Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/217

 UNITY OF AUTHORSHIP 201 unwilling to believe that the author of the fifth book, or Aristeia of Diomedes, would condescend to employ the hero whom he there so brightly glorifies, the victor even over Ares himself, in slaughtering newly-arrived Thracian sleepers, without any large purpose or necessity. 1 The ninth book, of which I have already spoken at length, belongs to a different vein of conception, and seems to me more likely to have emanated from a separate composer. While intimating these views respecting the authorship of the Iliad, as being in my judgment the most probable, I must repeat that, though the study of the poem carries to my mind a sufficient conviction respecting its structure, the question between unity and plurality of authors is essentially less determinable. The poem consists of a part original, and other parts superadded ; yet it is certainly not impossible that the author of the former may 1 Subsequent poets, seemingly thinking that the naked story, (of Diomedes slaughtering Rhesus and his companions in their sleep,) as it now stands in the Iliad, was too displeasing, adopted different ways of dressing it up. Thus, according to Pindar (ap. Schol. Iliad, x. 435), Rhesus fought one day as the ally of Troy, and did such terrific damage, that the Greeks had no other means of averting total destruction from his hand on the next day, except by killing him during the night. And the Euripidean drama, called Widsus, though representing the latter as a new-comer, yet puts into the mouth of Athene the like overwhelming predictions of what he would do on the coming day, if suffered to live ; so that to kill him in the night is the only way of saving the Greeks (Eurip. Rhes. 602) : moreover, Rhesus him- self is there brought forward as talking with such overweening insolence, that the sympathies of man, and the envy of the gods, are turned against him (ib. 458). But the story is best known in the form and with the addition (equally unknown to the Iliad) which Virgil has adopted. It was decreed by fate that, if the splendid horses of Rhesus were permitted once either to taste the Trojan provender, or to drink of the river Xanthus, nothing could preserve the Greeks from ruin ( JEneid, i. 468, with Servius, ad loc.): " Nee procul hinc Rhesi niveis tentoria velis Agnoscit lacrymans : primo quse prodita somno Tydides multa vastabat caede crucntus : Ardentesque avertit equos in castra, priusquam Pabula gustassent Trojae, Xanthumque bibissent" All these versions arc certainly improvements upon the story as it stands in the Iliad. 9*