Nestor advises Agamemnon to set an advanced guard, which that martialist had never thought of doing, and to discuss matters over supper. A force of 700 men, under Meriones and the son of Nestor, was posted between the foss and the wall round the camp; the council met, and Nestor advised Agamemnon to approach Achilles with gentle words and gifts of atonement. Agamemnon, full of repentance, acknowledges his folly and offers enormous atonement. Heralds and three ambassadors are sent; and how Achilles received them, with perfect courtesy, but with absolute distrust of Agamemnon and refusal of his gifts, sending the message that he will fight only when fire comes to his own ships, we know.
Achilles is now entirely in the wrong, and the Over-Lord is once more within his right. He has done all, or more than all, that customary law demands. In Book IX. Phoenix states the case plainly. "If Agamemnon brought thee not gifts, and promised thee more hereafter, ... then were I not he that should bid thee cast aside thine anger, and save the Argives...." (IX. 515-517). The case so stands that, if Achilles later relents and fights, the gifts of atonement will no longer be due to him, and he "will not be held in like honour" (IX. 604).
The poet knows intimately, and, like his audience, is keenly interested in the details of the customary law. We cannot easily suppose this frame of mind and this knowledge in a late poet addressing a late Ionian audience.
The ambassadors return to Agamemnon; their evil tidings are received in despairing silence. But Diomede bids Agamemnon take heart and fight next day, with his host arrayed "before the ships" (IX. 708). This appears to counsel defensive war; but, in fact, and for reasons, when it comes to fighting they do battle in the open.
The next Book (X.) is almost universally thought a late interpolation; an opinion elsewhere discussed (see {blank space}). Let us, then, say with Mr. Leaf that the Book begins with "exaggerated despondency" and ends with "hasty exultation," in consequence of a brilliant camisade, wherein Odysseus and Diomede massacre a Thracian contingent. Our point is that the poet carefully (see The Doloneia) continues the study of Agamemnon in despondency, and later, by his "hasty exultation," preludes to the valour which the Over-Lord displays in Book XI.
The poet knows that something in the way of personal valour is due to Agamemnon's position; he fights brilliantly, receives a flesh wound, retires, and is soon proposing a general flight in his accustomed way. When the Trojans, in Book XIV., are attacking the ships, Agamemnon remarks that he fears the disaffection of his whole army (XIV. 49, 51), and, as for the coming defeat, that he "knew it," even when Zeus helped the Greeks. They are all to perish far from Argos. Let them drag the ships to the sea, moor them with stones, and fly, "For there is no shame in fleeing from ruin, even in the night. Better doth he fare who flees from trouble than he that is overtaken." It is now the turn of Odysseus again to save the honour of the army. "Be silent, lest some other of the Achaeans hear this word, that no man should so much as suffer to pass through his mouth.... And now I wholly scorn thy thoughts, such a word hast thou uttered." On this Agamemnon instantly repents. "Right sharply hast thou touched my heart with thy stern reproof:" he has not even the courage of his nervousness.
The combat is now in the hands of Aias and Patroclus, who is slain. Agamemnon, who is wounded, does not reappear till Book XIX., when Achilles, anxious to fight and avenge Patroclus at once, without formalities of reconciliation, professes his desire to let bygones be bygones. Agamemnon excuses his insolence to Achilles as an inspiration of Ate: a predestined fault—"Not I am the cause, but Zeus and Destiny."
Odysseus, to clinch the reunion and fulfil customary law, advises Agamemnon to bring out the gifts of atonement (the gifts prepared in Book IX.), after which the right thing is for him to give a feast of reconciliation, "that Achilles may have nothing lacking of his right." {Footnote: Book XIX. 179, 180.} The case is one which has been provided for by customary law in every detail. Mr. Leaf argues that all this part must be late, because of the allusion to the gifts offered in Book IX. But we reply, with Mr. Monro, that the Ninth Book is "almost necessary to any Achilleis." The question is, would a late editor or poet know all the details of customary law in such a case as a quarrel between Over-Lord and peer? would a feudal audience have been satisfied with a poem which did not wind the quarrel up in accordance with usage? and would a late poet, in a society no longer feudal, know how to wind it up? Would he find any demand on the part of his audience for a long series of statements, which to a modern seem to interrupt the story? To ourselves it appears that a feudal audience desired the customary details; to such an audience they were most interesting.
This is a taste which, as has been said, we find in all early poetry and in the sagas; hence the long "runs" of the Celtic sagas, minutely repeated descriptions of customary things. The Icelandic saga-men never weary, though modern readers do, of legal details. For these reasons we reckon the passages in Book XIX. about the reconciliation as original, and think they can be nothing else. It is quite natural that, in a feudal society of men who were sticklers for custom, the hearers should insist on having all things done duly and in order—the giving of the gifts and the feast of reconciliation—though the passionate Achilles himself desires to fight at once. Odysseus insists that what we may call the regular routine shall be gone through. It is tedious to the modern reader, but it is surely much more probable that a feudal poet thus gratified his peculiar audience (he looked for no other) than that a late poet, with a different kind of audience, thrust the Reconciliation in as an "after-thought." {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p. 317.} The right thing must be done, Odysseus assures Achilles, "for I was born first, and know more things." It is not the right thing to fight at once, unfed, and before the solemn sacrifice by the Over-Lord, the prayer, the Oath of Agamemnon, and the reception of the gifts by Achilles; only after these formalities, and after the army has fed, can the host go forth. "I know more than you do; you are a younger man," says Odysseus, speaking in accordance with feudal character, at the risk of wearying later unforeseen generations.
This is not criticism inspired by mere "literary feeling," for "literary feeling" is on the side of Achilles, and wishes the story to hurry to his revenge. But ours is {blank space} criticism; we must think of the poet in relation to his audience and of their demands, which we can estimate by similar demands, vouched for by the supply, in the early national poetry of other peoples and in the Icelandic sagas.