the double resistance of belt and corslet. It draws blood, nevertheless, in a stream; and both Menelaus and Agamemnon at first fear that the wound is mortal;—
"Great Agamemnon shuddered as he saw
The crimson blood-drops issuing from the wound,
Shuddered the warlike Menelaus' self;
But when the sinew and the arrow-head
He saw projecting, back his spirit came.
Then, deeply groaning, Agamemnon spoke,
As Menelaus by the hand he held,
And with him groaned his comrades; 'Brother dear,
Fatal to thee hath been the oath I swore,
When thou stoodst forth alone for Greece to fight;
Wounded by Trojans, who their plighted troth
Have trodden under foot.'" (D.)
Two points are remarkable in this passage: first, the tenderness which Agamemnon shows towards his younger brother, even to the point of self-reproach at having allowed him to fight Paris at all, though in a quarrel which was so thoroughly his own. His expressions of grief and remorse at the thought of going home to Greece without him (which run to considerable length), though somewhat tinged with selfishness, inasmuch as he feels his own honour at stake, are much more like the feeling of a parent than of an elder brother. Again, the picture of Menelaus "shuddering" at his own wound —so sensitive to the dread of death that he apparently all but faints, until he is reassured by finding that the barb of the arrow has not really penetrated—is utterly inconsistent with our English notions of a hero. We have to bear in mind, here and elsewhere, that these Greek heroes, of whatever race we are to suppose them to be, are of an entirely differ-
