Homer: The Iliad; The Odyssey. W. Lucas Collins

hears, and rises on the sea—“like as it were a mist”—(the “White Lady of Avenel”) caresses him soothingly with her hand, as though the stalwart warrior were still a child indeed, and asks him the simple question which all mothers, goddesses or not, would put into much the same words—“My son, why weepest thou?” He tells his tale of wrong; and she proceeds to give him, in the first place, advice certainly not wiser than that of some earthly mothers. She does not advise him to make up his quarrel with Agamemnon, but to nurse his wrath, and withdraw himself wholly from the siege. She, meanwhile, will intercede with Jupiter, and beseech him to grant the Trojans victory for a while, that so the Greeks may learn to feel the loss of the hero whom they have insulted.

      There is an obstacle, however, in the way of the immediate performance of her promise—a ludicrous obstacle, to our modern taste, though the poet does not so intend it. The King of the Gods has gone out to dinner—or rather to a continuous festival of twelve days, to which he has been invited by “the blameless Ethiopians;”[11] a race with whom the Immortals of Olympus have some mysterious connection, which has been held to imply an Eastern origin for the Greek religion and race. With the dawn of the twelfth morning, however, Thetis presents herself in the “brazen-floored” halls of Jupiter, and we are introduced to the Olympian court and household. A strange picture it is—such a travesty of a divine life as makes us wonder what the poet himself really conceived of the gods of his adoption. The life of mortal heroes in the world below is grandeur and nobleness itself compared with that of the Olympian heaven. Its pleasures indeed are much the same—those of sensual gratification; the feast, the wine-cup, music and song, are what gods and goddesses delight in as much as those whom the poet pathetically calls “the creatures of a day.” But all their passions are incomparably meaner. The wrath of Achilles is dignified—Juno’s anger against Troy is mere vicious spite. The subtle craft of Ulysses is at least exercised for the benefit of his countrymen and their cause; but the shifty counsels of Jupiter are the mere expedients of a cunning despot who, between queen and ministers and favourites, finds it difficult, in spite of his despotism, to have his own way. The quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles is tragedy: the domestic wrangles of the Thunderer and his queen are in the very spirit of low comedy, and not even the burlesques of Life in Olympus, which some years ago were popular on our English stage, went far beyond the recognised legends of mythology. In fact, the comic element, what little there is of it in the Iliad, is supplied (with the single exception of the incident of Thersites) by the powers whom the poet recognises as divinities. The idea of rival wills and influences existing in the supernatural world led the poet necessarily to represent his gods as quarrelling; and quarrels in a primitive age are perhaps hardly compatible with dignity. But the conception of gods in human shape has always a tendency to monstrosities and caricature. How close, too, the supernatural and the grotesque seem to lie together may be seen even in the existing sculptures and carvings of ancient Christendom, and still more remarkably in the old Miracle-Plays, which mix buffoonery with the most sacred subjects in a manner which it is hard to reconcile with any real feeling of reverence.

      Thetis throws herself at the feet of her father Jupiter, and begs of him, as a personal favour, the temporary humiliation of Agamemnon and his Greeks. For a while the Thunderer is silent, and hesitates; Thetis perseveringly clings to his knees. At last he confides to her his dread lest a compliance with her petition should involve him in domestic difficulties.

      “Sad work thou mak’st, in bidding me oppose

       My will to Juno’s, when her bitter words

       Assail me, for full oft amid the gods

       She taunts me that I aid the Trojan cause.

       But thou return—that Juno see thee not— And leave to me the furtherance of thy suit.” (D.)

      He pledges his promise to her, and ratifies it with the mighty nod that shakes Olympus—a solemn confirmation which made his word irrevocable.

      “Waved on th’ immortal head th’ ambrosial locks,

       And all Olympus trembled at his nod.”

      Critics have somewhat over-praised the grandeur of the image; but it is said that the great sculptor Phidias referred to it as having furnished him with the idea of his noble statue of Olympian Jove. Satisfied with her success, Thetis plunges down from high Olympus into the sea, and the Thunderer proceeds to take his place in full council of the gods, as calm as if nothing had happened. But there are watchful eyes about him which he has not escaped. Juno has been a witness of the interview, and has a shrewd suspicion of its object. A connubial dialogue ensues, which, though the poet has thought fit to transfer the scene of it to Olympus, is of an exceedingly earthly, and what we should now call “realistic,” type. Homer’s recognised translators have not condescended to give it the homely tone of the original. Pope is grandiloquent, and Lord Derby calmly dignified; but Homer intends to be neither. Mr. Gladstone’s translation comes nearest the spirit of the Greek. The brief encounter between the king and queen of the Immortals is cut short by the former in rather summary fashion. “Thou hast been promising honour to Achilles, I trow,” says Juno.

“Zeus that rolls the clouds of heaven ‘Moonstruck! thou art ever trowing; After all, it boots thee nothing; So thou hast the worser bargain. It was done because I willed it. Lest, if I come near, and on thee All the gods that hold Olympus

her addressing answered then; never I escape thy ken. leaves thee of my heart the less: What if I the fact confess? Hold thy peace—my word obey, these unconquered hands I lay, nought avail thee here to-day.’”[12]

      He bids her, in very plain Greek, sit down and hold her tongue; and gives her clearly to understand—with a threat of violence which is an unusual addition to his many failings as a husband—that it is his fixed intention, on this occasion, to be lord and master, not only of Olympus, but of his wife. Juno is silenced, and the whole assembly of the gods is startled by the Thunderer’s violence. Vulcan, the fire-god—the lame brawny hunchback, always more or less the jester and the butt of the court of Olympus, but with more brains in his head than most of his straight-limbed compeers—Vulcan comes to the general relief. He soothes his royal mother by the argument, that it were ill indeed to break the peace of heaven for the sake of two or three wretched mortals: and he reminds her—we must suppose in an aside—that they both knew by bitter experience that when the father of gods and men did choose to put forth his might, it went hard with all who resisted.

      “When to thy succour once before I came,

       He seized me by the foot, and hurled me down

       From heaven’s high threshold; all the day I fell,

       And with the setting sun on Lemnos’ isle

       Lighted, scarce half-alive; there was I found,

       And by the Sintian people kindly nursed.” (D.)

      He gives the mother-goddess further comfort—in “a double cup,” which he proceeds also to hand round the whole of the august circle. They quaff their nectar with unusual zest, as they break into peals of laughter (it must be confessed, rather ungratefully) at the hobbling gait and awkward attentions of their new cup-bearer:—

      “Thus they till sunset passed the festive hours;

       Nor lacked the banquet aught to please the sense,

       Nor sound of tuneful lyre by Phœbus touched,

       Nor Muses’ voice, who in alternate strains

       Responsive sung; but when the sun had set

       Each to his home departed, where for each

       The crippled Vulcan, matchless architect,

       With wondrous skill a noble house had reared.”

      And so, at the end of the first book of the poem, the curtain falls on the Olympian happy family.

      But Jupiter has but a wakeful night. He is planning how he may best carry out his promise to Thetis. He sends a lying spirit in a dream to Agamemnon at midnight. The vision stands at the head of the king’s couch, taking the shape of old Nestor. In this character it encourages