Over his dead body the combat grows furious—the Greeks endeavouring to drag him off to strip his armour, the Trojans to prevent it. The armour of a vanquished enemy was, in these combats, something like what an enemy’s scalp is to the Indian “brave;” to carry it off in triumph, and hang it up in their own tents as a trophy, was the great ambition of the slayer and his friends. Ajax, too, slays his man—spearing him right through from breast to shoulder: and the tall Trojan falls like a poplar—

Ulysses, roused by the death of a friend who is killed in trying to carry off this last body, rushes to the front, and poising his spear, looks round to choose his victim. The foremost of his enemies recoil; but he drives his weapon right through the temples of Demophoon, a natural son of Priam, as he sits high in his chariot. The Trojans waver; even Hector gives ground; the Greeks cheer, and some carry off the bodies, while the rest press forward. It is going hard with Troy, when Apollo, who sits watching the battle from the citadel, calls loudly to their troops to remember that “there is no Achilles in the field to-day.” So the fight is renewed, Minerva cheering on the Greeks, as Apollo does the Trojans.

Diomed, the gallant son of Tydeus, now becomes the hero of the day. His exploits occupy, indeed, so large a portion of the next book of the poem, that it was known as “The Deeds of Diomed,” and would form, according to one theory, a separate romance or lay of itself, exactly as some portions of the Arthurian romance have for their exclusive hero some one renowned Knight of the Round Table, as Tristram or Lancelot. Diomed fights under supernatural colours. Minerva herself not only inspires him with indomitable courage, but sheds over his whole person a halo of celestial radiance before which the bravest Trojan might well recoil—

Once more the prince of archers, Pandarus the Lycian, comes to the rescue of the discomfited Trojans. He bends his bow against Diomed, who is now fighting on foot, and the arrow flies true to its mark. He sees it strike deep into the shoulder, and the red blood streams out visibly over the breastplate. Elated by his success, he turns round and shouts his triumphant rallying-cry to the Trojans—“The bravest of the Greeks is wounded to the death!” But his exultation is premature. Diomed gets him back to his chariot, and calls on his faithful friend and charioteer Sthenelus to draw the arrow from the wound. The blood wells out fast, as the barb is withdrawn; but the hero puts up a brief prayer to his guardian goddess for strength yet to avenge him of his adversary, whose exulting boast he has just heard. Minerva hears. By some rapid celestial pharmacy she heals the wound at once, and gives him fresh strength and vigour, adding these words of encouragement and warning:—

With redoubled vigour and fury the hero returns to the battle; and again the Trojans’ names, to each of which the poet contrives to give some touch of individual character, swell the list of his victims. Æneas marks his terrible career, and goes to seek for Pandarus. He points out to him the movements of the Greek champion, and bids him try upon his person the far-famed skill that had so nearly turned the fate of war in the case of Menelaus. Pandarus tells him of his late unsuccessful attempt, and declares his full belief that some glamour of more than mortal power has made Diomed invulnerable to human weapons. He bitterly regrets, as he tells Æneas, that he did not follow the counsels of his father Lycaon, and bring with him to the campaign, like other chiefs of his rank, some of those noble steeds of whom eleven pair stand always in his father’s stalls, “champing the white barley and the spelt.” He had feared, in truth, that they might lack provender in the straits of the siege:—

Æneas bids him mount with him into his chariot, and together they will encounter this redoubtable Greek. Pandarus takes the spear and shield, while Æneas guides the horses. Diomed is still fighting on foot, when Sthenelus, who attends him with the chariot, sees the two hostile chiefs bearing down upon him. He begs his comrade to remount, and avoid the encounter with two such adversaries. Diomed indignantly refuses. He will slay both, with the help of Heaven; and he charges Sthenelus, if such should be the happy result, to leave his own horses and chariot, securing the reins carefully to the chariot-front, and make prize of the far-famed steeds of Æneas—they are descended from the immortal breed bestowed of old by Jupiter upon King Tros. So, on foot still, he awaits their onset. Pandarus stands high in the chariot with poised weapon, and hails his enemy as he comes within hurling distance:—

It does enter, and piercing through the tough ox-hide of the shield, stands fixed in the breastplate. Again, with premature triumph, he shouts exultingly to Diomed that at last he has got his death-wound. But the Greek quietly tells him that he has missed—which assuredly he himself is not going to do. He hurls his spear in turn with fatal aim: and the poet tells us with ghastly detail how it entered beneath the eyeball, and passed down through the “white teeth” and tongue—

and Pandarus the Lycian closes his career, free at least from the baseness which medieval romances have attached to his name.

Æneas, in obedience to the laws of heroic chivalry, at once leaps down from the chariot to defend against all comers the body of his fallen comrade.

