book nine
champions come forward to contend with Hector, the want of the greatest hero of all is sufficiently felt. If these passages do not belong to the period of the wrath of Achilles, how are we to account for his conspicuous absence?
Further, the want of smoothness and unity which is visible in this part of the _Iliad_ may be due to other causes than difference of date or authorship. A national poet such as the author of the _Iliad_ cannot always choose or arrange his matter at his own will. He is bound by the traditions of his art, and by the feelings and expectations of his hearers. The poet who brought the exploits of Diomede into the _Iliad_ doubtless had his reasons for doing so, which were equally strong whether he was the poet of the Achilleis or a later Homerid or rhapsodist. And if some of the incidents (those of the third book in
## particular) seem to belong to the beginning of the war, it must be
considered that poetically, and to the hearers of the _Iliad_, the war opens in the third book, and the incidents are of the kind that is required in such a place. The truce makes a pause which heightens the interest of the impending battle; the duel and the scene on the walls are effective in bringing some of the leading characters on the stage, and in making us acquainted with the previous history. The story of Paris and Helen especially, and the general position of affairs in Troy, is put before us in a singularly vivid manner. The book in short forms so good a _prologue_ to the action of the war that we can hardly be wrong in attributing it to the genius which devised the rest of the _Iliad_.
The case against the remaining books is of a different kind. The ninth and tenth seem like two independent pictures of the night before the great battle of xi.-xvii. Either is enough to fill the space in Homer's canvas; and the suspicion arises (as when two Platonic dialogues bear the same name) that if either had been genuine, the other would not have come into existence. If one of the two is to be rejected it must be the tenth, which is certainly the less Homeric. It relates a picturesque adventure, conceived in a vein more approaching that of comedy than any other part of the _Iliad_. Moreover, the language in several places exhibits traces of post-Homeric date. The ninth book, on the other hand, was rejected by Grote, chiefly on the grounds that the embassy to Achilles ought to have put an end to the quarrel, and that it is ignored in later passages, especially in the speeches of Achilles (xi. 609; xvi. 72, 85). His argument, however, rests on an assumption which we are apt to bring with us to the reading of the _Iliad_, but which is not borne out by its language, viz. that there was some definite atonement demanded by Achilles, or due to him according to the custom and sentiment of the time. But in the _Iliad_ the whole stress is laid on the anger of Achilles, which can only be satisfied by the defeat and extreme peril of the Greeks.[12] He is influenced by his own feeling, and by nothing else. Accordingly, in the ninth book, when they are still protected by the rampart (see 348 sqq.), he rejects gifts and fair words alike; in the sixteenth he is moved by the tears and entreaties of Patroclus, and the sight of the Greek ships on fire; in the nineteenth his anger is quenched in grief. But he makes no conditions, either in rejecting the offers of the embassy or in returning to the Greek army. And this conduct is the result, not only of his fierce and inexorable character, but also (as the silence of Homer shows) of the want of any general rules or principles, any code of morality or of honour, which would have required him to act in a different way.
Finally, Grote objected to the two last books that they prolong the
## action of the _Iliad_ beyond the exigencies of a coherent scheme. Of the
two, the twenty-third could more easily be spared. In language, and perhaps in style and manner, it is akin to the tenth; while the twenty-fourth is in the pathetic vein of the ninth, and like it serves to bring out new aspects of the character of Achilles.
Dr E. Kammer has given some strong reasons for doubting the genuineness of the passage in