Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3

In the βουλὴ[202 - Cf. Od. xi. 512.], Nestor takes the lead more than Agamemnon. As to the Assembly, the whole plan in the Second Iliad is expressly founded upon the supposition, that the army was accustomed to hear the chiefs argue against, and even overthrow, the proposals of Agamemnon. His advice that they should return home, which Grote[203 - Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. 95, 97.] considers only an unaccountable fancy and a childish freak, is however capable of being regarded in this view, that, before renewing active operations without Achilles, it was thought wise to test the feeling of the army, and that it could not be more effectually tried than by a recommendation from the commander-in-chief that they should re-embark for Greece. The plan was over-refined; and it may even seem ridiculous, because it failed, and simply kindled an ungovernable passion, which would not listen to debate. But the proposal does not bear that character in the Ninth Book, where the same suggestion is renewed, without the previous knowledge of the chiefs, in the same words, and at a time when the Greeks were in far worse condition.

When Agamemnon made it in order to be overruled it took effect: when he made it in good earnest, it failed. If then the Greeks could be retained contrary to his wish in the Ninth Book, it might be misjudged, but could hardly be absurd, to expect a similar result in the Second, when they had less cause for discouragement.

And why did it take effect? Simply because the Assembly, instead of being the simple medium[204 - Grote ii. 104.] through which the king acted, was the arena on which either the will of the people might find a rude and tumultuary vent, or, on the other hand, his royal companions in arms could say, as Diomed says, ‘I will use my right and resist your foolish project in debate; which you ought not to resent.’

Ἀτρείδη, σοὶ πρῶτα μαχήσομαι ἀφραδέοντι,
ἣ θέμις ἐστὶν, ἄναξ, ἀγορῇ· σὺ δὲ μή τι χολωθῇς.

The proposal of Agamemnon had been heard in silence[205 - Il. ix. 30.], the mode by which the army indicated its disinclination or its doubt. But the counter proposal of Diomed, to fight to the last, was hailed with acclamation[206 - Ibid. 50.];

οἱ δ’ ἄρα πάντες ἐπίαχον υἷες Ἀχαιῶν,
μῦθον ἀγασσάμενοι Διομήδεος ἱπποδάμοιο·

so that the Assembly was then ripe for the plan of Nestor, which at once received its approval[207 - Il. ix. 79.]:

ὣς ἔφαθ’· οἱ δ’ ἄρα τοῦ μάλα μὲν κλύον, ἠδ’ ἐπίθοντο.

Subsequently, in the βουλὴ of the same Book, Nestor tells Agamemnon that it is his duty to listen as well as to speak, and to adopt the plans of others when they are good (100-2). At the same time, the aged chieftain appears to submit himself to the judgment of Agamemnon in the Council[208 - Ibid. 97.]. His expressions are perhaps matter more of compliment than of business; and at any rate we do not find any like terms used in the Assembly.

It was a happy characteristic of heroic Greece, that while she abounded in true shame, she had no false shame. It was not thought that a king, who had done wrong, compromised his dignity by atonement; but, on the contrary, that he recovered it. So says Ulysses, in the Assembly of the Nineteenth Iliad[209 - Il. xix. 182.];

οὐ μὲν γάρ τι νεμεσσητὸν βασιλῆα
ἄνδρ’ ἀπαρέσσασθαι, ὅτε τις πρότερος χαλεπήνῃ.

This passage at once establishes in the most pointed manner both the right to chide the head of the army, and the obligation incumbent on him, as on others, where he had given offence to make amends.

Thus then a large liberty of speech and judgment on the part of the kings or chiefs, when they differed from Agamemnon, would appear to be established beyond dispute, a liberty which in certain cases resulted in his being summarily overruled. I cannot therefore here subscribe even to the measured statement of Mure, who, admits the liberty of remonstrance, but asserts also the sovereignty of the will of Agamemnon. Much less to the very broad assertions of Grote, that the resolutions of Agamemnon appear uniformly to prevail in the Council, and that the nullity of positive function is still more striking in the Agorè[210 - Grote’s Hist. vol. ii. pp. 90, 2.].

To that institution it is now time for us to turn.

Influence of Speech.

The trait which is truly most worthy of note in the polities of Homeric Greece, is also that which is so peculiar to them; namely, the substantive weight and influence which belonged to speech as an instrument of government; and of this power by much the most remarkable development is in its less confined and more popular application to the Assembly.

