The hero withdraws, and remains aloof. The Greeks, after a panic and a recovery, determine to carry on the war without him. But the hostile deities, less under restraint than the friendly ones, give active encouragement to the Trojan chiefs and army in the fight. They are discerned by the Greeks, who accordingly recede[700]. Finding that, instead of driving the Trojans to the city, on the contrary, even before the single fight of Hector and Ajax, they themselves had suffered loss, they supply their camp with the defences, which it had never needed while the name of Achilles and his prowess kept the enemy either within their walls, or in the immediate vicinity of the city. This happens in the Seventh Book, and it is the first note of the consequences of the Wrath. In the Eighth, they are more decidedly worsted under a divine influence, and are driven back upon their works, while the Trojans bivouac on the place of battle. The army had suffered no heavy loss: yet the infirm will of Agamemnon gives way: and, portending greater evils, he a second time counsels flight[701]. The advice is warmly repudiated by Diomed and the other chiefs. Still the course of their affairs is now by undeniable signs altered for the worse. Hereupon, Nestor advises an attempt to conciliate Achilles by offers of restitution and of gifts, with close union and incorporation into the family of Agamemnon. Now it is most important that we should observe, that gifts and kind words were the beginning and the end of this mission. There was no confession of wrong authorized by Agamemnon, or made by the Envoys, to Achilles. The woes of the Greeks are described: Achilles is exhorted to lay aside his Wrath: he is told of all the fine things he will receive upon his compliance: but not one word in the speech of Ulysses conveys the admission at length gained from Agamemnon in the Nineteenth Book, that he has offended. Therefore Achilles is not appeased: but, I must add, neither is justice satisfied, nor right re-established.
Apology needed also.
Presents and promises were not what Achilles wanted. On the contrary, to his inflamed and inexorable spirit, being less than and different from the thing he sought, the very offer of them was matter of new exasperation. The very offer of them thus made seemed, and in some degree rightly seemed, to imply that they who tendered it must take him for a man, whose mind was cast in the same sordid mould as that of the king, who had given the offence. Gifts indeed Achilles must have, and abundance of them, when he is at last to be appeased: but it is not in order to swell an inventory of possessions: it is that the memory of them may dwell in his mind, and stand upon the record of his life, like the golden ornaments that he wore upon his manly person, namely, to exhibit and to make felt his glory.
I do not indeed presume to say we have evidence to show that Achilles would have relented at the period of the mission, if a frank confession of wrong, and apology for insult, had been made together with the proffer of the gifts. On the contrary, with his higher sentiments there mingled a towering passion of a vindictive order. It was as it were the corruption or abuse, not the basis, of the mood of the estranged Achilles: but it was there, and there, like everything Achillean, in colossal proportions. Still I think it has not been sufficiently observed that, as matter of fact, the proceeding of the Ninth Book was radically defective, because it treated the affair as (so to call it) one of mere merchandize, to be disposed of like the balance of an account.
When Achilles finds that the desire to avenge the death of Patroclus has become paramount within him, and in consequence renounces the Wrath[702], it is true that he does not stipulate for an apology. But neither does he stipulate for the gifts. Both however are given, and the apology comes first in the faltering speech of Agamemnon[703], who distinguishes between two kinds of atonement;
ἂψ ἐθέλω ἀρέσαι, δόμεναί τ’ ἀπερείσι’ ἄποινα.
Were there any doubt about the reality of this distinction, it might be removed by evidence which the Odyssey supplies. Eurualus, who appears to have been one of the secondary kings in Scheria, had not yet atoned for his insult to Ulysses, when Alcinous recommended that all the twelve, who belonged to that order, should make a present to the departing stranger. But from Eurualus, he observes, something more is requisite; he must offer an apology as well as a gift[704];
Εὐρύαλος δέ ἑ αὐτὸν ἀρεσσάσθω ἐπέεσσιν
καὶ δώρῳ· ἐπεὶ οὔτι ἔπος κατὰ μοῖραν ἔειπεν.
And this is done accordingly, in the amplest and frankest manner.