With reference, then, to the main purpose of the poem, it proceeds regularly to its climax, and there is no limb of the Iliad separable from the body without destroying the symmetrical, masculine, and broad development of its general plan. I speak now of the principal fabric of the poem. Few who are not prepared to pull that in pieces will, I apprehend, accede to the proposal to shear it of the two last Books, which therefore hardly require a separate defence.
Skilful adjustment of conflicting aims.
To me it appears well worthy of remark, with what extraordinary skill Homer has contrived to adjust his poem to the several aims which he had to keep in view. The grand one doubtless was the glory of his country in the person of Achilles[712]. Still he was bound not to sacrifice poetically the martial fame of the rest of Greece even to the first among them, whatever calamities he might make the army suffer on his account. To avoid this sacrifice, he was obliged to uphold the military character and power of the Greeks in their struggle with the Trojans, even when deprived of the prowess of their great champion Achilles. And yet he could not degrade Hector and the Trojans, or he would have reached the lame conclusion of adorning his own country’s heroes with a poor and unworthy triumph. Thus his course was to be steered among a variety of difficulties, all pressing upon him from opposite quarters.
We see at once how steadily he kept in view his pole-star; how he handled the events and characters of his poem so as to give the most powerful, or rather it may be said the most overpowering, impression of the greatness of his hero, which is lifted higher and higher by the whole movement of the work as it proceeds. Let us now examine whether, in giving full scope to his main purpose, he has been obliged to sacrifice others which were also important, nay, if the highest excellence was his aim, even indispensable.
The paramount glory of Achilles is established by this: first, that in the Ninth Book the whole army, as it were, lies at his feet, and is spurned from thence: secondly, that when he finally comes forth, it is not in deference to those who have insulted him, but it is under the burning impulses of his own heart. Let us now proceed to inquire whether the Poet has or has not satisfied two other great demands. Has he, as a Greek, done all that was required to glorify Greece, and is Achilles its crown only, or is he its substitute? Has he, as a man, vindicated the principles of the moral order, and of that retributive justice which, even in this world, visibly maintains at least a partial balance between human action and its consequences to the agent?
Glory given to Greece.
We should look in vain, I think, for a finer and subtler exercise of poetic art, than in the mode in which Homer has contrived to convey to us, both the general, and in particular the military inferiority of the Trojans, as compared with the Greeks. Hardly any reader can be so superficial in his observation of the poem, as not to rise from it with this inferiority sufficiently impressed upon his mind. Yet there is not a passage or a word throughout, in which it is asserted. And why? Because every direct assertion that the Trojans were less valiant or less strong than their antagonists, would have been so much detracted from the glory of overcoming them. It was essential to the work of the Poet, that he should represent the contest as an arduous one. He might have done this in the coarse method, for which his theurgy would have afforded the materials: that is, by converting his Trojans into mere puppets, whose arm, at every turn of the narrative, merely represented the impelling force of some deity or other, and, independently of such extraneous aid, was powerless. But this would have destroyed the full-flushed humanity of Homer’s poem.
As it is, he has availed himself of the divine element to make up by its assistance for the comparative weakness of the Trojan chiefs: but it is only a subdued and occasional assistance, so that there is no glaring difference in point of free agency between the two parties. Nor can it be without a purpose, that the two deities, who appear in the field on behalf of the Trojans, namely, Venus and Mars, are sent off it both wounded, the one whining, and the other howling, by the prowess of Diomed. If the Greeks are to suffer by the gods, he takes care that it shall not be by those gods who are the mere national partisans of Troy, but by a higher agency; by the decree of Jupiter, now temporarily indeed, but effectively, set against them.
It is by an indefinitely great number of strokes and touches each indefinitely small, that Homer has gained his object. The Trojan successes are always effected with the concurrence of supernatural power; the Greeks not unfrequently without, and sometimes even against it[713].
He as it were sets up the Trojans, so to speak, by generalities; but he gives to the Greeks, with certain occasional exceptions, the whole detail of solid achievement. Sometimes he allows a panic of doubt and fear to seize their host, but he takes care to make the sentiment only flit like a momentary shade over the sun. Thus, when the assembled chieftains of the Greek army hesitate to accept the challenge of Hector[714],