ment the terror he inspires. With his mere shout he dislodges the Trojans from the camp. The divine arms of Hephæstus are fashioned for him, and he goes forth to drive the foe like mice before him. Then he contends with Simois and Scamander, the river-gods. Lastly, he slays Hector. What follows in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth books seems to be intended as a repose from the vehement action and high-wrought passion of the preceding five.

Patroclus is buried, and his funeral games are celebrated. Then, at the very end, Achilles appears before us in the interview with Priam, no longer as a petulant, spoiled child or fiery barbarian chief, but as a hero, capable of sacrificing his still fierce passion for revenge to the nobler emotion of reverence for the age and sorrow of the sonless king.

The centralization of interest in the character of Achilles constitutes the grandeur of the Iliad. It is also by this that the Iliad is distinguished from all the narrative epics in the world. In the case of all the rest there is one main event, one deed which has to be accomplished, one series of actions with a definite beginning and ending. In none else are the passions of the hero made the main points of the movement. This may be observed at once by comparing the Iliad with the chief epical poems of European literature. To begin with the Odyssey. The restoration, after many wanderings of Odysseus (Ulysses) to his wife and kingdom forms the subject of this romance. When that has been accomplished the Odyssey is completed. In the same way the subject of the Eneid is the foundation of the Trojan kingdom in Italy. Æneas is conducted from Troy to Carthage, from Carthage to Latium. He flies from Dido, because fate has decreed that his empire should not take root in Africa. He conquers Turnus because it is destined that he, and not the Latin prince, should be the ancestor of Roman kings. As soon as Turnus has been killed and Lavinia has been wedded to Æneas, the action of the poem is accomplished and the Æneid is completed. When we pass to modern epics, the first that meets us is the Niebelungen Lied. Here the action turns upon the murder of Sigfrit by Hagen, and the vengeance of his bride, Chriemhilt. As soon as Chriemhilt has assembled her husband's murderers in

the halls of King Etzel, and there has compassed their destruction, the subject is complete, the Niebelungen is at an end.

The British epic of the Round Table, if we may regard Sir Thomas Mallory's Mort d' Arthur as a poem, centres in the life and predestined death of King Arthur. Upon the fate of Arthur hangs the whole complex series of events which compose the romance. His death is its natural climax, for with him expires the Round Table he had framed to keep the pagans in awe. After that event nothing remains for the epic poet to relate.

Thus each of these great epics has one principal event, on which the whole action hinges and which leaves nothing more to be narrated. But with the Iliad it is different. At the end of the Iliad we have Achilles with his fate still unaccomplished, the Trojan War still undecided. The Iliad has no one great internal event or series of events to narrate. It is an episode in the war of Troy, a chapter in the life of Peleus' son. But it does set forth with the vivid and absorbing interest that attaches to true artistic* unity, the character of its hero, selecting for that purpose the group of incidents which best display it.

The Iliad, therefore, has for its whole subject the passion of Achilles, that ardent energy or power of the hero, which displayed itself first as anger against Agamemnon, and afterwards as love for the lost Patroclus. The truth of this was perceived by one of the greatest poets and profoundest critics of the modern world, Dante. When Dante, in the Inferno, wished to describe Achilles, he wrote with characteristic brevity:

"Achillest, who at the last was brought to fight by love."

In this sentence Dante sounded the whole depth of the Iliad. The wrath of Achilles against Agamemnon, which prevented him at first from fighting; the love of Achilles, passing the love

*Symonds proves the artistic unity of the Iliad by the relation of all points in it to the central figure, Achilles, though some of the parts are not ostensibly related to each other. Real artistic unity demands that each part be related to every other part, and all parts to the central figure.

