in the sight of all two golden talents, to be given to him who should pronounce the fairest judgment (xviii. 508); τῷ δόμεν, ὃς μετὰ τοῖσι δίκην ιθύντατα εἴποι.

Thus it is plain that the judge who might do best was to get the two talents: but who was to give them? Not the Yépovтes or elders themselves, surely; for among them the competition lay. There could be but one way in which the disposal of this fee could be settled namely, by the general acclamation of the people, to be expressed, after hearing the respective parties, in favour of him whose sentiments they most approved. And those, to whom it may seem strange to speak of vote by acclamation, should remember, that down to this day, in all deliberative assemblies, an overpowering proportion of the votes are votes by acclamation, or by the still less definite test of silence. The small minority of instances, when a difference of opinion is seriously pressed, are now settled by arithmetic; they would then have been adjusted by some prudent appeal to the general will, proceeding from a person of ability and weight. Indeed even now, in cases when the numbers approximate to those of the Greek army, there can be no bona fide decision by arithmetic. The demand, however, that dissension shall be the only allowed criterion of liberty, is one which really worsens the condition of human nature beyond what the truth of experience requires.

And finally, what shall we say to the direct evidence of Agamemnon himself? Idæush, the Trojan herald, arrives with the offer to restore the stolen property, but not Helen. He is received in dead silence. After a pause, Diomed gives utterance to the general feeling. Neither will we have the goods

h Il. vii. 381.

Decisions in Assemblies of Il. vii. and ix.

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without Helen, nor yet Helen with the goods. Troy is doomed.' The Assembly shouts its approbation. Agamemnon immediately addresses himself to the messenger; Idæus, you hear the sense of the Achæans, how they answer you; and I think with them.' At the least this is a declaration as express as words can make it, and proceeding out of the mouth of the rival authority, to the effect that the acclamation of the Assembly was, for all practical purposes, its vote, and that it required only concurrence from the king, to invest it with the fullest authority. In the Ninth Iliad, as we have seen, the vote held good even without that concurrence'.

We may now, I hope, proceed upon the ground that we are not to take the ill success of a foulmouthed scoundrel, detested by the whole army, as a sample of what would have happened to the people, or even a part of them, when differing in judgment from their king. But what shall we say to the argument, that no case is found where a person of humble condition takes part in the debates of the Assemblies? No doubt the conduct of debates was virtually in the hands of those whose birth, wealth, station, and habits of life gave them capacity for public affairs. Even in the nineteenth century, it very rarely happens that a working man takes part in the proceedings of a county meeting: but no one would on that account suppose that such an assembly can be used as the mere tool of the class who conduct the debate, far less of any individual prominent in that class. If we cannot conceive freedom without perpetual discord, the faithful performance of the duty of information and advice without coercion and oppression, it is a sign either of our narrow-mindedness, or of i Sup. p. 100.

K

our political degeneracy; but a feeble eye does not impair the reality of the object on which it may happen to be fixed.

Still we may admit that among the numerous assemblies of the Iliad, there is no instance where assent is given by one part of the Assembly, and withheld by the other. There is, as we have seen, a clear and strong case where the opinion of the commanderin-chief is rejected, and that of an inferior commander adopted in its stead. This in my opinion goes far to prove all that is necessary. We have from the Odyssey, however, the means of going further still.

Only, before leaving the Iliad, let us observe the terms in which the Greek Assemblies are addressed by the kings: they are denominated friends and heroes; names which at least appear to imply their title to judge, or freely to concur, at least as much as such a title was recognised in the ancient councils and assemblies of the Anglo-saxons. Was this appearance a mockery? I do not say we should compare it with the organized, secure and regular privileges of a few nations in modern days. But it would be a far greater mistake to treat it as an idle form, or as otherwise than a weighty reality.

From what is related in that poem to have occurred after the capture of Troy, it becomes abundantly clear that the function of the Greek Assembly was not confined to listening. The army met in what, for the sake of distinction, we may call the Drunken Assembly. Now, the influence of wine upon its proceedings is amply sufficient to show that its acts were the acts of the people for Homer never allows his chiefs to be moved from their self-possession by the power of liquor.

j Od. iii. 139.

Division in the Drunken Assembly.

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There was a marked difference of opinion on that occasion: the people took their sides; dixa dé opioiv vdave Bouλý (Od.iii. 150). One half embarked; the residue staid behind with Agamemnon (155-7). The moiety, which had sailed away, split again (162); and a portion of them went back to Agamemnon. We see, indeed, throughout the Odyssey, how freely the crews of Ulysses spoke or acted, when they thought fit, in opposition to his views. If it be said, we must not argue from the unruly speeches of men in great straits at sea, the answer is, first, that their necessities might rather tend to induce their acquiescence in a stricter discipline; and secondly, that their liberty, and even license, are not out of keeping with the general tone of the relations between freemen of different classes, as exhibited to us elsewhere in the Homeric poems.

It may, indeed, be said, that the divisions of the Greeks in the final proceedings at Troy were divisions, not of the men, but of the chiefs. This, however, upon the face of the text, is very doubtful. We see from the tale of the Pseudo-Ulysses, in the Thirteenth Odyssey (265, 6), that there were parties and separate action in the Greek contingents: and it is probably to these that Nestor may allude, when he recommends the Review in order that the responsibility of the officers may be brought home to them individually. Now, in the case before us, the first division is thus described. Menelaus exhorted all the Greeks (Távтas 'Axaιovs) to go home: Agamemnon disagreed (141, 3): while they were contesting the point, the Assembly rose in two parties (vv. 149, 50);

οἱ δ ̓ ἀνόρουσαν ἐϋκνήμιδες Αχαιοὶ

ἠχῇ θεσπεσίῃ· δίχα δέ σφισιν ἤνδανε βουλή.

There is no intimation here that the people in di

viding simply followed their chiefs. Nay, the tone of the description is such as obliges us to understand that the movement was a popular one, and took its rise from the debate: so that, even if the chiefs and their men kept together respectively, as they may have done, still the chiefs may probably have followed quite as much as they led. Again, when the second separation takes place, it is thus described, 'One portion returned, under Ulysses, to Agamemnon. Prognosticating evil, I made sail homewards with the whole body of my ships, which followed me. Diomed did the same, and (pre d'éraipovs) invited his men (to do it). And after us at last came Menelaus.' (vv. 162-8). Now here instruction is given us on three points:

1. Diomed urged his men; therefore it was not a mere matter of course that they should go.

2. Nestor mentions especially that his division all kept together (œùv vyvoìv àoλλéow); therefore this did not always happen.

3. It is very unlikely that the part, which is first named as having returned with Ulysses, should have been confined to his own petty contingent.

Thus it is left in great doubt, whether the chiefs and men did uniformly keep together and the tenour of the narrative favours the supposition, that the men at least contributed materially to any joint conclusions.

As, in the first Assembly of the Iliad, Achilles acts his personal quarrel in the public eye, and lodges a sort of tacit appeal against Agamemnon, so, in that of the Odyssey, Telemachus does the like with reference to the Suitors. It is there that he protests against their continued consumption of his substance; that he rejects their counter-proposal for the dismissal of his mother on their behalf, and that he himself finally pro