Homer and His Age

Choosing the part of the Over-Lord Agamemnon, we must not forget that he is one of several analogous figures in the national poetry and romance of other feudal ages. Of that great analogous figure, Charlemagne, and of his relations with his peers in the earlier and later French mediaeval epics we shall later speak. Another example is Arthur, in some romances "the blameless king," in others un roi fainйant.

The parallel Irish case is found in the Irish saga of Diarmaid and Grai

Human nature eternally repeats itself in similar conditions of society, French, Norse, Celtic, and Achaean. "We never hear anything bad" of Diomede, Odysseus, or Aias, and the evil in Achilles's resentment up to a certain point is legal, and not beyond what the poet thinks natural and pardonable in his circumstances.

The poet's view of Agamemnon is expressed in the speeches and conduct of the peers. In Book I. we see the bullying truculence of Agamemnon, wreaked first on the priest of Apollo, Chryses, then in threats against the prophet Chalcas, then in menaces against any prince on whom he chooses to avenge his loss of fair Chryseis, and, finally, in the Seizure of Briseis from Achilles.

This part of the First Book of the Iliadis confessedly original, and there is no varying, throughout the Epic, from the strong and delicate drawing of an historical situation, and of a complex character. Agamemnon is truculent, and eager to assert his authority, but he is also possessed of a heavy sense of his responsibilities, which often unmans him. He has a legal right to a separate "prize of honour" (geras) after each capture of spoil. Considering the wrath of Apollo for the wrong done in refusing his priest's offered ransom for his daughter, Agamemnon will give her back, "if that is better; rather would I see my folks whole than perishing." {Footnote: Iliad, I. 115-117.}

Here we note points of feudal law and of kingly character. The giving and taking of ransom exists as it did in the Middle Ages; ransom is refused, death is dealt, as the war becomes more fierce towards its close. Agamemnon has sense enough to waive his right to the girlish prize, for the sake of his people, but is not so generous as to demand no compensation. But there are no fresh spoils to apportion, and the Over-Lord threatens to take the prize of one of his peers, even of Achilles.

Thereon Achilles does what was frequently done in the feudal age of western Europe, he "renounces his fealty," and will return to Phthia. He adds insult, "thou dog-face!" The whole situation, we shall show, recurs again and again in the epics of feudal France, the later epics of feudal discontent. Agamemnon replies that Achilles may do as he pleases. "I have others by my side that shall do me honour, and, above all, Zeus, Lord of Counsel" (I. 175). He rules, literally, by divine right, and we shall see that, in the French feudal epics, as in Homer, this claim of divine right is granted, even in the case of an insolent and cowardly Over-Lord. Achilles half draws "his great sword," one of the long, ponderous cut-and-thrust bronze swords of which we have actual examples from Mycenae and elsewhere. He is restrained by Athene, visible only to him. "With words, indeed," she says, "revile him .... hereafter shall goodly gifts come to thee, yea, in threefold measure...."

Gifts of atonement for "surquedry," like that of Agamemnon, are given and received in the French epics, for example, in the {blank space}. The Iliadthroughout exhibits much interest in such gifts, and in the customary law as to their acceptance, and other ritual or etiquette of reconciliation. This fact, it will be shown, accounts for a passage which critics reject, and which is tedious to our taste, as it probably was tedious to the age of the supposed late poets themselves. (Book XIX.). But the taste of a feudal audience, as of the audience of the Saga men, delighted in "realistic" descriptions of their own customs and customary law, as in descriptions of costume and armour. This is fortunate for students of customary law and costume, but wearies hearers and readers who desire the action to advance. Passages of this kind would never be inserted by late poets, who had neither the knowledge of, nor any interest in, the subjects.

To return to Achilles, he is now within his right; the moral goddess assures him of that, and he is allowed to give the reins to his tongue, as he does in passages to which the mediaeval epics offer many parallels. In the mediaeval epics, as in Homer, there is no idea of recourse to a duel between the Over-Lord and his peer. Achilles accuses Agamemnon of drunke

As concerns the apology and the gifts of atonement, the poet has feudal customary law and usage clearly before his eyes. He knows exactly what is due, and the limits of the rights of Over-Lord and prince, matters about which the late Ionian poets could only pick up information by a course of study in constitutional history—the last thing they were likely to attempt—unless we suppose that they all kept their eyes on the "kernel," and that steadily, through centuries, generations of strollers worked on the lines laid down in that brief poem.

Thus the poet of Book IX.—one of "the latest expansions,"—thoroughly understands the legal and constitutional situation, as between Agamemnon and Achilles. Or rather all the poets who collaborated in Book IX., which "had grown by a process of accretion," {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. 371.} understood the legal situation.

Returning to the poet's conception of Agamemnon, we find in the character of Agamemnon himself the key to the difficulties which critics discover in the Second Book. The difficulty is that when Zeus, won over to the cause of Achilles by Thetis, sends a false Dream to Agamemnon, the Dream tells the prince that he shall at once take Troy, and bids him summon the host to arms. But Agamemnon, far from doing that, summons the host to a peaceful assembly, with the well-known results of demoralisation.

Mr. Leaf explains the circumstances on his own theory of expansions compiled into a confused whole by a late editor. He thinks that probably there were two varying versions even of this earliest Book of the poem. In one (A), the story went on from the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, to the holding of a general assembly "to consider the altered state of affairs." This is the Assembly of Book H, but debate, in version A, was opened by Thersites, not by Agamemnon, and Thersites proposed instant flight! That was probably the earlier version.