The Iliad Part 78

72 --_A double bowl, i.e._ a vessel with a cup at both ends, something like the measures by which a halfpenny or pennyworth of nuts is sold. See b.u.t.tmann, Lexic. p. 93 sq.

73 "Paradise Lost," i. 44.

"Him th' Almighty power Hurl'd headlong flaming from th ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion"

74 The occasion on which Vulcan incurred Jove's displeasure was this--After Hercules, had taken and pillaged Troy, Juno raised a storm, which drove him to the island of Cos, having previously cast Jove into a sleep, to prevent him aiding his son. Jove, in revenge, fastened iron anvils to her feet, and hung her from the sky, and Vulcan, attempting to relieve her, was kicked down from Olympus in the manner described. The allegorists have gone mad in finding deep explanations for this amusing fiction. See Heraclides, 'Ponticus,"

p. 463 sq., ed Gale. The story is told by Homer himself in Book xv.

The Sinthians were a race of robbers, the ancient inhabitants of Lemnos which island was ever after sacred to Vulcan.

"Nor was his name unheard or unadored In ancient Greece, and in Ausonian land Men call'd him Mulciber, and how he fell From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o'er the crystal battlements from morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A summer's day and with the setting sun Dropp'd from the zenith like a falling star On Lemnos, th' Aegean isle thus they relate."

"Paradise Lost," i. 738

75 It is ingeniously observed by Grote, vol i p. 463, that "The G.o.ds formed a sort of political community of their own which had its hierarchy, its distribution of ranks and duties, its contentions for power and occasional revolutions, its public meetings in the agora of Olympus, and its mult.i.tudinous banquets or festivals."

76 Plato, Rep. iii. p. 437, was so scandalized at this deception of Jupiter's, and at his other attacks on the character of the G.o.ds, that he would fain sentence him to an honourable banishment. (See Minucius Felix, Section 22.) Coleridge, Introd. p. 154, well observes, that the supreme father of G.o.ds and men had a full right to employ a lying spirit to work out his ultimate will. Compare "Paradise Lost," v. 646:

"And roseate dews disposed All but the unsleeping eyes of G.o.d to rest."

77 --_Dream_ ought to be spelt with a capital letter, being, I think, evidently personified as the G.o.d of dreams. See Anthon and others.

"When, by Minerva sent, a _fraudful_ Dream Rush'd from the skies, the bane of her and Troy."

Dyce's "Select Translations from Quintus Calaber," p.10.

78 "Sleep'st thou, companion dear, what sleep can close Thy eye-lids?"

--"Paradise Lost," v. 673.

79 This truly military sentiment has been echoed by the approving voice of many a general and statesman of antiquity. See Pliny's Panegyric on Trajan. Silius neatly translates it,

"Turpe duci totam somno consumere noctem."

80 --_The same in habit, &c._

"To whom once more the winged G.o.d appears; His former youthful mien and shape he wears."

Dryden's Virgil, iv. 803.

81 "As bees in spring-time, when The sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In cl.u.s.ters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of this straw-built citadel, New-nibb'd with balm, expatiate and confer Their state affairs. So thick the very crowd Swarm'd and were straiten'd."--"Paradise Lost" i. 768.

82 It was the herald's duty to make the people sit down. "A _standing_ agora is a symptom of manifest terror (II. Xviii. 246) an evening agora, to which men came elevated by wine, is also the forerunner of mischief ('Odyssey,' iii. 138)."--Grote, ii. p. 91, _note._

83 This sceptre, like that of Judah (Genesis xlix. 10), is a type of the supreme and far-spread dominion of the house of the Atrides. See Thucydides i. 9. "It is traced through the hands of Hermes, he being the wealth giving G.o.d, whose blessing is most efficacious in furthering the process of acquisition."--Grote, i. p. 212. Compare Quintus Calaber (Dyce's Selections, p. 43).

"Thus the monarch spoke, Then pledged the chief in a capacious cup, Golden, and framed by art divine (a gift Which to Almighty Jove lame Vulcan brought Upon his nuptial day, when he espoused The Queen of Love), the sire of G.o.ds bestow'd The cup on Darda.n.u.s, who gave it next To Ericthonius Tros received it then, And left it, with his wealth, to be possess'd By Ilus he to great Laomedon Gave it, and last to Priam's lot it fell."

84 Grote, i, p. 393, states the number of the Grecian forces at upwards of 100,000 men. Nichols makes a total of 135,000.

85 "As thick as when a field Of Ceres, ripe for harvest, waving bends His bearded grove of ears, which way the wind Sways them."--Paradise Lost," iv. 980, sqq.

86 This sentiment used to be a popular one with some of the greatest tyrants, who abused it into a pretext for unlimited usurpation of power. Dion, Caligula, and Domitian were particularly fond of it, and, in an extended form, we find the maxim propounded by Creon in the Antigone of Sophocles. See some important remarks of Heeren, "Ancient Greece," ch. vi. p. 105.

87 It may be remarked, that the character of Thersites, revolting and contemptible as it is, serves admirably to develop the disposition of Ulysses in a new light, in which mere cunning is less prominent.

Of the gradual and individual development of Homer's heroes, Schlegel well observes, "In bas-relief the figures are usually in profile, and in the epos all are characterized in the simplest manner in relief; they are not grouped together, but follow one another; so Homer's heroes advance, one by one, in succession before us. It has been remarked that the _Iliad_ is not definitively closed, but that we are left to suppose something both to precede and to follow it. The bas-relief is equally without limit, and may be continued _ad infinitum,_ either from before or behind, on which account the ancients preferred for it such subjects as admitted of an indefinite extension, sacrificial processions, dances, and lines of combatants, and hence they also exhibit bas-reliefs on curved surfaces, such as vases, or the frieze of a rotunda, where, by the curvature, the two ends are withdrawn from our sight, and where, while we advance, one object appears as another disappears. Reading Homer is very much like such a circuit; the present object alone arresting our attention, we lose sight of what precedes, and do not concern ourselves about what is to follow."--"Dramatic Literature,"

p. 75.

88 "There cannot be a clearer indication than this description --so graphic in the original poem--of the true character of the Homeric agora. The mult.i.tude who compose it are listening and acquiescent, not often hesitating, and never refractory to the chief. The fate which awaits a presumptuous critic, even where his virulent reproaches are substantially well-founded, is plainly set forth in the treatment of Thersites; while the unpopularity of such a character is attested even more by the excessive pains which Homer takes to heap upon him repulsive personal deformities, than by the chastis.e.m.e.nt of Odysseus he is lame, bald, crook-backed, of misshapen head, and squinting vision."--Grote, vol. i. p. 97.

89 According to Pausanias, both the sprig and the remains of the tree were exhibited in his time. The tragedians, Lucretius and others, adopted a different fable to account for the stoppage at Aulis, and seem to have found the sacrifice of Iphigena better suited to form the subject of a tragedy. Compare Dryden's "aeneid," vol. iii. sqq.

90 --_Full of his G.o.d, i.e.,_ Apollo, filled with the prophetic spirit.

"_The_ G.o.d" would be more simple and emphatic.

91 Those critics who have maintained that the "Catalogue of Ships" is an interpolation, should have paid more attention to these lines, which form a most natural introduction to their enumeration.

92 The following observation will be useful to Homeric readers: "Particular animals were, at a later time, consecrated to particular deities. To Jupiter, Ceres, Juno, Apollo, and Bacchus victims of advanced age might be offered. An ox of five years old was considered especially acceptable to Jupiter. A black bull, a ram, or a boar pig, were offerings for Neptune. A heifer, or a sheep, for Minerva. To Ceres a sow was sacrificed, as an enemy to corn. The goat to Bacchus, because he fed on vines. Diana was propitiated with a stag; and to Venus the dove was consecrated. The infernal and evil deities were to be appeased with black victims. The most acceptable of all sacrifices was the heifer of a year old, which had never borne the yoke. It was to be perfect in every limb, healthy, and without blemish."--"Elgin Marbles," vol. i. p. 78.

93 --_Idomeneus,_ son of Deucalion, was king of Crete. Having vowed, during a tempest, on his return from Troy, to sacrifice to Neptune the first creature that should present itself to his eye on the Cretan sh.o.r.e, his son fell a victim to his rash vow.

94 --_Tydeus' son, i.e._ Diomed.

95 That is, Ajax, the son of Oileus, a Locrian. He must be distinguished from the other, who was king of Salamis.

96 A great deal of nonsense has been written to account for the word _unbid,_ in this line. Even Plato, "Sympos." p. 315, has found some curious meaning in what, to us, appears to need no explanation. Was there any _heroic_ rule of etiquette which prevented one brother-king visiting another without a formal invitation?

