Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3
TekstThe discussion of the Ninth Iliad.
Ulysses begins a skilled harangue to the offended hero with a most artful and well-masked exaggeration of the martial fury of Hector. He takes care only to present it as part of a general picture, which in other parts is true enough; but he obviously relies upon it as a mode of getting within the guard of Achilles. He next touches him upon the point, to which Priam afterwards made a yet higher appeal; the tender recollection of his father Peleus, who had warned him how much more arduous was the acquisition of self-command, than that of daring. He then recites the gifts of Agamemnon: and, encouraged perhaps by the kind greeting that, with his companions, he had received, he closes by urging that, however hateful Agamemnon may be, yet, in pity for the other Greeks, both high and low, and in anticipation of their gratitude, he ought to arm. I shall not attempt to analyse the wonderful speech of Achilles which follows, and to which some references have already been made. Suffice it to say, that it commences with an intimation to Ulysses that it will, in the opinion of the speaker, be best for all parties if he tells out his mind plainly: an indirect and courteous reproof to Ulysses for having thought to act upon him by tact and by the processes of a rhetorician. After this follows such a combination of argument, declamation, invective, and sarcasm as, within the same compass, I do not believe all the records of the world can match. But the general result of the whole is the announcement that he will return to Phthia the very next morning; together with an absolute, unconditional rejection of all gifts and proffers, until the outrage of Agamemnon is entirely wiped away227:
πρίν γ’ ἀπὸ πᾶσαν ἐμοὶ δόμεναι θυμαλγέα λώβην.
When he has concluded, all his hearers, abashed by his masculine wrath, are silent for a while. Then Phœnix, in the longest speech of the poem, pours forth his unselfish and warm, but prolix and digressive affection. This speech displays far less of rhetorical resource, than that of Ulysses. Ulysses had conceded, as it were, the right of Achilles to an unbounded resentment against Agamemnon (300): Phœnix, on the contrary, by parable, menaces him with retribution from the Erinūs, unless he shall subdue the mighty soul within him. But Achilles, touched in his better nature, gives way a little to the more ethical appeal, where he had been inflexible and invulnerable before the intellectual and rhetorical address. He now bids Phœnix come himself, and sleep in his encampment: there they can consider together, in the morning, whether to go or to stay (618). Still he announces, that nothing will induce him to quit the ships for the field (609). Next comes blunt Ajax into the palæstra; deprecates the wasting of time; is for taking back the answer, bad as it may be: Achilles has evidently made up his mind; and cares not a rush for all or any of them. ‘What,’ says the simple man-mountain, ‘the homicide of a brother or child is atoned for by a fine, and yet here is all this to-do about a girl. Aye, and a single girl; when we offer seven of the very best, and ever so much besides.’ Having thus reached the acmè of his arts, he now aims at the friendly feeling of Achilles, and in a single word bids him be placable to men whom he has admitted beneath his roof, and whom he owns for as loyal friends as the whole army could find him.
The leverage of this straightforward speech, which is only saved by kindliness from falling into rudeness, again produces an initial movement towards concession on the part of the great hero. He replies in effect to Ajax, ‘You have spoken well: I like your way of going to work: but my heart swells and boils with the shame inflicted on me before the Greeks by Agamemnon. Tell them then’ – there is now no announcement of setting sail; nay, there is no longer any need for debate in the morning whether to set sail or not – ‘tell them that I fight no more, till Hector, carrying slaughter and fire, shall reach this camp, these ships. Keen as he may be, it will then be time enough for ME to stay his onward path.’
Such is the remarkable course of this debate. But Ulysses, when they return to Agamemnon – meaning probably to bring him and all the Greeks fairly to bay – takes no notice of the partial relaxations of the iron will of Achilles, but simply reports that he has threatened to set sail. Then comes the turn of Diomed. ‘You were wrong to cringe to him. Of himself, he is arrogant enough: you have made him worse. Let him alone; he will come when he thinks proper, or when Providence wills it; and no sooner. My advice is that we sleep and eat now, and fight at dawn. I, at any rate, will be there, in the foremost of the battle.’
Function of the Assembly.
We will now proceed to consider the nature and place of the ἀγορὴ or Assembly, in the heroic age: and a view of the proceedings on several occasions will further illustrate the great and diversified oratorical resources of the Poet.
