PROPERTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY LIBRARV A COMPANION TO THE ILIAD A BESIEGED CITY. (from the " Fourth Tomb" at Mykenai) A- COMPANION TO THE ILIAD FOR ENGLISH READERS BY WALTER LEAF, LITT. D. FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE iLontion MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1892 All rights reserved Bfcfl PREFACE THE last few years have caused some not unnatural dis- quietude to those who are interested in the future of classi- cal studies in England. A serious attack, led by some of the ablest men engaged in teaching, alike in schools and universities, has been delivered upon the place which Greek now holds in the established course of English education. It appears to have failed for the present ; but none the less it has revealed the existence of a body of opinion at once powerful in reputation and influential in position ; it is likely enough that it may be repeated at no distant date with over- whelming forces. If the success of this attack meant, as many or perhaps most now think, a total divorce of modern and ancient literature, it would surely be deplorable. But to believe such a divorce possible argues a weak faith in the intrinsic vitality of Greek letters. Their union with our modern thought is indissoluble, because it is based on a long his- torical growth, and because those who would study English literature find themselves forced to study Greek Greek literature at least, if not the Greek language. And it is in the recognition of this fact that the real hope for classical vill PREFACE study lies. It is because the history of literature is a most important branch of universal history, and itself a continuous whole, that Greek literature will hold its ground. The more mankind studies its own past, the more it will see that a knowledge of Greek life and thought is imperatively needed. That such a knowledge can be adequately obtained without a thorough acquaintance with the Greek language no scholar is likely to assert. But the language after all is not the whole of philology. The scholar is tempted to underestimate the real importance of his task, which is nothing less than to reproduce the whole minds and sur- roundings of men of the past, so far as the materials allow him. And much of this he can do without appealing to linguistic subtleties. There have always been those who by sheer genius have been able to catch the Greek spirit even from Chapman's Homer; it is certain that there are many more who will be able to catch it through careful teaching based on translation. For the last century has put within our reach the means of making even translations live in the illustrations with which the rediscovery of the material remains of ancient Greece has so abundantly provided us. The in- tangible grace and elastic life of the original must be lost in any translation ; in a prose translation of a poet much more is lost. But that even in this all the charm does not vanish is testified by the welcome which has been given to many prose translations of Greek poets in these last few years. And with what remains of poetic spirit there is left too, in any accurate translation, the whole of the historic value of the original. It is not too much to say that in these ele- PREFACE ix ments we have the base of an education hardly inferior, if inferior at all, to that founded on the study of the language, at least as understood in the ordinary classical curriculum. The Companion to the Iliad has been written in the belief that if the classics are thus taught, with their interest as an essential part of the history of the human mind for a broad base, and translation as a means of bringing them before a great public lying beyond the present range of university education, they can never lose their privilege of intellectual rank. The book is an experiment in some respects, I think, a novel experiment. A running commentary de- liberately sacrifices literary independence and literary form. The Companion is strictly a companion to another book, and cannot be read as a separate work. But it aims at an object which can be attained in no other way ; it aims at bringing to the exact place where it is needed the informa- tion required for the understanding of the original. It is designed for students who really wish to learn, but can read Homer in a translation only ; I may perhaps hope that even those who have a knowledge of the language may find in it something to help them. It is true that there is in it little which will not be found in my large edition of the Iliad ; but some may be glad to have even this free from all purely linguistic and grammatical commentary. As a preparation for the study of Homer, such as is required by those who would make the best use of the Companion, nothing can be better than Professor Jebb's admirable Introduction to Homer. There is little or nothing in this which will be unintelligible to those who do not x PREFACE know the language. For the discoveries at Mykenai I have freely referred throughout to Schuchhardt's work, Schlie- mann's Excavations^ in the English translation by Miss Sellers. It is a significant indication of the direction in which classical study is tending, that while the following pages were passing through the press there should have appeared no less than three new works which are exactly suited to help those who may be so far interested in Homer as to work their way through the Companion. The Pictorial Atlas to Homer, by Dr. Engelmann and Professor W. C. F. Anderson, contains a most instructive collection of illustrations of the poems and myths taken from Greek remains of all ages. Miss Agnes Clerke's Familiar Studies in Homer gives an attractive and accurate account of a great deal of Homeric archaeology. And those who wish for a more advanced account of the relation of the Homeric world to the finds of Mykenai cannot do better than go to the earlier portion of Professor Gardner's New Chapters in Greek History. It will be seen that I have devoted a large portion of the commentary to the discussion of the Homeric question, and especially to the theory which in my belief gives the best ac- count of the difficulties which exist in the Iliad. I have done this because the problem itself is one of the most important in literature, and because I think it is one which can be dealt with in a translation almost as well as in the original. It is on the broad grounds of the construction and motives of the poem, and not on any merely linguistic considerations, that a decision must be sought. A cultivated reader who PREFACE XI has studied other literatures is hardly less qualified than the professional scholar in some respects he is better qualified to pronounce a judgment on these. The notes deal to a great extent, perhaps it may seem disproportionately, with the weaknesses which are to be found in the Iliad, But it must be remembered that for the beauties the text must in the end speak for itself. Those who cannot enjoy the Iliad without a commentary will certainly not be made to enjoy it by any number of laudatory annotations. The complete aesthetic appreciation of the Iliad is the business of the essayist, not of the com- mentator ; and my own feeling is that an honest recognition of difficulties and weaknesses is likely to be more helpful to the learner than indiscriminate adulation. It is hardly necessary to say that I have taken as text for the notes the prose translation of the Iliad by Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. Ernest Myers, and myself. For the sake of easy reference I have in most cases quoted not only the line of the Iliad, but the page and line of the translation, where a phrase occurs. These latter references are in all cases expressed in italic numerals. A revised version of the translation has recently appeared ; but I have through- out taken pains to make the Companion equally intelligible to those who possess the earlier editions. In only one case, I think, on p. 214, will there be found a slight difference in the numbering of the lines; and where an important alteration of the text has been introduced it will in all cases, I hope, have been pointed out in the notes. The remarkable picture of a siege which forms the frontis- xii PREFACE piece comes from a fragment of a silver bowl found by Schliemann at Mykenai. The picture itself has only been recently discovered by the careful removal of a thick coating of deposit. It was first published last year in the Greek Ephemeris Archaiologike, whence the frontispiece is repro- duced. W. L. 28tA May 1892. INTRODUCTION BEFORE the beginnings of European history there dwelt in Greece a people who called themselves Achaians. They had come probably from the North, through Thrace, and had settled in Thessaly and Boeotia, in the Peloponnesos, in the islands of the western coast, in Crete, and in a few of the neighbouring islands which lie between Crete and the coast of Asia Minor. They were a pure Greek race, and spoke a pure Greek tongue, the parent of those dialects which the Greeks themselves in after years distinguished as Aiolic. But they had not found Greece vacant when they came. It had been inhabited by a race or races whom the Greeks themselves called Pelasgians, and of whom we know little more than the name. These Pelasgians still lived in the land as a plebeian class, to whom the invading Achaians held something of the same position as the feudal lords in early Norman times to their defeated Saxons. The main seat of the Achaians was at the inland fortress of Mykenai, in the hills between Corinth and the Gulf of Argos. But they were divided among many petty princes, who dwelt in various strong towns, chiefly along the eastern coasts and the islands, and with few important settlements perhaps only Pylos and Kalydon in the west. Sparta was probably their main settlement next after Mykenai. B COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " When they came into Greece we cannot even approxi- mately tell. But we know that in the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries B.C. they had attained to great wealth, and had produced a vigorous and beautiful school of art. They were great builders, and much of their work is still, after more than 3000 years, a marvel for boldness of conception and solidity of construction. Their rule must have lasted for several centuries, but at length it fell, about 1000 B.C., before the invading Dorians, a rude tribe of Greek mountaineers who pressed southwards from the hills round Thessaly. The period at which we become acquainted with the Achaians is that of the height of their civilisation. Such knowledge as we have of them at this time, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries B.C., we owe to the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann at Mykenai, since supplemented by excavations at other sites in Greece. But these great finds, though telling us much, leave much still to be guessed at. It is at a later period, probably less than a century before their destruction by the Dorians, that we gain a more intimate acquaintance with them through the two great poems which they have left us as their intellectual inheritance, the Iliad and the Odyssey. These poems have often been spoken of as popular poetry, Volkspoesie, and have even been compared to the ballad poetry of our own and other nations. It is now generally recognised that this conception is radically false. The Iliad and Odyssey are essentially and above all court poems. They were composed to be sung in the splendid palaces of a ruling aristocracy, and the commonalty have no part or lot as actors in them. Even the slave and swine- herd Eumaios, the only figure of the lower class of heroic society who takes a leading part in either poem, is described INTRODUCTION as of princely birth, kidnapped when a child and sold as a slave by Phenician traders. When the common sort are mentioned in the Iliad in contrast to the " kings " it is in terms of supreme disdain ; only one of them, Thersites, is given an individuality, and then only that he may be held up to ridicule and humiliation. This is the first point which must be clearly grasped by those who would enter into the spirit of Homer : that the poems are aristocratic and courtly, not popular. The next is, that they are not to be regarded as the outcome of a young and primitive people. They are the offspring of an advanced civilisation, the growth of centuries ; and of a civilisation which was approaching its decline and fall. It was in some respects a civilisation even more ad- vanced than that which grew out of the ruins brought about by the invasion of the Dorians. This is clear from various traits, of which one or two may be mentioned. First, the position of women, the keystone of the family, was as high as any that the world has yet seen ; in many ways it strikingly reminds us of the family of our own day, and was far above the status of women in classical Athens. Women were on a virtual equality with men, mixing with them freely in domestic intercourse, and sub- iect to none of the disabilities which weighed so heavily upon them in later times. In archaeological discussions on the Homeric house we hear a great deal of the " women's chambers " ; but the phrase is an incorrect one, as incorrect as it would be if used of a modern London house. The women sit habitually among the men in the great common hall. There are of course besides the bedrooms, working chambers, and offices, which are used by the domestic slaves who are, for household duties, naturally women. But there is no trace of anything resembling the gynaikonitis of later COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " Greece, a separate part of the house where the woman was almost a prisoner, and where no man but the master of the house might penetrate. The conception of the home was, in fact, more like that of an English than of an Attic house. In religion, again, the Achaians held a distinctly more ad- vanced position than did the Greeks of the classical period. The most salient point here is the absence of superstition. Charms and witchcraft are almost entirely absent ; we hardly hear of more than of the stopping of blood by a charm in one passage of the Odyssey? Augury is indeed practised, but it holds a quite subordinate position, and in one very famous passage of Iliad xii. it is spoken of in terms of any- thing but respect. Though an omen at times may encourage or alarm the observer, it never on any occasion suggests or prevents an action of any importance ; there is nothing in the least resembling the childish observance of sacrifices or birds by which not only the classical Greeks but even the sober Romans allowed the gravest decisions to be postponed or abandoned. We miss too the crowds of local deities who received in later times a higher and more earnest share of worship than the nominally supreme gods. Especially we notice the absence of all forms of the " Chthonian " worship of the dread powers of the under-world in which superstition in later days was allowed to run riot. All these baser forms of belief which characterise the primitive stage of thought had been purged away ; and even what is left is treated with a lightness which seems hardly to conceal failing belief. The passage of arms between Zeus and Hera at the end of Iliad i. may stand as a type of all ; the gods throughout are treated with scant respect, and are not even made ideals of moral virtue; far from it. Here, again, the Achaians 1 Xix. 457, "As for the wound, they bound it up skilfully, and stayed the black blood with a song of healing. " INTRODUCTION had gone far beyond the Greeks who succeeded them in the historic age. So too in many of the customs which mark more particularly the primitive state later Greece is far richer than the heroic age. It is indeed remarkable, considering the early age of the poems, that they should have afforded so little material for the students of survivals from the first ages of culture. Relationship is virtually the same as in modern Europe ; there is hardly a trace to be found of such early institutions as maternal descent instead of paternal, and none whatever of exogamy or other artificial restraints upon the choice of a wife. And what is still more remark- able, perhaps, is the entire absence of any tribal feeling as distinct from national. The only division in the Greek army of which we hear is the purely personal quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon ; there is no sign of this having ever passed into a division between the Myrmidons and Argives ; and yet the preponderance of tribal feeling over national is one of the most universal signs of early civilisation. That national feeling should be supreme, is the mark of the last step in the slow process of nation-making ; and it had been won by the Achaians. We have only to think of Marathon and Plataea to see how far they were in this respect beyond the Greeks of the fifth century. It is clear, then, that between the time of the Achaians and the classical age the clock of civilisation had been set far back. The invasion of the rude Dorians had destroyed the earlier culture, and the delicate plant took long to grow up again ; and when it recovered, it was under other circumstances which materially altered its aspect Though the Achaians were thorough Greeks, yet there is a gulf between them and the Greeks whom we best know which cannot be too clearly conceived. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD How then did it come to pass that the Homeric poems are thus in many ways more modern than later Greece ? The answer is, I believe, to be found in the descent of the lonians. The appearance of the Ionian name is the great mark of the difference between pre-historic and historic Greece. In Homer the Greeks are a unity the Achaians. In the historic age they are found as three sharply sundered stems Aiolians, Dorians, and lonians. We know who the Aiolians were they were descendants of the Achaians ; we know who the Dorians were and whence they came ; but who were these lonians who are to us the type of all that is most Greek in the world of intellect at least ? The answer is given us by the traditions of the lonians themselves, and there is no reason for doubting it. The lonians were the old pre-Hellenic or Pelasgian population Hellenised by the Achaians. 1 Far from being ashamed of this mixture of blood, they gloried in it ; the first aim of the Ionic Athenians was to magnify their old Autochthon- ous descent, and to minimise the share of the Achaians in their blood. The whole aim of the Ion of Euripides is nothing but this. And in Attica at least they no doubt had good grounds for this exclusiveness. Of all Greece proper this corner seems to have been least modified by the Achaians. Hence it is that in the Iliad Athens and the Athenians are in the background. An Achaian dynasty of Athens there certainly was ; but it is not recognised in the true Athenian tradition ; Theseus and not the Homeric Menestheus is the Attic hero. It is true that Athens, like the rest of Greece, could not resist the temptation to seek a place in the roll of honour of Agamemnon's army ; the lonians even claimed as their own some of the noble Achaian families, who no 1 This is repeatedly asserted by Herodotos. See i. 56, 57 ; ii. 51 ; vii. 94 ; viii. 44. INTRODUCTION doubt had, at the time of the great catastrophe of the Dorian migration, thrown in their lot with the hitherto subject population among whom they had lived, just as the Fitzgeralds and other English of the Pale became in time more Irish than the Irish themselves. A notable instance of this is to be found in the Neleid family, claiming to be the descendants of Nestor, who, in the person of Peisistratos, asserted the foremost place among the lonians and yet claimed Achaian blood from the first. But in Homer there is no trace whatever of a race difference between Nestor and the other Achaians ; the idea of making him and Odysseus lonians is, in fact, a gross anachronism. It was a deliberate invention of a later age. We thus have an obvious explanation of the comparative modernness of the Homeric civilisation as compared with that of Athens. The Autochthonous population had pre- served intact all their primitive beliefs and superstitions, while adopting the forms of the Achaian civilisation ; that is what always happens. But when the once dominant classes were removed to perish by an artistic but otherwise inglorious death in the Aiolian colonies of Asia Minor and elsewhere, the older people, impregnated with their genius, sprang rapidly into independent life. But they did not drop the more primitive phases of belief which had clung to them ; these rose to the surface with the rest of that marvellous Ionic genius, and many an ancient survival was enshrined in the literature or mythology of Athens which had long passed out of all remembrance at Mykenai. Hence it is at Athens and in Arcadia and not in Homer that Mr. M'Lennan finds his clearest traces of maternal kinship, and Mr. Lang his few survivals of totemism on Greek soil. Wherever the Pelasgians were strongest, in Attica, in Arcadia, and in Thessaly, for these were the three sites of traditional Pelasgianism, there 8 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " we find the most abundant evidence of primitive thought ; stone-worship in Athens and Arcadia in Arcadia the were- wolf, in Thessaly witchcraft. It was, in fact, the cropping up of an older stratum which brought to light these remains of a hoary antiquity in a land whose former masters, so far as they are in evidence, had outlived them. This, then, is the fundamental mark of the gap between Homeric and classical Greece ; a fresh start is taken from an earlier level, and all classical Greece bears witness to the fact. It must not of course be imagined that what I have called the modernness of the heroic age extended through the whole range of life. Many departments still retained a rudimentary complexion ; in polity, in law, and in mechanical invention the Achaians were far behind the Greeks as we find them when they enter into history proper. But none the less the Achaians had reached a point in art, in religion, and in domestic relations which shows that they were an old nation, not a young one. They had accumulated wealth which enabled them to enjoy the cultured luxury which is the privilege of age; and with luxury the seeds of decay had begun to sprout. The Achaians had lost the love of war and fighting for its own sake ; the sense of honour, and the desire of plunder, were the motives which kept up the army of the Atreidai ; their ideal was the happy nation of the Phaiakians, who lived far from tumult and could give them- selves to the delights of song, feast, and dance. It is impossible not to be reminded of the happy land of the Counts of Toulouse in the twelfth century, where a whole people lived in an atmosphere of luxury and song. The realm of Agamemnon, like the realm of Raymond, went down before the attack of the rude barbarians from the North. But, unlike Toulouse, Mykenai has left us two immortal treasures : first, the Ionian genius which thence drew life ; INTRODUCTION and secondly, the great Epic, a monument happily more perfect and more enduring than even the Lion-gate of Mykenai itself. Not many years ago it would have been considered absurd, and even now it may be held rash, to suppose that we have in the Iliad and the Odyssey a direct legacy from Achaian times. The prevalent theory, from the days of classical Greece downwards, has been that the two poems were not Achaian but Ionian in origin ; that they were composed by Ionian singers in the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor, probably in Chios or Smyrna. On this point the voice of antiquity was indeed unanimous, or at least only varied so far that some attributed them to Ionian Athens on the mainland instead of to the eastern shores of the Aegaean. And we cannot afford to neglect entirely testimony such as this. If we hold it to be wrong, we must explain how the mistake arose. And of this we can give a sufficient account The theory was doubtless based on two facts : first, that the traditional knowledge of the poems came to classical Greece through the Asiatic lonians ; and secondly, that the language in which they were handed down was a dialect which, though somewhat mixed, was in the main Ionian, such as was spoken in the islands along the coast of Asia. Now there is no difficulty in supposing that when the sceptre of intellect passed from the worn-out Achaian race to the fresh vigour of Ionia, the latter people took over the poetical inheritance which the old Achaian families, under their new name of Aiolians, had lost the art of keeping up. The two races had been so closely connected in their ancient home that such a transfer contains nothing that need surprise us, the more so as we have seen that the most vigorous of the ancient Achaians cast in their lot with the lonians and COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " were absorbed by them. And when the poems were taken over by the new singers, it followed of necessity that the dialect was changed. But the change could not be complete. Many of the words of the old Achaian dialect differed in metre from the corresponding Ionian words. Where this happened, it was necessary for the new singers either to change the old text, and modify whole lines in order to introduce words of their own, or to keep the old words as they were, in spite of their unfamiliarity. The latter course was that which they adopted, and the result was the so- called Epic dialect, which, with its prevailing Ionic colouring, contains many words which the laws of speech as well as the tradition of antiquity tell us are Aiolic. And as there is no doubt that the typical Aiolic dialect was that spoken in the northern colonies of Asia Minor which were peopled by men who claimed to be the immediate descendants of the Achaians, we have every reason to suppose that these words so strangely surviving among others of different stock are nothing but relics of the old Achaian dialect itself. There is thus no inherent difficulty in the theory that the poems are directly deducible from the bards who sang in the palaces of the Achaian princes of Mykenai and Sparta. The Ionian singers of the new Greek world appropriated them by the right of genius, and partly trans- formed them ; no doubt, as we shall see, they extended them; no wonder that in after ages they succeeded in claiming the original authorship of them. This theory then, which has been worked out in detail by Professor Pick of Gottingen, though it has led him to conclusions different from those stated above, is so far negative that it merely enables us to explain away the evidence of tradition ; it is positive in so far as it enables us to explain the mixed character of the Epic dialect, which INTRODUCTION without it is an insoluble problem. But the positive evidence on which we must chiefly rely is that of the poems themselves. There can be no doubt that, wherever and whenever the poems were composed, they profess to be the composition of poets living in Greece proper among the princes of Achaia. Ostensibly at least they are entirely pre-Dorian. There is not one word of the great catastrophe which changed the face of Greece, nor a single hint at the new life which sprang up after the great migration, and changed the eastern Mediterranean into a Greek sea. The life de- picted in the poems is that of a wealthy aristocracy living on the produce of their lands, confined to Greece proper and Crete, with a few neighbouring islands, governed by hereditary kings, and with a geographical horizon only extend- ing to Egypt on the one side, and perhaps vaguely to Sicily on the other. But the Ionian emigrants were above all things expansive and commercial; their centres were Miletos, Ephesos, Colophon, and the other great towns of the Asian coasts ; their ships and their colonies went freely over all lands, from the recesses of the Black Sea on the one hand to Marseilles and Spain on the other. To suppose that people thus overflowing with living energy should care or be able to remove themselves entirely from their surround- ings and throw themselves into a description of the past without allowing a single allusion, or, so far as we can detect, a single anachronism to escape them, is to credit them first with a power of historic imagination, and next with means of archaeological research, such as have been hardly equalled in the history of the world ; not even in our age, with all the resources of documentary study to help. For it must not be forgotten that the world of Homer is a real world, not a world of fancy. This is evident in every COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD line. The surroundings among which the heroes move are as vivid and real as the heroes themselves ; and they are as different as possible from the surroundings of poets com- posing in Ionia. It is not as if we were transported into a mere realm of fairyland, where the poet could imagine and impose upon us such scenery as he thought fit. Wherever we can test the actualities of the poem we find that they are at all events possible, and in many points they coincide in a surprising way with the results which recent discoveries have shown us. It is, in fact, in the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann that we have the impulse which seems to be sending the balance over towards the belief in the European instead of in the Asiatic origin of the poems. We now know that at the very point which Homer makes the chief royal city of Greece there did, in fact, exist a civilisation, which did, in fact, offer just the conditions for the rise of a poetry such as the Homeric a great city " rich in gold," with a cultivation of the material arts, such as is wont to go hand in hand with the growth of poetry. The heroic world, as depicted in the poems, can no longer be supposed the product of a poet's fancy dwelling on the olden days and idealising them with imaginative exaggeration. The correspondence is too strik- ing for that. It is no longer possible to doubt that the world which the poems describe was one which really existed in the place where they put it. Even in details the poems have received striking illustration from the remains of Mykenai. It is true that there are some discrepancies, of which the most notable is connected with funeral rites ; in Homer the dead are burnt, at Mykenai they were buried, and probably even mummified. But this difference is not entirely inexplicable; it cannot be held to outweigh the more numerous coincidences. INTRODUCTION 13 The only form in which the Asiatic origin of the poems can now be reasonably maintained is by supposing that the Iliad and Odyssey were founded on older Achaian poems ; and that, while they had a new plot of their own, the scenery was faithfully copied from that handed down in these older poems, which were still in existence and accessible to the Ionic bards of the Iliad and Odyssey. But this supposition again makes too large a demand upon our faith in the power of these Ionic bards to reproduce from other sources a world which was unknown to them and entirely alien to their surroundings. And the hypothesis is quite gratuitous. If these ancient poems were in the possession of the Ionian bards, there is no improbability in supposing that it was these original poems and not a copy of them which has reached us ; they must at all events have been very similar in contents to our Iliad and Odyssey, or they could not have served as models for so abundant a variety of scenery. The hypothesis may, however, have a certain amount of truth in it. It is hardly possible to hold that the Iliad and Odyssey have come down to us entirely in their present form from Achaian times. In a mass of poems which lent them- selves so easily to expansion, it is likely enough that inter- polations of considerable compass were made from time to time ; and when we come to examine the poems in detail, we shall see that there is positive evidence in favour of such a supposition. Some of the latest additions may be as recent as the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. There is no such difficulty in supposing that, in making interpolations into an existing poem, the traditional scenery would be carefully followed, as in the idea that Ionian bards could for themselves create a new poem on the old lines. There is an obvious artistic need for preserving the unity of the existing work, which will make an interpolator painfully 14 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " anxious to avoid anything obviously anachronistic from the standpoint of his original. Yet even so he is almost certain from time to time to betray his later date by some unconscious turn of expression. In our ignorance of the historical surroundings of the Ionian colonies, it is obviously very hard for us to detect such discrepancies ; but some of them have been made at least very probable, and seem to show that parts of the Iliad and Odyssey are later than the time they profess to represent later, that is, than the Dorian migration. Which parts can be supposed to be thus later we shall presently have to consider. But it must not be forgotten that even in the post-Dorian period there is a double possibility to be kept in mind. Post- Dorian poems are not of necessity Ionian ; they may have come from the Achaian that is, the Aiolian colonies; and for the earlier of them at least this origin is the more likely. It is extremely difficult, perhaps altogether beyond our power, to apply any sure criterion for distinguishing between Aiolian and Ionian work. Language is our best guide ; but in our ignorance of the dialects of Greece in the ninth and tenth centuries, we must guard against a too confident reliance on this clue. It appears, then, that we may date the oldest part of the Iliad at least to some time before the Dorian invasion, which, according to the traditional chronology, took place about 1000 B.C. ; a date agreeing sufficiently well with the time probably needed for the development of the Asiatic colonies, which arose from the pressure of that invasion, and had already reached a great height of pros- perity and power by 750 B.C. But the poems can hardly be much earlier than the invasion ; for there are various signs which indicate that the civilisation which they depict had made some advance beyond that of which we find the INTRODUCTION material remains in the " shaft tombs," discovered by Dr. Schliemann in the Acropolis of Mykenai. And the date of these has now been fixed by Mr. Petrie, from comparison with Egyptian remains, at about 1150. We can therefore hardly be far wrong, if the poems were composed in Achaian Greece, in dating their origin at about 1050 B.C. There still remains the question of the historical basis which may underlie the story of the Iliad. The poem may give us a true picture of Achaian Greece and its civilisation, and yet be no proof that the armies of Agamemnon fought beneath the walls of Troy. But here again the discoveries of recent years, and notably those of Schliemann at Hissarlik, have tended on the whole to confirm the belief that there is a historic reality behind the tale of Troy. Two things seem to be clearly made out. First, the Achaian empire was sufficiently powerful to collect a great armament and transport it across the seas for a distant war. Here, as in so many unexpected points, we get light from Egypt ; for it seems to be made out that about 1500 B.C. the Achaians were allies of the Libyans in a great invasion of Egypt ; possibly colonies of them were actually established there. If the Achaians could invade Egypt, there is no antecedent improbability in their invading Troas. Secondly, at the very point where tradition placed the city of Troy, there actually was a town of unknown antiquity and of considerable power. Thus two of the conditions, which have been gravely doubted previously, are now shown to have actually existed, and there is no a priori improbability, much less an impossibility, in such a Trojan expedition as the Iliad describes. But we can say positively if indeed it is not sufficiently evident on the face of it that the details of the Homeric story cannot possibly be historic. To take one main point, it is a fundamental assumption of the whole 16 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " Iliad that the Greeks and Trojans are essentially one people in civilisation and belief, in dress, manners, and language. Hardly here and there, as for instance in the polygamy of Priam, do we find traces of non-Greek habits. But this likeness cannot have existed between the inhabitants of Mykenai and Troy the Troy of Hissarlik. The inhabitants of Hissarlik had a culture of their own, but it was entirely different from and inferior to that of Mykenai. The siege of Troy was a conflict of two races and two cultures, with nothing in common. The description of it in the Iliad is purely imaginary a poetic idealisation of an event which can at most have been known by distant tradition. Even if Agamemnon and Achilles ever really lived, the Iliad can no more be taken as a proof that they fought before Troy, than the romances of the Middle Ages can prove that Charlemagne headed a crusade and fought before Jerusalem. One more indication of the reality of the siege of Troy may perhaps be added ; it is one on which undue stress has been laid by Schliemann and Schuchhardt, but it deserves consideration. It is clear that the topography of the plain of Troy was known either to the poets who composed the* Iliad, or possibly to those who made the ruder ballads by which, as we must suppose, the tradition was handed down to the eleventh century. The situation of Hissarlik, on the whole, suits the geography of the poems. But it is treated with the greatest freedom. When it suits his purpose, the poet forgets all about the river which runs between the Greek camp and the city of Troy. The sources of the Scamarider are brought down from the hills of Ida, miles away, and placed at the foot of the hill of Troy. The citadel itself, a gently sloping hill only 100 feet high, is made into a precipitous rock a picture taken perhaps from the neighbouring rock fastness of Balidagh, which was INTRODUCTION 17 itself for long identified with Troy. This is the poet's privilege ; even bolder treatment may be allowed to poets nearer home. The inaccessible Doone valley, so familiar to all the readers of Lorna Doone, is hardly more than a gentle depression in the Devonshire hills, where a man can walk in and out with his hands in his pockets ; the " water- slide" is only the ordinary stony bed of a Devonshire stream. We must say, then, that the Homeric poets had a real knowledge of the Troad, whether directly by their own observation, or indirectly through less accurate and more poetic tradition, and that they used this knowledge as pleased them best. It will be noted later on as a fact of some significance that parts of the Iliad which appear on other grounds to be later show a more minute knowledge of the geography of the Troad, and of other parts of Asia Minor; this may mean that these parts were composed, after the Dorian migration, by poets settled in Asia Minor, and thus having more opportunity of personal knowledge of the scene of their story. The hypothesis that the Iliad and Odyssey are the work of more than one poet, which has been assumed in the preceding pages, is one which has been gaining ground ever since it was seriously taken up and argued at length by Wolf in his famous Prolegomena, just a century ago. But it has from the first encountered strong opposition, and is still regarded, in England at least, as the heretical view. The feeling of reverence for a great work of art which regards as sacrilege any attempt at analysis is one which commands respect; but the truth must be sought at all costs. And no analysis can after all affect the real merits of any work of art. This must be judged in the impression it makes upon our artistic sensibility. The question of its origin has a great historic importance, but stands apart from c i8 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " its aesthetic value. The question of the authorship of the Iliad can in no way, however it be decided, detract from the magical power which the poem has held over the mind of man from the very earliest days. There is one art at least in which this fact is fully recognised, so that composite authorship is not held to be any bar to complete aesthetic enjoyment of the result. Many of our great Gothic cathedrals are the joint product of many hands, working in different styles over a long period of years ; and in the marks of many men, designing independently yet ruled by one main aim, we are accustomed to find a singular charm of human interest a proof of vital force which we miss in the more formal buildings which have been conceived and carried out on one consistent plan. The same is the case with the Iliad; it loses nothing in human interest if it be conceived not as the voice of a single man, but as the heritage of a whole age of Greek history. The prejudice which is felt against this view is perhaps partly due to a want of historic imagination. It seems as though there is a sort of moral delinquency implied by the apparent assumption that a number of great poets attempted to pass their work off on the world under a famous name which did not belong to them. A few moments' thought will show that such an idea is essentially a modern concep- tion ; it rests upon the conception of literary property, which is really one of the most curiously subtle and complicated creations of an advanced civilisation. It is one which must have been practically inconceivable in an age whose literary compositions were not written; and it is almost certain that writing was unknown, at least as a means of publication, in the Homeric age. When a new poem can be published only by teaching it to reciters by heart, a man must of necessity lose all sense of property in his work. The INTRODUCTION 19 reciter, once in possession of the poem, was unchecked ; nothing could prevent him treating it as his own, adding to it or curtailing it, and adapting it as seemed to him best suited to the taste of his audience. The Homeric poems, and especially the Odyssey, give us a picture of the bards or reciters, such as we must suppose the men to have been who created and handed down the poems. In the Iliad, it is true, we hardly get a hint at what they were ; they are out of place in a poem of war. We find Achilles himself, and not a professional bard, singing of the famous deeds of heroes. 1 We might, indeed, be tempted to see in Thamyris, whom the Muses met in Dorion, and blinded for his presumption, 2 the type of a wandering minstrel ; for he is found wandering westwards from the court of Eurytos of Oichalia. But he is after all a vague and mythical figure. The Odyssey gives no hint of wandering bards ; all those whom we meet there are attached to the courts of princes with whom they rank high among the retainers ; for it is to a bard that Agamemnon, when leaving for Troy, commits the charge of his wife. 3 As the supply of original poets of a high order can never have been sufficient to provide one for each princely court in Greece, it is clear that many or most must have been content to learn the songs which they recited. It follows that there must have been some sort of school to which those would resort who followed the profession of bard, in order to acquire, and from time to time to extend, their repertory'. This school would naturally attract the poets of original power, and would, in fact, become the publishers of Greece. But it would be necessary that every original genius who attached himself to the school should sink his own personal claim in his poems. It would thus 1 //. ix. 186. 2 //. ii. 595-600. 3 OJ. iii. 267. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " be indifferent to him whether he composed fresh poems altogether, or only added fresh episodes to those already in existence. The mere existence of the Iliad and Odyssey is itself a sufficient proof that the taste of the day ran in favour of long poems with numerous episodes clustering round a central story. It is easy to see that, under these circum- stances, any new poem which had proved itself a general favourite would be likely, as it was handed down from year to year, to receive continually fresh accretions of episode, till the original tale became only the nucleus round which a vast amount of fresh matter had grown up. This, or something like it, was, I believe, the process by which the Iliad, as we know it, came into being. It began with a short poem of supreme genius, which won its way to general favour by its own intrinsic merit. The most certain way in which a poet could gain acceptance for his own songs was by joining them to this great work. This could deceive nobody, especially when the original poem was, as we must suppose, familiar to all hearers. The business of the bard was to please his audience by giving them their old favourites combined with something new, whether of his own or learnt from others. In doing this no literary rights could be hurt, for none existed beyond the power which each poet possessed of being the only person who could teach that which he had himself created. This is little more than mere hypothesis ; but some such hypothesis we are bound to make in order to explain the possibility of any theory. And the main assumption, that of a school which busied itself with the tradition of the Homeric poetry, is equally necessary, even if we suppose that Iliad and Odyssey were composed in their entirety by one and the same person ; for there must have INTRODUCTION been some central authority to preserve the text intact when it could not be published in writing. Were there no such body to maintain a fixed standard, the poems must have ended by varying indefinitely according to the caprice of their different reciters. There is, indeed, some faint trace of the actual existence of such a school busying themselves with the authentic tradition of Homer, and calling themselves Homeridae, even in historic times ; but what we hear of them is too vague and obscure to enable us to place reliance on it. We must after all content ourselves with hypothesis ; the important thing is that we should attempt to realise the possibility of the creation and pre- servation of long poems in times when writing, if known in Greece at all, was at least a rare and a difficult art, not available for the publication of literature. Under such circumstances it would be strange if favourite poems did not receive additions, and go through a gradual course of growth as time went on. It remains to see how such a theory will explain the difficulties which have at all times been felt in the structure of the Iliad. The most casual reader cannot fail to have been struck by one difference between the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The latter is a model of skilful construction ; from the first we have the two parallel stories of Telemachos and Odysseus, beginning independently, and joining in the same channel at the beginning of the second half of the tale. The way in which we are told the adventures of Odysseus himself, the narrative opening near the end, and then brought back to the beginning in the hero's own words in the palace of Alkinoos, is a true masterpiece. And when we are once landed in Ithaca the final catastrophe is always in view ; at each step we feel it drawing nearer, till the interest reaches its climax at the magnificent opening of the 22 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " twenty-second book. From beginning to end there is not a single episode which does not bear upon a catastrophe foreseen and aimed at without wavering. With the Iliad all is different. There is indeed a plot, a most magnificent story, underlying the whole ; yet for large portions of the poem at a time this main plot seems to be entirely forgotten in the long series of brilliant episodes which form the beauty of the Iliad. From the second book to the seventh we hear nothing of the counsel of Zeus which is to avenge the wrong done to Achilles ; but for the negative fact that the absence of Achilles from the battle-field is pre- supposed, all the events of these books might have taken place at any other period of the war. So also in the thirteenth and fourteenth and the first part of the fifteenth books no advance whatever towards the catastrophe is made ; the battle surges forwards and backwards ; whatever is gained by one party is exactly balanced by a success of the other ; and at the end of this long section things are in precisely the same position as at the opening. This episodical char- acter distinguishes the Iliad throughout, and is the first fact of which account must be taken. The result is not merely that the Iliad to some extent lacks the peculiar interest which is due to the close relation of all parts of a work of art to a definite end; it suffers positively as well as negatively from the disturbance of the balance of the original story. Of that story Achilles is the hero, and the laws of art require that the catastrophe of the tale, the killing of Hector, should be led up to as the great climax of all. But as things now stand, this scene is thrown into the background by the exploits of Diomedes. He, in the fifth book, performs achievements which are far beyond those of Achilles himself; Achilles only slays a mortal, while Diomedes alone of all the heroes wounds and drives INTRODUCTION 23 from the field a goddess and a god. Brilliant though the fifth book is, it is impossible to deny that it involves a dis- location of the main thread of the poem, and impairs the general unity of conception. When we leave these broad considerations and come to a closer examination of the Iliad, we find ourselves face to face with various matters which make us pause and think that they are not such as we should expect to find in the work of a poet composing a long poem with his mind fixed throughout on the subject as a single whole. The most notable of these is to be found in the fact that Achilles twice, in the eleventh book and in the sixteenth, appears entirely to ignore the embassy sent to him by Agamemnon in the ninth. The words he uses are explicable on no other hypothesis, if the ninth book really formed part of the original Iliad, than that of a most extraordinary lapse of memory on the poet's part. A poet composing by memory alone may, indeed, forget whatever is of an episodical nature ; he is likely enough to contradict himself in the little touches put in for their effect at the moment. Even with their own words lying written before them poets and novelists of to- day often enough make slips of this sort. But the question of the embassy is of a different nature. It fundamentally affects our whole conception of the character of Achilles. On the question whether or no he refused the humilia- tion of Agamemnon and spurned his gifts must turn our sympathy for him. If he did indeed refuse them, then he was beyond measure inexorable, and the loss of his friend was but a small punishment for his betrayal of his country. If, on the other hand, no such atonement had been offered him, and he was only waiting for Agamemnon to fall at his feet in order to relent, then we can feel for the passionate but high-hearted man ; the death of Patroklos 2 4 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " becomes a really tragic stroke, and the incalculable vengeance exacted by fate for a loss of self-control which may appear in itself almost pardonable is a moral lesson of the highest order. And such I believe to have been the original con- ception of the character, as unmistakably indicated in the words of Achilles himself. But be that as it may, there is no possibility of supposing that the poet forgets which idea he had set before himself, and after making Achilles refuse the gifts can let him speak as though they had never been offered. To make such an assumption is to bring the heaviest of charges against a poet ; for it is to suppose him incapable of clearly realising his own characters. There is another instance of inconsistency in the char- acter of Achilles in the Iliad as it now stands which is even more glaring, though less far-reaching in the conclusions to which it leads. At the opening of book xx. we find the hero starting from the Greek camp on his career of vengeance for the death of Patroklos. The first enemy whom fate puts in his way is no less than Aineias, one of the chiefs of the Trojans and closely connected with the family of Priam. Knowing Achilles as we do, and putting ourselves in his place, we can feel no doubt that he will think of nothing but of making so distinguished a victim the first-fruits of his vengeance, and will charge with irresistible fury. Nothing of the sort. Instead of being furious, he is only sarcastic ; instead of blows, he uses nothing harder than taunts, " like a child," as Aineias not unnaturally says. He listens patiently to a long historical disquisition on the pedigree of the Trojan Royal Family a pedigree which is most interesting to us, but is out of place on a battle-field. By way of a striking contrast we have an admirable instance of the introduction of a similar pedigree in the famous meeting of Diomedes and Glaukos in the sixth book, where the INTRODUCTION 25 family history of Bellerophon is admirably suited to the scene. But when Aineias's family tree has been duly set out, we expect that Achilles will now, at all events, brook no longer delay, but smite at once. No ; the attack is left to Aineias, and awaited by Achilles "in fear." Achilles is afraid ! He forgets that he has divine armour ; as though it were the armour alone to which Achilles can trust for safety ! At last, after surviving Aineias's cast, he ventures to hurl his own spear, but without effect ; the duel comes to an impotent conclusion through the interposition of Poseidon. Surely a greater perversion of the character of Achilles could hardly be imagined ; it reads almost like a deliberate attempt to belittle the hero. It is no sacrilege to relieve the author of the first book from such a picture of irresolution and timidity in the hero whom he has shown us in far nobler fashion. It is on such fundamental discrepancies as these that we can depend, and on these alone, when we come to dissect the Iliad, But when once we have made up our mind that it has to be dissected, we may be guided by contradictions of a less pronounced nature. We shall find these in abundance on close examination; they tend to form a cumulative proof that the conclusions are correct to which we are led by the larger indications. Evidences from language tend also in the same direction. Some critics have attempted to base their analysis on these ; but I do not think that they are sufficient to bear the superstructure which has been raised on them. They are more important as confirmations than as proofs. The language of the Epic was fixed by conventional rules, and by the existence beyond a doubt of a long period of poetic activity before the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the assumed existence of a school whjch made it a business to preserve the old tradition will explain the general uniformity of style throughout both the 26 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " Iliad and Odyssey. Nothing is easier than to catch a style, if the effort to do so is seriously made ; parody is notoriously the easiest form of literature. And the condi- tions of composition which we have assumed would evidently make it the first object of a poet, however original, to catch the traditional style, so that his work might be incorporated in the existing Corpus. In our own time the first object of the literary man is to have a style of his own, and hence we are apt to think that " the style is the man," and that individuality cannot but betray itself. Yet even now, under certain circumstances, the effort is successfully made to get a number of men to work together in one style, as the leaders of the Times can witness. And within the range of our own classical literature, where, if any- where, a man's touch should be felt, critics are still disput- ing as to whether the bulk of important and familiar plays is by the hand of Shakespeare or of Fletcher. One important result of what has been already said must not be overlooked. Though the meeting of Achilles and Aineias in the twentieth book is inferior work, yet the same cannot be said of the ninth book. On the contrary, the speech of Achilles in reply to Odysseus is one of the noblest passages in the Iliad, or indeed in all poetry. It must not be supposed then that because we say that a certain passage is "late," or "an addition," or even an "interpolation," it is therefore inferior. The idea that an interpolator must be inferior to the original poet is, in fact, only another instance of arguing from our own literary conditions to those of an entirely different age. Mere lateness is not in itself any proof of inferiority, or we should have to rank Sophokles below Aischylos. When once we have conceived conditions where the poet aimed not at a separate existence for his best work, but at its incorporation INTRODUCTION 27 with a large mass of original poetry, the word " interpolation " entirely loses any stigma. In fact, among the parts of the Iliad which are always recognised as the latest, we find as a rule most of the passages of noble pathos which sink deepest into our hearts. The arguments on which the following analysis of the Iliad is based cannot be stated shortly; they arise from numerous small points scattered throughout the whole of the Iliad ; and it is only by a careful study of every book that their weight can be appreciated. The reader is there- fore referred to the notes for the proofs in full. Here I propose only to give a general outline of the theory adopted, into which the details may be ranged by the reader. Even those who do not accept the theory in full will, I think, find the analysis not uninstructive. For even if it be supposed that the whole of the Iliad was composed by one poet, it can hardly be held that it was conceived from the beginning as a unity. It must have been a growth, whether in one mind or in many. The original story has been over- laid with episodes which obscure the first form. It is no doubt possible that a poet, especially before the invention of writing, may have put together one long poem in this way, and that it may represent the gradual development of a long life. If it be so, the different stages of the growth must roughly correspond to the stages here set out. And even as a matter of mere literary comprehension and enjoy- ment I believe that the reader will do well to study the Iliad by stages, taking first the central story by itself, and then going on to the episodes which have been interwoven in it. The ordinary reader, if perfectly honest, will admit that, from want of continuity in the main story, he is unable to read the Iliad with the same pleasure as the Odyssey, and is generally at a loss to understand how it is that the critics 28 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " whose judgment stands highest have been unanimous in regarding the Iliad as the greater of the two poems. By studying first the " Wrath of Achilles " as a story, and then turning to the rest as a collection of magnificent episodes, he will the easier understand the strength and the weakness of the Iliad. In individual passages it rises to heights above any in the Odyssey ; as a story it falls distinctly below it. But it is by the greatest things in it that a poem must be judged ; and it is by individual passages that the Iliad has made good its claim to be the greatest poem of the world. No honour is done to a work of art by attempting to conceal its defects, much less by extolling them as merits. Let us, then, freely acknowledge the existence of many parts of the Iliad which might be absent without any great loss. The long descriptions of battles which seem to lead to nothing but the deaths of unimportant persons, and to have no effect on the development of the plot, are the most obvious weakness. From time to time the narrative flags, and seems like perfunctory work, the only object of which is to shift the scene. But when the new scene has been brought on, we are amply rewarded, by a speech it may be, or a simile which sets some aspect of nature before our eyes in words which cannot be forgotten. To try to keep one level of interest in the Iliad from beginning to end is to most readers a disheartening task, which ends only in their fancying that they have not the power of poetic appreciation. It is my hope that I may be able to render these some service by not hesitating to point out the defects of which they are perhaps dimly conscious, and to show how the difficulty may have in many cases arisen not from want of poetic power on the part of the composers, but as a natural result of the conditions under which the Iliad came into existence. INTRODUCTION 29 I. THE "MENIS" OR "WRATH OF ACHILLES " l There need be no hesitation in laying down the great central story of the Iliad, so far as the broad outlines go. It is contained in the following books : i., the " Quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles," and the " Promise of Zeus" ; xi., the consequent "Rout of the Greeks"; xvi., the "Exploits and Death of Patroklos " ; xxii., the " Slaying of Hector." These four books are the kernel of the whole, and by reading them we see what was the story of the Iliad. They do not, how- ever, thus read form a quite connected tale ; some parts require to be left out, and others to be supplied. It might perhaps be enough to point this out, and to give up as hopeless the idea of rinding the necessary omissions and additions required to make a perfectly united story. It might very well be argued that the successive alterations, whether made by the original poet himself or by his successors, must have involved the destruction of many connecting passages, which had been replaced by fresh material, so that we could not possibly expect to restore the original tale in its entirety. But the other alternative is tempting; to try if we cannot still detect, lying somewhere in the Iliad, scattered fragments which will enable us to restore the work as it left its author's mind. The attempt can, I believe, be made with approximate success. But it must not be forgotten that, in piecing together such fragments, we can in no way speak with the same confidence which we may feel in laying down the broad outlines of the first plan. Let us begin at the beginning, then, and see what we want to complete the tale, and where we can find it. t, "wrath," is the word with which the Iliad opens. 30 COMPANION TO THE "*ILIAD " The first book is complete in itself; we have to find out how to join it to the eleventh. The original story is that Zeus, having promised to avenge Achilles, proceeds to bring the Greeks and Trojans into a pitched battle that the Greeks may be defeated. This battle is described in the eleventh ; we only want to know how it was brought about. The Trojans had for a long time been hemmed within the city walls by fear of Achilles ; in order to bring them into the plain, some action on the part of Zeus is needed. The steps taken by Zeus are found in the second book. He sends a delusive dream to Agamemnon, to tell him that the hour of victory has at last come ; while to the Trojans he sends Iris with a divine command to march out into the plain at once. We must read straight on from the end of book i. to the fifty-third line of book ii., ending with the words "so did those summon and these gathered with speed," at the top of page 23 of the translation. Only, instead of " to the assembly " in the last line of page 22, we must read "to battle." And, indeed, the line with these words in it, which originally belonged to this place, still exists, but it has been displaced by the addition of the scene in the assembly. It will be found in the ninth line of page 35. In fact, it is likely that the whole of this paragraph, from "and the kings " to " unto the heavens," is the climax of this scene of the original story. The message to the Trojans will be found on page 45. It begins with the words " now fleet Iris the windfooted " and goes to " mighty din arose " in the middle of page 46. Zeus has now taken the first steps to work out his counsel. In xi. we see the result. But the opening of the book is a later addition ; the original story begins again with the words "and Hector in the foremost rank" (204, 8}. From these words it runs on continuously, with the excep- INTRODUCTION 31 tion of one considerable interpolation, which does not affect the story, to the end of xi. This leaves the Greeks in a state of defeat and flight, deprived of all their leaders except Aias, who still remains to cover the retreat. But in the beginning of xvi. we find him defending the ships ( 317, 318}. We therefore require to be told how he comes to be in this position. The requisite narrative is found at the end of xv., beginning at 592 (309, 5), " now the Trojans like ravening lions." This fits on to the end of xi., and the story proceeds, with some few interpolations which will be noticed in their proper places, to the end of xvi. So far we have had only to assume two detached pieces to belong to the old story of the Menis to wit, the passages on p. 35 and pp. 45, 46. The rest has been found in three large unbroken blocks. The story thus put together is perfectly clear and lucid, without blot or break. But when we ask what there was to join xvi. to xxii., we find our- selves in considerable difficulty ; and it is here, if anywhere, that we are tempted to give up the problem as hopeless, and suppose that there has been some real mutilation of the first plot. Book xvi. has brought us to the death of Patroklos. As is shown in the introduction to xvi., he was not in the original form, of the " Menis " wearing the armour of Achilles. In book xxii. we have Achilles in the full career of revenge. What are we to suppose happened in the interval ? The detailed discussion of this complicated question must be postponed to the notes on books xvii.-xxi., and a mere summary of results must suffice in this place. The conclusion then is this : that in the original story the body of Patroklos was not saved at all ; that the bringing of the news of his death to Achilles in the beginning of xviii. 32 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " in some form or another probably stood in the oldest form of the poem, and was immediately followed by the issuing of Achilles from the camp, as told at the end of xix. In his victorious onset on the Trojans he slays Polydoros at the end of xx., and Lykaon at the beginning of xxi. ; at the end of the same book, with the words " they straight for the city" (431, -fj), we again find ourselves in the main stream, which runs on to nearly the end of xxii. With the words " to entreat foully in his own native land " (446, /j), we reach the end of the tale of the " Wrath " in the avengement of the death of Patroklos, and the fulfilment of the counsel of Zeus, which has been the keynote of the story from the first. But all the rest of xvii.-xxi. is later expansion. Such then, or nearly such, is the great tale of the " Wrath of Achilles." Even though here and there in detail we may have missed out some scene, or introduced an episode which does not belong, we cannot fail to trace in it the sublime conception of one mind, carried out in flawless strength and with impeccable vision. From end to end we note the supreme mark of Greek genius, the unerring re- lation of the parts to the whole ; every scene is bright and clear before us as if it alone were the creation of its author's mind; yet never for an instant can we forget that each scene is but a step in the development of a plan a moment in the accomplishment of the counsel of Zeus. It is what we cannot but feel that the Iliad as a whole is not, a unity and a creation. The action seems to fall naturally into five dramatic crises, the forerunners as it were of the five acts which are not a mere conventionality of tragedy but a natural outcome of the principle of symmetry. The first is con- tained in book i. While giving us action enough, it fulfils INTRODUCTION 33 unerringly the need for presentation of the characters of the tale. At the end of it we not only have the key to the plot of the whole story in the quarrel and the promise of Zeus, but we have learnt to know, so that we can never again mistake them, the actors who will carry it through. The second act is primarily one of rapid action, contrasting the high delusive hopes with which Agamemnon opens his career of victory, and the sudden turn of the battle which dashes them. It ends, as it began, in the camp, at the moment when Achilles sees Nestor return with the wounded Machaon. Achilles seems to have triumphed, but his punishment is to come. The third act is wholly in the camp ; it includes the scene between Nestor and Patroklos, the relenting of Achilles, and the arming of the Myrmidons. The fourth act balances the second, and like it takes us from the camp into the plain ; like it, this also begins with high hopes of victory for the Achaians and ends in disaster the death of Patroklos. The fifth act is the climax of all, presenting us Achilles in irresistible might avenging his cruel loss, but none the less a type for all time of the Nemesis which will allow no overweening selfishness to go unpunished. From the beginning, the issue of Achilles from the camp, to the catastrophe, the death of Hector, Achilles is before us in sublime grandeur, and no other Greek chief is so much as mentioned. Only his great antagonist stands out before us as a hero worthy to meet his death at the hands of such an one as Achilles. One special mark of the story thus disentangled is too significant to be passed over in silence. The interest from beginning to end is almost purely human. The gods form a background or underplot, but their interference is such as becomes the rulers of the world, not partisans in the battles. They nowhere take any part in the fighting ; indeed, they D 34 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " seldom appear at all on the earthly stage. The intervention of Athene in the first book is expressly confined to Achilles alone " Of the rest no man beheld her " as though to let us know that this is the way in which the gods speak to the mind of man. Apollo invisible stuns Patroklos, and Athene appears for a moment to bring Hector to a stand before Achilles. In other words, the gods appear just so much as to let us know what are the powers which control mankind from heaven ; but none the less it is purely human motive and human action which guide the plot. In this the " Menis " is markedly different from other parts of the Iliad. It is in quite a different spirit that we find Diomedes set to fight with Ares and Aphrodite, or Achilles with the River. Even the Odyssey is different, where Athene is always at hand, or Ino or Kirke, to give super- natural aid to Odysseus. It is in this absolute predominance of the human interest that the " Menis " finds the power of appealing to our hearts, not to our fancy only. From beginning to end of it we are in the world and not in fairyland. II. THE SECOND STRATUM The additions made to this great story may be divided into two classes. The first of these, which may be called the Second Stratum of the Iliad, consists in the main of tales of the prowess of individual heroes ; the type of all of them is the " Aristeia of Diomedes " in the fifth and sixth books. The parts of the Iliad to be attributed to this stratum are the books from the second to the seventh (down to 1. 312); the "Aristeia of Idomeneus," which occupies a great part of xiii. ; and perhaps the "Aristeia of Menelaos" over the body of Patroklos in xvii. INTRODUCTION 35 The term Aristeia, to express the story, of the great deeds of a single hero, is found as far back as Herodotos, who quotes several lines of the sixth book of the Iliad as occurring in the " Aristeia of Diomedes." The name well characterises the whole of this stratum, in which individual heroes from time to time come to the front and absorb our interest. Thus in the third and fourth books Menelaos is the hero ; in the fifth and sixth Diomedes ; in the seventh Aias. The predominance of Idomeneus in the thirteenth has been already remarked. The whole stratum cannot, however, be regarded as contemporaneous ; it is possible to trace within it various substrata. It is hardly worth while to enter here into the details of these, but one point requires to be noticed. It seems obvious that the two duels that between Menelaos and Paris in the third book, and the other between Aias and Hector in the seventh cannot have both stood together in a poem composed as a unity. The fact that the breach of the oath with which the first ended is almost unnoticed when the second is proposed is in itself an undeniable and gross inconsistency in the story ; and even the short allusion which is made to it bears clear marks of interpolation. This stratum serves a twofold purpose. Its immediate occasion was no doubt to glorify the heroes of the great Achaian families who seemed to have received too scanty notice in the " Menis." This of itself seems enough to mark off this stratum as older than the Dorian invasion ; for the destruction of the old families was the central fact of the new regime ; and the wrecks of them surviving as emigrants in Asia Minor can hardly have been able to keep up the old state, with the family bard to sing the family deeds. But the Second Stratum has another meaning which to us is the more important. The deeds of famous ancestors 36 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " concern us less than the structure of the Iliad; and upon this the Second Stratum has exercised a decisive influence. The first blow to the unity of the plot was given when the " Aristeia of Diomedes " was inserted. The feats of Achilles were overshadowed by those of Diomedes, and the perfect balance and unity of the old poem were grievously impaired. But it must not be forgotten that we suffer far more from this than did the original hearers. To them the " Menis " as a whole was perfectly familiar ; it had not to be sought out from amid a quantity of material overlying it. The "Aristeia of Diomedes" was a new poem, and though incorporated with the " Menis," yet not liable to be confused with it, as it is for us. The " Menis " by itself could still, if need were, be demanded from the bard. Thus the addition of Diomedes, though it had the evident motive of exalting him at the expense of Achilles, was still far less damaging to the unity of the " Menis " than it seems to us. And what a splendid compensation we get for such loss as there is ! We gain a superb panorama of the whole siege of Troy. The Trojan heroes are introduced to us in the same immortal touches which set Achilles and Agamemnon before us in the first book Paris, Helen, Priam, Hector, and Andromache, whom we knew little or not at all from the " Menis," are now in living presentment before our eyes. The fighting, which was told in somewhat formal fashion in the eleventh and sixteenth books, now takes every variety of incident. We hear of the great families of Greece and of their noble enemies and kinsmen Glaukos and Sarpedon of Lykia. As Grote rightly felt, it is books ii.