This power of speech was essentially a power to be exercised over numbers, and with the safeguards of publicity, by man among his fellow-men. It was also essentially an instrument addressing itself to reason and free will, and acknowledging their authority. No government which sought its power in force, as opposed to reason, has at any time used this form of deception. The world has seen absolutism deck itself with the titles and mere forms of freedom, or seek shelter under its naked abstractions: but from the exercise of free speech as an instrument of state, it has always shrunk with an instinctive horror.

One mode of proving the power of speech in the heroic age is, by showing what place it occupied in the thoughts of men, as they are to be gathered from their language. Another mode is, by pointing to its connection, in practical examples, with this or that course of action, adopted or shunned. A third is, by giving evidence of the earnestness with which the art was prosecuted, and the depth and comprehensiveness of the conceptions from which it derived its form.

We shall presently trace the course of public affairs, as they were managed by the Greeks of the heroic age in their public assemblies. For the present, let us endeavour to collect the true sense of Homer respecting oratory from his language concerning it, from the characters with whom he has particularly connected it, and from the knowledge which he may be found to have possessed of its resources.

Although it is common to regard the Iliad as a poem having battle for its theme, yet it is in truth not less a monument of policy than of war; and in this respect it is even more broadly distinguished, than in most others, from later epics.

The adjectives in Homer are in very many cases the key to his inner mind: and among them all there is none of which this is more true, than the grand epithet κυδιάνειρα. He confines it strictly to two subjects, battle and debate, the clash of swords and the wrestling of minds. Of Achilles, he says in the First Book[211 - He uses the epithet for battle in Il. iv. 225, 6. 124, 7. 113, 8. 448, 12. 325, 13. 270, 14. 155, and 24. 391.], (490)

οὔτε ποτ’ εἰς ἀγορὴν πωλέσκετο κυδιάνειραν,
οὔτε ποτ’ ἐς πόλεμον.

In every other passage where he employs the word, it is attached to the substantive μάχη. Thus with him it was in two fields, that man was to seek for glory; partly in the fight, and partly in the Assembly.

The intellectual function was no less essential to the warrior-king of Homer, than was the martial; and the culture of the art of persuasion entered no less deeply into his early training. How, says Phœnix to Achilles, shall I leave you, I, whom your father attached to you when you were a mere child, without knowledge of the evenhanded battle, or of the assemblies, in which men attain to fame,

οὔπω εἰδόθ’ ὁμοιΐου πολέμοιο
οὐτ’ ἀγορέων, ἵνα τ’ ἄνδρες ἀριπρέπεες τελέθουσιν.

So he sent me to teach you the arts both of speech and fight[212 - Il. ix. 438-43.],

μύθων τε ῥητῆρ’ ἔμεναι, πρηκτῆρά τε ἔργων.

Even so Ulysses, in the under-world, relates to Achilles the greatness of Neoptolemus in speech, not less than in battle, (Od. xi. 510-16.)

Nay, the ἀγορὴ of little Ithaca, where there had been no Assembly for twenty years, is with Homer the ἀγορὴ πολύφημος[213 - Od. ii. 150.]. In a description, if possible yet more striking than that of Phœnix, Homer places before us the orator at his work. ‘His hearers behold him with delight; he speaks with tempered modesty, yet with confidence in himself (ἀσφαλέως); he stands preeminent among the assembled people, and while he passes through the city, they gaze on him as on a god[214 - Od. viii. 170-3.]. From a passage like this we may form some idea, what a real power in human society was the orator of the heroic age; and we may also learn how and why it was, that the great Bard of that time has also placed himself in the foremost rank of oratory for all time.

It is in the very same spirit that Ulysses, in the same most remarkable speech given in the Odyssey[215 - Od. viii. 166-85.], sets forth the different accomplishments by which human nature is adorned. The three great gifts of the gods to man are, first, corporeal beauty, strength and bearing, all included in the word φύη; secondly, judgment or good sense (φρένες), and thirdly, the power of discourse, or ἀγορητύς. To one man, the great gift last named is the compensation for the want of corporeal excellence. To another is given beauty like that of the Immortals; but then his comeliness is not crowned by eloquence: ἀλλ’ οὔ οἱ χάρις ἀμφιπεριστέφεται ἐπέεσσιν. For χάρις in Od. xi. 367 we have μορφὴ ἐπέων.

