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26 also the original hearers are supposed to have been acquainted. The Trojans and their allies are cooped up within the walls of their city, while the Greek hero Achilles has spread the terror of his name far and wide.

The poet’s exordium is of the very briefest. His invocation to the goddess of song is in just three words:—

We have here the key-note of the poem brought before us in the very first line—nay, in the very first word, according to the original, for “wrath” stands first in the Greek, which it cannot very conveniently do in the English. The two great heroes of the Greek chivalry, Agamemnon and Achilles, always jealous of each other, come to an open quarrel in full council of the princes of the League. Their quarrel is—like the original cause of the war, like so many quarrels before and since—about a woman, a beautiful captive. A fatal pestilence is raging in the camp. The Sun-god, Apollo, is angry. To him and to his twin-sister Diana, the Moon, all mysterious diseases were attributed—not without some sufficient reasons, in a hot climate. Pestilence and disease were the arrows of Apollo and Diana. Therefore the Greeks have no doubt as to the author of the present calamity. It is “the god of the silver bow” who is sending his swift shafts of death amongst them. The poet’s vision even sees the dread Archer in bodily shape. It is a fine picture; the English reader will lose little of its beauty in Lord Derby’s version:—

Along Olympus heights he passed, his heart Burning with wrath; behind his shoulders hung His bow and ample quiver; at his back