unconscious satirist, and that he willingly allowed his hearers to draw, if they pleased, the inference which he hints in more than one passage, that war is the sport of princes, for which the masses pay the cost.
But Juno's ever-watchful eyes have marked the movement. Again Minerva is her messenger, and shoots down from Olympus to stop this disgraceful flight. She addresses herself to the ear of the sage Ulysses, who knows her voice at once. 'Wisdom speaks to the wise,—if any reader prefers the moral allegory to the simple fiction. Ulysses is standing fixed in disgust and despair at the cowardice of his countrymen. The goddess bids him use all his eloquence to check their flight. Without a word he flings off his cloak,[1] and meeting Agamemnon, receives the immortal sceptre from his hand, and armed with this staff of authority rushes down to the galleys. Any king or chieftain whom he encounters he hastily reminds of the secret understanding which had been the result of the previous council, and urges them, at least, to set a braver example. To the plebeian crowd he uses argument of another kind. He applies the royal sceptre to them in one of its primitive uses, as a rod of correction, and bids them wait for orders from their superiors. Easily swayed to either course, the crowd are awed into quiet by his energetic remonstrances. One popular orator alone lifts his well-known voice loudly in defiance. It is a certain
- ↑ It may be satisfactory to a matter-of-fact reader to know that Eurybates, his attendant, takes care of it. The old Greek bard is much more particular on such points than modern novelists, who make even their heroines take sudden journeys without (apparently) having any chance of carrying with them so much as a sac-de-nuit.