Varied descriptions of Oratory.

In full conformity with this strongly developed idea, the Poet places before us the descriptions of a variety of speakers. There is Thersites[216 - Il. ii. 212.], copious and offensive, to whom we must return. There is Telemachus, full of the gracious diffidence of youth[217 - Od. iii. 23, 124.], but commended by Nestor for a power and a tact of expression beyond his years. There is Menelaus, who speaks with a laconic ease[218 - Il. iii. 213.]. There are the Trojan elders, or δημογέροντες, who from their experience and age chiefly guide the Assembly, and whose volubility and shrill small thread of voice[219 - Il. iii. 150.] Homer compares to the chirping of grasshoppers. Then we have Nestor the soft and silvery, whose tones of happy and benevolent egotism flowed sweeter than a stream of honey[220 - Il. i. 248.]. In the hands of an inferior artist, Phœnix must have reproduced him; but an absorbing affection for Achilles is the key-note to all he says; even the account in his speech of his own early adventures is evidently meant as a warning on the effects of rage: this intense earnestness completely prevents any thing like sameness, and thus the two garrulities stand perfectly distinct from one another, because they have (so to speak) different centres of gravity. Lastly, we have Ulysses, who, wont to rise with his energies concentrated within him, gives no promise of display: but when his deep voice issues from his chest, and his mighty words drive like the flakes of snow in winter[221 - Il. iii. 216, 23.], then indeed he soars away far above all competitors.

It is very unusual for Homer to indulge thus largely in careful and detailed description. And even here he has left the one superlative, as well as other considerable, orators, undescribed. The eloquence of Achilles is left to describe itself; and to challenge comparison with all the choicest patterns both of power and beauty in this kind, that three thousand years since Homer, and all their ebbing and flowing tides, have brought within the knowledge of man. Although he modestly describes himself as beneath Ulysses in this accomplishment, yet in truth no speeches come near to his. But Homer’s resources are not even now exhausted. The decision of Diomed, the irresolution of Agamemnon, the bluntness of Ajax, are all admirably marked in the series of speeches allotted to each. Indeed Homer has put into the mouth of Idomeneus, whom he nowhere describes as an orator at all, a speech which is quite enough to establish his reputation in that capacity. (Il. xiii. 275-94.)

In reviewing the arrangements Homer has made, we shall find one feature alike unequivocal and decisive. The two persons, to whom he has given supremacy in oratory, are his two, his only two godlike heroes (θεῖοι), the Achilles and the Ulysses, each of whom bears up, like the Atlas of tradition, the weight of the epic to which he principally belongs.

How could Homer have conceived thoughts like these, if government in his eyes had rested upon either force or fraud? Moreover, when he speaks of persuasion and of strength or valour, of the action of the tongue and that of the hand, he clearly does not mean that these elements are mixed in the ordinary conduct of a sovereign to his subjects: he means the first for peace, the latter for war; the first to be his sole instrument for governing his own people, the latter for their enemies alone.

If, again, we endeavour to estimate the importance of Speech in the heroic age by the degree in which the faculty was actually cultivated, we must take the achievements of the Poet as the best indicators of the capacities of the age. The speeches which Homer has put into the mouths of his leading orators should be tolerably fair representatives of the best performances of the time. Nor is it possible that in any age there should be in a few a capacity for making such speeches, without a capacity in many for receiving, feeling, and comprehending them. Poets of modern times have composed great works, in ages that stopped their ears against them. ‘Paradise Lost’ does not represent the time of Charles the Second, nor the ‘Excursion’ the first decades of the present century. The case of the orator is entirely different. His work, from its very inception, is inextricably mixed up with practice. It is cast in the mould offered to him by the mind of his hearers. It is an influence principally received from his audience (so to speak) in vapour, which he pours back upon them in a flood. The sympathy and concurrence of his time is with his own mind joint parent of his work. He cannot follow nor frame ideals; his choice is, to be what his age will have him, what it requires in order to be moved by him, or else not to be at all. And as when we find the speeches in Homer, we know that there must have been men who could speak them, so, from the existence of units who could speak them, we know that there must have been crowds who could feel them.

The orations of the Poems.

