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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
An Epic is not made by piecing together a series of heroic lays, adjusting their discrepancies and making them into a continuous narrative. There is only one thing which can master the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and that is, an ability to see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man's general destiny. We do not appreciate what Homer did for his time, and is still doing for all the world, unless we see the warfare and the adventure as symbols of the primary courage of life. And it is not his morals, but Homer's art that does that for us.—Lascelles Abercrombie, The Epic.
I.—The Modesty of Diomed.
Pandar has shot his arrow at Menelaus. The truce is broken, and the critics have been fretting for a display of Agamemnon's prowess ever since they heard the promise and incitement of the Lying Dream. Now, at last, they think, Agamemnon will lead the attack, and the story can develope. A king ought not to sleep all night, said the Dream: and now, with the truce broken, and his precious brother wounded, Agamemnon will surely wake up. He does. ‘Then you would not have seen Agamemnon sleeping nor shirking, but very eager to the fight. He left the horses and the chariot … and went on foot …’ To the battle? No, to review his forces.
1 Professor Ridgeway reminds me that Ares and Aphrodite are still regarded as half-barbarous, foreign divinities, not to be treated so seriously as the great Olympians.
2 Iliad, xxiv. 518–551.
3 521 ‘your heart must be of steel.’ See xxii. 357. Hector's last words are recalled. When Achilles has told him that not even if Priam seeks to ransom the body, will he give it back, Hector replies ‘Your heart is of steel.’
4 Agamemnon's treatment of Achilles has undermined the discipline of the army. The ‘testing’ and the Thersites episode illustrate that fact, and heighten the effect of Diomed's behaviour.
5 I am indebted to Mr. D. S. Robertson for pointing out to me the importance of this distinction. Diomed saw Apollo: Patroclus did not see him.
6 Christodorus of Thebes: Paton, , A.P. vol. i. p. 84.Google Scholar
7 It should be noted that the similarity between xi. 463, Odysseus' reply to Agamemnon's eager question ‘Is my son alive?’, and iv. 836, the answer of the ghostly Iphthime to Penelope's question ‘Is Odysseus living?’ is deliberate. This is how the poet manipulates and links his threads. In the earlier passage he is preparing us for the shift of interest from Telemachus to Odysseus: in the later, for the shift from Odysseus alone to Odysseus and Telemachus together.
8 xiv. 175–7. This description is the more moving because the swineherd uses a phrase which recalls exquisite memories of Nausicaa (v. 163). The charm of this reminiscence will not be felt unless we observe that it does not stand alone. The comedy of the cloak, for instance, recalls the interview with Arete. Cf. vii. 259, 265, 296, and xiv. 154, 460, xvii. 550.
9 Thus Menelaus, with his own peculiar courtesy, suggests that Athene put it in Helen's mind to withdraw from the wooden horse and that ‘some daimon’ suggested she should go and call the hidden warriors by by name, xiv. 274–289.
10 The problem of Book XXIV. is too complicated for discussion here. But what has been said above has relevance to the discussion of the use of the word ὄλβιος in 36 and 192, which has been unnecessarily explained as Orphic. Remember how Zeus criticised complaining mortals, how Menelaus discovered that wealth is not happiness, and how Odysseus' fortune is contrasted with the fates of Agamemnon and Achilles. The epilogue has a closer connection with the prologue than is often supposed.