Achilles as a Gentleman.
As Homer has thus sharply exhibited Ulysses in the character of a gentleman with respect to truth[89], so he has made the same exhibition for Achilles with respect to courtesy: protesting, as it were, in this manner by anticipation against the degenerate conceptions of those characters, which were to reproduce and render current through the world Achilles as a brute, and Ulysses as a thorough knave. But let us see the residue of the proof.
In the first Iliad, when the wrath is in the first flush of its heat, the heralds Talthybius and Eurybates are sent to his encampment, with the appalling commission to bring away Briseis. On entering, they remain awe-struck and silent. Though, in much later times, we know that
The messenger of evil tidings
Hath but a losing office,
he at once relieves them from their embarrassment, and bids them personally welcome;
χαίρετε, κήρυκες, Διὸς ἄγγελοι, ἠδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν·
ἆσσον ἴτ’[90]·
And he desires Patroclus to bring forth the object of their quest. More extraordinary self-command and considerateness than this, never has been ascribed by any author to any character.
Again, when in the Ninth Book he is surprised in his seclusion by the envoys Phœnix, Ulysses, and Ajax, though he is prepared to reject every offer, he hails them all personally, without waiting to be addressed and with the utmost kindness[91], as of all the Greeks the dearest to him even in his wrath; he of course proceeds to order an entertainment for them. But the most refined of all his attentions is that shown to Agamemnon in the Twenty-third Book. Inferior to Ajax, Diomed, and Ulysses, Agamemnon could not enter into the principal games, to be beaten by any abler competitor, without disparagement to his office: while there would also have been a serious disparagement of another kind in his contending with a secondary person. Accordingly, Achilles at the close makes a nominal match for the use of the sling—of which we never hear elsewhere in the poems—and, interposing after the candidates are announced, but before the actual contest, he presents the chief prize to Agamemnon, with this compliment; that there need be no trial, as every one is aware already how much he excels all others in the exercise.