There is really nothing absurd in this. Napoleon often visited his outposts in the night before Waterloo, and Cromwell rode along his lines all through the night before Dunbar, biting his lips till the blood dropped on his linen bands. In all three cases hostile armies were arrayed within striking distance of each other, and the generals were careworn.
Nestor admits that it is an anxious night, and rather blames Menelaus for not rousing the other chiefs; but Agamemnon explains and defends his brother. Nestor then puts on the comfortable cloak already described, and picks up a spear, {blank space} in HIS QUARTERS.
As for Odysseus, he merely throws a shield over his shoulders. The company of Diomede are sleeping with their heads on their shields. Thence Reichel (see "The Shield") infers that the late poet of Book X. gave them small Ionian round bucklers; but it has been shown that no such inference is legitimate. Their spears were erect by their sides, fixed in the ground by the sauroter, or butt-spike, used by the men of the late "warrior vase" found at Mycenae. To arrange the spears thus, we have seen, was a point of drill that, in Aristotle's time, survived among the Illyrians. {Footnote: Poetics, XXV.} The practice is also alluded to in Iliad, III 135. During a truce "the tall spears are planted by their sides." The poet, whether ignorant or learned, knew that point of war, later obsolete in Greece, but still extant in Illyria.
Nestor aroused Diomede, whose night apparel was the pelt of a lion; he took his spear, and they came to the outposts, where the men were awake, and kept a keen watch on all movements among the Trojans. Nestor praised them, and the princes, taking Nestor's son, Thrasymedes, and Meriones with them, went out into the open in view of the Trojan camp, sat down, and held a consultation.
Nestor asked if any one would volunteer to go as a spy among the Trojans and pick up intelligence. His reward will be "a black ewe with her lamb at her foot," from their chiefs—"nothing like her for value"—and he will be remembered in songs at feasts, orwill be admitted to feasts and wine parties of the chiefs. {Footnote: Leaf, Note on X. 215.} The proposal is very odd; what do the princes want with black ewes, while at feasts they always have honoured places? Can Nestor be thinking of sending out any brave swift-footed young member of the outpost party, to whom the reward would be appropriate?
After silence, Diomede volunteers to go, with a comrade, though this kind of work is very seldom undertaken in any army of any age by a chief, and by his remark about admission to wine parties it is clear that Nestor was not thinking of a princely spy. Many others volunteer, but Agamemnon bids Diomede choose his own companion, with a very broad hint not to take Menelaus. HISdeath, Agamemnon knows, would mean the disgraceful return of the host to Greece; besides he is, throughout the ILIAD, deeply attached to his brother.
The poet of Book X., however late, knows the ILIADwell, for he keeps up the uniform treatment of the character of the Over-Lord. As he knows the ILIADwell, how can he be ignorant of the conditions of life of the heroes? How can he dream of "introducing a note of heroic simplicity" (Mr. Leaf's phrase), when he must be as well aware as we are of the way in which the heroes lived? We cannot explain the black ewes, if meant as a princely reward, but we do not know everything about Homeric life.
Diomede chooses Odysseus, "whom Pallas Athene loveth"; she was also the patroness of Diomede himself, in Books V., VI.
As they are unarmed—all of the chiefs hastily aroused were unarmed, save for a spear there or a sword here—Thrasymedes gives to Diomede his two-edged sword, hisshield, and "a helm of bull's hide, without horns or crest, that is called a skull-cap (knap-skull), and keeps the heads of strong young men." All the advanced guard were young men, as we saw in Book IX. 77. Obviously, Thrasymedes must then send back to camp, though we are not told it, for another shield, sword, and helmet, as he is to lie all night under arms. We shall hear of the shield later.
Meriones, who is an archer (XIII. 650), lends to Odysseus his bow and quiver and a sword. He also gives him "a helm made of leather; and with many a thong it was stiffly wrought within, while without the white teeth of a boar of flashing tusks were arrayed, thick set on either side well and cunningly... ." Here Reichel perceives that the ignorant poet is describing a piece of ancient headgear represented in Mycenaean art, while the boars' teeth were found by Schliemann, to the number of sixty, in Grave IV. at Mycenae. Each of them had "the reverse side cut perfectly flat, and with the borings to attach them to some other object." They were "in a veritable funereal armoury." The manner of setting the tusks on the cap is shown on an ivory head of a warrior from Mycenae. {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, 196-197.}
Reichel recognises that the poet's description in Book X. is excellent, " ebenso klar als eingehend." He publishes another ivory head from Spata, with the same helmet set with boars' tusks. {Footnote: Reichel, pp. 102-104} Mr. Leaf decides that this description by the poet, wholly ignorant of heroic costume, as Reichel thinks him, must be "another instance of the archaic and archaeologising tendency so notable in Book X." {Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii. p. 629.}
At the same time, according to Reichel and Mr. Leaf, the poet of Book X. introduces the small round Ionian buckler, thus showing his utter ignorance of the great Mycenaean shield. The ignorance was most unusual and quite inexcusable, for any one who reads the rest of the Iliad(which the poet of Book X. knew well) is aware that the Homeric shields were huge, often covering body and legs. This fact the poet of Book X. did not know, in Reichel's opinion. {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. 575}
How are we to understand this poet? He is such an erudite archaeologist that, in the seventh century, he knows and carefully describes a helmet of the Mycenaean prime. Did he excavate it? and had the leather interior lasted with the felt cap through seven centuries? Or did he see a sample in an old temple of the Mycenaean prime, or in a museum of his own period? Or had he heard of it in a lost Mycenaean poem? Yet, careful as he was, so pedantic that he must have puzzled his seventh-century audience, who never saw such caps, the poet knew nothing of the shields and costumes of the heroes, though he might have found out all that is known about them in the then existing Iliadic lays with which he was perfectly familiar—see his portrait of Agamemnon. He was well aware that corslets were, in Homeric poetry, anachronisms, for he gave Nestor none; yet he fully believed, in his ignorance, that small Ionian bucklers loveth; (which need the aid of corslets badly) were the only wear among the heroes!
Criticism has, as we often observe, no right to throw the first stone at the inconsistencies of Homer. As we cannot possibly believe that one poet knew so much which his contemporaries did not know (and how, in the seventh century, could he know it?), and that he also knew so little, knew nothing in fact, we take our own view. The poet of Book X. sings of afresh topic, a confused night of dread; of young men wearing the headgear which, he says, young men dowear; of pelts of fur such as suddenly wakened men, roused, but not roused for battle, would be likely to throw over their bodies against the chill air. He describes things of his own day; things with which he is familiar. He is said to "take quite a peculiar delight in the minute description of dress and weapons." {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. 423.} We do not observe that he does describe weapons or shields minutely; but Homer always loves to describe weapons and costume—scores of examples prove it—and here he happens to be describing such costume as he nowhere else has occasion to mention. By an accident of archaeological discovery, we find that there were such caps set with boars' tusks as he introduces. They had survived, for young men on night duty, into the poet's age. We really cannot believe that a poet of the seventh century had made excavations in Mycenaean graves. If he did and put the results into his lay, his audience—not wearing boars' tusks—would have asked, "What nonsense is the man talking?"