Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/74

52 52 HISTORY OF THE placed the building of these walls immediately after the landing*. This endeavour to comprehend every thing in one poem also shows itself in another circumstance, — that some of the events of the war lying within this poem are copied from others not included in it. Thus the wounding of Diomed by Paris, in the heel t, is taken from the story of the death of Achilles, and the same event furnishes the general outlines of the death of Patroclus; as in both, a god and a man together bring about the accomplishment of the will of fate J. § 7. The other motive for the great extension of the preparatory part of the catastrophe may, it appears, be traced to a certain conflict between the plan of the poet and his own patriotic feelings. An attentive reader cannot fail to observe that while Homer intends that the Greeks should be made to suffer severely from the anger of Achilles, he is yet, as it were, retarded in his progress towards that end by a natural endeavour to avenge the death of each Greek by that of a yet more illustrious Trojan, and thus to increase the glory of the numerous Achaean heroes; so that, even on the days in which the Greeks are defeated, more Trojans than Greeks are described as being slain-. Admitting that the poet, living among the descendants of these Achaean heroes, found more legends about them than about the Trojans in circulation, still the intro- duction of them into a poem, in which these very Achaeans were de- scribed as one of the parties in a war, could not fail to impart to it a national character. Row short is the narration of the second day's battle in the eighth book, where the incidents follow their direct course, under the superintendence of Zeus, and the poet is forced to allow the Greeks to be driven back to their camp (yet even then not without severe loss to the Trojans), in comparison with the narrative of the first day's battle, which, besides many others, celebrates the exploits of Diomed, and extends from the second to the seventh book ; in which Zeus appears, as it were, to have forgotten his resolution and his promise to Thetis. The exploits of Diomed § are indeed closely connected with the violation of the treaty, inasmuch as the death of Pandarus, which became necessary in order that his treachery might be avenged, is the work of Tydides || ; but they have been greatly extended, particularly by the battles with the gods, which form the characteristic feature of the legend of Diomed ^[ : hence in this part of the Iliad oarticularly, slight a smaller and a larger bulwark, is absurd, t II. xi. 377. { II. xix. 417 ; xxii. 339. It was the fate of Achilles, faf n xa.) avUi 7fi luftweu. § AioyAoovi aoiffri'ia. expects; but it is his practice rather to leave the requisite moral iinpression to be made by the simple combination of the events, without adding any comment of his own. fl[ Diomed, in the Argive mythology, which referred to Pallas, was a being closely connected with this goddess, her shield-bearer and defender of the Palladium,
 * Thuc. i. 1 1 . The attempt of the scholiast to remove the difficult}', by supposing
 * ] II. v. 290. Homer does not make on this occasion the reflection which one