Homer and His Age

Now the epic prose narrative of Herodotus is here clearly based on Iliad, II., which Herodotus must have understood as I do. But in Homer there is no line to say – and one line or two would have been enough – that Agamemnon, when awake, doubted, like Xerxes, though Agamemnon, when asleep, had been confident. The necessary line, for all that we know, still existed in the text used by Herodotus. Homer may lose a line as well as Dieuchidas of Megara, or rather Diogenes Laertius. Juvenal lost a whole passage, re-discovered by Mr. Winstedt in a Bodleian manuscript. If Homer expected modern critics to note the delicate distinction between Agamemnon asleep and Agamemnon awake, or to understand Agamemnon's character, he expected too much. {Footnote: Cf. Jevons, Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. vii. pp. 306, 307.} The poet then treats the situation on these lines: Agamemnon, awake and free from illusion, does not obey the dream, does not call the army to war; he takes a middle course.

In the whole passage the poet's main motive, as Mr. Monro remarks with obvious truth, is "to let his audience become acquainted with the temper and spirit of the army as it was affected by the long siege … and by the events of the First Book." {Footnote: Monro, Iliad, vol. i. p. 261.} The poet could not obtain his object if Agamemnon merely gave the summons to battle; and he thinks Agamemnon precisely the kind of waverer who will call, first the Privy Council of the Chiefs, and then an assembly. Herein the homesick host will display its humours, as it does with a vengeance. Agamemnon next tells his Dream to the chiefs (if he had a dream of this kind he would most certainly tell it), and adds (as has been already stated) that he will first test the spirit of the army by a feigned proposal of return to Greece, while the chiefs are to restrain them if they rush to launch the ships. Nestor hints that there is not much good in attending to dreams; however, this is the dream of the Over-Lord, who is the favoured of Zeus.

Agamemnon next, addressing the assembly, says that posterity will think it a shameful thing that the Achaeans raised the siege of a town with a population much smaller than their own army; but allies from many cities help the Trojans, and are too strong for him, whether posterity understands that or not. "Let us flee with our ships!"

On this the host break up, in a splendid passage of poetry, and rush to launch the ships, the passion of nostalgie carrying away even the chiefs, it appears – a thing most natural in the circumstances. But Athene finds Odysseus in grief: "neither laid he any hand upon his ship," as the others did, and she encouraged him to stop the flight. This he does, taking the sceptre of Agamemnon from his unnerved hand.

He goes about reminding the princes "have we not heard Agamemnon's real intention in council?" (II. 188-197), and rating the common sort. The assembly meets again in great confusion; Thersites seizes the chance to be insolent, and is beaten by Odysseus. The host then arms for battle.

The poet has thus shown Agamemnon in the colours which he wears consistently all through the Iliad. He has, as usual, contrasted with him Odysseus, the type of a wise and resolute man. This contrast the poet maintains without fail throughout. He has shown us the temper of the weary, home-sick army, and he has persuaded us that he knows how subtle, dangerous, and contagious a thing is military panic. Thus, at least, I venture to read the passage, which, thus read, is perfectly intelligible. Agamemnon is no personal coward, but the burden of the safety of the host overcomes him later, and he keeps suggesting flight in the ships, as we shall see. Suppose, then, we read on from II. 40 thus: "The Dream left him thinking of things not to be, even that on this day he shall take the town of Priam… But he awoke from sleep with the divine voice ringing in his ears. (Then it seemed him that some dreams are true and some false, for all do not come through the Gate of Horn.) So he arose and sat up and did on his soft tunic, and his great cloak, and grasped his ancestral sceptre … and bade the clear-voiced heralds summon the Achaeans of the long locks to the deliberative assembly." He then, as in II. 53-75 told his Dream to the preliminary council, and proposed that he should try the temper of the host by proposing flight – which, if it began, the chiefs were to restrain – before giving orders to arm. The test of the temper of the host acted as it might be expected to act; all rushed to launch the ships, and the princes were swept away in the tide of flight, Agamemnon himself merely looking on helpless. The panic was contagious; only Odysseus escaped its influence, and redeemed the honour of the Achaeans, as he did again on a later day.

The passage certainly has its difficulties. But Erhardt expresses the proper state of the case, after giving his analysis. "The hearer's imagination is so captured, first by the dream, then by the brawling assembly, by the rush to the ships, by the intervention of Odysseus, by the punishment of Thersites – all these living pictures follow each other so fleetly before the eyes that we have scarcely time to make objections." {Footnote: Die Enstehung der Homerische Gedichte, p. 29.}. The poet aimed at no more and no less effect than he has produced, and no more should be required by any one, except by that anachronism – "the analytical reader." He has "time to make objections": the poet's audience had none; and he must be criticised from their point of view. Homer did not sing for analytical readers, for the modern professor; he could not possibly conceive that Time would bring such a being into existence.

To return to the character of Agamemnon. In moments of encouragement Agamemnon is a valiant fighter, few better spearmen, yet "he attains not to the first Three," Achilles, Aias, Diomede. But Agamemnon is unstable as water; again and again, as in Book II., the lives and honour of the Achaeans are saved in the Over-Lord's despite by one or other of the peers. The whole Iliad, with consistent uniformity, pursues the scheme of character and conduct laid down in the two first Books. It is guided at once by feudal allegiance and feudal jealousy, like the Chansons de Geste and the early sagas or romances of Ireland. A measure of respect for Agamemnon, even of sympathy, is preserved; he is not degraded as the kings and princes are often degraded on the Attic stage, and even in the Cyclic poems. Would wandering Ionian reciters at fairs have maintained this uniformity? Would the tyrant Pisistratus have made his literary man take this view?

CHAPTER V

AGAMEMNON IN THE LATER "ILIAD"

In the Third Book, Agamemnon receives the compliments due to his supremacy, aspect, and valour from the lips of Helen and Priam. There are other warriors taller by a head, and Odysseus was shorter than he by a head, so Agamemnon was a man of middle stature. He is "beautiful and royal" of aspect; "a good king and a mighty spearman," says Helen.

The interrupted duel between Menelaus and Paris follows, and then the treacherous wounding of Menelaus by Pandarus. One of Agamemnon's most sympathetic characteristics is his intense love of his brother, for whose sake he has made the war. He shudders on seeing the arrow wound, but consoles Menelaus by the certainty that Troy will fall, for the Trojans have broken the solemn oath of truce. Zeus "doth fulfil at last, and men make dear amends." But with characteristic inconsistency he discourages Menelaus by a picture of many a proud Trojan leaping on his tomb, while the host will return home-an idea constantly present to Agamemnon's mind. He is always the first to propose flight, though he will "return with shame" to Mycenae. Menelaus is of much better cheer: "Be of good courage, {blank space} ALL THE HOST OF THE {misprint}" – a thing which Agamemnon does habitually, though he is not a personal poltroon. As Menelaus has only a slight flesh wound after all, and as the Trojans are doomed men, Agamemnon is now "eager for glorious battle." He encourages the princes, but, of all men, rebukes Odysseus as "last at a fray and first at a feast": such is his insolence, for which men detest him.

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