-vii. which turn the "Achilleid," as he called his "Menis," into an Iliad. The poem has become truly Panhellenic. The question may then fairly be asked, if we cannot suppose that this extension of the "Menis" is due to the same INTRODUCTION 37 hand which gave us that poem? That the best parts of the Second Stratum are worthy of the author of the "Menis" cannot be questioned ; indeed, the poet has never lived of whom the scene between Hector and Andromache is not more than worthy. The answer to the question, as to so many others, must be left open. It comes in the end to this Can we suppose that the author of the " Menis " would, without hesitation, so fundamentally alter the character of his own story as to interpolate the " Aristeia of Diomedes " ? And when he had told us of the duel of Aias and Hector, would he care so far to repeat himself and to defy probability as to add to it tfye other duel on the same day between Paris and Menelaos ? The question is not one to be lightly answered. And it is further to be noticed that in the treatment of religious matters the spirit of the " Aristeia of Diomedes " stands alone in the Iliad. The gods interfere in the battles as persistently as they hold aloof in the " Menis." Mythology, which plays in the "Menis" but the smallest of parts, is here almost obtrusive. Nowhere else in Iliad or Odyssey have we so many stories of the gods, or so many divine titles elsewhere unknown. It is this character which to me seems more than any other to mark off the fifth book as the work of another hand. III. THE THIRD STRATUM We now pass into a quite different region. As the Second Stratum consists of Aristeiai, the Third is composed of great individual poems, led up to and connected by portions of narrative which are in themselves treated as subordinate. These new poems cannot be ascribed to the desire to glorify particular heroes ; they deal mostly with the persons whom we already know, and introduce but few 38 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " fresh figures. They bear throughout the stamp of creations composed solely for the sake of the delight in beautiful poetry. The poems which form the nuclei of the structure are the "Embassy to Achilles" in ix. ; the "Capture of the Wall" in xii. ; the " Deceiving of Zeus by Hera " in xiv. and xv. ; the "Making of the Arms of Achilles" in xviii. ; the "Funeral of Patroklos and the Games" in xxiii.; and the "Ransoming of the Body of Hector" in xxiv. To these must be added certain subordinate poems which stand by themselves and have not exercised so deep an influence on the Iliad at large, such as the " Doloneia," or " Story of Dolon," in book x. ; the "Fight with the River" in xxi., with its pendant, the " Battle of the Gods" ; the " Catalogue of the Ships " in ii. ; and numerous shorter episodes which will be discussed in their proper places. The whole of book viii. is an instance of connecting narrative, introduced only to lead up to the scene of the " Embassy " in ix. In the creation of the Second Stratum full respect was paid to the scenery and atmosphere of the original " Menis," though its artistic effect was much altered. But the poets of the Third Stratum had far less reverence for their pre- decessors, and allowed themselves free hands in introducing changes which go to the very roots of the poetic structure. The great change produced in the conception of the character of Achilles by the introduction of the "Embassy," and the relentless refusal of Agamemnon's advances, is perhaps the most vital of all. But no less important an innovation is the entire reconstruction of the scenery by the invention of the wall with which the Greek camp was surrounded. Careful readers of the "Menis," asabove analysed, will find, not indeed that the wall is never mentioned in it, nor in INTRODUCTION 39 the Second Stratum; but what is more significant, they will find that it is very rarely mentioned, always in lines which can easily be cut out ; and that whenever it is found it introduces some confusion into the narrative. These statements will be duly supported in the notes on book xvi. and elsewhere. Meanwhile, it may suffice to remark that they in themselves afford the strongest proof that the poet of the " Menis " never at any time conceived the Greek camp as surrounded by a wall at all. If confirmation is needed, it may be found in the manner in which the building of the wall is introduced in vii. ; the improbabilities, contra- dictions, and inconsistencies of that piece of narrative have been remarked from the earliest times, and various efforts have been made to provide a remedy by cutting out longer or shorter passages. But such strong measures are never justified unless we can give some reason for the introduction of the spurious lines. When we once see that the wall was a novel invention, we cannot but feel some sympathy with the trouble of the poet who had to introduce it with the least possible disturbance into the poem as it lay before him ; and we are ready with excuses if he failed to make his work fit smoothly into its place. The motive for the introduction of the wall is easily seen. By the time the Second Stratum had been incorporated in the " Menis " there was already an abundance of descriptions of battles in the open plain. But so long as the Iliad was to be expanded, so long was it necessary to have fighting. The idea of varying the battle-field by bringing into it a trench and palisade was an ingenious means for avoiding the monotony of the episodes of slaughter. It must be pro- nounced a success, as but for that the long descriptions of battles on the open plain must have become intolerably wearisome ; indeed, as it is, it must be confessed that they 40 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " come in somewhat larger masses than the modern reader cares for. The innovation is therefore highly laudable, not only to the reader for the variety it offers him, but to the critic, inasmuch as it affords him an invaluable test for the analysis of the later books ; for the presence of the wall is the infallible mark of the Third Stratum. The different work of different hands is here far more clearly separable than in the Second. Four books stand out as notably later than the rest ix., x., xxiii., xxiv. The evidence for this is mainly linguistic and cannot here be discussed ; it must suffice to say that the best scholars are agreed that these four books show numerous signs of change in language, bringing it into very close agreement with that of the Odyssey, which is, as a whole, a good deal later than that of the " Menis," or of the Second Stratum. It would seem, therefore, that the Third Stratum began either with the episode of the "Making of the Arms of Achilles," or with the poem of the " Deceiving of Zeus." But of the two it is probable that the latter was the first to be composed. It is inserted at a point where the original connexion had already been disturbed by the interpolation of the " Aristeia of Idomeneus." This had found room as a long episode of the " Retreat to the Ships," where Aias alone had originally acted as rearguard. This insertion naturally made a suitable point for further additions. It will be seen when we come to discuss the books in detail that the " Deceiving of Zeus " has been most closely interwoven with the " Aristeia of Idomeneus"; it comprises xiii. 1-125, xiv., and xv. 1-262. Possibly also the battle round the wall in xii. may date from about the same time, though it is not such good work. The story of the " Making of the Arms of Achilles " is one which has had a marked effect on the construction of the INTRODUCTION 41 Iliad as a whole, for it brought with it the necessity of first depriving Achilles of his armour, and to this end was first invented the idea of making Patroklos arm himself in the panoply of Achilles. This new motive is very skilfully introduced into the description of the starting of Patroklos from the camp in xvi., but still we can see that there was in the "Menis " at first no notion of the exchange of armour. The idea is no doubt a startling one at first sight, but the notes on xvi. and xvii. will show how small a space the addition takes, and how little effect it has on the narrative. It has, indeed, been introduced not only with skill, but in the most conservative manner. And here, again, we cannot but be grateful for the innovation, even if we regret the effect it has had on the older poem ; we can, indeed, hardly imagine the Iliad without the description of the shield and the magnificent scene of the appearance of Achilles at the trench. The same may be said of the "Embassy" in the ninth book. The speech of Achilles is one of the sublimest instances of rhetoric which literature has given us. The eighth and ninth books, deeply though they affect our idea of Achilles, have but little disturbing power on the construction of the Iliad as a whole they stand by themselves, and are hardly alluded to in any of the subsequent books. Naturally, too, xxiii. and xxiv., from their position, are isolated additions, and do not in any way react upon the rest. It is however just possible that the very puzzling book xvii., whose place is so uncertain, may have been composed as an introduction to xxiii. ; in order that the body of Patroklos might be buried it must first be rescued. The later portions of the Second Stratum seem to show some falling off in poetical vigour. If that be so, then we have in the poems of the Third a brilliant renascence of epic 42 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " poetry under somewhat altered conditions. The gradual accretion of the Second Stratum had obscured the original symmetry of the " Menis," and the new poets felt them- selves at liberty to insert their compositions where they thought fit, and with little regard to anything more than the external continuity of the story. They could thus introduce any fresh episodes of battle that they liked, subject only to the condition that any substantial advance in the progress of the war must be negatived before the return to the original tale. Hector might be wounded and expelled from the fortification, so long as he were miraculously healed and restored to his former position when the "Menis "was resumed. In order to make place for the " Embassy to Achilles," a fresh disaster to the Greeks was related, but ended in nothing, and the next morning we find the army starting with hopes as high as ever. Thus it is this stratum which gives the story of the Iliad that aspect of continual retardation and want of singleness of aim which has already been pointed out as the chief note of difference from the Odyssey. On the other hand, it shows us a whole new phase of development of epic poetry. This art has grown like other arts. Opening as it does with the strong and severe reserve which is the unfailing mark in every age of what we call the classical style, it has now made some approach to that which, in the unvarying sequence of things, is the successor of the classical the style which we name the romantic. It is romantic of course only in the Greek manner ; the Greek artist could never cast off his self-restraint as the modern can. But it is in this part of the Iliad that we reach the heights of pathos in the scene between Priam and Achilles in xxiv., and the full bloom of rhetoric in ix. ; while the meeting of Zeus and Hera on Ida, and the blossoming of earth about their loves, is as near an approach as INTRODUCTION 43 epic poetry could ever make to romance in the modern sense. With these great poems incorporated, the Iliad had reached nearly the form in which we now have it. It is true that there remain passages which are mostly obvious interpolations, and have been recognised as such ever since Homeric criticism came into existence. The motives of these we can often guess at with confidence. These inter- polations are, however, rarely of any considerable extent, and do not materially affect the main question, so that they can be left for consideration as we come to them. There remains the question how far we can date the Iliad in this form that is, when were these latest additions made? I have already intimated my belief that if we are to suppose part of the Iliad to date from before, and part from after the great migration from Greece proper to Asia Minor, the break must coincide with the division between the Second and Third Strata. It is here that we find the greatest change in the spirit of the work the attitude of the poet towards the poem seems to have changed. The desire to glorify the great families of Achaian Greece has passed away. The first step seems to have been taken towards the development of lyric and elegiac poetry from epic. In the latest part of the Iliad, the end of the twenty- fourth book, the lamentations over the body of Hector begin to wear a distinctly lyric garb. There is thus no difficulty in setting the Iliad in its proper place in the development of poetry which, as we know, took place in the eighth and seventh centuries in the Aiolian colonies of Asia Minor. Possibly the latest parts of the Iliad may coincide in time with the earliest growth of the great lyric school which blossomed into Sappho. At an early date the tradition of epic poetry was taken 44 COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD" over from the Aiolians by the lonians. At what point in the development of the Iliad this happened we can hardly say. But it is noteworthy that Pick, who would ascribe to Ionian imitators the greater part of what I have called the Third Stratum, yet has to admit that the signs of Ionian imitation in ix. are extremely few and slight. So far as the dialect goes this book might, all but two or three words, have been written by a poet of the old Achaian days. Much more does it follow that it may be due to an Aiolian poet of Asia Minor. If we can then without any great difficulty place the ninth book, so late in the history of the Iliad as it comes, in what may be called the prae-Ionic period of the Epic, it follows that all the Third Stratum can go with it into the same epoch. The full discussion of the problem is impossible with- out considerable knowledge of Greek dialects a fuller know- ledge indeed than any one now is likely ever to gain of the Greek dialects of the eighth century B.C. It must suffice to say that I for one do not feel that Pick's arguments for ascribing any considerable portion of the Iliad to Ionian poets have cogent force. The whole of the Third Stratum, to my mind, may well be the work of the Aiolian successors of the Achaian bards, and have come into being in the first two centuries of the period of colonisation, to speak roughly, between 1000 and 800 B.C. Something must yet be left to the Ionian bards, for of the interpolations later than the great poems of the Third Stratum a few can be approximately dated. The most import- ant of these is mentioned in the notes at the beginning of xi. And it is noteworthy that the lines here which are the most nearly datable are in immediate connexion with a passage, the description of Agamemnon's shield, which must belong to the Third Stratum, and yet was an accepted part of the Iliad in the seventh century. This would seem to show INTRODUCTION 45 that the Third Stratum had obtained its canonical position at that time in virtue of age ; and this can hardly have hap- pened in less than a century. This would lead us to sup- pose that the description of the shield of Agamemnon must have found its present place by about 800 B.C., a date which coincides with the supposition already made. We have then to suppose that the First and Second Strata were composed in Greece Proper before 1000 B.C. They were the traditional possession of a school of poets who made it their business at once to preserve with religious care the old tale of the " Menis," the foundation of all, and to incorporate with it from time to time such additions as from their own intrinsic merit, or from the favour of powerful houses, claimed a more than passing value. These two strata the Homeric school took with them across the sea when the invasion of the Dorians broke up the old order of things, and sent the patrons of poetry to seek new homes in Asia. But though the old material was taken across the sea as a precious heirloom from the past, the old tradition was not unaffected by the change in the conditions of Achaian life. As the emigrants were fighting to gain a footing in the new country, the creation of new poems may well have sunk into the background, in face of the immedi- ate necessities of the hour. Half a century or more may- have passed before the work of creation was again resumed. In this time the attitude of hearers and poets alike towards their heritage had changed. To incorporate new poetry in the old Iliad was still the approved tradition ; but now the incorporation was done with less reverence to the earlier poems. With the new life had come a new outburst of the poetic spirit conscious of its own power, and unwilling to be too tightly bound by respect for the past. This fresh burst has given us the Third Stratum with it the real genius 46 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " of epic poetry was exhausted ; the new world turned to new forms. It was not only the epic inspiration which was dying out ; the great Achaian race was decadent, and the lyric school was its swan-song. But by the side of the outworn nation a new one was arising the mixed blood of the lonians was, in accordance with the fixed laws of breeding, beginning to show its superiority to the too pure and ex- clusive strain of the ancient aristocracy. The lonians were growing, and making a second Greece, destined to be far greater than the old ; they had no poetic tradition of their own as yet, but they had what never failed the Ionic race the aesthetic insight to see what was of truly noble form. They borrowed the Epic to serve as capital on which to begin life, and put it to usury till it returned a more than abundant profit in the glorious literature of Athens ; and the loan was never repaid. Aiolia was never strong enough to claim it back ; to them that had was given, and tradition, finding that Ionia had the usufruct of the Homeric Epic, soon adjudged the fee-simple to the occupiers by right of prescription. But the tenants had done little to improve the old property ; they had changed its face to adapt it to their daily needs, but they added little enough ; nor does what we know of the real Ionic Epic the imitative poems which dealt with the old tale of Troy and essayed to com- plete Homer lead us to suppose that the Ionic genius ever had sufficient bent in this line to enable it to rival the old school of singers, and add to their work anything that should possess competing power. The lonians had a great enough work before them in creating Greek prose, elegy, tragedy, and comedy, without wasting their time in attempt- ing to revivify the Epic ; it was enough that they had the honour of handing down to the after-world the treasure INTRODUCTION 47 which was already gathered, and which they neither needed nor were able to increase. This theory of the Iliad, conjectural though it is, will at least explain how it came to pass that the Iliad has taken its present form, with all its inequalities and irregularities. To those who do not admit the existence of such inequalities and irregularities in its structure who regard it as a poem no less artistically and flawlessly constructed than the Odyssey the arguments given will have no weight. With such, indeed, I feel that I have no common ground of literary criticism which would enable me to argue with them ; but that position is not taken by the ordinary careful and intelligent reader. To him, while he honestly admires large passages of the Iliad, the Odyssey as a story is by far the better reading. This at least, when taken in conjunction with the higher place which poets have in- variably given to the Iliad, is a phenomenon which is of itself worth examination. I can see no better explanation than the one I have given. The Odyssey, whatever the original materials on which it was based, is in its present form at least a poem due to a single poet, arranging, if not composing, with a view to its effect as a whole. The Iliad is a growth from a single poem, added to from time to time, less with a view to its effect as a whole than to the intrinsic beauty of individual parts. The answer to the question whether more minds than one were concerned in making these additions will probably always depend upon personal feeling. It is, as has been already said, not inconceivable that one poet may, during the course of a long life, have composed the Iliad thus piecemeal ; the probabilities seem to me strongly against it ; the change in the attitude of the poet towards his own work seems more than we can credit to one man ; but there is 48 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " one favourite argument often brought to bear on this point which must be briefly dealt with. It is commonly said I quote from Mr. Gladstone l that it " is of the very highest improbability that two such master poets should spring from a race insignificant in numbers at the same or nearly the same time, each of them isolated and each con- summate." The special reference here is only to the theory that the Odyssey and Iliad are by two different authors ; but the argument of course is meant to apply a fortiori to the composite authorship of the Iliad. It appears plausible at first sight ; but unfortunately it is in direct contradiction to the teachings of history. It is easy to see that through all time, whenever there has been a genius of supreme capacity, he has appeared as the out- come of a great age, and has been surrounded by men of little less power. It is hardly necessary to point to Shake- speare as the chief of the famous Elizabethan school of dramatists, or to the great names of the beginning of the century Shelley with Keats and Byron and Wordsworth in England, Goethe with Schiller in Germany ; or to the poets of the Louis Quatorze period in France ; or in other branches of art, to the painters of the Renascence in Italy, Michael Angelo and Raphael and Botticelli, all within the compass of a lifetime ; or in music to Bach and Handel, Beethoven and Schubert, all clustering in small space round Mozart and Haydn ; we need not go so far to show that the whole argument is delusive ; we need not pass out of Greece itself. In Athens, from a race " insignificant in numbers," there sprang " at the same or nearly the same time two master poets, each of them isolated and each consummate," and their names were Aeschylos and Sophokles. If the argument proves anything, it proves that 1 Landmarks of Homeric Study, p. 25. INTRODUCTION 49 these names are myths after all, and that the tragedies ascribed to them, to say nothing of those called by the name of Euripides, are all in fact the work of a single man. And, indeed, such a thing is not in itself inconceivable ; it cannot be said to be absolutely impossible that a single poet, beginning with the style of Aeschylos, should, in the course of a long life, attain to that of Euripides ; the change is not, on the whole, more remarkable than that which exists between the earlier and the later parts of the Iliad. So regular, in fact, is the law that no great genius comes alone, that we are almost tempted to retort the argument and say that the mere existence of the first book of the Iliad is in itself sufficient proof that at about the same time there arose in Greece another man or men who were capable of writing the third. Here, then, we must leave the problem, one of the most absorbing and important which literature sets before us, but one which will for a long time at least to come be left without a positive answer. Yet it is one on which every reader must have some sort of an opinion ; for on the answer which we give to this fundamental problem depends the attitude in which we face the minor difficulties which must continually arise as we read. For this reason it seems well to put before the student a clear theory, and even to state it with more positiveness than a strict critic can pretend to feel, rather than to puzzle him at the outset with various contradictory hypotheses, and to guard every step with a caveat of uncertainty. When read with a working theory as guide, the Iliad will at least lose none of its beauty ; I hope that for some readers it may even gain in poetical as well as in intellectual interest. But the theory can only be judged by a careful study of the poem itself in all its details ; and this I earnestly commend to any one who has read thus far. E BOOK I WITH a brief appeal to the Muse, and as it were a religious dedication announcing that the theme of the poem is to be the fulfilment of the designs of Zeus, an illustration of " the ways of God to man," the Iliad opens at once in the tenth year of the siege of Troy. The hearer is supposed to be familiar not only with the general history of the siege, but with the chief actors. Hence from the first we find occasional allusions to what has gone before, as when Achilles mentions the cities which he has captured in various raids from the camp ; and Patroklos is introduced at first not by his own name, but by his patronymic " son of Menoitios." This is in itself sufficient proof that the tale of Troy was ancient material which the poet developed, and not, as some critics have maintained, an original creation which had no existence before the composition of the first book of the Iliad. It further shows that the Iliad is to be regarded not as the foundation of a new school of poetry, but as the outcome of a long period of poetical development of which, indeed, the perfection of its form affords sufficient proof. The advantage gained by thus plunging us in medias res has been a commonplace of criticism in all ages. Above all, it shows us that we are not to regard the poet as a chronicler ; the human interest is all in all to him, history is entirely in the background. It is in this suprem- COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I 51 acy of the human and personal element that the Greek Epic asserts its superiority over the epic poems of all who have not expressly taken it as a model. And it is not unreasonable to suppose that it was this method of treatment which constituted the real originality of the composer of the oldest Iliad, and has preserved his poems intact through the ages, while those of his predecessors were finally lost before the historic age of Greece had opened. By the side of such an innovation all question of the originality of the story sinks into insignificance. The thoroughly Greek genius of the poem is seen, among many other points, in the fact that anything in the nature of scenery or background is as absent from the opening as is the historical introduction. The spirit of the epic poet is from the very first analogous to the plastic rather than to the pictorial art. It is only from the story itself that we are left gradually to find out that the scene lies in the Greek camp beside the opening of the Hellespont, a few miles from the besieged city of Troy. Only at lon^ intervals are we able to pick up hints as to the physical details of the scene the ravines through the plain, the river which separates the camp from the city, the hills which lie along the field of battle. Indeed, it is clear that the poet himself has not always a clear picture of the scenery before him; it often happens that he forgets the river altogether as the battle surges backwards and forwards from camp to city. We are never even told the season of the year at which the action takes place ; we can only suppose from the activity of military operations, and from occasional expressions which indicate heat, that it lies in the summer- time ; in the Odyssey we have far clearer signs that the main action, the return of Odysseus, takes place in the depth of winter. 52 COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD": I The quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles is the founda- tion of all that follows, and it is impossible to doubt that the book belongs, with at most few and brief exceptions, to the very oldest part of the Iliad. Still it has not been free from the attacks of modern criticism. Lachmann led the assault, which has been pressed by various of his followers. The weak point to which he directed himself is the con- tradiction between the words of Thetis in 11. 423, 424 (14, 25) and various statements in the other parts of the book. Thetis says that "Zeus went yesterday unto the noble Ethiopians for a feast, and all the gods followed with him." Yet we find in the opening that Apollo is in Olympos, whence he comes down to the Greek camp, apparently to stay, shooting his arrows ; in 1. 474 he is present at Chryse, and certainly on this very day Athene comes from Hera, so that these two cannot have left Olympos. That there is a contradiction here cannot be denied; Lachmann held that it was such as to render it inconceivable that the passages containing it could have been written by one man. He therefore begins his analysis of the Iliad into different lays by breaking up the first book. He divides as follows : (i) an original lay consisting of 11. 1-347 to the words "the woman all unwilling" (12, 11} ; (2) the " first continuation," 11. 430-492, from " Odysseus came to Chryse " (p. 14, last line) to " for the war-cry and for battle " (16, jo); (3) the second continuation, consisting of 11. 348-429, and from 1. 493 to the end of the book. Of these he holds that the first continuation may be by the author of the original lay, but that the second is certainly by a different hand, and is not very skilfully adapted to the place which it now holds. It is now generally admitted that Lachmann's theory does not adequately explain the origin of the Iliad as we COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I 53 now have it ; its weakness is very evident in this particular case. For if the " second continuation " is a continuation at all, it must have been composed with reference to the original lay, so that any contradiction between the two stands as much in need of an explanation as ever. And there is no intelligible ground for the existence of the " second continuation " as an original lay ; it is meaningless except on the supposition that the story of the " Quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles " was already before the composer of it. And this is the objection which can be urged against Lachmann's theory at every step ; his supposed independent lays are always based on the assumption that the story in its main lines as we now have it was already known, and formed the basis of them. For instance, it has never been explained on this theory how it happens that a large number of lays were made to fall within the few days in which Achilles was absent from the fight. Yet the whole of the Iliad up to the twentieth book makes this assumption. The only rational explanation is that these parts of the Iliad were composed with especial reference to the pre-existing lay of the " Wrath of Achilles " ; in other words, that they are not independent lays at all. If, then, the theory as a whole breaks down, there must be a fault in the arguments which support it. The con- tradiction between the words of Thetis and the other parts of the story cannot be altogether denied ; but it is not such as to bear the consequences which Lachmann deduces from it. The epic poet, though he has in his mind a clear picture of the scene which is at the moment before him, does not trouble himself with the absolute consistency of the details of successive pictures. He does not hesitate to allow himself a certain liberty for the sake of being able to arrange his story after his own fashion. And this 54 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I liberty is evidently more pardonable where it involves the local presence of gods, who are endowed with a certain vague power of "hearing from afar" and crossing the width of the world in rapid flight. We should be indeed astonished if we found Achilles before Troy after being told that he had the day before sailed for Phthia ; but we find nothing astonishing in the words of Zeus that Thetis is " ever at Achilles'- side " (xxiv. 73), though all the time she is dwelling in the depths of the sea with her father. This ill-defined power of quasi-omnipresence which characterises the Homeric gods is, in fact, a convenient though by no means logical device for combining their immediate action in the plot with an excuse for marking Achilles' resentment more emphatically by keeping him for twelve days out of the battle. Lachmann's second continuation must therefore be regarded as an essential part of the first book ; the promise which Thetis extorts from Zeus is indeed the foundation of the whole story, and is so announced in the prologue, as the "Counsel of Zeus." With the first continuation the case is somewhat different. This is an episode which naturally springs out of the quarrel, but is not a necessary continuation of it. And its authenticity has been doubted on grounds quite different from Lachmann's. These, how- ever, will be pointed out when we come to the passage itself. Beyond this there is no reason to suspect any interpolation of more than a line or two. NOTES i i. The goddess invoked is of course the "Muse" of Od. i. i. The Muses appear in the plural in 1. 604, ii. 491, 594, and elsewhere; but the later number, nine, is unknown COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I 55 to Homer, except in Od. xxiv. 60, a book which, since the days of Aristarchos, has generally been considered a very late composition. Hesiod makes them the daughters of Memory, a transparent allegory of the inspiration needed by a poet who does not write, but has to compose and recite his song by heart. They are invoked not only at special crises in the story, but also at the beginning of the " Catalogue of the Ships," a passage which evidently needs a special effort of memory. The one or two passages where they are appealed to at moments of no particular importance are suspected on other grounds of being later interpolations. 4. "Their bodies," literally "themselves." To the 1,4 Homeric age the body is the man's real self, his soul is but a faint shadow of him (see note on xxiii. 103). 14. The woollen fillet wound round a staff was at all /, 14 periods of Greek history the mark of the suppliant. It is here perhaps the same fillet which the priest usually wears on his head in sign of his divine office. Or possibly it may even be a fillet from the head of the image of the god him- self, and thus have still higher sanctity. 30. " In Argos," that is, in Greece ; or rather in the 2, // Peloponnesos ; Argos always has this wide territorial sense in Homer. Thus in vi. 152 Ephyre" (Corinth) is said to lie "in the heart" or rather " in a nook" of "Argos." There are at most one or two passages where the name is applied to the town of Argos, so famous in later Greece, but in Homeric times evidently of no importance whatever. It is only in later parts of the Iliad that Argos in this sense is made the realm of Diomedes, who in the earlier parts has no local kingdom at all. 37. Chryse and Killa are towns of the Troad, and 2, 18 Tenedos is the neighbouring island. It is natural that Apollo as god of Troy should rule also the neighbouring 56 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I towns ; but the title " Smintheus " is a peculiar one. It appears to be derived from a word meaning field-mouse; so Apollo was worshipped at Smyrna as the locust-god. The old explanation of the name was that Apollo gained it by ridding the land of a plague of field-mice. Others would see in the title an indication of the existence of an old tribal totem or family ancestor. In many parts of the world primitive families believe themselves to be descended from an animal, which they worship as a sort of god. If such a practice was ever known among the Greeks, it is likely enough that the divine attributes of this bestial semi-divinity would be merged in those of the higher Olympian god, who succeeded him as an object of worship, and would thus retain the title in memory of the ancient belief. But the evidence for the existence of such tribal totems among the earliest Greeks is at present very weak, and till that is established the matter cannot be decided. A similar question also arises in connection with the title " Lykios " which Apollo also bore, and which was generally explained from his worship in Lykia in historical times. Some modern writers have referred this to the word lykos (a wolf), and explained it as the relic of a wolf-totem (see note on iv. 101). Yet another explanation of the field-mouse god is possible, for the mouse was in Eastern countries often taken as a personifica- tion of disease and plague. In the version of the destruction of the army of Sennacherib which is given by Herodotos the disaster is attributed not to a plague, but to an army of field-mice which came in the night and gnawed the Assyrian bow-strings. In i Sam. vi. 4, golden mice are offered by the Philistines as a propitiation when visited by the plague (see W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 302). It may therefore be that the god has this name only in virtue of his well- COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I 57 marked function of bringing and removing pestilence, of which this book of the Iliad is the best instance. In that case the appeal of Chryses gives him this title with peculiar appropriateness. 39. " Built," lit. roofed a temple. The word suggests 2, 20 that the temple may have been no more than a shrine in a grove roofed over with boughs. Temples are very rarely mentioned in the Homeric poems ; we have those of Apollo and Athene in the citadel of Troy, but no temple on Greek ground is ever named, just as the statue of Athene in Troy is the only statue mentioned in Homer. 62. It will be noticed that the soothsaying of the j, // Homeric army is very far removed from the elaborate system with which we are acquainted in later Greece and Rome. The words of Achilles show that it was not con- fined to the priestly office, though the priest, from the relations which he had with his god, was likely to be speci- ally favoured with communications. In the Odyssey Odysseus himself is an interpreter of dreams (xix. 535), and Helen explains omens from the flight of birds (xv. 172). Kalchas, indeed, seems to be the only case of an augur who is not heard of except for his augury. Helenos, who holds the corresponding position of chief soothsayer to the Trojans, is son of Priam ; we do not hear that he is a priest, and he fights like any other hero. But indeed it is true that the Homeric priests in no case form a caste apart, as they do in most civilised communities ; they generally fight with the rest. Note, too, the almost complete absence of oracles in Homer; Delphi is once mentioned under the name of Pytho in ix. 405, as a wealthy fane ; and in the Odyssey (xiv. 327, xix. 296) the oracle of Dodona is mentioned as a famous resort ; but there is no other case. Some further remarks on the subject of augury will be found on xii. 231. 58 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I 5, 4 1 1 8. Agamemnon's demand for a fresh prize of honour is not mere covetousness, though Achilles in his retort makes out that it is. But this is a mere rhetorical appeal ad invidiam ; and it is in making it that Achilles commits his fault. For it is clear throughout the Iliad that it is in the public gifts, which are the signs of pre-eminence, that the "point of honour" lies; to lose such a meed of honour is a disgrace as well as a material loss. So Achilles himself requires (xxiv. 139) that if he is to give up the body of Hector he shall receive the ransom ; by so doing he does not diminish the grace of his act, but only saves himself from the reproach of weakness. It is important that this should be kept in view throughout the Iliad. j-, a 125. The hearer is supposed to know that the past years of the siege have been partly spent in raids upon the neigh- bouring cities of the Troad, such as that in which Thebe, the city of Andromache, was destroyed (vi. 415). Compare Achilles' own words in ix. 328-9 (171, 6-7). 8, 24 234. The staff here is evidently not Achilles' own sceptre, but one which is common to all the Achaian chiefs. It was handed in the assembly to the speaker for the time and gave him "possession of the house." Thus in Od. ii. 37, when Telemachos wished to speak, " the herald Peisenor, skilled in sage counsels, placed the staff in his hands." Similarly in //. xxiii. 568, "Menelaos arose among them . . . and the herald set the staff in his hand." And in //. xviii. 505, the elders "were sitting in the sacred circle, and holding in their hands staves from the loud-voiced heralds." So too in the Ellice Islands in the Pacific Ocean the natives " preserved an old worm-eaten staff, which in their assemblies the orator held in his hand as the sign of having the right to speak" (Tylor, Anthropology, p. 374). 9, 9 250. In Od. iii. 245, we are told that Nestor " reigned COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I 59 over " three generations of men : a different statement from that given here, and one that would make him quite one hundred years old. This seems to be an instance of the exaggeration which is naturally produced in myths as they grow older. 265. The bracketed words are omitted in all the best 9, 2 MSS., and are undoubtedly a quite late interpolation. They are a good instance of a tendency which has to be kept in mind in many passages of the Iliad the desire to bring into the great Greek Epic local heroes who had not originally that honour. This is especially the case with great Attic heroes like Theseus, whose name occurs only in spurious lines. The mention of him here naturally follows on that of Peirithoos, with whom he was so closely associated in Attic legend. The famous myth of the battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae is mentioned again in ii. 742, and in greater detail Od. xxi. 295-304 ; but it will be noticed that the Centaurs seem to be to Homer only wild men. There is no allusion to their semi -equine form, though in the Odyssey they are contrasted with " mankind." 296. The line bracketed was condemned by Aristarchos, *, 2 rightly, as an instance of the common tendency to complete an elliptical phrase like "not to me" here. When this is done the rest of the line, as might be expected, is always feeble. 314. The meaning is that the Achaians washed in the //, 7 sea, so that it might carry off the defilements which were typical of their sin. Probably they had during the pesti- lence abstained from ablution and cast dust on their heads in sign of mourning. The sea was always regarded by the Greeks as the great ceremonial purifier. It was no doubt by a survival from Greek times that the Neapolitans used, even down to 1580 A.D., to perform once a year a ritual ablution in the sea. 60 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I 358. "Her aged sire" is known to later mythology as Nereus ; but the name does not occur in Homer, to whom he is only " the Ancient of the sea," a title which in the Odyssey is given also to Proteus. In //. xviii. 38 the nymphs, as his daughters, are called Nereides, but that is in a passage copied from Hesiod. It will be noticed that there is in all this dialogue no mention of the choice offered to Achilles between a long and inglorious or a short and famous life ; that idea appears, however, in book ix., which is probably later. 399. This strange legend of the binding of Zeus is not known from other sources, nor is it again mentioned in Homer, though there are numerous allusions to battles and quarrels among the gods, and to the previous dynasty of the Titans, who are now banished to Tartaros. It is partic- ularly strange to find Athene in revolt against her father, in alliance with Hera, and the primitive earth-power Briareus on the side of Zeus. Nor do we find elsewhere in Homer any such monstrous conception as that of a being with a hundred arms. The Chimaira in vi. 181 is the only Homeric member of all the tribe of mixed creatures who play so prominent a part in later Greek as in Oriental mythology. The father of Briareus, the scholiasts tell us, was Poseidon, who himself bears at times the title of Aigaion or Aigaios, " the stormy," a name which has passed to the " Aegaean " sea. There are several other cases in Homer of the distinction between the languages of gods and men to which the names Briareus and Aigaion are assigned. In ii. 813 "men indeed call this Batieia, but the immortals call it the tomb of lithe Myrine"; xiv. 291, "the shrill bird that gods call chalkis but men kymindis " ; xx. 74, " the great deep-eddying River whom gods call Xanthos and men Skamandros." Compare also Od. x. 305, " Moly the gods COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I 61 call it" ; and xii. 61, " these are they the blessed gods call the Rocks Wandering." It is natural to suppose that we have in one of the two languages words used by some other race of men whom the Greeks found, perhaps, living before them in Greece, or on the coasts of Asia Minor. But here both the names Aigaion and Briareus are equally Greek ; and Batieia is a word which may have as Greek an origin as the name Tomb of Myrine. In the other two pairs, how- ever, the divine names Chalkis and Xanthos are pure Greek, while the human Kymindis and Skamandros seem to be of foreign origin. It would seem, therefore, on the whole, that the Homeric Greeks regarded their own tongue as the language of gods, and words which were used by the foreign races who dwelt around them or preceded them in Greece were ascribed to the language of men. In that case Aigaion will be a divinity of the pre-Greek race of the Greek peninsula, adopted as a subordinate member of the Olympian polity under the name Briareus ; and the fact that the name Aigaion has also a meaning in Greek must be accidental. 423. The legend of the " blameless" or " noble" Ethio- pians is a curious instance of the idea the Greeks had of the tribes who lived on the outskirts of their world. They are mentioned more in detail in the Odyssey, where they are said to dwell in two distant regions at the end of the world one at the west, the other at the east (i. 23). . Like the Scythian tribes in the extreme north (//. xiii. 6), they are famed for their piety, and the gods often make journeys to enjoy their hecatombs (//. xxiii. 206). 430. As mentioned in the introduction to this book, serious doubts have been cast upon the following episode of the return of Chryseis to her parents. These are based mainly not on any real or apparent contradictions, but on 62 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I the fact that an unusual proportion of the lines appears in other places of 450 to 486, for instance, all but four recur elsewhere; and of the whole episode 430-489, from the words " whom they had taken perforce " to " Achilles fleet of foot " (16, 2"f) more than half is found in other parts of the poems. It has further been pointed out that, as the story now stands, the reference of the word "thereafter" (r6, 31) is inexact. It must mean "after the meeting of Achilles and his mother," whereas, according to the context, it can only stand for " after the return of Odysseus from Chryse," which is a day later. And finally, the pouring of the libation (16, 7-10) is not Homeric. For the regular custom was to pour the libation to the gods before drinking, giving them, as it were, the first-fruits of the cup, whereas here it is made a separate offering after they have " put away the desire of drink." It cannot be denied that there is force in these arguments, especially in the last ; but there is something to be said on the other side. With regard to the word " thereafter," though it is true that the last definite event from which time can be reckoned is the return of Odysseus, yet the mention of Achilles' retirement from the war has taken back our thoughts to the scene which led to it, so that there is not really any difficulty about the point from which the twelve days are to be counted, and the poet has no need to insist upon any laborious accuracy in the measurement of time. Then as to the repetitions, a con- siderable part is of merely formal lines, such as the genius of epic poetry permits to be freely repeated in describing similar scenes. No doubt if we find a large number of lines which do not fall under this head repeated in a short passage, it is more likely that they should be borrowed there than that they should have formed the model for borrowing in many other scattered passages ; but when COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I 63 the formal lines are deducted the number of repetitions in the present case is not very large. The gross total of lines which are not of this formal kind, and are found repeated in different parts of the Iliad and Odyssey, is very considerable. Modern critics have minutely examined them in the hope of finding, by proof of borrowing, the relative ages of the different passages where they occur. It may be said gene- rally that when a line is borrowed in one passage from another, the real test as to which of the two is original is to be sought in the different suitability of the line to its two environments ; for of course it will rarely happen that a borrowed line is quite as perfectly adapted to its new con- text as it was to the old. A slight indication of this nature is to be found here in the line (463) " the young men in their hands held five-pronged forks." This line, with those which precede it, recurs in Od. iii. 460, and it has a more accurate adaptation to the passage in the Odyssey, for there " young men" have been already mentioned as assisting at the sacrifice, Nestor's sons to wit, who are helping their father : whereas in the Iliad there has been no previous allusion to young men at all, and we are only left to infer that it means the Greeks in general. Thus the repetition affords some evidence in favour of the supposition that the episode of the restoration of Chryseis is by a poet who did not hesitate to borrow lines from other parts of the Iliad and Odyssey, and is later in date than Od. iii. ; but it can hardly be said to be quite decisive. In any case it must be admitted that the interpolation of the episode is ingeniously effected in order to bridge over the pause in the story caused by Achilles' retirement to his hut. 500. Clasping the knees and touching the chin is the /7, 6 recognised attitude of the Greek suppliant. It is probably derived from the action of the wounded warrior who with 64 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I the left arm clasps the knee of his victor to hamper his movement, and with the right hand turns aside his face so that he cannot aim the fatal blow till he has heard the appeal for mercy. 528. This majestic description of Zeus was very famous in antiquity, and is said to have inspired Pheidias with the conception of his great statue of the god at Olympia. 539. The scene between Zeus and Hera is typical of the spirit in which Homer treats the deities of Olympia. It .is, to say the least, not reverent, and far removed from any conception of primitive piety. It is, indeed, one among many signs that the civilisation of the heroic age was old and not young a civilisation which was outgrowing the simple faith of its ancestors. It has often been pointed out with truth that the humour of Homer is almost entirely con- fined to the scenes in Olympos, which seem to be treated as a fit opportunity for the display of passions which would be beneath the dignity of heroes. Even in morality the tone of Olympos is distinctly beneath that of earth. Mr. Glad- stone has well remarked that not one of the gods can be called as distinctly good as the swineherd Eumaios. It is impossible to leave this splendid book without noticing the supreme art with which all the leading char- acters on both the stages of the coming story have been introduced to us ; drawn in strong strokes where not a touch is lost, and standing before us at once as finished types for all time. On earth we already know the con- trast between the surly resentment of Agamemnon and the flaming but placable passion of Achilles, and we have had a glimpse of the mild wisdom of Nestor and the devoted friendship of Patroklos. In heaven the three chief actors, Zeus, Hera, and Athene, already present themselves as the strong but overweighted husband, the jealous and domineer- COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : I 65 ing wife, and the ideal of self-restraint and wise reflexion. The third book will do the same for the Trojan side, show- ing us in vivid outline Hector, Paris, and Priam, and their chief advocate in heaven, the goddess Aphrodite, with .her victim Helen, the centre of the tragedy. BOOK II THIS book obviously falls into two distinct parts, of which the second, the " Catalogue of the Ships," from 1. 484 to the end, will be treated independently. We are at present concerned only with the first part. The immense interest and importance of the scene in the assembly hardly needs to be dwelt upon. Whether as a picture of early Greek life, or as a character -sketch of Odysseus and Thersites, or as a general introduction to the war before Troy, it is of unsurpassed value. Yet there is no portion of the Iliad which has caused more searching of hearts even to the most believing adherents of the unity of the Iliad, The connexion with the main story remains a hopeless puzzle. It hardly needs to be pointed out that this is precisely what we must always expect to find when a poem has been added in a place where it did not origin- ally exist. However excellent the poem itself may be, it is always in the motives and incidents which join it to the main plot that we should look for the signs of trouble. The great difficulty is to see why Agamemnon should wish to tempt the army at all. We can understand why Zeus should send the dream promising victory ; that is the first step to the fulfilment of his promise to Thetis, for, com- bined with an order to the Trojans to prepare for battle, it will bring the two forces face to face, and thus lead to the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD" : II 67 defeat of the Greeks. But why, after the explicit promise of the dream that final victory is now in his power, does Agamemnon, instead of at once marching out to win it, run the perfectly gratuitous risk of the proposition to the army to flee back to Greece ? And even more suspicious than this want of motive is the scene in the council, by which we are given to understand what it is that Agamemnon really wishes. The meagreness of the narrative is evident, and the inconsequence of Agamemnon's action is brought into strong relief thereby. As" a matter of fact the resolution supposed to be arrived at in the council is ignored in the sequel ; none of the chiefs attempt to stem the popular tide till Odysseus is specially aroused to do so, not by remembering what he pro- mised, but by a special intervention of Athene. The only two brief passing allusions to the council are in no way necessary to the context, and may well be interpolated. As, therefore, the motive of the test is in itself unreasonable, and the manner in which it is presented suspicious, there is good reason for supposing that the test itself did not originally exist in the poet's mind. The scene in the assembly gains quite a fresh significance if we regard it not as a mere fetch to delude the army, but as a serious matter ; if we suppose, that is, that Agamemnon is really, in utter despondency, proposing that the siege should be abandoned. We can well imagine a form of the story in which this would be the immediate result of Achilles' determination to fight no more ; it would per- fectly suit the character of Agamemnon, who is in turns overweening and depressed. It seems to me clear that such was the original intention of the scene ; but then it is not to be reconciled with the episode of the dream. It is more probable that the scene in the assembly was meant to 68 COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD": II be an alternative to the dream, not an appendage to it, as it is now made. Thus in one, the older, version, the Greeks are brought out from the camp by the dream ; in the other, Agamemnon, disheartened at the defection of Achilles, pro- poses to return home ; his design is frustrated only by Odysseus, with the help of Hera and Athene, by whom the first impulse to flight is turned into eagerness for battle. The two versions, either of which, but not both, could be chosen by the reciter, were subsequently fused into one by an ill-advised adapter of more ingenuity than poetical feel- ing, who invented the scene in the council in order 'to introduce his conceit of the trial of the spirit of the army. With this explanation the whole construction of the book becomes intelligible. The constituent portions of the book will then be, so far as the first part is concerned ; (i) a piece of the ancient "Menis," 1-53, 442-454 (see General Introduction); (2) the scene in the assembly, 87-441, from "even as when the tribes " (24, 6} to " Agamemnon, king of men, disregarded not " (SSi 7) > (3) tne inserted connecting passage, 54-86, added at some later uncertain date. The scene in the assembly introduces us to a new character destined to play an important part, to Odysseus, who has been no more than a name in the first book. It further expands and confirms the pictures of Agamemnon which we have already had given us ; and it shows us what is unique in Iliad and Odyssey together, a portrait of one of the commonalty, a caricature, it is true, but one of those caricatures of genius which are more instructive than a photograph. We now too hear for the first time of the past of the war, of the ten years which have elapsed since the fleets set out from Greece, and the hardships which the host has had to undergo. COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD": II 69 These characters led Grote to regard this book, and those that follow it down to vii., as a poem by themselves, an Iliad, properly so called, because they tell us something of the war as a whole, and not only of a particular incident in it. The reasons why this theory cannot be accepted have been indicated in the General Introduction. We find in these six books, as in other parts of the Iliad, marks indicating that they have not been composed as a whole, but by stages. And they have been composed with a special adaptation to this place in the poem, for the absence of Achilles is assumed throughout ; in the present book, for instance, Thersites pointedly alludes to it and to its cause. We may note also that this book, like the first, assumes the chief characters of the legend to be known ; for Odysseus speaks of himself as "the father of Telemachos," who is only mentioned again in the Iliad in a similar phrase, and plays absolutely no part in the action of the poem. NOTES 2. It is an old problem to ask how Zeus can be said to 21, 2 be "not holden of sweet sleep," when we have just been told at the end of the last book that he went up to his bed " and slept." But the difficulty, though some of the ancient critics made much of it, is at most a trifling inaccuracy of expression ; in all languages " to sleep " naturally becomes a synonym of " to pass the night," apart from the question of actual somnolence. The supposed contradiction is there- fore one which may be entirely neglected ; especially as it comes at a natural break in the story, where a pause would be made in recitation sufficient to mask any sense of in- congruity. A precisely similar sequence is found at the beginning of x., which is evidently copied from this. 70 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : II 21, 7 8. Observe the curious personification of the individual dream, as if it were a living person. There is no trace in Homer of a " Dream-God " such as is found in late mythology. 27 > '9 19. "Ambrosial" as applied to sleep seems to mean little more than delicious. The word always carries with it the idea of fragrance, and is not improbably derived from the Oriental word ambar, the name of the perfume amber- gris, to which the nations of the East ascribed all sorts of magical properties. In the form ambrosia it is the food of the gods. The adjective is applied also to night, perhaps from the peculiar fragrance of sweet-scented flowers in still warm nights, which every one must have remarked who has been in a land of orange trees. The ascription of ambrosia to the gods alone was doubtless helped by the accidental resemblance of the word to the pure Greek adjective ambrotos, immortal. 22 1 2 5 42. This passage gives the usual dress of the Achaian hero. He wears a tunic or close-fitting shirt, made of linen ; the material is indicated by the epithets soft and bright, which contrast it with the rougher and duller surface of wool. This garment seems to have reached below the knees, and was the only one worn within the house. On going out a large cloak was thrown over the shoulders. This was, at least as a rule, of wool, and often dyed in varied colours. It was sometimes worn single, sometimes double ; we shall find instances of both in the Iliad. It appears probable that the linen garment was an importation from the East, as the word chiton, translated tunic, is Semitic, and appears in Hebrew in the form kittun. It was a fundamental difference between the two classes of garments, the primitive cloak of wool and the shirt of linen, that the latter was cut and sewn to the shape of the body, COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : II 71 whereas the former was unshaped, and was worn by fasten- ing it over the shoulder with pins. In the Homeric age the linen shaped garment was worn only by men, and the women still adhered to the traditional woollen garment fastened by pins, which was indeed even in historic times the classical garment for women, and formed the peplos or Greek dress as familiar to us. But the habit of wearing the more luxurious linen chiton had come in even for women during the seventh century, as it would seem ; it is often found figured on the monuments, and was known as the Ionic dress, in contradistinction to the old woollen garment which was called the Doric; doubtless because the con- servative Dorians adhered to the older fashion, while the lonians, with their constant intercourse with the East, were always ready to adopt the latest fashion, and able to import the linen fabrics of the Semitic nations. 53. This book gives us a picture of the constitution of 23, 3 the Homeric state, with its three orders : the king, the council of chiefs, or elders as they are often called, but without reference to age, and the assembly of the whole people. This threefold division seems to have been in- herited from the earliest ages of the Indo-European nations, for Tacitus describes a precisely similar state of things among the Germans ; measures are debated by the king in concert with his chiefs, and are then brought before the assembly, who decide for or against by acclamation. It is evident that our own Houses of Lords and Commons are but the latest development of the same form of government, of which indeed we find traces throughout Europe. The Athenian Areopagos was, for instance, only the representa- tive of the royal council, and existed side by side with the ekklesia, in which all free Athenians took part. The Homeric council seems, so far as we can judge from casual 72 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : II mention, to have consisted of some nine or ten members ; but this is nowhere definitely stated, nor have we any clear ground for supposing that any of the chiefs who occur in the Iliad were excluded from it. It is thus in order that a council should be called before the question of retreat is laid before the assembly ; and it is likely enough that there was a council scene of some sort even before the idea of the tempting of the host was introduced. But the weakness of what we now have is obvious. The third repetition of the dream is inartistic, but it forms more than half of the scene. The speech of Nestor is feeble in the extreme ; he says nothing of the extraordinary proposal which has been made, and his assumption that a dream is more likely to be true if it comes to Agamemnon is very strange, though perhaps not more so than the idea that a trial of the dis- position of the temper of the army should follow on a posi- tive promise of victory. If the dream had threatened defeat such a device might be intelligible as a ruse to bring about retreat without casting the odium too directly on the king ; as it is, it is almost an insult to Zeus. Aristarchos indeed rejected the whole speech of Nestor, for, as he pointed out, it is not Nestor but Agamemnon who ought to lead the way from the council. But the episode is not to be made rational by mere excision, and the unaccountable precedence given to Nestor seems to be implied in the fact that the council is held at his ship, not, as we should expect, at that of Agamemnon. 24, 12 93. " Rumour, messenger of Zeus," is evidently a per- sonification of the wave of popular report which often spreads among a people with a rapidity which seems almost superhuman. The speed, for instance, with which news flashes through the bazaars of India has often been re- marked as something inexplicable, and it is easy to see how COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : II 73 such rapidity leads to calling rumour a messenger of heaven. 1 08. Argos is here, as elsewhere in Homer, a general 24, 27 name for Greece, and not for the city to which it was after- wards restricted. The latter, indeed, is hardly named except in one or two passages, probably of late origin, and possibly came into existence, as it certainly only came into importance, after the Dorian invasion and the fall of the neighbouring capital of Mykenae. This whole passage was famous in antiquity, and is mentioned by Thucydides under the title of " The Demise of the Sceptre." The last words seem to find a curious echo, perhaps only accidental, in Malory's Morte D' Arthur, i. 24 (Globe ed.) : " King he was of all Ireland and of many isles." 143. This line (" throughout . . . council"), which was 25, 29 rejected by Aristarchos as superfluous, seems to have been added when the scene in the council had been introduced ; it is certainly just as well away. It is the only certain re- ference to the resolution which Agamemnon had laid before his counsellors. (See on 194.) 144-149. Objection has been raised to these two similes in 25, 30 such close sequence ; but they appear to illustrate two different ideas. The first brings before us the sudden emotion which seizes the assembly, as the sudden squalls of the Aegaean Sea stir the waves ; the second vividly ex- presses the simultaneous bending of the people in one direction, as the ears of corn bend together before the wind. 153. The " launching-ways " are no doubt the furrows 26, 6 made by dragging the ships up on land ; in these they rest, supported by props on both sides to keep them upright. 164. This line ("with thy ... man"), as Aristarchos 26,17 pointed out, is evidently interpolated from 180 below; it 74 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : II is for Odysseus, not for Athene, to speak to the fugitives individually. 8 125. This picture of Helen weaving the battles going on around her cannot but remind us of the Bayeux tapestry, with the wars of William embroidered by the Norman ladies. The web on which she is engaged is a large-sized cloak meant to be worn double ; see note on ii. 42. It is im- possible to say from the Greek exactly how the decorations were added ; embroidery, properly speaking, is evidently inconsistent with the weaving. On the other hand, it seems hardly likely that the art of weaving was sufficiently ad- vanced to enable figures of warriors to be introduced by the action of the loom itself. The process may have been some- what similar to that by which a modern Indian weaver pro- duces the patterns in his carpets by inserting tufts of coloured wool by hand in the web as it advances on the loom. Re- ference should be made to the similar passage xxii. 441 (447, 18} where the decoration is floral. It may be noticed as a peculiarity of this passage that Iris is not here, as else- where, a messenger of the gods, but is sent by the poet only for his own convenience; compare xxiii. 192. 53 1 2 7 144. According to later legends Aithre, daughter of Pittheus, was mother of Theseus. But this is impossible even for legendary chronology, for Nestor speaks of Peiri- COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : III 93 thoos the friend of Theseus as a hero of his own youth, so that, as the scholiast points out, it is absurd to suppose that his mother could now be a handmaid of Helen. This is, in fact, one of the links by which the Athenians tried to bring their legends into connexion with the Epos, taking advantage probably of the merely accidental occurrence of the name Aithre*. The story was that Peirithoos and Theseus stole Helen when a child, and that in return for the outrage Helen's two brothers captured Aithre" and made her Helen's slave. The recovery of Aithre" by the sons of Theseus is a favourite subject on Attic vases representing the capture of Troy. 149. "At the Skaian Gates," perhaps literally "on" 53*32 the gates. The great gate found at Hissarlik was in the middle of a tower, on the top of which there may well have been a platform to sit upon. At Tiryns there is also a plat- . form with a colonnade above the point where the chief gate leads into the citadel. Of course we cannot conclude from such an expression, as some have done, that the gate found at Hissarlik is the Skaian Gate of Troy, or that the poet was acquainted with Troy personally (see Schuchh., p. 49). 152. No satisfactory explanation has been given of the 54, 2 application of the epithet " lily-like " to a voice which has just been compared to that of the grasshopper, or rather cicada. The commentators have nothing better to say than that the idea of delicacy is transferred from the flower to the sound. It has been suggested to me that there may possibly be a reference to the acute creaking sound produced in long- leaved plants like the lily as they move in the wind. But perhaps the word is a corruption of some older epithet whose real sense had been lost. It is applied to flesh, apparently as a taunt, in xiii. 830. 156. In a well-known passage of the Laokoon, Lessing 54, 5 94 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : III has pointed out how, without describing a single feature, Homer has, by the admiration of the old men, given us a higher sense of surpassing personal beauty than could have been conveyed by the most elaborate description. 54, a 161. A few German critics have raised futile objections to the following scene. They say that it is absurd to sup- pose that after ten years of war Priam only now asks who are the Greek chiefs, though they can, it appears, be easily seen. Such an objection appears entirely to ignore the poet's liberty. For the hearer this is the beginning of the war, and, though somewhat naif, no doubt, the device by which the leaders are brought before him in review creates its own poetical justification. With the curious exception of Diomedes, we now have vivid personal portraits of all the chief actors in the drama which is to be played before us. . Nothing more than this is needed to justify the position of the " Teichoskopia." There is no more delightful passage of description in the Iliad, and it is set off by the charming touches with which Priam is introduced. 54, 30 1 80. " If ever such an one there was," i.e. if it be not all a dream. This seems to be the most likely explanation of the Greek ; it is a rhetorical phrase to contrast the present with the happy past. Similar expressions occur in xi. 762, xxiv. 426, and in the Odyssey. 55, 22 205. Before the beginning of the war Odysseus and Menelaos had come on an embassy to Troy, in order to obtain the restitution of Helen by peaceful means. This is alluded to again in xi. 124, where it is said that Paris obtained the rejection of the proposal by bribery. 56, 22 237. This is the only mention in the Iliad of Kastor and Polydeukes whose name the Romans corrupted to Pollux. They are here no more than common mortals, resting in their graves. The next mention of them is in a late passage COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : III 95 of the Odyssey i xi. 300, where we find the story of their alternate immortality. "These twain yet live, but the quickening earth is over them ; and even in the nether world they have honour at the hand of Zeus; and they possess their life in turn, living one day and dying the next; and they have gotten worship even as the gods." This is a good illustration of the growth of a myth. The " quicken- ing earth " in the Odyssey is evidently an allusion to the present passage. The exquisite pathos of the lines hardly needs to be pointed out. It should be observed that though Helen, like other royal persons, is descended from Zeus, there is no clear evidence that she was to Homer actually his daughter. In 140 (above) the allusion to her parents seems to imply that she is daughter of Tyndareos, who in the Odyssey is clearly made the father both of Kastor and Polydeukes. The tale of the amours of Zeus and Leda is not known to Homer at all. 269. The mingling of the wine in the bowl means per- 37> haps that the wine brought by the Trojans is mingled with wine of the Greeks. Such an act would have an obvious significance, and it was the custom to mix no water with the wine used for oaths. The hair of the victim represents his whole body ; just as when the mourner cut a lock of his hair for his friend's grave he symbolically offered himself as a companion (see note on xxiii. 135). The portioning of the hair among the chiefs makes them all partakers in the act of sacrifice. The interest of this passage, as bearing on the whole Homeric view of life, is obvious. It is the clearest case of a supposed retribution in the other world for sins committed in this. A few exceptions are only apparent. The punish- ments of Tityos, Tantalos, and Sisyphos, in Od, xi. 576-600, for instance, occur in a late passage ; and even these do not 96 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : III imply that Hades is a place of punishment for common sinners. In another important case, the very similar oath in xix. 259, it is possible to understand the words to mean " Erinyes who dwell under the earth and take vengeance on living men." Thus this passage stands quite by itself, and there is no satisfactory explanation of it. The difficulty lies in the fact that in the Homeric idea what survives after death is not the man, but only a faint shadow of him, not capable of feeling joy or pain, and therefore not subject to punishment Perhaps the significance of the formula lies in the prayer that the perjurer may, unlike other men, be made capable of suffering in the next world as well as in this (see Rohde, Psyche, p. 60). The Erinyes are not named here, but we can supply their names as the god- desses invoked from xix. 29 310. It is curious that the victims should be taken away in the chariot; in xix. 267 the boar is cast into the sea. Here it may be presumed they are to be buried, that they may be always at hand in order to watch over the fulfilment of the oath. 16-23 33~33^- Similar descriptions of arming will be found in xi. 17, xvi. 131, xix. 369. The six pieces of armour are always named in the same order, that in which they would be naturally put on, except that we should have expected the helmet to be set on the head before the heavy shield was taken on the arm. The greaves seem to have been a peculiarity of the Greeks ; they are not known to have been worn by any other early people, and the Achaians are dis- tinguished in Homer by the epithet ivell-greaved. The greaves from the classical time to be found in our museums seem to have been fastened only by the natural elasticity of the metal ; they were opened out at the back to be put on, and then closed round the calf so as COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : III 97 to hold it tight, but the Homeric greaves had clasps of some sort round the ankles, as is clear from this passage ; we have no means of telling what these were like. The corslet was composed of a breastplate and backplate, as we shall see in the next book. Paris takes Lykaon's because he has been wearing a panther-skin himself instead of a corslet. The sword is hung over the shoulder by a strap or baldric. 346. "Far-shadowing," or more literally " long-shadowed," S9> 3 f is the obvious meaning of the Greek epithet, but it does not seem a very appropriate one, and has been disputed. In defence of this interpretation it has been said that "the Arabs declare that the shadow of the lance is the longest shadow. Before the first morning light the Arabian horse- man rides forth, and returns with the last ray of evening ; so in the treeless level of the desert the shadow of his lance appears to him all day through as the longest shadow." But it must be confessed that this explanation is not par- ticularly appropriate to the Greek soldier ; and it is very probable that the word is an ancient epithet meaning simply long - shafted. Similarly the epithet "round," as applied to the shield, is of uncertain significance. It is, as usually taken, literally " equal every way." But here again it seems possible that the word which usually means equal may in this context mean " brilliant " or conspicuous. Homeric shields were in fact not invariably circular. The classical Greek shield was always round ; but in the intaglios found at Mykenai we have long oblong shields (see Schuchh., No. 221). Such a shape is evidently meant when the shield of Aias is compared to a tower, an expression quite inapplicable to a round shield. And again we often hear of the shield as "covering the whole height of a man." A circular shield, to do this, would have to be of some 5 feet H 98 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : III in diameter, and would be entirely unmanageable. But various shapes of shields were in use at Mykenai, and we cannot deny altogether the use of the circular shield in the Homeric age ; so that the exact significance of the epithet must be left uncertain. " The bronze " is of course the spear-point, as we use " the steel " of the sword blade. 60,14 362. " The helmet-ridge " a much disputed word. The most probable explanation is that the Greek word//m/ "imparted to his sire"), or perhaps 1-250 (72, i, "the ranks of warriors ") ; (2) the review of the army of Agamemnon, 220 (or 25i)-42i (77, 13, "even upon one stout-hearted"); (3) the opening of the general battle, 422-544. Of these three sections the first and third present no difficulty; for the first evidently belongs closely to the story of the last book, which it follows without any break. The third coheres equally with the fifth book, to which it forms the introduction, and is thus the beginning of the first great addition to the " Menis." The words with which it opens are fitted to come directly after the account of the arming in ii., the last point at which we recognised the " Menis." The second section, the review of the army, is somewhat more difficult. It comes in to delay the action at a moment when we should expect rapidity of movement; and the speeches seem needlessly prolix. The army has been already prepared for battle at the beginning of the preced- ing book, and everything would lead us to suppose that the treachery of Pandaros must be followed by a rapid stroke either on the part of the Trojans, to take advantage of the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IV 101 blow, or by the Greeks to revenge the outrage ; but nothing justifies the long review of the troops, or rather of the generals. The gratuitous insults with which Agamemnon assails both Odysseus and Diomedes are quite out of keep- ing with his character, and, as the Iliad stands, Odysseus has just rendered, in book ii., an important service which renders Agamemnon's attack doubly unjustifiable. Nor can it be said that the whole scene does very much to extend our knowledge of the actors concerned, with the single exception of Diomedes. His speech is thoroughly in harmony with his modest but strong character, as por- trayed more especially in books vii.-x. This is our first in- troduction to him, and serves to lead up to his " Aristeia " in the next book. But it is not essential to that, and seems to be more closely connected with ix., where the insults of Agamemnon are distinctly alluded to. It may therefore be conjectured that the whole scene of the review belongs rather to the Third Stratum than the Second, and more par- ticularly to the ninth book. It may have been added to soften the abruptness with which Diomedes is brought upon the scene in v., and at the same time to introduce other important heroes of the later part of the Second and earlier parts of the Third Stratum, Menestheus and Idomeneus. In no portion of the Iliad is the absolute neglect of the plot of the "Menis" more conspicuous than in the first section of this book. The colloquy in heaven entirely ignores the promise of Zeus to Thetis, and the future course of the war is regarded as an entirely open question. It will be found that the violation of the oath, which might be expected to have some vital influence on the course of the story, is in the sequel completely forgotten, except in a few lines which are most gravely suspected of interpolation (see v. 206, vii. 69). Especially in the account of the death of Pandaros COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IV in v. 286-296 it would seem to be hardly possible to omit all allusion to the treachery which ought to have brought his fate upon him. The conclusion is that the whole episode of the duel of Menelaos and Paris, with its sequel in this book, is an addition later than the " Aristeia of Diomedes " in v. NOTES 64, 7 8. " Alalkomenean " is one of the many obscure titles of gods at whose meaning we can only vaguely guess. There was a town called Alalkomenai in Boeotia, where Athene was worshipped, and from which she is generally said to have taken her title ; but it is possible that the town may have been called after the goddess and not vice versa. The name probably means "protectress." We hear also of Zeus Alalkomeneus. The epithet " Triton-born " also given to Athene (see 1. 