3. And what shall we say to the language of Achilles and Patroclus, at the beginning of the sixteenth book, just at the moment when the danger has reached its maximum, and when Achilles is about to send forth his friend?
Neither Nestor, when he invokes and instructs Patroclus as intercessor with Achilles (xi. 654-790), nor Patroclus himself, though in the extreme of anxiety to work upon the mind of Achilles, and reproaching him with hardness of heart,—ever bring to remembrance the ample atonement which had been tendered to him; while Achilles himself repeats the original ground of quarrel, the wrong offered to him in taking away Brisêis, continuing the language of the first book; then, without the least allusion to the atonement and restitution since tendered, he yields to his friend’s proposition, just like a man whose wrong remained unredressed, but who was, nevertheless, forced to take arms by necessity (xvi. 60-63):—
Ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν προτετύχθαι ἐάσομεν, οὔδ᾽ ἄρα πως ἦν
Ἀσπερχὲς κεχολῶσθαι ἐνὶ φρεσίν· ἤτοι ἔφην γε
Οὐ πρὶν μηνιθμὸν καταπαύσεμεν, ἀλλ᾽ ὁπόταν δὴ
Νῆας ἐμὰς ἀφίκηται ἀϋτή τε πτόλεμός τε.
I agree with the Scholiast and Heyne in interpreting ἔφην γε as equivalent to διενοήθην,—not as referring to any express antecedent declaration.
Again, farther on in the same speech, “The Trojans (Achilles says) now press boldly forward upon the ships, for they no longer see the blaze of my helmet: but if Agamemnôn were favorably disposed towards me, they would presently run away and fill the ditches with their dead bodies” (71):—
... τάχα κεν φεύγοντες ἐναύλους
Πλήσειαν νεκύων, εἴ μοι κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων