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

Of the Greeks nine are named in Il. xi. 301-3, who were slain by Hector at once, before he went among the privates (πληθύς). Of these nine no one is mentioned in any other part of the poem; and since at the same time they are expressly declared to be ἡγεμόνες, we may safely look upon them as examples of the class of minor or secondary officers. From their names, which have a strong Hellenic colour[181 - Vid. Achæis or Ethnology, p. 574.], we may venture at least to conjecture, that this class was chiefly Achæan, or of Achæan rank, and that the Pelasgian blood of the army was principally among the common soldiers.

The maritime order of the armament, which required a commander for each vessel, necessarily involved the existence of a class of what we may call subaltern officers.

When Helen describes the chieftains to Priam from the tower, of whom Idomeneus is one, she proceeds (Il. iii. 231);

ἀμφὶ δέ μιν Κρητῶν ἀγοὶ ἠγερέθονται.

Again, when Achilles went with fifty ships to Troy, he divided his 2500 men under five ἡγεμόνες, whom he appointed to give the word of command (σημαίνειν) under him. The force thus arranged formed five στίχες or ranks, Il. xvi. 168-72: and here the private persons are expressly called ἑταῖροι (ver. 170). Most probably these ἀγοὶ of the Cretans, and these five Myrmidon leaders, are to be considered as belonging to a class below the ἀριστῆες, yet above the subalterns.

Lastly, we have to notice the privates, so to speak, of the Greek army, who are called by the several names of λαὸς (Il. ii. 191. i. 54), δῆμος (ii. 198), and πληθὺς (ii. 278).

In their military character they are indeed a mass of atoms, undistinguishable from one another, but yet distinguished by their silence and order, which was founded probably on confidence in their leaders.

The descriptions of fighting men.

No private or nameless[182 - Even the instance, in Il. xiii. 211, of a nameless person who had simply been wounded is a rare, if not indeed the single, exception.] person of the Greek army, however, on any occasion performs any feat, either great or small: these are always achieved by the men of birth and station: and the three designations we have mentioned, the only ones which are used to designate the whole mass of the soldiery, represent them to us as a community bearing arms, rather than as an army in any sense that is technical or professional.

All these were entitled to attend the ἀγορὴ, or Assembly, if they pleased. And accordingly, on the first Assembly that Achilles attended after renouncing his wrath, we find that, from the great interest of the occasion, even those persons were present who did not usually appear: namely, the pilots of the ships, and others who probably had charge of them while ashore, together with those who managed the provisioning of the force (ταμίαι), or, in our language, the commissariat (Il. xix. 42-5).

In their strictly military capacity they were, however, divided into

1. ἱππῆες, who fought in chariots, commonly (Il. xxiii. 334-40) with two horses. When there were three (xvi. 467-75), the outrunner was called παρήορος. The chariot of Hector was drawn by four horses (viii. 185), but we have no such case among the Greeks. Two persons went in each chariot; of whom the inferior (ἠνίοχος) drove, and the superior (παρέβασκε) stood by him free to fight. But probably none of these ἱππῆες were of the mere πληθὺς of the army, or common soldiery.

2. ἀσπισταί, the heavy-armed, of the σταδίη ὑσμίνη. These use the longer spear, the axe, the sword, or the stone.

3. ἀκοντίσται, using the lighter spear (Il. xv. 709. xxiii. 622. Od. xviii. 261).

4. τοξόται (Il. ii. 720. iii. 79).

Again, the men are distinguished by epithets according to merit; each being ἔξοχος, μεσήεις, or χερειότερος (Il. xii. 269), or even κακός; and with the last-named the precaution is taken to place them in the midst of their comrades.

The policy of Nestor, which recommended the muster of the whole army, with a view to stronger mutual support among those who had peculiar ties, was entirely in harmony with what we meet elsewhere in the poems. For instance, in the defence of the rampart in the Thirteenth Book, we find Bœotians, Athenians, and Locrians[183 - Il. xiii. 685.], who were neighbours, all mentioned as fighting side by side.

All ranks apparently went to the Assemblies as freemen, and were treated there by their superiors with respect. It was not those of the common sort in general, but only such as were clamorous for the tumultuary breaking up of the Assembly, that Ulysses went so far as to hit (ἐλάσασκε) with the staff he bore, the supreme sceptre of Agamemnon. In addressing them he used the word δαιμόνιε, the same word which he employed to their superiors, the kings and chiefs (Il. ii. 190, 200). When they heard a speech that they approved of, they habitually and immediately shouted in applause[184 - Il. ii. 333.],

Ἀργεῖοι δὲ μέγ’ ἴαχον …
μῦθον ἐπαινήσαντες Ὀδυσσῆος θείοιο·

and they commented freely among themselves on what occurred (Il. ii. 271 and elsewhere).

The modes of warfare in the heroic age were very simple: the open battle was a battle of main force, as regarded both the chieftains and the men, relieved from time to time by a sprinkling of panics. But besides the battle, there was another and a more distinguished mode of fighting: that of the λόχος or ambuscade. And the different estimate of the two, which reverses the popular view, is eminently illustrative of the Greek character.