5 1 5 below) is a similar case. Near Alalko- menai was the Tritonian lake, from which some derived the name, but here again the lake may have been named from the divinity ; some regard Triton itself as an old name for water. Under the same head we may perhaps class another title of Athene, " AtrytoneY' translated in ii. 157 and elsewhere " unwearied maiden." Some would see in this name also a connexion with the same mysterious word " Triton " (see note 10 to the translation of the Odyssey]. 6$ 't 2 7 52. This line is remarkable as containing the only allu- sion, outside the Catalogue and one or two suspected passages referring to Diomedes, to the city of Argos. It has already been pointed out on ii. 563 that the regular use of the word Argos belongs in Homer to Greece as a whole, and that Argos as a city came into prominence only under the Dorians. This line shows, however, that the city existed under that name before the Dorian invasion. Some critics COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IV 103 have indeed seen an allusion to the Dorian conquest in the words of Hera. This, however, is impossible, for though Mykenai was, if not destroyed, at least rendered powerless by that invasion, Argos and Sparta were raised to a higher position than ever by it. The offer is a perfectly general one on Hera's part. 75. The description of the descent of Athene is not very 66, 18 clear ; it is hardly to be supposed that she actually changed herself into the semblance of a meteor, such as the words indicate. What seems to be meant is that there was a rapid flash of light as she came down, as swift and as bright as a fire-ball ; the people do not actually see the goddess, nor do they know what has happened, but can only suppose that some important omen has been given. 101. "Son of light," Lykegenes, another of the obscure 67, // divine names. The word may equally well mean "wolf- born," while the ancients themselves explained it "born in Lykia." It is quite possible that "wolf-born" may be the right rendering, implying " some such relation with the wolf as Smintheus implies with the field-mouse, or as Demeter had with the horse, and Hera with the cow. The favourite modern rendering of the epithet is Might-born/ which is connected with the supposed solar origin of Apollo " (A. L.) According to one myth, Leto, the mother of Apollo, was changed into a wolf, and thus he was wolf-born. The in- terpretation " born in Lykia " is, of course, due to the fame of that land as a seat of Apollo-worship ; and it must be noticed that Pandaros himself is called a Lykian in v. 105, though his home was on the Aisepos in the north of the Troad, and far from Lykia proper, the land of Sarpedon. Whatever the connexion may have been, the name Lykian evidently goes with it (see note on i. 37). 105. It is tolerably certain that the animal named here 67. 16 io 4 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IV is the ibex or steinbock, which is still found in the Alps, and was also a denizen of Crete in historical times, though it is doubtful if it is still found in Greece. There is in the Louvre a bronze plate from Crete which represents two huntsmen, one of whom carries a dead ibex, while the other bears a bow, evidently made of ibex-horn, and clearly showing the rings. The " palm " or four fingers' breadth would be about 3 inches, making the horns 4 feet long. This is beyond the recorded length of ibex-horns, but may be a mere poetic exaggeration. 67, 29 IJ 7- "Chain" or "source" of woes: an obscure ex- pression. The usual sense of the Greek word is chain or pendant; but that seems to give no meaning here. It is possible also to explain the word as spring or source ; but, though this gives a good sense, there is no other case of it in Greek. This therefore must remain among the many Homeric problems which cannot be confidently solved. Schiller imitates the expression while avoiding the difficulty, when he makes Tell say to his arrow, " Komm du hervor, du Bringer bittrer Schmerzen" 68, 12 132. In order to understand this passage it is necessary to form a clear idea of the Homeric corslet. This is formed of two curved plates of bronze, one for the breast and one for the back, overlapping down each side. They were fastened by some sort of clasp over the shoulder, and by a belt round the waist. This was fastened at the side with a golden buckle. The arrow is guided by Athene to alight just on this buckle, where it lay over the two overlapping edges of the breast and back-plates. This was the point at which the armour was thickest to meet a blow. The arrow passes through all this ; but below them it finds another obstacle, the mitre. For want of a better word this is translated by taslet, "the old word which designates the COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD": IV 105 thigh covering, though, for men who rode and did not fight in chariots, the taslets were made with a divided skirt. In the Legend of Montrose (ch. xiv.) Dugald Dalgetty is shot in the thigh : ' I always told the immortal Gustavus, Wallen- stein, Tilly, and other men of the sword, that, in my poor mind, taslets ought to be musket-proof" (A. L.) The mitre here, however, evidently covers the flanks, not the thighs. What it was is a matter of doubt. Helbig thinks that it was a wide oval piece of metal, such as is often found in prehistoric tombs in Italy, and more rarely in Greece ; this he supposes was worn round the waist, under the corslet. But such a piece of armour would seem very inconvenient, and the bands of metal in question are orna- mented, so that they must have been worn, if they were worn at all, in some place where they could be seen. On the other hand the mitre cannot have been a mere taslet of leather, for we are told in 1. 187 (70, 4) that the " copper- smiths fashioned" it. Possibly the conditions are best fulfilled by supposing a leather apron with plates of metal sewn upon it, thus forming a more flexible and practical defence than the stiff bronze belt. It will be noticed that neither here nor in the two further passages where the wound is described have we any mention of the tunic or chiton, which was undoubtedly worn below the corslet; evidently because it does not form any defensive armour. 141. This passage is particularly interesting as the 68, 21 clearest evidence in Homer of a very early intercourse and commerce in works of art between Achaian Greece and Asia Minor. The general tendency of recent research has uniformly been to emphasise the importance of this con- nexion, and to diminish that of the Phenician, which was at one time held to be the main source of early Greek art. It is now beginning to be admitted that there 106 COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD": IV was a native Achaian school of art, which was influenced at once by Egypt, by Phenicia, and by Asia Minor ; and it is doubtful if the Phenician element was as important as either of the other two. But we shall have to learn much more about the early art of Asia Minor before the question can be properly answered. 7> 3 187. The "kirtle of mail" probably indicates a sort of rim in which the ancient Greek cuirass ended at the bottom, the lower edge of it being bent outwards all round. This seems to have been the usual way of finishing off the corslet beneath till about the middle of the sixth century B.C., when a new fashion came in, and the lower edge, instead of being thus bent outwards, finished in a fringe of strips of leather hanging down over the thighs. It is this which we generally regard as the typical mark of the Greek corslet, but it is certainly not the most ancient fashion. The kirtle here takes the place of the " curiously wrought breast- plate" in the former passage (68, ijj\ the part especially concerned being put for the whole. 7/, 4 219. Cheiron is mentioned again as having taught Achilles the knowledge of medicinal herbs, xi. 832, and as having given his father the Pelian spear, xix. 390 ; but none of the other legends about him appear in Homer. 71, 6 221. The idea evidently is that the Trojans advance immediately, to take advantage of the confusion in the Greek ranks ; and as the two armies are already close together, the long speeches in the section which follows are entirely out of place. This indicates that the follow- ing lines, to 250, are to be taken as the close of the last section rather than as the beginning of the next, and form the transition by which the end of the duel between Mene- laos and Paris was joined on to the beginning of the " Aristeia of Diomedes " in 422. If we consider this passage COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IV 107 to form the introduction to the review of the troops, it is not easy to see why the poet should have introduced the inconsistency; he would evidently, instead of saying that the Trojans "came on," have preferred to speak of their being brought gradually into order, so as to give some time for the episode which he was adding. 242. " Warriors of the bow," i.e. not daring to face 7 7 - 2 5 your enemies like spearmen in close combat. The bow- man was always held in contempt in Greece : see xi. 385, where Diomedes calls Paris a bowman, by way of a taunt; and xiii. 714, of the Lokrians, "Their hearts were not steadfast in close brunt of battle . . . but trusting in bows they followed to Ilios." It may be mentioned that the word translated " warriors of the bow " is somewhat obscure, but this is the most probable of various renderings that have been proposed. 259. The "wine of the counsellors" alludes to the 7 2 , ff feasts given by Agamemnon to the members of the royal council. On such occasions it was a mark of special honour to have the cup kept always full, as appears from viii. 161 : " The fleet-horsed Danaans were wont to honour thee with the highest place, and meats, and cups brimful." A familiar instance of this primitive mark of distinction is " Benjamin's mess." 277. " Blacker, even as pitch " ; perhaps rather, " blacker 72, 30 than pitch " ; but the expression is an unusual one. Such hyperbolical phrases are rare in Homer, but we have "whiter than snow " in x. 437. The comparison seems not to be so much with the actual blackness of the advancing line, as with the moral effect of awe produced by the advancing squadrons, as by the gathering storm-cloud. 297. From this line to 310, "of yore in battles," is a 73>''3 typical specimen of the sort of lecture on tactics which we io8 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IV have elsewhere recognised as a favourite interpolation put into Nestor's mouth. The only other example in Homer of a speech begun, as it is here, without a formal introduc- tion, such as "and thus he said," is in xxiii. 855 ; and that is certainly a late passage. The advice itself is far from clear. The concluding words would seem to apply to rules for a siege, but they are given to horsemen, and the expression first in 19 implies that some further advice is coming for the footmen ; but it does not appear. It may further be noticed that the tactics recommended are the contrary of those followed in the Iliad, where all fighting from chariots is conducted individually by different chiefs ; whereas the words given to Nestor imply a formation of chariots in close array, such as we never hear of elsewhere. Even those who have chariots fight as a rule on foot, and certainly never hesitate to attack the Trojans " alone before the rest." 74, 7 3 I 9- Nestor's story of the slaying of Ereuthalion is only postponed; it will be found in vii. 136-156. 74, 22 334- "Column," literally tower ; the metaphors seem to express the same thing, a body of men drawn up in strong formation, with great depth but a narrow front. 75, 8 354. For the phrase " Father of Telemachos," see the note on ii. 260. It is clearly used only as a title of honour which a man may apply to himself. Aristarchos regarded this " foreshadowing of the Odyssey " as a proof that both poems were by the same author; but it shows only that Telemachos, like the other personages of the Epos, was already familiar in the legends springing from the Tale of Troy. 7S> 2 4 37- This is one of the very few allusions in Homer to the famous story of the Theban war ; it is heard of only in connexion with Tydeus, and the more celebrated events COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD " : IV 109 are not mentioned. Though it was dealt with in so many tragedies, the epic poems which told of it have entirely perished, and we are unable to say whether this episode was a part of the recognised legend or was invented for his own purposes by the author of this portion of the Iliad, The incident of the embassy of Tydeus to Thebes is again alluded to in v. 801-813. The "highways," literally bridges or rather dams, " of the war " are generally understood to mean the spaces which separate the two armies, like dams along a river. 406. " We did take," i.e. we did not merely besiege in 76, 30 vain as our fathers did. This is the only allusion in Homer to the war of the "Epigonoi," when the sons of those who were defeated in the attempt to place Polyneikes on the throne of Thebes returned to the attack and captured and razed the city. The mention of the omens of the gods and the salvation of Zeus alludes to the blasphemous impiety of some of the leaders of the first campaign, which is strongly insisted upon by Aischylos, and was doubtless an essential point in the legend. In the Seven against Thebes Kapaneus is made to boast that he will take the city " whether God will it or will it not." 412. The word translated "brother" occurs only here 77,4 in Greek, and some of the ancient critics took it for an expression of rebuke. It is, however, more likely a phrase of affectionate address. 422. With this splendid simile the " Aristeia of Diomedes" 77, 14 opens. It will be noticed that the noise of the waves comes in only for the sake of the picture, not as one of the points of comparison ; for here, as in the beginning of Hi., the silence of the Greeks is contrasted with the noise of the Trojans, which has another fine simile all to itself. 482. The comparison of a falling warrior to a tree is one 79> * no COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD ": IV which we shall frequently meet with in the descriptions of battles. In this case the resemblance comes, as Colonel Mure pointed out, from "the practice, still common in Southern Europe, of trimming up the stem of a poplar to within a few feet of the top, which, left untouched, preserves the appearance of a bushy tuft," waving like the great horse- hair plume on the warrior's helmet. The use of soft wood like that of the poplar for the felloe of a wheel is curious ; but no doubt the flexibility of the material, and the facility with which it could be bent into a circle, outweighed its disadvantages with carpenters who had not the means to bend the harder woods by steam. 79, 27 500. Priam's breed of horses came from the famous stock of Tros, which is spoken of in v. 265-267, and at greater length in xx. 221-230. It would seem that Priam kept a sort of " stud-farm " at Abydos. So, i 508. Pergamos here has of course nothing to do with the famous city of that name. The word is very likely Thracian and connected with the German Burg and Berg; it means Citadel simply, and is here applied, as often, to the citadel of Troy, where Apollo has a temple. 8, 10 515. For the title "Triton-born" (Tritogeneia), see the note on iv. 8. 2 89. There are here two readings : one adopted in the translation, which means literally joined together (in long lines), the other meaning fenced in, i.e. set as a fence about the streams. The latter is perhaps somewhat preferable, and is that given by almost all MSS. ; but the former has the authority of Aristarchos in its favour. The word trans- lated causeways means in later Greek bridges, but it is always used in Homer to express dams or embankments. There is no clear mention in Homer of bridges proper. The word is the same which occurs in the expression highways of the battle, for which see note on iv. 371. 8j t 8 95- Lykaon's son is Pandaros, see iv. 89, etc. The name Lykaon has evidently some connexion with Lykia, COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : V 115 the name of his country, which lay on the Sea of Mar- mora in the north part of the Troad. It is probable that a tribe of Lykians settled here, either as a colony from the better known Lykians in the south of Asia Minor, or pos- sibly left behind as the mass of the nation passed on to their later settlement, if, as is likely, they entered Asia through Thrace. It is not uncommon to find such isolated fragments of nations ; the Gauls in Galatia are a familiar instance, and here we know how they came to Asia Minor. Thus, when in the Odyssey (xix. 177) we find Dorians in Crete, we cannot feel sure that this is an indication of the colonisation of the island by Dorians who came in with the great invasion ; it is quite possible that we have here only another case of a branch of the same tribe who had separated off and gone their own way at an earlier date. The Lykians of Pandaros disappear with their leader a little farther on, and after 1. 471 we hear only of the other more famous Lykians under Sarpedon. 112. " Right through," because the barbs are buried in 8s, 26 the flesh, so that it is easier to draw the arrow through than to pull it backwards. The latter course was taken in the case of Menelaos (iv. 213), because the barbs had not reached the flesh, but were only fixed in the armour. The " pliant " doublet or shirt (chiton) probably means that the shirt was pleated over the shoulder, in order to form a pad to relieve the weight of the corslet ; the word means literally twisted, and of various proposed explanations this seems the most probable. 150. Of the two alternative versions given in the trans- ^ i lation, that of the text seems decidedly preferable. It means, of course, that he did not foresee what their fate was to be when they set out, or he would not have let them come to Troy. There is no good sense to be got from the ii6 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD" : V version in the note, as there is no reason why the father should welcome his sons back by discerning dreams for them. Such assistance should have been given before the war, not after it. 2 whose exact sense was possibly forgotten by the com- posers of the Iliad themselves, and which we can only render by guess-work. "Whole-hooved," in Biblical lan- guage "not dividing the hoof," gives a fairly good sense, though the epithet is always given to individual horses, and not to the race as a whole. But it is not clear that the Greek can mean this. It has been suggested that the word means rather " with impetuous hooves." But in such cases it is wiser only to recognise the uncertainty of etymology, and adhere to the traditional rendering. 262. The chariot rim is the rail which ran all round the go, 14 front and sides of the Greek chariot. We often find in vases a chariot left for the time by its driver with the reins fastened to this rail to hold the horses back. 265. It is practically impossible to decide between the go, 16 two renderings of the epithet ascribed to Zeus, far-seeing or with far-borne voice. Both are appropriate, the latter suiting the god of thunder. 291. Commentators have been much troubled by the ?/, to wound here described ; the spear passes in a downward direction from the eye to the root of the tongue, as though it was cast from above, whereas Diomedes is on foot and n8 COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD": V Pandaros in a chariot. The simplest explanation is to sup- pose that Pandaros, seeing the spear coming, "ducks" a moment too late, so that he is caught with his face bent downwards. This would quite explain the course of the spear. 97, 25 306. The " cup-bone " is the acetabulum of modern anatomy : the socket, not unlike a shallow cup, by which the head of the thigh-bone articulates with the pelvis. 9^> * 7 33- The title " Kypris," generally understood to mean " the Cyprian," is used in Homer only in this episode. The worship of Aphrodite in Cyprus is alluded to in Homer only in Od. viii. 362, in a passage which is universally recognised as late ; and it is by no means certain that the title Kypris is derived from the island. It is generally taken for granted that the Greeks borrowed the Phenician Astarte from the Phenicians whom they found in Cyprus, and that the name Kypris is a proof of the Phenician origin of the goddess. But as she appears in Homer she shows no signs whatever of Phenician birth. It is highly probable that she was origin- ally an old Greek goddess, and that Kypris is an old Greek name ; it has been compared with some probability to the Italian Dea Cupra, about whom, however, we know little more than the title. Assuming that there was an old Greek goddess Kypris, it was certain that when the Greeks came to Cyprus and found the Phenicians there they would at once identify their own goddess with Astarte ; for they had in the early historical period, as we know from Hero- dotos, a passion for deriving all their divinities from neighbouring nations. Hence it came that Aphrodite, as we know her in classical times, had been clothed with many of the attributes of Astarte. In just the same way the Achaian hero Herakles was, after Homer, endued with many of the deeds and attributes of the Babylonian sun-hero Gilgilis. COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD" : V 119 Whether the name of the island was merely accidentally like that of the goddess Kypris, or whether it was given after her, we cannot say ; it is the same question which arises in many places, as for instance with the name of Athens itself. The chief reason for doubting the derivation of the name of the goddess from that of the island is this, that in Homer, with the exception of the late passage xi. 21, there is no trace whatever of Cyprus being even known to the Greeks, much less regarded as a Greek land. But Aphrodite is found as an established Olympian goddess, with no mark of foreign origin ; if she was really borrowed, it must have been at a very remote time, to enable her to be thus naturalised. The close contact of the Phenicians with the Greeks seems to have only come about at the very end of the Achaian period ; they were of course known as traders, but not yet as settlers on Greek soil ; it was only when they had established their trading stations at Corinth and in other parts of the mainland that they exercised so immediate an influence as to affect the religion as well as the arts of the Greeks. It should be particularly noticed that it is precisely in this passage where Aphrodite appears as Kypris that she is made the daughter of Dione, a name which takes us not to Phenicia, but to Dodona, the very oldest Greek settlement known to us in Epeiros : a stronger contradiction to the hypothesis of a foreign origin could hardly be given. 340. From " such ichor " to " named immortals " seems 92, 26 to be a very poor interpolation ; it is a ridiculous non sequitur to say that they are named immortals and are bloodless because they do not feed on bread and wine. The attribution to the gods of ichor in place of blood is a legend found only here, and was never adopted by later poets. The word ichor itself is found in later Greek, but without any special application to the gods ; it means either 120 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : V blood generally, or, in medical writers, the serum of any of the animal juices. In Homer it recurs only in 1. 416, where the sense blood is all that is required. 9?> 9 355- I n 1- 36 Ares was left beside the Skamander. As it is natural to suppose that "the left of the battle" is from the Greek point of view, it will follow that the battle is supposed to be going on upon the left bank of the river. But the Skamander is always treated as a feature of the scene which can be brought in or omitted at the poet's will, and it is useless to push inquiries into the exact position of the field of battle too far. 93,26 370- Dione appears only here in Homer; her cult was connected with that of Zeus at Dodona. Possibly the name is the same as the Latin Juno ; while at the same time it reminds us of Dionysos. But it is quite useless to speculate on the etymology of divine names ; the practice is one which has led to infinite blundering. 94, 8 3^5- The story of Otos and Ephialtes, who piled Pelion on Ossa, and Ossa on Olympos, in order to storm heaven, is found in Od. xi. 308. The " vessel " is literally a jar of bronze. Jars of earthenware quite large enough to hold a man were found by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik ; and it must have been in such a one, only made, like all the properties of the gods, of metal instead of the commoner material, that Ares was imprisoned. Eurystheus, going in fear of Herakles, is also said to have lived in a great jar sunk in the ground, as is often represented on vase-paintings. It is probable that the legend may have arisen from a practice not unknown to savages, of carrying off the war -god in a basket or other vessel, in order that he may accompany the army to war and fight for them, just as the Jews carried the ark in war. In Sparta the war-god Enyalios was fettered to prevent his leaving the country, and at Rome Janus was COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD locked up in his temple during peace for the same reason. (Frazer, in Class. Rev. ii. 222.) 389. The Greek simply says " the step-mother " without 94, n mentioning the sons of Aloeus, and some said she was the step-mother of Hermes. But the usual tradition made her the step-mother of the sons of Aloeus, and it is evidently meant that the step-mother is at enmity with the sons, and does what she can to thwart them. Their mother is called Iphimedeia in Od. XL 305. 395. This incident seems to have happened in the 94> J 7 campaign of Herakles against Pylos, which is mentioned in xi. 690, though nothing is said there about the participa- tion of the gods. The legend given in the Scholia is as follows : " Herakles had gone to Pylos to seek purification for the slaying of Iphitos. But the Pylians shut their gates and would not admit him, for which the hero was wroth and laid Pylos waste. And there were allied with the Pylians three gods, Poseidon, Hera, and Hades ; and with Herakles two, Athene and Zeus." This, however, cannot be the Homeric story, as in Homeric times there is no trace of purification for bloodshed. Pindar also mentions the battle of the gods at Pylos, bringing in Apollo too as one of the combatants. The journey of Herakles to Hades appears in several forms, chiefly in connexion with the bringing back of Alkestis, or the capture of Kerberos. There seems to have been an idea that there was an entrance to the under- world at Pylos ; and Pausanias mentions a cult of Hades there. Aristarchos, however, took Pylos here to be, not the proper name, but another form of the word pyle, meaning a gate, and explained " in the gate of hell among the dead." This does not seem likely when we know that there was such a close connexion between Pylos and Hades. 401. Paieon appears again as the divine leech in 1. 899, 94, 23 122 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD" : V and in Od. iv. 232, where the physicians of Egypt are said to be of his race. In later mythology he was identified with Apollo ; but the two are evidently distinct in Homer, where Apollo does not exercise the healing function at all. 412. Aigialeia wife of Diomedes and daughter of Adrestos, better known as Adrastos was the aunt of her husband; for her elder sister Deipyle was the wife of Tydeus. So in xi. 226 Iphidamas is married to his maternal aunt. This shows that in the heroic age there is no trace of any feeling of close kinship through the mother, such as forbids the marriage of near relations on the mother's side in communities where kinship through females is the rule, and not through males. Mr. M'Lennan finds traces of this maternal kinship in the Eumenides, where the question whether the mother or the father is the real parent forms the great problem ; if so, we must admit here, as in so many other cases, that Homeric Greece had advanced to a further stage in the development of society than ancient Athens. 448. A " sanctuary " or adyton, a place " not to be entered " by the common sort, appears only here in Homer ; indeed we have only one other instance in the Iliad of a regular temple, that of Athene, also in Troy. For such shrines as are mentioned by Chryses in i. 39 seem to have been hardly more than shelters for an image in a sacred grove, which was the oldest Greek place of worship. The false image or wraith of Aineias is a curious thing, with nothing like it elsewhere ; it is forgotten in the sequel, and we do not hear of any surprise when the real Aineias re- appears. 453. The "fluttering targes" seem to have been aprons of leather which hung from the lower edge of the shield and served to protect the thighs against arrows. They are fre- COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : V 123 quently represented in vase-paintings of the best epoch, but are rare in the oldest paintings. They are, however, attested in the sixth century B.C. by the paintings from two archaic sarcophagi found at Klazomenai. 454. With this speech of Apollo begins the second section 96, 9 of the book, where the interference of the two gods turns the tide for a season in favour of the Trojans. 462. Ares is an especially Thracian god, so it is natural 9^. '8 that he should assume the form of a Thracian leader. 471. This is the first entry upon the scene except for 96, 28 a brief mention in the Catalogue of the brilliant figure of Sarpedon and his southern Lykians, who henceforth sup- plant the northern Lykians of Pandaros. The change is perhaps indicated by the fact that Sarpedon begins by emphasising the distance of Lykia from Troy. 487. Fishing with a net is mentioned again only in 97> I0 Od. xxii. 384, and there also in a simile, "like fishes that the fishermen have drawn forth in the meshes of the net into a hollow of the beach from out the gray sea." Fish- ing with an angle is mentioned several times in the Odyssey, and twice in the Iliad, again both times in similes, xvi. 406, xxiv. 80. 500. Demeter never appears in the Iliad in a personal 97> 2 4 form, but only as a personification of agriculture, as here and in phrases like "the grain of Demeter." Once in the Odyssey only (v. 125) is there a personal legend about her ; and even that is a transparent myth of the fertilising of the corn in the lap of the earth. She thus can hardly rank as an Olympian goddess at all. The beautiful later myths in connexion with Persephone are absolutely un- known to Homer. Another elaborate simile from the process of winnowing will be found in xiii. 588. 576. The same Pylaimenes here slain is found again in too, 3 124 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : V xiii. 658 (266, TJ) weeping for his son's death. This is the most obvious of the contradictions of the Jliad, and has been discussed by all critics, ancient and modern. To the school of Lachmann it is one of the most convincing proofs of the composition of the iliad from small independent lays. But the slip is just such a one as might have been made by any poet, even by one who wrote and had not to compose from memory. Pylaimenes is one of the minor persons of the story, though his name was probably given in the legend; the poet who composed book xiii., whether he is the same as the author of v. or not, might easily forget that this particular chief had fallen in one of the numerous battle scenes ; and we can certainly not found any argument of weight on the point. An oversight like this is altogether different from the forgetfulness which some critics suppose to have prevailed concerning the most fundamental concep- tions of the poem. /oo, 21 592. The "turmoil of war" which Enyo brings seems to be conceived as something which she actually holds in her hands, just as Ares holds his spear. So Discord is spoken of in xi. 4 as holding in her hands the signal of war. How the poet conceived of such a materialisation of turmoil we cannot guess. Enyo, the war-goddess, was mentioned in 1. 333 above the only place where she recurs. She is a sort of female counterpart of Ares, and the title Enyalios, which the latter sometimes bears, is evidently connected with the name Enyo. 100,25 597. " Shiftless," literally handless. It has been suggested that in this connexion the word means unable to use his hands in swimming. /07, 24 627. The following episode, the slaying of Tlepolemos by Sarpedon, has aroused critical doubts, chiefly on account of the appearance of the son of Herakles with the Rhodian COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : V 125 forces in the Catalogue. If it were certain that Tlepolemos only came into the legend through the Dorian colonisation of Rhodes under the leadership of the sons of Herakles, the grounds for condemning it would be decisive. But it has already been seen (p. 80) that Rhodes formed a part of the Greek world in prehistoric times long before the days of the Dorians ; while in this place the Rhodians are not mentioned at all, and Tlepolemos comes on the stage only as an Achaian hero like any other. Thus the argument fails in two points : first, we are not sure that the Rhodians in the Catalogue are Dorians ; secondly, even if they are, we are not sure that the connexion of Tlepolemos with them may not be a later addition to the legend. On the other hand this episode is nowhere alluded to again ; although Sarpedon receives a severe wound, we find him shortly afterwards in xii. fighting as though nothing had happened. This is the more noticeable because the wound which Glaukos receives in xii. 387 is mentioned again in xvi. 511, and requires divine interposition to heal it. Still such a piece of forget- fulness is not such as to exclude common authorship ; and the whole character of the scene is so thoroughly in the spirit of this book that I am now inclined to regard the episode as originally belonging to this place. 640. The legend was that Herakles saved Hesione, 102, a the daughter of Laomedon, from a sea-monster, and afterwards destroyed Troy because Laomedon refused to give him his stipulated recompense, the famous mares of the stock of Tros. The legend is again alluded to in xx. 145 q.v. 654. Hades is several times named with this epithet, 102, 77 " of the goodly steeds." It is possible that it is only one which may be applied to any king ; for horses are a natural mark of magnificence. But there is possibly an allusion to 126 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD ": V the connexion of the horse with death, which is found in many places. The horse's head is an almost unfailing addition to the feasting- scenes which are so common on Greek tombs ; the Etruscan god of death is commonly associated with the horse, and Charos, the modern Greek death -spirit, who has inherited the name of Charon, is always conceived as riding through the land. It is not easy to say how the connexion arose ; possibly it may ex- press only the swiftness of death's approach. 104, 20 722. The body of the Homeric chariot was very light, and when not in use was put away on a stand ; see viii. 441, " The noble Shaker of Earth unyoked the steeds and set the car upon the stand, and spread a cloth thereover." Thus when the chariot is being got ready, the first thing to do is to put the car upon the wheels, as is done here. It will be seen that all the parts of the chariot are of metal, even those which in the human chariot are made of wood. This is in accordance with the usual custom of describing all the gear of the gods as made of the most precious substances. Even the straps are of gold and silver instead of leather. The eight spokes instead of six or four are not usual in early Greek representations of chariots. There are, however, one or two cases of this number known. The thongs with which the car is plaited may mean either the breastwork round the sides, or more probably the actual floor of the car, which is woven of straps in order to make a springy standing-place. This device is known to have been employed in ancient Egyptian chariots. The rail ran round the front, and on each side ended in a curved projection which served as a handle in getting into the car. These two handles are probably meant by the "two rails"; there is no reason to suppose that there were two rails all round, one above the other. The pole seems to have been separate, and to have COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : V 127 been put in when the chariot was being set up for use. A detailed account of the manner in which the yoke was fastened to the end of it will be found in xxv. 265-280. There were no traces, except in the rare cases where a third horse was harnessed at the side, as in the chariot of Patroklos in xvi. 148-154. The goddesses have only two horses, which are harnessed to the yoke by two broad breast- straps fastened at both ends to the yoke. 736. The tunic, as pointed out in the note on ii. 42, is 104, 33 essentially the masculine dress, as the peplos, here translated vesture, is the feminine. Athene dresses in all points as a full -armed warrior. The aegis is to be conceived as a shield of the ordinary sort, made of metal ; for in xv. 309 it is the work of Hephaistos the smith. Like the tunic, it belongs properly to Zeus, but Athene is often found using it ; in xv. it is lent to Apollo. The legend is later which makes it the exclusive attribute of Athene herself, and further depicts it as a goat-skin fringed with snakes, and with the Gorgon's head in the centre. All this is unknown to Homer; for the mention of the Gorgon's head is un- doubtedly here a later interpolation, meant to bring Homer more into accordance with the established mythology of the classical age. The reason for holding the Gorgon to be quite a late interpolation into Homer is given in the note on p. 205. Here we can leave out two lines, " and therein " to "Zeus," without any loss to the sense. The explanation of the aegis as a goat-skin seems to have arisen from a mis- taken etymology of the word, aided probably by the in- fluence of some non-Hellenic myth, such as Herodotos tells us of in iv. 189, where, after the fashion of his day, he derives the aegis itself from Libya. We may, perhaps, get some idea of the way in which the personifications on the shield are conceived by comparison with the description of 128 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : V Agamemnon's shield, and the words of Pausanias quoted in the note referring to it on xi. 19. /0 5 7 743. The interpretation of the words translated two- crested and with fourfold plate depends on what we under- stand by the word phalos, already discussed in the note on iii. 362. A possible sense is that there were such phaloi on both sides, two on either, and that there was a plume in each ; so that the translation should rather be " the golden helm with sockets on either side and fourfold plumes." But as previously indicated the question is altogether obscure, and can hardly be explained except by mere conjecture. Nor can we say exactly what is meant by the phrase translated "bedecked with men-at-arms of a hundred cities." The most natural explanation is that it was adorned with repre- sentations of battle scenes. So we know that Pheidias adorned the shield of Athene Parthenos with a battle scene, the fight with the Amazons. Another rendering has been proposed, "fitted to the champions of a hundred cities," i.e. big enough for the champions of a hundred cities to wear. But this is too absurdly grotesque for Homer. The chariot is called " flaming " presumably from the brilliance of the precious metals of which it is built. Homeric gods are not conceived, like the Semitic, as going with flames of fire about them. 105, 14 750. It will be observed that Homer in the Iliad always keeps heaven distinct from Olympos, which is the actual mountain in Thessaly, and not, as in later mythology, the celestial abode of the gods. It seems that it is the way by which the gods ascend into heaven, and the cloud at the top of the mountain is the entrance gate of the celestial domain. Hera and Athene have armed themselves in heaven, and now come forth on to the top of Olympos where Zeus is sitting watching the world. It is by a very COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : V 129 bold use of imagery that the gate, though a cloud, is said to creak on its hinges. 774. Simoeis very rarely appears in the Iliad; the only 106, 7 other passages where it is named are vi. 4, xii. 22, and xxi. 307. The two latter of these are both late passages, and in the former there is - strong reason for supposing that the older reading made no mention of Simoeis at all. It would seem, therefore, that the oldest form of the legend knew of only one river of Troy, the Skamandros. This would, of course, form a strong argument for the lateness of the whole of the present, passage ; but it is possible here that the mention of the Simoeis may have been introduced later, as it seems to have been at the beginning of the next book; and there would be no difficulty in cutting out altogether the mention of it, merely altering " the two flowing rivers " into " the flowing river." But as the argument is a purely nega- tive one, too much stress must not be laid upon it. There is in the plain of Troy a small stream, the Dumbrek-su, which is the only possible representative of the Simoeis. It does not now join the Mendereh or Skamandros at all, ending in a marsh at the foot of the hill of Troy. But the bed of the Skamandros has changed in historical times, and it is quite possible that ten centuries B.C. the Dumbrek-su may have run into the Mendereh, whose course then was close to the point at which the former now loses itself (see Schuchh., pp. 19, 32). 778. The word translated "step" is ambiguous, meaning 106, u literally going, and some have taken it to mean "flying swift as doves." But as the goddesses have now reached the earth and are on the plain, there is no reason to suppose that they fly, nor is any swiftness needed, as they are already in the midst of the battle-field. There seems, in fact, to be a distinct touch of humour in comparing the steps of the K 130 COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD" : V two goddesses to the strutting of a pigeon, so unlike the stride of a hero. /ad, 1 8 785. Stentor is never named again in the Iliad, though his name has become a proverb for a loud voice. The scholiasts give some late legends about him, but these are obviously guess-work based on the present passage. The earliest known proverbial use of the name is in a well-known passage of the Politics of Aristotle, vii. 4, where he argues that a state must always be limited in size if the govern- ment is to be popular ; for after it had passed certain limits of population " what herald would be able to summon the assembly, unless he had the voice of Stentor?" rod, 22 789. We cannot say if the Dardanian Gate is a particular gate of Troy different from the Skaian, or if the words only mean "from the Dardanian Gates," i.e. the Trojan gates generally. 106,28 795. We were told in 1. 122 that Athene "made Diomedes' limbs nimble, his hands and his feet withal." This might be supposed to imply that she healed his wound, as gods sometimes do, in an instant. But that is not ex- pressly stated, so that there is not the contradiction which some have seen in the present words, and on which they have relied to ascribe the two parts of the book to different authors. The baldrick here is the strap by which the shield is hung over the right shoulder ; the wound was at the top of the breastplate, and is conceived as thus lying just under the point where the weight of the shield would come upon it. 107, 8 808. The bracketed line is said to have been inserted here from iv. 390 and from 828 just below. It quite spoils the passage ; for Athene means to contrast the courage of Tydeus by himself with the slackness of his son when he is not by himself, but has a goddess at his side, as the next line shows. We have already heard of this exploit of Tydeus COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : V 131 on the occasion of the opening of the war of the Seven against Thebes (see iv. 384-400). 831. "Renegade" or "double-faced," literally one thing to 707, 32 one and another to another. This treacherous desertion of the Greeks by Ares is again alluded to in xxi. 413, but not elsewhere. 838. Aristarchos rejected the two lines which refer to the 108, 6-7 axle creaking with the weight of the goddess as being ludi- crous. But it is quite in keeping with the other passages in the book referring to the superhuman size of the gods ; this is often exaggerated, reaching its climax in the fall of Ares below; but it is rather to be regarded as one of the peculiarities in the treatment of the gods throughout this book, and it is useless to object to one special instance of it. 845. The " helm of Hades " is the cap of darkness which 108, 12 appears in popular stories all the world over ; in northern mythology as the tarnkappe. It is not mentioned again in Homer, but is familiar in the legend of Perseus, and is spoken of by Aristophanes and Plato. The name Hades in this phrase evidently preserves something of its original sense, " the invisible/' 864. The comparison seems to be to a cloud of dust 108, 31 carried up to the sky by a whirlwind. 880. Though Zeus is thus emphatically spoken of as the 709, 13 father of Athene, there is no trace in Homer of the legend that she was born from his head ; nor is there any myth of her birth from any mother. We cannot, therefore, say what the story of her origin was in Homeric times. 885. The two alternatives which Ares gives are not very jog, / 33 90. The offering of the robe or peplos to Athene reminds us of the famous scenes at Athens, immortalised in the frieze of the Parthenon, when a peplos was solemnly brought to the goddess by the city of Athens. The practice of offering a robe with which to clothe the divine image is indeed a very natural one ; it is found in other parts of Greece at Amyklai, for instance, and Olympia ; it is the same feeling which leads worshippers to this day to clothe images of the Madonna with bright garments. The phrase, "laying it upon the knees" of the goddess, seems to imply that she was represented by a sitting statue, such as is frequently found in Asia Minor. Strabo too mentions COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VI 137 seated statues of Athene as existing at Phokaia, Massalia, Chios, and other places. As Phokaia and Chios belong to Asia Minor, and Marseilles is a colony of Phokaia, this seems further evidence for supposing that such images were originally introduced to the Greeks from Asia Minor ; so that there may be a touch of local colour in representing the Trojan image in this form. 117. Hector's shield is composed of layers of ox-hide //^. 28 covered with metal. It appears that one of the layers of hide is turned up so as to form a rim in which the metal surface is set. This passage gives us the length of the Homeric shield, or at least of one form of it, as sufficient to reach from the ankles to the neck. 128. The inconsistency of these words of Diomedes ///, 6 with his exploits in the previous book has been already pointed out in the introduction. The only way to avoid the difficulty is to reject the whole passage from "but if thou art " to " eat the fruit of the field." The arguments for rejecting the greater part of these lines are quite inde- pendent of the difficulty in Diomedes' words. The way in which Dionysos is introduced is alien to Homer, who elsewhere knows nothing of this god at all; he is only once or twice mentioned again in passages of equally doubtful authenticity. Popular and important though his worship was in later Greece, it was everywhere recognised that it was a comparatively recent introduction, and that Uionysos had no place in the older Olympian pantheon. And the absolute silence which prevails in Homer is con- clusive evidence that the introduction had not taken place in Achaian days. At the same time it is easy to see how strong the tendency must have been to legitimise the new god by foisting an allusion to him into Homer. It is characteristic that in doing this his divinity should be 138 COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD" : VI exalted by one of the legends which appear in different parts of Greece relating the vengeance which he took upon those who opposed the new worship. The home of Lykurgos was, according to the later legend, in Thrace. The "Land of Nysa" was, however, a mystical name and not geographical ; for it is localised wherever the Dionysiac legend went in India, in Helikon, and even on the Nile. The " nursing-mothers of Dionysos " are the nymphs who brought him up ; in the orgies these were typified by the Maenads, who are evidently meant here. The " wands " are the thyrsi, or staves wreathed with ivy, which were the attribute of the Maenads. It is likely that the ox-goad had also some mystical significance in connexion with the name of " the bull," by which Dionysos was invoked during the mystic rites. But of all this we know but little. 115, 2 4 146. This famous line supplies the oldest extant quota- tion of Homer ; Simonides says, " The noblest word the man of Chios spake : ' Even as are the generations of leaves such are those likewise of men.'" The date of the quotation cannot be exactly given, as there were two poets of the name of Simonides, or rather Semonides the most famous of them was the great epigrammatist, who lived at the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth centuries ; but some have thought that the lines are by Semonides of Amorgos, who was nearly two centuries older. In either case it is noteworthy that the origin of the Iliad is already referred to Asia Minor, as Homer is known simply as " the man of Chios." 7/5-, 31 152. Ephyre is said to be the ancient name of Corinth, the city where the legend of Bellerophon was at home. It has been pointed out that when the poet speaks of the city in his own person, in the Catalogue (ii. 570), he calls it by the later name of Corinth, but in the mouth of one of his COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VI 139 characters it retains its legendary title. " In the heart of Argos" would perhaps be more correctly translated "in a nook of Argos." Here, as elsewhere, the name Argos belongs to Greece at large, and more especially to the Peloponnesos. To one coming from the side of Mykenai Corinth is correctly described as being in a "nook" or "corner" of the peninsula. 158. The legend, as elsewhere in Homer, is told only 116,3 imperfectly, the main outlines being doubtless assumed as familiar. According to the story as given by the scholiasts, Bellerophon was guilty of homicide in Corinth and came to Proitos, King of Tiryns, to seek purification for bloodshed. This story is not Homeric in the latter detail, for the idea of purification is entirely post -Homeric. But the cause which drove Bellerophon to take refuge with Proitos may have been bloodshed, as in several other cases in the Iliad; e.g. Patroklos had taken refuge with Peleus because he had killed a boy comrade (xxiii. 87). The "driving from the land of the Argives" seems to be an anticipation of the sequel of the story. The clause about Zeus is quite ambiguous ; it may mean either " Zeus had made Proitos king of Argos," or "Zeus had brought Bellerophon into the power of Proitos " by making him an exile from his own land. The latter seems to give the more vigorous sense.' 1 60. Anteia is called Stheneboia in the later form of the 116,3 legend. The tale of the lustful wife and the virtuous youth whom she accuses wrongfully to revenge his refusal is one which is well known in all lands. The story of Hippolytos is another case in Greece, and that of Joseph is even more familiar. It is needless to have recourse to any theory of borrowing to explain these resemblances. 164. " Die," more literally " mayest thou lie dead '' ; it is //6, 8 140 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VI a sort of curse, " I pray that thou mayest die thyself if thou slay not," etc. 116, 13 1 68. This passage raises the important question of the knowledge of writing in Homeric times. It seems impos- sible to deny that such a knowledge is implied. The "folded tablet" seems to show that the message might have been intelligible to Bellerophon if it had not been concealed; the "many deadly" (literally soul -destroy ing) " things " implies a real message, not a mere picture or conventional sign of a murder or the like. It is further clear that the use of such a letter of introduction was regular, for the king asks to see it as a matter of course. This is in fact just an example of the way in which we might suppose writing to have been introduced into Greece. It seems to be regarded as a strange accomplishment, for the adjective "soul- destroying " implies a sort of magical power, such as always is ascribed to writing by savages who are not practically acquainted with it. It is known only to a royal family con- nected with Asia Minor ; and it is to Asia Minor that we are being more and more led by recent researches to look for the introduction of the higher culture into Greece. There is therefore no reason for doubting that the knowledge of the art had gone so far as this passage indicates long before the Dorian invasion. This, of course, is far from justifying us in supposing that an Achaian poet would be able to use writing for the composition of a long poem, though it does show that this is not impossible. If we ask what sort of writing this could have been, we naturally think of the Cypriote syllabary. It is hardly likely that the Phenician alphabet, the foundation of later Greek writing, had been yet introduced ; for the traces of Phenician influence on the Achaian world are very few and slight, just as the mention of the Phenicians in the Iliad is rare. The Cypriote COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VI 141 syllabary, on the other hand, must have been known at an early date throughout Asia Minor, if Professor Sayce is right in recognising it on whorls from Hissarlik (Schuchh., p. 334). We may thus provisionally suppose it to be alluded to here, in the hope of further discoveries to elucidate this all -important point. The other alternative is that the writing may have been Egyptian ; for it is daily becoming more clear that the Achaians had been acquainted with Egypt from a date long anterior to the Homeric poems, and it is likely enough that they may have picked up some knowledge of the use of hieroglyphs. In fact a few Egyptian inscriptions are the only traces of writing which have as yet been found in Mykenai. 170. Anteia's father is called lobates in the later legend ; ub, perhaps he is identical with Amisodaros, who, as we are told in xvi. 328 (324, / 4 191. The expression "offspring of a god" is explained, according to the later legend followed by Pindar, by saying that although nominally the son of Glaukos, Bellerophon was in reality the son of Poseidon. This ode (Ol. xiii.) is well worth comparison with the present passage. 7/ 7 7 J 94- The giving of a separate domain would be a formal recognition of Bellerophon's royal position; for it appears that in Homeric times none but those of royal family could hold several property in land (see note on xviii. 550). 777, ii 199. Herodotos tells us that in Lykia the ancient rule was followed by which kingship descended in the maternal line. This agrees with the present passage ; for it is Sarpe- don, the son of the daughter, and not Glaukos, who inherits his grandfather's kingdom. 777, 14 202. The story evidently was that Bellerophon went mad, though this is not expressly stated. Similarly Pindar, speaking of Bellerophon, says, " I will veil his fate in silence." Madness was always considered a specially heaven-sent disease. The Aleian plain, the "plain of wandering," was localised in Kilikia. 7/7, 77-7 *5 235. Hector feels that Aias is treating him like a child because he offers him the first shot ; the usual course in a duel was to cast lots for this, and in offering his foe the advantage Aias assumes a position of superiority and con- descension. So in xxi. 440, Poseidon, as the older and wiser, tells Apollo to begin. /jy, 20 241. " To join in furious Ares' revel " seems to be an allusion to the war -dance; it is literally "to dance to Ares." A mimic battle has at all times been a favourite form of dance among primitive people. Hector means that he can dance the war-dance in grim earnest on the battle- field, not merely at the feast. 135 1 2 4 244. It will be observed that the fight is to a great extent described in the same words as that between Paris and Menelaos in iii. '37, *J 33- Both these gifts, according to the later legends, COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD": VII 157 proved baneful to their recipients ; for it was by the belt of Aias that Achilles bound Hector to his chariot, and with the sword of Hector that Aias slew himself. Of this, how- ever, Homer knows nothing. 313. With this line begins the later part of the book ; a /J7> 2 4 large portion of the opening consists, as so often in added passages, of lines which are found in other parts of the Iliad and Odyssey. 334-335. These lines, "a little way . . . native land," i3 S ' I2 ~ I 4 were rejected by Aristarchos, on the obvious ground that the burning of all the bodies in a common pyre was inconsistent with the taking the bones home. Nor does the latter idea recur again in Homer. Besides, the expression is terribly confused; the natural sense of the words is "that each man may take his own bones home to his children," and we can only avoid this absurdity by supposing them to mean " that every man may take somebody's bones home to the children of their \owner." Nestor's idea seems to have been to combine piety with utility by making the barrow form part of the circuit of the wall ; but this is not done in the sequel, nor do we hear any more of this common tomb. 344. Here again we come to a passage of sixty lines (to 138, 22 405), of which more than half recur in other parts of the Iliad. 353. The last line of the speech is obviously a weak 138,31 addition ; indeed it is hardly translatable, and the rendering given is only an approximation to what the Greek seems to mean. It was rejected by Aristarchos. 380. The bracketed line is omitted by all the best MSS. ; 139, 25 it is interpolated here from xviii. 298. There the expres- sion " by ranks " is suitable, as the army is bivouacking near the Greek camp, and its formation has to be kept. Here it is meaningless, as they are in the city. At this point a 158 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : VII night passes, though, against the usual epic rule, it is not expressly mentioned. 140, 10 398. This silence of the Greeks, followed by the decisive interposition of Diomedes giving valiant counsel, is almost a mannerism of the Third Stratum of the Iliad, It recurs again, for instance, in almost the same words, twice in ix. (29-31 and 693-696), and in x. 218-219. 241, i 421. The time here grows quite confused. Presumably the sun mentioned is that of the same morning on which Idaios goes to the ships ; but what are we to say then of the beginning of the next paragraph ? That, it would seem, must be the morning of a fresh day ; but the omission to mention the night in the interval is quite unaccountable. 141, 22 443. This passage, to " one with the other " (464, 142, ij), was rejected by Zenodotos and Aristarchos, on the ground that in the very similar passage at the beginning of xii. no allusion is made to it. That passage, however, is itself very suspicious. The idea of the abolition of the wall by the gods was no doubt brought in to account for the fact that the wall is not " there to this day." Eight out of the twenty-two lines appear in other parts of the Iliad. 142, i 452. In xxi. 446 Poseidon alone builds the wall, while Apollo is engaged in herding Laomedon's kine. But the usual legend joined both gods in the work. 142, 17 469. This is one of the few appearances in Homer of a character connected with the legend of the Argonauts ; the only direct allusion to the legend itself occurs in the Odyssey, xii. 69-72. Jason is just named again in xxi. 41, xxiii. 747. BOOK VIII OF all the books of the Iliad there can be no doubt that the eighth is the least original. Large parts at a time are made up of lines, and even whole speeches, taken bodily from other parts of the Iliad. Even the famous simile with which the book ends contains a couplet taken verbatim from a yet finer simile in book xvi., where it is certainly more in place than here. The only episode which has real claim to origin- ality and merit of its own is the little " Aristeia of Teukros," in 266-329. On the theory of the Iliad hitherto assumed there is no difficulty in accounting for this peculiar character of the book. It is inserted here not for its own sake, but simply to form an introduction to ix. When it was decided to intro- duce the poem of the " Embassy to Achilles," it was clearly necessary to duplicate the defeat of the Greeks. It was only after a Greek defeat that the embassy could be sent to ask Achilles to relent. But there was clearly no room for such an interpolation in xi., which describes the original great defeat of the Greeks, for the sending of Patroklos was inti- mately bound up with that. So a new defeat had to be invented and added to the story at some earlier stage ; and a little thought will show that this was the only possible point. But as ix. is one of the very latest additions to the Iliad, there was by this time little possible variety in the 160 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VIII description of fighting. Moreover, the fight itself had to be subordinate to the principal poem in ix. The poet, therefore, who undertook to introduce the "Embassy" devoted but small pains to the narrative of viii., and was content to make the greater part of it up from materials already before him. Grote thought that viii. was a part of the original Achilleis from which the Iliad sprang. He felt rightly that the " Promise of Zeus " in i. required a Greek defeat to follow it, and that the series of Greek victories in i.-vii. was a dis- turbance of the primitive plan. Finding that viii. was the first book which described such a defeat, he took it into his scheme at once, instead of looking further on and going to xi. This was, in fact, the main mistake which he made in his analysis of the Iliad. Internal evidence clearly shows that viii. has borrowed from the other books, and not vice versa ; therefore it must be later. There are a few passages which seem to be late additions to the book ; but as a whole it is clear and consistent. In spite of the manner in which it has been composed, it is not without vigour and action. The chief fault to be found with it is the want of sufficient explanation for the changes of the battle, which are brought about by repeated thunder- ings on the part of Zeus, not, as in the best parts of the Iliad, by the death or wounding of prominent Greek heroes. This means is in fact forbidden by the conditions under which the book was composed ; for all the prominent Greeks have to be reserved for wounding in xi. NOTES 143, 13 13. For Tartaros, the place of punishment for all re- bellious gods, see note on v. 898. The "gate of iron and threshold of bronze " mark it as a prison. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VIII 161 1 8. Zeus challenges the gods to a trial of strength by a 143, 18 " tug of war." The rope by which the trial is to be made is golden because the gear of the gods is always of precious metal. In spite of this simple explanation, the "golden chain of Homer " has always been the object of all sorts of mystical explanation, beginning with Plato, who says that it means the sun ; and receiving more recondite meanings with the Neo-Platonists, by whom it was handed down to the alchemists and mystics of the Middle Ages, to end by expressing the whole concatenation of the existences of the universe. 25. Zeus seems to forget that Olympos is itself a part of /^, j the earth, and thinks of earth and sea as hanging from the top of the mountain. The idea is made the easier by the fact that Olympos, as the seat of the gods, has a tendency to be confused with the sky. In later mythology, indeed, Olympos means the sky simply ; but this stage has not been reached in Homer, and we find at most in later passages like the present the first sign of confusion, almost amount- ing to a forgetfulness that Olympos is an actual mountain in Thessaly (see note on v. 750). 28-40. These two paragraphs were rejected by Aristarchos 144, 6-18 as being entirely composed of lines found elsewhere, and as spoiling the effect of the threat of Zeus. This is certainly the case ; Zeus might have spared himself his big words, if he was to declare immediately afterwards that he speaks " not at all of earnest purpose." These latter lines are taken from xxii. 183-185, where they come in quite suitably. 48. Gargaros is the highest point of Ida, 5608 feet above 144, . 2 5 the sea. 69. The scales of Zeus appear again in three other /#>, 14 passages of the Iliad. The most remarkable, and the one which has evidently served as model for this, is xxii. 209-213 M 162 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VIII (440, 15-19)1 where the scales decide the moment at which Hector's fate is sealed. So in xvi. 658 (334^ 36] Hector turns in flight, " for he knew the turning of the sacred scales of Zeus"; and again in xix. 223 (392, jo) the moment of defeat comes "when Zeus inclineth his balance." It is a natural metaphor to express the vicissitudes of battle by the alternate rising and falling of the scale-pans ; and it is but a step from such a metaphor to believe in its reality, to suppose that there is in heaven an actual pair of scales which moves up and down in a sort of magic sympathy, as the chances of war change. In other words, for primitive man always confounds cause and metaphor, these scales guide the war, and so become a material expression for Fate. How this idea of Fate, lying at the back of all that happens, is to be reconciled with the dignity and power of Zeus is a question which it is useless to discuss, for in all probability such a difficulty hardly presented itself to primi- tive thought. In fact the ideas of Zeus and Fate seem hardly to have been distinguished ; Fate is the will of Zeus, and the other gods are subject to it. If we ask how then Zeus him- self is bound by Fate, we come only upon a rough form of the general problem of free-will and determinism, such as cer- tainly would have been unintelligible in an age which had not yet thought out even the relation of cause and effect. 145,18-20 73-74. This couplet was rejected by Aristarchos ; it is a needless and tautological explanation of what precedes, and contains a strange Greek word which seems to have arisen from a misunderstanding of an older form whose real sense had been forgotten. 145, 20 75- It will be noticed that throughout this book the rout of the Achaians is brought about by the direct interference of Zeus with his thunderbolt. 145, 2 $ 8 1. The horse here killed is a trace-horse, harnessed not COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VIII 163 to the yoke, like the ordinary pair, but in traces at the side. The only other mention of this third horse is in xvi. 152. Elsewhere, except in a spurious passage of this book, 185, only two-horse chariots are known in the Iliad. 94. Perhaps these lines should be translated " whither f ^6, s fleest thou, casting thy shield behind thy back, like a coward in the throng, lest as thou fleest one plant a spear between thy shoulders?" The Greek is obscure; but it seems likely that when a warrior was in flight he would thus throw his shield over his back to protect himself. So in xi. 545 Aias retreats, " casting behind him his seven-fold shield of bull's hide." 97. It has been much disputed whether the Greek here 146, ij means heard not or hearkened not. The latter would repre- sent Odysseus as a coward, which is quite unlike his char- acter ; and the former rendering, which absolves him from blame, is at least as possible as the other, even if not in- trinsically better. 104. The slowness of the steeds of Nestor is again 146, 20 alluded to in xxiii. 309. 130. The sudden change of the battle, and the imminent 147, 14 utter rout of the Trojans, seem quite inadequately ex- plained by the mere momentary absence of Hector ; it is nowhere else indicated that a single warrior, even Diomedes, absolutely unaided by his friends, who are all in flight, could have driven back the whole Trojan army and " penned them in Ilios like lambs." But this is all of a piece with the general character of the book. 162. For the "cups brimful" as a sign of honour, see 148, 17 iv. 260; and for the "meats," compare the slices of the chine which Agamemnon gives to Aias in vii. 321. Hector loses no time in justifying Diomedes' prophecy. 184. There is every reason to think that this speech of 149,5 164 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VIII Hector's is a late interpolation. It has been remarked that the four-horse chariot is not Homeric at all. Aristarchos was offended at the idea of giving the horses wine to drink, and cut out the line "and mingled . . . bidding"; but then he left the equal absurdity of giving Hector grain to eat. We hear nothing elsewhere of Nestor's shield, "whose fame has gone up to heaven"; nor do we hear of a breastplate of Diomedes made by Hephaistos. Yet we had in the last book an account of the way in which Nestor came by his armour ; and as for that of Diomedes, as the story now stands, it must be that which he took from Glaukos in vi. But in the scene of the exchange, the fact that the most important article was of divine handicraft could hardly have been passed over. Moreover, it seems absurd to make the total defeat of the Achaians depend simply on the capture of these two pieces of armour. The mention of "rods" or armrods in connexion with the shield again is peculiar to this place ; there is nowhere else any clear mention of such a device in Homer, and it is most prob- able that they were a later invention (see xiii. 407). The Homeric warrior had his shield slung round his neck, and wielded it by pushing it out with his arm ; but it would seem that he had no handle of any sort with which to carry it. This tissue of difficulties and absurdities gives ample ground for the rejection of the lines. Finally, it may be pointed out that Hector does not want to " make the Achaians embark," but to prevent their doing so by burning their ships. 149, 79 198. It is not improbable that the condemnation of the preceding passage should extend also to this colloquy of Hera and Poseidon. It is certainly weak and quite need- less. The use of the expression answered is curious, as nothing has been said before. *49t 2 4 203. Helike and Aigai are two towns in the north of the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VIII 165 Peloponnesos, chief seats of the worship of Poseidon. There was also an Aigai in Euboia (see xiii. 21). For "wish thou them victory " we may also read " thou wast wont to wish them victory." The last words of Hera are hardly con- sistent with the attitude which she took at the beginning of the book, but they may be meant to pave the way to the coming outbreak. 213. It seems that the trench is conceived as not being fjo, i immediately in front of the wall, but at some little distance from it, so as to form a double line of defence. The poems of the Third Stratum are not very clear on the point, but this seems to be the ruling notion. The Greek here is very obscure, and possibly the original reading is lost ; but it is hardly to be explained except on the assumption that the space meant is that thus left between the wall and moat. It is in this space that we shall in the next two books find the sentinels posted. 221. It is not quite clear whether Agamemnon holds his /jo, 8 cloak in his hands in order to be more free, like Odysseus in ii. 183, or whether as a sort of banner to attract atten- tion. The following lines recur in the beginning of xi. (5-9). The last three, " whether to the huts . . . might of their hands," are omitted here by the best MSS. 237. Agamemnon is always fond of casting the blame of i5i 2 4 his misfortunes on Ate, the judicial blindness sent by Zeus (see especially xix. 91). 250. " Lord of all oracles," rather of all omens from 131, 4 sounds or voices. Oracles, strictly speaking, are not known to the Iliad; but omens of all sorts appear. Odysseus prays for and receives an omen from a casual voice (Od. xx. 100) : an interesting passage well worth referring to. Though the mention of omens from voices is not appro- priate to the particular sign here given, yet Zeus is the lord 166 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VIII of all omens alike, so that the dropping of the fawn by his altar shows the ominous character of the sign. V, J 7 261. This list of heroes is taken from vii. 164-167. It is curious that Odysseus is not named here. *5*, 2 3 267. The Assyrian reliefs give pictures of this mode of fighting, where an archer goes with a full-armed warrior and shoots from behind his shield. It seems to have been a favourite form of attack in Asia. 152, 8 284. According to the common legend, when Herakles took Troy he carried off Hesione", the daughter of Laomedon (see on v. 640), and gave her as a slave to Telamon, who became by her father of Teukros. His name thus indi- cates his Teukrian or Trojan descent. This is, however, the only case where his base descent is mentioned, and he is generally called only the brother of Aias. Aristarchos seems to have thought that Homer knew nothing of the legend of Hesione", and thus cut out the words " and reared thee, though a bastard, in his house." Z 53> J 7 328. Literally "he brake the sinew." As the Homeric bow-string was made of sinew, this leads to an ambiguity. The hurt to the arm is more important than the mere breaking of a bow-string, so the sinew should be that of the arm ; but the Greek word has two forms, of which one, that found here, is more commonly used of the bow-string, the other of the sinew of the body ; so that we cannot be sure. *S4t 2I 363- Eurystheus is mentioned in connexion with Her- akles in xv. 639, xix. 133 ; and again in the very late passage Od. xi. 621 Herakles says, "I was subdued unto a man far worse than I," meaning Eurystheus. Although the legend of the servitude of Herakles is ancient and purely Greek, it would seem that he was afterwards, probably through Phenician influence, identified with the Babylonian hero Gilgilis (formerly read Gizdhubar). From him came the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VIII 167 twelve labours ; for Homer knows nothing of this definite number, which is said to be connected with the twelve signs of the Zodiac, Gilgilis being a sun-god. Herakles, whatever his origin, shows no signs of ever having been a sun-god in the oldest Greek mythology. The task here mentioned, that of bringing up Kerberos from the.under-world, is the only one of the later series specially mentioned in the Iliad ; but other allusions to the journey of Herakles to the under-world have been pointed out in v. 395. The name Kerberos itself does not occur before Hesiod. 381. The whole description of the arming of the two god- /^ 6 desses is taken with considerable omissions from v. 719-752. 420. The last part of this speech was rejected by Aris- /^6, 14 tarchos. The last two lines, which Iris adds on her own authority, are quite unlike the usually courteous and dignified tone in which she acquits her of her messages, and remind us rather of the unmannerly rudeness of the gods in xxi. 435. The word translated " faces of the gateway " has T ^6. j/ been much discussed. It has usually been taken to mean the short passage in the portal leading into the courtyard from the outside ; but such a place would be most inconvenient for a chariot. More likely it means the face of the court- yard wall opposite the house, and just at the side of the entrance from the road. Here the chariot would be under the protection of the colonnade. " Shining," because faced with the bright polished stucco which was used to cover the walls of all the heroic houses, as we learn from Mykenai and Tiryns. 441. We know from the description in v. 722 that when 757, ^ the chariot was not in use the wheels were kept separate from it. The stand is thus evidently meant for the car to rest upon when the wheels have been taken off. The car is covered with a cloth, as in ii. 777, v. 194. i68 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VIII rjS, 8 479. lapetos and Kronos are gods of the Titan or pre- Olympian dynasty (see note on v. 898). ytf. 7 7 488. " Thrice " is used simply to intensify the thought, as in phrases like " thrice accursed " etc. /jc?, 21 49 L Aristarchos remarked that these words show either that the burying of the dead in vii. has been already for- gotten, or that it is an interpolation into the text. *59> 14 S 1 ^. The reading of the MSS. varies between "stripling boys " and " young girls," but the best authority is for the latter, which has been adopted in the revised edition of the translation. ij9, 18 523. The latter part of Hector's speech, from "thus be it," contains several strange expressions, and has probably suffered from interpolation. Thus his prayer that he may " drive from hence these dogs " is inconsistent with his wish to prevent their escape. The words " them that the fates bear onwards in the black ships " have all the appearance of a weak commentary on the preceding words, which we should naturally, without the reference to the ships, under- stand to mean " them that the fates bear along the path of destruction." This line was omitted altogether by Zeno- dotos. Then the words " to-morrow shall he prove " to " round about their lord " are tautological, and weaken the effect of the speech, more perhaps in the Greek than the English; they were rejected by Aristarchos. "This day" should mean "to-day," whereas here it can only mean "the day of which I am speaking," a sense which the Greek will hardly bear. But the whole composition of the book is such that we cannot feel confidence in any attempt to expel all irregularities of expression. 