+Dante's opinion, that the love of Achilles for Patroclus is the pivot on which the whole Iliad turns. It is doubtless true, since the action in the poem steadily grows in importance and energy up to that point and then gradually relaxes. This is an "internal evidence" that the poem was written by one poet.

of women, for Patroclus, which induced him to forego his anger and fight at last, these are the two poles on which the Iliad turns. Two passions, heroic anger and measureless love, in the breast of the chief actor, are the motive forces of the poem. It is this simplicity in the structure of the Iliad which constitutes its nobleness. There is no double plot, no attempt to keep our interest alive by misunderstandings, or treacheries, or thwartings of the hero in his aims. These subtleties and resources of art the poet, whom we will call Homer, for the sake of brevity, discards. He trusts to the magnitude of his chief actor, to the sublime central figure of Achilles, for the whole effect of his epic. It is hardly necessary to insist upon the highly tragic value of this subject. The destinies of two great nations hang trembling in the balance. Kings on the earth below, gods in the heavens above, are moved to turn this way or that the scale of war. Meanwhile the whole must wait upon the passions of one man. Nowhere else, in any work of art, has the relation of a singl heroic character to the history of the world been set forth with more of tragic pomp and splendid incident. Across the scene on which gods and men are contending in fierce rivalry moves the lustrous figure of Achilles, ever potent, ever young, but with the ash-white aureole of coming death around his forehead. He, too, is in the clutch of destiny. As the price of his decisive action, he must lay his life down and retire with sorrow to the shades. It is thus that in the very dawn of civilization the Greek poet divined the pathos and expounded the philosophy of human life, showing how the fate of nations may depend upon the passions of a man, who in his turn is but the creature of a day, a ripple on the stream of time. Nothing need be said about the solar theory, which pretends to explain the tale of Troy. The mythus of Achilles may possibly in very distant ages have expressed some simple astronomical idea. But for a man to think of this with the actual Iliad before his eyes would be about as bad as botanizing on his mother's grave. Homer was not thinking of the sun when he composed the Iliad. He wove, as in a web, all elements of tragic pity and fear, pathos and passion, and fateful energy, which constitute the dramas of nations and of men. In the two passions, anger and love, which form

the prominent features of the character of Achilles, there is nothing small or mean. Anger has scarcely less right than ambition to be styled the last infirmity of noble minds. And love, when it gives the motive force to great action, is sublime. The love of Achilles had no softness or effeminacy. The wrath of Achilles never degenerated into savagery. Both of these passions, instead of weakening the hero, add force to his activity. Homer has traced the outlines of the portrait of Achilles so largely that criticism can scarcely avoid dwarfing them. In looking closely at the picture, there is a danger lest, while we examine the parts, we should fail to seize the greatness of the whole. It is better to bring together in rapid succession those passages of the Iliad which display the character of Achilles under the double aspect of anger and of love."

In the foregoing criticisms of Homer, and in his plan of presenting the Iliad as a character study, Sy'monds has shown the most ingenious critical acumen, and the selections which follow are chosen with reference to his plan.

CHAPTER VI.

*The Character of Achilles as Found in the Iliad.

BOOK I.

Of Peleus' son, Achilles, sing, O Muse,

The vengeance, deep and deadly; whence to Greece
Unnumbered ills arose; which many a soul

The wrath of
Achilles.

Of mighty warriors to the viewless shades
Untimely sent; they on the battle plain
Unburied lay, a prey to rav'ning dogs,
And carrion birds, fulfilling thus the plan
Devised of Jovet since first in wordy war,
The mighty Agamemnon, King of men,
Confronted stood by Peleus'‡ godlike son.

Say then, what God the fatal strife provok'd?
Jove's and Latona's§ son; he, filled with wrath
Against the King,|| with deadly pestilence
The camp afflicted, and the people died,-
For Chryses' sake, his priest, whom Atreus' son
With scorn dismiss'd, when to the Grecian ships
He came, his captive daughter to redeem,
With costly ransom charg'd: and in his hand
The sacred fillet of his God he bore,

5

10

15

And golden staff; to all he sued, but chief

20

To Atreus' sons, twin captains of the host:

"Ye sons of Atreus, and ye well-greav'd Greeks,

*The selections are made from Derby's translation. +Gladstone recognizes a "celestial plot" in the Iliad as well as a terrestrial. He says, "A persistent controversy in the council of Olympus accompanies the struggle upon earth, in which the several deities take part."

Peleus' son, Achilles.

§Jove's and Latona's son, Apollo.

| The king Agamemnon, son of Atreus.

The sons of Atreus were Agamemnon and Menelaus, the husband of Helen. They were called Atridæ.