[9] The original is quoted in the Notes to Grote, vol. i. p. 474.
[10] The dissimilarity between Greek and Roman religion has often been observed, and will be touched upon below. Supposing it to be proved that the Romans can produce one relic of an Aryan myth in Romulus, we find that their most native deities—Saturnus, Ops, Bellona, Janus, Terminus, Concordia, Fides, Bonus Eventus, and so forth—are abstractions which have nothing in common with Greek or other Aryan legends. They are the characteristic product of the Roman mind, and indicate its habit of thought. In like manner it is only by a crasis amounting to confusion that Mercurius can be identified with Hermes, or Hercules with Herakles.
[11] ii. 44.
CHAPTER III.
ACHILLES.
Unity of Iliad.—Character of Achilles.—Structure of the whole Poem.—Comparison with other Epics.—Energy Dividing into Anger and Love.—Personality of Achilles.—The Quarrel with Agamemnon.—Pallas Athene.—The Embassy.—Achilles' Foreknowledge of his Death.—The Message of Antilochus.—Interview with Thetis.—The Shouting in the Trench.—The Speech of Xanthus.—The Pæan over Hector's Corpse.—The Ghost of Patroclus.—-The Funeral Obsequies of Patroclus.—Achilles and Priam.—Achilles in Hades.—Achilles Considered as a Greek Ideal.—Friendship among the Greeks.—Heroism and Knighthood: Ancient and Modern Chivalry.—The Myrmidones of Æschylus.—Achilles and Hector.—Alexander the Great.—The Dæmonic Nature of Achilles.
It is the sign of a return to healthy criticism that scholars are beginning to acknowledge that the Iliad may be one poem—that is to say, no mere patchwork of ballads and minor epics put together by some diaskeuast in the age of Pisistratus, but the work of a single poet, who surveyed his creation as an artist, and was satisfied with its unity. We are not bound to pronounce an opinion as to whether this poet was named Homer, whether Homer ever existed, and, if so, at what period of the world's history he lived. We are not bound to put forward a complete view concerning the college of Homeridæ, from which the poet must have arisen, if he did not found it. Nor, again, need we deny that the Iliad itself presents unmistakable signs of having been constructed in a great measure out of material already existing in songs and romances dear to the Greek nation in their youth, and familiar to the poet. The æsthetic critic finds no difficulty in conceding, nay, is eager to claim, a long genealogy through antecedent, now forgotten, poems for the Iliad. But about this, of one thing, at any rate, he will be sure, after due experience of the tests applied by Wolf and his followers, that a great artist gave its present form to the Iliad, that he chose from the whole Trojan tale a central subject for development, and that all the episodes and collateral matter with which he enriched his epic were arranged by him with a view to the effect that he had calculated.
What, then, was this central subject, which gives the unity of a true work of art to the Iliad? We answer, the person and the character of Achilles. It is not fanciful to say, with the old grammarians of Alexandria, that the first line of the poem sets forth the whole of its action—
Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus.
The wrath of Achilles, and the consequences of that wrath in the misery of the Greeks, left alone to fight without their fated hero; the death of Patroclus, caused by his sullen anger; the energy of Achilles, reawakened by his remorse for his friend's death; and the consequent slaughter of Hector, form the whole of the simple structure of the Iliad. This seems clear enough when we analyze the conduct of the poem.