160, 10-13 548-552. The lines bracketed are a quite recent addition to the Homeric text, having been inserted less than two hundred years ago by the Cambridge scholar Barnes, a contemporary COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : VIII 169 of Bentley. They are not found in any MS., and appear only as a quotation in a dialogue (Alcibiades ii.) attributed, probably wrongly, to Plato. The first line is unexception- able, but the other three are not consistent with the rest of the Iliad. For the destruction of Troy is never the wish of the gods at large, but only of a section ; and Zeus, far from hating the city, expresses in iv. 44-49 his surpassing affection for it on account of the piety of its inhabitants. The lines probably come from some lost poem of the later epic school, and have no business here at all. 555. This simile is a famous one, and has been magnifi- cently rendered by Tennyson, in one of his too few and brief translations from the Iliad. But it is characteristic of this book that the two finest lines are borrowed plumes from a passage where they are better in place than here. It will be found that the words from " all the peaks " to " infinite air" recur in xvi. 299-300. There the sallying of Patroklos and the Myrmidons to the rescue of the Greeks is compared to a sudden rift in heavy clouds hanging about the moun- tains, and the strong phrase " heaven breaks open," or even more literally "is burst asunder," fully suits the picture. But here it is quite out of place ; for the scene is a calm still night, with moon and stars shining in an unclouded sky. Zenodotos, Aristophanes, and Aristarchos, all agreed, there- fore, in rejecting the lines here. 1 But they are in fact indis- pensable to the simile, for if they are left out the close repetition of " the stars " becomes intolerable. We have in fact only another case of the borrowing which distinguishes the book from beginning to end. In fact, all but half the 565 lines of which it is composed appear in one place or another of the Iliad and Odyssey. 1 See also Miss Clerke, Familiar Studies, p. 37. BOOK IX THE relation of this remarkable book to the rest of the Iliad has already been discussed in the Introduction, and here it will be sufficient to recapitulate what was there said as to the influence which our opinion on it must exert upon our conception of the character both of the Iliad at large and of Achilles in particular. If we accept this book as original, we must regard Achilles as really inexorable, wishing not for satisfaction for his wounded honour, for that is admittedly offered him in abundance, but for simple unreasoning vengeance. No doubt such a view of him is quite possible ; it cannot be said to be absolutely inconsistent with what we see of him elsewhere. But it is a very different view from that which we should have if this book were non-existent. It is also a conception which is much less sympathetic to our modern notions. But this again is not an argument against the book ; it is only a point to be noted. Nor is Grote's observation that such an attitude of inexorability offends the idea of moderation, "the sentiment of Nemesis which is so deeply seated in the Greek mind," in itself a valid argu- ment ; for we cannot prove the existence of such a feeling in Homeric Greeks from the fact that we know it in the classical age, when Greek thought has undergone such a profound change. The real ground for holding that this book had no place COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IX 171 in the original scheme of the Iliad lies in the fact that it is inconsistent, not with the general character of Achilles, but with words which are put into his mouth. Let the impartial reader look at xi. 609 and xvi. 49-100, and say if he can really hold that the words there used are those of a man who has just refused an ample atonement ; who wants, as an excuse for withdrawing from his anger, that the Greeks should " stand in prayer about his knees," and that the son of Atreus should be " but kindly to him." Much acute criticism has been devoted to showing that these words are not inconsistent with the reparation which has just been offered; but none of it, in my opinion, touches the real point, which is that no poet, even if it was possible to put those words into his hero's mouth, could have done so with the least regard to his narrative. For they are at all events, even if possible, which I do not see, not natural words to be used under the circumstances. This, however, is one of the points on which the reader himself is almost as good a judge as the scholar, and to him it may be left. It is enough to point out how easily the poet, if he had really the embassy in his eye when he composed those words, could have made his allusion clear ; it is inconceivable that he should not have done so. There are, moreover, numerous other places at which we might have expected an allusion to the embassy, but we find none except in xviii. and xix., both in rather late parts of the Third Stratum. It is no small tribute to Grote's acumen that to the evi- dence which led him to separate this book from the rest should have been added testimony of a different class lead- ing to the same conclusion. A close examination of the language of the book has led so competent and conservative a critic as Mr. Monro to the conclusion that it is later in character than the bulk of the Iliad, and must be classed 172 COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD : IX with that of books x., xxiii., and xxiv., which show signs of lateness consistently by every test. Into this question it is impossible to enter here. It must be sufficient to state the general conclusion that ix. belongs to the Third Stratum of the Iliad, and not to the earliest part of it. When the Iliad had been already largely expanded, the poetical desirability of an episode designed to bring before us in a brilliant light the hero whose place in the poem had been so greatly narrowed became obvious. And there cannot be the least doubt that from this point of view the addition is splendidly successful. The narrative itself is perhaps not of the best, and shares some of the weakness of viii., which is designed only to lead up to it. In particular it may be noticed that the despair of Agamemnon at the beginning seems exaggerated and out of proportion to the check which his army has received. But when we come to the great speeches which form the body of the book, we can feel nothing but admiration. For passionate rhetoric the reply of Achilles to Odysseus is above praise. The contrast of these two with one another, and with the plain bluff soldier Aias, is most dramatic and effective. The whole book is straightforward and simple in plot, but it seems to contain one large addition, the whole person of Phoinix. The arguments for holding that he did not originally appear are very strong. The envoys are through- out spoken of as two, not three, the verbs referring to them being in the dual number. The part of Phoinix is not essential to the book, picturesque and effective though it is ; but it cannot be cut clean out, so that some alteration of the original text must have been made. It will be noticed that he has not previously been mentioned in the Iliad, and his sudden appearance in the hut of Agamemnon instead of that of Achilles is quite unexplained. With this somewhat COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IX 173 considerable exception the book is a single and harmonious piece of work. NOTES 5. This is one of the few passages in the Iliad which have been quoted as showing that the poems were composed somewhere along the shore of Asia Minor. It is by a dweller on the east coast of the Aegaean that the north and west winds would be thought of as casting up the tangle along the sea-shore. The mere fact that the winds are said to have their homes in Thrace is not sufficient to prove this ; the great snowy mountains are a too natural home for the storm-winds to allow us to draw any conclusions as to the exact geographical position of the spots to which they blow ; the Thracian highlands were the home of Boreas and Zephyros to all Greeks, wherever they dwelt. But it does not seem so likely that a poet of Sparta or Mykenai should speak of these winds casting the tangle up along tlic shore, though it certainly is not impossible. But there is no difficulty in supposing that this book was composed some- where in the north of Asia Minor, among the Aiolian settle- ments, at Smyrna or near the Troad, even for those who accept the theory of the European origin of the " Menis." For it has been already intimated that it is most likely that the Third Stratum arose after the great migration of the Achaians across the sea. 14. This passage resembles the closely connected preced- ing book in being all taken from other places. The com- parison to a spring comes from the beginning of xvi., and the whole speech of Agamemnon reappears in ii. 110-118, 139-141. It will, however, be observed that whereas in ii. Agamemnon addresses his audience as " Danaan 174 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IX warriors," he here calls them "leaders and captains," as though he were speaking in a council of the kings, and not in a general assembly of the whole army, as this is said to be. The change therefore does not seem to be a happy one. 162, 7-8 29-3- This introduction to the speech of Diomedes recurs several times, as has been pointed out on vii. 388. 162 12 34- The reference is evidently to the bitter reproach of Agamemnon in iv. 370. f6j, 7-8 63. A more literal rendering would be, " Without clan, without dooms, without a hearth, is he that loveth." Nestor alludes to the three foundations of early society : the relation- ship of the clan orphretre (literally brotherhood ; for this word see note on ii. 363) ; the common tradition of law embodied in the " dooms " or inherited principles of justice adminis- tered by the king to the people ; and the common fire which formed the centre of the religion of the early community. The man who stirs up strife within the circle of his own people violates all these common bonds of the body politic, and destroys the roots of civil existence. /6? 10-12 66-68. We have already learnt to distrust the genuineness of tactical advice put into Nestor's mouth ; and the present reference to the sentinels does not appear to be an excep- tion. The posting of the watch is at least not necessary to the story, and it has a suspicious appearance of being merely a preparation for the next book, which is much later, and which turns entirely upon a visit to the sentinels. If we cut out these two lines, from " and let " to " young men," and lower down 80-88 (25-32) " Forth sallied " to " his meal," we shall miss nothing. The point, however, is not of great im- portance. /6? ?/ ^7- It will be seen that the moat is here unmistakably conceived as being some distance in front of the wall, leaving COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IX 175 sufficient space between for the sentinels to take up position (see note on viil 213). 97. " With thy name will I begin and with thine end " 164, 8 was a favourite way of addressing a god in a hymn to his honour. Taken in connexion with the words that follow it seems to imply that Nestor is here addressing the king in what may be called his divine capacity, as a representative of Zeus on earth. This is a fitting beginning for a solemn exhortation to forget his personal feeling, and to remember only his public duty to the people given into his charge. 99. " Law," here again literally dooms. The body of /^ / traditional decisions and principles on which the king has to administer justice is regarded as an inherited appanage of the royal house, received by the king for his property in trust for his people, as he receives the sceptre, the sign of what we should now call the executive, as distinguished from the judicial power. 101-102. Nestor means "do not be prejudiced against a 164,13-25 course just because it is advised by some one else ; whoever urges it, it is you that will receive the credit for wise action." 122. Untouched of fire, i.e. quite new, not yet used, as is />-, / shown by xxiii. 270, where the word "yet" proves that this is the sense. Others have taken it to mean a tripod not made to go upon the fire, but only for ornament ; in xxiii. 702 we hear of a tripod "for standing on the fire," which has been supposed to imply the existence of others not so meant. The Homeric talent of gold was a definite weight, for in xix. 247 Odysseus weighs out the ten talents. The sum represented can only have been a small one, for in xxiiL 262-270 we find that two talents are less in value than a caldron. We must not confuse it with the more familiar Attic talent which represented a very large sum, about 200. 176 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IX Professor Ridgeway has ingeniously argued that one talent was the value of an ox, the primitive unit of exchange. It is likely that the talents were wedges or bars of gold ; there is, of course, no such thing in Homer as coined money ; this was not invented till about the seventh cen- tury B.C. 163, 4 125. The word translated "lackland" in the earlier editions of 'the translation, and " lackwealth " in the later, has generally been taken to mean "without corn-land." But Professor Ridgeway has proved that it means " without booty." Property in land was not an ordinary form of wealth in Homeric times, for as a rule the land was held in common, and only the king had severally of his own. On the other hand, booty acquired in raids was a recognised source of riches. We shall see a little further on in the speech of Achilles that, with purchase, it forms the only means of gaining property in Homeric times. Agamemnon means, in modern language, that he has gained a large fortune in prizes alone. *6$, 8 129. "He," Achilles; Agamemnon dares not, through the whole of his speech, speak the dreaded name. On the other hand, Achilles in his great reply is continually harping on the hated "Atreides." i6y, 2j 145. In Attic tragedy the daughters of Agamemnon are Chrysothemis, Elektra, and Iphigeneia. If, as is natural to suppose, the latter is identical with Iphianassa, it follows that the story of the sacrifice in Aulis is quite unknown to Homer, for Iphianassa is here still alive. 165, 25 146. The usual practice was for the bridegroom to give large sums to the father of the bride, thus in fact buying her ; an instance will be found in xi. 243-245. Agamemnon promises not only to forgo these bride-gifts, but actually to give a dower with his daughter, which seems to have been COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IX 177 almost unheard of in heroic times. There is, however, one other case, in xxii. 51, where Altes gives his daughter " much wealth " in order to marry her to Priam. 150. These cities, so far as they can be identified, are in 165, 28 the country later known as Messenia. It is not clear how Agamemnon disposes of cities which we should suppose to belong to Nestor. If they were not part of Pylos, as the words seem to imply, they must have been subject to Menelaos, which may perhaps have given Agamemnon some family rights over them. 158. Death cannot be prevailed upon either by prayers 166, 2 or violence. " Of all gods Death alone despiseth gifts," as Aeschylos says. 1 68. We come upon Phoinix without a word of warning. f66, 12 We have not heard his name before, and it remains untold how he comes to be among the councillors in the hut of Agamemnon. He is never heard of elsewhere in the council, and as a retainer of Achilles his place would seem to be rather with the Myrmidons than among the leaders of the army which they have for the time deserted. It is only later on that. we learn of his relation to Achilles. He is barely mentioned here, and once on p. 168. In the inter- mediate parts of the narrative he is simply ignored till it comes to his turn to speak. The envoys are always spoken of as " the twain " ; and in the words with which Achilles greets them, "Welcome; verily ye are friends that are come," the verbs are in the dual number, showing that only two enter the hut. The conclusion seems inevitable that the person of Phoinix is a later addition made with only a very few superficial changes in the text. It has been suggested that Phoinix, as a friend of Achilles, is sent on before the other two, not as an envoy, but only to prepare the way ; but this supposition is excluded by the surprise N 1 78 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IX which we are expressly told that Achilles feels on seeing them. 166, 20-21 175-176. These lines have already occurred in i. 470-471, where see the note. The drinking here is, as usual, a separate ceremony from the meal, and has distinct religious import. 166, 29 183. Poseidon is the chief patron of the Achaian cause among the gods, so it is natural that they should pray to him as they walk beside his element. He is the Earth- embracer because the ocean enfolds the earth ; and Shaker of the Earth because all earthquakes were attributed to his agency. 166, 32 !86. This is the only case in the Iliad where we find the heroes singing, though the Muses sing to the gods in i. 604. It is, of course, natural that the bards who are so prominent in the peaceful Odyssey should not appear in the scenes of war of the Iliad (see Introduction, p. 19). 167,10 197. This rather disjointed sentence graphically expresses the two feelings which arise in Achilles' mind : pleasure at the visit of his friends, and with it satisfaction, which he does not attempt to conceal, at their humiliation under the stress of defeat. The latter feeling, however, he betrays only for a moment, to return at once to the affectionate greeting with which he began. 167, 28 214. Salt is called holy presumably because, on account of its purifying qualities, it was regarded as making a sacrifice suitable for the gods. This recalls the rule of Hebrew ritual that "every sacrifice must be seasoned with salt." There is, however, no other mention of such a practice in Homer, where indeed salt, other than the salt water of the sea, is very rarely mentioned only three times in the Odyssey. 167,30 216. There appears to be only one table for the two COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : IX 179 guests here ; whereas in the Odyssey it seems to have been the custom for each guest to have a small table to himself. 220. The first-fruits are generally supposed to be small 168, i pieces of meat cut off and burnt for the gods. The word, however, is obscure, and some have taken it to mean " he cast incense into the fire." But there is no clear allusion in Homer to the use of incense for sacrifice. 223. It is not clear why Aias nods to Phoinix; if it is a 168, 4 sign for him to begin, Odysseus treats the other two with very scant courtesy, unlike the usual good manners of Homeric chiefs. 236. Lightning on the right is regarded as a favourable /6 7 7 537- It has recently been suggested by Mr. Platt that the word " not " has been inserted in the Greek and should be expelled. This improves the metre, and at the same time gives a better sense : " whether he forgat, or marked it," i.e. knew what he was doing, and omitted the sacrifice on purpose, to insult the goddess. J 77> 3 55 2 - "Without their city walls" seems to imply that so COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IX 187 long as Meleagros fought, the Kuretes, far from besieging Kalydon, were themselves besieged. This makes the parallel between Achilles and Meleagros all the closer. 557. The digression about Marpessa could well be 178, 3 spared; it contains several curious expressions not like Homer, and looks like a fragment of the genealogical poetry which was so popular in the age after Homer ; the " Eoiai " of Hesiod was a long series of little stories of famous heroines like the present, strung together without much connexion. The " halcyon-bird " is supposed to be the kingfisher ; it is said that the hen when separated from her mate continually utters a plaintive note. Thus the daughter is named after the cry of her mother, as Eurysakes after the shield of his father, and Astyanax after the prowess of Hector (see on vi. 402). It will be seen that here again the legend of Alkyone has nothing to do with the well-known later story of Alkyone and Keyx. 570. To kneel down and beat the earth is a natural 77,?, /y means of calling the attention of the gods of the under- world. Erebos, "the dark land," is the realm of Hades. We do not hear of any result from this prayer of Althaia to Erinys, except that Meleagros loses the promised gifts. 578. Here, as elsewhere, the grant of land to be held as 178, 24. private property is only made to one of the royal house in return for public services. 6 1 6. Achilles means, " I will give you anything that you 779, 29 may ask, even to the half of my kingdom ; but I will not recall the message which I have given." The offer to share the kingdom is of course only a rhetorical expression to show the strength of his determination not to change his mind. So the following words show that the threat to depart (in 359) was only a rhetorical device, and not seriously meant. In this way indeed Phoinix himself must have i88 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : IX taken it, as is clear from the concluding words of his speech, and his assumption that Achilles will in the end save the ships, even if only when they are on fire. /, 12 only in the shield of Achilles, book xviii. (381, 15, and jS2, /j). They are peaceful instruments, and out of place in a bivouac on the field of battle. 56. It is not easy to explain the exact force of the epithet /<%, j "sacred" applied to the company of the sentinels. The same word is applied to the sentinels in xxiv. 68 1 (499, fj), where it is translated " trusty." It is also used of cities, of day and night, of the place of justice (xviii. 504), and in xvi. 407 of a fish. It is probable that the Greek word originally meant " strong," and this will account for many of the uses ; but it must be admitted that if this was the o 194 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : X primitive sense of the word, all traces of it, except in these few instances, had been entirely lost at a very early period. Perhaps the vital importance of the office of sentinel had led to its being in some way connected with divine supervi- sion, but of this there seems to be no other trace. We are not told what commands are to be laid on the sentinels, who have only been appointed for a few hours (see ix. 80), nor in fact are any given in the sequel. The " son of Nestor " is Thrasymedes. 286, 2 84. There is some doubt in the translation of this line ; Aristarchos held that the word translated " mules " meant watchers. He further rejected the line as spurious, on account of this use of the word. But there seems little reason for this ; there is a graphic touch in making Nestor, who seems to be sleeping outside his hut, suppose that the sudden alarm which rouses him is due to some one in search of a strayed mule, of which there were many in the camp, to judge from i. 50. 186,17 ioo. The punctuation here is not certain; perhaps it would be better to translate " hostile men camp hard by, and we know naught ; I fear lest they plan to do battle by night." 186, 28 II0 . The son of Phyleus is Meges (see ii. 627). 188, i j^. This line recurs in the same words in 327 below (193, 25), and has evidently been wrongly interpolated here. The question of flight or fighting has been already deter- mined in the preceding book. f88, 18 !6o. For the "high place of the plain," see note on xi. 56. 188,22 164. "Hard," here in the physical sense; the word is more commonly used to signify " hard of heart." 188,32 173. "Standeth on a razor's edge" is a proverbial ex- pression common in later Greek. To put the phrase into COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : X 195 prose, it means, of course, that everything is balancing in a state of unstable equilibrium between safety and destruction. It forms the only allusion in Homer to the practice of shaving. It was usual in archaic Greece to shave the upper lip, and there are traces of the same practice at Mykenai in the hairless upper lip of the gold mask represented in Schuchh. p. 253. It is likely enough, therefore, that it was usual in the intermediate Homeric age. Razors of very great antiquity have been found too among remains of the bronze age in Italy, and perhaps in Greece. 1 88. The "wicked" or "evil" night means the night of 189, 14 disaster and terror. 198. The moat is regarded as being some little distance 189, 26 in front of the wall, with a level space between in which the sentinels are posted. The chiefs now pass out from this into the open plain. The sudden conversion of the visit of inspection into a council of war is not explained ; but the idea has been suggested in the words of Menelaos (see 184, 19-23}. 213. The last portion of Nestor's speech, from the words I90 , 8 " for all the best men," or still more probably from the line before, " among all men," seems to be an interpolation ; at all events it is very un-epic in tone. Homeric heroes are rich in gold and slaves, cattle and tripods, and fine Sidonian cups. It is an obvious absurdity to say that for them " no chattel may compare " with a few black ewes and lambs. At best, such a reward might have some attraction for a common soldier ; but here only the greatest chiefs of the army are present Nor can it be any inducement to them to promise that they shall be " present at feasts and clan-drinkings " ; for that is a privilege which they already enjoy in virtue of their rank (see iv. 259). Either, there- 196 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : X fore, we must suppose these lines to have been interpolated here from some other poem where they were more in place, or we must admit that the poet of the present book quite failed to realise the conditions of life of the heroes of whom he sang. 797, 16 253. For the three-fold division of the night compare Od. xii. 312: " When it was the third watch of the night, and the stars had crossed the zenith." 797, 21 257. The description of the head-gear of Diomedes and Odysseus is not easy to understand in detail. The word' translated " skull-cap " is of quite unknown meaning, as it occurs only here in the whole course of Greek literature. Nor is the account of the cap of Odysseus quite intelligible. It seems to have been a cap of felt wound round with thongs, and set with teeth outside to give it strength. Autolykos was the maternal grandfather of Odysseus, and famous for his thefts. It was he who gave the name of Odysseus to his grandson (see the story in Od. xix. 395). Molos, the father of Meriones, is said to have been the brother of Idomeneus (see xiii. 249). 192, 1 6 285. For the story of this famous expedition of Tydeus to Thebes, see iv. 396 and v. 803. 192, 23 294. The gilding of the horns of the victim before sacrifice is described in Od. iii. 432-438, to which reference should be made. The lines 292-294, "and to thee . . . with gold," occur in the same book, 382-384. It is evident from the mention of the hammer among the tools of the crafts- man there that the process consisted in wrapping the horns with thin gold-leaf, which was beaten out for the purpose. 194, 20 351. This curious phrase must be compared with Od. viii. 124 : "So far as is the ploughing of mules in a fallow field." From this it will be seen that by the "range" of mules for with this word we get a fairer idea of the Greek COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : X 197 than with the " furrow " of the text is meant an absolute distance, not one relative to the "range" of oxen. The expression, as ingeniously explained by Professor Ridgeway, seems to take us back to the old method of cultivation in which the common land of the community was divided up into strips of equal breadth. The unit of breadth was a " furrow-length," our " furlong " (for furrow-long). The unit of area was the portion which could be ploughed in a day's work. In a field of fixed breadth this area was, of course, expressed sufficiently by the length of the strip which was ploughed in a day ; and this length therefore depended on the animal which ploughed. We see that it was held that a team of mules was faster and did a greater length of field in a day's work than a team of oxen; and the average length of the strip of common field which mules would plough in a day is taken here, and in the eighth book of the Odyssey, as a familiar unit of length. Naturally, we have not got the necessary materials for guessing even approximately what this length was. 415. The tomb of Ilos is mentioned again in xi. 166, '9<5 20 372, and xxiv. 349. It was evidently considered to be somewhere near the middle of the plain, in the neighbour- hood of the river ; but it is of course useless to attempt to fix it accurately. 418. The word translated "watch-fires" means properly 196,22 "hearths," and is commonly used of the hearth in the centre of the house. It is not certain if it here bears the literal sense of fires; or if "hearths of the Trojans" may not be used to mean the actual dwellers in Troy ; the hearth, as the centre of the home, standing for the family itself. The contrast in any case is between the dwellers in Troy, " on whom is necessity," because they are fighting for their homes and families, and the allies, who have come out 198 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : X of complaisance, and have no such need to trouble them- selves. 33 4 2 8. Karians, Leleges, Kaukones, and Pelasgians are all names of primitive races which, according to later tradi- tion, dwelt round the shores and islands of the Aegaean Sea, or preceded the Greeks on the mainland of Greece. They are elsewhere named in Homer as inhabiting the countries near the Troad. Thymbra was a town on the Skamander, a little above Troy. The introduction of these tribal names may possibly be meant to give an air of antiquity to the passage; none of them are elsewhere recorded in Homer with anything like this fulness, and the Leleges and Kaukones do not appear in the catalogue of Trojan allies at all. a 469. The " arms and the black blood " are those of the slain who are scattered about the plain, as in line 298. 8 497. The words "that night, even the seed of Oineus, through the device of Athene " seem to be an interpolation. They mean, of course, that Rhesos had a prophetic dream in which he saw Diomedes, the grandson of Oineus (the father of Tydeus), standing over him about to slay him. The sense is quite complete without the line; an evil dream, ominous of the future, makes Rhesos breathe hard at the moment that its fulfilment comes. But it would seem that some rhapsodist thought fit to alter the idea by making this dream, by irony, into a vision of Diomedes himself. The line was regarded as spurious by all the notable ancient critics. The thought is certainly not Homeric; for we elsewhere find that Homer is always true to nature in making those persons only appear in dreams who are known to the sleeper, which evidently would not be the case here. Still, at the same time, we must remember that we are here not dealing with pure COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : X 199 " Homer " ; and it is possible that the author of this book may have made mistakes which in the bloom of epic poetry would have been avoided. It cannot, therefore, be said that the absence of truth to nature, or the somewhat frigid conceit of the personification of Diomedes as a dream to his victim, can be relied upon as absolute proofs of the interpolation of the line. 500. Odysseus seems to show his inexperience in dealing 799, 12 with horses. He is the only important hero in Homer who is never found fighting in a chariot ; for his own island of Ithaca is not fit for rearing horses. See Od. iv. 607 : " Of the isles that lie and lean upon the sea, none are fit for the driving of horses, and least of all is Ithaca." 504. The alternatives before Diomedes are two : to take 799, 16 the chariot and retire, or to go on slaying the Thracians. Athene forbids the second, and we may therefore assume that he takes the first, and carries off the chariot ; though this is not expressly stated in words. If this is so, then we shall not have to assume in the next paragraph that he rides on the horses' backs ; such an art is never practised by Homeric heroes, and the phrase "he sprang upon the steeds " is regularly used of jumping into the chariot But here again we feel the difficulty of judging the present book by strict Homeric standards. Although Homeric heroes themselves are never made to ride, yet it is certain that the art was known in Greece before the Homeric poems had reached their final shape, for we have it mentioned twice in similes ; first in xv. 680, the interpretation of which is however not clear from doubt; and secondly in Od. v. 371, where the words are quite unambiguous, "Odysseus bestrode a single plank, as one rideth a courser." It is therefore possible, but by no means certain, that the poet really did mean here to attribute to his heroes the practice of his own COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : X day, and conceived them, or at least Diomedes, as riding to the ships on the horses' backs. 200, 13 531. The words "to the hollow ships; for there they fain would be," are an obvious interpolation from xi. 520. There is no reason why the Thracian horses should be glad to go to the Greek ships. The line is omitted by the best MSS. 201, 22 571. It would seem that the arms are to be dedicated to Athene with the sacrifice. If so, we have here another instance of a post-Homeric practice ; for the idea of dedi- cating the arms of the slain as a trophy is not elsewhere found in the Homeric poems, though the opportunities of mentioning it are so numerous. 201, 23 572. The washing with sea-water before taking the bath is probably founded on the still prevalent idea that " sea- water never gives a cold," but that it is dangerous to go into a bath of fresh water when hot. The "polished baths," though common enough in the palaces of the Odyssey, are not found elsewhere in the Iliad, and seem rather out of place among the furniture of a camp. The whole line is in fact simply copied from the Odyssey. 578. It may be noticed that, as the Iliad stands, this is the third supper which Odysseus has enjoyed during this long and eventful night (see ix. 90, 221). BOOK XI AFTER a long digression, lasting from book ii. to book x., we at length return to the story of the " Menis." The transition has to be effected, of course, by a connecting passage : the circumstances at the end of x. are too different from those which existed in ii., at the first gather- ing of the army, to allow the thread to be resumed without a word of explanation, and the opening of the book belongs therefore to the same stratum as ix. and x. This we could say with confidence a priori, and the character of the prologue itself amply justifies the conclu- sion. The mention of the 'fosse in 1. 51 would in itself be enough to show that this line belongs to the Third Stratum. And we shall find that besides this clear evidence there are other signs of lateness all pointing the same way : so much so that we may even venture on approximately dating the composition of the whole passage. The prologue may be taken to end at 56, or a little later. Line 61 for instance, " and Hector in the foremost rank," would join on well to ii. 810 (46, 77), "and mighty din arose," where we last recognised the " Menis." From this point the narrative flows on without break or serious difficulty through the book, and the story of the "Wrath" is developed with the splendid vigour and dramatic speed which are characteristic of the work. The hopes of COMPANION TO THE "ILIAD"': XI the Greeks rise high, as the exploits of Agamemnon seem to fulfil the promise of the delusive dream ; but the wound- ing of their chief captains suddenly turns victory into rout. The scene then shifts to the camp, and we find Achilles all ready to relent. The sending of Patroklos to enquire of Nestor is the first sign of the turning tide, and is introduced with a foreboding of the disaster which is to come : " this to him was the beginning of evil." The scene in Nestor's hut is the only part of the book which has suffered any serious interpolation. The long account which Nestor gives of his youthful exploits in 664- 672 is undoubtedly a later addition, disturbing the context and betraying itself in manner and language. This will be dealt with in the notes : with the exception of this and the prologue the whole book may be read with undisturbed enjoyment as a perfect piece of ancient and uncontaminated poetry. NOTES 202, 4 4. It is impossible to say what was the " signal of war " which the Goddess of Discord held in her hands. It may be the thunderbolt, or the aegis which Athene wears as a " portent of Zeus " in v. 742 (105, 5). 202, ij 13. This line and the next are repeated from ii. 453- 454, where they are evidently more in place than they are here : for there the allusion to returning home has a distinct reference to the proposal of flight made by Agamemnon ; here, there has been no word of anything of the sort. 202, ij 1 6. The following account of the arming of Agamemnon is in many respects of great interest. It will be noticed in the first place that it gives us the only instance in the Iliad of a mention of Cyprus as a Greek land. The name Kypris, as has been shown in the note on v. 330, cannot be held an COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI 203 instance to the contrary, and the connexion of Aphrodite with Paphos, which is alluded to in the Odyssey, occurs in a very late passage, viii. 363. With these exceptions Cyprus is quite unknown to both Iliad and Odyssey. It is natural to suppose, therefore, that these lines were added about the time when the Greeks were establishing themselves in the island, and wished to legitimise their claim to it as the successors of Agamemnon. This was done by introducing into the Iliad lines which should at once represent Cyprus as a vassal of the king of Argos, and explain why it was that no Cyprian contingent appeared in the army before Troy. Kinyras was a famous legendary king of Cyprus, perhaps a Phenician deity whose worship had been assimi- lated to that of Aphrodite by the Greeks. Pindar says of him (Pyth. ii. 2), "The fair speech of Cyprus echoeth about the name of Kinyras, him whom Apollo of the golden hair loved fervently, and who dwelt a priest in the house of Aphrodite " (trans, by E. Myers). The question of early work in metal which is raised here will be more properly discussed in connexion with the shield of Achilles in xviii., but the reference of inlaid metal-work to Cyprus has a significance of its own. The island was a Phenician settlement in very early days, so that we are led to ascribe any work of art coming from it to Phenician hands. So far as direct evidence goes, the metal-work found at Mykenai is not Phenician. But though in all prob- ability the work itself is Mykenaean, there is no doubt that it is founded on Egyptian models, and these assuredly were also followed by the imitative rather than creative Pheni- cians. Thus there is every reason to suppose that the Phenicians executed metal-work very like in technic to that of Mykenai. Such work, we must suppose, is spoken 01 here. 204 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI The breastplate is adorned with " courses " or stripes of various coloured metals, presumably inlaid on a ground of bronze. Of the three metals named, gold and kyanos were familiar in Mykenaean times. The genuine kyanos or cyanus was lapis lazuli, the source of the beautiful tint ultramarine. But at a very early period, as we know from Egypt, an artificial imitation was made by colouring a glass paste with a blue salt of copper. This is no doubt the kyanos of Homer. A frieze adorned with such a blue enamel was found at Tiryns, and exactly answers to the "frieze of cyanus" in the palace of Alkinoos, Od. vii. 87 (see Schuchh., p. 117). The third metal, tin, is such as we should hardly have expected to meet in such fine company. The Greek word is kassiteros^ There is no ground for identifying this with anything but tin ; the only doubt is whether it was the pure metal, or an alloy of tin and silver, such as is often produced in smelting silver ore. It is named again as one of the metals in the shield of Achilles (xviii. 474, 565, 574), as used in chariot decoration (xxiii. 503). and on the breastplate of Asteropaios (xxiii. 561). But the last place where we should have looked for it is in greaves (xviii. 613; xxi. 592). For this purpose its plia- bility seems to have outweighed the disadvantages of its softness ; for greaves seem to have been attached to the leg by their elastic pressure only. How the stripes were arranged, and how they were combined with the dark blue snakes (rather " snakes of kyanos ") we cannot say, but Helbig ingeniously suggests that the forty-two stripes were divided equally between front and back, and followed one another in this order : gold, tin, kyanos, tin. This, repeated five times, with an extra course of gold at the end, will give a 1 A good discussion of the question of tin will be found in Miss Clerke's Familiar Studies, pp. 246-249, and of kyanos, pp. 294-302. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI 205 perfectly symmetrical arrangement of exactly the right number of stripes. The surface of the shield itself is of bronze, arranged in concentric circles. On these are set bosses in circles, such as can be made out in one of the gold intaglios found at Mykenai (Schuchh., no. 178, p. 196). The boss in the middle is of kyanos, called " black " : in the poverty of Homeric language for words expressing colour this name is commonly applied to all the tints of blue as well as of black. It is surprising to find the Gorgon head here ; for though this adornment was commonly applied to Greek shields, we can trace the appearance of the type in the range of Greek art from existing archaic monuments, and these enable us to say with confidence that it was not known in Greece before the seventh century B.C. This would make the present passage much later than the rest of the Iliad. But it is quite possible that the two lines which mention the Gorgon are themselves interpolated. They rather interfere with the rest of the description ; for it is not easy to see how a Gorgon head flanked by two figures of Dread and Terror can have been combined with all the bosses. We cannot, therefore, argue from the lateness of these two lines to that of the whole prologue of the book ; we can only say that the two lines, " and thereon . . . terror," are certainly late. But on the other hand we have a curious proof that they cannot be later, as they cannot be earlier, than the seventh century. Pausanias saw at Olympia the venerable box known as the Chest of Kypselos, made probably about 700 B.C., and covered with pictures of heroic and mythological subjects. Among these he mentions a scene which was evidently taken from this very passage in its present form : " There is Iphidamas the son of Antenor fallen, and Koon fighting Agamemnon over his body; and on the shield of Agamemnon 206 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI is Terror, with a lion's head. There are inscriptions, first over the body of the dead Iphidamas : 'This is Iphidamas, and Koon fighting over him'; and also on the shield of Agamemnon, ' This is the Terror of mortal men, and the bearer is Agamemnon.' " This interesting passage gives us the earliest known case of an illustration of the Iliad; and it shows an evident inten- tion to illustrate the lines as we have them. It has been argued that the Gorgon head was still unfamiliar to the artist, so that he rather chose to portray Terror by the common oriental device of a horrible lion-headed demon. It is likely that the other reference 'to the Gorgon head in v. 741 is equally a late interpolation (see note there). 203, 24 45. The thundering of Athene and Hera is strange, for the wielding of the thunder is elsewhere always in the hands of Zeus alone. The lines are also in contradiction to 1. 75 (204, 23), where we are expressly told that all the gods except Discord sat at peace in their halls. This seems to be a mark of interpolation. So again the rain of blood in 1. 54 is a portent unlike those of the real epic style ; it aims at inspiring horror by supernatural means, and ill accords with the best traditions of reserve which mark the bloom of epic poetry. The description of the arraying of the host is also obscure ; it is hard to see how the footmen were arrayed " long before " the charioteers, while the drivers came " a little way " after them. 20 4> 3 56. In this paragraph, on the assumed theory of the com- position of the Iliad, we come again into the main stream of the " Menis," which was left in the second book. It is not certain, however, if we do this at the first words, " but COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI 207 the Trojans," or at the next sentence, " Hector in the fore- most rank." The question depends naturally on the point in the second book at which we suppose the " Menis " to leave off. If we are right in including in the " Menis " the passage on pp. 45-46, then the words there "mighty din arose" will be fitly followed by " and Hector in the foremost rank." If, on the other hand, we hold with Fick that the " Menis " ended in ii. with the words on p. 23 (or rather on 35), "so did those summon, and these gathered with speed," then it will be more fitting to begin again here with the words, " but the Trojans." In this case " the high ground of the plain " will indicate the slope joining the plain itself to the hill of Troy. This is evidently the natural place for the army to assemble. But then we must suppose that the author of x. 1 60 misunderstood the words; for there the same phrase is used of a position in the middle of the plain near the Greek camp. This supposition of a misunderstanding is the more probable (i) because the Greek phrase is more naturally used of the point at which the plain springs up into a hill than of a mere knoll in the middle of the plain ; (2) such a knoll, so close to the Greek camp as to be a menace to it, is an impossible place for the assembling of an army at the beginning of a day's fighting. It may be added that there is as a fact no prominent eminence in the Trojan plain. It appears that there is one just sufficient to hide a horsemen on his way from the town to the sea (see Dr. Schliemann's observation in Schuchhardt, p. 29); but this evidently does not correspond to the conditions, as it seems to be quite unnoticeable to any one in the plain itself, and therefore cannot be a strategic point. In this respect the attempt to reconcile the Iliad with the facts of geography fails, and if the " high ground of the plain " is to be found in reality, it can only be at the foot of the hill. 208 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI 203, i 86. The time of day indicated by these words is not very clear. In xvi. 777 we come to the noon of the same day : a fact which, as the Iliad stands, cannot be reconciled with the number of intervening events. This is indeed not the sort of inconsistency on which stress can be laid ; but it is worth noticing that, such as it is, it disappears when we make xvi. follow close upon xi. In that case we can suppose that the time here meant is nine or ten o'clock in the morn- ing of a summer's day ; this would be a likely time for a woodman who had been working since sunrise to take a rest. Then three hours will be quite enough for the re- maining events of this book, the rout of the Greeks in the end of xv., and the events of the beginning of xvi., up to noon. 205, 17 ioo. "With their breasts gleaming," literally gleaming with their breasts. This is probably an ironical parody of the familiar "gleaming with their armour," a sort of taunt of the dead, who are despoiled and have nothing left but their bare breasts to shine instead of their corslets. 206, 27 139. The allusion is to the occasion of the embassy of Odysseus and Menelaos to Troy, to obtain the peaceful return of Helen (see iii. 205). 207, 2 147. The "ball of stone" is explained by the scholiasts as a mortar for bruising pulse. 207, 22 1 66. These landmarks in the plain are all mentioned else- where ; the tomb of Ilos was near the ford, on the Trojan side (see xxiv. 349). For the fig-tree see vi. 433, xxii. 145 ; the oak-tree, v. 693. 209, 10 2 1 8. This appeal to the Muses introduces one of the turning points of the poem ; for it is with the wounding of Agamemnon that Zeus begins to fulfil the promise to Thetis on which the whole plot turns. In the older portions of the Iliad such an appeal is always reserved for like critical COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI 209 moments ; only in a few later passages do we find it as a mere artifice to vary an even narrative, as in xiv. 508. 223. Theano, daughter of Kisses and wife of Antenor, soy, 16 has already been mentioned as priestess of Athene in vi. 298. 226. It will be seen that Iphidamas married his maternal 209, 18 aunt, as also did Diomedes (v. 412). This did not, how- ever, exempt him from paying a full price for his bride, see 11. 243-245. He "went after" the tidings, as though to find out where the news came from. Perkote was a town on the Hellespont, a natural point to land for one coming from Thrace. 237. The silver seems to mean the metal covering of the 209, 29 girdle. Lead is named only here and in xxiv. 80 ; both times in similes. This may be a sign that the poet was aware that the metal was not known in heroic times. 241. "Sleep of bronze," as though binding a man with 209,33 bonds which he could not break ; imitated by Virgil in his ferreus somnus, Aen. x. 745. 244. " Thereafter," presumably in instalments from the 210, 4 increase of his flocks. 256. "Wind-nurtured," because the buffeting of the 210, 17 winds strengthened the grain of the wood. Compare Tennyson's " spear of grain storm-strengthened on a windy site." 297. Hector has been holding aloof; his sudden appear- 211, 29 ance in the battle, when he sees the sign given him by Zeus, is finely compared to one of the sudden squalls of the Aegaean which leap down upon the sea from the high mountains of the coast. 362. The words of Diomedes are found again in the 213, 3 2 mouth of Achilles in xx. 449-454. They are more in place there than here ; for they are expressive rather of the violent fury of Achilles than of the moderate temper of Diomedes. p COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI In xx., too, the words " Phoebus Apollo rescued thee " have a significance of their own ; for there Apollo has actually saved Hector by carrying him out of the battle. Here the rescuing can only be understood of Apollo's gift of the helmet a very indirect aid. It must be admitted in any case that to give a speech of so marked a character to two heroes under quite different circumstances is absolutely destructive of any sort of character-drawing, and quite unworthy of the epic poet. The interpolation, which is needless, begins no doubt at the words, "then rushing on," and ends at "spearman renowned." 214., 23 385. " Proud in thy bow of horn," literally " brilliant with the horn." This has been commonly understood as referring to the horns of which bows were made; the notable case is the bow of Pandaros in iv. 105. But another interpretation was given by Aristarchos, and is probably right, strange though it may seem at first. Ac- cording to this the " horn " was the name of a particular way of dressing the hair in a sort of love-lock. The evi- dence for this seems sufficient, and there is no doubt that it gives a particular appropriateness to the taunt when used against the effeminate dandy Paris. The contempt of the full-armed warrior for the bowman was traditional through the whole of Greek history. 2ig, 22 543. The words in brackets are not found in any MS., and have been introduced into the text only from quotations in Aristotle's Rhetoric and Plutarch. The meaning of them is quite obscure, for there is no reason why Zeus should be angry that Aias should fight with a better man than himself. The only question is whether the preceding lines, from " nay, but," are not interpolations as well, though these are found in the MSS. After the pompous account of Hector's entry into the battle, it would certainly be expected that he COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI would be the cause of the retreat of Aias, who has success- fully withstood all lesser warriors. If not, the whole pre- ceding passage ends in a bathos. The two first lines, " nay, but, . . . great stones," are simply repeated from 11. 264-265 of this book. 545. It seems that Aias hangs his shield over his back 219, 26 by the baldrick so as to protect him in his retreat. 558. This famous simile derives much of its force from 220, j- the contrast with the magnificent comparison of the lion which precedes it ; and which, it may be added, reappears verbatim in xvii. 657-666. Many critics, from Zenodotos downwards, have rejected the lion-simile here as merely in- terpolated from xvii. There are no positive criteria to prove this one way or the other, and the question becomes one of taste, where every reader can judge for himself. My own feeling is that the contrast of the two in such close proximity is a masterpiece of delicate humour. It is a curious fact that the ass is mentioned here only in Homer, and never appears, where we should certainly have expected it, in Hesiod. It would seem that it must have been kept chiefly for the purpose of breeding mules. The picture is clear ; the lazy ass is being driven along the road and turns into a field of corn at the side, whence the boys cannot drive him out till he has eaten as much as he wishes. Instead of " feeble is the force," etc, a more literal render- ing would perhaps be, "Their violence is but child's play to him ; and hardly can they drive him out when he has taken his fill," etc. 597. " The mares of Neleus," literally the " Neleian 221, 16 mares," i.e. of the breed belonging to Neleus, the " fleet horses bred at Pylos " of xxiii. 303. 604. The " beginning of evil " clearly marks this moment 221, 24 as the opening of what we may call the next act of the drama. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI 221, 2g 609. These words are not those of a man who has had the Achaians in prayer about him only a few hours before, as Achilles had, if we suppose that the ninth book was part of the original Iliad, In that case, in order to avoid an anticlimax, Achilles must have hoped for some yet deeper humiliation; hemight, for instance, have said, "Now methinks that Agamemnon himself will beseech me," or the like; but on no grounds of poetical propriety can he be made to hope, as a satisfaction of his vanity, that the very thing will happen which he has just rejected as quite impotent to affect his resolution. 222, 9 621. The standing in the breeze to dry reminds us of the somewhat similar proceeding of Diomedes and Odysseus at the end of x. 222, 20 632. This description of Nestor's cup, which is not in itself very easy to understand, has received a curious illus- tration from a gold cup discovered by Schliemann among the graves at Mykenai. It is represented in Schuchh. p. 241, and closely resembles that of the text, though it is of somewhat less elaborate design. It has only two handles instead of four, and only one dove on each instead of two. But the two strips of gold plate which connect the handles with the foot give an explanation of the obscure expression " two feet (or rather bases) below." " Studs " will also be seen in the heads of the rivets with which these strips are fastened to the base ; though it is probable that the text may refer to some more elaborate system of adornment by means of studs used for decorative purposes alone. 222, 26 638. This mess, which seems to have been a sort of thick porridge made with wine, recalls the somewhat similar posset with which Circe bewitches the companions of Odysseus in Od, x. 234 ; but there honey is added. Pramnian wine was known in classical times, and is called a " black austere " wine COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI 213 by Galen ; but of course we cannot tell that the wine thus named was the same as that of the Homeric age. 662. This line is bracketed because Nestor knows nothing 223^ 19 of the wounding of Eurypylos, which happened after he had left the field. It is interpolated from xvi. 27, and is rightly omitted by the best MSS. 664. The long story of Nestor's youthful prowess, from 223, 21 the words " but Achilles " to the same words in 1. 762 (226, 20), is generally recognised as an interpolation. The arguments leading to this conclusion are as follows : (i) The speech is out of place. It has no bearing on the situation whatever, and is particularly inappropriate when Patroklos has just expressed his wish to return to Achilles without delay, even to the extent of refusing to sit down ; and, more- over, it spoils the effect of the story at the end of the speech, which is essential. (2) The language is in several respects more closely allied to that of the Odyssey than of the Iliad. (3) In several points the episode seems to betray a later stage of civilisation than that belonging to the true Homeric time. For instance, a chariot with four horses is mentioned ; but elsewhere in Homer, with the exception of one passage also gravely suspected (//. viii. 185), we hear only of chariots with two horses. The same passage looks too as if it con- tained a reference to the Olympian games. This is not very clear, but if it be admitted it will follow that it is late ; for the Olympian games are quite unknown to Homer, who recognises only games on exceptional occasions, especially funerals. It appears too that the geography is wrong ; for the " rock Olenian " and the " hill of Alision," if they are rightly identified with the later Olenos and Alesiaion, are at the opposite extremities of Elis : one in the north-east, the other in the south. Such a mistake can be paralleled from the Odyssey; for in iii. 493-497, iv. i, Telemachos drives from 214 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI Pherae to Sparta in a day, regardless of the fact that the high range of Taygetos lies between the two. But there is no similar case of ignorance of the geography of Greece proper in the Iliad. It is likely therefore that the passage is introduced from some later Epic dealing with the youth of Nestor. The character of the garrulous old man is obviously suitable for the interpolation of such inappropriate episodes ; and we frequently have occasion to suspect speeches put into his mouth. 224, 12 688. The Epeians are the same as the Eleians, one being the tribal name, the other the local. But 671 is the only case in Homer where the name Eleians is used. 224, 14 690. It will be noticed that Herakles is by no means a Greek national hero. He appears in Homer as the lawless oppressor of western Greece, and is spoken of in terms of hatred in Od. xxi. 28, as in //. v. 403. 22 4-> 33 709. The two Moliones appear again, in another story of Nestor's, //. xxiii. 638, where they are called the sons of Aktor. See that passage for the curious legends concerning them. Z2 5, 3 74- It is possible that Agamede is none other than Medeia ; the two agree in their knowledge of drugs, and in their solar parentage ; for both are granddaughters of the Sun, who was father of Augeias. In that case the connexion of Medeia with the Argonauts will be a later expansion of the legend. 227, 21 794. It is likely that the end of Nestor's speech, from " but if in his heart," is interpolated from xvi. 36 (j-TJ, 14). The suggestion that Patroklos should take Achilles' place at the head of the Myrmidons seems to come better from him- self than merely as a repetition of words put into his mouth by Nestor. Such additions by a messenger on his own account to a message which he repeats verbally are obviously COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XI 215 likely to be added on wrongly to the original message ; several passages can be quoted from the Iliad where this has demonstrably happened (see note on xxiv. 181). 806. According to 1. 5 of this book, the ship of Odysseus 228, 2 was in the middle of the camp. But in vii. 383 the assembly is held at the ship of Agamemnon, which seems a more likely place. 846. According to tradition, the root used was the 229, n " yarrow," still called Achilka from this passage. Both this and Aristolochia were used as anodynes in Greek medicine. BOOK XII ON the assumption that the Third Stratum is marked by the introduction of the wall,- we have no choice but to place this book in it ; for, as its ancient title, the " Teichomachy," im- plies, it is entirely concerned with the fighting round the wall. It shows in a marked degree the typical character of books of the Third Stratum, brilliant individual passages connected by narrative which shows a decided want of clearness and vigour. The speeches of Hector to Polydamas, and of Sarpedon to Glaukos, are among the most famous in Homer. But the most striking beauty of the book is perhaps to be found in the abundance and elaboration of its similes, in which it is not surpassed by any other part of the Iliad, much less of the Odyssey; which is far more sparing of this ornament. Fine specimens of all the favourite Homeric comparisons are to be found here. The commonest types of simile liken a warrior to a wild beast at bay, or to a lofty tree in its pride or its fall. Both these are represented in this book, the former in several instances (231, 20; 234, 24 ; 239, 13), the latter once (234, n}. Then come the similes from nature, which give the epic poet his chief occasion for touching the modern sympathy with inanimate things. Of these we have two, both from snow : one quite brief ", i\ the other one of the most elaborate and most COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XII 217 beautiful in the Iliad (238, 25). And, finally, the third great class, that from the actions of men themselves, has several most remarkable examples, notably those just at the end of the book, of the men striving over the boundary, of the woman weighing the wool, and of the shepherd carrying the fleece. In contrast to the long and elaborate similes, we must not overlook the numerous brief, but yet most graphic comparisons, which illuminate a scene, it may be, in only two words ; take, for instance, the comparison to a diver of the man falling headlong from the walls (241, 32). The book contains too an instance of the fertility of the Homeric simile ; one which is introduced to illustrate a single point, often, in the course of expansion, develops a touch which suggests a new comparison altogether. Thus when the two Lapiths are compared to two wild boars for the fierceness with which they charge, the passing mention of the champing of the boars' tusks suggests the further com- parison to the clattering of their armour (234^ 24). Other instances of these " two-sided " similes, as they have been called, will be found in xiii. 492 (261, tf the light manner in which the gods are treated in the 220 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XII scenes in Olympos, and shows that we are not by any means to regard the Homeric age as one of primitive and simple piety. Piety of course there is; but it has reached the reflective stage, and it is singularly free from superstition. In this it contrasts in the strongest way with the official religion of later Greece and Rome, with that elaborate apparatus of auguries and omens without which no import- ant public step could be taken. There is no other equally outspoken expression of contempt in Homer ; the nearest approach is in Od. ii. 181, " Go now, old man, get thee home and prophesy to thine own children, lest haply they suffer harm hereafter ; but herein am I a far better prophet than thou. Howbeit, there be many birds that fly to and fro under the sun's rays, but all are not birds of fate." And here the contempt expressed is rather for the particular prophet than for his art. 238,4, 258. The word translated "machicolations" is one of uncertain meaning. It might naturally be used of courses of masonry, as Herodotos uses the same word of the courses of the Pyramids ; but we are led to suppose that the Greek wall was built only of earth with wooden pillars to hold it up. The question is one which cannot be decided. Aristarchos understood it to mean " they dragged scaling ladders towards the towers " ; but apart from the fact that scaling ladders do not appear elsewhere, the con- struction of the Greek seems to forbid this explanation. 238, 9 263. The Greek does not expressly name shields, and may mean only " with bulls' hides " kept at hand for the purpose of stopping gaps in the rampart. A shield is often called simply a bull's hide, from its chief material ; but it does not follow that a bull's hide is always a shield. 239, 9 294. The description of Sarpedon's shield offers some obscurities, chiefly in the explanation of the word trans- COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XII 221 lated rivets^ which literally means rods. It is generally understood to mean the rods inside the shield through which the arm was passed ; but there is no other trace of the use of these in Homer, except in the spurious line viii. 193; and tradition ascribed their invention to the Carians in post-Homeric times. A more probable explan- ation is that the rods were fastened to a central boss, and stretched radially at the back of the shield, something like the ribs of an umbrella, thus forming a framework on which the hides were fastened. But it is equally possible that they were rivets as translated ; the golden heads of such rivets formed one of the usual ornaments of the Homeric shield, the " bosses " of xi. 34. 310. Robert Wood, whose Essay on the Original Genius 239, 24 and Writings of Homer (1775) originally inspired Wolf, tells a story about this speech of Sarpedon which is too striking not to be repeated. It refers to Earl Granville, better known perhaps as Lord Carteret, and the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763. "Being directed to wait upon his Lordship a few days before he died, with the preliminary Articles of the Treaty of Paris, I found him so languid that I proposed postponing my business for another time ; but he insisted that I should stay, saying it could not prolong his life to neglect his duty, and repeating the following pas- sage out of Sarpedon's speech (from ' Ah, friend,' to ' let us go ' *), he dwelled with particular emphasis on the third line ('neither would I fight myself in the foremost ranks'), which recalled to his mind the distinguishing part he had taken in public affairs. His Lordship repeated the last words ('let us go') with a calm and determined resigna- tion ; and after a serious pause of some minutes, he desired to hear the Treaty read, to which he listened with a great 1 Wood of course gives the original Greek when quoting. 222 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XII attention, and recovered spirits enough to declare the ap- probation of a dying statesman (I use his own words) on the most glorious war and most honourable peace this nation ever saw." 240, 14 333. It is clear that the word "tower" here is used in a collective sense of the whole fortification, and this is indeed the general sense of the word in Homer. "Against his tower," just above, thus means against his part of the fortification. 240, 18 336. "Newly come from his hut," whither he had been taken after his wounding by Hector ; see viii. 334. 243, 2 421. This interesting simile seems to give clear evidence of the ancient "common -field" system of agriculture, of which traces still remain in England. The arable land of the township was held in common, and apportioned out for cultivation from time to time among the members of the community. In order to make the apportionment the fairer, the land was commonly cut up into small strips. of which each man had several in different places, so as to share all the different qualities of soil. It is easy to see how such a system would lead to perpetual disputes about the exact boundaries of the different slips. In Homer only the members of the Royal Family, or those to whom especial honour is decreed by the community, have land which they hold as their private property : the demesne which is enumerated by Sarpedon among the prerogatives of royalty in 11. 313-314 (2jp, 27), and is given to Bellerophon in vi. 194-195, as a reward for saving the state from its enemies. 243, 14 433. This simile again is peculiarly interesting, as giving us one of our few glimpses into the home life of the poor. Elsewhere the working of wool is always carried out by the women of the house for themselves even by Queen Arete* COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XII 223 in Phaeacia. Only here do we find the first trace of the beginnings of an industry of working wool, the spinning of it, as it would seem, being given out for payment. We may presume that the weighing is to show that all the wool given out is being faithfully returned in the form of yarn. The payment must have been in kind, of course ; probably in the form of food for the woman and her children. BOOK XIII WE now come to the great retardation in the plot of the Iliad which has been already pointed out in the Introduc- tion (p. 22). From the beginning of xiii. till we come again to the story of the " Menis " near the end of xv. the action does not advance ; every step gained by either side is exactly counterbalanced by a corresponding success on the other, so that things are brought back just to the state in which they began. At many points the story becomes confused, and then again flows on clearly for a considerable time. In disentangling the elements of which it has been built up, we have to take as our guides these passages of clear narrative, regarding them as constituting the original groundwork; the shorter confused intervals are the addi- tions by which the mosaic has been fitted together. Regarding the three books xiii.-xv. as a whole, we see that there are two main stories the "Aristeia of Idomeneus" and the " Deceiving of Zeus." The former occupies the bulk of this book, while the latter includes the main part of xiv. and the first 262 lines of xv. It would certainly be easiest not to attempt to analyse the manner in which these two poems have been fused into a continuous narrative, and to abandon any attempt to ex- plain the difficulties and complications of the next two books ; but it is at least worth while to put forward a theory COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIII 225 which, however hypothetical, seems to give a sufficient account of the phenomena. This theory assumes that the story of the "Aristeia of Idomeneus " was a part of the Second Stratum, an isolated Aristeia inserted, somewhat after the model of the " Aristeia of Diomedes," in the middle of the rout of the Greeks which began in xi. Aias was there left covering the retreat; a poet, wishing to do honour to Idomeneus, conceived the idea of making him sally forth from the camp and for a time stem the tide of the advancing Trojans. This episode at one time joined the end of xi. to xv. 592, where we suppose the " Menis " to begin again. Subsequently, at the epoch of the Third Stratum, a poet less interested in Idomeneus composed an alternative poem to take the same place. In this poem it was Poseidon who took the leading part in delaying the career of Hector, and it was by the wiles of Hera that he was enabled to escape the attention of Zeus and do so. The two poems could not properly stand together, as they occupied exactly the same space of time. But the school of Homeridae, or whatever authority it was which busied itself with the tradition of the Iliad, always reluctant to lose anything which had ever been incorporated in the masterwork, took it in hand to weld the two poems together. This was done by breaking up the " Deceiving of Zeus " into several parts, among which the "Aristeia of Idomeneus" was inserted almost whole, by the aid of various short passages of transition. These, by their confusion of motive, as we should expect, betray the difficulties which the arranger or " Diaskeuast " had to contend with. The general question of the reasons which lead to these conclusions will be best discussed in connexion with the next book. It will here be sufficient to state the results Q 226 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIII there arrived at so far as they concern xiii. These are, that the opening, 1-125 ( 2 49> I2 > "the Achaians"), and the clos- ing passage, 795-837 (from 270, 27 "and these set forth"), really belong to the " Deceiving of Zeus " ; that the original " Aristeia of Idomeneus " consists of 136-672 (249, 23 " then the Trojans " to 266, 32, " overshadowed him "). The in- tervening passages, 126-135 an ^ 673-794, are later, and added to make the necessary joints ; and two short pieces seem to have been inserted in the Aristeia itself for similar purposes (see notes on 210-245 an d 345~36o). The chief reason for supposing that the " Aristeia of Idomeneus " belongs to the Second Stratum is the fact that the wall is not mentioned in it, whereas there Js at least one allusion, and probably two, to fighting in chariots, which of course implies that the battle-field is the open plain and not a fortification. The general character of the Aristeia, too, is such as to bring it into immediate relation with the other Aristeiai, notably that of Diomedes. The gorgeous imagery of the opening scene, on the other hand, is thoroughly typical of the Third Stratum, which, as has been before mentioned, approaches what we call the romantic style. A remarkable instance of this is in the gambolling of the sea- beasts around Poseidon, and the standing asunder of the sea for gladness. Such a sympathy of non-human nature with the emotions of men is a certain touch of pure roman- ticism. NOTES 243, 4 4. It is evident that we have here a bit of genuine tradi- tion of nations who lay beyond the Greek horizon even in the classical times. The tribes to whom Zeus looks are clearly the nomad hordes of Southern Russia and the Lower Danube, who were afterwards known under the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XIII 227 general name of Scythians. The Hippemolgoi (literally mare-milkers) are the predecessors of the Tartars, who to this day drink koumiss or fermented mares' milk. As for the Abioi, they are probably the same as the Gabioi mentioned in a fragment of Aeschylos as "the most just and hospitable of all men." Herodotos mentions a tradi- tion of another Scythian tribe who were so just that all the neighbouring tribes used to resort to them for the settle- ment of their disputes. The Mysians are evidently not the nations of the Propontis who were known by that name in classical times, but the parent stock, the Moesians, as they were afterwards called, who lived in Thrace. As amber from the Baltic was known in Greek lands from the earliest times (see Schuchh. p. 196), it is likely enough that there came with it along the trade route from the north to the Mediterranean some vague knowledge of these northern tribes, just as we may naturally conclude that the knowledge of the pigmy races of Central Africa (iii. 6) came to Europe with ivory. 12. This is perhaps the most striking instance in the 245, 12 Iliad of a personal knowledge of the neighbourhood of the Troas on the poet's part; for, as a fact, the plain is visible in its whole extent from the summit of Samothrace. As the island is at a considerable distance, and Imbros lies directly between it and Troy, it would naturally be supposed by any one not well acquainted with the country that this was not the case. But the mountains of Samothrace are so high as to look well over the top of Imbros. 1 7. This journey of Poseidon is not easy to understand. 245, / * f 59. The staff has been the symbol of magical power throughout all time ; so it is with Kirke, as with Moses. It is noteworthy, however, that in the Iliad it is found only in books of the Third Stratum, as for instance the staff of Hermes in xxiv. 343. In v. 122, on the other hand, Athene produces the same effect on Diomedes without any other means than the exercise of the divine will. 247,22 71. "Tokens," perhaps rather "movements" or gait; but the word is obscure here. Virgil makes the goddess reveal her divinity in her majestic gait : " Vera incessu patuit dea " (Aen. i. 405). 2 47, 33 82. "Delight of battle" is the usual translation of the Greek charme, which looks as if it were derived from chairo, to rejoice. But this is by no means certain. It is remarkable that Homeric heroes never rejoice in fighting for the sake of fighting, except, as in this passage, by a miracle. Hatred and weariness of war are the predominant notes of the Iliad; and if we except this single word charme, it would hardly be possible to find any Homeric authority for such a phrase as Tennyson's "drink delight of battle with my peers." And etymologically the word charme can be just as well explained heat or fury. Here it will be " rejoicing in the fierceness which God put in them." It is COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XIII 229 probable that this single word has from all time given a false colouring to our conception of the heroic age, and led to the conclusion that it was not so far removed from the barbarous love of war for the sake of fighting and killing. On the other hand, the epithets which are heaped upon war, grievous, hateful, and the like, to say nothing of the whole tone of the poem, should rather show that the Homeric civilisation is one which is actually drawing to its close, and has lost the overflowing vigour and vitality which mark the earlier stages of culture. It is, in fact, ripening for its com- plete overthrow before the rougher Dorian tribes from the mountains. 