The λόχος or ambuscade.

In that epitome of human life, which Homer has presented to us on the Shield of Achilles, martial operations are of course included. The collective life of man is represented by two cities, one for peace and the other for war. Two armies appear beneath the walls of the latter; and one of these takes its post in an ambush[185 - Il. xviii. 509, 13, 20.]. Whenever persons were to be appointed out of an army for this duty, the noblest and bravest were chosen. Hence Achilles launches the double reproach against Agamemnon, that he has never had spirit enough to arm either with the soldiery at large for battle, or with the chiefs and prime warriors for ambuscade[186 - Il. i. 226.]. And the reason why the ambuscade stood thus high as the duty and the privilege of the best, is explained in an admirable speech of Idomeneus. It is simply because it involves a higher trial, through the patience it requires, of moral as opposed to animal courage.

The Cretan leader supposes the case to have occurred, when all the flower of the army are picked for an ambush. ‘There,’ he says, ‘is the true criterion of valour;

ἔνθα μάλιστ’ ἀρετὴ διαείδεται ἀνδρῶν·

and there it soon appears who is the hero, and who the coward; for the flesh of the poltroon turns to one colour and another, nor can he settle his mind so as to sit quiet, for his knees yield under him, and he shifts from resting on one foot to resting on the other; his heart is fluttering in his breast, and his teeth chatter, as he gives himself up for lost: but the brave man, from the moment when he takes his place in the ambush, neither changes colour, nor is over nervous; but only prays that the time may soon come for him to mingle in the fearful fight[187 - Il. xiii. 276-86.].’ Then he goes on to commend Meriones as one suited for such a trial.

In exact conformity with what we should expect from these descriptions, it appears that Ulysses was the warrior who was preeminent in the λόχος, while Achilles towered so immeasurably above all others in the field. When the Greeks were concealed in the cavity of the Horse, and Helen came down from the city imitating the voices of their wives, Menelaus and Diomed were on the point of either going forth, or answering; but Ulysses restrained them. One Anticlos was still unwilling to be silent; and Ulysses, resolutely gagging him with his hand, ‘saved the lives of all the Achæans[188 - Od. iv. 277-88.].’ In all this we again see how the poems of Homer are, like the Shield, an epitome of life. All the points of capital and paramount excellence, for which he could find no place in the hero of the one poem, he has fully represented in the hero of the other; and he has so exhausted, between the two, the resources of our nature, and likewise its appliances as they were then understood, that, had he produced yet a third Epic, not even he could have furnished a third protagonist to form its centre, who should have been worthy to count with Achilles and Ulysses among the undying ideals of human greatness.

We have now considered the Greek community of the heroic age, as it was divided in time of peace into classes, and as in time of war it resolved all its more potent and energetic elements into the form of a military order.

We have also examined the position and functions of the king; who was at once a person, a class, and a great political institution. It remains to consider two other political institutions of heroic Greece, which not only, with the king, made up the whole machinery both of civil and military administration for that period, but likewise supplied the essential germ, at least, of that form of constitution, on which the best governments of the continent of Europe have, two of them within the last quarter of a century, been modelled, with such deviations as experience has recommended, or the change of times has required. I mean the form of government by a threefold legislative body, having for one of its members, and for its head, a single person, in whose hands the executive power of the state is lodged. This form has been eminently favoured in Christendom, in Europe, and in England; and it has even survived the passage of the Atlantic, and the transition, in the United States of America, to institutions which are not only republican, but highly democratic.

The Greek Βουλὴ or Council.

Of these two Greek institutions, we will examine first the βουλὴ, or Council.

It was the usage of the Greeks to consider, in a small preliminary meeting of principal persons, which was called the βουλὴ, of the measures to be taken in managing the Assembly, or ἀγορή.

To the persons, who were summoned thither, the name of γέροντες appears to have been officially applied. It had thus become dissociated from the idea of age, its original signification: for Nestor was the only old man among the Greek senators. Idomeneus, indeed, was near upon old age: Ulysses was elderly (ὠμογέρων[189 - Il. xxiii. 791.]), apparently not under fifty. The majority would seem to have been rather under middle life; so that γέρων was, when thus employed, a title, not a description. The βουλὴ was composed of the men of greatest rank and weight; and no more required an advanced age among the qualifications for it, than does the presbyterate of the Christian Church, though it too signifies eldership.

Before the great assembly of the Second Book, we are told, not that Agamemnon thought it would be well, as it were for the nonce, to consult the kings or seniors of the expedition; but, in language which indicates a fixed practice, that the choice of the place for the meeting was on this occasion by the ship of Nestor, whose great age possibly either made nearness convenient, or entitled him to this mark of honour:

βουλὴ δὲ πρῶτον μεγαθύμων ἷζε γερόντων
Νεστορέῃ παρὰ νηῒ Πυλαιγενέος βασιλῆος. Il. ii. 53.

