Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/194

(78 HISTORY OF GREECiv The great and capital misfortune which prostrates the strengln of the Greeks, and renders them incapable of defending them- selves without Achilles, is the disablement, by wounds, of Aga- memnon, Diomedes, and Odysseus ; so that the defence of the wall and of the ships is left only to heroes of the second magni- tude (Ajax alone excepted), such as Idomeneus, Leonteus, Poly- pa? tes, Meriones, Menelaus, etc. Now, it is remarkable that all these three first-rate chiefs are in full force at the beginning of the eleventh book: all three are wounded in the battle which that book describes, and at the commencement of which Agamemnon is full of spirits and courage. Nothing can be more striking than the manner in which Homer concentrates our attention in the first book upon Achilles as the hero, his quarrel with Agamemnon, and the calamities to the Greeks which are held out as about to ensue from it, through the intercession of Thetis with Zeus. But the incidents dwelt upon from the beginning of the second book down to the combat between Hector and Ajax in the seventh, animated and interesting us they are, do nothing to realize this promise. They are a splendid picture of the Trojan war generally, and eminently suitable to that larger title under which the poem has been immortalized, but the consequences of the anger of Achilles do not appear until the eighth book. The tenth book, or Doloneia, is also a portion of the Iliad, but not of the Achilleis : while the ninth book appears to me a subsequent addition, nowise harmo- nizing with that main stream of the Achilleis which flows from the eleventh book to the twenty-second. The eighth book ought to be read in immediate connection with the eleventh, in order to see the structure of what seems the primitive Achilleis ; for there are several passages in the eleventh and the following book?, which prove that the poet who composed them could not have had present to his mind the main event of the ninth book, the outpouring of profound humiliation by the Greeks, and from Agamemnon, especially, before Achilles, coupled with formal and the natural train of circumstances whereby he is made the vehicle of reconciliation on the part of his offended friend, and rescue to his imperiled countrymen, nil these exhibit a degree of epical skill, in the author of the primitive Achilluis, tc which nothing is found parallel in the added books of the Iliad.