“Atrides, lie not, when thou know’st the truth;
We hold ourselves far better than our sires;
We took the strength of seven-gated Thebes,
Though with a smaller host we stormed her towers,
Strong in heaven’s omens and the help of Jove;
For them—their own presumption was their fall.”
All the leaders of the Greeks eagerly marshal their forces at the King’s call. Nestor’s experienced counsel orders the line of battle—so well, that subsequent commanders were fain to take a lesson from it.
“In the front rank, with chariot and with horse,
He placed the mounted warriors; in the rear,
Num’rous and brave, a cloud of infantry,
Compactly massed, to stem the tide of war.
Between the two he placed th’ inferior troops,
That e’en against their will they needs must fight.
The horsemen first he charged, and bade them keep
Their horses well in hand, nor wildly rush
Amid the tumult: ‘See,’ he said, ‘that none,
In skill or valour over-confident,
Advance before his comrades, nor alone
Retire; for so your lines were easier forced;
But ranging each beside a hostile car,
Thrust with your spears; for such the better way;
By men so disciplined, in elder days,
Were lofty walls and fencèd towers destroyed.’” (D.)
CHAPTER IV.
THE FIRST DAY’S BATTLE.
As before, while the Greek line advances in perfect silence, the Trojans make their onset with loud shouts and a clamour of discordant war-cries in many tongues. Mars animates the Trojans, Minerva the Greeks; while Fear and Panic hover over the two armies, and Strife—whom the poet describes in words which are the very echo of Solomon’s proverb—“The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water”—
“With humble crest at first, anon her head,
While yet she treads the earth, affronts the skies.”
The two armies close in battle, only embittered by the broken truce. The description is a good specimen of the poet’s powers, and Lord Derby’s translation is sufficiently close:—
“Then rose the mingled shouts and groans of men
Slaying and slain; the earth ran red with blood.
As when descending from the mountain’s brow
Two wintry torrents from their copious source
Pour downwards to the narrow pass, where meet
Their mingled waters in some deep ravine,
Their weight of flood, on the far mountain’s side
The shepherd hears the roar; so loud arose
The shouts and yells of those commingling hosts.”[17]
Then begins one of those remarkable descriptions of a series of single combats between warriors of note on either side, in which Homer delights and excels. It must be confessed that they are somewhat wearisome to a modern reader; although, as has been well observed, the details of attack and defence, wounds and death, are varied in a fashion which shows that the artist was thoroughly master of his work; and it is even said that in the physical results assigned to each particular wound he has shown no mean knowledge of anatomy. Still, the continuous catalogue of ghastly wounds and dying agonies is uncongenial with our more refined sympathies. But it was quite in harmony with the tastes of ruder days. We find the same apparent repetition of single combats in the medieval romances—notably in Mallory’s King Arthur; and they were probably not the least popular portions of the tale. Even a stronger parallel case might be found in the description of a prize-fight in the columns of sporting newspapers, not so many years ago, when each particular blow and its results, up to “Round 102,” were graphically described in language quite as figurative, if not so poetic, as Homer’s; and found, we must suppose, a sufficient circle of readers to whom it was not only intelligible but highly interesting. The poet who recites—as we must suppose Homer to have done—must above everything else excite and interest his audience: his lay must be rich in incident; and to an audience who were all more or less warlike, no incidents could be so exciting as the details of battle. There is much savageness in Homer’s combats; but savageness is to the taste of men whose only means of excitement is through their grosser senses, and a love of the horrible in fact or fiction is by no means extinct even in our own day.
Young Antilochus, the son of Nestor’s old age, draws the first blood in the battle. He kills Echepolus.