Important for the story of the Achillêis, I should say, not for that of the Iliad. This remark of Lachmann is highly illustrative for the distinction between the original and the enlarged poem.
[287] I confess my astonishment that a man of so much genius and power of thought as M. Benjamin Constant, should have imagined the original Iliad to have concluded with the death of Patroclus, on the ground that Achilles then becomes reconciled with Agamemnôn. See the review of B. Constant’s work, De la Religion, etc., by O. Müller, in the Kleine Schriften of the latter, vol. ii. p. 74.
[288] He appears as the mediator between the insulted Achilles and the Greeks, manifesting kindly sympathies for the latter without renouncing his fidelity to the former. The wounded Machaon, an object of interest to the whole camp, being carried off the field by Nestor,—Achilles, looking on from his distant ship, sends Patroclus to inquire whether it be really Machaon; which enables Nestor to lay before Patroclus the deplorable state of the Grecian host, as a motive to induce him and Achilles again to take arms. The compassionate feelings of Patroclus being powerfully touched, he is hastening to enforce upon Achilles the urgent necessity of giving help, when he meets Eurypylus crawling out of the field, helpless with a severe wound, and imploring his succor. He supports the wounded warrior to his tent, and ministers to his suffering; but before this operation is fully completed, the Grecian host has been totally driven back, and the Trojans are on the point of setting fire to the ships: Patroclus then hurries to Achilles to proclaim the desperate peril which hangs over them all, and succeeds in obtaining his permission to take the field at the head of the Myrmidons. The way in which Patroclus is kept present to the hearer, as a prelude to his brilliant but short-lived display, when he comes forth in arms,—the contrast between his characteristic gentleness and the ferocity of Achilles,—and the natural train of circumstances whereby he is made the vehicle of reconciliation on the part of his offended friend, and rescue to his imperiled countrymen,—all these exhibit a degree of epical skill, in the author of the primitive Achillêis, to which nothing is found parallel in the added books of the Iliad.
[289] Observe, for example, the following passages:—
1. Achilles, standing on the prow of his ship, sees the general army of Greeks undergoing defeat by the Trojans, and also sees Nestor conveying in his chariot a wounded warrior from the field. He sends Patroclus to find out who the wounded man is: in calling forth Patroclus, he says (xi. 607),—
Δῖε Μενοιτιάδη τῷ ᾽μῷ κεχαρισμένε θυμῷ,
Νῦν οἴω περὶ γούνατ᾽ ἐμὰ στήσεσθαι Ἀχαιοὺς
Λισσομένους· χρείω γὰρ ἱκάνεται οὔκετ᾽ ἀνεκτός.
Heyne, in his comment, asks the question, not unnaturally, “Pœnituerat igitur asperitatis erga priorem legationem, an homo arrogans expectaverat alteram ad se missam iri?” I answer, neither one nor the other: the words imply that he had received no embassy at all. He is still the same Achilles who in the first book paced alone by the seashore, devouring his own soul under a sense of bitter affront, and praying to Thetis to aid his revenge: this revenge is now about to be realized, and he hails its approach with delight. But if we admit the embassy of the ninth book to intervene, the passage becomes a glaring inconsistency for that which Achilles anticipates as future, and even yet as contingent, had actually occurred on the previous evening; the Greeks had supplicated at his feet,—they had proclaimed their intolerable need,—and he had spurned them. The Scholiast, in his explanation of these lines, after giving the plain meaning, that “Achilles shows what he has long been desiring, to see the Greeks in a state of supplication to him,”—seems to recollect that this is in contradiction to the ninth book, and tries to remove the contradiction, by saying “that he had been previously mollified by conversation with Phœnix,”—ἤδη δὲ προμαλαχθεὶς ἦν ἐκ τῶν Φοίνικος λόγων,—a supposition neither countenanced by anything in the poet, nor sufficient to remove the difficulty.
2. The speech of Poseidôn (xiii. 115) to encourage the dispirited Grecian heroes, in which, after having admitted the injury done to Achilles by Agamemnôn, he recommends an effort to heal the sore, and intimates “that the minds of good men admit of this healing process,” (Ἀλλ᾽ ἀκεώμεθα θᾶσσον· ἀκεσταί τε φρένες ἐσθλῶν,) is certainly not very consistent with the supposition that this attempt to heal had been made in the best possible way, and that Achilles had manifested a mind implacable in the extreme on the evening before,—while the mind of Agamemnôn was already brought to proclaimed humiliation, and needed no farther healing.