95-124. The following speech of Poseidon is very con- 248, 14. fused, and it has been pointed out that it bears many marks of having been made up from two speeches. The one may consist of the first four lines, to "the Trojans," and from " all through the baseness " (26) to " hearts of the brave" (249, i). The rest gives the other form. It will be found that each of these reads as a perfect speech, and avoids the unnecessary tautology which marks the present text. The words translated " out on it " should, according to Homeric usage, stand at the beginning of a speech ; and even in the English it will be felt that the outburst which they introduce loses much of its effect when it has already been preceded by another rhetorical exordium. It will be seen that the first speech contains a distinct allusion to Achilles, in terms which imply that Agamemnon, who is meant by "our leader" and "the chief," had done nothing to expiate his wrong ; " let us right our fault with speed " is evidently an allusion to steps which ought to be taken, but it and the following words are entirely out of place if Achilles has already refused the humiliation offered, and has thus shewn that the " hearts of the brave " are in this 230 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIII case not easily righted. It may be conjectured, then, that the first form of the speech is the older, and that an alterna- tive was composed when the introduction of the " Embassy " had made the allusions meaningless; and that the two alternatives were subsequently fused into one. 249, 16-20 130-133. These lines, which recur in xvi. 215-217, were very famous in antiquity, and well deserve their reputation as a piece of description. There was a legend that Homer chose them to recite in the mythical contest which took place between him and Hesiod for the prize of poetry. This, of course, means no more than that they were regarded as worthy to represent the best style of the Iliad. They were frequently imitated, by Virgil as well as by earlier Greek and Roman poets. It will be observed that in this place they are borrowed from the " Menis " to fill up the gap, on the theory previously explained, between the proem to the " Deceiving of Zeus" and the "Aristeia of Idomeneus," which probably begins at the next paragraph of the trans- lation. The following metaphor of the falling rock is well worthy to stand beside them. 252, 2 207. Amphimachos is called Poseidon's grandson because, though his father Kteatos was nominally the son of Aktor (251, 12), he was in reality, according to the legend, the son of Poseidon. S 5 2 > 3" 210. We now come to a passage full of difficulties, which seems to have been added to bring the "Aristeia of Ido- meneus " into connexion with the story of the interference of Poseidon in the battle. This, as will be remembered, on the theory adopted, belonged originally not to the Aristeia at all, but to the following poem, the " Deceiving of Zeus." It is quite unlike Homer to say that Idomeneus was coming "from his comrade," without ever giving the comrade's name. None has been spoken of before; it cannot be Amphimachos, COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XIII 231 the last mentioned, of course, for Amphimachos is dead; and Meriones, the regular comrade of Idomeneus, is not wounded; it can only be some anonymous Cretan. Be- sides, why does Idomeneus appear unarmed? When we last heard of him in xii. 1 1 7 he was defending the wall, and in xi. 501 he was among the fore-fighters; even if he had left the battle to look after his anonymous friend, this would be no excuse for disarming at such a critical moment. The question as to how far the added piece extends is hard to answer; it must go at least to 239 ( 2 53> Si "into the strife of men"), and may possibly reach yet further ; for the whole colloquy between Meriones and Idomeneus seems out of place at this juncture. But in any case some older passage, probably quite a short one, must have been suppressed, saying how Idomeneus joined the fight with Meriones as soon as the latter had got his fresh spear. 249. According to the later legend, Molos was a son of 233, 14 Deukalion, so that Idomeneus was uncle of Meriones. This relationship is, however, not alluded to in Homer. 276. This spirited and vivid description of the ambush, 234, 8 the forlorn hope of the heroic age, should be compared with Odysseus' account of the conduct of Neoptolemos in the wooden horse, Od. xi. 523. 301. Ares is, of course, familiar to us from later authors -JJ", 2 as a Thracian god; but it is curious that the only other passage in which his Thracian relations are alluded to in Homer is in the very late "Lay of Demodokos," Od. viii. 361, where he goes to Thrace while his paramour Aphrodite goes to Paphos. Reason has been given in the note on v. 330 for supposing that this connexion of Aphrodite with Cyprus is post-Homeric ; perhaps the same may turn out to be the case with the connexion of Ares with Thrace. Who 232 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIII the Ephyri and Phlegyans were we can hardly say, as they are not historical peoples ; the legend said that the former dwelt in Thessaly near Krannon, and the latter were a pred- atory tribe who harassed Boiotia, and even succeeded in taking Thebes. From the context we should have supposed that they were to be found nearer to Thrace. The idea seems to be that the two tribes are constantly at war, and that now one and now the other gets the upper hand, as Ares joins either side. 35S> 2 7 326. "Guide us twain" is a strange expression, for, according to Homeric usage, it can only mean "drive us twain," thus distinctly implying that the two are in a chariot of which we have heard nothing before. If they are in a chariot, then it is clear that nothing was known about the wall to the poet who composed this part of the fighting. It looks as though all previous mention of the chariot had been suppressed, only this allusion being left because it is somewhat ambiguous, and therefore not a glaring contradiction. 2 5^ *3 343- Note how war is regarded as a painful sight even for an imaginary spectator who runs no danger himself. See the similar expression at the end of iv. 256, 16 345-354- This passage seems to be a very needless recapitulation of the position of affairs. The mention of Poseidon " stealing forth from the sea " is more suited to the opening of the book than to the present moment. The best solution of the difficulty is that it is an addition intended to keep Poseidon before us, and to give some sort of explanation of how it is that Zeus does not intervene to stop his help to the Achaians. The mention of the same "place of birth," or more literally "fatherland," is curious; the Homeric gods have very slight local affinities, as has been remarked with regard to Ares above; and from COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIII 233 Homer at least we could not say what is the birthplace of either Poseidon or Zeus. Perhaps the word is here to be taken not in its regular sense of " fatherland," but rather as fatherhood or parentage. The final sentence is difficult ; it is clearly another case of the metaphor by which the gods are regarded as deciding the course of battle by pulling the two armies backwards and forwards with ropes. The general sense is clear, that the two gods were both at once guiding the fight, but the exact bearing of the different phrases used is uncertain, and cannot be discussed apart from the Greek. 366. This reminds us of David, who promised to slay ^57,5 one hundred Philistines as the price of Saul's daughter. Here the victory is to take the place of the usual bride- price or gifts of wooing. 382. We are no hard matchmakers, we will not push you .257, 25 too hard : an irony to give the last touch to the taunt. The profession of the matchmaker or marriage-broker is a natural outcome of the commercial view of marriage implied in the buying of the bride for a price, and is fully recognised in many semi-civilised communities to say nothing of those which claim to be advanced. 385. Here we have an explicit mention of a chariot .257, 28 among the footmen. This has been prepared in xii., where we are told how Asios succeeded in driving his chariot through the gate. That passage, indeed, was no doubt put into. xii. for the very purpose of explaining the appearance of a chariot here. If we are right in supposing that the whole of this Aristeia is older than the invention of the wall, we see that there is no reason to be surprised at the appear- ance of a chariot, as the Greeks have gradually been driven along the open plain to the immediate neighbourhood of their ships. 234 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XIII 257, 33 3^9- The poplar here spoken of is the beautiful white poplar, which is by far the finest tree that grows to-day in Greece. 238, 18 407. On the question of the arm-rods of the Homeric shield, see the notes on viii. 193, xii. 294; the Greek here has only rods, and the word used, the familiar canon, means a straight rod, the English uses being derived from the sense of ruler. Hence it is not a very likely word to mean arm-rods, as these would naturally be curved. They may have been rods to which the baldrick was fastened; or, again, they may have been ribs like those on Sarpedon's shield, xii. 297 ; but in that case we should have expected to find more than two of them. 259, 23 444. Ares presides over every detail of the battle, even over the fate of weapons that miss their aim. In fact, the name Ares is commonly used as a mere synonym of battle itself. 260, 6 460. This curious legend of a jealousy between the elder and the younger branches of the Trojan royal house is alluded to again in xx. 178-186. It appears that there was a story of the permanence of the family of Aineias as kings in the Troad after the fall of Troy and the destruction of the house of Priam. There was even a legend that Aineias, being angry because Priam excluded him from public office, betrayed the city to the Greeks, and was rewarded by them with the kingship in the land. 260, 12 466. It would seem that Anchises, like Priam in vi. 249, had his son-in-law Alkathoos living with him in his house. 261,8 492. Notice the "two -sided" simile; the joy of >the shepherd, which is originally only a touch added to the comparison of the host to a flock of sheep, is in its turn made the point of comparison in a fresh simile. 262,5 521-525 look like a preparation for the scene in xv. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIII 235 no, where Ares is told of his bereavement. The lines contain several curious expressions. " Loud-voiced," liter- ally heavy -voiced, is an epithet which appears here only. The idea of the gods sitting under a canopy of golden clouds is unique, and looks like the work of the author of the " Deceiving of Zeus " (compare xiv. 350). And it is not true that the gods have been imprisoned in Olympos by Zeus ; they have only been forbidden to join in the war. 564. The meaning seems to be that the stump of the 263, 77 spear sticks in the shield like a stake driven into the ground, with its end charred to prevent decay : a precau- tion which is still commonly taken. 577. We hear of another Thracian sword, that of Aster- 263,30 opaios, in xxiii. 808. The reputation of the Thracians as metal-workers evidently dates from prehistoric times. A Thracian cup of metal is mentioned in xxiv. 234, and the chariot of the Thracian Rhesos is specially noted for its decoration in gold and silver, x. 438. There is no reason to suppose that the Thracian sword differed in size or shape from the ordinary Greek weapon. 600. This line, from " a sling," has all the appearance of 264, 20 a late addition intended to explain where the band of wool was found. For we nowhere hear of Homeric heroes using the sling as a weapon ; the only possible allusion to it at all in Homer is in 1. 716 below, and that is, as will be seen, an undoubtedly late interpolation. The expression of the line is in the Greek particularly awkward, and is in itself almost enough to show that it is a subsequent addition. -It is much more likely that the heroes would have carried woollen bandages with them in case of a wound than that they should have had slings and used them for that purpose. At the same time it must not be forgotten that slings were known in the Mykenaean age ; for they are clearly represented 236 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIII in the curious picture of a siege reproduced in the frontis- piece. The explanation probably is that they were the arm not of the heroes, but of the common soldier, with whom Homer does not concern himself. 264,33 612. Here again we have mention of a weapon not elsewhere occurring in Homer, a battle-axe, carried, it would seem, in a sling attached to the shield. It is true that in xv. 711 we find the Greeks fighting with axes, but that seems to be an accident due to the nature of the battle among the ships and huts, where every man fights with the first thing that comes to hand ; it does not prove that the axe was a regular weapon for battle. It is just possible that the attribution of the axe to the Trojan Peisandros may be a piece of local colouring, for the double-headed axe was a favourite symbol of various tribes of Asia Minor, especially of the Carians. But this had a religious significance, and would naturally be a sacrificial rather than a battle axe. 265, 20 631. This ending to the speech comes in rather curi- ously, and has been suspected of interpolation. It is not an effective reproach to an enemy to say that he is insati- able of battle. The chief objection, however, is to the last lines, beginning with the favourite commonplace "of all things there is satiety." The speech would certainly be more effective if it ended with " din of equal war." But it cannot be said that there is any strong ground for rejecting the passage. 266, 75 658. Pylaimenes, the father of Harpalion, has been already killed in v. 576; this undoubted contradiction, the most glaring, but after all one of the least important in the Iliad, has been already discussed in the note there. 266, 28 669. We have another case of a war-fine in xxiii. 297 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XIII 237 where Echepolos gives Agamemnon a mare " that he might escape from following him to windy Ilios." 673. We now come to the transition passage which is to 266, jj take us back again from the " Aristeia of Idomeneus " to the story of the " Deceiving of Zeus." It may be taken to end at 794. It is remarkable in many ways, among others as containing the only occurrence in Homer of the Ionian name. This, with other signs, leads to the conclusion that we have here a passage which can be pretty definitely put down to Ionic poets. Indeed, we may go further, and say that it bears the appearance of an Athenian interpolation ; for it places the Athenians at the head of the lonians, a position which they certainly do not elsewhere hold in the Epic. The composition of the whole piece is confused in several points. The effect produced by the Lokrian bow- men is unlike anything else in the Iliad; the speech of Polydamas contains much that is strange, and the tactics that he recommends seem to be inconsistent with the earlier part of the book. In 789 we are told that the heat of the fight is at the centre ; but this contradicts the whole of the " Aristeia of Idomeneus," in which the fighting has been on the left. Finally, it will be observed that the wall, of which we have heard nothing during the whole of the exploits of Idomeneus, suddenly reappears, and, strangely enough, in connexion with chariots and horses, which in the previ- ous fighting round the wall have been entirely absent, with the notable exception of Asios, and this was specially accounted for. 685. The epithet "with trailing tunics" is one which 267,12 does not reappear in Homer, but in later Greek it was particularly appropriated to the lonians. It alludes to the long flowing chiton which was borrowed from the East, and was later known as the Ionic chiton, because the lonians 238 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIII had introduced it into Greece. It was, however, only a dress for peace, and could not be worn in war, where it would have hindered free movement. It can here therefore be regarded only as a not very appropriate national epithet. It will be seen that the lonians here meant cannot possibly be those of Asia Minor, to whom the name was afterwards specially given. The title must here be a general one, including the Lokrians, Phthians, and Epeians, and, of course, the Athenians. The mention of the Phthians, however, is particularly strange; Phthia is the home of Achilles, and its inhabitants, the Myrmidons, Hellenes, and Achaians (see ii. 684), were certainly not lonians. Their leaders, Medon and Podarkes, are mentioned in the Catalogue as having succeeded to Philoktetes and Protesi- laos respectively. 267, 29 701. It will be observed that of the tribes first mentioned the Lokrians were not, like the rest, repeated with the name of their captain, Aias the Less ; his absence is now explained by his fighting with the other Aias. 267, 32 705. The oxen are yoked by the horns instead of by the neck, as is still the custom in south Europe. They are said to work " in a fallow field " because the breaking up of such fresh ground is the hardest work. 268, 2 707. The words translated " the end of the furrow brings them up" are probably corrupt, and the exact meaning of the phrase is not known. That given in the translation no doubt gives the sense approximately. 268, 5 710. The idea of a hero giving his shield to an attendant is again not Homeric ; there is no other instance of such a practice. It may have been later borrowed from Eastern nations, to whom the shield-bearer as an attendant on the fighter was familiar. 268, 10 716. The appearance of the Lokrians as archers was COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIII 239 noticed by Pausanias as an anomaly; for, as he says, no Greek people with the exception of the Cretans was accus- tomed to fight with bows and arrows. The question of the use of slings has been already touched upon in the note to 1. 600. The Greek here only says " trusting in bows and well-twisted sheep's wool " ; but there can be little doubt that the reference is to slings, though attempts have been made to explain it differently. But the uncertainty is only of a piece with the many difficulties of all this part of the narrative. It has, however, been already noted on ii. 530 that the epithet with linen corslet there applied to Aias marks him out as a light-armed warrior, though he does not appear as such either here or in other parts of the Iliad. 721. It is quite unlike Homer to make this confusion 268, 77 of the Trojans, and almost their defeat, result only from the doings of the archers whom the heroic age, like later Greece, held in such open contempt. They nowhere else have the slightest effect on the army at large, though here and there an individual Greek hero is wounded or killed by a Trojan archer. 731. This line ("to another the dance, to another lute 268, 27 and song "), a commonplace and tasteless interpolation, is omitted by all the best MSS., and, according to Eustathios, was first inserted by Zenodotos. 745. The debt of yesterday is evidently an allusion -to the 269, 8 Greek defeat in viii. ; so that this passage must be at least as late as that book ; it is probably much later. 749. The mention of the chariot is unexpected here, as 269, 13 Hector had left his chariot before breaking through the wall. The couplet is borrowed from xii. 80-8 1 ; but the second line ("straightway ... his arms, and"), with the mention of the chariot, is omitted here by one or two good 240 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIII MSS. So Hector's speech is borrowed from xii. 368-369. In xii. the words are more intelligible ; for thither has a distinct reference there, which is not the case here ; and besides Hector does not now go " to face the war," but to withdraw from it for a short time. 2fy> 18 754- The comparison of a warrior at full speed to a snowy mountain seems highly inappropriate. It has been suggested that a " snowy mountain " means an avalanche ; but that can hardly be got out of the words, and in any case an avalanche can never have been a familiar sight even in Greece, and on the coasts of Asia Minor must always have been quite unknown. The only other explanation of the simile is that the white crest on the helmet is meant to be compared to the snowy top of a mountain; but this is by no means satisfactory. To say the least it lacks the clearness which marks the real Homeric simile. 269, 28 764. It seems that "within the wall" must mean within the city of Troy, whither Dei'phobos has been taken. But such a use is strange in a passage where the Greek wall has been the main object of interest for so long. sjo, 8 776. Some other day, i.e. any day rather than now. 270, 27 795. The fine passage which follows is one of the best battle-scenes in the Iliad. At one time I was prepared to attribute it to the "Menis," and it is certainly well worthy of a place in that or any other poem. But I feel that mere excellence is no ground for so attributing it ; and, as the "Menis" elsewhere appears only in large continuous masses, we have no ground for giving it this isolated piece. It must therefore be counted as part of the "Deceiving of Zeus "; the exact place which it takes in that poem will be discussed in the next book. The splendid simile with which it opens is evidently taken from one of the "white squalls" of the Aegaean Sea, which seem to leap straight down from the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIII 241 tops of the mountains, and lash the waves to fury in an incredibly short time. 830. The term " lily-skin " is evidently used ironically, .?//, that fair tender flesh, as though Aias were a girl. For the only other mention of the lily in Homer see note on iii. 152. BOOK XIV WE now have to consider the whole question of the relation of the " Deceiving of Zeus," as this book has always been called, to the story of xiii. It must be remarked that the story of the Deceiving is continued without a break into the next book, and only comes to an end with xv. 366. All up to that line will therefore be treated together. The first question which occurs is this : Why, when Poseidon has been successfully helping the Greeks for a long space of time, measured by no less than 700 lines, should it only now occur to Hera to come to his aid, and distract the attention of Zeus? Her intervention should evidently have come at the beginning of the preceding book, not here. This consideration led the eminent critic Nitzsch to suggest that the whole action of this book is not consecutive to, but parallel with, that of xiii. ; that the journey of Hera to Ida in xiv. takes place simultaneously with the journey of Poseidon to Troy in xiii., and that his unchecked action on the battle-field in the last book is due to the fact that it is happening at the very same time when Hera is beguiling Zeus on Gargaros. This supposition would entirely remove the difficulty ; but, unfortunately, it is not a possible one. There is not in the text one word to indicate it ; even a careful reader could not discover it for himself without an abnormal gift of insight; while for an uninstructed COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIV 243 hearer to find it out would be a perfect miracle, xiii. ends with the " cry of the two hosts," and xiv. begins with the " cry of battle " how is any one to know that these are by no means the same cry, but that the cry of xiv. is by far the earlier in time, and in fact is identical with the " shouts and cries " of xiii. 41 ? Yet there can be no doubt that this is the connexion required ; for it is natural to suppose that the wounded chiefs, if they were to come out at all, would do so when the wall has just been carried, and not, as they now seem to do, only after a long and stubborn fight has taken place within it. Now this difficulty can be got over by supposing that the beginning of xiii. was originally the introduction to the " Deceiving of Zeus," and immediately preceded xiv. i. The bulk of xiii. has been already recognised as an independent poem, and may be left out of account. But there still remains the passage which closes the book xiii. 795-837. What are we to say of this ? Fine though it is as far as it goes, it is only a beginning. We expect to find it followed by a conflict between Aias and Hector, and it is something of a surprise when we come to the opening of xiv. to see that all the loud talk ends in nothing whatever. But when we look a little further on in xiv. we find the converse difficulty ; there is a conflict between Aias and Hector which is not introduced at all ; it is preceded only by a short passage which is so full of difficulties and absurdities that it at once betrays itself as a later addition inserted only as a stop-gap. We are at once led to the conclusion that the lines at the end of xiii. are out of their proper place, and really ought to stand instead of this offending passage, which consists of 363-401 (from " who straightway " 284, 23, to " each other " 285, 29) ; if in place of this we put xiii. 795-837, it will read on without a 244 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XIV break ; only in xiii. 795 instead of "and these" we must trans- late " but the others," which is equally consistent with the Greek. To resume, then ; on this supposition the " Deceiving of Zeus" was originally composed as follows : xiii. 1-125, xiv. 1-362, xiii. 795-837, xiv. 402-522, xv. 1-366. It then forms a clear and consistent whole, which can be read from end to end without offence. At the same time it is only fair to point out the difficulty involved ; it is hard to see why, even if it had been decided to combine the "Aristeia of Idomeneus " with the " Deceiving of Zeus," the latter story should have been thus broken up ; the transposition of the meeting of Aias and Hector from the middle of xiv. to the end of xiii. is not accounted for. We can only say that the evidence is very strong in favour of such a transposition having been made, and we must be content to remain in ignorance as to the motive. Be that as it may, it does not interfere with the extreme beauty of the poem in its most important parts. This stands alone in the Iliad as having the doings of the gods as its central interest, and not those of men. Hence it is that now we find ourselves in the realm of fancy, and almost of romance ; the tone is perhaps more sensuous than in any other part of the Iliad, but it is the sensuousness of healthy nature, such as befits the later period of the great epic age. NOTES 273, i i. Nestor, it will be remembered, was at his wine when we left him at the end of xi. ; this is evidently alluded to here. 273, 16 l6 - This fine simile is taken from the ground swell caused by a storm at a distance, and often followed by the storm itself. The wave is called " dumb " because there is COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIV 245 no wind to make it foam and dance. The chosen, or rather "steady," gale means a decided wind in contrast to the uncertain airs which precede the gale. 31. The "first," not in time, but in place, as one goes 274, n from the shore inland. So " hindmost " means the furthest from the sea. 36. The headlands at the ends of the bay, known later 274, 16 as Sigeion and Rhoiteion, are about five miles apart. 40. There is no reason why Nestor should have caused 274, 20 the spirit of the chieftains to fail ; Aristarchos omitted the line (from " even Nestor "), saying that it is quite needless for the old man to be named. 77. For " far out " it would perhaps be better to translate 275, 28 "afloat," for the intention evidently is to have the ships close at hand for a start. The Homeric ship when ready to sail was moored by ropes from the bows fastened to heavy stones in place of anchors, while the stern was made fast to the shore with hawsers. 86. To wind the skein, literally to wind up wars, i.e. carry 276, 5 them through to the end ; much as we too talk of " winding up" a business. The expression recurs in xxiv. 7, and several times in the Odyssey. 95. This line " and now . . . uttered " recurs in xvii. 276, 13 173, and is probably interpolated thence. 113. This little genealogical dissertation, down to 125 277,1 ("speak sooth," 277, /j), is far from appropriate at this place, and hardly suits the very direct and simple style of Diomedes' speeches in other places. It is just the sort of addition which could easily be made, and may be a specimen of the genealogical poetry which was so popular in the Hesiodic age. The reason of the migration of Tydeus from Aitolia to Argos was, according to the later legend, a homicide, which Diomedes passes over in silence 246 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIV for reasons of piety to his father's memory. It is likely enough that homicide with the penalty of exile attached to it was in fact a potent element in scattering the early noble families. The exile attached himself to some powerful man who gave him protection, and was in turn glad to have his importance increased by well-born retainers. It will be seen that the property in land with which Tydeus is endowed is a recognition of his entrance into the royal family by marriage with the king's daughter (see note on xii. 421). Diomedes himself had married another of the daughters of Adrastos or Adrestos, who was thus his own aunt (v. 412). 277, 24 135-152. This sudden appearance of Poseidon is clearly a later addition. It is against the Homeric practice to make him appear simply as " an ancient man " ; elsewhere, whenever a god shows himself to mortals in human form, it is always as a definite person known to them, and with his name fully stated. After his speech he seems suddenly to drop the character of the old man, and to shout his loudest in his own person, quite forgetting that he has to conceal himself from Zeus ; with a rather comic effect. We can easily see why such an interpolation should have been made. In the original form of the " Deceiving," the first appearance of Poseidon and his efforts to help the Greeks at the beginning of xiii. came very shortly before this. But now that the whole of the " Aristeia of Idomeneus " has been put in between, we need to have our attention recalled to his doings, which are the motive for the intervention of Hera. 278, 23 170. This account of Hera's toilet is interesting as being the fullest account which we have of the Homeric lady's dress. The stress laid upon sweet fragrance will strike the reader at once ; the idea is repeated in many forms ; it is, of COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIV 247 course, implied in the word ambrosia itself, for which refer- ence may be made to the note on ii. 19. The robe, as is shown by the fastening with clasps, is the ancient Greek dress, known later as the Doric chiton ; it consisted of a single large square piece of woollen fabric, neither shaped nor sewn, but put round the body from the side. A lappet from the back was then brought over each shoulder some way down the breast, and there fastened by a long pin or bodkin this is the real meaning, probably, of the word translated " clasps " to the corresponding part of the front of the dress. The words translated wrought delicately mean literally scraped, or polished, with careful work ; they must therefore apply to the last process only, that of giving the finished surface to the material; though this is doubtless meant to stand for the whole process of manufacture. " Many things beautifully made," i.e. coloured patterns, whether inwoven or, more probably, embroidered. The elaborate adornment of articles of apparel is very character- istic of the early Greek age ; in the classical time it was almost abandoned, the robe being quite plain. The tassels to the girdle too are a mark of antiquity ; such pendants are found in very archaic representations of women's dress, but were given up later ; they were probably due to Oriental influence. They are here to be conceived as golden pen- dants, perhaps such as were found at Mykenai (see Schuchh. p. 1 80). The veil is to be conceived as another piece of woollen material, worn like the modern factory girl's shawl ; i.e. thrown over the head from behind, not worn in front like the veil proper. It served the purpose both of a head covering and a cloak, and seems to have been the origin of the later Greek himation or lady's cloak. Earrings were a favourite adornment of Mykenaean ladies, and have been found of all sorts, some of an enormous size (Schuchh. p. 248 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIV 193). It has not hitherto been possible to prove from the oldest Mykenaean tombs the use of the " clasps " or pins for fastening the main garment ; and from the few representa- tions of women's dress which have been preserved from the Mykenaean time it would appear that the ladies did not then wear the " Doric chiton," but dressed in an elaborate- shaped garment, not unlike that of the modern lady, with flounces or tucks running round the skirt (Schuchh. pp. 276, 293). But towards the end of the Mykenaean period fashion must have changed ; for in the latest tombs there have been found fairly numerous examples of these dress- pins or fibulae, as Roman archaeologists call them (Schuchh. p. 296). 279, 21 201. This is one of the few Homeric allusions to the pre- Olympian dynasty of Kronos and Rhea. Okeanos appears again as a divinity only in xx. 7, where he does not seem to be regarded as a progenitor of the gods. When we come to Hesiod, we find Okeanos and Tethys counted, along with Kronos, as children of Earth and Heaven, Gaia and Uranos. Compare the note on the Titans, v. 898. 280,3 214. Broidered girdle, literally pierced strap. It is not quite clear that it was a girdle, as it was taken from the breast, and the Homeric girdle was worn low down about the waist. The expression may be a loose one ; if it really was a girdle, we must understand that Hera puts it in her bosom for purposes of concealment. Kestos, " pierced," is here an adjective only, indicating the adornment of the strap with needlework, as in iii. 371 ; in Roman days it appears as a substantive, the cestus or magic girdle of Venus. Comparison should be made with the passage in Od. v. 346, where Leukothea gives Odysseus, to save him from the sea, her " veil immortal." 280, 19 230. Thoas is mentioned again as king of Lemnos in COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XIV 249 xxiii. 745 ; he is, of course, not to be confused with the Aitolian hero of the same name. Why Hera should have found Sleep at Lemnos we cannot say ; there may have been some cultus of Sleep there, but nothing is known of it, and Sleep hardly looks like a genuine primitive god. He is rather a personification for the purpose of the moment, like the Dream at the beginning of ii. 250. The son of Zeus is Herakles, whose capture of Troy 281, s has been already alluded to in v. 640. The same legend is related at greater length in xv. 18-30 ; and in xix. 96-133 we have the reason of Hera's enmity to Herakles. 272. The touching of earth and sea is an appeal to these 281, 29 nether gods ; just as Althaia calls upon the Erinyes by beating the earth (ix. 568). The Styx is always the river of the divine oath (see ii. 755 ; xv. 37). But the addition of the mysterious older gods is peculiar to this passage, and seems to answer to the feeling that a more personal sanction than that of a river is required. 291. It is not of much use to speculate what the Kymindis 282, 75- really was. Aristotle gives the name to a .bird which is 1 generally identified with the night-jar, as in Mr. Raper's note to the translation. But he says that it is a bird dwelling in the mountains, to which the night-jar is certainly not pecu- liar. Another conjecture is that he meant the hawk-owl, which is a mountain bird. But even then we have little ground for supposing that he could know that the bird so called in his time had borne the name from prehistoric antiquity. For the " language of the gods " see note on i. 403 ; and for the god taking the likeness of a bird, vii. 59. 296. The secret wedlock of Zeus and Hera was a very 282, 19 ancient mythological theme, and appears in many local cults apparently of the highest antiquity. 317. This "Leporello Catalogue," as it has been called, 283, 12 250 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIV of the loves of Zeus from " not when I loved " to " thy very self " has been rejected by critics from very early times as a later interpolation. With* the exception of Leto, not one of these mistresses is known to Homeric mythology, and we can definitely say that one tale at least, that of the birth of Dionysos, is post-Homeric. The legend of the birth of Minos and Rhadamanthys from the daughter of Phoinix, " the Phenician," is interesting, as probably containing the legend of the meeting of Greek and Phenician elements in Crete. Her name is Europa, which is probably only a Greek form of the Semitic 'ereb, " the west." Demeter is generally a mere abstraction of the idea of agriculture, not a goddess proper, in Homer. In one other passage only, Od. v. 125, has she a personality of her own, and there an amour of hers is related which has all the appearance of being far more ancient than this. 284, 23 363. It has been said that the following passage, down to 401 (283,2(2), is clearly a later addition. The chief argu- ment for this is the absurdity of the idea of making the warriors exchange arms in the middle of the fight. Even the idea of " harnessing in the best shields " is ridiculous ; as though the warriors in general had only their second-best with them, and could retire to their huts to make the change. Almost equally un-Homeric is the way in which Hector and Poseidon are in 389 (285, 18-1^) spoken "of as if they were two equal powers ; however we take it, this is flat blasphemy. It is strange too that we are not told in what guise Poseidon appears, or even whether he makes himself visible at all. Certainly there is no appearance of the " ancient man " in the way in which he proposes to lead the chieftains of the army into battle ; but they seem to take it all as a matter or course, without the least consciousness that they have to do with a god. Nestor's presence with the other chiefs is COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XIV 251 entirely forgotten (285, 7). There are, too, several obscure and un-Homeric descriptions. For instance, the phrase used of Poseidon's sword, which, by the way, does nothing to sustain its reputation, " wherewith it is not permitted that any should mingle in woful war," is not intelligible. The phrase "mingle in war" is common in Homer, but always in its natural sense, of the warriors and not of their weapons. Here it must mean either that no mortal can carry it with him into battle, or that no mortal can dare to face it in the battle ; the following words seem to show that the latter is meant, but the expression is very awkward. In short, the whole passage is as poor a stop-gap as is to be found. When we get to 402 the style changes at once, and we are on Homeric ground once more. 404. The two belts did not of course cross ; they must 283, 32 both have gone over the right shoulder, but would soon part company, the sword-belt passing lower down than the baldrick of the shield. The point meant must therefore be immediately beneath the right shoulder. 410. The props here spoken of seem to be the same as 2S6 < J those mentioned in i. 486, ii. 154, which were used to keep the ships upright ; though a different word is used in those passages. It is, however, hard to see how it could happen that many such props should be rolling about ; and a plaus- ible suggestion has been made that the real sense of the word is ballast. Stones used for ballast would naturally be thrown out when the ships were drawn up on the beach. 413. "Top" is the traditional explanation, but it is not 2 $ 6 > & certain. Aeschylos uses the same word of a whirlwind, and it is quite possible that this may be the meaning here, though it gives perhaps a less Homeric simile. Compare xi. 147, " tossed him like a ball of stone to roll." 433. Though in the preceding books the battle has 286, 30 252 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIV frequently swayed to and fro from the camp to the city walls, this is the first mention we have had of the ford of the Sca- mander lying between. It reappears in xxi. i, xxiv. 692-693, and is implied in xxiv. 350. This is only one instance of the freedom with which the details of topography are treated in the Iliad. The river appears and disappears just as suits the poet at the moment. 287, 8 444. The river nymph is a mother by a mortal, as in vi. 22. Satnios is a short form for Satnioeisios ; a similar name from a river is Simoeisios in iv. 474. So also we have Skamandrios as the name of Hector's son (vi. 402). 287* 3 2 467. It is not clear whether the head is completely severed, so that it falls to the ground before the trunk, or if the meaning is that the blow makes Archelochos turn head over heels, so as to alight on his face. 288, 5 474. " Favoureth his house," an obscure expression, meaning apparently that Aias pretends to recognise a family likeness ; several sons of Antenor appear and are slain, the last of them in xxi. 546. The Alexandrian critic Aristophanes had a simpler reading here, " for to him he is most like in favour." 288, 7 476. Akamas also is son of Antenor (see xi. 60 and elsewhere). 288, 22 491. Hermes is the god of flocks and herds ; and, prob- ably as a subordinate result of this function, the god of wealth gained in any way. His character as the god of herdsmen is seen in Od. xiv. 435, where the swineherd Eumaios sacrifices to him along with the nymphs. 288, 32 499. The head at the end of the spear is compared to a poppy-head at the end of its long stalk. 289, 9 508. The following passage to the end of the book is very likely a later addition. Contrary to the regular Homeric practice, the appeal to the Muses does not come COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XIV 253 at a critical point. The turning of the battle took place at the wounding of Hector, and since then many heroes have " lifted the spoils " besides Aias. Nor do we anywhere else find Aias the Less given such praise as he has here. This, however, is a minor point ; the chief objection is to 508-510, and if these be rejected the rest of the passage may perhaps stand as genuine. BOOK XV THE beginning and ending of this book will give us little trouble. The first three hundred and sixty -six lines are closely connected with the preceding story of the "Deceiving of Zeus"; this only reaches its end when Apollo, at the command of Zeus, has brought back Hector to the battle-field, and undone all that the interference of Poseidon has effected. Things are thus left in the same state as at the beginning of xiii. The end of the book is equally bound up with the story of xvi. ; it describes the attack on the ships which makes the sally of the Myrmidons a matter of pressing need. Some little doubt may be felt as to the point at which the tale of the "Wrath" is thus resumed. On the whole, 592 ("now the Trojans," jop, j) is the most likely point; though it might be possible to include a little more, and begin at 515 ("then Hector slew," 306, 23). The former passage, however, fits on to the end of xi., where we last left the " Menis," but the latter does not ; we should, therefore, if we include 515-591 in the "Menis," have to suppose that some connecting passage has been lost, which is not necessary on the other hypothesis. The intervening portion of the book, being a joint between two stories of different origin and age, is, as we are prepared to find, full of considerable difficulties. The most obvious of these is the continual uncertainty and want of clearness in the view of the field of battle. In COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XV 255 1. 387 we are told that the Achaians climb up aloft and fight from the ships; but only a few lines further on, 405-410 (303, id), the Achaians are in ranks which the Trojans cannot break through to get at the huts and ships. Then for two hundred lines the fighting is, so far as we can see, of the normal type on the level, and in 592 we are told that the Trojans " rushed upon the ships," as though they had not done so long before; it is not till 653 (j-fo, last line) that they get " over against " the ships, or " into the intervals of the ships," whatever the word means. This latter interpretation is quite intelligible if we suppose that the attack made upon the ships in 592 is really the first moment at which the Trojans have reached them, and that it is only after a hard struggle that they get among them ; but it is quite meaningless if they have driven the Achaians up into the ships a long time before. The fact is that the poet who composed all this part before 592 has spun it out at far too great length, and has brought in so many incidents that he has been at a loss to find scenery for them, and has been reduced to borrowing it by anticipa- tion from the succeeding incidents of the " Menis." Among other tasks, he was bound to remind us of the existence of Patroklos, who had last been left tending Eurypylos at the end of xi. ; he is therefore brought upon the scene again in a short passage, most of the lines of which are borrowed from other places in the Iliad, while those which are original almost all betray a departure from the Homeric style of expression. These and other minor difficulties will be best discussed in the notes. NOTES 1 8. This is one of the many stories of the fettering of the *9, 20 gods, of which we had a curious instance in i. 399, and 256 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XV another in v. 385. A third instance is the fettering of Ares and Aphrodite in the " Lay of Demodokos " in Od. viii. The mythological significance of all these stories is as yet not made out ; but the fettering of gods and the casting of them out of heaven is a feature common to many primitive mythologies. It is not quite certain what the objects were which Zeus fastened to Hera's feet The word used means "anvils" in later Greek, as in Homer regularly ; but it is clear from a comparison of similar words in related languages that it originally meant large stones, especially meteoric stones, commonly known as thunderbolts. This would be a far more suitable thing for Zeus to use than an anvil. There appears also, from a note of Eustathios on this passage, to have been a legend that the actual blocks used on this occasion were thrown down by Zeus and fell in Troy -land, where they were shown to sightseers. This would evidently be conclusive, for such blocks can only have been meteoric masses. The weights in any case are used simply as a means of torture, such as is applied. to Melanthios in Od, xxii. 173; he is hung by a rope to a pillar with, as is suggested in the note to the translation, boards tied behind him as a weight. 291, 17 36. Though Hera sails very near the wind, she may be acquitted of actual perjury, as Poseidon has gone to the battle without consulting her; and though Sleep has gone to tell him of the diversion which Hera has made in his favour, yet it does not appear that this was done by her own command. Morally, of course, the oath is fraudulent ; but Zeus guesses the actual state of things very fairly. 292, a 64. From this line, beginning with " of Achilles son of Peleus," to the end of the speech, has all the appearance of an interpolation. The prophecy of the course of the war is COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XV 257 not in accordance with epic practice, and is quite unneces- sary. And it does not agree with the facts ; Achilles does not stir up Patroklos, but vice versa ; and the attack is made not upon the ships of Achilles, at the end of the line, but in the centre. It is not clear whether " from that hour " means, as it would seem, from the death of Achilles, or from the sending of Patroklos ; in neither case is it true at least so far as we know the legend of what happened after the death of Achilles that the pursuit from the ships endured continually till the Achaians took Troy. The "counsels of Athene" refer to the stratagem of the wooden horse. 80. This is the only simile in Homer taken from mental 292, 28 processes, with the exception of Od. vii. 36, "Their ships are swift as the flight of a bird, or as a thought." The mean- ing, of course, is that Hera travels as fast as a man can go in thought from one place to another of many distant lands which he has visited. "And he thinketh him of many things" means virtually "however many places he may think of" as wishing to transport himself thither. 105. "Draw nigh," i.e. with hostile intent; as in Ps. 293,21 xxxii. 9, " Whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee." in. The death of Askalaphos has been related in xiii. 293, 27 518. 119. In iv. 440 Fear and Dread, or, as the same words 294,3 are there translated, Terror and Rout, are the companions, not the horses, of Ares; and here it is quite possible to translate " bade Fear and Dread yoke his horses." So too in xiii. 299, Panic, or Dread, is the son of Ares. 141. This phrase is not easy to explain, as the immediate 294, 26 concern is with the offspring of a god and not of a common man, to which the words seem to refer. In fact there are s 258 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XV very few sons of gods warring before Troy; Achilles, Aineias, and Sarpedon are the only cases of any importance. Athene may mean that, when pedigrees are traced back, a large number are descended from gods, so that "it is hard to keep watch over the lineage " of all men ; i.e. if divine blood is to be avenged, then the death of almost any hero would lead to a divine strife. 296, 25 204. The function of the Erinyes to avenge ail wrongs done to family ties has already been pointed out on ix. 454, 57i- 296, 29 207. This line is alluded to by Pindar : " Lay to heart this also of the words of Homer, and bear it out ; he saith that a good messenger bringeth greatest honour into every matter ; the Muse is also exalted by excellent message- bearing" (Pyth. iv. 277). This is the only instance where Pindar quotes anything from Homer by name. 2 97>3 214. This line, from "and of Hera" to " Hephaistos," is apparently interpolated, as Hermes and Hephaistos hardly appear as partisans of Troy, except in the very late " Theo- machy " in xx. and xxi. It would seem that originally Hera was not mentioned ; some rhapsodist thought she ought to have been, and in order to introduce her he added the other gods also, in order to make up his line. 2 97> 33 242. It seems to be implied that Zeus has already begun to revive Hector by his mere will from afar. Such action of a god is very rare in Homer ; it is almost always essential for him to come to the spot where he is to act. 298, 24 263-268. This fine simile is repeated word for word from vi. 506-511. There can be no doubt that it is far more in place there than here : there it illustrates the exultant wanton pride of Paris, going fresh from his chamber to the battle- field, and every touch tells ; here the only comparison is with the speed of Hector, and, except for fleetness, the simile COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XV 259 has no special bearing. Aristarchos omitted nearly all of it here ; but it seems necessary that we should have some indication of the return of Hector to the fight, and if the simile is omitted, nothing of the sort is left. 280. The expression "their hearts fell to their feet" ^99, 7 seems to be much the same as our own "their courage sank into their heels," with an obvious allusion to running away. 281. There are reasons for doubting the authenticity of *99> 8 this passage, down to 305. These are mainly linguistic; but it may be noticed that the idea of sending away the mass of the army to the rear is strange at a moment when it would be supposed that every mart was wanted. There is no subsequent allusion to the division, but the narrative continues as if the whole force were fighting. 310. The mention of "Hephaistos the smith" shows 300,3 clearly that the Homeric aegis was conceived as an ordinary shield faced with metal, and was not the goatskin of later legend (see note on v. 736). For the fringe of tassels compare the note on xiv. 170. 344. The palisade spoken of has nothing to do with the 301, 10 wall ; it consists of stakes driven into the ground at the bottom of the trench ; see ix. 350. The wall is some dis- tance off. 365. The word translated archer is of quite uncertain 301, 32 meaning, like so many other titles of gods. It has been also explained " bright " or " loud-voiced." With this action of Apollo the episode of the "Deceiving of Zeus" comes to an end, everything that has happened in it having been exactly counteracted. Apollo now disappears from the scene. 379. It is curious that the thunder, though said to be in 302, 14 answer to Nestor's prayer, acts in favour of the Trojans, who are encouraged by it. In any case the time has not 260 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XV yet come for Zeus to listen to prayers on behalf of the Achaians. 302, 20 385. The presence of chariots within the wall, which at the earlier stages of the fight contradicted what was said in xii., is now of course explained by Apollo's action in bridging the moat and sweeping away part of the wall. 302, 24 388. This passage, and 677 below, "a great pike for sea- battles," are the only allusions in Homer to sea-fighting. It was probably of a rudimentary sort, and would consist chiefly of attempts to board ; at least, so far as negative evi- dence goes, there is no reference to ships' beaks such as would be used for ramming. The pike in 677 is 22 cubits long, and is here called jointed, presumably because a weapon of such size had to be made in lengths joined to- gether. One may suppose that in a sea-fight it would be used rather for fending off an enemy's ship than as a spear proper. 302, 26 390. This takes us back to the end of xi., where Patroklos was left tending Eurypylos. It will be remembered that the wall has twice been crossed by the Trojans, first at the end of xii. It is not clear whether it is that attack which is now referred to, or the one which has been just described. The latter supposition seems the most natural; but then it is strange that Patroklos should have sat through all the first escalade, as it would seem, without noticing it ; and it is only of the former that it can be said that the flight of the Danaans began. The difficulty is of course inherent in the attempt to join together the two ends of the story of the "Menis," which have been separated by such long additions. joj, 12 410. This simile is not quite clear ; but it seems that the reference must be to the string which a carpenter stretches to give him a line by which to cut a straight plank. The COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XV 261 boundary between the two armies is as straight as this; neither side can break the enemies' line. When we hear of the equal straining of the battle, we generally find that there is an allusion to the idea that the two armies are connected by a metaphorical rope, which they pull backwards and for- wards (see note on vii. 102) ; but this idea does not seem suitable here, where the stress is on the straightness of the line itself. Compare the metaphor in xii. 433-436. 422. "Cousin," because his father Klytios was brother 303,23 of Priam, as we hear in xx. 238. 441. " The bow " here means skill in archery, as in ii. 827. 304, 8 449. " Showing a favour " seems to mean that Kleitos 304, 18 was trying to make himself prominent, and to win favour in Hector's eyes, by driving into the thick of the battle on his own account, instead of hanging on the outskirts and watch- ing Polydamas, as he should have done. Polydamas in the sequel gives Astynoos strict injunctions designed to prevent a repetition of the disaster. 463. This episode recalls the previous account of 305, i Teukros' prowess as an archer in viii. That passage may indeed be alluded to in the words " which I bound on this morning " ; for it will be remembered that Teukros' bow- string had been broken the day before (in viii. 327). But this is not certain. 479. " Fourfold," no doubt, means with four layers of 35, *9 hide behind the metal facing ; the shield of Aias was seven- fold, having seven layers of hide (vii. 220). 498. The " lot of land " is evidently the right to join in 306, 6 the periodical division of the common land by lot among the members of the community. This is reserved to a man's family after his death. 530. The " plates of mail " are the two plates, one for the 307, 6 back and one for the breast, of which the Homeric corslet 262 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XV is composed. It must not be thought that anything like " scale-armour " or " chain-armour," such as is properly de- noted by mail, was known in Homeric times. Ephyre on the Selleeis has nothing to do with Ephyre the ancient name of Corinth (see on ii. 659, where the same line recurs) ; and this Selleeis in Thesprotia must not be confused with the Trojan river of the same name (ii. 839). 307, 12 537- The "breaking off" the plume shows that it was not fixed in a ridge on the helmet, but was borne at the top of a slender stem, such as is often represented on vases, and is found even in the Mykenai intaglios (see Schuchh. no. 221, p. 221). 307, 21 546. Melanippos is a kinsman, because his father Hike- taon is brother of Priam (xx. 238). 39, 5 59 2 - It nas been pointed out in the introduction to the book that this is probably the line with which we again enter upon the story of the " Menis " ; it will then follow immedi- ately after the end of xi. It is obvious that the words used gain greatly in force if we suppose that this is the first attack on the ships by the Trojans, and not merely a fresh spurt after many assaults. 309, 22 6 10. Five lines here, from " for Zeus" to " son of Peleus," were omitted altogether by Zenodotos ; Aristarchos also regarded them as spurious. They contain several strange expressions. Hector at the head of his army can hardly be called "one man against many." The prophecy of the future course of the war is against epic practice (see note on L 64), nor is it in accordance with the usual theology that Athene should appear as carrying out the designs of fate. The lines break the continuity of the passage, and are at best but a weak repetition of what has been said just before. 310, 3 624. This simile is "two-sided," beginning with the com- parison of Hector's onslaught to a wave, and then develop- COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XV 263 ing from this the comparison of the terror of the Argives to that of the sailors. 639. Eurystheus, according to the legend, employed 310, iS a messenger when taskmaster of Herakles, because he was afraid to meet him face to face (see note on v. 385). The name Kopreus is not known from other sources ; those who are acquainted with Greek will see that it is evidently meant to express contempt. 646. This shield, reaching to the feet, must evidently be 3 IO > 2 5 one of the long rectangular sort, not the round shield ; for that would not reach to the feet so that it could be " kicked," as the Greek implies. 653. The word translated in the earlier editions " just over 3 IO > 33 against, "and in the revised "between," isonewhich has caused great difficulty. The Greek would naturally mean "in sight of"; but that is obviously impossible, for the fight has already reached the ships. Some definite stage in the progress of the attack must be meant, and the only interpretation which seems to suit the circumstances is that the Trojans now got " into the intervals " between the ships. This may be got out of the Greek, though, it must be confessed, not very easily. But nothing short of this will enable us to picture the pro- gress of events. Hitherto the Trojans have only come just up to the ships' sterns. Here the Greeks make a " wall of bronze " just in front of the ships, and hold their ground for a time. But they are gradually forced back; a change must at once come over the character of the fight when they are driven in between the ships, where they would be separated into groups, and defence would become much more difficult, as it would be impossible to bring assistance rapidly to any point that might be threatened. It would seem that the huts are conceived as being immediately in the rear of the foremost line of ships. As soon as the 264 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XV Trojans follow the Argives in between the ships, they have no difficulty in pursuing them still further and driving them away from the first line of ships altogether ; it is only when they get in front of the huts that the Achaians are able to make a fresh stand. 311, 7 659. From this line to 673 " swift ships " is beyond doubt an interpolation. If we are right in our theory of the " Menis," this will follow at once ; for in the " Menis " Nestor is still sitting in his own hut with Machaon, as we left him in xi. ; we have heard nothing of his returning to the field. But there is no lack of independent arguments to prove the same thing. The appeal of Nestor is far from clear; when he speaks of children, wives, possessions, and parents, we suppose that he means " if you do not fight manfully now, you will never see them again." But this clearly does not suit the further appeal by dead parents as well as living ; nor is it easy to see how any appeal can be made "for the sake of" the dead. It cannot mean to save the honour of the family name ; for then how can he ap- peal for possessions? The best that can be said for the passage is that it betrays a confusion of thought which may be understood under the circumstances. But for the next passage even this excuse cannot be made. We are suddenly, to our great surprise, told that there is a " wondrous cloud of mist " about, so that the foes have not been able to see one another hitherto. Of this there has not been the slightest hint before, and the whole description of the battle is quite inconsistent with any such idea. The lines were long ago condemned by Aristarchos. 311, 26 676. The picture evidently is this : the ships are quite low, even when drawn up on land, and not too high for a man to jump on to them from beneath. Aias jumps first on to one ship, and then down again to the earth and on to COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XV 265 another, according as he sees that hi aid is needed. Thus we must understand the remarkable simile of the horseman. His feat consists in springing on to the back first of one horse and then of another, leaping from the ground each time, without stopping the team. It is not to be supposed that the feat is the same as that of the modern circus, where the rider leaps from one horse to the next without touching the ground between. Riding, strictly speaking, was evidently not known in Homeric times, or rather not in the time at which the poet places his story ; the only certain cases occur in similes (see on x. 504). 711. For the fighting with axes and hatchets see the note j/^, 26 on xiii. 612. "Axes" is a safer translation than "battle- axes," as what is probably meant is that they were fighting with tools, or whatever came first to hand, as well as with their regular weapons. 714. " From off the shoulders," because the baldricks by 3 i 2 , 29 which they were hung over the shoulders were severed. 717. For the "ensign" see note on ix. 241. The Greek j/.?, 32 word here is different, but no doubt means the same thing. So Herodotos tells us that at the battle of Marathon Kynaigeiros seized the ensign of a Persian ship, and would not let go till his hand was severed at the wrist. 721. We do not elsewhere hear of the "cowardice of the j/j, 4 elders" as keeping Hector back. Achilles in the " Embassy" gives a different reason (ix. 352). 7 29. We can only guess what the " oarsmen's bench of j/j, // seven feet long" was. The Greek says only "the seven- foot bench." It is sometimes explained as a raised bench at the stern of the ship on which the steersman sat ; but then this is the point from which Aias is driven away. Perhaps it may be a raised gangway leading from the stern to the bows of the vessel. The Homeric ship was only 266 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XV partly decked, over the bows and stern ; and some sort of passage was needed to connect the two. This would give Aias the standing ground which he needed when first driven from the after-deck. It may have been called the " seven-foot," because it would naturally be about seven feet above the bottom of the ship, so as to give room for rowing and moving about beneath it. 7 9 736. "Stronger than this," i.e. than the barrier formed by the ships. There is clearly no allusion to any wall round the ships, for in any case, now that it had been passed by the Trojans, Aias could not be appealing to his men to hold it as their last resort ; and in the following words the ships are evidently spoken of as the only wall they have, in con- trast to the walls with towers which form the fortification of a town. But it is just such a wall " arrayed with towers " which has been described in the poems of the Third Stratum. Thus the words of Aias form an indirect proof that no such wall was known to the poet of the " Menis." BOOK XVI To those who have accepted the theory of an original " Menis," into which, among other parts, the " Embassy " in book ix. has been subsequently inserted, the opening of the splendid Patrokleia, or " Prowess of Patroklos," in xvi. will offer no difficulty. In xi. Patroklos was sent by Achilles to ask after the wounded man whom Nestor was bringing into the camp. While he has been absent on his errand, things have moved apace. The whole Greek army has been driven back, as we have just been told in the latter part of xv., till they are forced first upon the outer row of ships, and then among the huts which lie just behind. Only the indomitable defence of Aias still keeps Hector at bay. All this has happened while Patroklos has been holding his colloquy with Nestor, and on the way back to Achilles has been tending the wounded Eurypylos. It is at a critical moment that he returns, at the opening of this book, to the hut of Achilles. It is but natural that, in the altered posi- tion of affairs, the comparatively unimportant question about which he was sent should not be mentioned ; both have other things to think of than the state of a wounded man. Patroklos at once opens with the suggestion which Nestor has made to him, and to this Achilles, already repenting his wrath in the distress of the Greeks, readily yields. But to those who hold that the Iliad from the first con- 268 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI tained book ix. as an integral part, this speech of Achilles offers insuperable difficulties. Three passages in it are in- consistent with the idea that an abject reparation for his fault has been offered by Agamemnon only a few hours before : 60-61, "We will let bygones be bygones. No man may be angry of heart for ever"; 71-73, "Swiftly would they flee and fill the watercourses with dead if mighty Agamemnon were but kindly to me " (see note) ; 84-86, " That ... they may return again the fairest maiden, and thereto add splendid gifts." That these passages are inconsistent with the existence of ix. is generally admitted ; those critics who think that the two books stood side by side in the Iliad from the first have no valid resource but to declare that we must cut out the offending expressions as interpolated here. But it is an elementary principle of criticism that we must not reject anything in this way simply because it contradicts a theory; we must, at least, if we cannot show other grounds for believing it to be an interpolation, give some plausible guess to show why it should have been inserted. But no valid grounds have been alleged to show that the lines do not suit their place here, or bear any other marks of spurious- ness. As to a reason for their insertion, not only can none be shown, but it is obvious that none can exist, short of a deliberate desire to introduce confusion into the poem. That such confusion should be introduced by the addition of ix. is intelligible enough ; such a poem is its own justifi- cation, and to have it is worth some confusion. But nothing of the sort applies here ; the lines in question are not in the least essential, and could easily have been cut out. The fact that they still exist is a striking proof of the conservative forces which guided the construction of the Iliad from its first elements. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XVI 269 Though this speech of Achilles may thus be regarded as sound, we do not go far before we come across another question which strikes almost as deep into the structure of the Iliad. It has been asked if all the lines which refer to Patroklos arming in Achilles' armour are not interpolated ; whether he did not in fact start in his own arms, without any thought of being mistaken for his friend. Our conception of the story is so intimately bound up with the idea of the change of armour, that we are apt at first sight to regard such a question as absurd ; but a little consideration will show that it is not so. To begin with, it will be remarked that if it was really the intention that Patroklos should be mistaken for Achilles, the result is a singular failure. It is true that when the Myrmidons first begin to pour out from their huts the Trojans are afraid that "the swift-footed son of Peleus had cast away his wrath," as they naturally might suppose from the appearance of his men ; but there is not a word to say that they thought that Patroklos was Achilles himself. The only possible allusion to a disguise is in 423-424, where Sarpedon says, "I will encounter this man that I may know who he is that conquers here." This only shows that, though not knowing who he is, the face being as usual covered by the helmet, Sarpedon does not in any case take him for Achilles. The whole history of the change is in fact contained in fifteen lines, all of which can be dropped out without leaving any gap. These lines are 40-43 (313, 18-22, " and give me ... in war"); 64 (316, 11-12, "do thou on thy shoulders my famous harness, and"); 134 possibly (see note); 140-144 (318, 22-27," on ty h e to k not bane of heroes 1 "); 796-800 (jjp, 1-6, "with blood and dust . . . destruction near him"). Even of these few lines, 140-144 are 1 " Death of warriors " in revised edition. 270 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI repeated bodily from xix. 388-391, and were rejected on independent grounds by Zenodotos, who rightly held that they were only in place in the latter book. It is in itself remarkable enough that what seems to be at first sight a cardinal conception of the Iliad can disappear from the book where it should be most important, with the excision of so few lines ; but it is in the next book that we shall find positive evidence to support what so far has been purely negative. There we shall find that the only passage which represents Patroklos as wearing the armour of Achilles not only may be cut out, but must be, because it in- troduces hopeless confusion into a perfectly plain narrative. Finally, we have no difficulty here in assigning the motive for the introduction of this idea of the change of armour. In xviii. we have a splendid description of the making of the shield of Achilles ; a poem which, like the " Embassy," needs only its own beauty to justify its addition to the Iliad. But if Achilles was to have new arms, some means must be found for depriving him of those which he already possessed. The loss of Patroklos is ingeniously made into this means ; and the very slight additions by which the new conception is introduced again offer a strik- ing proof of the reverence with which the new poets handled all that was before them, adding only a few lines, but changing nothing in the older structure. We have every reason to congratulate ourselves on the possibility of still recovering the primitive poem of the " Wrath of Achilles " without a gap. The book contains also some rather important interpola- tions, which, as they do not affect its character as a whole, had better be taken in detail in the notes. The most interesting of these are perhaps the passages where the wall is mentioned. The way in which these interrupt the narra- COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI 271 tive is a strong argument in favour of supposing the wall to have been originally absent from the story. Another con- siderable interpolation is the catalogue of the Myrmidons ; and the description of the death of Patroklos shows certain signs of having been tampered with. But, with the pos- sible exception of the last, none of these need for a moment disturb our enjoyment of this grand piece of composition, the third act of the great drama of the " Menis." NOTES 7. This delightful bit of child-life is a worthy companion j'4, 7 to the equally charming simile in the last book (xv. 362) of the child who makes sand -castles by the sea. It is by touches such as these that Homer goes to the heart of every age. The whole of this short speech is admirable ; Achilles shows his angry triumph in bitter sarcasm, pre- tending not to be able to guess why Patroklos is in trouble, and ironically assuming that it must be because he has heard some bad news from home ; the ruin of the Greeks is nothing to make him or his friends weep. 50. For "that I wot of" Aristarchos read "even if I 315,31 wot of one." This is evidently a change made to bring the passage into harmony with ix. 410, whence it appears that Achilles does in fact know of a warning prophecy from his mother. But the discrepancy is really a slight argument in favour of the separate authorship of the two books. 59. For the " sojourner dishonourable " see ix. 648, j/6, 7 where the same words are translated " worthless sojourner." 61. "I said" is commonly referred to the words of s /6 > 9 Achilles to this effect in ix. 650. But the Greek implies no more than " I said to myself, or " I thought." There is thus nothing in them inconsistent with the late origin of ix. 272 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI Indeed the words there put into Achilles' mouth were prob- ably suggested by this very phrase. j/6, 79 71. The "watercourses" are the gullies in the open plain, whither Achilles means that he would drive the Trojans from the camp to slay them. " If Agamemnon had been but kindly to me " is not an impossible translation ; but the natural meaning of the words certainly is " if Aga- memnon were but kindly to me," implying a state of things which still exists. Though this has an obvious bearing on the question of the position of book ix., it is of less import- ance than might at first appear, for really even the trans- lation " had been " is inconsistent with ix. The fact i^ that on any supposition the words show an evident readiness for reconciliation. If it is to be supposed that Achilles is still ignoring a restitution which has been already offered, it is clear that he could not use so mild a phrase as a require- ment that Agamemnon should only be friendly with him, when Agamemnon has offered to be that and more. If ix. were to be recognised in Achilles' words, he would have to say, " If Agamemnon had been sufficiently abased to please me," or the like. j/6, jj 85. " Give me back again " is the correct translation, not, as in the earlier editions, " take away from him." The inconsistency of this with the supposition that Agamemnon has actually offered to return the fairest maiden, and thereto added splendid gifts, is patent. Those who would defend the unity of the Iliad have therefore to expel these lines, but without the slightest warrant. j/7, 10 97-100. This final outburst was condemned by Aristar- chos, whom most recent editors have followed. The chief argument is that the expression is too outrageous even for Achilles; even he cannot really wish all the Argives to perish. But as a mere piece of rhetoric to show the depth COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI 273 of Achilles' resentment it is surely permissible. There are also some difficulties in the Greek, but these are explicable, and the lines may therefore stand. 1 01. The story now returns to Aias, as he was left at the j/7 f S end of xv. The " cheek-pieces " on which Aias is smitten are not again mentioned in Homer, and it is not certain that this is the correct meaning of the word, which may possibly refer to the knobs or sockets for fixing plumes alluded to in the note on iii. 362. 112. The appeal to the Muses fitly introduces what is 317,27 really the turning-point of the whole Iliad. 134. If the Greek text is right we must expel this line, 318, 16 containing the words " well-dight starry " and " of the swift- footed son of Aiakos," as being a part of the later interpolation of the change of armour ; but, fortunately, we hear from the Scholia of an ancient various reading, which will be translated, " He did on the well-dight starry corslet, a protection from fell darts." Thus there will be no allusion to the change of arms, and there is good reason to suppose that this was the original form of the line, altered only after the new idea had been introduced. 141. It has been pointed out in the Introduction that 318, 22 this description of the spear is taken bodily from xix. 388-391. If, as supposed, that passage belongs to the original poem, it was evidently necessary for the interpolator of the change of armour to put in an explanation here to show how it came to pass that the famous spear had not been lost along with the rest of the arms. 150. The " Harpy" in Homer must not be confused with 318, 33 the foul misshapen creatures of later legend, with which we are familiar from the Aeneid. In Homer the Harpy, literally " the Snatcher," is simply the personified storm-blast, and is thus a fitting mother for a fleet steed. T 274 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI j/9, i 152. This line is, with the probably quite late viii. 87, the only mention in Homer of the trace-horse, which was not harnessed to the yoke like the regular pair, but ran in traces at the side. It has been suggested that it was meant not so much to help in drawing the chariot as to kick and bite in the mellay. It would act also as a reserve in case one of the pair in the yoke were killed. ?'9> *7 1 68. There are numerous reasons for thinking the fol- lowing Catalogue of the Myrmidons a later addition. Phoinix, who appears in it, has been already recognised in the " Embassy " as a very late recruit to the dramatis personae. The other chiefs, in spite of the circumstance with which they are announced, do not reappear in the sequel. The speech of Achilles, 200-209 (<3 2O -> 1< ^~ 2 7}i contains some curious phrases, and more especially one word which has all the appearance of being a mistaken imitation of a form which appears in book ii., showing that the earlier language had so far passed away as to give the opportunity for such " false archaisms." Still the question is not absolutely certain, and in any case it has no very important bearing on the general theory of the composition of the book. If the Catalogue is an interpolation, it will end at 1. 