A people cannot live in its corporate capacity without intermission, and the king is the standing representative of the community. But yet the ἀγορὴ, or Assembly, is the true centre of its life and its vital motion, as the monarch is of its functional or administrative activity; and the greatest ultimate power, which the king possesses, is that of influence upon his subjects collected there, through the combined medium of their reverence for his person, and of his own powers of persuasion. In the case of the army before Troy, to the strength of these ordinary motives is added, along with a certain spirit of resentment for injury received in the person of Helen, the hope of a rich booty on the capture of the city, and the principle of pure military honour; never perhaps more powerfully drawn than in the Iliad, nor with greater freedom from extravagances, by which it is sometimes made to ride over the heads of duty and justice, its only lawful superiors.
First, it would appear to have belonged to the Assembly, not indeed to distribute the spoil, but to consent to its distribution by the chief commander, and his brother-leaders. To the former it is imputed in the Ninth Book. But in the First Book Achilles says to him in the Assembly, We the Greeks (Ἀχαιοὶ) will requite you three and four-fold, when Troy is taken228. It is probable that he here means to speak of the chiefs alone, (but only so far as the act of distribution is concerned,) because Thersites uses the very same expression (ἅς τοι Ἀχαιοὶ πρωτίστῳ δίδομεν229) in the Second Book. Therefore the division of booty was probably made on the king’s proposal, with the aid of the chiefs, but with the general knowledge and consent of the army, and in right of that consent on their part.
It must be remembered all along, that the state of political society, which Homer represents to us, is that in which the different elements of power wear their original and natural forms; neither much altered as yet by the elaborate contrivances of man, nor driven into their several extremes by the consequences of long strife, greedy appetite, and furious passions, excited by the temptations which the accumulation of property presents.
In those simple times, when the functions of government were few, and its acts, except perhaps the trial of private causes, far between, there was no formal distribution of political rights, as if they could be made the object of ambitious or contentious cupidity: but the grand social power that moved the machine was in the determinations of the ἀγορὴ, however informally declared.
Grote has observed, that in the Homeric ἀγορὴ no division of affirmative and negative voices ever takes place. It would require a volume to discuss all that this remark involves and indicates. I will however observe that the principle surely cannot be made good from history or in philosophy, that numbers prevail by an inherent right. Decision by majorities is as much an expedient, as lighting by gas. In adopting it as a rule, we are not realizing perfection, but bowing to imperfection. We follow it as best for us, not as best in itself. The only right to command, as Burke has said, resides in wisdom and virtue. In their application to human affairs, these great powers have commonly been qualified, on the one hand by tradition and prepossession, on the other hand by force. Decision by majorities has the great merit of avoiding, and that by a test perfectly definite, the last resort to violence; and of making force itself the servant instead of the master of authority. But our country still rejoices in the belief, that she does not decide all things by majorities. The first Greeks neither knew the use of this numerical dogma, nor the abuse of it. They did not employ it as an instrument, and in that they lost: but they did not worship it as an idol, and in that they greatly gained. Votes were not polled in the Olympus of Homer; yet a minority of influential gods carry the day in favour of the Greeks against the majority, and against their Head. There surely could not be a grosser error than to deny every power to be a real one, unless we are able both to measure its results in a table of statistics, and to trace at every step, with our weak and partial vision, the precise mode by which it works towards its end.
Great decisions all taken there.
We have seen, in the first place, that all the great decisions of the War were taken in the Assembly of the Greeks. And here the first reflection that arises is, how deeply this method of political action must have been engrained in their habits and ideas, when it could survive the transition from peace to war, and, notwithstanding its palpable inconveniences in a camp, form the practical rule of its proceedings under the eye of the enemy.
The force of this consideration is raised to the utmost height by the case of the Night Assembly in the Ninth Book. The Trojans, no longer confined to their walls, are lying beside a thousand watch-fires, just outside the rampart. Some important measure is absolutely demanded on the instant by the downcast condition of the less than half-beaten, but still thoroughly discouraged army. Yet not even under these circumstances would Agamemnon act individually, or with the kings alone. He sends his heralds round the camp (Il. ix. 11), to summon an Assembly noiselessly, and man by man. Can there be a more conclusive proof of the vigour, with which the popular principle entered into the idea of the Homeric polities? If it be said that such an operation could hardly be effected at night without stir, I reply that if it be so, the argument for the power and vitality of the Assembly is but strengthened: for Homer was evidently far more careful to speak in harmony with the political tone of his country than to measure out time by the hour and minute, or place by the yard, foot, and inch; as valuing not the latter methods less, but the former more.
κλήδην εἰς ἀγορὴν κικλήσκειν ἄνδρα ἕκαστον,
μηδὲ βοᾶν·
The Greek army, in fact, is neither more nor less than, so to speak, the State in uniform. As the soldier of those days was simply the citizen armed, so the armament was the aggregate of armed citizens, who, in all except their arms and the handling of them, continued to be what they had been before. But when we find that in such great emergencies political ideas did not give way to military expediency, we cannot, I think, but conclude that those ideas rested on broad and deep foundations.
