The second was the voice of conscience, speaking for each man within his own breast[811].
The third was a sentiment ranging between reverence and fear, which led to the performance of duty, and to the avoidance of crime, in consideration of the general authority and established opinion of mankind.
We may consider those examples from bygone days, which are so often adduced either for warning or for imitation, as belonging to this third division of moral powers.
The finer forms of this third class of sentiments pass by imperceptible shades into the second.
The principle of conscience.
After his conquest of Hypoplacian Thebes, Achilles would not despoil the body of the slain Eetion, σεβάσσατο γὰρ τόγε θυμῷ: accordingly he burnt him, with his precious armour on. Now it would have been no crime to strip him of this valuable booty, and therefore would have drawn down no vengeance: but the high standard of his own chivalrous feelings would not suffer the act. We have no reason to suppose that in this instance he had any regard to the general opinion of the Greeks. For as when they gathered round the corpse of Hector, every one of them inflicted a wound upon it, and as it was the common custom of the war to strip the dead of their arms, nothing can be more unlikely than that the army would have resented a similar proceeding on the part of Achilles towards Eetion. It was therefore to his own mind that he deferred. Here there was a conscience not only taking notice of the broader and, so to speak, coarser, outlines of duty, but likewise exhibiting a refined and tender sense of it.
Again, Telemachus says, by way of appeal to the good feeling of the Suitors themselves (Od. ii. 138.),
ὑμέτερος δ’ εἰ μὲν θυμὸς νεμεσίζεται αὐτῶν,
ἔξιτέ μοι μεγάρων.
In this place he seems to refer to the sense of right within each man, and by no means to their regard for appearances as before each other; while that, from which he exhorts them to abstain, is a purely moral wrong. So Glaucus appears to aim at the individual conscience, when he impresses on Hector and the Trojans the duty of recovering the body of Sarpedon, lest the Myrmidons should deface his remains (Il. xvi. 544–6). Again, Menelaus addresses a similar exhortation to the Greeks, and here expressly exhorts each person to feel and act for himself (Il. xvii. 254),