These γέροντες were summoned[190 - Il. ii. 408-9.] again by Agamemnon before the sacrifice of the Second Book, which preceded the enumeration. On this occasion they are not called a βουλή; probably because they were not called for consultation.

The Council meets again in the Ninth Book[191 - Il. ix. 10. 89.], by appointment of the Assembly, and sends the mission to Achilles[192 - Il. x. 195.]. In the same night, and perhaps under the same authority, the expedition of Ulysses and Diomed is arranged.

There is no βουλὴ indeed in the First Book, and none in the great Assembly of the Nineteenth: but then both of these were summoned by Achilles, not by Agamemnon, and neither of them were called for properly deliberative purposes[193 - Il. i. 54. xix. 41.].

Again, Ulysses, in urging the Greeks not to quit the assembly of the Second Book prematurely, reminds them that they ought to know fully the views of Agamemnon, and that they have not all had the advantage of learning those views in the βουλή.

In the Seventh Book, the Council held under the roof of Agamemnon forms the plan for a pause to bury the dead, and erect the rampart. Accordingly, when just afterwards a herald arrives with a proposal from Troy, he finds the Greeks in their Assembly, doubtless an Assembly held to sanction the project of the kings. That this amounted to an institution of the Greeks, we may further judge from the familiar manner, in which Nestor mentions it in the Odyssey to Telemachus, on seeing him for the first time, (Od. iii. 127). ‘Ulysses and I,’ he says, ‘never differed:’ οὔτε ποτ’ εἰν ἀγορῇ δίχ’ ἐβάζομεν, οὔτ’ ἐνὶ βουλῇ[194 - Il. vii. 344, 382.].

Among other causes, which might tend to promote the establishment of the Greek βουλὴ or Council, we may perhaps reckon with propriety the inability of the old to discharge the full duties of sovereignty in the heroic age. Bodily force usually undergoes a certain amount of decay, before the mind has passed out of its ripeness; and both kings and subordinate lords, who had ceased to possess the strength that was requisite for bearing the principal burdens of government, might still make their experience available for the public good in the Council; even as we find that in Troas the brothers of Priam, with others advanced in life, were the principal advisers of the Assembly[195 - Il. iii. 146-53.].

The βουλὴ in time of peace.

I admit that we have no example to give of the use of the βουλὴ by the Greeks during peace, so precise as those which the Iliad supplies for time of war. But even in war we do not find it except before Assemblies, which had deliberative business to transact. Now the only deliberative Greek ἀγορὴ which we meet with in time of peace is that of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey. The absence of a sovereign and a government in Ithaca at that time, and the utter discord of the principal persons, made a Council quite impossible, and left no measure open except a direct appeal to the people.

It appears however clear, that the action of the βουλὴ was not confined to war. For we not only find the γέροντες on the Shield[196 - Il. xviii. 506.], who sit in the ἀγορὴ, exercising exclusively the office of judges, but they are also distinctly noticed as a class or order[197 - Od. ii. 14.] in the Ithacan Assembly, who had a place in it set apart for themselves. Nor are we without a proof which, though conveyed in few words, is complete, of the conjunction of the Council with the sovereign in acts of government. For when Ulysses in his youth undertook the mission to Messene, in the matter of the sheep that had been carried off from Ithaca, he did it under the orders of Laertes, together with his council[198 - Od. xxi. 21.]:

πρὸ γὰρ ἧκε πατὴρ ἄλλοι τε γέροντες.

And Nausicaa meets her father Alcinous, on his way to the βουλὴ of the Phæacians.

Upon the whole, the βουλὴ seems to have been a most important auxiliary instrument of government; sometimes as preparing materials for the more public deliberations of the Assembly, sometimes intrusted, as a kind of executive committee, with its confidence; always as supplying the Assemblies with an intellectual and authoritative element, in a concentrated form, which might give steadiness to its tone, and advise its course with a weight adequate to so important a function.

Opposition in the βουλή.

The individuals who composed this Council were of such a station that, when they acted separately, King Agamemnon himself might have to encounter resistance and reproof from them in various instances. Accordingly, upon the occasion when Agamemnon made a survey of the army, and when he thought fit to rebuke Ulysses for slackness, that chieftain remonstrated with him something more than freely (ὑποδρὰ ἰδὼν) both in voice and manner. So far from trusting to his authority, Agamemnon made a soothing and even an apologetic reply[199 - Il. iv. 329-63.]. Again, when on the same occasion he reproved Diomed[200 - Ibid. 385-418.], Sthenelus defended his immediate Chief in vainglorious terms. These the more refined nature of Diomed himself induced him at once to disclaim, but they do not appear to have been considered as involving any thing in the nature of an offence against the station of Agamemnon. Again, though Diomed on this occasion restrained his lieutenant, yet, when he meets Agamemnon in the Assembly of the Ninth Book, he frankly tells him that Jupiter, who has given him the honours of the sceptre, has not endowed him with the superior power that springs from determined courage[201 - Il. ix. 37.]; and even the passionate invectives of Achilles in the First Book bear a similar testimony, because they do not appear to have been treated as constituting any infringement of his duty.