guilty. No, he replies: I will observe them for myself; that is not your businessP: μαῖα, τίη δὲ σὺ τὰς μυθήσεαι; οὐδέ τί σε χρή εὖ νυ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐγὼ φράσομαι καὶ εἴσομ ̓ ἑκάστην As Homer has thus sharply exhibited Ulysses in the character of a gentleman with respect to truth, so he has made the same exhibition for Achilles with respect to courtesy: protesting, as it were, in this manner by anticipation against the degenerate conceptions of those characters, which were to reproduce and render current through the world Achilles as a brute, and Ulysses as a thorough knave. But let us see the residue of the proof. In the first Iliad, when the wrath is in the first flush of its heat, the heralds Talthybius and Eurybates are sent to his encampment, with the appalling commission to bring away Briseis. On entering, they remain awestruck and silent. Though, in much later times, we know that The messenger of evil tidings. Hath but a losing office, he at once relieves them from their embarrassment, and bids them personally welcome; χαίρετε, κήρυκες, Διὸς ἄγγελοι, ἠδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν ἄσσον ἴττ. And he desires Patroclus to bring forth the object of their quest. More extraordinary self-command and P Od. xix. 500-2. q In Od. xxii. 417, he applies to Euryclea for the information, which he had before declined. This is after the trial of the Bow the other was before it was proposed, and when the Chief probably reckoned on having himself more time for observation than proved to be the case. r Il. i. 334. Achilles as a Gentleman. 49 considerateness than this, never has been ascribed by any author to any character. Again, when in the Ninth Book he is surprised in his seclusion by the envoys Phoenix, Ulysses, and Ajax, though he is prepared to reject every offer, he hails them all personally, without waiting to be addressed and with the utmost kindness, as of all the Greeks the dearest to him even in his wrath; he of course proceeds to order an entertainment for them. But the most refined of all his attentions is that shown to Agamemnon in the Twenty-third Book. Inferior to Ajax, Diomed, and Ulysses, Agamemnon could not enter into the principal games, to be beaten by any abler competitor, without disparagement to his office: while there would also have been a serious disparagement of another kind in his contending with a secondary person. Accordingly, Achilles at the close makes a nominal match for the use of the sling-of which we never hear elsewhere in the poems--and, interposing after the candidates are announced, but before the actual contest, he presents the chief prize to Agamemnon, with this compliment; that there need be no trial, as every one is aware already how much he excels all others in the exercise. Yet these great chiefs, so strong and brave and wise, so proud and stern, so equipped in arts, manners, and accomplishments, can upon occasion weep like a woman or a child. Ulysses, in the island of Calypso daily pours forth his waterfloods' as he strains his vision over the sea; and he covers up his head in the halls of Alcinous, while Demodocus is singing, that his tears may flow unobserved. And so Achilles, fresh from his fierce • Il. ix. 197. E t vengeance on the corpse of Hector, yet, when the Trojan king has called up before his mind the image of his father Peleus, at the thought now of his aged parent, and now of his slaughtered friend, sheds tears. as tender as those of Priam for his son, and lets his griefs overflow in a deep compassion for the aged suppliant before him. Nor is it only in sorrow that we may remark a high susceptibility. The Greek chieftains in general are acutely sensible of praise and of blame. Telemachus" is delighted when Ægyptius commends him as a likely looking youth: and even Ulysses, first among them all in self-command, is deeply stung by the remark of the saucy Phæacian on his appearance, and replies upon the offender with excellent sense, but with an extraordinary pungency. A similar temper is shown in all the answers of the chieftains to Agamemnon when he goes the round of the army. The hereditary character of the royal office is stamped upon almost every page of the poems; as nearly all the chiefs, whose lineage we are able to trace, have apparently succeeded their fathers in power. The only exception in the order, of which we are informed, is one where, probably on account of the infancy of the heir, the brother of the deceased sovereign assumes his sceptre. In this way Thyestes, uncle to Agamemnon, succeeded his father Atreus, and then, evidently without any breach of regularity, transmitted it to Agamemnon. And such is probably the reason why, Orestes being a mere child, a part of the dignity of Agamemnon is communicated to Menelaus. For in the Iliad he has a qualified supremacy; receives jointly with Aga t Il. xxiv. 486. u Od. ii. 33, 5. x Od. viii. 159. and seqq. z Od. i. 40. Rights of Hereditary Succession. 51 memnon the present of Euneus; is more royal, higher in rank, than the other chieftains: we are also told of him, μέγα πάντων Αργείων ἤνασσε; and he came to the second meeting of γέροντες in the Second Book αὐτόMatos, without the formality of a summons. In a case like that of Thyestes, if we may judge from what actually happened, the uncle would perhaps succeed instead of the minor, whose hereditary right would in such case be postponed until the next turn. The case of Telemachus in the Odyssey is interesting in many ways, as unfolding to us the relations of the family life of the period. Among other points which it illustrates, is that of the succession to sovereignty. It was admitted by the Suitors, that it descended to him from his fatherb. Yet there evidently was some special, if not formal act to be done, without which he could not be king. For Antinous expresses his hope that Jupiter will never make Telemachus king of Ithaca. Not because the throne was full, for, on the contrary, the death of Ulysses was admitted or assumed to have occurred; but apparently because this act, whatever it was, had not been performed in his case. Perhaps the expressions of Antinous imply that such a proceeding was much more than formal, and that the accession of Telemachus to the supreme dignity might be arrested by the dissent of the nobles. The answer too of the young princed (τῶν κέν τις τόδ ̓ ἔχῃσιν) seems to be at least in harmony with the idea that a practice, either approaching to election, or in some way involving a voluntary action on the part of the subjects or of a b ὅ τοι γενεῇ πατρώϊόν ἐστιν, Od. i. 387. a ll. x. 32. portion of them, had to be gone through. But the personal dignity of the son of Ulysses was unquestioned. Even the Suitors pay a certain regard to it in the midst of their insolence: and when the young prince goes into the place of assembly, he takes his place upon his father's seat, the elders spontaneously making way for him to assume it. It may, however, be said with truth, that Telemachus was an only son, and that accordingly we cannot judge from his case whether it was the right of the eldest to succeed. Whether the rights of primogeniture were acknowledged among the Greeks of the heroic age, is a question of much interest to our own. For, on the one hand, there is a disposition to canvass and to dispute those rights. On the other hand, we live in a state of society, to which they probably have contributed more largely than any other specific cause, after the Christian religion, to give its specific form. Homer has supplied us with but few cases of brotherhood among his greater characters. We see, however, that Agamemnon everywhere bears the character of the elder, and he appears to have succeeded in that capacity to the throne of Atreus, while Menelaus, the younger, takes his inheritance in virtue of his wife. Tyro, in the Eleventh Odyssey, is said to have borne, on the banks of the Enipeus, the twins Pelias and Neleus. In this passage the order in which the children are named is most probably that of age. We find Pelias reigning in Iaolcus, a part of the original country of the Eolids: while Neleus emigrates, and, either by or before marrying Chloris, becomes king of Pylos in the south of Greece. Of the two brothers Protesilaus and Podarces, the former, who is also the elder, come Od. ii. 82. f Od. xi. 254, 6. g Od. xi. 281. |