Diomed in this case avails himself of a mode of attack not uncommon with Homer’s heroes. He seizes a huge stone—which not two men of this degenerate age (says Homer, with a poet’s cynicism for the present) could have lifted—and hurls it at the Trojan prince. It strikes him on the hip, crushes the joint, and brings him to his knees. But that his goddess-mother Venus comes to his rescue, the world had heard the last of Æneas, and Virgil must have sought another hero for his great poem.

Sthenelus, for his part, remembers the orders of his friend and chief, and drives off at once to the Greek camp with the much-coveted horses of Æneas. Diomed rushes in pursuit of Venus—whom he knows, by his new gift of clear vision—as she carries off her son through the ranks of the Trojans. She, at least, of all the divinities of Olympus, had no business, thought the Greek, in the mêlée of battle. Besides, he had received from Minerva special permission to attack her. Most ungallantly, to our notions, he does so. The scene is such a curious one, that it is well to give Lord Derby’s version of it:—

It is the original of the grand passage in the ‘Paradise Lost,’ in which the English poet has adopted almost literally the Homeric idea of suffering inflicted on an immortal essence, while carefully avoiding the ludicrous element in the scene. In the battle of the Angels, Michael cleaves Satan down the right side:—

In sore plight the goddess mounts to Olympus, and there, throwing herself into the arms of her mother Dione, bewails the wrong she has suffered at the hands of a presumptuous mortal. Dione comforts her as best she may, reminding her how in times past other of the Olympian deities have had to endure woes from men: Mars, when the giants Otus and Ephialtes bound him for thirteen months in brazen fetters; Juno herself, the queen of Heaven, and Pluto, the king of the Shades, had been wounded by the daring Hercules. She foretells, however, an untimely death for the presumptuous hero who has raised his hand against a goddess:—

But Dione is no prophet. Diomed returned home (if the later legends are to be believed) to find that his wife Ægiale had been anything but inconsolable during his absence.

Venus’ wound is healed, and her tears are soon dried. But Minerva—whose province in the celestial government seems to be not only wisdom but satire—cannot resist a jest upon the unfortunate plight of the Queen of Love. She points her out to Jupiter, and suggests as a probable explanation of the wound, that she has been trying to lead astray some other fair Greek, like Helen,—

Jupiter smiles, and calling his pouting daughter-goddess to his side, recommends her in future to leave to Mars and Minerva the dangers of the battle-field, and confine her own prowess to campaigns in which she is likely to be more victorious.

Diomed is still rushing in pursuit of Æneas. He knows that Apollo is shielding him; but not even this knowledge checks the impetuous Greek.

Diomed accepts the warning, and Æneas is carried off to the temple of Apollo in the citadel, where Latona and Diana tend and heal him. Apollo meanwhile replaces him in the battle by a phantom likeness, round which Greeks and Trojans continue the fight. Then he calls his brother deity the War-god to the rescue of the hard-prest Trojans, and entreats him to scare from the field this irreverent and outrageous champion, who, he verily believes, would lift his spear against Olympian Jove himself. In the likeness of a Thracian chief, Mars calls Hector to the rescue; and the Trojan prince leaps from his chariot, and, crying his battle-cry, turns the tide of war. Æneas is restored, sound and well, to his place in the mêlée—somewhat indeed to the astonishment of his friends, who had seen him lying so long grievously wounded; but, as the poet pithily remarks, little time had they to ask him questions. The two Ajaxes, Ulysses, Menelaus, and Agamemnon himself, “king of men,” come to the forefront of the Greek battle: and the young Antilochus, son of the venerable Nestor, notably wins his spurs. But the Trojans have supernatural aid: and Diomed, of the purged vision, cries to his friends to beware, for that he sees the War-god in their front brandishing his huge spear. The Greek line warily gives ground before this immortal adversary. The Queen of Heaven can no longer endure to be a mere spectatress of the peril of her favourites. She obtains permission from Jupiter to send Minerva against Mars: and the two goddesses, seated in Juno’s chariot of state, glide down from Olympus—

and alight upon the plain of Troy. There Juno, taking human shape, taunts the Greek troops with cowardice—

and whose name has made a familiar place for itself in our English vocabulary.