Now if we examine those orations, we shall, I think, find not only that they contain specimens of transcendent eloquence which have never been surpassed, but likewise that they evince the most comprehensive knowledge, and the most varied and elastic use, of all the resources of the art. If we seek a specimen of invective, let us take the speeches of Achilles in the debate of the First Iliad. If it is the loftiest tone of terrible declamation that we desire, I know not where (to speak with moderation) we can find any thing that in grandeur can surpass the passage (Il. xvi. 74-9) beginning,

οὐ γὰρ Τυδειδέω Διομήδεος ἐν παλάμῃσιν
μαίνεται ἐγχείη, κ. τ. λ.

But if it is solemnity that is sought, nothing can, I think, excel the ναὶ μὰ τόδε σκῆπτρον. (Il. i. 233-44.)

What more admirable example of comprehensive statement, which exhausts the case, and absolutely shuts up the mouth of the adversary, than in the speech of Ulysses to Euryalus, who has reproached him with looking like a sharper? That speech consists of twenty lines: and I think any one who attempts to give a really accurate summary of it will be apt to find that his epitome, if it be at all complete, has become unawares a paraphrase. Nor is Homer less successful in showing us, how he has sounded the depths of pathos. For though the speeches of Priam to Achilles in the Twenty-fourth Iliad are spoken privately, and from man to man only, and are therefore not in the nature of oratory properly so called, they are conclusive, a fortiori, as to his knowledge of the instruments by which the human affections might be moved so much more easily, when the speaker would be assisted at once by the friendliness and by the electric sympathies of a multitude.

Repartee and Sarcasm.

All these are direct instruments of influence on the mind and actions of man. But of assaults in flank Homer is quite as great a master. He shows a peculiar genius for that which is properly called repartee; for that form of speech, which flings back upon the opponent the stroke of his own weapon, or on the supplicant the plea of his own prayer. There was one Antimachus, a Trojan, who had grown wealthy, probably by the bribes which he received from Paris in consideration of his always opposing, in the Trojan Agorè, the restoration of Helen to the Greeks. His sons are mastered by Agamemnon in the field. Aware that he had a thirst for money, they cry, ‘Quarter, Agamemnon! we are the sons of rich Antimachus: he will pay well for our lives.’ ‘If,’ replies the king, ‘you are the sons of that Antimachus, who, when Menelaus came as envoy to Troy, advised to take and slay him, here and now shall ye expiate your father’s infamy[222 - Il. xi. 122-42.].’ Compare with this the yet sharper turn of Ulysses on Leiodes in the Odyssey: ‘Spare me, Ulysses! I have done no ill in your halls; I stopped what ill I could; I was but Augur to the Suitors.’ Then follows the stern reply. ‘If thou dost avow that thou art Augur to the Suitors, then often in prayer must thou have augured my destruction, and desired my wife for thine own; wherefore thou shalt not escape the painsome bed of death[223 - Od. xxii. 310-25.].’

But the weapons of sarcasm, from the lightest to the weightiest, are wielded by Homer with almost greater effect than any others. As a sample of the former, I take the speech of Phœnix when he introduces, by way of parable, the Legend of Meleager. ‘As long as Meleager fought, all was well; but when rage took possession of him – which (I would just observe) now and then bewilders other great minds also – then,’ and so onward.

But for the great master of this art, Homer has chosen Achilles. As with his invectives he grinds to powder, so with the razor edge of the most refined irony he cuts his way in a moment to the quick. When Greece, in the person of the envoy-kings, is at his feet, and he has spurned them away, he says, ‘No: I will go home: you can come and see me depart – if you think it worth your while.’

ὄψεαι, ἢν ἐθέλῃσθα, καὶ αἴ κέν τοι τὰ μεμήλῃ.

Of this passage, Il. ix. 356-64, the following translation may give a very imperfect idea[224 - The version of Voss is very accurate, but, I think, lifeless. The version of Cowper is at this point not satisfactory: he weakens, by exaggerating, the delicate expression μεμήλῃ:Look thou forth at early dawn,And, if such spectacle delight thee aught,Thou shalt behold me cleaving with my prows, &c.The version of Pope simply omits the line!Tomorrow we the favouring gods implore:Then shall you see our parting vessels crowned,And hear with oars the Hellespont resound.]: