The Iliad of Homer

Book I The Contention of Achilles and Agamemnon. [40]

In the war of Troy, the Greeks having sacked some of the neighbouring towns, and taken from thence two beautiful captives, Chryseis and Briseis, allotted the first to Agamemnon, and the last to Achilles. Chryses, the father of Chryseis, and priest of Apollo, comes to the Grecian camp to ransom her; with which the action of the poem opens, in the tenth year of the siege. The priest being refused, and insolently dismissed by Agamemnon, entreats for vengeance from his god; who inflicts a pestilence on the Greeks. Achilles calls a council, and encourages Chalcas to declare the cause of it; who attributes it to the refusal of Chryseis. The king, being obliged to send back his captive, enters into a furious contest with Achilles, which Nestor pacifies; however, as he had the absolute command of the army, he seizes on Briseis in revenge. Achilles in discontent withdraws himself and his forces from the rest of the Greeks; and complaining to Thetis, she supplicates Jupiter to render them sensible of the wrong done to her son, by giving victory to the Trojans. Jupiter, granting her suit, incenses Juno: between whom the debate runs high, till they are reconciled by the address of Vulcan.

The time of two–and–twenty days is taken up in this book: nine during the plague, one in the council and quarrel of the princes, and twelve for Jupiter's stay with the Æthiopians, at whose return Thetis prefers her petition. The scene lies in the Grecian camp, then changes to Chrysa, and lastly to Olympus.

Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.^[41]

Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!^[42]
Declare, O Muse! in what ill–fated hour^[43]
Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended power
Latona's son a dire contagion spread,^[44]
And heap'd the camp with mountains of the dead;
The king of men his reverent priest defied,^[45]
And for the king's offence the people died.

For Chryses sought with costly gifts to gain
His captive daughter from the victor's chain.
Suppliant the venerable father stands;
Apollo's awful ensigns grace his hands
By these he begs; and lowly bending down,
Extends the sceptre and the laurel crown
He sued to all, but chief implored for grace
The brother–kings, of Atreus' royal race^[46]
"Ye kings and warriors! may your vows be crown'd,
And Troy's proud walls lie level with the ground.

May Jove restore you when your toils are o'er
Safe to the pleasures of your native shore.
But, oh! relieve a wretched parent's pain,
And give Chryseis to these arms again;
If mercy fail, yet let my presents move,
And dread avenging Phoebus, son of Jove."
The Greeks in shouts their joint assent declare,
The priest to reverence, and release the fair.

Not so Atrides; he, with kingly pride,
Repulsed the sacred sire, and thus replied:
"Hence on thy life, and fly these hostile plains,
Nor ask, presumptuous, what the king detains
Hence, with thy laurel crown, and golden rod,
Nor trust too far those ensigns of thy god.

Mine is thy daughter, priest, and shall remain;
And prayers, and tears, and bribes, shall plead in vain;
Till time shall rifle every youthful grace,
And age dismiss her from my cold embrace,
In daily labours of the loom employ'd,
Or doom'd to deck the bed she once enjoy'd
Hence then; to Argos shall the maid retire,
Far from her native soil and weeping sire."

HOMER INVOKING THE MUSE.

The trembling priest along the shore return'd,
And in the anguish of a father mourn'd.
Disconsolate, not daring to complain,
Silent he wander'd by the sounding main;
Till, safe at distance, to his god he prays,
The god who darts around the world his rays.
"O Smintheus! sprung from fair Latona's line,^[47]
Thou guardian power of Cilla the divine,^[48]
Thou source of light! whom Tenedos adores,
And whose bright presence gilds thy Chrysa's shores.

If e'er with wreaths I hung thy sacred fane,^[49]
Or fed the flames with fat of oxen slain;
God of the silver bow! thy shafts employ,
Avenge thy servant, and the Greeks destroy."
Thus Chryses pray'd.—the favouring power attends,
And from Olympus' lofty tops descends.
Bent was his bow, the Grecian hearts to wound;^[50]
Fierce as he moved, his silver shafts resound.

Breathing revenge, a sudden night he spread,
And gloomy darkness roll'd about his head.
The fleet in view, he twang'd his deadly bow,
And hissing fly the feather'd fates below.

On mules and dogs the infection first began;^[51]
And last, the vengeful arrows fix'd in man.
For nine long nights, through all the dusky air,
The pyres, thick–flaming, shot a dismal glare.

But ere the tenth revolving day was run,
Inspired by Juno, Thetis' godlike son
Convened to council all the Grecian train;
For much the goddess mourn'd her heroes slain.^[52]

The assembly seated, rising o'er the rest,
Achilles thus the king of men address'd:
"Why leave we not the fatal Trojan shore,
And measure back the seas we cross'd before?

The plague destroying whom the sword would spare,
'Tis time to save the few remains of war.
But let some prophet, or some sacred sage,
Explore the cause of great Apollo's rage;
Or learn the wasteful vengeance to remove
By mystic dreams, for dreams descend from Jove.^[53]

40

The following argument of the Iliad, corrected in a few particulars, is translated from Bitaube, and is, perhaps, the neatest summary that has ever been drawn up:—"A hero, injured by his general, and animated with a noble resentment, retires to his tent; and for a season withdraws himself and his troops from the war. During this interval, victory abandons the army, which for nine years has been occupied in a great enterprise, upon the successful termination of which the honour of their country depends. The general, at length opening his eyes to the fault which he had committed, deputes the principal officers of his army to the incensed hero, with commission to make compensation for the injury, and to tender magnificent presents. The hero, according to the proud obstinacy of his character, persists in his animosity; the army is again defeated, and is on the verge of entire destruction. This inexorable man has a friend; this friend weeps before him, and asks for the hero's arms, and for permission to go to the war in his stead. The eloquence of friendship prevails more than the intercession of the ambassadors or the gifts of the general. He lends his armour to his friend, but commands him not to engage with the chief of the enemy's army, because he reserves to himself the honour of that combat, and because he also fears for his friend's life. The prohibition is forgotten; the friend listens to nothing but his courage; his corpse is brought back to the hero, and the hero's arms become the prize of the conqueror. Then the hero, given up to the most lively despair, prepares to fight; he receives from a divinity new armour, is reconciled with his general and, thirsting for glory and revenge, enacts prodigies of valour, recovers the victory, slays the enemy's chief, honours his friend with superb funeral rites, and exercises a cruel vengeance on the body of his destroyer; but finally appeased by the tears and prayers of the father of the slain warrior, restores to the old man the corpse of his son, which he buries with due solemnities.'—Coleridge, p. 177, sqq.

41

Vultures: Pope is more accurate than the poet he translates, for Homer writes "a prey to dogs and to all kinds of birds." But all kinds of birds are not carnivorous.

42

—i.e. during the whole time of their striving the will of Jove was being gradually accomplished.

43

Compare Milton's "Paradise Lost" i. 6

"Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top Of Horeb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd."

44

—Latona's son: i.e. Apollo.

45

—King of men: Agamemnon.

46

—Brother kings: Menelaus and Agamemnon.

47

—Smintheus an epithet taken from sminthos, the Phrygian name for a mouse, was applied to Apollo for having put an end to a plague of mice which had harassed that territory. Strabo, however, says, that when the Teucri were migrating from Crete, they were told by an oracle to settle in that place, where they should not be attacked by the original inhabitants of the land, and that, having halted for the night, a number of field–mice came and gnawed away the leathern straps of their baggage, and thongs of their armour. In fulfilment of the oracle, they settled on the spot, and raised a temple to Sminthean Apollo. Grote, "History of Greece," i. p. 68, remarks that the "worship of Sminthean Apollo, in various parts of the Troad and its neighboring territory, dates before the earliest period of Aeolian colonization."

48

—Cilla, a town of Troas near Thebe, so called from Cillus, a sister of Hippodamia, slain by OEnomaus.

49

A mistake. It should be,

"If e'er I roofed thy graceful fane,"

for the custom of decorating temples with garlands was of later date.

50

—Bent was his bow "The Apollo of Homer, it must be borne in mind, is a different character from the deity of the same name in the later classical pantheon. Throughout both poems, all deaths from unforeseen or invisible causes, the ravages of pestilence, the fate of the young child or promising adult, cut off in the germ of infancy or flower of youth, of the old man dropping peacefully into the grave, or of the reckless sinner suddenly checked in his career of crime, are ascribed to the arrows of Apollo or Diana. The oracular functions of the god rose naturally out of the above fundamental attributes, for who could more appropriately impart to mortals what little foreknowledge Fate permitted of her decrees than the agent of her most awful dispensations? The close union of the arts of prophecy and song explains his additional office of god of music, while the arrows with which he and his sister were armed, symbols of sudden death in every age, no less naturally procured him that of god of archery. Of any connection between Apollo and the Sun, whatever may have existed in the more esoteric doctrine of the Greek sanctuaries, there is no trace in either Iliad or Odyssey."—Mure, "History of Greek Literature," vol. i. p. 478, sq.

51

It has frequently been observed, that most pestilences begin with animals, and that Homer had this fact in mind.

52

—Convened to council. The public assembly in the heroic times is well characterized by Grote, vol. ii. p 92. "It is an assembly for talk. Communication and discussion to a certain extent by the chiefs in person, of the people as listeners and sympathizers—often for eloquence, and sometimes for quarrel—but here its ostensible purposes end."

53

Old Jacob Duport, whose "Gnomologia Homerica" is full of curious and useful things, quotes several passages of the ancients, in which reference is made to these words of Homer, in maintenance of the belief that dreams had a divine origin and an import in which men were interested.