Minerva seeks out Diomed, whom she finds leaning on his chariot, resting awhile from the fight, and bathing the wound made by the arrow of Pandarus. She taunts him with his inferiority to his great father Tydeus, who was, she reminds him, “small in stature, but every inch a soldier.” Diomed excuses himself by reference to her own charge to him—to fight with none of the immortals save Venus only. But now the goddess withdraws the prohibition, and herself—putting on the “helmet of darkness,” to hide herself from Mars—takes her place beside him in the chariot, instead of Sthenelus, his henchman and charioteer: and the chariot-axle groans beneath the more than mortal load. They drive in full career against the War-god: in vain he hurls his spear against Diomed, for the hand of the goddess turns it safely aside. The mortal champion is more successful: his spear strikes Mars in the flank, piercing the flesh, and drawing from him, as from Venus, the heavenly “ichor.” And the wounded god cries out with a shout like that of ten thousand men, so that both hosts listen to the sound with awe and trembling. He too, like Venus, flies to Olympus, and there makes piteous complaint of the impious deeds which, at the instigation of Minerva, this headstrong mortal is permitted to do. His father Jupiter rates him soundly, as the outlaw of the Olympian family, inheriting his mother Juno’s headstrong temper. However, he bids Pæon, the physician of the immortals, heal the wound, and Hebe prepares him a bath. Juno and Minerva have done their work, having driven Mars from the field, and they too quit the plains of Troy, and leave the mortal heroes to themselves.

While Diomed still pursues his career of slaughter, Menelaus gives token of that easy and pliant disposition which half explains his behaviour to Helen. He has at his mercy a Trojan who has been thrown from his chariot, and begs his life. The fair-haired king is about to spare him,—as none in the whole story of the fight is spared,—when his brother Agamemnon comes up, and after chiding him for such soft-heartedness, pins the wretched suppliant to the ground with his ashen spear.

So the fight goes on through the sixth book; which is, however, chiefly remarkable for two of the most striking episodes in the poem. The first is the meeting of Diomed with the young Lycian captain, Glaucus. Encountering him in the field, and struck by his bold bearing, he asks his name and race. Glaucus replies with that pathetic simile which, found under many forms in many poets, has its earliest embodiment in the verse of the Hebrew Psalmist and the Greek bard. “The days of man are but as grass.”

The young chieftain goes on, nevertheless, to announce his birth and lineage. He is the grandson of the noble Bellerophon—the rider of the wondrous horse Pegasus and the slayer of the monster Chimæra—all of whose exploits he narrates at length, with some disregard to probabilities, in the full roar of the battle round him. It turns out that he and Diomed are bound together by a tie which all of Greek blood scrupulously respected—the rights of hospitality exercised towards each other by some of their ancestors. Such obligations descended from father to son, and served from time to time to mitigate the fierce and vindictive spirit of an age when every man’s hand was in some sort against another. The grandfather of Diomed had been Bellerophon’s guest and friend. So the Greek places his spear in the ground, and vows that he will not raise his arm against Glaucus. There are enough besides of the Trojan allies for him to slay, and Glaucus may find Greeks enough on whom to flesh his valour; but for themselves, the old hereditary bond shall hold good, and in token of amity they will change armour. A good exchange, indeed, for Diomed; for whereas his own is but of the ordinary brass or bronze, the young Lycian’s panoply is richly inlaid with gold—“a hundred oxen’s worth for the worth of nine.” The Greek words have passed into a proverb.

The Trojans are still hard prest, and by the advice of his brother Helenus, who has the gift of soothsaying, and is as it were the domestic priest of the royal household, Hector hastens to the city, and directs his mother Hecuba to go with her matrons in solemn procession to the temple of Pallas, and beseech the goddess to withdraw the terrible Diomed from the field. In the palace, to his indignation, he finds Paris dallying with Helen, and polishing his armour instead of joining the fight. Hector upbraids him sharply: and Helen, in a speech full of self-abasement, laments the unworthiness of her paramour. Hector speaks no word of reproach to her, though he gently declines her invitation to rest himself also a while from the battle. Paris promises to follow him at once to the field; and Hector moves on to his own wife’s apartments, to see her and his child once more before he goes back to the combat which he has a half-foreboding will end fatally for himself, whatever be the fortunes of Troy.

And now we are introduced to the second female character in the poem, standing in the strongest possible contrast with that of Helen, but of no less admirable conception. It is remarkable how entirely Homer succeeds in interesting us in his women, without having recourse to what might seem to us the very natural expedient of dwelling on their personal charms; especially when it is taken into account that, in his simple narrative, he has not the resources of the modern novelist, who can make even the plainest heroine attractive by painting her mental perfections, or setting before us the charms of her conversation. It has been said that he rather assumes than describes the beauty of Helen: in the case of Andromache, it has been remarked that he never once applies to her any epithet implying personal attractions, though all his translators, Lord Derby included, have been tempted to do so. It is as the wife and mother that Andromache charms us. We readily assume that she is comely, graceful—all that a woman should be; but it is simple grace of domestic character which forms the attraction of the Trojan princess.

