“Sing, heavenly muse, the wrath of Peleus’ son.”
We have here the key-note of the poem brought before us in the very first line—nay, in the very first word, according to the original, for “wrath” stands first in the Greek, which it cannot very conveniently do in the English. The two great heroes of the Greek chivalry, Agamemnon and Achilles, always jealous of each other, come to an open quarrel in full council of the princes of the League. Their quarrel is—like the original cause of the war, like so many quarrels before and since—about a woman, a beautiful captive. A fatal pestilence is raging in the camp. The Sun-god, Apollo, is angry. To him and to his twin-sister Diana, the Moon, all mysterious diseases were attributed—not without some sufficient reasons, in a hot climate. Pestilence and disease were the arrows of Apollo and Diana. Therefore the Greeks have no doubt as to the author of the present calamity. It is “the god of the silver bow” who is sending his swift shafts of death amongst them. The poet’s vision even sees the dread Archer in bodily shape. It is a fine picture; the English reader will lose little of its beauty in Lord Derby’s version:—
“Along Olympus’ heights he passed, his heart
Burning with wrath; behind his shoulders hung
His bow and ample quiver; at his back
Rattled the fateful arrows as he moved.
Like the night-cloud he passed, and from afar
He bent against the ships, and sped the bolt;
And fierce and deadly twanged the silver bow.
First on the mules and dogs, on man the last,
Was poured the arrowy storm; and through the camp
Constant and numerous blazed the funeral-fires.”
In their misery the Greeks appeal to their soothsayer Calchas, to divine for them the cause of the god’s displeasure. The Mantis or soothsayer, whose skill was in most cases supposed to be hereditary, accompanied a Greek force on all its expeditions; and no prudent general would risk a battle, or engage in any important enterprise, without first ascertaining from this authority the will of the gods, as shadowed out in certain appearances of the sacrifice, or some peculiarity in the flight of birds, or some phenomena of the heavens. In this particular expedition it would appear that Calchas had turned the last branch of his art to good purpose; it must have been his knowledge of the stars which had enabled him, as Homer tells us, to pilot the great fleet from their own shores to Troy. He confesses that he can read the secret of Apollo’s present wrath; but he hesitates to tell it, dreading, he says, lest he should thereby anger the “great chief whom the whole host obeys.” Achilles charges him to speak out boldly without fear or favour; none shall harm him—not even if he should denounce Agamemnon himself as the cause of this visitation, adds the hero, gladly seizing the opportunity of hurling a defiance at his great rival. Thus supported, the seer speaks out; Agamemnon is indeed the guilty cause. In a late foray he had taken captive the maiden daughter of Chryses, a priest of the Sun-god, and the father had come to the camp of the invaders as a suppliant, pleading the sanctity of his office, and offering a fitting ransom. The great king had refused to listen, had sent him away with bitter words and threats; and the priest had prayed to his god to punish the insult: hence the pestilence. Immediately the popular voice—expressed loudly through Achilles—demands the maiden’s instant restitution to her father. Agamemnon, though burning with indignation alike against the seer and his champion, dares not refuse. His prerogative, however generally admitted and respected by the confederate army, is dependent in such extremities on the popular will. He promises at once to send back the daughter of Chryses unharmed and without ransom. But at the same time, after a stormy and bitter dispute with Achilles, he announces his intention to insist on that chief resigning, by way of exchange, a fair captive named Briseis, carried off in some similar raid, who had been awarded to him as his share of the public spoil. To this insolent demand the majority of the council of chiefs, content with their victory on the main question, appear to raise no objection. But Achilles—his impetuous nature roused to madness by the studied insult—leaps up and half unsheathes his sword. Even then—such is the Greek’s reverence for authority—he hesitates; and as he stands with his hand upon the hilt, there sweeps down from Olympus[10] Pallas Athene (Minerva), the goddess of wisdom, sent by Here (Juno) Queen of Heaven to check this fatal strife between her favourite Greeks. The celestial messenger is visible to Achilles alone. She calms the hero’s wrath so far as to restrain him from any act of violence; but, as she disappears, he turns on his enemy, and swears a mighty oath—the royal oath of kings—by the golden-studded staff, or “sceptre,” which was borne by king, priest, and judge as the emblem of their authority. Pope’s rendering has all the fire of the original, and the additional touches which he throws in are at least in a kindred spirit:—
“By this I swear, when bleeding Greece again
Shall call Achilles, she shall call in vain:
When flushed with slaughter Hector comes to spread
The purpled shore with mountains of the dead,
Then shalt thou mourn th’ affront thy madness gave,
Forced to deplore, when impotent to save;
Then rage in bitterness of soul, to know
This act has made the bravest Greek thy foe.”
He dashes his sceptre on the ground, and sits down in savage silence. Agamemnon is ready enough to return the taunt, when there rises in the assembly a venerable figure, whose grey hairs and tried sagacity in council command at once the respect of all. It is Nestor, the hoary-headed chieftain of the rocky Pylos in the Peloponnese—known in his more vigorous days as “the horse-tamer,” and, in sooth, not a little proud of his past exploits. Two generations of men he has already outlived in his own dominions, and is now loved and respected by the third. He has joined the great armament still sound in wind and limb; but he is valued now not so much for his
as for his
“Sage counsel in cumber.”
He can clothe this counsel, too, in winning words. The stream of eloquence that flowed from his lips, says the poet, was “sweeter than honey.” He gently reproves both disputants for their unseemly strife—a shame to the Greeks, a triumph to the enemy. His words ring like the lament of David over the suicide of Saul—“Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice.”