“Successful forays may good store provide;
And tripods may be gained, and noble steeds:
But when the breath of man hath passed his lips,
Nor strength, nor foray can the loss repair.
I by my goddess mother have been warned,
The silver-footed Thetis, that o’er me
A double chance of destiny impends:
If here remaining, round the walls of Troy
I wage the war, I ne’er shall see my home,
But then undying glory shall be mine:
If I return, and see my native land,
My glory all is gone; but length of life
Shall then be mine, and death be long deferred.” (D.)
Besides, he adds with biting sarcasm, Agamemnon can have no need now of his poor services. He has built a wall, he hears,—with ditch and palisade to boot: though he doubts whether, after all, it will keep out Hector. To be sure, when he was in the field, no wall was needed.
Nor is he a whit more moved by the few blunt and soldier-like remarks with which Ajax closes the conference. They may as well return, says that chief to Ulysses; words are lost upon one so obstinate as Achilles, who will neither listen to reason, nor cares for the love of his old companions in arms. Ajax has no patience, either, with the romantic side of the quarrel—
“And for a single girl! we offer seven.”
Reproach and argument are alike in vain. The hero listens patiently and courteously; but nothing shall move him from his resolution, unless Hector, the godlike, shall carry fire and sword even to the ships and tents of the Myrmidons; a venture which, he thinks, the Trojan prince, with all his hardihood, will pause before he makes.
With downcast hearts the envoys return to Agamemnon; the aged Phœnix alone remaining behind, at Achilles’ special request, to accompany him when he shall set sail for home. Great consternation falls on the assembled chiefs when they learn the failure of their overtures; only Diomed, chivalrous as ever, laments that they should have stooped to ask grace at such a churlish hand. Let Achilles go or stay as he will: for themselves—let every man refresh himself with food and wine—“for therein do lie both strength and courage”—and then betake themselves to their no less needful rest: ready, so soon as “the rosy-fingered dawn” appears, to set the battle fearlessly in array, in front of their ships and tents, against this redoubtable Hector.
But
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”
There is no rest for the King of Men, who has the fate of a national armament on his soul. He looks forth upon the plain, where the thousand watchfires of the enemy are blazing out into the night, and hears the confused hum of their thick-lying battalions, and the sounds of the wild Eastern music with which they are enlivening their revels, and celebrating their victory by anticipation. He rises from his troubled couch, determined to hold a night-council with Nestor and other chiefs of mark. He is donning his armour, when he is visited by his brother Menelaus—for he too has no rest, thinking of the dire straits into which in his sole cause the armies of Greece are driven. The royal brothers go in different directions through the camp, and quietly rouse all the most illustrious captains. Nestor is the guiding spirit in the council, as before. He advises a reconnoissance of the enemy’s lines under cover of the darkness. The office of a spy, be it remembered, was reckoned in these old times, as in the days of the Hebrew commonwealth, a service of honour as well as of danger; and the kings and chiefs of the Greeks no more thought it beneath their dignity than Gideon did in the case of the Midianites. The man who could discover for them the counsels of Hector would win for himself not only a solid reward, but an immortal name—
“High as heaven in all men’s mouths
Should be his praise, and ample his reward;
For every captain of a ship should give
A coal-black ewe, and at her foot a lamb,
A prize beyond compare: and high should be
His place at banquets and at solemn feasts.”