It further tends to show the free nature of the relation between the Assembly and the Commander-in-chief, that it might be summoned by others, as well as by him. We are told explicitly in the First Book, that Achilles called it together, as he did again in the Nineteenth for the Reconciliation. On the second of these occasions, it may have been his purpose that the reparation should be as public as had been the insult: at any rate there was a determination to make the reconciliation final, absolute, and thorough. But, at the former time, the act partook of the nature of a moral appeal from Agamemnon to the army. It illustrated, in the first place, the principle of publicity so prevalent in the Greek polities. That which Calchas had to declare, he must declare not in a ‘hole and corner,’ but on his responsibility, liable to challenge, subject to the δήμου φάτις if he told less than the truth, as well as to the resentment of the sovereign if he should venture on divulging it entire. But secondly, it shows that Achilles held the Greeks at large entitled and bound to be parties to the transaction. He meant that the Greeks should see his wrong. Perhaps he hoped that they would intercept its infliction. This at any rate is clear: he commenced the debate with measured reproofs of Agamemnon230; but afterwards he rose, with a wider scope, to a more intense and a bitterer strain231.
When he found that the monarch was determined, and when he had repressed the access of rage which tempted him to summary revenge, he began to use language not now of mere invective against Agamemnon, but of such invective as tended to set him at odds with the people. Then further on, perhaps because they did not echo back his sentiments, and become active parties to the terrible fray, he both taunts and threatens them. For he begins232, ‘Coward that thou art! Never hast thou dared to arm with the people for the fight, or with the leaders for the ambush.’ And then233. ‘Devourer of the people! over what nobodies thou rulest! or surely this would be the last of your misdeeds.’ Again, in the peroration234, ‘By this mighty oath, every man among you shall lament the absence of Achilles.’
Opposition in the Agorè.
It has often been asserted that the principle of popular opposition in debate is only represented by Thersites. But let us proceed step by step. It is at any rate clear enough that opposition by the confederate kings is at once sufficiently represented in Achilles; and that it is not represented by him alone, since in the Assembly of the Ninth Book, Diomed both strongly reprehended Agamemnon, and proposes a course diametrically the reverse of his; which course was forthwith adopted by the acclamations of the army.
The case of Thersites.
Let us now pass on to Thersites. There is no more singular picture in the Iliad, than that which he presents to us. It well deserves examination in detail.
Homer has evidently been at pains to concentrate upon this personage all that could make him odious to the hearers of his song, while nevertheless he puts into his mouth not only the cant of patriotism, but also a case that would perhaps have been popular, had he not averted the favour of the army by his insolent vulgarity.
Upon its merits, too, it was a tolerable case, but not a good one; for he was wrong in supposing Achilles placable; and again wrong in advising that the Greeks, now without Achilles, should give way before the Trojans, to whom they were still superior in war.
He is in all things the reverse of the great human ideals of Homer. As, in the pattern kings and heroes, moral, intellectual, and corporeal excellences, each in the highest degree, must be combined, so Thersites presents a corresponding complication of deformities to view. As to the first, he is the most infamous person (αἴσχιστος) in the army; and he relies for his influence, not on the sense and honour of the soldiers, but on a vein of gross buffoonery; which he displays in the only coarse allusion that is to be found in all the speeches of the poems. As to the second head, his voluble speech is as void of order as of decency235. As to the third, he is lame, bandy-legged236, hump-backed, round-shouldered, peak-headed, and lastly, (among the καρηκομόωντες,) he is bald, or indeed worse, for on his head a hair is planted here and there237. Lastly, hateful to all238, he is most of all hateful to, as well as spiteful against, the two paramount heroes of the poems, Achilles and Ulysses: an observation inserted with equal ingenuity and significance, because Homer, by inserting it, effectually cuts off any favour which Thersites might otherwise have gained with his hearers from seeming to take the side of the wronged Achilles. It is also worthy of note, as indicating how Homer felt the strength of that bond which unites together all great excellences of whatever kind. Upon a slight and exterior view, the two great characters of Achilles and Ulysses appear antagonistic, and we might expect to find their likes and dislikes running in opposite directions. But as, in the Ninth Book, Ulysses is declared by Achilles to be one of those whom he loves best among the Greeks239, so here they are united in carrying to the highest degree a common antipathy to Thersites.
While depriving the wretch of all qualities that could attract towards him the slightest share of sympathy, Homer has taken care to leave Thersites in full possession of every thing that was necessary for his trade; an ample flow of speech (213), and no small power of vulgar invective (215).
