The Iliad (Wisehouse Classics Edition). Homer

(Dyce’s Selections, p. 43).

      “Thus the monarch spoke,

      Then pledged the chief in a capacious cup,

      Golden, and framed by art divine (a gift

      Which to Almighty Jove lame Vulcan brought

      Upon his nuptial day, when he espoused

      The Queen of Love), the sire of gods bestow’d

      The cup on Dardanus, who gave it next

      To Ericthonius Tros received it then,

      And left it, with his wealth, to be possess’d

      By Ilus he to great Laomedon

      Gave it, and last to Priam’s lot it fell.”

      ⁹ Grote, i, p. 393, states the number of the Grecian forces at upwards of 100,000 men. Nichols makes a total of 135,000.

       ¹⁰

      “As thick as when a field

      Of Ceres, ripe for harvest, waving bends

      His bearded grove of ears, which way the wind

      Sways them.”— Paradise Lost,” iv. 980, sqq.

      ¹¹ This sentiment used to be a popular one with some of the greatest tyrants, who abused it into a pretext for unlimited usurpation of power. Dion, Caligula, and Domitian were particularly fond of it, and, in an extended form, we find the maxim propounded by Creon in the Antigone of Sophocles. See some important remarks of Heeren, “Ancient Greece,” ch. vi. p. 105.

      ¹² It may be remarked, that the character of Thersites, revolting and contemptible as it is, serves admirably to develop the disposition of Ulysses in a new light, in which mere cunning is less prominent. Of the gradual and individual development of Homer’s heroes, Schlegel well observes, “In bas-relief the figures are usually in profile, and in the epos all are characterized in the simplest manner in relief; they are not grouped together, but follow one another; so Homer’s heroes advance, one by one, in succession before us. It has been remarked that the Iliad is not definitively closed, but that we are left to suppose something both to precede and to follow it. The bas-relief is equally without limit, and may be continued ad infinitum, either from before or behind, on which account the ancients preferred for it such subjects as admitted of an indefinite extension, sacrificial processions, dances, and lines of combatants, and hence they also exhibit bas-reliefs on curved surfaces, such as vases, or the frieze of a rotunda, where, by the curvature, the two ends are withdrawn from our sight, and where, while we advance, one object appears as another disappears. Reading Homer is very much like such a circuit; the present object alone arresting our attention, we lose sight of what precedes, and do not concern ourselves about what is to follow.”—“Dramatic Literature,” p. 75.

      ¹³ “There cannot be a clearer indication than this description — so graphic in the original poem — of the true character of the Homeric agora. The multitude who compose it are listening and acquiescent, not often hesitating, and never refractory to the chief. The fate which awaits a presumptuous critic, even where his virulent reproaches are substantially well-founded, is plainly set forth in the treatment of Thersites; while the unpopularity of such a character is attested even more by the excessive pains which Homer takes to heap upon him repulsive personal deformities, than by the chastisement of Odysseus he is lame, bald, crook-backed, of misshapen head, and squinting vision.”— Grote, vol. i. p. 97.

      ¹⁴ According to Pausanias, both the sprig and the remains of the tree were exhibited in his time. The tragedians, Lucretius and others, adopted a different fable to account for the stoppage at Aulis, and seem to have found the sacrifice of Iphigena better suited to form the subject of a tragedy. Compare Dryden’s “AEneid,” vol. iii. sqq.

      ¹⁵ Full of his god, i.e., Apollo, filled with the prophetic spirit. “The god” would be more simple and emphatic.

      ¹⁶ Those critics who have maintained that the “Catalogue of Ships” is an interpolation, should have paid more attention to these lines, which form a most natural introduction to their enumeration.

      ¹⁷ The following observation will be useful to Homeric readers: “Particular animals were, at a later time, consecrated to particular deities. To Jupiter, Ceres, Juno, Apollo, and Bacchus victims of advanced age might be offered. An ox of five years old was considered especially acceptable to Jupiter. A black bull, a ram, or a boar pig, were offerings for Neptune. A heifer, or a sheep, for Minerva. To Ceres a sow was sacrificed, as an enemy to corn. The goat to Bacchus, because he fed on vines. Diana was propitiated with a stag; and to Venus the dove was consecrated. The infernal and evil deities were to be appeased with black victims. The most acceptable of all sacrifices was the heifer of a year old, which had never borne the yoke. It was to be perfect in every limb, healthy, and without blemish.”—“Elgin Marbles,” vol. i. p. 78.

      ¹⁸ Idomeneus, son of Deucalion, was king of Crete. Having vowed, during a tempest, on his return from Troy, to sacrifice to Neptune the first creature that should present itself to his eye on the Cretan shore, his son fell a victim to his rash vow.

      ¹⁹ Tydeus’ son, i.e. Diomed.

      ²⁰ That is, Ajax, the son of Oileus, a Locrian. He must be distinguished from the other, who was king of Salamis.

      ²¹ A great deal of nonsense has been written to account for the word unbid, in this line. Even Plato, “Sympos.” p. 315, has found some curious meaning in what, to us, appears to need no explanation. Was there any heroic rule of etiquette which prevented one brother-king visiting another without a formal invitation?

      ²² Fresh water fowl, especially swans, were found in great numbers about the Asian Marsh, a fenny tract of country in Lydia, formed by the river Cayster, near its mouth. See Virgil, “Georgics,” vol. i. 383, sq.

      ²³ Scamander, or Scamandros, was a river of Troas, rising, according to Strabo, on the highest part of Mount Ida, in the same hill with the Granicus and the OEdipus, and falling into the sea at Sigaeum; everything tends to identify it with Mendere, as Wood, Rennell, and others maintain; the Mendere is 40 miles long, 300 feet broad, deep in the time of flood, nearly dry in the summer. Dr. Clarke successfully combats the opinion of those who make the Scamander to have arisen from the springs of Bounabarshy, and traces the source of the river to the highest mountain in the chain of Ida, now Kusdaghy; receives the Simois in its course; towards its mouth it is very muddy, and flows through marshes. Between the Scamander and Simois, Homer’s Troy is supposed to have stood: this river, according to Homer, was called Xanthus by the gods, Scamander by men. The waters of the Scamander had the singular property of giving a beautiful colour to the hair or wool of such animals as bathed in them; hence the three goddesses, Minerva, Juno, and Venus, bathed there before they appeared before Paris to obtain the golden apple: the name Xanthus, “yellow,” was given to the Scamander, from the peculiar colour of its waters, still applicable to the Mendere, the yellow colour of whose waters attracts the attention of travellers.

      ²⁴ It should be “his chest like Neptune.” The torso of Neptune, in the “Elgin Marbles,” No. 103, (vol. ii. p. 26,) is remarkable for its breadth and massiveness of development.

      ²⁵ “Say first, for heav’n hides nothing from thy view.”— “Paradise Lost,” i. 27.

      “Ma di’ tu, Musa, come i primi danni

      Mandassero a Cristiani, e di quai parti:

      Tu ‘l sai; ma di tant’ opra a noi si lunge

      Debil aura di fama appena giunge.”—“Gier. Lib.” iv. 19.

      ²⁶ “The Catalogue is, perhaps, the portion of the poem in favour of which a claim to separate authorship has been most plausibly urged. Although the example of Homer has since rendered some such formal enumeration of the forces engaged, a common practice in epic poems descriptive of great warlike adventures, still so minute