97 Fresh water fowl, especially swans, were found in great numbers about the Asian Marsh, a fenny tract of country in Lydia, formed by the river Cayster, near its mouth. See Virgil, "Georgics," vol. i.

383, sq.

98 --_Scamander,_ or Scamandros, was a river of Troas, rising, according to Strabo, on the highest part of Mount Ida, in the same hill with the Granicus and the OEdipus, and falling into the sea at Sigaeum; everything tends to identify it with Mendere, as Wood, Rennell, and others maintain; the Mendere is 40 miles long, 300 feet broad, deep in the time of flood, nearly dry in the summer. Dr. Clarke successfully combats the opinion of those who make the Scamander to have arisen from the springs of Bounabarshy, and traces the source of the river to the highest mountain in the chain of Ida, now Kusdaghy; receives the Simois in its course; towards its mouth it is very muddy, and flows through marshes. Between the Scamander and Simois, Homer's Troy is supposed to have stood: this river, according to Homer, was called Xanthus by the G.o.ds, Scamander by men. The waters of the Scamander had the singular property of giving a beautiful colour to the hair or wool of such animals as bathed in them; hence the three G.o.ddesses, Minerva, Juno, and Venus, bathed there before they appeared before Paris to obtain the golden apple: the name Xanthus, "yellow," was given to the Scamander, from the peculiar colour of its waters, still applicable to the Mendere, the yellow colour of whose waters attracts the attention of travellers.

99 It should be "his _chest_ like Neptune." The torso of Neptune, in the "Elgin Marbles," No. 103, (vol. ii. p. 26,) is remarkable for its breadth and ma.s.siveness of development.

100 "Say first, for heav'n hides nothing from thy view."

--"Paradise Lost," i. 27.

"Ma di' tu, Musa, come i primi danni Manda.s.sero a Cristiani, e di quai parti: Tu 'l sai; ma di tant' opra a noi si lunge Debil aura di fama appena giunge."

--"Gier. Lib." iv. 19.

101 "The Catalogue is, perhaps, the portion of the poem in favour of which a claim to separate authorship has been most plausibly urged.

Although the example of Homer has since rendered some such formal enumeration of the forces engaged, a common practice in epic poems descriptive of great warlike adventures, still so minute a statistical detail can neither be considered as imperatively required, nor perhaps such as would, in ordinary cases, suggest itself to the mind of a poet. Yet there is scarcely any portion of the Iliad where both historical and internal evidence are more clearly in favour of a connection from the remotest period, with the remainder of the work. The composition of the Catalogue, whensoever it may have taken place, necessarily presumes its author's acquaintance with a previously existing Iliad. It were impossible otherwise to account for the harmony observable in the recurrence of so vast a number of proper names, most of them historically unimportant, and not a few altogether fict.i.tious: or of so many geographical and genealogical details as are condensed in these few hundred lines, and incidentally scattered over the thousands which follow: equally inexplicable were the pointed allusions occurring in this episode to events narrated in the previous and subsequent text, several of which could hardly be of traditional notoriety, but through the medium of the Iliad."--Mure, "Language and Literature of Greece," vol. i. p. 263.

102 --_Twice Sixty:_ "Thucydides observes that the Boeotian vessels, which carried one hundred and twenty men each, were probably meant to be the largest in the fleet, and those of Philoctetes, carrying fifty each, the smallest. The average would be eighty-five, and Thucydides supposes the troops to have rowed and navigated themselves; and that very few, besides the chiefs, went as mere pa.s.sengers or landsmen. In short, we have in the Homeric descriptions the complete picture of an Indian or African war canoe, many of which are considerably larger than the largest scale a.s.signed to those of the Greeks. If the total number of the Greek ships be taken at twelve hundred, according to Thucydides, although in point of fact there are only eleven hundred and eighty-six in the Catalogue, the amount of the army, upon the foregoing average, will be about a hundred and two thousand men. The historian considers this a small force as representing all Greece. Bryant, comparing it with the allied army at Platae, thinks it so large as to prove the entire falsehood of the whole story; and his reasonings and calculations are, for their curiosity, well worth a careful perusal."--Coleridge, p. 211, sq.

103 The mention of Corinth is an anachronism, as that city was called Ephyre before its capture by the Dorians. But Velleius, vol. i. p.