Again, the quality of mere scurrility assigned to Thersites, and well exemplified in his speech, stands alike distinguished in Homer from the vein of fun, which he can open in the grave Ulysses of the Odyssey, even while he is under terror of the Cyclops; and from that tremendous and perhaps still unrivalled power of sarcasm, of which we have found the climax in Achilles.
In the short speech of Thersites, Homer has contrived to exhibit striking examples of malice (vv. 226, 234), coarseness (232), vanity (vv. 228, 231, 238), cowardice (236); while it is a tissue of consummate impudence throughout. Of this we find the finest stroke at the end of it, where he says240,
ἀλλὰ μάλ’ οὐκ Ἀχιλῆϊ χόλος φρεσὶν, ἀλλὰ μεθήμων·
ἦ γὰρ ἂν, Ἀτρείδη, νῦν ὕστατα λωβήσαιο241.
For here the wretch apes Achilles, whom (for the sake of damaging Agamemnon) he affects to patronize, and, over and above the pretension to speak of his feelings as if he had been taken into his confidence on the occasion, he actually closes with the very line which Achilles, at the moment of high passion, had used in the Assembly of the First Book (i. 232).
If we consider the selection of topics each by themselves, with reference to effect, the speech is not without a certain εὐστοχία: he hits the avarice of Agamemnon hard (226); and his responsibility as a ruler (234): while pretending to incite the courage of the Greeks (235), he flatters their home-sickness and faint-heartedness by counselling the return (236); and, in supporting Achilles, he plausibly reckons on being found to have taken the popular side. But if we regard it, as every speech should be regarded, with reference to some paramount purpose, it is really senseless and inconsequent. Dwelling as he does upon the wrong done to Achilles, and asserting the placability of that chieftain, he ought to have ended with recommending an attempt to compensate and appease him; instead of which he recommends the Return, which had been just abandoned. But the real extravagance of the speech comes out only in connection with his self-love; when, like many better men, he wholly loses whatever sense of the ridiculous he might possess. It is not only ‘the women whom we give you’ (227); ‘the service which we render you’ (238), but it is also ‘the gold242 that some Trojan may bring to ransom his son, whom I, or else some other Greek, may have led captive.’ I, Thersites, or some other Greek! The only Greek, of whom we hear in the Iliad as having made and sold on ransom captives during the war, is Achilles243; and it is with him that Thersites thus couples himself. Upon this, Ulysses, perceiving that he stands in opposition to the prevailing sentiment of the Assembly, silences him by a judicious application of the sceptre to his back and shoulders: yet not even Thersites does he silence by force, until he has first rebuked him by reasoning244.
Such are the facts of the case of Thersites. Are we to infer from it, with Grote, that Homer has made him ugly and execrable because he was a presumptuous critic, though his virulent reproaches were substantially well founded, and that his fate, and the whole circumstances of this Assembly, show ‘the degradation of the mass of the people before the chiefs245?’
In rallying the Greeks, says the distinguished historian246, Ulysses flatters and soothes the chiefs, but drives the people with harsh reprimand and blows. Now surely, as to the mere matter of fact, this is not quite so. It is not the people, but those whom he caught carrying the matter by shouts, instead of returning to hear reason in the Assembly, that he struck with the sceptre247:
ὃν δ’ αὖ δήμου τ’ ἄνδρα ἴδοι, βοόωντά τ’ ἐφεύροι·
and it may be observed, that he addresses all classes alike by the word δαιμόνιε248; which, though a term of expostulation, is not one of disrespect.
If Thersites represented the principle of reasoning in the public Assembly, we might well see in the treatment of him the degradation of the people. But it is railing, and not reasoning, that he represents; and Homer has separated widely between this individual and the mass of the army, by informing us that in the general opinion Ulysses had rendered a service, even greater than any of his former ones, by putting down Thersites. ‘Ulysses has done a thousand good things in council and in war: but this is the best of all, that he has stopped the scoundrel in his ribaldry249.’