211 (320, jo), " heard the prince." j/9, 18 170. On the benches, or perhaps rather "at the row- locks." The Greek word may mean either the rowers' bench, or the thole-pin on which the oar worked, and to which it was attached by a leather strap. The word is found elsewhere only in the Odyssey, and the evidence there is not decisive as to the sense. j/p, 21 173. The parentage of Menesthios and Eudoros, each the son of a god, though his mother has afterwards wedded a mortal, affords a good instance of the simple device by which divine origin is reconciled to legendary pedigree. It COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD ' : XVI 275 is commonly the old family god, in the last resort perhaps a " totem," who is thus brought into the family tree. It will be seen that Menesthios must have been nephew of Achilles, though the fact is not expressly noted. 185. The epithet of Hermes, akaketa, translated "the 3 2 , * bearer of all things good," is probably an ancient and non- Greek title ; for, according to Pausanias, it seems to have been connected with the Pelasgian worship of Zeus Lykaon in Arkadia. It was naturally referred by the Greeks to their adjective akakos, literally "not harmful," but most likely this has nothing to do with the original name. 228. It would seem that the disinfecting power of sulphur 3 2I > X 4 fumes was recognised even in Homeric times. After the slaughter of the suitors in the Odyssey the hall is purified with sulphur (xxii. 481): " Bring sulphur, old nurse, that cleanses all pollution ; and bring me fire that I may purify the hall with sulphur." It is possible that its volcanic origin, and the smell of sulphur which accompanies a lightning flash, may have given it a sort of divine character. 233. This appeal to the Pelasgian Zeus at Dodona 321, 19 instead of to the Olympian is most remarkable. It is no doubt related to his local connexion with Thessaly, which, however hard it may be to explain, seems estab- lished beyond a doubt by the place which Dodona takes among Thessalian towns in the Catalogue (ii. 68 1 ; see the note). It is, therefore, as a Thessalian that Achilles prays to him. The worship of Zeus at Dodona bears every trace of the hoariest antiquity, and from this passage it would seem that it must have succeeded on the same site an older Pelasgian worship of some god whom the Greeks identified with their own Zeus. So the Pelasgian divinity Lykaon was in later times worshipped as Zeus Lykaon. The Selloi sleep on the ground and do not wash their feet, 276 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI as preserving the habits of a more primitive time, with the conservatism which marks all cults; just as the frequent rule that a victim must be slain with a stone implement and not with metal is a survival from the time when stone alone was known. The name Selloi or Helloi for the reading is doubtful is in itself remarkable, for it is in all probability the original of the name Hellenes, though we are unable to trace the growth from one to the other. But it is likely enough that the Hellenes took their national title from a name so closely connected with their most ancient place of worship. It must be also noticed that Achilles is not only a Thessalian, but a Hellen in the narrower sense of the word, so that we may have here another link between him and the Dodonaean Zeus. 323, 18 297. The sudden gleam of hope is magnificently com- pared to a rift in the clouds hanging about a mountain peak, as though a cleft were opened into the very heart of heaven. Compare the other passage (viii. 557), where two lines from here have been borrowed ; it is impossible not to feel how far more graphic and " inevitable " they are here. 324, 1 8 328. Amisodaros is not mentioned in the other passage, vi. 179, which speaks of the Chimaira. It is not clear whether he is the king of Lykia, the father-in-law of Proitos, or not; but as he "reared" the Chimaira which was an enemy to the Lykians, it seems natural to conclude that he was not himself their king. The name Amisodaros is evidently a genuine non-Greek name from Asia Minor ; for we hear of a Karian in Herodotos with the very similar name of Pixodaros. Compare also the Trojan Pandaros. 3 2 5, 2 5 364. From this line to the bottom of the page is an interpolation designed to bring in a mention of the Greek fortification. When this had been added to the Iliad it was evidently necessary that it should play a part as the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI 277 Trojans left the camp as well as when they entered it. The interpolation is fortunately so done as to betray itself beyond a doubt. To begin with, the flight of Hector without a word of explanation is in glaring contrast to the immediately pre- ceding words describing his stubborn defence of his men. The trench is mentioned, but the wall is forgotten. It is hard to see why the trench should be so formidable a matter for the footmen while Hector crosses it in his chariot without difficulty; in xii. the opposite and more natural effect is strongly insisted on. The filling up of the trench by Apollo in xv. 356 is entirely forgotten. And finally, the simile with which the passage opens is quite unintelligible. The "sacred air" (aether) is to Homer always the bright upper sky, where no clouds are; it is therefore wrong to say that a cloud comes from this into the "heaven" or lower sky. And even apart from this the simile illustrates nothing; why is the rout compared to a cloud, except that both move? It would seem as though some interpolator were trying with very inadequate ability to imitate the splendid simile of 297 above, where every word has its right effect in illustrating the object of comparison ; here there is no appropriateness anywhere. 380. Here again we have the mention of the trench in 326, 10 connexion with a most confused piece of narrative, such as .one cannot conceive coming from the author of this book. So confused is it that in translating it has been absolutely necessary to put in an important word which is not in the Greek at all. Note in the first place that 1. 381, containing the words " immortal . . . that the gods gave for glorious gifts to Peleus," is interpolated here from the last line of the book ; it is not given by any good MS. Thus the Greek runs, " But straight over the ditch, in forward flight, leaped the swift horses." This we naturally suppose to mean the 278 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI steeds of the cars which, as we have just been told, are over- turned. Then it goes on, "And his heart bade him against Hector." There is no mention here of Patroklos ; we are only led by the context to see that he must be meant ; his name is given in the translation only for the sake of intelligi- bility. We have now to correct our reading of the preceding line, for we perceive that the horses meant must be his. It was to avoid this most awkward ambiguity that some scribe interpolated 1. 381 to show that the horses were those of Achilles. But the obvious conclusion to be drawn from this passage and that last commented on is that the wall and trench were absolutely unknown when this book was composed, and that it is useless to try to patch up the work of the poor man who undertook the ungrateful task of dragging them in by hook or by crook. These lines, from "but straight" to "forth and away," being removed, we are in a position to understand the following very striking simile. This does actually refer to the horses which escape from the overthrown Trojan chariots. Their headlong course across the plain is finely compared to that of torrents in flood -time. The simile, however, seems to have suffered by the insertion of two lines from Hesiod, from "who judge" to "vengeance of the gods." These spoil the balance by removing our attention from the picture itself to a subordinate point. Both send-, ment and expression are thoroughly Hesiodean and un- Homeric; this is not the first place where we have had good reason to suspect that an opportunity of inserting a moral reflexion, however inappropriate, proved too great a temptation for a poet of the sententious Hesiodean school. With these lines cut out, the simile, to which many modern critics have raised objections, is absolutely faultless. 326, 28 397- The phrase "the lofty wall" here has caused much COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XVI 279 trouble because it has been supposed, as indeed was natural enough, that it referred to the wall round the Greek camp. But when we have once grasped that there was, for the poet of this book, no wall round the Greek camp, we see at once that the words must refer to the only wall of which he knew, the wall of Troy itself. Instead of " approach " in the preceding line, it would be more exact to say " to set foot in " the city ; he drives them up to the city wall, but keeps them from entering in at the gates. 406. Another simile from angling will be found in Od. 327, 5 xii. 251-254, which should be referred to. How a fish can be spoken of as " sacred " has never been satisfactorily ex- plained. Fish were worshipped in Syria, as in the case of the fish-god Dagon ; but there is no trace of anything of the sort in Homeric Greece. It is just possible that there may have been some sort of taboo or religious feeling in early times against eating fish ; Homeric heroes do so only in the Odyssey when under the stress of famine (Od. xii. 331), and angling is mentioned only in similes, which may indicate that the poet knew that it was not practised in the days in which his poem is placed (see Miss Clerke, Familiar Studies, p. 182 ff.). ut all this is very uncertain. An alternative is to explain the epithet not as sacred but as strong, a sense which it seems to have had originally. But it is very doubtful if this older sense survived to Homeric days, and as a rule the sense " sacred " is well established. 419. " With ungirdled doublets," literally without taslets on 327, 17 the doublet (see note on iv. 132). The absence of the taslet would thus seem to be a national Lykian peculiarity ; such "local colouring" is very rare in Homer. This is the first appearance of Sarpedon in the " Menis," and it has been sup- posed that he is really a character belonging solely to the Second Stratum. It is quite possible to leave out the 2 8o COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI whole of the following beautiful episode of his death, down to 683 ; but the evidence is purely negative, and the points where this episode is joined to the main story show no signs of patching, such as we have learnt to recognise at the seams where later episodes have been inserted. It is well, there- fore, to be content with the text as we have it, without at- tempting to analyse further. 328, 9 444. It would seem that this passage, down to 449 ("terrible wrath"), is an interpolation. It is not only un- necessary but very weak. And it is not true that there are " many " sons of the Immortals warring round Ilios. Even those that there are, with the exception of Achilles and Aineias, are quite insignificant ; and they appear only in late passages (see note on xv. 141, of which passage this would seem to be a reminiscence). 328, 21 456. Bury him; see note on vii. 85. The subject of a dead hero being carried through the air by Death and Sleep is a rather favourite one in early vase-paintings ; it was probably suggested by this passage, but certainly does not always represent the burial of Sarpedon. The vase- painter, when he had once got his type, adapted it to other circumstances, as, for instance, the burial of Memnon after his death at the hands of Achilles in the post-Homeric epos. 328, 24 459. The bloody raindrops remind us of the similar portent in xi. 53, the "dew dank with blood," which is rained down to portend the coming slaughter. 330, i 503. "Eyes and nostrils," because sight and breathing are the most obvious signs of life. The curious phrase which follows, of drawing forth the spear-point and the soul together, is not to be paralleled in Homer. To a modern reader it is perhaps apt to suggest how "stern death cut short his being and the noun at once." But it is really a COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XVI 281 quite natural phrase to those who conceived the soul as actually passing out through the wound in the flesh. 510. Whatever may be thought of the episode of the 330, 10 death of Sarpedon as a whole, there can be no doubt, if there is any truth in the general theory of the growth of the Iliad, that this passage must be an interpolation, from the words " and with his hand " (10) to " heard his prayer " (32], as it explicitly alludes to the events of xii. It will be seen that these lines can be cut out without leaving any mark, and there is an obvious reason for their addition to meet the objection that Glaukos, having been so recently wounded (see xii. 387), could not be fit to take the leading part in the following rally. 555-562, as containing a reference to xii., must equally 33 I > 2 3~3 2 be interpolated. Here there are other reasons to show that the lines are in fact added. 555 is copied from xiii. 46, where it is better in place ; for the words " he spake first " have no particular meaning here, where Patroklos does not speak to any others after the Aiantes, whereas in xiii. the words spoken to them are the beginning of exhortations addressed to all the Greek heroes. So the expression in 558, " the man who first leaped on the wall of the Achaians," is copied from xii. 438 ; only there it is applied not to Sarpedon but to Hector. 562 is identical with xv. 565. 567-568. We do not hear anything more of this " baneful 332, j-j- night," and it has no effect on the course of the battle. It is probably an addition by the same hand as xv. 668, a cheap device to produce a somewhat sensational effect. We shall have other instances of it in the next book. 598. This incident reminds us of the story of Abner and 333, i Asahel in 2 Sam. ii. 23. 617. The taunt is directed at Meriones' agility in avoid- 333, 22 ing the spear, and has perhaps an especial reference to 282 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XVI Meriones' Cretan origin ; for Crete was famous for the war- dance. Compare Patroklos' banter in 745 below : " How nimble a man, how lightly he tumbleth ! " The war-dance has also been alluded to in vii. 241, though there it is evi- dent that no taunt is implied. 334t 3 630. This line is not very exactly expressed. The literal translation of the Greek is, " In hands is the end of war, but of words in council." The sense is clear enough ; war is the time for action, the time for words is in the council. A more formal antithesis would have been given if the second member had run the issues of council are in words. But this, though more correct, would have lost something in vigour. 334, 10 636. The " well-tanned bulls' hides " are of course those of which the shields are made; see note on xii. 263. 334-, 3 658. For the metaphor of the scales of Zeus, see note on viii. 69. Here the expression evidently means no more than the will of Zeus ; for he is not said to have actually used his scales. 335^ 4 .667. Zenodotos rejected this speech of Zeus to Apollo, on the ground that it was a pollution to the pure nature of the god to be required to touch a dead body. This no doubt was so, according to the later notions of Apollo ; but it must be regarded as only another instance of the gulf between the religious ideas of classical and heroic times. 335, 2 & 689. These two lines, from " for he driveth " to " to fight," are interpolated here from xvii. 177-178, and are omitted by the best MSS. They are evidently quite inappro- priate in this place. 337) s 736- " Nor long did the stone miss its man," given in the earlier editions, is a translation of the reading usually adopted here by modern editors ; but it is better to go back to that given by the MSS. almost without exception ; " nor long did COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI 283 he shrink before his foe," i.e. the panic inspired by Apollo did not for long affect Patroklos. 745. " Tumbles " would be a better translation than 337 > lS 11 diveth " ; the allusion is to the artistic tumbling of the performer such as is mentioned in xviii. 605. Patroklos means that Kebriones takes a header with all the skill of a professional acrobat on land ; so if he were at sea, he would make an excellent diver there too. The word translated "oysters" does not recur in Greek; it evidently means some sort of food obtained by diving, and oyster shells have actually been found at Mykenai, so it is possible that, unlike fish, they were eaten in heroic times (Schuchh. p. 267). It may be mentioned that there was a various reading, ap- proved by Zenodotos, " even if they were hard to please " in place of " even if it were stormy weather." The taunt of tumbling applied to Kebriones looks like a repartee to that of nimble dancing which was cast in the teeth of Meriones above, 617. 777. Compare xi. 84-86. The point there reached will have 338,16 been late morning, while the period here indicated is early afternoon. The three or four hours between the two, say from 1 1 till 3, will give ample time for all the events which properly belong to the ancient story of the " Menis " ; the rout in xi., the attack on the ships in xv., and the sally of Pat- roklos in xvi. But if we suppose that all the other inter- vening books were contemplated in the original scheme, it is evident that there is not nearly time for everything. As a poet is not a chronicler, we cannot of course expect a strict reckoning of time, and thus this is hardly an argument for the analysis of the Iliad. On the other hand it is inter- esting to find that, when we have once got at the primitive story, it is not only perfect in poetry, but a humanly possible one into the bargain, so far as the sequence of events is con- 284 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI cerned, and there is no longer ground for saying that we have " two noons on the same day." The time of the loosing of oxen recurs again in Od. ix. 58 ; the English reader will naturally be reminded of Comus, "what time the laboured ox in his loose traces from the furrow came." A still more curious phrase for " supper time " will be found in Od. xii. 439, and is worth referring to. 338, *9 780. " Beyond their doom," perhaps rather beyond med- sure, i.e. beyond expectation. We have similar but not identical phrases which certainly do mean " beyond doom " or " against fate," but they are never used of things that actually happen, as here ; but only of things that very nearly happened, or might have happened. See for instance xvii. 321 (332, n\ "against the appointment of Zeus" ; xxi. 517 (430, 2j) "before its hour," literally against fate; ii. 155, "against the will of fate." 33 S > 3 1 793- There is every reason to suppose that we have here another interpolation ; and that in the original story Apollo did no more than make Patroklos dizzy, thus leaving him at his enemies' mercy. In the next book we shall find that his body is spoken of as if the armour were still upon it ; nothing is said about the helmet and corslet having been removed. If we cut out 793-804 "and from his head" to " loosed his corslet " (339, id] we find that the lines are not missed, but that the story runs quite smoothly, and all contradictions vanish. At the same time the allusion to the helmet which Patroklos is wearing as that of Achilles disappears, and with it the last mention in this book of the change of armour. We shall at the same time have to remove one more line on the next page (22), "For them- selves stripped my armour from my shoulders " ; and the story is betterwithout it, for it is clear that if Apollo stripped off the armour, Zeus did not do it as well. The idea of Apollo COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVI 285 dazing a man with a stroke of his hand may well be a poetical expression for what a more prosaic age calls a sun-stroke. 803. The tasselled shield can hardly be compared with 339, 9 the tasselled aegis of ii. 448, for the Greek word is different here, and its meaning is obscure. It may very likely mean with a fringe, or leather pendant, such as is described in the note on v. 453. 808. This is the Euphorbos whose soul Pythagoras 339, *4 claimed as having descended to him ; proving his claim, as the legend ran, by walking straight up to the shield of Euphorbos, which hung as an ancient relic in the Temple of Hera at Argos, and taking it down from the wall, though he had never been there before (Ov. Met. xv. 161). 8 10. Euphorbos, though a young man who had never 339, f 7 been in war before, is here made out, by his first exploits, to be no unworthy conqueror of Patroklos. His feat of killing twenty enemies as a first lesson reminds us of Nestor's in xi. 748. 823. "A boar will drink between two tigers," as the 339,3* Mahratta proverb says ; the fierceness of the animal is not overrated when he is made to fight a lion. 842. Notice the splendid dramatic effect of the victor's 340, 18 taunt answered by the solemn prophecy of the dying man. The falseness of Hector's supposition heightens the effect This is evidently an intentional preparation for the scene of the death of Hector in xxii., which is very similar, only that the parts are reversed. The contrast of the two scenes is a noble example of the true Greek " irony." 849. Fate and Apollo are counted as one, because 340, 23 Apollo is here the instrument of fate. It is a very common belief that dying men have in an especial degree the power of prophecy. Those who are familiar with the Apology of Sokrates will remember a noble instance of it there. BOOK XVII THE very puzzling problem of the position of this book in the scheme of the Iliad has been alluded to in the Introduction (p. 41) : it must now be examined somewhat more closely. The book contains one gem of lovely poetry, the mourning of the horses for . Achilles, and the words of Zeus which follow (426-458) ; but, with this exception, it cannot be said to maintain the average level of the Iliad certainly not of the "Menis." Nowhere else do we feel the fighting so unduly drawn out. The scene is often con- fused, and the individual incidents are, with hardly an exception, not such as to reward us for the delay in return- ing to the main story, to Achilles and the camp, whither we feel that we should be taken immediately after the fall of Patroklos. We miss, in short, both the unity of purpose and the speed of action which mark the best parts of the Iliad, and the "Menis" above all. These objections apply especially to the latter part of the book ; the first part, ending with 1. 365 (J5J, 24 " in the press "), is more vigorous, and may possibly belong to the "Menis" or to the Second Stratum ; I can point to no posi- tive criterion for or against either alternative. But of the two the style seems to point rather to the later and not the best period of the Second Stratum. We cannot, in fact, be sure if the saving of the body of Patroklos was an original COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XVII 287 episode of the "Menis" or no. It is on the whole probable that it was not, but positive arguments are lacking. In any case we must omit from this part the forty-three lines which describe the armour taken from Patroklos as the armour of Achilles; see notes on 186-228 (348, 4, "until I do on" to 349, 1 6 " the dalliance of war "). With 366 the narrative begins to drag ; we have several consecutive short sections, each of which begins as if it were going to open a new development of the battle, but turns out to be only a false start ; we do not get fairly off till 424, the little "Aristeia of Automedon." Beautifully though this begins, it declines into, one of the most languid battle-scenes of the Iliad, ending at 543. The later part of the book, after 575, is better, but too long for its place. It is, perhaps, seeing that Idomeneus and Meriones are promi- nent in it, not unreasonable to attribute it to the hand which gave us the " Aristeia of Idomeneus " in xiii. NOTES 21. For the Homeric estimate of the wild boar's courage 342, 21 see xvi. 823. 24. Hyperenor was slain by Menelaos in xiv. 516, but 343, / nothing is said there about his contemptuous remarks of which Menelaos here speaks. If this part of the book belongs to the Second Stratum, it is earlier than xiv., and we must suppose that the allusion is to some event out- side the Iliad as then existing, and only brought into it afterwards, on account of the allusion here. 27. Not on his own feet, i.e. borne by others, a sarcastic 343, 3 allusion like the mocking advice of Polydamas in xiv. 457, that Prothoenor shall use as a staff on his way to Hades the spear with which he has been killed. 288 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XVII 343, 14 36. The " new bridal-chamber " seems to allude to the practice by which a newly married couple lived in the parental home, a new chamber being added to it for them (see note on vi. 242). This habit may be a relic of the ancient rule of the " joint undivided family " which still prevails in India. Under this the married son always brings his wife into the dwelling of the head of the family, which thus grows by the addition of new chambers, not of new houses. 343> 3 52. "Closely knit," literally wasped in, pinched like the waist of a wasp. Little spirals of gold have been found lying beside the head in graves in Mykenai, Hissarlik, and other places, which were evidently used to encircle locks tightly, as here indicated. 344, 19 73. Mentes is not heard of again, and the Kikones have a different leader in the Catalogue (see ii. 846). It is curi- ous that in Od. i. 105 Athene likens herself to "Mentes, captain of the Taphians." 346, 6 125. It is clear that the body of Patroklos is here still clothed in armour, so that the lines which describe the stripping of it off by Apollo in xvi. cannot have been known to the author of this part. 346, 18 136. There was a legend that the lion, when fighting for his cubs, was wont to draw down the skin of the brow to hide his eyes, so that he might not be frightened by seeing the missiles coming upon him. This curious idea was current as late as the time of Pliny, who mentions it in his Natural History. 347, i 151. Evidently Glaukos knows nothing of what has really happened to the body of Sarpedon. When Apollo took the body away in xvi., we were not told how its disappearance was explained to the two armies. 348, 4 1 86. As mentioned above, we must reject some lines COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVII 289 here. The idea that Patroklos is wearing the armour of Achilles has not appeared before in this book. There are many independent reasons to support the excision. To begin with, it is very strange that after Hector's proud words to Glaukos, whom he has bidden to stand at his side and see him fight, he should without more ado leave the field to change his armour. Nor is there any reason why this idea should occur to him just after he has sent off the arms to the city. The Greeks seem to take no notice whatever of the change, though one would suppose it worthy of at least a passing remark on their side. There can be little doubt that we have here an interpolation by the author of the " Making of the Arms " in xviii., designed to keep the change of armour before us. The interpolation probably ends at 228 (349, i6\ as 229 will follow 185 without the least appear- ance of a gap: "bethink you of impetuous valour; whoso shall drag Patroklos," etc. Thus too we get an additional significance for Hector's words in 349, 16-19 ; for it is far more natural that he should promise a share of the spoils if they are not yet taken, than if he has them already on his own shoulders. 205. It will be noticed that this passage again is incon- 34 S > 2 4 sistent with the action ascribed to Apollo in xvi., where he is said to have stripped the armour from head (793) and shoulders (802). It follows that the added lines in xvi. must be later even than this interpolation. 210. For "the armour fitted itself," we may also read 348,31 " he (Zeus) fitted the armour to Hector's body," and this suits the general sense rather better. It is hardly Homeric to suppose that the armour had a magic power of adapting itself to its wearer, without the special interposition of a god. 213. This line should perhaps be rendered " he appeared jV9> f to them all as flashing in the armour of Achilles," the Greek u 290 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVII being ambiguous. We should certainly expect more effect than this to be produced by the reappearance of Hector. 349, 12 225. A similar picture of the economic difficulties of the war will be found in xviii. 290. But such considerations hardly seem consonant with the " grand style " of the earliest poems, to which, moreover, the idea of a vast multitude of allies is strange; we hear only of a few neighbouring tribes as helping the Trojans, the only foreign allies being the Lykians of Sarpedon. 349, 30 243. The metaphor here is bold beyond measure ; it is Homeric to say that a cloud of war enshrouds everything, but not to identify it with Hector, and say that Hector enshrouds everything. It is very probable that from "even by Hector" to "our face" is an interpolated line; the name Hector having been added as a mistaken explanation, perhaps a mere marginal note, and the line then filled up, in order to get the name into the text. 350, 4 250. Drinking at the public cost is the privilege of members of the council, who are entertained by the king (see ii. 404, iv. 259, etc.) 35> 'S-'J 260-261. This couplet was condemned by Zenodotos, with good reason. It would imply, like the similar phrase at the opening of the Catalogue (" the common sort could I not number nor name"), that a very great multitude came to the rescue. But this does not suit the context at all ; the interest of the struggle lies in the heroic defence of a few Greeks, and is lost if the multitude of the defenders is thus insisted upon. 330,22 268-273. These lines, from "walled in" to "battle for him," must be rejected as another instance of the endeavour to produce a sensational effect by supernatural darkness which we have noticed in the two last books (see on xv. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XVII 291 659, xvi. 567). They do not suit the story at all. It is true that we find Aias in 645-647 below praying for darkness to be removed; but that need be no more than the natural darkness from the clouds of dust stirred up by the fight. The darkness here is said to have been sent to help the Achaians; but, however well meant, the interference of Zeus would seem to have been very ill-judged, for it is the Achaians who are the first to pray for light There are in the Greek some linguistic difficulties besides which cannot be shown in the translation. 290. "With a strap," the Greek seems to mean "with his 35 1 , u baldrick," i.e. with the strap on which either the shield or the sword was hung; one of these must have been detached on purpose. 297. "Through the vizor" and "through the crest- 35 f , *9 socket " are both possible renderings of the Greek, but the former gives the most natural sense. The vizor here is the opening or breathing-hole left in the front of the helmet. There is even a third alternative, " along the socket of the spear-head." 301. Larissa or Larisa was a very common name ; there 35 r > 2 ^ were eleven towns thus called in ancient times, three of them in Asia Minor. There is no reason to doubt the truth of the tradition that it was a Pelasgian word meaning " citadel " ; in confirmation of this it will be noticed that Lethos the father of Hippothoos is called a Pelasgian above. 324. " His," i.e. Aineias' "old father " Anchises. SJ 2 > *4 330. There can be no doubt that the reading given in jj-.?, 79 the footnote is right. The sense is, " I have known men who, by sheer courage and confidence, have been able to protect their land, even when the favour of God was against them." The question of the scantiness of the host has nothing to do with the matter, and we require the antithesis 292 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVII with " albeit Zeus is fainer far," etc. The only alteration in the text is the change of an e to an /". This really brilliant conjecture of Dr. Brocks makes all clear where previously everything was difficult, both in grammar and sense. 353> 2 5 366. With this line, as pointed out in the introduction to the book, we enter a region of interpolations. It is not clear if the darkness here is supernatural or not; as the passage is late, it is possible that the former may be meant. Perhaps this part is by the same hand which inserted 268-273. 35 4i 7 381. The idea seems to be that the two sons of Nestor are keeping aloof from the main fight, so as to be ready to bring help wherever they see that it is needed. This is a quite unheroic conception, and the tactical advice put in the mouth of Nestor is always a subject for grave suspicion. Nothing can be less Homeric than the description of this languid battle with pauses between. 354, ii 384. After the preceding section we should have supposed that the scene was to shift to the part of the battle where the sons of Nestor were fighting.; instead of that the narrative hangs fire, and goes on to a general account of the fight over Patroklos, which has been already sufficiently described. But though the context is weak, the simile of the hide is interesting in itself, and gives a lively picture of primitive industry. What is referred to is the curing of leather by stretching it, and rubbing in oil. This process is still followed in Europe for the production of certain sorts of leather, and is said to be quite common in India. The idea is that as the skin is stretched, the natural moisture comes out of it, and lets the oil or fat take its place. 354, 26 400, 412. Each of these sections begins as if we were to JJ15> p ass to a f res h stage of the narrative, but each stops short. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVII 293 It is not till 424 that we get fairly under way with a new episode. Up to that point there is nothing but a laborious explanation of the state of affairs over and over again. 408. This seems curiously in contradiction with xviii. 9, 355, f where we find Achilles actually fearing the death of Patroklos, because of a prophecy received from Thetis. The conclusion is natural that the two passages must be of independent origin, though it is not an argument upon which much stress must be laid, as the discrepancy refers only to a subordinate point. We nowhere else hear of a continued imparting of prophecies to her son by Thetis, though casual warnings are mentioned also in ix. 410, xvi. 36-37- 424. " Iron," i.e. indomitable, unwearying. So in xxiii. 355, *9 177 the "merciless might of the fire " is literally the "iron" might. The epithet is not well chosen here on account of the " brazen heaven " following immediately afterwards ; this gives the idea of some antithesis between the metals, which of course does not exist. Brazen is simply the stand- ing epithet of the sky, conceived as a dome of solid bronze. 440. The yoke-cushion will be a pad to save the necks 355, 33 from being chafed by the yoke. Others explain the word as the " breast-band," which harnessed the horses to the yoke, and against which they pulled ; but the former explanation suits the context better ; we have no external evidence on which to decide. 454-455, "so that they slay . . . come down," are 356,13 borrowed from xi. 193-194. They are not in place here; for the Trojans never again reach the ships, but are stopped by Achilles at the moat outside the wall. 464. Here we have another instance of the adjective stf, 26 " sacred " which is not easy to explain (see note on xvi. 294 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVII 406). The most obvious reason for its use here is that the car is drawn by divine steeds; but this is not wholly satisfactory. 358, 7 5 I 4- " I* 1 tne l a P f tne gds," an obscure phrase recur- ring also in xx. 435 and Od. i. 267. It evidently means in the disposal of the gods ; and the most probable explanation is that it refers to the seated images on which, as in the case of Athene in vi. 92, the gifts offered are laid. Thus a man who says that anything is " on the knees of the gods " means that he has yielded up any claim he might have in it and left it to the gods to dispose of. (There is a curiously similar phrase in Prov. xvi. 33, " The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord." But the resemblance is purely superficial.) 359) 4 545-546. These two lines ("from heaven . . . was changed") were rejected by Zenodotos, and probably by Aristarchos. The condemnation is certainly just, for there is no change in the mind of Zeus ; he is still carrying out his intention of letting the Achaians be driven backwards. It is likely that the couplet was added by some rhapsodist who thought it necessary to explain how it was that Athene roused the strife after Zeus' commands in viii. that the gods should abstain from war. But it is likely enough that all this part is considerably older than viii. 359, 6 547- This simile is a difficult one. How can the "stretch- ing forth of the rainbow" be compared to the goddess wrapping herself in a thick cloud ? It would be natural to say that the goddess wrapped in cloud was like the rainbow surrounded by cloud. But this interpretation is precluded by the epithet " gleaming " (literally purple), applied to both the rainbow and the cloud, which shows that the contrast alike of the bright rainbow and the bright goddess with the dark clouds cannot be meant. If instead of "gleaming COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVII 295 cloud " we had " dark cloud " all would be simple. And perhaps purple here means dark, gloomy, rather than gleam- ing ; the word is used of the colour of a stormy sea, and thus includes the idea of gloom. In that case the compari- son is between the gloomy portent of the rainbow and the deadly purpose of Athene's descent, and must not be pushed to details. The rainbow is spoken of as a portent also in xi. 27 ; the sentiment which looks upon it as a sign of hope and comfort is foreign to Greek imagery. It is a question if this whole scene be not quite late, however, as Phoinix, who appears directly afterwards, is a character known only to the latest part of the Third Stratum. The added scene will then begin at 543 (JS9> j) an d end at 592 (360, 19, " in flashing bronze "). 595. For "the earth," the reading of Zenodotos, the 360,21 MSS. simply have " shook //," viz. the aegis. This is obvi- ously very weak. 6 10. This passage is not easy to understand. As a rule 36*, 6 Meriones himself is the charioteer of Idomeneus. Here it would seem that he has a chariot of his own ; he is at the moment fighting on foot, and his charioteer Koiranos, see- ing Idomeneus hard pressed, comes to his rescue just in time, leaving his own master for the moment. Idomeneus, contrary to the usual practice, has brought no chariot of his own at all, but has entered the battle on foot. This evi- dently refers to xiii. 240, where we find Idomeneus and Meriones both leaving the camp on foot. 644. It has been already remarked, on 269, that it is not 362, 2 4 to j/7, 5, "for Patroklos "). These pieces form a fairly connected whole, and tell so much of the story as is essential for the " Menis," on the supposition that the saving of the body of Patroklos really belonged to it. But it is impossible to speak with any con- fidence on this point (see p. 286), and we shall do best to leave it still uncertain ; we shall at least feel no surprise that, in all the manipulations to which the venerable story has been subject, there should be one and only one place in which there may possibly be a gap in the original narra- tive ; and even here it is likely that what originally filled this gap still exists, though no longer in a form in which we can pick it out with any confidence. Whatever may be the origin of the book, its supreme beauty and importance cannot be overrated. The " Shield of Achilles " is a document of the first rank, whether as an un- surpassed piece of descriptive composition, or as a picture of the doings and thinking of men of the Achaian age, or as our first literary testimony to the origin of Greek art. On the other hand, the appearance of Achilles at the trench is one of the supreme pieces of poetical imagination which the world has brought forth. And the narrative throughout is' of the best class; it is a model of vigour, rapidity, and clearness, while the deepest notes of pathos are touched in the opening lines. To poet, artist, archaeologist, and historian, the poem of the " Making of the Arms " COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII 299 must ever be a precious corner-stone of the fabric of their work. NOTES 3. " Of upright horns," because the " ensigns " or vertical 366, 3 projections which ran up from the stem and stern of the ship (see ix. 241) were likened to the horns of an ox. In viii. 231 the same adjective, there translated "tall-horned," is applied in the literal sense to oxen. 34. " With the sword," literally " with the iron." This 367, 12 perhaps means rather with a knife ; for in Homer we always find weapons made of bronze, except the iron club of Arei- thoos and the iron arrowpoint of Pandaros (iv. 123); while, on the other hand, small tools are commonly made of iron. A knife was carried by Agamemnon for sacrificial purposes, iii. 271; and if Achilles also had one hanging beside his sword, it would be an obvious thing to use. 39. This " Catalogue of the Nereids " was rejected by 367, 16 Zenodotos as having a " Hesiodean character," and this judgment is clearly right. Hesiod, in fact, gives a longer list of Nereids, from which this seems to have been selected. Such catalogues of names are very common throughout the Hesiodean poetry, but are rarely found in Homer. 101. It is quite natural that Achilles in his emotion 369, 13 should forget the beginning of his sentence in the multitude of thoughts that are crowding on him. The answer to "since I go not back " comes only in 114 (24), "now go I forth." 109. The "trickling honey" reminds us of the story of 369, 20 Jonathan in the wood eating of the honey which dropped. Wrath is said to "wax like smoke," because a little smoke from a small fire will soon fill all the house. 117. It is clear that the poet of this passage knew 369,28 300 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII nothing of the later legend which told how Herakles be- came a god. This appears first in the notoriously late scene which forms the latter part of the story of Odysseus' descent to Hades (Od. xi. 60 1). 370, 29 150. It will be noticed that nothing is said here about passing the wall ; only the ships are named. This may be taken as some indication that the passage belongs to the original " Menis." It will also be noticed that we hear no more about the carrying of the body of Patroklos by Meriones and Menelaos, with which the last book ended ; the corpse is now being dragged. 371, 21 177. The "stakes of the wall" might naturally be sup- posed to be the palisade which, as we have several times been told, was set by the Greeks in the moat in front of their wall. But to fix it there would be to surrender the head to the Greeks, and it is more likely that what is meant is a palisade along the top of the wall of Troy. We are never actually told of such a palisade, but we may fairly infer that it was a common addition to a fortress wall in the Homeric times. For in the model city of the Phaiakians, in Od. vii. 45, we hear of " the long high walls crowned with palisades." 371, 25 1 80. The translation given in the revised edition, "if he go down mangled amid the dead," is evidently more forcible than the alternative rendering, which is literally, " if he come to thee a mangled corpse." Both are consistent with the Greek. It must be remembered that the mutilation of the body was a more serious thing to the Greeks than it would be to us. We regard it chiefly as a matter of sentiment ; but the Greeks thought that if the body was mangled, the spirit suffered similarly in power. This belief is at the root of the common superstition which led murderers in Greece, as in other lands, to mutilate the corpses of their victims, COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII 301 in order to make their spirits powerless to take revenge. It is not so long since we have got rid of a survival of the same belief; for suicides used to be buried with a stake through them, simply in order to prevent their ghosts from " walking." 207. The scene is laid on an island where the town is 372, 19 being attacked, perhaps by a descent of pirates. The citi- zens light beacons to summon their friends on neighbouring islands to their assistance against the common foe. As long as it is day only the smoke of the beacons is seen, but as soon as the sun goes down the fire appears beneath the smoke; so in like manner, while the cloud is dark over Achilles' head, the fire shines to heaven. "The others" are apparently the townsfolk; but the expression is not very clear. One of Tennyson's too rare Homeric transla- tions is worthy of this fine simile. 219. This mention of the clarion is one of the cases 372,32 where the epic poet puts into a simile a usage which he does not attribute to his heroes ; for we never find the trumpet employed in Homeric battles. The conclusion is that he knew it to be a recent invention which he could not attrib- ute to heroes of old. The only other allusion is in xxi. 388, this time in a metaphor, " the clarion of great heaven rang around." It seems to be used here by sentinels on the walls to summon the townsmen to defence. The idea is carried on in the "brazen voice," a phrase with which we may compare "Stentor with voice of bronze" in v. 785. 239. This supernatural shortening of the day is hardly 373, 20 consistent with the extraordinary quantity of events which, as the Iliad now stands, have been crowded into it since it began in xi. ; but it would be quite consistent with the plan of the original " Menis," when the events were comparatively few. It may be noticed that this is the only case where a Homeric divinity interferes with the course of inanimate 302 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII nature, except Od, xxiii. 243, where Athene " holds the night long " and " stays the golden dawn." 374> 7 2 59- The allusion might seem to be to the bivouac of the Trojans near the Greek camp of which we are told at the end of viii. But the Greek really says " I used to re- joice," as though it had been common for the Trojans to pass the night on the plain. This is inconsistent not only with the actual events of the Iliad, but with what is hinted of the previous course of the war ; for we are always told that while Achilles fought the Trojans did not dare come out of their city. There is therefore some reason for con- sidering the couplet 259-260 as an interpolation ; it certainly is not needed. 374, 19 272. "Far be that from my ear" looks as though it were borrowed from xxii. 454 (there translated " would that such word might never reach my ear "). The phrase is appro- priate there, for a word has just been mentioned ; but here there has been no allusion to anything audible. It is prob- able that this line and those that follow down to "close- shut " are an interpolation. They contain a good many linguistic difficulties, as well as obscurities of expression. -The meaning of the phrase translated "we shall possess our strength " is quite uncertain. The natural interpretation "in deliberation we shall maintain our force," or "courage," is not satisfactory, but no better sense has been suggested. It hardly seems likely that Polydamas . means that the army should pass the whole night in discussing, as the Greek would seem to imply more clearly than the English does. 375, 2 ~7 288-292. It is not easy to see what bearing these lines have on Hector's argument; perhaps he means that as there is no wealth in the town, the Trojans need not be too anxious about guarding it closely, and may take more risk. He professes to believe that the counsel of Polydamas has been COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII 303 inspired by a timid fear for the loss of his wealth an idea which recurs a few lines further on, 300-302 (14-17}. Here " whoso of the Trojans " of course means Polydamas, and "is grieved" means "is frightened." But the expressions are very involved, and the elaborate irony is hardly like the direct simplicity of the pure Homeric style. 303. " At dawn of day in armour harnessed " is a sarcas- 373, 17 tic repetition of Polydamas' words above (374, 23), in order to emphasise by contrast the opposite advice which follows. 317. This beautiful contrast of the murderous hands with 375, 32 their pathetic employment is even more touchingly expanded in xxiv. 478-479. 326. We are told in xxiii. 85 that Patroklos had left his 376, 8 home in Opoeis or Opus with his father on account of a homicide, and had gone to live in Phthia. If the poet of these lines was acquainted with that legend, which is not certain, it follows that it was taken as a matter of course that the exile was only to be temporary. 335. The alternative given in the revised edition, " slayer ^6, 18 of thee the high-hearted," for "thy high-hearted slayer," is more suitable to the context. It is true that Homeric heroes do not hesitate to apply conventional epithets of praise even to their enemies ; but it is impossible not to feel < that this is a place where we should prefer to have the con- ventional usage in the background, if possible, and the laudatory epithet applied to the dead friend. 336-337. This promise is made in the same words in 376, 19 xxiii. 22-23, an d fulfilled in xxiii. 175-176. It is not unlikely that the couplet may have been inserted here, in order to prepare the way for an incident invented by the author of xxiii. 339. The idea seems to be that the captive women are 376, 22 set to do the work of mourners in a sort of triumphant 304 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII mockery. But in xix. we shall find Trojan captives mourn- ing Patroklos with apparent sincerity. That passage is prob- ably later than the present, however, and was no doubt suggested by it. 377> & SS^- The following short colloquy between Zeus and Hera has from ancient times been suspected as an inter- polation. It has no bearing on the story; it gives us no fresh insight into the minds of the gods, and certainly would not be missed. Seven out of the thirteen lines of which it consists appear again in other parts of the poems, and of the remaining six several contain expressions unlike the usual Homeric style. 377,20 370. " Starlike " perhaps alludes to the decoration of the walls with rosettes or starlike bosses of metal which was the system of ornament, it would seem, in the " treasury of Atreus" at Mykenai (see Schuchh. p. 147) as in the great tomb at Orchomenos (ibid. 302). The house is called a " house of bronze " probably only because all divine property is of nobler material than that used for the same purpose by mortals. J77) 2 5 375- The wheels on the feet of tripods are found in Phenician work (compare i Kings vii. 27-38, ''Every base had four brazen wheels"}. The tripods stand as a rule in the hall of Hephaistos, but they are made, it would seem, so as to go to the general assembly of the gods when required : perhaps to serve as tables at the feast. The " ears " are the rings which are found attached to the edges of all Greek tripods to serve as handles ; for " chains " we should per- haps rather translate "rivets," but the word is not quite clear. The magic power of movement may be compared with that of the handmaidens mentioned below, and with the gold and silver dogs which guard the palace of Alkinoos in Od. vii. 91-94. But it is very characteristic of the epic COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII 305 reserve that so little use should be made of supernatural marvels even in Olympos. 382. Charts or " Grace " is made the wife of Hephaistos 377, 3* by a transparent allegory, because the artificer must have grace to put in his work. There is evidently no knowledge here of the legend by which Aphrodite herself was made the wife of Hephaistos. This appears first in Od. viii. 395. The legend of the casting of Hephaistos out of 378, 14 heaven has already appeared in i. 590-594 ; but there it is Zeus himself who does the deed, here it is Hera. See also the note on xv. 18-24. 399. The epithet given to ocean, literally " back-flowing," 378, 18 probably contains some echo of knowledge of the tides which so markedly distinguish the ocean from the tideless Mediterranean. Some hold, however, that it refers to the shape of the ocean, conceived to surround the earth as a circular river, whose stream thus endlessly flows back into itself. 401. We are hardly in a position to say exactly what the 378, 19 articles were that Hephaistos made. The brooches are probably the long safety-pins which were used for fastening the dress over the shoulder. The " cups " were perhaps small bud-like ornaments for use as ear-rings. 448. This allusion to the " Embassy " looks like an inter- 380, i polation, for as it stands it would imply that the sending of Patroklos was the result of the embassy, which we know was not the case. In all probability the addition of the " Embassy " was later than the " Making of the Arms," and this short allusion was put in subsequently with an obvious intention. The story reads quite smoothly when it is left out. Aristarchos indeed rejected on other grounds the whole passage 444-456 (from j/p, jo, "the maiden," to 380, 9, "glory unto Hector"). He thought that the recapitulation was unnecessary, as indeed it is. x 306 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII 380, 18 464. The words of Hephaistos are an instance of the common formula where the certainty of one event is emphasised by contrasting it with the impossibility of another : " He shall have his armour so surely as I cannot save him from death." The latter part, however, instead of being a direct statement, is put in the form of a wish, the fulfilment of which is evidently hopeless. 380, 23 468. The bellows, like the tripods above, are intelligent automata, and do their work at command. The phrase " now to aid his labour " begins as if it were going on " and now to cease when he ceased " ; but instead of the last clause there is substituted a general expression of their obedience in every respect. 380, 27 474. Besides the four metals here named we find men- tion in the sequel of "cyanus" or blue smalt, made of glass (see the note on xi. 16). The general description seems to be that of a man who has ocular knowledge of the processes of metal work, and does not support the belief once held that all the most ancient works of such kind in Greece were Phenician importations. Of the actual details, however, nothing is said, and the technique remained a mystery till the discovery of the dagger-blades at Mykenai. This at once made it evident that the poet here had in his mind such a process of inlaying metals as has been used in the blades. The bronze is probably used to make a dark ground, while coloured pictures are produced upon it in the lighter-tinted metals (see the description in Schuchh. pp. 229-231). jSo, 32 479. We are not told how the rim of the shield was made ; presumably it was simply a turning over of the plate which formed the facing. The five " folds " or layers of the shield itself must be conceived as being of hide, as is the case with all the shields of Homeric heroes ; a single COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XVIII 307 plate of metal is put in front of these, and it is with the decoration of this layer alone that the poet concerns himself. The pictures are evidently arranged in concentric circles, and the shield therefore cannot have been of the oblong shape ; it must either have been a complete circle, or it may have had the peculiar form which is commonly found in the Mykenaean pictures, that of an oval shield with a large notch cut out on either side (see Schuchh. pp. 197, 230). The latter shape, in the more developed form known as the Boiotian shield, is adopted by Mr. Murray in the interesting conjectural restoration which he has given in his History of Greek Sculpture. There is an obvious difficulty in the arrangement, if we suppose that the concentric circles are described in regular order. We begin with representations of the heavenly bodies. However we suppose these represented, they can only have been suitably placed at the centre ; while the stream of ocean, which comes last, as evidently has its suit- able place at the rim. But next to the heavenly bodies come the elaborate descriptions of two cities, with a far larger variety and multiplicity of incident than any other of the divisions which follow. These naturally, therefore, should occupy the larger outer divisions ; while the dance, which immediately precedes the ocean, is more suitable, from the little variety of its subject, for a small inner circle. Mr. Murray is therefore well advised in giving up the order of the description ; he places the heavenly bodies in a circle at the centre and the ocean outside, and then to find room for the cities goes to the outermost circle but one, whence he works regularly inwards, only returning to the rim for the ocean. The bipartite form of the shield which he adopts has the advantage of showing well the symmetrical arrangement 308 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XVIII which prevails throughout. After the first group, that of the sun, moon, and stars, we find this prominent at once. We have the besieged city balanced by the city at peace ; this will fill the two opposite halves of one circle. In the next we have the four seasons, which will go two and two in the two halves of the next circle spring represented by ploughing and summer by reaping in one, autumn by the vintage and winter by herding in the other. The notches at the side do not extend to the centre, so that the dance will be represented by a complete circle outside that containing the heavenly bodies. The annexed diagram illustrates this arrangement. Mr. Murray, in his restoration of the shield, takes the representations of the scenes from Egyptian and Assyrian sources, assuming them to have reached Greece through the medium of the Phenicians, whose art, as is well known, rested on a combination of these two distinct elements. But the art of Mykenai, as we have learned to know it of late, shows but little trace of Phenician influence. Egyptian art, it is true, has had an unmistakable and predominant influence in Mykenai, but Assyrian types are conspicuous by their absence. On the other hand, the evidence seems more and more to point to a native Mykenaean school, founding its work on Egyptian models, but treating them with a freedom and naturalism which is thoroughly Greek. The Assyrians, in fact, reached the shores of the Medi- terranean only about 1000 B.C., nearly at the same date as the Dorian migration ; and though it is quite likely that small specimens of Assyrian, and still more perhaps Baby- lonian, work came by way of trade to the Mediterranean region before that, yet it is only with the advance of the wave of Assyrian conquest that their art began to win an important place in Greece. The first traces of it are very 310 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII evident in the latest tombs of the Mykenaean period, not- ably those at Spata and Menidi in Attica, which may well be later than the Dorian invasion, and are probably not much before 800 B.C. Unless, therefore, we are prepared to place the composition of the shield as late as this, we must not import into it Assyrian motives or Assyrian style. And that it is possible to bring the composition to so late a date I at least cannot believe. The correspondence with Mykenaean art is too close to allow us to suppose that any long interval separated the poem from the great age of Mykenai ; and fresh coincidences to enforce this belief are still turning up. The last year, 1891, has witnessed the discovery of the most remarkable of these the picture of a siege, chosen as the frontispiece to this volume, which is certainly the most striking illustration of the Homeric poems yet discovered. We must, then, give up entirely the dry formalism of the Assyrian style which rules throughout Mr. Murray's restoration, and look rather for such a free- dom and vigour of natural treatment as we find in the engraved sword-blades, the Vaphio cups, and the new frag- ment from the silver bowl. With these before us, we see that the poet was idealising less than was thought possible a few years ago, and that the likeness to life which is the keynote of his description was a creation of the artist whom he had in mind, and not only of his own imagination. At the same time it is clear that the description does at times transgress the limits of possibility for a mere plastic art; for the actors are often made to move, not only to look as if they were moving. It is natural enough that the poet should allow himself to be thus carried away by his imagination, and should fuse what an artist must have con- ceived as separate scenes into a story which is told continu- ously. With these exceptions, there is no reason to doubt COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XVIII 311 that we have before us a poetical description of a work of art, or perhaps more probably a composition from many works of art, such as the poet was really familiar with ; and that what he describes is actually a work of Greek genius, the artistic ideal of that great epoch of Greek art which we call Mykenaean. In one noticeable respect this account of the shield differs from all similar works in later Greek art, and agrees with the Mykenaean remains. The subjects are all taken from everyday life, and mythology is conspicuously absent. Two divinities only are mentioned, Ares and Athene, in the scene of the siege ; and they are not brought into any mytho- logical relation, but are simply taking part in purely human events, just as they do in the battle-scenes of the Iliad itself. It has often been remarked that the same phenomenon is found at Mykenai ; there is not a single instance of a mytho- logical scene in all the numerous pictures which have been found, with the more than doubtful exception of the great seal (Schuchh. p. 277). On the other hand, we find that in later Greece mythology has an almost exclusive place in such work. The most noticeable instance is the Chest of Kypselos described by Pausanias. This, from its arrange- ment by scenes in bands, reminds us in many ways of the shield ; but there are in it no scenes of common life ; gods and heroes occupy the whole. So in the Hesiodean " Shield of Herakles," an early imitation of this very poem, mythology has usurped the whole field. In the " Shield of Achilles " we have a picture such as reminds us rather of the Egyptian wall-paintings, with their vivid delineation of the ordinary life of the common people. This selection of subject is no doubt yet another trace of that Egyptian influence which is so pervading at Mykenai. Among the occupations which are described, it has been noticed that nothing bearing in 312 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII any way upon seafaring has been found. This is somewhat remarkable, as there is no doubt that the Achaians must have been well acquainted with the sea ; but here again we find a parallel with the Mykenaean representations ; though they show us marine animals in abundance as ornamental types, we find no ships ; these appear only in the post- Achaian pictures of vases of the " Dipylon style." 381, 3 483. It is not easy to say how earth and the heavenly bodies were represented ; but it would seem from the epithet of the moon " waxing to the full " that there was more than a mere conventional personification such as Mr. Murray supposes ; for the shape of the moon must have been shown. 381, 7 488. When Orion is rising the Bear is, in northern Greece, just touching the northern horizon, from which he immediately begins to ascend. The idea is that as the Bear is about to take his bath in the ocean, Orion, the great hunter, appears and frightens him away. The Bear is said to have alone no bath in the ocean, because the other constellations which lie round the pole and do not set are comparatively inconspicuous, and in Homeric times had doubtless not been specially named (see Miss Clerke's interesting chapter on Homeric Astronomy in Familiar Studies, particularly pp. 42-46). 381, 10 490. The subject of the city at peace contains two parts the Marriage and the Trial. Each of these again seems naturally to fall into two scenes : the marriage, into the bridal procession and the dance ; the trial, into the dispute and the judgment. The significance of the trial scene was not properly brought out in the original edition of the trans- lation and the appended note. It is no doubt as follows : A man has been slain ; the homicide has offered a money payment in commutation of the death, but the next of kin COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD ' : XVIII 313 refuses to accept it Both parties come into the public place attended by their friends and dispute. This scene ends with the words "on either side." The next scene shows us the dispute referred to the decision of the elders, the king's council, who are to decide what course is to be taken. The importance of this double scene lies in the fact that it shows us criminal law in its very birth. No criminal law can be said to exist when it is a matter for private arrangement between the homicide and the next of kin to settle the offence, if they like, by a money payment, instead of by the normal blood revenge, which means the exile of the homicide if he is not killed. But criminal law begins when the people claim to have a voice in the question, and to say that the money shall be accepted. That is the case here. The appearance before the people with supporters, and the wrangle on both sides, is virtually a legal form for submitting the case for trial. Both litigants are willing to have the dispute settled by an umpire or daysman. It seems likely that this again was a legal formality ; the matter was referred in the first instance to a single judge, probably in heroic times the king, who declared the matter to be one for which he must call in the advice of his council. Thus it is that immediately after the mention of the single daysman (" witness") we find ourselves in the presence of the elders as a body. This is really the elementary process by which the king's council has in so many cases become the highest legal tribunal. The House of Lords in England is in this respect only the counterpart of the Areopagos at Athens ; for both courts are no doubt survivals of the old royal council, advising the king in the administration of justice. 505. The staves which the elders hold are those which give 3 Sl , 2 5 the right to speak in turn (see note on r. 234) ; the object of the two talents of gold is not so obvious. It has been sup- 314 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII posed that they represent the blood-price ; but the amount of two talents is far too small to represent the value of a man (see note on xxiii. 264). The Greek is unfortunately ambiguous, as it is not clear if we have to translate " plead " as a litigant, or "give judgment" as a judge; but the balance of probability is decidedly in favour of the latter interpretation. In that case we must look upon the two talents as a sort of court-fee to be given to the elder whose decision is considered the most righteous. One talent will have been paid in by each of the litigants. 381, jo 509. It is not easy so to mark all the scenes of the besieged city as to conceive it adapted for plastic repre- sentation. Two main divisions can be made out : (i) the siege; (2) the fight over the herds. The former again seems to divide into two scenes : first, the dispute among the besiegers ; secondly, the secret sortie of the besieged. So again the fight itself may be similarly divided into the attack on the herds, and the battle when the besiegers have come to the rescue. But narration here encroaches so much on de- scription that we cannot keep them distinctly apart. It has been ingeniously suggested by Mr. Murray that the reason for the mention of two armies is to be found in the purely technical difficulty which an early artist had in representing a city as surrounded by an army. This is most naturally expressed by putting an army on each side of it. These are interpreted by the poet as two armies in alliance. But then the difficulty remains that the two armies are here brought together in debate. And the Mykenaean artist of the siege in the frontispiece shows no such technical helplessness as the Assyrian from whom Mr. Murray takes his picture ; his perspective is bold and effective, and he does not hesitate to show us an army fighting in front of a city. It is perhaps enough to say that the poet, or perhaps the designer of some COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII 315 work of art which was in the poet's mind, was thinking of what may very well have been a familiar incident at a time when, as we know from Egyptian monuments, joint expedi- tions by the Achaians and allies were carried out on a large scale. The point in dispute between the armies seems to be whether or no they shall offer terms to the city, promising to raise the siege on condition of receiving half the wealth of the town. Such terms appear to have been usual, for Hector thinks for a moment of offering them to the Greeks in xxii. 120. While this debate is going on, the besieged, so far from thinking of surrender, are preparing a counter-stroke in the shape of a sortie to capture the herds on which the besiegers are subsisting. The noise of the attack breaks up the debate ; the besiegers hurry to the rescue of their herds, and a general engagement ensues. 531. The word translated "speech-places" is obscure. 382, r? No better sense than this has been found for it ; but the idea of " tribunes " from which the orators spoke is alien from Homeric conceptions. This is, however, what the ancient critics took it to mean. It may be more generally " the place of assembly"; but even that does not give a very good sense. 535. These personified spirits of battle recall the Val- 3& 2 > 23 kyries of northern mythology. They have already appeared in iv. 440, and are evidently, from the mention of raiment, conceived as in human shape. 541. Mr. Ridgeway has suggested that the mention of 3^,30 the " many ploughers " indicates the ploughing of the common land of the township. This is commonly done by the whole community on a fixed day, of which we have a relic in our " Plough Monday." " Fresh-ploughed," i.e. fallow ; no doubt the old system of cultivation in Greece as elsewhere was the " two-field," each piece of land being ploughed and left fallow in alternate years. It would seem 3i6 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII that it was usual to plough such fallow land three times before sowing it ; but of this we have no positive information. 383, 10 550. There is a variety of reading here between " demesne-land deep in corn " and " demesne-land of a king." It is not easy to choose between them. In any case it seems that we have here a contrast with the preced- ing scene in the fact that we are now not on the common land, but on the private property of a single person ; and that person must be a king. For, as has often been pointed out in the preceding notes, only those who had some special royal privilege were competent to hold land as private property. Thus, whether expressed or not, the demesne- land must have been a king's. But the explicit mention of the fact brings out better the contrast with the preceding scene. It follows that the " staff" on which the king leans is none other than the royal sceptre. 383, 21 560. Barley is commonly sprinkled on roast meat (see Od. xiv. 77). It would seem, therefore, that we have here the two processes in the preparation of the meat described together. Some, however, have held that the sprinkling of the meal means the preparation of a porridge for the workers, while the ox is being got ready for the king and his retainers. This is not impossible, but the meaning thus given to the word " sprinkled " is evidently not a natural one. 3 S 3>3 57- The Linos-song was in all probability a dirge for the departing summer, such as was particularly common in Semitic lands ; the wailing for Thammuz is a well-known instance of it. It has been ingeniously suggested that the name came from the Semitic phrase ai lenu, " woe to us " ; this was taken by the Greeks to mean " woe for Linos," and hence the name Linos was introduced into mythology. Linos is in fact identical with Adonis, who is nothing but the Phenician Adonai, "the Lord." Herodotos says that COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII 317 the Linos-song was commonest in Phenicia and Cyprus, but was known under other names in many lands. So Hesiod says, "All men that be bards and lute-players bewail in feasts and dances, singing of Linos." It was therefore a dirge which was specially reserved, strange though the col- location may seem, for scenes of merry-making. 587. This bare mention of the sheepfolds comes in 384, 14 strangely after the very elaborate descriptions which have preceded, and it is natural to suspect it In any case, though it is introduced in the same words as the other main divisions of the shield, we can only regard it as a pendant to the last scene, that of the winter herding of cattle ; for if set by itself it entirely destroys the symmetry which has hitherto prevailed, making five country scenes which cannot be properly balanced one against another, either in number or in the interest of their contents. 591. The mention of Knosos in Crete is remarkable as 384, 18 introducing the only touch of local colouring in the shield. This appears to be further carried out ; for it is said that the wearing of daggers during the dance was a Cretan custom ; and the island was, as we know, celebrated for its dances. What the "dancing -place," or more likely the "dance" simply, was which Daidalos made, we have of course no means of judging. The dance of Daidalos was shown at Knosos in the time of Pausanias (ix. 40, 3). This was a marble relief representing a dance, and therefore cannot have been very ancient, as marble sculpture was a com- paratively late invention ; and indeed the relief is likely enough to have been made in consequence of this very passage. The whole Daidalos -myth is very obscure; he was probably no more than a name for the art of a time whose real origin was forgotten. Ariadne elsewhere appears only in Attic mythology, but the name itself is 318 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XVIII Cretan, so that the Athenians no doubt took it from some older legend lost to us. 384, 22 596. Oil was actually used to give a gloss to cloth (see Od. vii. 107, of the weaving of the handmaidens of Alkinoos : "The soft olive oil drops off that linen, so closely is it woven "). 384, 29 604. The words " and among them ... on his lyre " have no business here at all. They are not found in any MS., and were first introduced a century ago by Wolf from Od. iv. 17. This required a further unauthorised alteration of the text, to give "as he began his strain." The genuine words can only refer to the two tumblers, leading the measure. Any one who has been at Megara on Easter Tuesday will see what these words mean. There the traditional dance is carried out by long lines of women making a few simple steps and gently swaying their bodies. But each line of women is led by a man who goes through most elaborate figures and really dances at their head. He evidently corresponds to the Homeric "tumbler" or posturer. Compare also Bent, The Cydades, p. 246, which illustrates the two forms of dances here mentioned : " The syrtos, a wavy line of five or six women, hand in hand, and led by a pocket-handkerchief by one man, whose acrobatic executions were wonderful to behold. Then there was the rapid dance performed by rows of men with their arms round each other's shoulders, four steps backwards, four forwards, with pointed toe, first slowly, with the pace in- creased till I was almost dazzled by its rapidity." 385, i 607. Okeanos is conceived as a river entirely surround- ing the world. He is thus in his appropriate place here, as running round the outer rim of the shield. 385, 7 613. For the use of tin as the material of the greaves, see note on xi. 16. BOOK XIX WITH this book we once more find ourselves, but for the last time, amid the same difficulties which have involved the analysis of the two preceding. There are, however, two parts of it about which we need feel but little hesitation the beginning and the end. The first thirty-nine lines, down to " the same continually " (387, / l( > close to the ships," as they did at the end of viii. This is, of course, sarcastic. 76. This is a difficult passage, and has been suspected of 3 SS > 22 interpolation ever since the time of Zenodotos. The only really satisfactory explanation is got by omitting altogether 1. 77, "speaking from the place . . . in their midst." Then all is clear enough. Agamemnon is naturally nervous and anxious, feeling that Achilles' frankness has placed him in a very unfavourable light. He therefore begins by appealing for a fair hearing. He is in no mood to face noisy inter- Y 322 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIX ruption, and appeals to the army to listen quietly. But this explanation is evidently inconsistent with 77 ; for Agamemnon cannot appeal for himself as one that "standeth up to speak," if we have just been expressly told that he was not standing, but sitting. The omission of 77 dates from the time of Zenodotos. Aristarchos, however, retained it, and gave a curious and very strained interpretation. Accord- ing to him Agamemnon (who by the way was only wounded in the arm) is prevented from standing by his wound. He begins by saying, " It is seemly to listen to a man standing up," i.e. he apologises for not being able to do so. He goes on, " but it is not well to prompt another," i.e. " If you are to be addressed by a man standing, since I cannot stand myself, I must have a spokesman into whose mouth I can put my words ; and that is hard even for a skilled speaker." There is some ambiguity in the Greek, for the verb, which literally means " to throw in," is used both of interrupting and of prompting, so that so far the last interpretation is possible. But it is evidently most strained and far-fetched ; nor does the following appeal for silence seem a logical sequence. It is possible that 77 was introduced only when this forced explanation had gained favour, it is hard to guess how, in order to prepare the way for this supposed meaning of the man who " standeth up to speak." 