The Gods murmur—and will that the unseemly Revenge cease. Jove sends Thetis to him—and what meeter messenger for minister of mercy than a mother to her son! God-bidden by that voice, he submits—he remits his Revenge. The Human Will, infuriated, bows under the Heavenly.
SEWARD.
Touched by the prayers and the sight of that kneeling gray-haired Father, he has given him back his dead son—and from the ransom a costly pall of honour, to hide the dead son from the father's eyes—and of his own Will and Power Twelve Days' truce; and the days have expired, and the Funeral is performed—and the pyre is burned out—and the mound over the slayer of Patroclus is heaped—and the Iliad is done—and this Moral indelibly writes itself on the heart—the words of Apollo in that Council—
Τλητον γας Θυμον Μοισαι Θνητωσιε εδωχαν.
The Fates have appointed to mortals a Spirit that shall submit and endure.
NORTH.
Right and good. Τλητον is more than "shall suffer." It is, that shall accept suffering—that shall bear.
SEWARD.
Compare this one Verse and the Twenty-four Books, and you have the poetical simplicity and the poetical multiplicity side by side.
BULLER.