Thersites spoke not against Agamemnon only, but against the sense of the whole army (212); and the ground of the proceeding of Ulysses is not laid in the fact of his having resisted Agamemnon, or Agamemnon with the whole body of the kings; but in the manner of his speech, and in his having acted alone and against the general sentiment. Above all, we must recollect the circumstances, under which Ulysses ventured to chastise even this rancorous and foul-mouthed railer. It was at a moment of crisis, nay, of agony. The rush from the Assembly to the ships did not follow upon an orderly assent to a proposal, such as was generally given; but it resulted from a tumultuous impulse, like that of blasts tossing the sea, or sweeping down upon the cornfield (Il. ii. 144-54). If therefore Ulysses employs the sceptre of Agamemnon to smite those who were shouting in aid of this ruinous tumult (ii. 198), we need not take this for a sample of what would be done in ordinary circumstances, more than the fate of Wat Tyler for a type of British freedom under the Plantagenets. Odious too as was Thersites, yet the army, amidst a preponderating sentiment of approval, still appear to have felt some regret at his mishap250;
οἱ δὲ, καὶ ἀχνύμενοί περ, ἐπ’ αὐτῷ ἡδὺ γέλασσαν·
for the first words would suggest, that they knew how to value the liberty of thought, which had been abused, disgraced, and consequently restrained, in his person. Surely it would be most precipitate to conclude, from a case like this, that the debates of the Assemblies were formal, and that they had nothing to do but to listen to a sham discussion, and to register or follow decrees which were substantially those of Agamemnon only.
I believe that the mistake involved in the judgment we have been canvassing is a double one: a mistake of the relation of Agamemnon to the other kings and chiefs; and a mistake of the relation of the sovereigns generally to their subjects. Agamemnon was strong in influence and authority, but he had, as we have already seen, nothing like a despotic control over the other kings. The kings were strong in personal ability, in high descent, in the sanction of Jupiter, in possession, and in tradition: but all their strength, great as it was, lay as a general rule in the direction of influence, and not in that of violence.
I do not think, however, that we ought to be contented with the merely negative mode of treatment for the case of Thersites. I cannot but conceive that, upon an impartial review, it may teach more, than is drawn from it by merely saying that it does not prove the Assembly to have been an illusion. We must assume that Homer’s picture, if not historical, at least conformed to the laws of probability. Now, what is the picture? That the buffoon of the army, wholly without influence, capable of attracting no respect, when the mass of the people had overcome their homeward impulse, had returned to the Assembly, and were awaiting the proposition of the kings, first continues to rail (ἐκολῴα) while every one else is silent, and then takes upon himself the initiative in recommending the resumption of the project, which they had that moment abandoned. If such conduct could be ascribed by the Poet to a creature sharp-witted enough, and as careful as others of his own back, does not the very fact presuppose that freedom of debate was a thing in principle at least known and familiar?
Agorè on the Shield in Il. xviii.
In the scene depicted on the Shield of Achilles, new evidence is afforded us that the people took a real part in the conduct of public affairs. The people are in Assembly. A suit is in progress. The matter is one of homicide; and the guilty person declares that he has paid the proper fine, while his antagonist avers that he has not received it. Each presses for a judicial decision. The people sympathizing, some with one, and some with the other, cheer them on.
Λαοὶ δ’ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἐπήπυον, ἀμφὶς ἀρωγοί·
κήρυκες δ’ ἄρα λαὸν ἐρήτυον251.
I understand the latter words as declaring, not that the heralds forbade and put a stop to the cheering of the people, but either that they kept it within bounds, or rather that, when the proper time came for the judges to speak, these, the heralds, procured silence. According to the meaning of ἐρητύω in Il. ii. 211,
ἄλλοι μέν ῥ’ ἕζοντο, ἐρήτυθεν δὲ καθ’ ἕδρας.
Now of the cheering of the people I venture to say, not that it raises a presumption of, but that it actually constitutes, their interference. The rule of every tolerably regulated assembly, charged with the conduct of important matters, is to permit no expressions of approval or otherwise during the proceedings, except from the parties immediately belonging to the body. The total exclusion of applause in judicial cases belongs to a state of mind and manners different from that of the heroic age. But the exclusion of all applause by mere strangers to the business rests upon a truth common to every age; namely, that such applause constitutes a share in the business, and contributes to the decision. It will be remembered how the cries of the Galleries became one of the grievous scandals of the first revolution in France, and how largely they affected the determinations of the National Assembly. The irregular use of such a power is a formidable invasion of legislative or judicial freedom: the allowed possession of the privilege amounts to participation in the office of the statesman or the judge, and demonstrates the substantive position of the λαὸς, or people, in the Assemblies of the heroic age.
But apparently their function was not completed by merely encouraging the litigant, with whom each man might chance to sympathize. For we are told not only that the Judges, that is to say, the γέροντες, delivered their opinions consecutively, but likewise that there lay 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 ἰθύντατα 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 γέροντες 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 bonâ 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.
Decisions in Assemblies of Il. vii. and ix.
And finally, what shall we say to the direct evidence of Agamemnon himself? Idæus252, 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 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 concurrence253.
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 our political degeneracy; but a feeble eye does not impair the reality of the object on which it may happen to be fixed.