388,33 87. For "Erinys who walketh in the darkness" see ix. 571. Erinys here has outstepped her original function of safeguarding family relations, and has assumed a general oversight over the morals of men. Compare Od. xv. 233, " The dread blindness of soul which the goddess, the Erinys of the dolorous stroke, had laid on him." " Madness " is in the Greek Ate, who is immediately afterwards personified as a divinity, as in ix. 502-512, where she is called "Sin." The similarity between that remarkable allegory and the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIX 323 present passage is striking ; the two stand alone in Homer. Ate is said to walk over the heads of men, as being a mysterious and silent infliction coming from above. 95-136. This long episode has all the appearance of an 389, 7- interpolation from some Epic dealing with the story of 39> *5 Herakles. Such a digression is most unsuitable here. It has but the faintest connexion with the story. The words and doings of the gods are elsewhere in Homer related only by the poet in his own person. He, of course, knows about them by the direct inspiration of the Muse ; but it is quite a departure from epic usage to find a tale of what goes on in Olympos put into the mouth of a personage of the poem. There is only one other case, itself gravely suspected, and even there an explanation is given to account for the de- parture from the rule. It is in Od. xii. 374-390, where Odysseus knows all about what happened in heaven when the news came of the slaughter of the kine of the Sun. " This," he says, " I heard from Calypso of the fair hair, and she said that she herself had heard it from Hermes the Messenger." We know that the story of Herakles was a favourite subject for epic treatment, and it is evident how easily an episode like the present may have been transferred bodily from such a poem into the mouth of Agamemnon. 105. Some have supposed that the "blindness" of Zeus 389, 16 lay in his not marking the slight change which Hera made in the form of his oath. He speaks of the race of men "who are sprung of me by blood," for which Hera says " all men who are of the lineage of thy blood." It has been thought that, in his own words, Zeus meant only his own sons, but that Hera extends the phrase so as to include all his descendants in whatever degree. Now Herakles was his own son, whereas Eurystheus, son of Sthenelos, was only the great-grandson of Zeus, as his grandfather Perseus was 324 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XIX son of Zeus and Danae. But this interpretation strains the words needlessly. It is enough to find the infatuation of Zeus in the fact that he swears that dominion should be given to that one of his descendants who should be born on a certain day, forgetting that Hera, as goddess of marriage and presiding over childbirth, would have a word to say in the matter. It will be noticed that the functions of Hera and Eileithuia, the goddess of travailing women, seem to overlap; but such confusion is characteristic of all living mythologies. The neat apportionment of functions only comes when the mythology has died and become a matter for systematisers and logicians. So too we hear first of Eileithuia as a single goddess, and directly afterwards of " the Eileithuiai " in the plural, just as we have sometimes Fate and sometimes the Fates. The whole story is evidently meant to explain, from the point of view of a partisan of Herakles, his traditional subjection to Eurystheus. 389, 26 115. The Achaian Argos is the Peloponnese, as opposed to the Pelasgian Argos or Thessaly. The exact scene of the event is Tiryns, where Perseus was the legendary king. 390, '19 141. "Yesterday," though to be quite exact it was late on the night of the day before. The discrepancy is due no doubt only to a momentary forgetfulness on the part of the interpolator, and no stress can be laid upon it. 392, 5 197. The boar was the animal on which the competitors at Olympia swore to observe the conditions of the contest. We are hardly in a position to say why it was thus specially selected for oaths. 392, ig 212. The turning of the feet of the dead to the doorway was an old rite. The corpse was always carried feet fore- most, in the belief, it would seem, that the soul was thus prevented from returning to haunt the earth. This at least is the explanation given of the custom, which is very wide- COMPANION TQ THE " ILIAD : XIX 325 spread, by the Pehuenches in South America (Rohde, Psyche^ p. 22 note). 221. This is another of the many obscure passages in 392, 28 this book. The explanation given in the note to the trans- lation is one of several which have been proposed. Accord- ing to this, the key is to be found in the contrast between a pitched battle and the sack of a town. The former carries with it little hope of plunder to keep up the courage of the soldier. In a battle " the sword strews most straw," because most men are killed ; but " the harvest is scanty," because there is but little to be got when the fight is over. It is as though a farmer had to reap a crop with much straw to increase his labour, but little grain in the end. The Homeric hero frankly looks on war as one of the regular means of acquiring wealth. For the metaphor of the balance of Zeus as a sign of the crisis of battle see note on viii. 69. 235. According to the punctuation, this line may be taken J9J, 9 in two ways : " this summons," i.e. that which I am now giving, " shall be for evil to whoso," etc., i.e. after this call to arms it will go hard with him that stays behind (so Monro) ; or " this (the words I am now speaking) is the summons ; it shall be ill for whoso," etc. The latter gives the most vigorous sense. Both, however, are open to the objection that it is not Odysseus who is giving the summons to arms ; Achilles has done that, and Odysseus is pleading for delay. The rendering given in the early editions of the translation, " such a summons shall be for evil," avoids this difficulty, but is not consistent with the Greek. The words used must necessarily imply a summons which is being given at the moment. 252. Compare the very similar scene of the oath in iii. jpj, 26 271, etc., whence several lines are repeated here. The name Erinyes is here given to the underworld powers who 326 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIX in the other place are left nameless. It will be noticed that here there is only one boar for all the powers appealed to, while in iii. there is a ram for each. The hurling of the victim into the sea is also peculiar to this place. In neither case is it burnt or eaten, but devoted to the nether gods. 394, 22 282. The following lament of Briseis, pathetic though it is, contains many departures from Homeric language, and cannot be ascribed to an early period of the Epic. The idea that Briseis could ever become Achilles' wedded wife is entirely repugnant to Homeric manners, and is incon- sistent with the rest of the Iliad, as for instance with the words of Achilles himself in ix. 336 (see note), 394. The very expression translated "wedded wife" seems to imply one wedded as a virgin, and in that case could not be used of Briseis, who has had another husband. Briseis' allusion to her brothers seems to be copied from the words of Andro- mache in vi. 421. J9J-, 2 296. The tradition said that Mynes was himself the husband of Briseis ; but there is nothing here to show that he was anything but her king. S95t 9 302. This passage has often been quoted as an instance of epic truth to nature : a pretended lamentation for a stranger is used as a cover for the expression of a real sorrow which else would have to be concealed. But such an idea seems hardly consistent with the directness and simplicity of the epic style. It is very likely that we should not trans- late " semblance," but say, the women wailed for the sake of Patroklos, and each for her own sorrow. The grief for Patroklos is real, but at the same time it awakens in each woman the thought of her private griefs as well. This is at least as true to nature, and has a finer dignity of its own. 395 1 3 1 325. It has been noticed that this passage is the only one in the Iliad where any Greek speaks of Helen in words COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIX 327 of anger. Similarly there is only one in the Odyssey, viz. xiv. 68, " I would that all the stock of Helen had perished utterly." 326. The whole of the following digression about Neop- 395,32 tolemos is probably a very late interpolation. The Iliad knows nothing of any son of Achilles, except in xxiv. 467, which is an equally suspicious passage. Achilles himself is evidently regarded as having been a mere boy when he left Greece for Troy (see xi. 786). Here his son is con- ceived as being too young to travel alone ; but in Od. xi. 506 we have the legend which made him bring about the fall of Troy immediately after his father's death. The passage in the Odyssey is probably one of the very latest in the Homeric poems, so that we can thus trace in Homer the gradual growth of the legend of Neoptolemos, which was to play a leading part in the poems of the late epic school. This subsequent celebrity was no doubt the motive which led to the interpolation here. 351. With the words "then the Achaians " we probably 396,27 re-enter the stream of the original story of the " Menis." 362. The metaphor "the earth laughed" may perhaps 396,33 seem more in the modern romantic style than in the epic ; but this is only apparent. The Greek word is closely con- nected in etymology with the meaning to shine, so that the phrase is much less artificial than it may appear to us. 365-368. These four lines, from " his teeth " to " by 397, 2 his art," were rejected by Aristarchos as being turgid and exaggerated in expression, and not needed. This criticism is just ; and for us there is the further consideration that they contain an allusion to the making of the arms by Hephaistos, and therefore cannot belong to the " Wrath." 377. For "then storm-blasts bear them off unwilling" 397,14 of the earlier editions of the translation, read "sailors 328 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XIX whom storm-blasts bear unwilling." The picture is that of storm-tossed sailors who see afar over the sea a light from some shepherd's hut, which shows them that they are near- ing land ; there is nothing implied about their being suddenly snatched away again. The actual comparison is taken from the distance at which a light on a hill can be seen at sea ; but it is perhaps meant to suggest also the further idea that the sight of Achilles is as welcome to the Greeks as the nearness of port to the weary mariner. 397,19 382-383. This couplet ("the horse-hair . . . about the crest") is certainly interpolated from xxii. 315-316. The repetition of the word " helmet " is awkward, and there are other linguistic reasons which render it clear that the lines are out of place here. They are evidently inserted in order to bring in the allusion to the making of the arms, of which this passage originally knew nothing. 397> 3 2 394. When the chariot is not in use, the reins are drawn back and fastened to the rail which runs about the car. See note on v. 262. 398, 2 398. Hyperion is a common name of the sun in the Odyssey, but is found only here and viii. 480 in the Iliad. In Hesiod and the later mythology Hyperion is made the father of the sun ; but of that Homer knows nothing. 398, 8 404. This striking scene of the speaking horse is unique in Homer ; it is characteristic of the Greek reserve that it should be treated with so little exaggeration, and should not have been imitated or repeated, easily though it lends itself to the art of the inferior poet. As it is, the prophecy, coming at this moment with its foreboding of ill, just as Achilles is about to be presented to us in all his glory, has a peculiarly solemn effect. It is not clear why Hera should have been the one to give the horse his voice. Thetis has been in the habit of bringing prophetic news to her son ; COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XIX 329 but perhaps the miracle is regarded as too great for any but a god of the highest rank. The Erinyes seem here to be the guardians of the physical order of the world as well as of the moral. Mr. Monro quotes a saying of Herakleitos that " if the sun went out of his course the Erinyes as the helpers of justice would find him out." Indeed, when the whole universe is regarded as only the expression of a divine will, which is itself controlled by a fixed fate or order, the distinction between the moral and the physical course of things almost vanishes. BOOK XX THERE are in this book three clear divisions, which must be treated quite separately. The first is the council of the gods, and the beginning of strife among them, 1-74 ("and men Skamandros," 401, 21}. The second tells of the meet- ing of Achilles and Aineias and their fruitless contest, 75- 352 ("face to face," 409, 28}. The third tells of the opening of Achilles' career of victory, 353 to end. The longest of these, the second, has already been dealt with at some length in the General Introduction (pp. 24-25), and it is enough here to recapitulate briefly the reasons which make it impossible to allow to the episode any place among the earlier or better parts of the Iliad. The whole digression is weak in conception and in execution. Even if we suppose that it is meant to show us Achilles as a mere man after all, and not incapable of fear, this is not the place where such a view should be put before us. The whole effect of the onset on the Trojans is damaged by this open- ing, with the banter and coolness of the hero at the moment where the situation demands the ungovernable fury of revenge, such as we have it at the end of the book and in the following narrative. In fact, it is here Aineias who is the hero and not Achilles. For some reason which we do not know, the poet of this part has wished to interweave into the Iliad legends which were evidently current in his COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XX 331 time about the sway in the Troad of some descendants of the family of Aineias. To this end he has subordinated all considerations of literary appropriateness. The style throughout shows signs of lateness, and partakes of the weakness of the narrative. The first section can hardly be rated higher than the second. After the turgid exordium on p. 401 nothing happens. Indeed, it is not clear from the narrative whether the gods actually come to blows here, or are only ranging themselves in preparation for a future fight. Such a battle does actually take place in xxi., as we shall see. Perhaps the best account of this prologue is that it originally belonged to that " Battle of the Gods," and has been separated from it, much as we found reason to suppose that the prologue of the " Deceiving of Zeus " was separated from the main tale of xiv. and put at the beginning of xiii. We can see how the interpolation of the Aineias episode would require such a separation ; for that is in itself founded upon the inter- ference of the gods, and therefore must needs come after the prologue of the " Theomachy," or " Battle of the Gods," proper ; for it is only in this that Zeus removes his veto upon divine interference in the battle. Of course the story of the " Wrath " itself knew nothing of any such veto ; for it is only with the development of the idea of divine inter- ference in the later strata that there came to be any need to forbid the gods from taking part in fight. The result of the displacement is, however, far from satisfactory. After the grandiloquent account of the " breaking out of strife," it is with no little surprise that we suddenly find the gods as interested but unexcited spectators of the' battle on earth. Poseidon himself uses words so peaceful as to produce an almost burlesque effect after what has preceded (403, 332 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XX The third section, the victories of Achilles, begins with 353, " he said, and leapt " (409, 29). But the first part of it seems to be a transitional passage bringing us back from the interpolated episodes to the " Menis." It will be felt that the speeches of Achilles and Hector on 410 are somewhat flat and conventional, and hardly equal to the situation. It is with 1. 381, "but Achilles sprang in" (410, 28}, that we suddenly find ourselves in an atmosphere of irresistible action and relentless movement. Here Achilles is again himself; and here in all probability is the exact point where the oldest tale is taken up again, so that we are swept along to the end of the book without a check. Hector is brought before us for a moment, in order to rouse our expectation of the final meeting ; but that has to be postponed for a while, that it may serve as the climax of Achilles' revenge. Still we end the book with the full feeling that this is in sight, and that we are moving on to it with all the certainty of fate. NOTES 399, 4 4- In Od. ii. 69 it is Themis " who looseth and gathereth the meetings of men." The goddess of Justice is evidently in her right place in summoning deliberative assemblies. It is equally hard to say why all the nymphs and river-gods should come, and why Okeanos should be absent. The former never elsewhere form part of the Olympian council ; perhaps they appear here because one of them, Skamandros, is shortly to play an important part in the story. 399,20 1 8. "Are kindled very nigh " is an obscure expression; we should suppose it to mean that the fighting has come to close quarters ; but in fact at this moment it has not yet begun, and there is still a pause in the war. It can only mean vaguely that a critical moment is at hand. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XX 333 26. Zeus hardly seems logical here, for the intervention 400, j- of the gods would aid rather than restrain Achilles, since the Greek gods are more powerful than the partisans of the Trojans. In the end the aid of Athene prevails in the death of Hector against the support of Apollo. 35. Hermes, Hephaistos, Artemis, and Leto are all new 400, 16 to the war, in which, in the older parts of the Iliad, they take no part whatever. " Of the unshorn hair " is a favourite epithet of Apollo in later Greek, but is not elsewhere found in Homer ; nor is the epithet " of the glancing helm " else- where applied to any but Hector. 53. There is a doubt as to the right reading here, but 401, 2 that adopted in the translation seems decidedly the best. The alternative is "along Simoeis' shore over Kallikolond of the gods" which is supposed to mean Kallikolon where the gods were. This locality is mentioned again only in 151 below. As the name means the If ill of Beauty, later legend naturally said that it was the scene of the judgment of Paris. We cannot locate it, further than by saying that there are, near the stream which has to be identified with the Simoeis (see note on v. 774), hills which will give a view of the battle-field. 56. No one who has felt the charm of the simplicity of 401, 4 the Homeric style and the power of producing great effects by simple means, which, above all, is the mark of the epic genius, can fail to be struck by the way in which this passage departs from the usual rule. If it led up to any great crisis of the story the description would have a grandeur of its own, though not a Homeric grandeur j as it is, ending in nothing whatever, it can hardly be called anything but a bombastic much ado about nothing. The ancient comment- ators inquired with much diligence into the reasons for the pairing off of the particular gods against one another, but 334 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XX succeeded in producing no reasonable explanation ; nor have the moderns done better. The only intelligible pair is that of Hephaistos and Skamandros, fire against water, the signi- ficance of which we shall see in the next book. 401, 21 74. For the language of gods and men see the note on i. 399. The name Xanthos means yellow, and is thus evi- dently significant as applied to a river ; while Skamandros has all the appearance of a real non-Greek name. 402, 4 90. This story is alluded to again by Achilles in 187-194 below. The event took place during one of the raids of Achilles in the Troad, the same which brought about the eventful capture of Briseis, ii. 690. For Pedasos, the later Assos, compare vi. 35, xxi. 86, where the inhabitants of the town are again, as here, spoken of as Leleges. These Leleges were in all probability a branch of the Pelasgian race, or at least nearly allied to them. 402, 29 114. Not only is the furious battle of the gods, of which we have just heard, wholly forgotten now, but it will be noticed that " the gods " means only Poseidon and Athene, the regular allies of the Greeks. Nothing is here said of the presence of Hephaistos and Hermes on the same side. 403, 7 125-128. Aristarchos rejected this sentence, "all we . . . bare him," on the ground that it is inconsistent with the words of Zeus in the council. All the gods have come down, not that Achilles may be saved, but, on the contrary, that he may not be irresistible. This objection is true ; it may be met by putting a comma before "all we" and taking the sentence down to "in this fight " as a parenthesis, explaining why Hera thinks it necessary to help Achilles, viz. because the hostile gods are on the field. But it is hardly worth while to remove this one inconsistency when much greater ones remain behind. 403, 23 144- Poseidon is "blue-haired" because he is god of the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XX 335 blue sea. For the legend of the saving of Hesione, the daughter of Laomedon, by Herakles see on v. 640. It is evidently an early form of the legend which we know better in connexion with the names of Perseus and St. George. Poseidon sent the sea -monster to ravage the land because Laomedon had cheated him of his payment for building the walls of Troy. Laomedon exposed his daughter in obedience to an oracle, and when Herakles had saved her he again had recourse to fraud, in spite of the teaching of experience, and refused Herakles his divine horses, the price promised for the rescue. In return for this Herakles laid the city waste. 164. This long simile is one of the most finished and 404, 13 perfect of the many lion-scenes in Homer. " Scourgeth his ribs " is explained by the belief, of which a Scholiast assures us, that the lion has "a black spur under his tail, like a little horn, with which he lashes himself to arouse his fury." 180-186, "in hope of holding . . . the slaying hard," 404,28 were rejected by Aristarchos on the ground that they are " poor in conception and in execution, and the tone is un- suited to the character of Achilles." This is perfectly true; but the same argument applies to the whole of this dialogue, and it is useless to cut out small pieces. Aineias' pretensions to the crown are evidently based on his connexion with the royal family explained below, 213-241. It has been already pointed out on xiii. 460 that there are traces of a legend about a rivalry for the Trojan crown between the family of Aineias and the elder branch. 195-198. The last four lines of the speech, from "but 403, n not this time," were rejected by Aristarchos, on the ground that the latter part is borrowed from xvii. 30-32, and is only in place there. For in xvii. Menelaos can properly bid his enemy retire, because his first object is to save the body of 336 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XX Patroklos; whereas here it is absurd to suppose that Achilles, at the outset of his career of vengeance, should wish to let his very first enemy, one of the most important he could meet, escape unharmed. But here again the difficulty is inherent in the whole conception of the scene, which cannot be made satisfactory by the omission of a few lines. The same remark may be made on Aristarchos' rejection of 206- 209 below (20-2 3\ "thou . . . Aphrodite." The recount- ing of the parents is unnecessary verbiage, but so is a great deal else in these speeches. 403, 26 213. The following long genealogy, though it is obviously out of place in its present situation, has a very considerable interest of its own. The language in various points shows it to be of late origin, and it is natural to refer it to the Hesiodean age, which, as has frequently been mentioned, was very prolific of genealogical poetry. The mention of the name of Erichthonios is curious ; this is very familiar to us in Attic legend, but is not known elsewhere. For this reason Fick has suggested that the whole passage dates from the time when the Athenians were endeavouring to gain a footing at Sigeion in the Troad. We are told by Strabo that to support their claim they set up a kinship with the Trojans through mythical ancestors ; so there is some ground for supposing that they may have interpolated the pedigree for the sake of the name of Erichthonios. In that case the date would be about 610 B.C. It will further be noticed that, according to v. 265, the divine horses were given to Tros, not to Erichthonios ; this may support the belief that the latter name did not really belong to the Trojan tradi- tion. This, however, is mere conjecture. A certain fact is that the position of Ilios " in the plain " exactly suits the site of Hissarlik, which is on a hillock projecting into the low land ; and it is at least highly probable that the town itself, COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XX 337 as opposed to the citadel, was round the base of this hill and literally in the plain. In any case the words can hardly be made to suit the position of Bali Dagh, the other claimant for the site of Troy ; for this is in no sense in the plain, but lies "on the slopes" or spurs of Ida (see Schuchh. p. 25). Unfortunately it is impossible to say whether this story embodies an ancient legend, or is merely a natural specula- tion as to the way in which a town was likely to grow up. The latter is the safer supposition. 227. " Ripened ears of corn " is the traditional interpre- 4 6 > S tation here ; but the word is used in later Greek in the sense of "stalks of asphodel," and it is quite possible that it should be so translated. The tall stems of this spiky plant, 1 often five or six feet in height, are familiar to all travellers in Greece and other southern countries ; they grow often in dense masses covering acres of land, and would well suit the picture required. 238. The names of Priam's three brothers are found in 46, '5 iii. 147, where, however, nothing is said about the relation- ship. It will be seen that Aineias and Hector are both fourth in descent from Tros ; i.e. they are third cousins. 247. A ship with a hundred thwarts, or seats for rowers, 46> 2 4 evidently means a bigger ship than was ever seen ; for we do not hear in Homer of any ship carrying more than fifty men. 251-255. From "but what need "to "bids them speak" 406, 28 was rejected by Aristarchos, on the grounds that the lines are a needless and tiresome repetition, and the expressions are not suited to the dignity of a hero ; and that it is a barbarian custom, and not Greek, for women to wrangle in public. The former criticism is most undoubtedly just ; 1 Asphodehu ramosus, the branched lily. See Miss Clerke, Familiar Studies, p. 207. Z 338 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XX but here again the speech is not to be cured by a single ex- cision. As to the barbarian habits of the women, it must be observed that in heroic times the women enjoyed a freedom which was quite unknown in classical Greece. The com- parison to the brawlers in the streets is, whatever may be thought of the dignity of the speakers, certainly the most vigorous passage in the speech. 407, 13-16 269-272. These lines were rejected by Aristarchos, and we are told that in some of the earlier MSS. they did not appear at all. They are obviously spurious, for they describe a quite absurd arrangement of metals. The " five folds " of xviii. 481, which, as there pointed out, are really of leather, are here supposed to be five layers of metal, the bronze outside, then tin, and the gold in the middle, where it would be neither useful nor ornamental. When the lines are cut out, we must understand the gold in the preceding line to stand for the whole of the metal facing, which is named from its most precious constituent. 407, 24 280. The "two circles" of the shield seem to mean the two parts of which the circular shield was made, the leathern backing and the metal facing. These might well be torn apart by a blow at the edge, where both were left thin, this part being the least important for defensive pur- poses. 47> 33 289 is as ambiguous in the Greek as in the English ; " which had warded " may mean either " the shield which had just before saved him," or "and this would have warded from him." In any case the whole sentence of "might have beens" is quite alien from the Homeric manner. 408, 4 293. This speech of Poseidon and the action to which it leads are entirely at variance alike with his whole policy during the Trojan war, and with his own words in 133-143 above ; nor is there any explanation of his sudden appear- COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XX 339 ance as a Trojan partisan. It is glaringly false, too, to say of Zeus that he has hated the race of Priam (see, for instance, his words in iv. 44-49). But the prophecy with which the speech closes is evidently what the whole episode of the appearance of Aineias has led up to, and it cannot be separated from its context. We can only conjecture that some family claiming to be sprung from Aineias existed in the Troad in post- Homeric times, and was in some way connected with the worship of Poseidon (see on xiii. 460). In much later days there was a variant, "The might of Aineias shall reign over all men." This was, however, from the first regarded as an alteration made to please the Romans. 322-324, "Peleus'son . . . Achilles' feet," were rejected -fS, 3 1 by Aristarchos as being inconsistent with the previous passage, where we were told that Achilles' spear had passed right through the shield and stuck in the earth; so that it could not now be plucked out of the shield. 329. The Kaukones are mentioned among the Trojan 409, j allies only in x. 429, and do not appear in the Trojan Catalogue. 385. The later geographers identified Hyd with Sardis, 410, 32 which lay near Mount Tmolos. Hyllos was an affluent of the Lydian Hermos ; and the Gygaian Lake, which is named also in ii. 865, is evidently connected with the famous Lydian name of Gyges, which we know from later times. If this part really belongs to the " Menis," as seems probable, it will be the only instance in the ancient poem which shows any minute knowledge of the geography of Asia Minor. But there are various indications which make it possible that this episode of the death of Iphition is a subsequent addition. 404. Helike in northern Peloponnesos was a seat of 4'i, '9 340 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XX Poseidon-worship. At Priene, in Asia Minor, there was a great Ionian festival, attended by all the Ionian tribes, and devoted to the cultus of the Helikonian Poseidon, which no doubt the colonists had brought with them across the Aegaean. The Scholiast tells us that the roaring of the victim was accounted a good sign, showing that the god was pleased to accept it. 411, 29 414. See note on iv. 132. The cuirass being formed of two plates, one for the back and one for the breast, there would be at the side a crevice between them into which a spear thrown from behind and sideways would be sure to slip. It is just over this crevice that the belt is buckled at the side. 412, 14 431-433 have already occurred in the speech of Aineias above, 200-202. Here they are thoroughly appropriate. The following line, in which Hector admits the superiority of Achilles, was regarded by the ancient critics as spoken ironically. This, however, destroys the dignity and pathos of the situation altogether. It is the tragedy of Hector's fate that he should have to face a man who is confessedly his better, and before whom he must in the end fall. 4 I2 > 2 3 440. " Very lightly," because even the faintest breath from a god is enough to overcome all the might of a man's arm. 412, 29 447. This line, "but when . . . godlike on," is omitted here by most MSS. ; it seems to be interpolated from the similar passages v. 436-439, xvi. 703-707, 784-786. In each of these the fourth onset is the sign for the interposition of a god, which does not take place here ; so that the line is less significant, and is better away. 4 I2 i 5 1 449-454. These lines have already occurred in xi. 362-367, where see the note. It is there shown that they are original here and copied there. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XX 341 463-468. The words between the dashes look very much #/?, 12 like an interpolation, especially because it is not the poet's way to describe the characters of his persons directly ; the true Homeric plan is the more artistic, to let them describe themselves by actions and words. The word translated " soft of heart " is literally " sweet-minded." There is no other case where the mind itself is called " sweet " in the sense of kind ; the adjective is always restricted to things which give pleasure song, sleep, etc. 498. Achilles, who has hitherto been on foot, here sud- 4*4, *5 denly appears in his chariot This has led some critics to reject this fine passage altogether. There is no justification for this. It is the practice of Homeric heroes to do most of their fighting on foot, having their chariots close at hand in case of retreat or of need for a rapid diversion in another part of the field. With the low Greek car it was the work of a moment to jump in or out, and we rarely find the actual process mentioned It is a matter of course that each hero has his car at hand, and is in or out as the circumstances of the moment demand. 499-502 are a repetition of xi. 534-537. BOOK XXI OF all the books of the Iliad none shows such sharp contrasts of style as the present. The part which stands out most strikingly is no doubt the " Battle of the Gods " in 385-513 (" but among the other gods," 426, 23, to " in dark clouds," 4jo, 28}. No other piece of Homeric poetry sinks to so low a level as this, whether in tone or execution. The action is no better than a ridiculous harlequinade, where the highest gods and goddesses descend to poor buffoonery. It has no connexion whatever with the story of the Iliad, and nothing could be further removed from what we are led to expect by the grandiloquent introduction to the preceding book. In expression even this story is worthy of its conception. There is a constant straining after originality of language, with a corresponding want of clearness, such as is hardly approached in any other part of Iliad or Odyssey. Manifestly such a piece of work cannot be ascribed to any of the great poets of the preceding books, much less to the author of the "Menis." We may therefore leave it aside and pass on. The rest of the book, after a prologue of thirty-three lines (to " athirst for slaying," 416, 12), contains four distinct scenes the " Death of Lykaon," the " Death of Asteropaios," the " Fight with the River," and the " Pursuit of Agenor and his Rescue by Apollo." The last (from 540, "they straight for COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXI 343 the city," 431, ij) fits on perfectly to the end of xx., and is closely connected with the beginning of xxii. There can be no doubt that this at least had its place in the original " Menis," and it is not certain that any of the three other scenes had. The most interesting and important of these other scenes is the " Fight with the River " a fine piece of poetry, whatever its date. Its one defect is a want of clearness of motive at an important point, discussed in the notes to 221-233. This has led various critics to suppose that it has received longer or shorter additions, or perhaps has been put together out of two different versions of the same tale. It is possible, by an assumption which it must be confessed is a rather violent one, to get over this difficulty, and in that case the whole episode may be taken as a single composition ; but in any case the style is not that of the " Menis," and re- minds us rather of the Third Stratum. It is besides closely connected at the end with the beginning of the " Battle of the Gods " ; so that it must either have been composed after that, or at least had the end changed so as to fit in. There is, moreover, at this point (332), in the words of Hera to Hephaistos, a clear allusion to the introduction to the " Battle of the Gods " in xx. There remain to be considered the two remaining episodes, the " Death of Lykaon " and that of Asteropaios. The former is full of beauty and pathos. Though we can- not say that it is necessary to the story of the " Menis," yet there is no strong reason for doubting that it belongs to it. It is moreover alluded to in xxii. 46. Unless we are pre- pared, with some critics, to reject a few lines there, this episode must be as old as that speech of Priam, which in the main certainly belongs to the " Menis." The " Death of Asteropaios " is not on the same level of 344 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXI beauty. The whole conception of it is a rather weak echo of the " Death of Lykaon " ; and the bandying of genealogies reminds us of the meeting of Aineias and Achilles in xx. Several lines, too, are borrowed from the meeting of Glaukos and Diomedes in vi. There remains only the prologue, which is separable from the " Death of Lykaon," and can hardly be attributed to the " Menis." In several points the description is obscure, and the taking of the prisoners is evidently a preparation for the funeral of Patroklos in xxiii. This is no doubt the reason for the interpolation of these thirty-three lines. The ford of the Skamandros, it may be observed, is a feature in the topography which is only known to the later books of the Iliad, and never appears in the " Menis." The most prob- able conclusion, then, is that this book contains two pieces from the " Wrath," viz. 34-135, and 526-611. The rest con- sists of various additions, which must all be referred generally to the Third Stratum. NOTES 413,1 1-2. For these lines see xiv. 433-434, xxiv. 692-693, the only other passages where the ford is named. In all the course of former battles it has never had any effect on the strategy, and seems to be no more than a poetical invention for occasional use. 413, 6 6. The mist spread over the battle by Hera is forgotten immediately, and not again alluded to. Thus this episode must come under the head of the other interpolations of supernatural darkness which we found in xv.-xvii. 415, 12 12. Driving locusts into a river by means of firegis a common way of dealing with them even in recent times. 4*6> 9 31. It is natural to suppose that the thongs or straps COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXI 345 worn on the doublets are belts round the waist, but there is no other mention of such. These captives are reserved to be killed on the pyre of Patroklos in xxiii. 175. 41. The son of Jason is Euneos, king of Lemnos (see 4*6, 20 vii. 468). He seems to have bought Lykaon as a slave. According to xxiii. 746 the price given was the silver cup there described; here only " the price of a hundred oxen" is spoken of (79). Of Eetion of Imbros we do not hear again. He is not to be confused with the other Eetion, the father of Andromache. Arisbe was a town on the Hellespont. The price now given for Lykaon was 300 oxen (79-80). 50. The sentence is interrupted for a time to explain 416, 27 how it was that Achilles recognised Lykaon. He has thrown off the helmet which covered his face, and the reason for his having done so is given before the main sentence is resumed. 75. "In the bonds of suppliantship," literally in the place of 417, 20 a suppliant. The mere breaking of bread under the roof of another man gives a right to be regarded as his guest whom he may not slay, even though the intention of protection on the host's part is absent. This is the rule to this day in Arabia. " Even the thief who has surreptitiously shared the evening draught of an unwitting host is safe " (Robert- son Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 41). 86. For " ruleth " some MSS. read " ruled," on the */7, 3 ground that the city of Pedasos had been destroyed by Achilles (see xx. 92). But the words there are not incon- sistent with the continued existence of the city, and we are not told that Altes was killed. The clear statement of the polygamy of Priam is repeated in the next book, and is almost the only instance of a marked difference in customs between the Trojans and the Greeks. The present passage has been urged as an instance of the primitive custom of 346 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXI reckoning kinship through the mother only, especially in the prosecution of blood-feuds. But it will not bear this interpretation. Lykaon's appeal for mercy on the ground that he is not of the same mother as Hector is a last resource; and, however kinship was reckoned, the bond between those brethren in a polygamous household who were of the same mother must always, in the nature of things, have been closer than between half-brothers, so that Lykaon might have a faint hope of thus keeping himself apart from Hector in Achilles' mind. For the slaying of Polydoros see xx. 408-418. 418,16 1 06. In the word "friend" the ancient commentators saw a mocking allusion to the claim of guest-friendship which Lykaon had made. But the word is evidently the expression of a genuine pity for youth like Achilles' own, and doomed to the same early fate. The following line, " Patroklos too is dead," etc., is said to have been quoted to Alexander on his death-bed by his physician Kallisthenes. 419,3 126. The Greek here is obscure and the reading un- certain, but the interpretation adopted gives an intelligible sense. Achilles pictures the body of Lykaon floating on the sea, on the rippled surface, up to which the fishes dart from below to eat his flesh. 419, 7 131. The sacrifice of a bull to a river is mentioned in xi. 728 ; the custom is perhaps connected with the frequent personification of a river in Greek art in the form of a bull- headed man. The sacrifice of horses, on the other hand, does not seem to have been practised by the Greeks, and is perhaps mentioned contemptuously as a foreign custom by Achilles. The Persians used to throw horses into rivers as an offering (see Herodotos, iv. 61, vii. 113), and in the time of Tiberius Tiridates the Parthian sacrificed a horse in the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXI 347 Euphrates (Tac. Ann. vi. 37). Pausanias, however, mentions a sacrifice of horses to Poseidon in a fresh-water spring off the coast of Argolis (viii. 7,2). 136. It will be seen that the episode of the " Death of 419, 12 Asteropaios " is introduced by words which prepare the way for the following combat with the River. This may indeed have been suggested originally by the words Achilles has just spoken. 154. " Distant Paionia," a district of Thrace on the river 4/9, 30 Axios, is mentioned in the Trojan Catalogue, ii. 848, but Asteropaios is not named there among the leaders. The mention of the eleven days is perhaps meant to explain this, though, strictly speaking, that period would take us back to an earlier date than that at which the Catalogue is inserted in the story. In the Catalogue, too, the Paionians are archers, whereas here they are spearmen. 158, which is omitted in nearly all MSS., is only a repe- 420, i tition of ii. 850, " Axios, whose water is the fairest that floweth over the face of the earth." 1 94. This is the only mention of the Acheloos in Homer 421, 3 (see note on xxiv. 6 1 6). As the great river of Greece proper, and perhaps from its neighbourhood to Dodona, it always enjoyed great reverence in Greece, and in later literature is often used as a personification of rivers, and indeed of water, in general. 203. For " around him swarmed " we ought perhaps to 421, to translate " him eels and fishes tended" a bitterly ironical expression ; for the verb is often used of the physician who tends a wounded man. So in xxiii. 184 we might render " it was not the dogs that tended Hector," with a similar thought. The mention of the " fat about the kidneys " seems to point to a widespread belief, found alike among Australian savages and the Arabians, that this very fat is the 348 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXI actual seat of life. Australian cannibals eat it in the belief that they thus acquire some of the strength of the slain enemy. The Hebrews, on the other hand, were forbidden to eat it, just as they might not eat the blood which " is the life." The idea is thus the same as in Tennyson's " in thy heart the scrawl shall play," the horror of the thought in both cases being that the very seat of life is devoured. (From Mr. Platt's article in Journal of Philology, xix. 46.) 421, 29 222. The connexion of the thought here is very obscure. The only way, it would seem, to make the narrative quite consistent is to suppose that the River bids Achilles drive the dead forth only as a deceitful means of getting him into his power ; that Achilles thereupon leaps into the river, not, as we should suppose, in order to go on slaying, but to clear away the dead as the River asks, and that his words "so be it " are a promise to do so. If these assumptions can be made, there is sufficient motive for what follows ; but it must be admitted that the true epic style does not leave us to supply all these missing links, but tells us plainly why the characters are acting. There is the further difficulty that the words " he set upon the Trojans like a god " (422, i) can only be used of an attack upon the living, and thus come in very awkwardly between the promise to the River and its fulfilment when Achilles " sprang from the bank." But it is very probable that the River's appeal to Apollo is an interpolation ; for the god is not at hand at the moment, and it remains absolutely unnoticed. If we cut it out, we must evidently reject with it the preceding words of Achilles also (from " and to him," 421, 29, to " deep-soiled earth," 422, 6} ; for " he said, and Achilles " (422, 7) can evidently only follow a speech by the River, and not one by Achilles himself. On the whole, this, of many solutions proposed for the difficulty, seems the most satisfactory. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXI 349 257. This very striking and vivid simile contains the 422, 29 only mention in Homer of the practice of irrigation. 283. " In a storm," perhaps more literally in winter. 423, 21 The allusion is evidently to the custom, of sending swine in charge of a boy to fatten in the autumn among the forests on the hillsides ; they are driven back to the plains on the approach of the winter storms. 289-290. These two lines (" such helpers . . . Athene 423, 27 and I ") were rejected by Aristarchos, on the ground that the gods, having disguised themselves as men, should not at once reveal their names. But the objection is insufficient ; it is absolutely necessary that Achilles, who knows that a god is fighting against him, should have assurance of divine support ; and the disguise assumed is sufficiently explained by the need that a god, before he appears to mortal eyes, should moderate the brightness of his heavenly form. It is, however, strange after this promise that it should be not Athene and Poseidon, but Hera and Hephaistos, who actually rescue Achilles. 307. The appeal to Simoeis, like that to Apollo, remains 424, 14 unnoticed and unanswered. The personality of Simoeis is very vague, as we might expect, considering the very small part which the river plays in the topography (see note on v. 774)- 323. " When the Achaians make his funeral is covered 424, 29 by the negative, the meaning being ' he will need no mound at his burial, because he will have no burial ' " (Mr. Monro). 332. " We thought " is ironical, as implying " it seems 425, 5 we were wrong." The allusion is to the pairing of the gods at the beginning of xx. There is an obvious symbolism of the natural enmity of fire and water. 362. Aristarchos remarked on this that " Homer is ac- 426, / quainted with the boiling of flesh, but does not introduce his 350 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXI heroes practising it." That is, the restriction of boiling to a simile shows that he was conscious that the roasting of flesh was the only ancient method of cooking, and that boiling had been introduced recently. But the melting of lard, which alone is here spoken of, can hardly be con- sidered to imply a knowledge of the boiling of flesh. 426, 27 388. "The clarion of great heaven rang," literally "the heaven trumpeted." For this metaphor, which is not at all like the reserved style of the Epic, see note on xviii. 219. The meaning is probably that the noise of the fighting echoed back from the vault of heaven ; it can hardly be that thunder accompanied the battle, for Zeus the thunderer is taking no part. 426, 28 389. It is only here, and in 508 below, that Zeus in Homer ever so far relaxes his dignity as to go beyond a smile. He evidently regards the whole combat as more of a joke than a real fight. -^6, 32 3^4. " Dogfly," only here and in 421 below. It evidently means " shameless as a dog (see i. 225) and bold as a fly" (see xvii. 570). ^ 7> 3 397. The word translated "visible" isobscure and probably corrupt. The allusion is to the wounding of Ares in v. 856. ^7* 7 J 407. So in Od. xi. 577, Tityos "covered nine roods as he lay." Though we cannot tell the measure meant by the word translated rood, yet, as it seems to imply a land-unit used in ploughing, the stature indicated in both these passages must be monstrous. In earlier and better parts of the poems, the gods, though doubtless, as in xviii. 518, " divinely tall," are not monsters. The nearest approach to these two passages, both of which are very late, is to be found in v. 860, where Ares bellows " loud as nine thousand warriors or ten thousand cry in battle " : a phrase repeated in xiv. 148 of Poseidon. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXI 351 412. " Curses," literally Erinyes, which are called upon 427,19 by the indignant mother as in the story of Meleager (ix. 571). The desertion of the Greek cause by Ares is alluded to also in v. 832. 416. The association of Ares and Aphrodite is here 427, 23 taken as a matter of course ; in the late " Lay of Demodokos " in Od. viii. it is expanded at length. The only indication of it in the older parts of the poems is in E. v. 357, where Aphrodite borrows Ares' chariot to escape to heaven. 436. Poseidon, who when last heard of was in a very 428, g pacific mood (xx. 134), is here suddenly found " spoiling for a fight." For the patronising offer to allow an enemy to begin, see note on vii. 235. 442. The legend of the slavery of Apollo and Poseidon 428, 16 to Laomedon has been already mentioned in vii. 452. We are not told what the reason of it was ; it would seem to be a punishment, perhaps for some revolt in heaven. 464. This is a reminiscence of the famous simile in vi. 4*9* 3 146, though here it is reduced to an extraordinary jumble of metaphors ; to be literal, " men are like leaves, full of fire, eating the fruits of the earth." 475. The end of the speech was rejected by Aristarchos -^9, 13 on the ground that Apollo, who was the god of dance and song, and who has just refused to fight his uncle, can hardly have been in the habit of challenging him to battle in Olympos. But the author of the " Battle of the Gods " would hardly stick at a contradiction like this ; and the speech requires something to end it off. 483. Artemis is the goddess who brings sudden death to 32 women (see note on xxiv. 759). The emphasis lies on "against women," i.e. not against goddesses. Artemis is called a lion probably because the lion was a common type of death among Semitic nations, and, though more rarely, 352 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXI among Greeks. Artemis herself is said to have been worshipped in Ambrakia under the form of a lioness, as she was in Attica under that of a bear. 43> I0 503. "Amid the whirl of dust" is here borrowed with little meaning from the grand passage xvi. 775 ; it produces all the effect of a mock-heroic parody. The following piece is evidently founded on the reception of Aphrodite by Zeus after her wounding by Diomedes (see v. 373-374). From the same place comes 510, "hastily . . . openly," which is here omitted by almost all MSS. 43'> 3 5 22 - This simile must be regarded as interpolated, if we are now again in the "Menis." The first line seems to be not very successfully adapted from xviii. 207 ; it is not right to say that the going up of the smoke causes grief to the inhabitants of a burning city. And the Greek shows what is not clear in the English that it is the smoke which causes the toil and griefs, not the burning of the city. By omitting the words " and causeth ... to many," with one MS., we can make the simile mean that the victorious career of Achilles is like the unceasing rush of smoke ; so that the causing of grief by Achilles will be outside the comparison altogether. But the result is not very satisfactory. 431, 24 549. The oak is evidently that which is spoken of as being near the Skaian gate (ix. 354 and elsewhere). The epithet " waster of cities " is elsewhere, with the exception of the spurious xv. 77, given only to Odysseus, as the taker of Troy by the stratagem of the wooden horse. 431,27 552. The following speech of Agenor is in construction exactly similar to that of Hector under similar circum- stances (xxii. 99-130). In both the most obvious method of escape, direct flight, is first considered and dismissed as impossible. A more circuitous evasion is first entertained, COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXI 353 and then dropped when all the chances have been weighed ; and the heroic alternative is finally adopted, but with faint hope. Several phrases, and even lines, are identical in the two. 558. The " Ileian plain " is mentioned here only. On 431,32 the supposition that Troy lay at Hissarlik, it can be explained from the topography; for there is, just south of the hill of Hissarlik, a small plain through which the Skamandros runs from the spurs of Ida. This exactly answers all the conditions, even to the bathing in the river. There is another reading, "the Idean plain," i.e. the plain near Ida, which would mean the same thing. In any case the plain cannot mean the great plain of the Skamandros, the usual battle-field ; for to run towards this would be to meet Achilles at once face to face. 568. It will be noticed that the invulnerability of 47.?, 8 Achilles is an entirely post-Homeric idea. 594. This line, " it smote . . . drave it back," is 432, 32 omitted by the best MS., and is therefore an interpolation designed to introduce, in the words "the god's gift," an allusion to the making of the arms by Hephaistos. 602. Presumably Apollo flees past the west side of the 433, 7 city, the way of which Agenor had thought, so that the "wheat-bearing plain" must be taken to be the same as the " Ileian plain." 2 A BOOK XXII WE have now reached the last scene of the great drama of the " Wrath." The fated series of events which sprang from the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon has reached its climax, and at the same time we feel that a still greater matter, the fate of Troy, is virtually settled. But it is in the personal contrast of the two heroes, and in the ever- present sense that at the back of the earthly stage the counsel of Zeus is directing all, that we trace the supreme interest of this book, in its double aspect, human and divine. As befits the close of a story where all the threads converge to the climax, the narrative is throughout simple and straightforward. Minor episodes are absent, and the whole interest is centred on the two great figures of Achilles and Hector. Splendid though the book is in its directness, speed, and pathos, the effect which it produces on a modern reader is probably very different from that which was aimed at by the original poet. For us it is Hector who is throughout the object of our sympathy and admiration. Fighting a hopeless fight for his country against gods as well as against the mightiest of heroes, he presents himself in a far nobler light than Achilles, whose strength is helped by divine aid denied to his enemy, and whose overmastering COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXII 355 motive is not patriotism but the gratification of a private revenge. It is in the last scene of all that we feel this most keenly ; first, in the treacherous interposition of Athene, which seems so needless as well as so revolting ; and secondly, in the brutal ferocity with which Achilles refuses the offer of Hector that the victor shall give the vanquished honourable burial. One might think that the poet had purposely done all in his power to exalt the Trojan hero at the expense of the Greek. But it is not conceivable that such was really his inten- tion ; and it is possible to see how an ancient Greek audience may have viewed the matter in another light. To them the presence of the gods on Achilles' side was not so much a mere extraneous aid as a tangible sign that Achilles was after all fighting the great fight of Hellenism against barbarism ; it is a reminder that the action on earth is but a reflexion of the will of heaven, and exalts rather than belittles those to whom the help is given. The moral superiority of Achilles being thus warranted from the point of view of national and religious feeling, to him re- dounds all the exaltation of his adversary. It is because it is difficult or rather impossible for a modern reader thus to realise the supreme importance of the religious aspect of the situation, and its predominating effect on the relative position of the two characters, that the death of Hector must always make on us an effect different from what we may be sure was originally aimed at. Otherwise we must admit that the poet of the ." Wrath " was guilty of a serious artistic mistake in allowing our sympathy at the last to go out only in favour of that one of his characters who cannot be his real hero, whether in the general design of the poem or from his position as a Greek patriot. The last portion of the book after the actual death of 356 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXII Hector, probably from 405 onwards, is closely connected with the next two books, xxiii. and xxiv. Many reasons combine to show that these belong to a late epoch, and have nothing to do with the " Wrath " ; if that be so, the end of xxii. must go with them. The whole of this last part, in fact, is adapted only to be an introduction to what follows ; the lament of Andromache can evidently never have been meant for the finish of a great poem. But with the death of Hector an end may fittingly have been made, whether at Achilles' cry of triumph, " Great glory have we won," or a few lines further on, after the description of the dragging of the body, " For now had Zeus given him over to his foes to entreat foully in his own native land." Of the two passages, my own feeling is in favour of the second as the close of the " Wrath"; but the question cannot be positively decided. It would seem, however, that some such outrage on the corpse should follow on the words in which Achilles had threatened his enemy; and it is more natural that the story should close with words of narrative, than with the speech of one of the actors. Of other portions of the book whose authenticity has been doubted, the most important is the speech of Hector to himself when he debates the question of fleeing or facing Achilles. The "courage unquenchable" of 96 (437, p) seems strangely at variance with the " sore trouble " of 98. The whole speech, as has been already observed, follows very closely the scheme of Agenor's near the end of xxi., so much so as to suggest that orje has been the model for the other. The mention of Polydamas refers to an incident in xviii. which is in suspicious company, and in all proba- bility does not belong to the " Menis." And the expression with which it closes is unlike anything else in the Iliad. There is thus some ground for doubting it. Other COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXII 357 suspected passages are of less importance, and need only be referred to in the notes. NOTES 4. " Setting shields to shoulders " seems to imply that 434, 4 the Greeks held the shields above their heads, so as to be able to approach the walls in safety from missiles cast from above. It is thus a manoeuvre something like the Roman testudo, which was employed in similar circumstances. 27. For a very similar comparison to the dog-star Sirius 433, 4 see note on v. 5. It is curious that the " coming forth at harvest-time " should be combined with brightness " in the darkness of the night." For it is in winter that Sirius is bright in the middle of the night ; his evil influence in summer, during the "dog-days," was attributed to the fact that he then rose with the sun. This position, though it was considered to give a star especial power over the earth, would of course make it invisible. But the brightness of Sirius at night, and its evil connexion with the heat of summer, are its two most prominent characters, so they may be fairly joined in a simile, though divided in nature. The name of the Dog is now commonly used for the constellation (Cant's major] of which Sirius is the brightest star; it is due to its connexion with Orion the great hunter, the constella- tion which immediately precedes it in the sky. 46. The deaths of Polydoros and Lykaon have been 435, '3 described at the end of xx. and beginning of xxi. The way in which Laothoe" is spoken of as a "princess among women," and as having received a dowry from her royal father clearly shows that she was actually a wife of Priam, and not in any inferior position. We have therefore a genuine case of polygamy (see on xxi. 86). 358 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXII 435* 2S 52. The footnote to the translation gives the two alter- native renderings of this passage, between which critics have hesitated from early times. That adopted in the text gives a somewhat more vigorous sense, as the'briefer sorrow of the people receives its proper antithesis in the sorrow of the parents, which will endure "even in the grave." But in any case the difference is not very material. 43&> 2 S 80. " Loosening the folds of her robe," i.e. undoing the brooch by which her dress was fastened over the right shoulder. This would allow the upper fold of the front of the robe to fall, so that the breast would be shown. The Homeric lady's peplos was open down the right side, prob- ably as far as the waist. 437) 7 94. It was believed even in classical times that snakes derived their poison directly from deadly herbs, of which they ate when about to attack. So Virgil speaks of "a snake that has fed on deadly herbs " (Aen. ii. 471). The picture, however, does not show the most accurate observa- tion ; a snake would hardly coil itself round in its hole in order to attack, but if in a hole would much prefer to remain there in safety. 437, JI 98. The question of the genuineness of this speech has been discussed in the introduction to the book. It will be observed that Hector does not take the least notice of the moving appeals of his father and mother. The allusion to Polydamas refers to his words in xviii. 249^; 437, 28 117. For the idea of offering the besiegers half the wealth of the city in consideration of the raising of the siege see the note on xviii. 509. The line 121 is interpolated here from that passage ; it is omitted by several of the best MSS., and is tautological after " all else that this city holdeth." The Trojan elders have been already mentioned in iii. 149. They are to swear in the name of the whole people. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXII 359 126. The phrase "from oak-tree or from rock" is very 438,2 obscure. To us it seems natural to suppose that it expresses a rustic background to a scene of pastoral love-making ; but this would not be an epic idea. Indeed the employment of any background is quite opposed to the Greek genius, which treats such scenes, in literature as in art, in a thoroughly plastic fashion, whereas a modern poet prefers the pictorial style. That is, the Greek poet describes the scene as if it were a carved relief, in which the actual persons alone are represented, without their surroundings. If it is necessary in a Greek work of art to express locality, this is commonly done in a purely symbolical manner ; e.g. a fish somewhere in the picture is enough to express the sea, and so on. The difficulty of the explanation is in- creased by the fact that similar phrases appear several times in Greek literature, each time with a quite different context, so that the various passages will be found to throw little light on one another. For instance, it will be found in Od. xix. 163, "Thou art not sprung of oak or rock, whereof old tales tell." There it means "you are of flesh and blood" ; but that sense does not suit the present passage. We can only say, therefore, that it seems to be a proverbial expres- sion of which the reference has now been lost, and that here it must have conveyed some such sense as " at ease, talking about indifferent matters," or the like. The repetition of the words " youth and maiden " was admired by the ancient critics ; but in this place it seems to be a superfluous pretti- ness hardly suiting the surroundings. 145. We do not hear elsewhere of the "watch -place," 438,21 but the fig-tree is mentioned as a landmark in vi. 433, xi. 167. The waggon-track is conceived as running round the wall at a short distance from it ; both keep on it, a little way from the wall, so as to secure the better going of the road. 360 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXII 43 8 > 2 3 147. The two springs of Skamandros have naturally been the foundation of all attempts to fix the site of the Homeric Troy. It is now settled that no such springs are to be found in the plain of the Skamander ; either therefore they have disappeared, or the topography is to some extent imaginary. There can be little doubt that the latter solution is the true one ; for two sources of Skamander, one hot and the other cold, do actually exist ; only they are not near any possible site of Troy, but more than twenty miles off to the south-east, near the summit of Ida. The coincidence is too remarkable to be accidental ; the poet must have known of these two springs, and taken the liberty of bringing them down from the mountain to the plain. A description of the real springs will be found in Schuchh. p. 31, and of the imaginary springs discovered by Lechevalier in the plain at p. 25. The two springs on Ida form the chief feature in a very remarkable piece of scenery, which might well have so deeply impressed the imagination of . any one who had seen it as to give it a place in the tradition of the war. It evidently by no means follows that the poet of the " Wrath " had a personal acquaintance with the landscape of the Troad ; so far as this passage allows an inference, it points in the opposite direction. 438, 28 153. Compare the description of the washing-trough in Od. vi. 40, 86. Schliemann found some washing-troughs at the foot of the hill of Hissarlik, but they are of Roman work (Schuchh. p. 30). Such washing-places may be seen out- side most Greek villages at the present day. 439) 6 164. "A man that is dead," because, as the Scholiasts remark, Homer knows only of funeral games ; there is no trace of athletic meetings in honour of a god such as we know in later Greece. 439) & 165. To run three times round the hill of Hissarlik is by COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXII 361 no means an impossibility for a strong man. So far as it goes this may be taken as an argument against placing Troy at Bunarbashi, for it would be impossible to run round the precipitous hill of the Bali-dagh. 167. Doubt has been cast upon the following colloquy 439, 8 of the gods. It is very similar to that which precedes the death of Sarpedon in xvi. 431-461. It somewhat weakens by anticipation the fine scene where Zeus weighs the fate of Hector in the balance (208-213) if he here recognises that the time is come when he can no longer save him. 171. In viii. 48 Zeus has an altar on Gargaros, the 439, // summit of Ida, where Schliemann found a slab of marble which he believed to be the remains of an altar. But this in any case could only date from historical times. 194. The idea seems to be that so long as Hector keeps 440, i to the waggon-track Achilles is unable to overtake him ; but as soon as he turns aside from it towards the walls Achilles can take a shorter line and cut him off. 199. The inability to catch and escape is vividly com- 44.0, j- pared to the feeling of being bound to pursue, and yet of being rooted to the ground, which is so common in night- mare. Aristarchos wished to expunge the simile as being " weak in conception and execution, and contradicting the previous simile in 162," which expressed the speed of the runners. But it is clear that no such contradiction exists ; the present simile is consistent with the utmost speed on both sides, if it is but equal, so that neither can catch or escape. And any reader can judge for himself how little justice there is in the attack made upon the poetical merit of the comparison. 202-204. These lines are very difficult. The best inter- 440, 8 pretation is perhaps that given in the text, which brings the phrase into the numerous class of those which speak of 362 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXII events as having nearly happened against the will of fate, for none ever actually happens so. Here the might of Hector is so great that if the support of Apollo had not been withdrawn he might yet have escaped. But this involves a change in the reading of all the MSS. The natural render- ing of the text which they give is, " And how could Hector have escaped the fates of death, had not Apollo for the last time of all met him near at hand, who nerved his strength and swift knees ? " This obviously implies that Hector did escape by the help of Apollo ; but we know by the sequel that this cannot be meant. The only way in which it can be twisted into sense is by taking it to mean, " how could Hector have escaped up to this point had not Apollo come to his help, though for the last time ? " And this is evidently not quite satisfactory. But it better suits the following words, which then give another reason why Hector escaped as he did, viz. that Achilles made signs to the Greek host not to interfere, as they might easily have done. 440, 15-18 209-212 are almost identical with viii. 69-72 (see the notes there). 440, 18 213. "Fell to the house of Hades" means that, as a symbol of destruction, the lot of death fell lower even than the earth. It is a hyperbolical expression, like that in the parallel passage of viii., that the lots of the Trojans were lifted up to heaven. It is equally consistent with the Greek to translate " he was gone to the house of Hades," i.e. he, Hector, was condemned to go. In either case it must be admitted that the expression is a rather violent one. 443, 5 294. " White " is not elsewhere an epithet of the shield. It may mean only " brilliant," or it may refer to a covering of the face of the shield with "white tin " (see xi. 35). 443 > 2 5 315-316. See xix. 382-383. The last line, "that COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXII 363 Hephaistos . . . the crest," is omitted here by the best MSS., and is out of place in so ancient a part of the poem, to which the making of the armour by Hephaistos is unknown. 323. If in the original poem the armour stripped from 443,32 Patroklos belonged to Achilles, as it does in the present arrangement, it is almost incredible that the fact should not be mentioned here. 346. This expression of Achilles is not to be taken, as 444> 2 4 some have supposed, in the light of an indication that the idea of cannibalism still lingered in Greece. It is, in fact, the utter impossibility of cannibalism which is made the strongest asseveration of Hector's fate : "As surely as I cannot eat thee myself, so surely the dogs shall eat thee." 351. We are told that in his play of The Phrygians 444^7 Aeschylos, acting on this hint, actually described the ran- soming of Hector for his weight in gold. 356. The similarity between the deaths of Hector and 444> 33 Patroklos is evidently intentional. Both have the dying man's power of looking into the future (see xvi. 854). 370. The admiration expressed for the dead body is a 445, 14 thoroughly Greek touch. Compare the way in which Herod- otos speaks of the body of the Persian general Masistios, found on the battle-field of Plataia (ix. 25) : " They placed the body in a waggon and carried it along the ranks, and it was wonderful by reason of its size and beauty ; and for this reason it was that they did so, and the men left the ranks and crowded to admire Masistios." On the other hand, the wounding of the helpless corpse strikes us as peculiarly brutal ; but it was probably not done out of mere wanton- ness. In the first place, such mutilation would render the ghost harmless (see note on xviii. 180); and in the second, each of the Greeks had a claim, for the sake of some kins- 364 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXII man slain by Hector, to a share in the blood revenge. The stabbing is alluded to again in xxiv. 421. 445,24 381-390. This passage ("come let us make . . . dear comrade. But ") has been seriously suspected. The most important argument against it is perhaps the appearance of a grammatical form which belongs only to later Greek. But Achilles' words certainly seem very inconsistent. He pro- poses first a sort of " reconnaissance in force " around the city, not to storm it, but simply to see what the enemy are doing. Then he drops this idea, which is hardly adequate to the situation, whether poetically or tactically, and turns to the thought of Patroklos lying unburied. This in itself will be suspicious, if it be true, as suggested in xvii. and xviii., that the body of Patroklos was never, in the original "Menis," brought back to the ships at all. On that point, however, it seems impossible to get at anything like reasonable cer- tainty. The other reasons, however, give strong cause for suspecting the passage. Mr. Monro suggests that there is no greater inconsistency than we expect from the wayward character of Achilles ; but surely the idea suggested is rather that of irresolution than waywardness, and that is hardly the fault of which Achilles can be accused, or which should be insisted on at this moment. 44&i 3 393. " This is the paean," or song of victory, as one of the Scholiasts remarks; that is, these words "great glory have we won," etc., are put by Achilles into the mouths of his men to sing on their way to the ships. 44&> 7 396. The tendons are those called the Achilles-tendons, above the heel ; not, however, from this passage, but because the later legend placed Achilles' own vulnerable point here. It will be seen that Achilles does not use the belt given to Hector by Aias, as the tragedians have it (see note on vii. 303). One of the Scholiasts says that it was a Thessalian COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXII 365 custom to drag the body of a murderer round the grave of his victim, so that Achilles here and in xxiv. 416 follows his national tradition. 441. For the weaving of patterns see note on iii. 125. ^7, 18 The word translated " flowers " is a very rare one, occurring only once or twice in Greek. The traditional meaning is that given, but some of the ancients thought that it meant animals. Others took it to be ornaments generally. We have no means of deciding positively. 457. "Perilous pride" is an echo of Andromache's own 448, 2 words to Hector in vi. 407, "This thy hardihood will undo thee." So again "like one mad" recalls "like to one frenzied" in vi. 389. The word used here is maenad; but in Homer this has not any of the associations which belong to the " mad women " of the Dionysiac orgies. 469. Of these articles of attire the frontlet is a diadem of 448, 14 metal worn over the forehead. The veil is a sort of man- tilla thrown over the back of the head (see note on xiv. 170). The meaning of the net and woven band is doubtful. For net we should perhaps translate kerchief, used to bind the hair, and fastened to the head by a woven, or rather twisted, band. Others take them to be respectively a high stiff cap, such as we find represented in early Etruscan monuments, and a sort of rolled turban which commonly goes round it at the base. But the objection to this is that there is no evidence of the use of such an article of head- dress by any Greek people. 487. The following passage (" for even if ... long +&> 3 2 walls," 449, 18} is almost certainly an interpolation. Aris- tarchos rejected it as far as 499, " shall he return " (449, 10), but the next few lines, to 507, certainly should go too. The whole passage is a commonplace on the sorrows of orphan- age, but has no appropriateness to the case of Astyanax. 366 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD ' : XXII Destitution is not what is to be feared for a child of the royal race while his grandfather the king and Hector's brothers are still alive. The danger for Astyanax is far more terrible. It may be added that the passage is full of strange expressions of a sort quite unfamiliar elsewhere in epic poetry. 449, i 489. Of the two readings of this line the more forcible is " shall remove his landmarks " rather than " shall take his fields." The idea is that the orphan still has his right to a share in the allotment of the common field of the com- munity (see on xii. 421); but as he is unable to defend himself, though the allotment is granted to him, it is stolen by removing the landmarks which define it, to the advantage of his neighbours. In the following sentence the words translated " sundereth from his fellows " and " his head is bowed down" are unique and hardly intelligible. The rendering given is the best that can be made of them. 449, & 496. The idea seems to be that by orphanage a child is shown to be no favourite of the gods, and may be insulted with impunity. This idea survives even to the present day in Albania. "An orphan will say to one whose parents are both alive, ' You are lucky, you may well talk ; the black ox has not yet trodden on you ' " (von Hahn, Albanesische Studien^ vol. i. p. 196). So too in the Albanian marriage ceremonies the baking of the marriage loaf must be per- formed by a virgin both of whose parents are alive, for she will bring luck to the wedded pair. Similarly we hear that the boy who led the Daphnephoria at Thebes must have his parents both alive; and the same rule held in some Roman rites. 449, 16 506. For the introduction of the name Astyanax, with its signification, see vi. 402-403 and the note there. The explanation comes in here with a peculiarly frigid effect. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXII 367 513. The burning of the garments will be no profit 449, 23 to Hector, because, as he will not himself be burnt on the pyre, they will not go with him to Hades, and he will have to wander naked, without being able to cross the river. The only good of burning them will be the consolation for the survivors, who will at least have done all in their power to honour Hector by burning what they would have burnt on his pyre, had they had his body to bury. BOOK XXIII SCHILLER says that a man who has lived only to read the twenty-third book of the Iliad cannot complain of his lot : " Wenn man auch nur gelebt hatte um den dreiundzwanzig- sten Gesang der Ilias zu lesen, so konnte man sich iiber sein Dasein nicht beschweren." The praise is perhaps somewhat exaggerated, for the book can hardly be said to rise to the heights of some other parts of the Iliad, whether for pathos or vigorous action. But it certainly offers both in a high degree and in striking contrast. In the second part especially the delight in living and doing finds expres- sion so keen and natural as almost to jar at times with the solemn and sad surroundings of the funeral scene. Some of the incidents indeed, especially the description of the footrace, are distinctly comic. But it would appear to be an impulse natural to man, and certainly consonant with the highest art, to relieve scenes of deepest tragedy with interludes of comedy. The famous entrance of the porter in Macbeth is for all time the capital instance of this. But it is a means of which the Greeks rarely availed them- selves ; the most striking instance of it in classical work is perhaps the appearance of Herakles in the Alkestis of Euripides. The employment of the same device here must be taken as a sign of departure from the old severity and simplicity of the Epic, as exemplified in the " Menis." COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIII 369 That the book is to be placed among the later parts of the Iliad hardly admits of a doubt. This is especially true of the Games, 258-897, the second of the two parts into which the book is sharply divided. The first part the funeral seems to be very closely connected with the follow- ing book, and there is every reason for supposing that they are by the same hand. "But Achilles," in 257, joins on perfectly to the same words in xxiv. 3, without showing any traces of a gap. We find here, as in xxiv., a marked resem- blance to the language of the Odyssey. Into this great poem, which of itself forms a noble close to the Iliad, the Games would seem to have been inserted at a still later date. They are in themselves a brilliant composition, and have formed for all times a model followed in countless descriptions of sport. But they again have been disfigured by later interpolations, for which nothing can be said. The most serious of these is the addition of three contests which stand out from the rest for the weakness and even absurdity of their descriptions. These are contained in 798-883. Another interpolation of the same sort is the long didactic speech of Nestor to Antilochos in 303-350, the last speci- men of a class of which we have already found so many, where an interpolator's good advice is placed in the mouth of the old man of Gerenia. Objection has also been taken to various other passages of less importance, to which allusion will be made in the notes. With all its great beauties, this book, like many other brilliant portions of the Third Stratum, shows one fault a certain want of clearness in narrative. But this must be accepted as a mark of style, and does not justify us in rejecting the passages in which it occurs. The two last books of the Iliad, together with the end of xxii., form an epilogue to the " Wrath," the general artistic 2 B 370 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIII value of which may be more conveniently discussed in con- nexion with the next book, as that contains the heart of the story. It may be sufficient here to point out that, on the theory of the gradual growth of the poem, the end is the most natural place for an important addition, and the one at which there is the least possibility of detecting a later extension by any unevenness at the point of contact. NOTES 45> 9 10. Literally "have joy of grievous wailing." This is an idea which occurs in the Iliad only in these two last books (see 1. 98 and xxiv. 513), but is common in the Odyssey. "Lamentation is a remedy for grief," as one of the Scholiasts quotes from Aischylos, though the thought is indeed too true and too familiar to us to need a quotation to support it. 450, 12 13. See the note on xxii. 396 for the practice of driving around the dead man. It is not said here that the body of Hector is dragged, but that seems to be implied in the fol- lowing words, where the "foul entreatment" must mean something more than the mere stretching of the body in the dust. When we last heard of the body of Patroklos it was in the hut of Achilles, "with the feet turned to the door " (xix. 212). Here it seems to be conceived as lying on the sand of the seashore. These are instances of flaws in the narrative mentioned in the introduction. Another will be found just below ; after the description of the prepara- tions for a funeral banquet to be given to the Myrmidons, it is a little surprising to find that Achilles goes to eat with the other Greek chiefs, and nothing more is said about the banquet to his men. So, too, the solemn appeal to the shade of Patroklos recurs in 179-180, where it is evidently more in place than here ; and the two beautiful lines which COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIII 371 precede it are taken from xviii. 316-317, where the "loud wail" actually introduces a dirge such as the words imply, which is not the case now. 34. " In cupfuls " is a doubtful phrase. Aristarchos 45 1 * I0 took it to mean " in streams deep enough to be taken up in cups," the abundance of blood only being implied. But that is not very likely ; it is much more probable that the blood was actually caught in cups, and poured out as a libation to the dead man. In the curious ritual of Odysseus' journey to the underworld, blood is given to the shades that they may have strength enough to speak (Od. xi. 96, etc.) 71. The words of Patroklos imply that the unburied 45 2 > '3 spirit is not allowed to enter the house of Hades. This does not agree with the ideas expressed in other parts of the poems. In Od. xi. 51-83 the spirit of Elpenor is found among the rest, though his body is unburied, and in Od. xxiv. the souls of the suitors pass among the dead at once before any funeral rites have been paid them. It would seem that during the Homeric period there must have been prevalent some considerable variation of belief as to the state of the soul after death; possibly a more primitive cultus of the dead survived by the side of a belief in their powerlessness which would put an end to such worship. Such a variety of belief and practice would go far to explain the discrepancy between the practice of cremation in Homer and of sepulture at Mykenai ; for it would seem that the prac- tice of burning implies a desire to keep the spirit away from the earth, to which it may return so long as the body is there. On the other hand, the burial and even artificial preservation of the corpse, as at Mykenai, shows that no such superstitious dread of the ghost is entertained. 73. "The River" is presumably the Styx, though the 45** '5 crossing of it, prominent as it is in later legends, is not 372 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIII mentioned elsewhere in Homer. It is just possible that it may be the River of Ocean, which Odysseus has to pass when he visits the underworld (Od. xi. 21). 452, 27 87. Notice this instance of exile as the penalty for un- premeditated homicide, comparing ix. 632-636 and the note on xviii. 490. These passages show that the practice of commuting exile for a fine was at least beginning to prevail in Homeric times. We cannot say why exile followed here ; perhaps Amphidamas may have been a kinsman of Patroklos ; the shedding of kindred blood is never com- muted among primitive races. It may be noticed that this is the only Homeric mention of the game of dice, or rather knuckle-bones, which was so popular in later Greece. 452, 33 92. The last line of the speech was rejected by Aris- tarchos, and is no doubt interpolated from Od. xxiv. 74, where it recurs. The Greek in this line calls a jar what in the line before is a coffer. Besides, it is im- possible to suppose that Thetis would perform an act of such ill omen as to make her son a present of his coffin before his death. In the Odyssey it is at his funeral that she brings this two-handled golden urn, " the gift of Dionysos and the work of renowned Hephaistos." 453 * u 103. This line gives clearly the belief of Homeric times as to the nature of the dead. The " spirit and phantom of the dead " is a faint material effluence of the man, not the man himself. It is a sort of second self, a copy of the real man, which can pass away from him and return, if he has only fainted ; but when he dies it leaves him finally, passing out either through his mouth or by his gaping wounds. It continues to exist in the underworld, but does not " live " ; it can at most be recalled to a momentary vitality by a draught of blood. In one exceptional case in a late part of the Odyssey (xi. 602) Herakles has the gift of immor- COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIII 373 tality ; he himself lives on in Olympos, but none the less his " phantom " abides in the underworld apart from him. It is this appearance of the departed in dreams which is the basis among many savage peoples of the belief of the exist- ence of the spirit of man after death ; but it is evidently something very different from what we mean when we speak of the immortality of the soul. 135. The custom of cutting off the hair and laying it on the 454, // pyre is regarded as one of peculiar importance. The origin of this is probably to be found in the idea that the mourner offered himself as a companion to the dead man on his journey to the underworld. Just as in magic a lock of hair or parings of the nails represent the whole man, so that incantations practised on them will act upon their former owner, so here the hair stands in place of the offerer. It is likely that they thus took the place of an actual suicide such as we are familiar with in the Indian rite of Suttee. Hence arose the widespread custom of shaving the head in sign of mourning. So the practice of devoting a " nurture- lock " to a river typifies the self-devotion of the young man to the divinity to whom he is indebted for his growth ; for that was the work of River-gods above all. The lock was usually cut off in their honour when the young man came of age. Achilles still wears his because he was too young to devote it when he left home. 170. Helbig has suggested with some probability that 455, 16 the placing of jars of honey on the pyre is a relic of a more primitive custom of using that material for embalming the dead (see note on vii. 85). There is an historical proof of the use of honey for mummification in the case of the Spartan king Agesilaos, who died in Egypt, and whose body was brought home to Greece in wax, " because no honey could be obtained." But there is another more obvious 374 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIII explanation, viz. that the honey and oil were given to the dead man to be his food, just as the horses are for him to drive, and the dogs and captives to attend him. Compare the curious account of the royal funeral among the Scythians in Herod, iv. 71-72. "Leaning them" implies that the jars were of the well-known shape ending in a point below, and therefore incapable of standing unless leant against something. 435,22 176. "Mischief" seems to imply moral condemnation of the act on the poet's part, as though his age had learnt to look with disapproval on the barbarous customs of their ancestors. But it must be admitted that the Greek does not necessarily involve such a moral judgment ; it may mean only "a deadly deed." The word "good" itself, as used in Homer, has rarely, if ever, any absolute moral significance, and is used of anything which is excellent of its kind. 455,33 187. It seems necessary to reject this line ("ambrosial . . . dragged him"), since the oil, though naturally used to save the body from decay, could not possibly preserve it from the effects of dragging. Apollo, as the Sun-god, veils his rays with a cloud. It is not needful to suppose, as some have done, that the place where the body is lying is miracu- lously hidden by a thick mist brought down to make it invisible. No such miracle is alluded to in xxiv. 20. The appearance of Aphrodite, who nowhere else shows any special regard for Hector, is to be explained by the fact that she, with Apollo, is the chief champion of the Trojan cause. The mention of " rose-sweet " oil is probably due to the ancient idea that oil of roses was specially powerful as an antiseptic. The rose, like the lily, is never mentioned directly by Homer, though a knowledge of both is implied in the use of adjectives derived from them (see Miss Clerke, Familiar Studies, p. 172). COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIII 375 192. The following episode is curious, and is at least not 456, 6 necessary to the story. It rather causes delay, and distracts attention from the main thread. It has been noticed too that Iris, against the usual rule, here acts on her own account, and not as messenger of the gods. Still the passage cannot well be cut out, and is rather to be taken as one of the peculiarities of the book. 200. Here, as elsewhere in ancient Greek poetry, the 456, 14 west wind is stormy or gusty, literally " ill-blowing." The name conveyed to the Greek none of the ideas which we associate with the word Zephyr. These came in only with Latin poetry. To the Greek, living on the east coast of the mainland, the west wind blew over the snowy ranges of the central chain. Thus in Od. iv. 567 it is the wind which brings pleasant coolness in heat, but it is never the balmy wind. 206. It would seem that Iris has heard Achilles from 456, 20 Aithiopia, and is about to return thither. For this distant land as the scene of the feasting of the gods, see i. 423. 223. "New-married," literally "a bridegroom." The word 457, 3 is added to show that the son is lost just at the moment when his father had good hope of " seeing his son's sons." We have already met the same idea in ii. 701 (see note there). 227. This line and the similar words in xxiv. 13 have 457, 8 often been quoted to show that the poet or poets of the Iliad lived in a place where the sun rose out of the sea. But it is plain that no such conclusion is justified, for the dawn " spreads over " the sea whichever way the shore looks. We cannot even say that it shows that the poet lived by the sea at all, for in viii. i we are told that the dawn " spreads over all the land," which warns us against pressing such phrases too far. 376 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIII 457 > 2 4 245. Evidently the mound is to be a mere cenotaph, the bones of Patroklos being preserved to be carried home with those of Achilles. 458,4 257. As the book stands, "were forgoing back" is a necessary translation. But in accordance with the regular Homeric practice the words should mean " went back," as in xxiv. 80 1, where the same line recurs. If we suppose that the Games are a later addition, as suggested in the Introduction, and that this line was originally continued in xxiv. 3, where " but Achilles " recurs, the words will have had at first their natural sense ; and the interpolator must have taken advantage of a possible ambiguity in order to introduce his own work. 45 S > u 264. " Eared," i.e. provided with rings to serve as handles (compare xviii. 378, " Not yet were the ears of cunning work set thereon "). The word " measures " shows that there was in Homeric times a definite unit of fluid measure. As the other Greek standards all came from the east, it has been suggested that this was probably the Phenician standard, the saton. From 269 we see the small value of the Homeric talent of gold ; for the order of the prizes shows that two talents are worth less than a caldron, and much less than a mare. For the same reason we see in 751 that half a talent is worth less than an ox ; indeed this strongly favours Mr. Ridgeway's suggestion that the talent was worth one ox, which is a very common early unit of value. 459, 5 291. For the capture of the horses of the breed of Tros see v. 323 ff. and viii. 108. 459t I0 297. The idea of a fine in place of personal service has already occurred in xiii. 669. One of the Scholiasts drily remarks that Agamemnon considered a war-horse worth more than an unwarlike man. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIII 377 303. With this line, at the words " who was the son of 459, if> Neleus," begins one of the larger interpolations noticed in the Introduction. It is absolutely unnecessary, and has no connexion with the following account; and it is at once obscure and commonplace in expression. It evidently interrupts the list of competitors in the most awkward manner, the fifth, Meriones, coming in all by himself when we have had time to forget that the list is being given at all. The word " fleet " is a good instance of the epic " standing " or " formal " epithet, for we are told directly afterwards that these particular horses are noted for their slowness. 307. Poseidon is mentioned here with Zeus, the general 4S9> 20 patron of royal races, because he is the ancestor of the family of Neleus. Though in later Greek mythology we know that Poseidon has a special connexion with the horse, it is important to observe that there is practically no trace of such a relation in Homer. 319. There is some uncertainty of reading, and it would 459> 3 r perhaps be better to render " another man " (i.e. an unskil- ful charioteer) in place of " whoso," removing the full stop after " in hand." The sense is, however, much the same. 320. " At either end " alludes to the shape of the normal 459^ 3 2 racecourse, backwards and forwards along two straight runs with sharp turns at each end. It is easy to see that on such a course skill at the turns and accurate management of the horses in the straight would be far more important than mere speed. 326. The following passage is hopelessly obscure, and 4 6 > 5 can be explained only by violent assumptions. We must suppose that Nestor had private information of the course which Achilles proposed to lay out, and of the nature of it, so that he can assure Antilochos that he will find good going at the turn, and therefore need not fear to make it at full 378 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIII speed. The other competitors, not knowing the ground, will have to make the turn more cautiously. " The joining of the track " is a strange phrase ; it seems to mean the point where the two straight parts join at the turn. There is no other case in antiquity, so far as we know, of a wooden stump being used as a monument on a grave. 460, 24 346. The horse Arion was a famous figure in later Theban myth, but else lies quite outside the Homeric cycle. He was endowed with reason and speech, and was intimately connected with the worship of Demeter and Poseidon under equine forms. For the horses of Laomedon see xx. 221-236. 461, 3 358. For "side by side" some commentators, including Aristarchos, would explain " in file," i.e. one in front of the other. This seems an absurd way of starting a race, but it may be right, and would give reason for the drawing of the lots for places ; it would be due to the narrowness of the course, which we shall find alluded to later on. Even if they started side by side, however, there would still be some reason for drawing lots, in the advantage of the inner station. The line recurs later on in the description of the foot-race, where the narrowness of the course would not explain it. Hence Aristarchos rejected the line there. 461, ig 373. For "the last part of the course" it would be more natural to translate " the last lap" and to suppose that they had made more than one circuit of the whole course. But in the absence of any mention of their having passed the starting-point it is better to translate as in the text, and to hold that the course involved only one turn at the point furthest from the start. 461, 30 383. The partiality of Apollo for the horses of Eumelos is explained by the fact that he had himself bred them (see ii. 766). The horse, it will be observed, is just as closely connected with Apollo as with Poseidon. Eumelos is COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD ' : XXIII 379 called " Pheres' grandson " above (23), because his father Admetos (ii. 713) was son of Pheres. 387. " Without spur," literally " without goad." There is 462, i good reason for supposing that the ancient Greek whip was more like what we should call a goad, i.e. a long pliant stick with a double point at the end. An illustration of it may be found in the British Museum on the well-known Burgon amphora. 420. The picture seems to be this. The way back to 462, 31 the starting-point passes through a gully, the bed of a stream in the plain. Antilochos proposes to spurt up level with Menelaos at this point, and thus force him either to give way or to run the risks of a collision in the narrow place, where there is room for one chariot only. 431. The "range of a disk" (the circular mass of metal 463, 3 560. For the capture of the arms of Asteropaios, see xxi. 183. The nature of the "casting of tin" is obscure. The inlaid dagger-blades found at Mykenai were covered with some metallic glaze, and it is possible that something of the sort is alluded to here. The Greek, however, may mean " a casting of tin is set all about it," i.e. the breast- plate has a rim of tin round the edge. Nothing analogous to this can be pointed to in the Mykenaean finds. For the use of tin as a means of decoration see the description of the breastplate of Agamemnon in xi. 24. 467, 10 568. For the use of the staff as giving Menelaos the right to speak, see note on i. 234. 467, 26 584. Here again (see on 307) Poseidon is appealed to as the god of the race of Neleus, and there is no ground for supposing that he has any special connexion with the horse. 468, 6 598. The simile seems to mean, "his heart was gladdened as the heart of the corn is gladdened with the dew in harvest-time." Or it may mean, " his heart was glad as the heart of men when they see the corn refreshed by dew." 468, 30 621. This list evidently shows that the Homeric " Pent- athlon" or regular series of five games consisted of the chariot-race, foot-race, boxing, wrestling, and throwing the javelin. Throughout classical times the number of COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIII 381 contests remained the same, but hurling the disk was substituted for the javelin. So, in the Phaiakian games, in Od. viii. 128, we find leaping instead of the chariot-race. The same series is given again in the following speech of Nestor, where the words " only in the chariot- race " clearly show that there was no other contest. All this would of itself almost show that the three other con- tests to which we shall presently come the fight in armour, the casting the mass of iron, and the archery are an unauthorised addition, even if the poverty of style were not enough to prove it. 631. Buprasion is named in xi. 756, in Nestor's story of 469, 6 the war between the Pylians and their northern neighbours the Epeians. Amarynkes was a local hero : the legends about him survived till the time of Pausanias. His son Diores is mentioned in ii. 622, iv. 517. 639. This line and the following are practically unin- 469, 14 telligible. The sons of Aktor have been already mentioned (see note on xi. 709, where they are called the Moliones). Nestor evidently complains that they took an unfair advan- tage by being two against one apparently because one was thus able to devote himself to whipping the horses while the other drove them. According to one legend they were " Siamese twins," with two bodies joined together. The second line, " jealous for victory," seems to mean that they roused themselves for a supreme effort because, though four of the prizes had been carried off by an outsider, the fifth and greatest, that for the chariot-race, still remained, and they determined that this at least should not be taken to Pylos. " Crowding their horses in front of me " is no more than a guess at what the Greek may mean. 648-649. This couplet, again, is very obscure. Another 46$, 22 possible rendering is, " Thou ever esteemest my goodwill 382 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIII (and forgettest me not) at the price at which it is meet that I should be prized among the Achaians." 660. Apollo seems here to be the god of boxing, per- haps in his capacity of the deity presiding over the education of young men, in virtue of which gymnasia were in later Greece under his protection. Compare Od. xix. 86, " By Apollo's grace he hath so goodly a son." The worship of Polydeukes as god of boxing is altogether later. 470, 9 665. Epeios is famous in later legend as the maker of the wooden horse (see Od. viii. 493, xi. 523); but he is not named in the Iliad except in this passage. It has been noticed that it is contrary to epic usage that one who begins by loud boasting should make it good in the end as Epeios does here. 470, 17 674. For " friends " it would perhaps be more exact to say " his family mourners " an evident sarcasm. 470, 20 677. Euryalos has hitherto appeared only in the Cata- logue, with a passing mention in vi. 20. He is a near kinsman of Diomedes, for his father Mekisteus was brother of Adrastos, the grandfather of Diomedes. This seems to explain the personal interest shown by Diomedes. 470, 22 679. Oedipus, or, as Homer calls him, Oidipodes, is named here and in Od. xi. 271-280. The latter passage dates from a more recent time, and shows a near relation to the familiar legend of the Tragedians, except that lokasta is called Epikaste. The present passage, brief as it is, con- tains a different version, for it evidently implies that Oedipus did not die in a foreign land as an exile, but received a royal funeral in his own city of Thebes. The " sons of Kadmos " or Kadmeiones are the ancient inhabitants of Thebes, as in iv. 385, etc. 470, 27 684. The thongs are bound round the hands to increase the force of the blow. They developed at last into the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIII 383 brutal Roman caestus, loaded with metal, which is familiar to readers of Virgil (Aen. v. 401, etc.) 692. This simile is obscure. It is not clear how the fish 471, 2 can be said to leap at once " beneath the ripple " and " on the beach." Nor should we expect a man to leap up as the effect of a severe blow on the cheek. We can only say that the intention seems to be to compare the spasmodic movements of Euryalos with the struggles of a fish which suddenly finds itself cast up by a wave on to the beach. 705. Four oxen seem to be a very low price for an ac- ^77, 13 complished woman : Laertes gave twenty for Eurykleia ( Od. i. 431). But in the Greek camp female captives were no doubt a drug in the market. 712. The two wrestlers, standing with their heads close 471, 22 together and their feet apart, are fitly compared to the gable of a house, or the Greek letter A. This is the only direct allusion to the way in which the roof of the Homeric house was built. It is not confirmed by the scanty indications which have been found at Mykenai (see Schuchh. p. 199), which seem to point to a flat roof. 724. The proposition seems to be that each in turn 471,32 should allow his adversary to endeavour to hoist and throw him, while he himself offers only a passive resistance. When either is once lifted it would seem that he is at liberty to do what he can to baffle his adversary ; for it is in this position that Odysseus kicks Aias behind the knee. The exact sense of the manoeuvre which Odysseus tries when his turn comes (literally " bent in his knee ") is not clear, nor can we see why honours should in the end be divided. As Odysseus had thrown his enemy on his back, and had then fallen with him upon his side, it would seem that he had the best of it Perhaps his failure to lift Aias clear off 384 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIII the ground told against him. But it should be added that the description is on the whole a good deal more intelligible than that of a modern wrestling match would be to the ordin- ary reader. 4~j2, ig 743. The distinction between the Sidonians as artificers and the Phenicians as traders is observed here as elsewhere (see note on vi. 289). Though the Phenicians appear often enough in the Odyssey, they are mentioned here only in the Iliad. 472, 21 745. Thoas, king of Lemnos, was father of Hypsipyle, and thus grandfather of Euneos, for whom see vii. 468. For the ransoming of Lykaon, see xxi. 40. Patroklos seems here to be the agent through whom the transaction was carried out, though he is not named in xxi. 473> 2 760. The explanation of this interesting simile seems to be as follows : the ancient Greek loom was vertical, the threads of the warp being fastened to a beam and hanging down. Each thread was attached by a loop to one of two rods : all the even threads to one, and all the odd to the other. By pulling these two rods forward alternately an opening between the two sets of threads was made through which the spool of the woof was passed. It is probable that this spool was not held in a shuttle, but was carried at the end of a long stick, which had to be passed completely through each time. This, however, does not affect the simile, which depends only on the rod. It is easy to see that in such a loom this must have been held very close indeed to the weaver's breast when pulled forward, while at the same time she had to pass the spool of the woof behind it from the side. 474) 6 798. The following three contests form one of the most patent interpolations in the Iliad, and are in glaring contrast to the preceding. It has been pointed out on 621 that they COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIII 385 are out of place, as being excluded by Achilles' own words. The idea of the first is simply grotesque : two of the chief captains of the Greeks are set to fight a gladiatorial contest in front of the army, apparently on the condition that they are to wound one another through the armour but not to kill ! We can as well imagine a duel between Bismarck and Moltke for the amusement of the German army at the siege of Paris. The actual conflict is described as if it were serious, mostly in lines borrowed from fights in other parts of the Iliad. It ends, however, in the most impotent way, the Achaians seeing, as they might well have done at first, the danger to which they are exposing their generals. No reason is given why Diomedes should receive the sword as victor, when he has done nothing but aim ; nor are we told how the armour is to be held in common. The whole scene is in fact a bad piece of patchwork, a mere tissue of absurdities and contradictions. For the despoiling of Asteropaios, see xxi. 183; and for the Thracian sword, xiii. 577. 826. This scene is somewhat better than the last, though 475, it contains many obscurities. The idea seems to be that a mass of pig-iron is given to be used as a disk for hurling, or rather " putting," and at the same time for a prize. The winner will use it as a source from which his farm servants will be able to make themselves such fresh tools as they need, without the trouble of taking a long journey to the blacksmith in the nearest town. This certainly shows little appreciation of the real conditions ; it is much more like an attempt to produce a picture of archaic life from the inner consciousness. In Homer the metal-worker is already specialised, and it is not likely that there was any period after the introduction of metals when he was not ; for this branch of industry must from its nature have been one of 2 c 386 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIII the very first to call for the division of labour ; and there can never have been a time when the farmer would find it cheaper to forge his own tools from unwrought iron than to take a journey to town. 475, *9 840. We are not told if the Achaians laughed in admira- tion of a good " put " or in derision of a bad one ; but as Epeios has already appeared as the type of brute force the latter is probably meant. ^75, 22 843. Aristarchos remarked that, as only two have put, we ought to have " both " for " all." The line is in fact simply taken from the contest of the disk in Od. viii. 192, where " all " is right, as several have already put. Leonteus and Polypoites have appeared in xii. 129. 475, 28 850. This contest is again absurd. It is ridiculous to provide beforehand a prize for the man who shall perform the purely accidental feat of cutting the string. Virgil has imitated the scene in Aen. v. 485-521, and so has Scott in Anne of Geier stein ; it is hardly needful to add that both have avoided this patent absurdity. The iron is evidently identical with the axe-heads ; it seems strange that these should be named first only by their material, and there is much plausibility in the suggestion made by a Scholiast, that what is meant is wedges of iron of a certain weight. If such wedges were in use as a medium of exchange, it is natural that they should be known as " double axes," and their halves as "single axes." It appears that weights of this name were in fact known in historical times in Boiotia and in Cyprus ; in a long inscription from the latter the two first letters of the word actually appear as an abbreviation of a unit of weight of silver. 4?6, J 4 871. It seems that both the competitors have to shoot with the same bow. Meriones stands by with his own arrow while Teukros is aiming. But the language here is COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIII 387 very obscure. In the sequel the incidents the flight of the bird, the arrow passing clean through, and then falling at the feet of Meriones are at once impossible and meaning- less. 884. The final scene, the contest of the spear, has been 4 j6, 26 distinctly alluded to by Achilles in 622, and probably be- longs to the original games. Though it is flat after the brilliant scenes of the first four games, yet it will be felt that in Achilles we have once more a live person in place of the dummies of the last three contests. Gladstone has sug- gested that the lameness may be due to the feeling on the one hand that Agamemnon should not be entirely ignored in the contests, and on the other that he should not have to run the risk of defeat by one of his own subordinates. It will be seen that here the spear, the second prize, is named first : unless, as has been suggested, the spear is that with which the contest is to be carried on, and is only by an afterthought made into a " consolation prize " for Meriones. BOOK XXIV THE supreme beauty of the last book of the Iliad, and the divine pathos of the dying fall in which the tale of strife and blood passes away, are above all words of praise. The meeting of Priam and Achilles, the kissing of the deadly hands, and the simplicity of infinite sadness over man's fate in Achilles' reply, mark the high-tide of a great epoch of poetry. In them we feel that the whole range of suffering has been added to the unsurpassed presentment of action which, without this book, might seem to be the crowning glory of the Iliad. In the Iliad itself there is nothing that we can compare with this 'save the equally supreme scene of the parting of Hector and Andromache. But a similar tenderness of sympathy with the finer chords of human emotion, though it never rises to such sublime expression, runs through the whole latter portion of the Odyssey. And it is with the Odyssey that this book, more than any of the Iliad, has close relation. This relation is not only spiritual ; it per- vades, less subtly but more tangibly, the whole language of the book. From end to end we are continually coming upon turns of expression unknown elsewhere to the Iliad, but recurring again and again in the Odyssey. This close kinship to the Odyssey forbids us to believe that the " Ransoming of Hector " is by the same hand as the COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIV 389 " Tale of the Wrath." And one secret of its inexpressible charm for us lies in the fact that it is more modern in spirit, as in date, appealing more directly to the moral sense of the later world. It has, as Mr. Monro has well said, a moral function, that of righting a great wrong the brutal treatment of the body of Hector. In xxii. " the moral superiority of Hector does not seem to attract the sympathy of the poet." Now, we are in a different atmosphere. The quality of mercy has assumed its right place. Reparation, however tardy, is made at length, and our indignation is assuaged. But it cannot be said that the poet of xxii. in any way looks forward to such a reparation. The difference of attitude, in fact, seems to imply a distinct advance in the moral feeling of the Greek world. The story itself is too coherent and uniform in style to admit the suspicion of any material interpolation. Here and there, it is true, a few lines have been added, especially in the opening portion, but they do not affect the character of the book as a whole, and therefore need not be con- sidered in this place. It is with the last scene, the dirges sung over the body, that criticism has chiefly concerned itself. These certainly raise some difficulties; the most striking is perhaps that involved in Helen's mention of twenty years as the time which has elapsed since she left Sparta. This seems to imply knowledge of a legend which in every other part of the Homeric poems is entirely ignored. The dirges themselves have been stigmatised as mere copies of those which we already know ; that of Andromache in particular is called a copy of her lament in xxii. With this judgment I am not able to agree, and though it is true that the whole group of laments shows a certain advance from the pure epic style in the direction of the lyric, which was destined to mark the next great epoch of Greek poetry, yet 390 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIV that is hardly a ground for separating this particular section from the rest of a book where almost every line shows signs of late origin. Thus, while leaving Helen's mention of the twenty years unexplained, I see no reason for doubting that the whole of the book is by one hand, the same to which we owe the funeral of Patroklos, and in all probability one which was largely concerned in the composition of the Odyssey. NOTES 478, i i. The first three lines belong to the Funeral Games; the narrative continuing the story of the funeral of Patroklos is probably resumed, as suggested in the notes on the last book, with the words "but Achilles." It will be noticed as a peculiarity in the following piece of narrative that it begins with the description of the grief of Achilles, as it would seem, at a particular moment, and then passes off, without any break, and even more markedly in the Greek than in the English, to the account of the repeated doings of several days. In the sequel it appears that this treatment of Hector's body is continued for twelve days. 478,20 20-21. These two lines ("even in death . . . dragged him ") are clearly an addition, like the very similar though inconsistent xxiii. 185-191. Aristarchos rejected them on the grounds that contact with a corpse is not consistent with the sanctity of the aegis ; that the aegis is not a skin, as in later mythology, but a shield, in which a body could not be wrapped, as seems to be implied in its preservation from injury when dragged ; and that the aegis belongs to Zeus, not to Apollo. Taken together these reasons seem de- cisive. 479> 7 24. The idea of entrusting the stealing of the body to Hermes shows that the conception of him as the thievish COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIV 391 god had already arisen, though he has no such reputation elsewhere in the Iliad. But then we shall soon meet him in the character of the messenger, as he is in the Odyssey, but not in other parts of the Iliad ; so that it is clear that at the time of the composition of this book fresh ideas of the gods had begun to come in. 29-30 (" in that . . . lustmlness ") were expunged by 479, 6 Aristarchos, and on even more convincing grounds than 20- 21. The absolute silence as to the judgment of Paris, here alluded to, in all the rest of the Homeric poems is sufficient proof that it is a purely post-Homeric legend. Besides, as Aristarchos remarked, Aphrodite did not bring Paris lustful- ness, but the fairest of women. The awkward way in which the addition is made is apparent to the most careless reader. 45. This line ("that doth . . . greatly ") is an interpola- 479,21 tion from the Works and Days of Hesiod. It is another instance of the favourite class of sententious interpolations. In the mouth of Zeus the words are out of place, for he cannot reproach Achilles for having none of the shame which hurts a man. The double character of Shame was a common topic with Greek moralists. The Greek word ex- presses on the one hand the respect for the opinion of men which we call sense of honour ; on the other it can stand for the wrong shame or want of proper boldness, such as prevents a man from properly doing his work in the world 56. Hera treats the idea of placing the son of the god- 479, 33 dess and the son of the woman on the same footing as a sufficient reductio ad absurdum of Apollo's argument. She seems to argue that Apollo should take the side of Thetis because he was present at her wedding ; the logic is amusingly feminine. 392 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIV 480, /j- 71. The Greek here is ambiguous ; if translated " we will suffer that they steal away Hector, yet," we must under- stand it to mean " even suppose we permit the stealing of Hector, yet it cannot be done secretly." But we may also render " we will let the stealing of Hector be," i.e. we will say nothing more about it, as is read in the revised edition. 480, 24 go. With this remarkable simile the reader should com- pare Od. xii. 251 ff., "Even as when a fisher on some head- land lets down with a long rod his baits for a snare to the little fishes below, casting into the deep the horn of an ox of the homestead," etc. Many explanations have been pro posed, but only two seem tenable. According to the first the line was protected, just above the hook, by a small tube of horn, so that the fish could not bite through it. The modern jack-fisher uses gimp at this point for the same reason. It is further supposed that a little lead was run into the hollow of the horn to sink the line, just as the modern fisherman uses shot. Another explanation which equally suits the passage is that the horn was an artificial bait probably shaped like a small fish. Strange though it may seem, it is true that some savage races use such arti- ficial baits while remaining ignorant of the use of edible baits; and artificial baits of horn are still used in trout- fishing. In this case the lead will be run into the bait itself to sink it (Journal of Phil. xix. 239). 481,5 94- "Robe," more exactly "veil," which is only worn out of doors. Black seems to be a sign of mourning, but is not so found elsewhere in Homer. 481,21 1 10. The "glory" accorded to Achilles is the receipt of gifts. If the body were stolen away and he received nothing for it, he would be disgraced; for, as has been frequently pointed out, it is in the receipt of gifts that COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIV 393 the heroic point of honour lies (see particularly note on i. 1 1 8). 1 5 7. A Scholiast well remarks that the three adjectives 483, j cover the great causes which make men ready to commit cruelty : stupidity, thoughtlessness, and malice. 181. It has been suspected with good reason that the 483, 27 end of Iris' speech has been interpolated ; for we shall find in the sequel that Priam, when he meets Hermes, is taken by surprise, and shows no sign of having been forewarned ; nor, when telling Hekabe of his intent, does he make any mention of a promise which would be so consoling to her. The words are repeated from the command of Zeus, where they may be defended, as giving the hearer warning of what is to come, and so relieving the strain of anxiety. If they stood originally in the speech of Zeus alone, they would certainly be interpolated before long by some copyist into that of Iris. They are better away ; for if Priam knows of the divine protection to be afforded him, it only diminishes our sympathetic admiration for the old man's courage. It will be seen that Thetis, when repeating her message to Achilles, only tells him just so much as is needful, and says nothing about the means by which the ransom is to be brought about. It is much more surprising that the con- cluding words of Zeus to Thetis should not have been tacked on to her speech in the MSS. than that the corre- sponding addition should have been made to that of Iris. It will further be seen that the substance of the command, " Let not death be in thy thought, nor any fear," has already been given by Iris in her own words at the beginning. 190. The "wicker carriage" recurs in Od. xv. 131, where 484, j it is translated " the chest of the car " in which the gifts are placed. It is natural to identify it also with the " upper frame " fitted to Nausikaa's car in Od. vi. 70, in order that 394 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIV the linen to be washed may be placed in it. We can say no more about it than that it was evidently a movable receptacle placed on the car. 484, 19 206. Perhaps the Greek might be more exactly rendered, " For suppose he get thee in his power and behold thee with his eyes ! a savage," etc. But the correct punctuation is not quite clear. 484, 26 212. The violent phrase used by Hekabe is of course merely rhetorical, just like the words of Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, " I could eat his heart in the market- place." It is strange that some commentators have seen in this, as in the similar words of iv. 35 and xxii. 347, an indi- cation of the survival in Homeric Greece of traces of earlier cannibalism. 485, 3 221. Though the words in the Greek are somewhat ambiguous, the order is in favour of translating "whether seers that divine from sacrifice, or priests " ; and this agrees better with the fact that we do not find the priests in Homer executing the office of diviners (see note on i. 62). 4$J>> I2 230. For the "cloaks of single fold" see note on ii. 42. " Coverlets," literally " carpets " ; but in Homer they seem to be always used for bedding. The " sheets " are the large linen garments which were worn, chiefly by women, as>a more luxurious substitute for the ordinary cloak of wool. 485,14 232. This line ("and he weighed ... in all") has already occurred in xix. 247, and is interpolated from there ; for the weighing is required only when the exact payment of a stipulated sum is in question, and "brought forth" is inappropriate here, where the gifts are only being chosen from the chests. They are not brought forth till 275. 486, 7 257. This is the only mention in Homer of Troilos, who was so favourite a character in the later Tale of Troy. The Scholiasts are probably right when they say that it is on COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIV 395 account of the epithet here applied to him, "with his chariot of war " (literally " rejoicing in his horses "), that the painters always represent him as riding when slain by Achilles. There is nothing to show that Homer, like his successors, regarded Troilos as a mere boy. 262. Of course the taunt lies in "your own people," 486, // instead of the enemy ; there is no reproach in the plunder- ing itself. 266. The details of the following passage are obscure, 486, 16 and not of sufficient importance to require full considera- tion here. It is clear that the yoke is fastened at the end of the pole by means of a ring attached to the yoke, and passed over a pin fixed in the pole. This general method of attachment can be illustrated by numerous vase-paintings. What is meant by the "knob" it is hard to say. The long " yoke-band " seems to have been used to fasten the yoke directly to an upright post at the front of the car itself, as well as to the pole, a curious arrangement which is also abundantly represented on vases. Instead of " belayed it close round the pole " we should therefore, perhaps, render "tied it to the post." The "guiding-rings" were no doubt rings on the yoke through which the reins ran. The " tongue " is presumably a metal covering to the end of the yoke-band to prevent it fraying. 278. The Mysians, on the north coast of Asia Minor, are 486, 28 said to have been famous for breeding mules. They were the immediate neighbours of the Eneti, "whence is the breed of wild mules" (ii. 852). 306. It has been remarked that the idea of praying for 487, 23 an omen is found again only in the Odyssey : elsewhere in the Iliad signs appear unasked for. Priam stands in the midst of the court because the altar of " Zeus of the home- stead " is there. Achilles does the same in xvi. 231. 396 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIV 488, i 316. Compare the words of xxi. 252-253, " A black eagle, the mighty hunter, strongest at once and swiftest of winged birds." This is the only foreshadowing in Homer of the place which the eagle was to take in later mythology as the especial bird of Zeus (see Miss Clerke, Familiar Studies, p. 142). 488, 25 339-345- These lines recur again in Od. v. 43-49. They seem, however, to be original here, for the mention of the magic wand prepares the way for its use in lulling the sentinels to sleep in 445 ; whereas in the Odyssey it is not required, for Hermes has only to carry a message to Kalypso. 489, 4 349. For the barrow of Ilos see x. 415. At the river evidently means at the ford, on crossing which they would come within the range of the Greek army ; for the river forms a sort of natural boundary between the foes across the middle of the plain. 489, 10 356. " In the chariot " implies leaving the mule-car to its fate. The Helper as a name of Hermes probably means "giver of wealth" (see note on xiv. 491). 490, 6 385. Notice how delicately Hermes lets Priam see that he knows him. Priam has no reason to be surprised at this, for he was in the Greek army but a little while ago to swear the truce in iii. The following words are not quite clear ; some take them to mean " he was no whit inferior to the Achaians in battle." 491,10 421. "Plunged their points in him" alludes to the wounding of the corpse in xxii. 369. 491, *5 426. " If that child indeed I had," i.e. if it is not all a dream (see note on iii. 180). 491, 27 437. Argos in the mouth of a Myrmidon would most naturally mean the Pelasgian Argos, i.e. Thessaly (see ii. 681). COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIV 397 448. The "hut" of Achilles is throughout this book 492,3 treated as if it were a palace ; it has a hall with forecourt, vestibule, and colonnades, and is at times spoken of as a house. This is a quite different conception from the rest of the Iliad, and seems to betray the hand of a bard who, like the poet of the Odyssey, is less familiar with camps than with the peaceful palaces of Greece. It is evident that a dwelling on this scale would not be consistent with the exigencies of the besiegers' camp. 463. Hermes' objection to entering the hut, though quite 492, 20 necessary from the poetical point of view, hardly seems justified by the reason he gives. He seems to fear that such favour to a mortal might provoke jealousy : though it is a trifle compared with what other gods do for their favourites. The Greek may also mean " it were cause of wrath that mortals should thus entertain an immortal god " ; but the sense is the same in the end. The following words, after " Peleus' son," are very suspicious ; for in the first place the Iliad knows in only one very late passage of a son of Achilles (see xix. 326) ; and in the second Priam does not follow the advice, and in his appeal to Achilles says nothing of any son of his. 480. The following simile is not very clear in expression. 493, 4 The meaning is "as men are surprised at the entrance of a homicide who has fled to a rich man for protection, so was Achilles amazed." But the real point of comparison is somewhat lost among the details which introduce it. We are told first of the curse or Ate, more literally " blindness of soul," which came on the man and made him do the deadly deed. Then we hear of his exile, and then of his taking refuge in the house of a wealthy chieftain. The story was no doubt a familiar one in early Greece. When the family of the dead man refused to accept blood money (see xviii. 398 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIV 490), the homicide could only save himself by flight ; and once in exile he had no choice but to attach himself to some chief wealthy enough to be able to maintain a number of retainers who served him in return for sustenance and pro- tection. It was in this way that Patroklos came to be an inmate of the house of Peleus (xxiii. 85). 506. "Toward the face," literally to the mouth. The allusion is to the gesture made by suppliants in touching the chin of the person whose grace they seek (see i. 500). 494 18 527. This remarkable passage is hardly so much an allegory as a specimen of the mode in which man in his primitive way interprets the puzzles of the universe. When he asks himself whence come good and ill, the answer he gives is that they are dispensed by Zeus from great store- rooms which lie in his palace. When he goes on to ask, in primitive pessimism, why man receives more ill than good, the reply is that there are two jars of ills against one of blessings. Thus the man is most fortunate who gets a mixture of the two, for the unlucky man receives ills alone. This is the sense as suggested in the translation, but it is not without difficulties ; the alternative usually accepted is to translate, " Two urns stand upon the floor of Zeus, one filled with his evil gifts and one with blessings." Thus the comparison is not between the happy man, but between the average man, and the unfortunate. This seems to give a less forcible sense ; either way the Greek is difficult. It is not to be supposed that the advanced minds among the Homeric Greeks actually believed in this rudimentary explanation of the world ; to them it can hardly have been more than a piece of proverbial mythology. 494, 23 532. Opinions have always been divided as to whether the strange word which occurs in this line should be trans- lated "famine" or "gadfly." As it hardly occurs again in COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIV 399 Greek, we have little but probability to guide us ; but this appears to be in favour of the latter. The Greeks were always fond of personifying under the image of the gadfly the impulse to wander which drives those who are cursed by the gods over the face of the earth ; so much so that the common name of the gadfly is applied to any frenzy or un- controllable passion. This seems to meet the needs of the case, and is more poetical than to say that the unhappy man is driven forth by hunger. 544. The lands here named are the boundaries of the 495, 2 Troad : Lesbos to the south, Phrygia to the east, and the Hellespont to the north. The name Makar connected with Lesbos is one which in various slightly differing forms is found all over the east of the Mediterranean. It has been plausibly identified with the Phenician Melkart, the god of sailors, who appears on the Isthmus of Corinth as Meli- kertes. " Seat of Makar " will thus indicate that there was a settlement of Phenicians on the island of Lesbos. 558. The omitted line says, "Myself to live and behold 495, 17 the light of the sun." It is evidently quite needless, and is either omitted or marked as spurious by the best MSS. 560. This outburst on the part of Achilles shows the 495, 19 intense struggle through which he is passing. It is all he can do to control himself, and he feels that he will not be able to do so at all unless he is left to act in his own way, without being either hurried or doubted, as Priam's words might seem to imply. 595. We cannot say with confidence how his share of the 496, 25 ransom was to be given to Patroklos. Some of the gifts may have been reserved to be buried with his bones, or they may have been burnt in his honour. Thus in Od. xi. 30-31, Odysseus promises the shades that he "will offer in his halls a barren heifer, and fill the pyre with treasure." 400 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIV 496, 32 602. This is the only mention in Homer of the Niobe legend, afterwards so popular. In the main it agrees with the later form, except that the number of children varies. The usual number given is seven sons and seven daughters. Niobe was daughter of Tantalos, and like her father was admitted to friendship with the gods : this privilege she abused, allowing her pride to grow excessive. The main difficulty in the introduction of the legend here, and one which has led most critics, from Aristarchos down, to reject it as an interpolation, is the fact that it seems unsuited to the circumstances. As Aristarchos said, " it is no induce- ment to Priam to take food to say, ' Eat, for Niobe ate and was turned to stone.' " But this seems to rest on a mistaken view. Niobe was in fact turned to stone as a favour and in answer to her own prayer ; her grief was so faithful that it was thought worthy of being thus eternalised. Achilles means " you may well eat, without appearing hard of heart ; for even Niobe ate in her grief, and she is actually the type of faithful mourning, and chosen by the gods themselves to embody endless grief before men for ever." According to the legend as given by the later Scholiasts, the slaughter took place in Thebes ; it was only after a long time that Niobe returned to her father's home near Sipylos in Lydia, and there prayed the gods to end her woe. It will be seen that taken in this way the mention of the legend is admirably suited to its purpose, and there is no reason for expelling it. We are not, however, in a position to explain all the allu- sions; the sentence, " For Kronion turned the folk to stones," is particularly obscure. The people seem to have been in some way involved in the offence and turned to stone, unlike Niobe, as a punishment. Another explanation is that they were not literally turned to stone, but that their hearts were made hard, that they might not help Niobe. COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIV 401 Only in that case it is not easy to see why the gods should have taken pains to bury the dead themselves. It is in fact this mention of a turning to stone with quite a different intention from that vouchsafed to Niobe which has compli- cated the whole passage. All difficulty would be removed if. we could only regard 610-612 ("nine days . . . buried them ") as an interpolation, translating the following words "but she" instead of "and she then." 614. The figure of Niobe on Mount Sipylos near Smyrna ^97, was shown to a late day, and is described minutely by Pausanias, himself a native of the district. He says, " The rock, seen from near at hand, is a precipice, with no resem- blance to a woman, mourning or otherwise ; but if you go farther off you can fancy that you are looking at a woman, downcast, and bathed in tears." Visitors to Symrna are still shown the supposed Niobe, a rudely carved seated figure in the face of a precipice. Owing to weathering it has but slight resemblance to a human being, but close examina- tion shows clearly that it is the work of men's hands. According to Mr. Sayce, it is a figure of the great goddess of Carchemish. But it cannot be said to correspond to the description of Pausanias. It is in a recess, so that water does not run over it, and it has no look of weeping ; and Pausanias seems to be describing some natural rock. It is therefore likely that the real Niobe is to be looked for farther inland, where indeed a recent traveller claims to have found a rock in all respects answering the conditions. 6 1 6. This Acheloos is of course in Lydia, and is not to ^97, be confounded with the famous stream of western Greece (see xxi. 194). Nothing else is known about it. The name is found applied to rivers in all parts of Hellas. In the following sentence we should rather translate " broodeth from the gods over her troubles," i.e. it is by the act of the 2 D 402 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD : XXIV gods in turning her to stone that she is still able to mourn. But the Greek is as ambiguous as the English. 498, a 649. " With bitter meaning," literally " taunting." The sense seems to be that Achilles' allusion to Agamemnon contains a taunt, as though his great enemy were still on the watch to thwart him in whatever he wished to do. The explanation of the words, it must be admitted, comes at some distance ; but there is clearly nothing taunting to Priam in what Achilles says. 498, 26 662. It is still true that the wood is " far to fetch " ; all that is needed for Hissarlik and the villages of the lower Troad is fetched by horses from the distant heights of Ida. 499> 5 673. For the "forepart of the house " see ix. 473, where the same word is translated " porch." It is probably the vestibule or outer chamber in front of the hall, where the couch of an unexpected visitor is regularly spread. 499, 31 699. The only other mention of Kassandra in the Iliad is in xiii. 366, q.v. Nothing here is said to show that she had the gift of prophecy attributed to her by later legend, but there is nothing inconsistent with the supposition ; the fact that the poet, for what reason we cannot say, chooses her to be the first to perceive the body may have suggested the idea of prophetic power. 500, 20 720. For the "fretted bed" see the note on the same phrase in iii. 448. The following words are very obscure in the Greek, but there is no doubt that the translation gives the general sense correctly. Professional mourners are employed to lead the lament, to which the women keep up a chorus of " keening." The custom can be illustrated with curious exactness from modern Greece. Thus in Mr. Bent's account of the dirge which he witnessed at Mykonos, " the (paid) lamenters who headed the procession broke forth COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD '' : XXIV 403 into their hideous wails. And as it passed by women came forth from their houses to groan in concert with the others " (The Cydades, chap, x.) Similarly in Albania "the women sit about the corpse, and now begins the dirge proper, in which neighbours as well as kinswomen take part. The dirge is always sung in verse, and as a rule consists of a couplet sung by a solo voice, and then repeated by the chorus of women. These dirges are fixed by usage . . . but it sometimes happens that one of the mourners is inspired by her grief to utter a lament of her own" (von Hahn, Albanesische Studien, i. 151). It has been remarked in the introduction that the nature of the following laments gives them a lyric cast, and various attempts have been made to trace a correspondence of lines in each which would give them a lyric form, an arrangement in verses, as well. These, however, are not by any means convincing, and it is almost impossible to illustrate them in the translation ; but a care- ful reader will be able to detect a certain similarity in the structure of all of them which is at least a first step to lyrical poetry. 725. With the exception of one phrase the lament of 300, 23 Andromache is quite independent of that in xxii., though the similarity of circumstance naturally produces a similarity of tone. The late epic poets took Andromache's words as to the fate of Astyanax for a text, and related that he was in fact slain by being hurled from the battlements of Troy. 748. It is natural that Hekabe's lament should not be 301, /6 quite exact in expression. The thought is, " though Achilles has dealt with thee so far more harshly than with my other sons, yet the gods have turned this very thing to thine honour ; for they have kept thy body fresh, all outraged though it was." 753. The adjective applied to Lemnos is of uncertain 501, 21 2 D 2 404 COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIV meaning, but the sense " misty " or " smoky " appears the best. The island was famous in antiquity for its volcano, Mosychlos, and for this reason was regarded as the smithy of Hephaistos. It is curious that it now shows no trace of any volcano ; the only explanation which has been offered of this fact is that the mountain itself disappeared in some volcanic outbreak, and that its place is now represented by a large shoal in the sea off the east coast. See an interest- ing discussion of the whole question in Professor Jebb's Philoctetes, p. 242. Samos here means Samothrace. Soi, 26 759. The last words of Hekabe's speech form a line which, like many other phrases in this book, is often found in the Odyssey, but not elsewhere in the Iliad. Apollo is the bringer of sudden death to men, as his sister Artemis is to women. The painless death which is a favour of the gods is bestowed by their arrows (see for instance Od. xviii. 202, " Oh ! that pure Artemis would give me so soft a death even now " ; and xi. 172, " Was it a slow disease, or did Artemis the archer slay thee with the visitation of her gentle shafts ? ") 507, 29 762. Helen's lament, like Hekabe's, is somewhat dis- jointed in expression, though the thought is clear. "Although Paris is my husband, and to him I should look for protection against harsh treatment, yet it was thou and not he that defended me." The great difficulty of the speech is the allusion to the "twentieth year." It is impossible to explain this except by a legend of which there is no other trace in the whole Iliad. This is that the Greeks, when first starting to besiege Troy, lost their way and landed in Mysia by mis- take. Their forces thus becoming scattered, they had to return to Greece to reorganise them, so losing ten years. Such a legend seems so absurd in itself that one would feel inclined to say that it must have been invented to explain COMPANION TO THE " ILIAD " : XXIV 405 the words here. The couplet "for this . . . native land" can easily be left out, but this still leaves unsolved the question of why it should ever have been interpolated. 796. From instances which have been found of Greek 502, 30 coffins wrapped in finely woven woollen cloth, it is probable that it is the urn itself, and not the bones, which is here wrapped in the dyed woollen robes. But of this it is not possible to speak with any confidence. It will be seen that the funeral rites of Hector are practically the same as those of Patroklos ; here, as elsewhere, the poet does not indicate any difference of national custom. 804. The Scholiasts give a curious variant for this last 303, 6 line : " Thus held they funeral for Hector ; and the Amazon came, the daughter of great-hearted Ares, slayer of men." It was thus that the Iliad was joined on to later tales of the Trojan war, in which the next event was the coming of Penthesileia, the Amazon queen, and her death at Achilles' hands. INDEX ABLUTION, i 314 Acheloos, xxi 194, xxiv 616 Adonis, xviii 570 Aegis, v 736, xv 310, xxiv 21 Agamed6, xi 740 Agriculture and land-tenure, ix 125, x 351, xii 421, xiii 705, xiv 113, xv 498, xviii 541, xxii 489 Aias, vii 199, ix 624 Aigai, xiii 17 Aineias, p. 24, xiii 460, xx Int., 180-186, 293 Aithiopians, i 423, xxiii 206 Aktor, see Moliones Alalkomenean, iv 8 Allegory, ix 502, xix 87, xxiv 527 Amber, xiii 4 Ambrosia, ii 19 Amisodaros, xvi 328 Angling, xvi 406, xxiv 80 Aphrodite, v 330, xi 19, xviii 382, xxi 416 Apollo, i 37, iv 101, v 401, xvi 667, xx 33, xxi 475, xxiii 660 Ares, v 462, 831, xiii 301, 444, xxi 416 Argonauts, vii 469 Argos, i 30, ii 108, 563, iv 48, xix 115. xxiv 437 Ariadne, xviii 590 Aristeia, pp. 35, 1 1 1 ; of Idomeneus, xiii Int. Armour, iii 330, xi 19 ; see Corslet, Shield, etc. Artemis, vi 205, xxi 483, xxiv 759 Asia, geography, iv 142, vi 90, 168, 208, ix 5, xii i, xx 385 Ass in simile, xi 558 Assyrians, xviii 478 (p. 308) Astyanax, vi 402, xxii 487, 506 At6, viii 237, ix 502, xix 87, xxiv 480 Athene 1 , v 880, vi 90 Attic legends, i 265, ii 546, iii 144 Augury, p. 4, i 62, xii 231 Autolykos, x 258 BACKGROUNDS, p. 51, xxii 126 Baldrick, xiv 404, xvii 290 Bards, p. 19, ix 186 Barrows, ii 786 Battle-axes, xiii 611, xv7ii Beds, iii 448 Bellerophon, vi 158 Binding of gods, i 399, v 385, xv 18 Black as sign of mourning, xxiv 94 Blood-money, xviii 490 Bows and bowmen, iv 242, viii 267, xi 385, xiii 716 Boxing, xxiii 684 Briareus, i 399 Bride-price, ix 146, xiii 365 Bridges, v 8y Bulls and rivers, xxi 131 CANNIBALISM, xxii 346, xxiv 213 Catalogue of Ships, p. 79 Centaurs, i 265 Costus of Venus, xiv 214 Charioteers, xvii 610 Chariots, iv 297, v 262, 722, viii 81, 184, 441, xx 498, xxiii 533, xxiv 190 Chariot harness, xvii 440, xxiv 266 408 INDEX Cheiron, iv 219 Chest of Kypselos, xi 16, p. 311 Chimaira, vi 181 Clanship, ii 360, ix 63 Colours, v 83, p. 205, xvii 547 Common field, see Agriculture Constellations, xviii 488 Cooking, xviii 560 Copper, ix 365 Corinth, vi 152 Corslets, iv 132, 187, xv 530, xx 414 Council, Royal, ii 53, iv 259 Crete, xvi 617, xviii 590 Cup of Nestor, xi 632 Cyprus, v 330, xi 19 DAIDALOS, xviii 590 Dancing, xviii 604 Darkness, supernatural, xv 659, xvi 567-568, xvii 268, 366, 644, xxi 6 Date of Iliad, p. 14 Decoration, rosettes, xviii 370 ; spirals, iii 391 ; of dresses, xxii 441 " Delight of battle," xiii 82 Demeter, v 500, xiv 317 Demigods, xii i Dione, v 370 Dionysos, vi 128 Dirges, xxiv 720 Dodona, ii 750, v 370, xvi 233 Dog-star, v 5, xxii 27 Doloneia, p. 189 Dooms, ix 63, 99 Dorians, p. 80, v 627 Dreams, x 497 Dress, men's, ii 42, xiii 685 ; women's, ii 42, xiv 170, xxii 80, 469, xxiv 230 EGYPT, ix 381 Eileithuia, xix 105 Embassy, p. 23, 170 Ensigns of ships, ix 241, xv 717, xviii 3 Enyalios, v 592 Enyo, v 592 Ephyre', vi 152 Epic dialect, p. 10 Epithets, formal, xxiii 300 irechtheus, ii 546 Srichthonios, xx 215 Erinyes, iii 269, ix 454, xv 204, xix 87, 252, 404, xxi 412 Eurystheus, v 385, xv 639 FAMILY, xvii 36 Fate, viii 69, xvi 780, xxii 202 Fishing, v 487, xvi 406 Ford of Skamandros, xiv 433, xxi Int., 1-2, xxiv 349 Funeral rites, vi 418, vii 85, xix 212, xxii 513, xxiii 35, 71, 170, xxiv 720 GADFLY, xxiv 532 Games, xxii 164, xxiii 621 Gates, iii 149, p. 217 Genealogy, xx 215 Geography, pp. 16, 79, ii 625, ix 150, xi 664, xii i, xxiv 544; external, xiii 4 Gifts, a point of honour, i 118, ix 318, xxiv no Gods, Homeric, v 838, vii 60, xiii 345, xiv 135, xxi 289, 407 ; fetter- ing of, i 399, v 385, xv 1 8 ; obscure titles, iv 8, 101, v 265, vi 205, xv 365, xvi 185 ; and nature, xviii 239 ; cast out of Heaven, xviii 395 ; language of, i 399 ; names a secret, vii 195 Gorgon head, v 736, p. 205 Greaves, iii 330 Crete's theory, pp. 69, 160 HADES, v 654, 845 Hair, cut in mourning, xxiii 135 ; dressing of, ii 542, xi 385, xvii 52 Halcyon bird, ix 557 Harpy, xvi 150 Helen, ii 356, p. 90, iii 428, xix 325 Hellas, ix 395, 447 Hellenes, ii 530 Helmets, iii 362, v 182, 743, xv 537, xvi 101, xvii 297 Hephaistos, v 10, xv 214 Hera, xix 105, 404 Herakles, ii 659, v 395, 640, viii 284, 363, xi 690, xv 639, xviii 117, xix 95-136, xx 144 INDEX 409 Hermes, xiv 491, xv 214, xxiv 24 Herodotos, p. in, vi 289 Hesiodean interpolations, xvi 380, xviii 39, xxiv 45 " High ground of the plain," xi 56 Hissarlik, p. 16, xx 215, xxii 165 Historical basis of Iliad, p. 15 Homeridae, p. 21 Homicide, xiv 113, xviii 326, 490, xxiii 87, xxiv 480 Honey, xxiii 170 Honour, point of, see Gifts Horses, xix 404, xxiii 346, 383 ; ridden, x 514, xv 676 ; sacrificed, xxi 131 Houses, p. 3, vi 242, 316, viii 435, 1x472 Huts, xxiv 448 Hyperion, xix 398 lARDANOS, vii 135 Ibex, iv 105 Ichor, v 340 Ileian plain, xxi 558 7/Wand Odyssey, p. 21 Ilos, tomb of, x 415 Immortality, xxiii 103 lonians, pp. 6, 9, xiii 673, 685 Iris, viii 420, xxiii 192 Iron, xviii 34, xxiii 826, 850 JAR as prison, v 385 Jason, xxi 41 KALLIKOLON, xx 53 Karians, x 428 Kassandra, xxiv 698 Kastor and Polydeukes, iii 237 Kinship, p. 5, xxi 86 Kyanos, xi 19, p. 205 Kymindis, xiv 290 Kypris, v 330 LACHMANN'S theory, p. 52 I^and-tenure, see Agriculture Lap of the gods, xvii 5 1 4 Law, xviii 490, see Dooms Lead, xi 237 leather-curing, xvii 384 Leleges, x 428, xx 90 Lemnos, xiv 230, xxiv 753 Libation, i 430 Life, seat of, xxi 203 Lily, iii 152, xiii 830 Linos, xviii 570 Lions, xvii 136, xx 164 Lykaon-Zeus, xvi 233 Lykegenes, iv 101 Lykia, iv 101, v 95, 471 MACHICOLATIONS, xii 258 Magic, spare use of, p. 4, xviii 373 Marriage with aunts, v 412, xi 226 ; brokers, xiii 382 Measure, fluid, xxiii 264 Meleagros, ix 529 " Menis," p. 29 etc. Messages, interpolations in, xi 794, xxiv 182 Metal work, ix 365, xi 19, xviii 474 Minos, xiv 317 Moliones, xi 709, xiii 207, xxiii 638 Moral judgments, vi 62, xxiii 176 Mouse, symbolism, i 37 Mules, xxiv 278 Mummification, vii 85, xix 38 Muses, i i, xi 218, xiv 508, xvi 112 Mutilation of dead, xviii 180, xxii 370 NECTAR, xix 38 Neoptolemos, xix 326, xxiv 464 Nereus, i 358 Nestor interpolations, ii 360, iv 297, ix 66, xi 664, xvii 381, xxiii 300 Nestor's Cup, xi 632 J^Iiobe, xxiv 602, 614 OATHS, iii 269, xiv 272, xix 197, 252 Oedipus, xxiii 679 Okeanos, xviii 399, 607 Olympos, v 750, viii 25 Omens, viii 250, xxiv 306 Oracles, ix 405 Orion, xxii 27 Orphanage, xxii 496 Oysters, xvi 745 PAIKON, v 401 Palisades, xviii 177 Parentage, divine, xvi 175 410 INDEX Paris, judgment of, xxiv 29 Peisistratos, p. 190 Pelasgians, pp. i, 6, ii 816, x 428, xvi 233, xvii 301 Pergamos, iv 508 Personification, xviii 535 Phalos, iii 362 Phenicians, v 330, pp. 203, 308, xxiii 743 Phoinix, ix 168 Pigmies, iii 2 Pindar quotes Homer, xv 207 Plain of Troy, xi 56 Ploughing, x 351 Polity, Homeric, ii 53 Polydamas and Hector, xii 211, xviii 288 Polygamy, xxi 86, xxii 46 Pope's Iliad, ix 308 Portents, iv 75, xi 45, xv 379, xvi 459 Poseidon, xx 144, 293, 404, xxiii 37. 574 Prae-Olympian dynasties, xiv 201 Pramnian wine, xi 638 Priesthood, i 62 Purple, xvii 547 Pylaimenes, v 576, xiii 658 Pylos, v395 Pytho, ix 405 RACE-COURSE, xxiii 320, 373 Razors, x 173 Religion, see Gods Repetition of lines, i 430 Rhesos, p. 189 Rhodes, p. 80, ii 659, v 627 , Roses, oil of, xxiii 187 "SACRED," x 56, xvi 406, xvii 464 Sacrifice, ii 421, iii 103, 269 Salt, ix 214 Sarpedon, xvi 419 Scales of Zeus, viii 69, xvi 658 Sea-fights, xv 388 Seasons, v 5 Shame, sense of, xxiv 45 Shields, iii 346, v 182, 453, vi 117, vii 219, viii 184, xi 19, xii 263, 294, xiii 407, xv 646, xvi 803, xviii 478, xx 28.0, xxii 4, 294 Shield of Achilles, xviii 478, xx 269 Ships, xiv 77, xv 729, xx 247 Sidonians, xxiii 743 Similes, ii 144, 442, iv 482, x i, xi 558, p. 216, xii 421, 432, xiii 492, 754, xv 80, 263, 410, 629, 676, xvi 7, 297, 364, xvii 547, xviii 207, xix 377, xx 164, xxi 257, 522, xxii 199, xxiii 692, 760, xxiv 80, 480 ; later manners in, xviii 219, xxi 362 Simoeis, v 774, vi 4, xxi 307 Simonides quotes Homer, vi 146 Skamandros, xxii 147 Slings, xiii 600, 716 Smintheus, i 37 Snakes, xxii 94 Solymoi, vi 184 Soul, conception of, xxiii 71, 103 Spears, iii 346, vi 319 Squires, v 48 Staff, magic, xiii 59, xxiv 339 ; in assembly, i 234, xviii 505 Stentor, v 785 Styx, xxiii 73 Sulphur, xvi 228 Suppliantship, i 500, xxi 75 TALENT of gold, ix 122, xviii 505, xxiii .264 Tartaros, v 898 Taslet, iv 132, xvi 419 Telemachos, ii 260, iv 354 Temples, i 39, v 448 Teukros, viii 284 Thamyris, p. 19, ii 595 Thebe\ vi 397 Thebes, ^505, 1V37O, 406 ; Egyptian, ix 381 Themis, xx 4 Thersites, ii 212 Theseus, i 265 Thrace, ix 5 Thracians, xiii 577 Time - reckoning, vii 421, xvi 777, xxi 154 Tin, xi 19, xxiii 560 Tiryns, ii 563 Titans, v 898 Tlepolemos, v 627 Topography of Iliad, xi 56, xiii 12, xx 215, xxii 145, 147 INDEX 411 Totems, i 37 Tower, xii 333 Trace-horse, viii 81, xvi 152 Tribal feeling, p. 5, ii 360 Tripods, ix 122, xviii 373 " Triton-born," iv 8 Troilos, xxiv 257 Trojan religion, iii 103 Trumpets, xviii 219, xxi 388 Tumblers, xvi 745, xviii 604 Tunics, v 112, 736 VESTIBULE, ix 472, xxiv 673 Vultures, vii 60 WALL and trench, viii 213, ix 87, x 198 Wall round camp, a late addition, p. 38, 151, xv 736, xvi 364, 380, 397, xviii 150 War, Homeric view of, xiii 82, 343, xix 221 War-dance, vii 241 War-fine, xiii 669 Washing-troughs, xxii 153 Weaving, iii 125, xxiii 760 Whips, xxiii 387 " Whole-hooved," v 236 Women, position of, p. 3 Wool-working, xii 432 Wrestling, xxiii 712, 724 Writing, vi 168, vii 189 XANTHOS, xx 74 ZEPHYR, xxiii 200 Zeus, viii 69, xvi 233, xxi 390 THE END Pri*tdby R. & R. CLARK. Edinburgh. MESSRS. MACMILLAN & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Two Vols. 8vo. I4J. each. HOMER THE ILIAD. By WALTER LEAF, LitLD. 8vo. Books I.-XII. 145. Books XII I.-XXIV. 1 4 s. [Classical Library. In preparation. 2 vols. Fcaf>. 8vo. HOMER THE ILIAD. Edited for Schools by WALTER LEAF, Litt.D., and the Rev. M. A. BAYFIELD, M.A., Headmaster of Christ's College, Brecon. [Classical Series. *% The Notes will be adapted by Mr. Bay field from Dr. Leaf's larger commentary. Crown 8v0. $s. HOMER ILIAD. BOOKS I., IX., XL, XVI.-XXIV. THE STORY OF ACHILLES. By the late J. H. PRATT, M.A., and WALTER LEAF, Litt.D., Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge. [Classical Series. Crown 8vo. 12s. 6J. THE ILIAD. Translated into English Prose by ANDREW LANG, M. A., WALTER LEAF, Litt.D., and ERNEST MYERS, M.A. Crown 8z'0. 6s. THE ODYSSEY. Done into English by S. H. BUTCHER, M.A., Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh, and ANDREW LANG, M.A. Crown 8vo. 6s. HOMERIC DICTIONARY. 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