Hector does not find her, as he expects, in the palace. She had heard how the fortunes of the day seemed turning against the Trojans; and she had hurried, “like one distraught,” to the tower of the citadel, to see with her own eyes how the fight was going. He meets her at the Scæan gates, with the nurse and the child, “whom Hector called Scamandrius, from the river, but the citizens Astyanax”—“defender of the city.” The father looks silently on his boy, and smiles; Andromache in tears clings to her husband, and makes a pathetic appeal to him not to be too prodigal of a life which is so dear to his wife and child. Her fate has been already that of many women of her day. Her father and seven tall brethren have been slain by the fierce Achilles, when ravaging the country round Troy he destroyed their native city of Cilician Thebes: her mother too is dead, and she is left alone. She adds the touching loving confession, which Pope’s version has made popular enough even to unclassical ears—

Hector soothes her, but it is with a mournful foreboding of evil to come. He values too much his own honour and fair fame to shrink from the battle:—

But that which wrings his heart most of all is the vision before his eyes of his beloved wife dragged into slavery. Pope’s version of the rest of the passage is so good of its kind, and has so naturalised the scene to our English conceptions, that no closer version will ever supersede it.

The “charms,” be it said, are entirely Pope’s idea, and do not harmonise with the simplicity of the true Homeric picture. The husband was not thinking of his wife’s beauty. He “caresses her with his hand,” and tries to cheer her with the thought that no hero dies until his work is done.

The tender yet half-contemptuous tone in which the iron soldier relegates the woman to her own inferior cares, is true to the spirit of every age in which war is the main business of man’s life. Something in the same tone is the charming scene between Hotspur and his lady in Shakspeare’s ‘Henry IV.’

Hector and his wife part; he to the fight, accompanied now by Paris, girt for the battle in glittering armour, the show knight of the Trojans: Andromache back to the palace, casting many a lingering glance behind at the gallant husband she is fated never again to see alive. The Roman ladies of the last days of the Republic were not much given to sentiment; but we do not wonder that Brutus’s wife, Portia, knowing well the Homeric story, was moved to tears in looking at a picture of this parting scene.

CHAPTER V.

THE SECOND DAY’S BATTLE.

By the advice of his brother Helenus, who knows the counsels of heaven, Hector now challenges the Greek host to match some one of their chieftains against him in single combat. There is an unwillingness even amongst the bravest to accept the defiance—so terrible is the name of Hector. Menelaus—always gallant and generous—is indignant at their cowardice, and offers himself as the champion. He feels he is no match for Hector; but, as he says with modest confidence, the issues in such case lie in the hands of heaven. But Agamemnon, ever affectionately careful of his brother, will not suffer such unequal risk: some more stalwart warrior shall be found to maintain the honour of the Achæans. Old Nestor rises, and loudly regrets that he has no longer the eye and sinews of his youth—but the men of Greece, he sees with shame, are not now what they were in his day. Stung by the taunt, nine chiefs spring to their feet at once, and offer themselves for the combat. Conspicuous amongst them are Diomed, the giant Ajax, and King Agamemnon himself; and when the choice of a champion is referred to lot, the hopes and wishes of the whole army are audibly expressed, that on one of these three the lot may fall. It falls on Ajax; and amidst the congratulations and prayers of his comrades, the tall chieftain dons his armour, and strides forth to meet his adversary. The combat is maintained with vigour on both sides, till dusk comes on; the heralds interpose, and they separate with mutual courtesies and exchange of presents.

Both armies agree to a truce, that they may collect and burn their dead who strew the plain thickly after the long day’s battle. The Trojans, dispirited by their loss, and conscious that, owing to the breach of the first truce by the treacherous act of Pandarus, they are fighting under the curse of perjury, hold a council of war, in which Antenor (the Nestor of Troy) proposes to restore Helen and her wealth, and so put an end at last to this weary siege. But Paris refuses—he will give back the treasure, but not Helen; and the proposal thus made is spurned by the Greeks as an insult. They busy themselves in building a fortification—ditch, and wall, and palisade—to protect their fleet from any sudden incursion of the Trojans. When this great work is completed, they devote the next night to one of those heavy feasts and deep carousals, to which men of the heroic mould have always had the repute of being addicted in the intervals of hard fighting. Most opportunely, a fleet of merchant-ships comes in from Lemnos, laden with wine; in part a present sent by Euneus, son of the renowned voyager Jason, to the two royal brothers; in part a trading speculation, which meets with immediate success among the thirsty host. The thunder of Olympus rolls all through the night, for the Thunderer is angry at the prolongation of the war: but the Greeks content their consciences with pouring copious libations to appease his wrath, and after their prolonged revelry sink into careless slumber.

At daybreak Jupiter holds a council in Olympus, and harangues the assembled deities at some length—with a special request that he may not be interrupted. He forbids, on pain of his royal displeasure, any further interference on the part of the Olympians on either side in the contest; and then, mounting his chariot, descends in person to Mount Ida to survey the field of battle, once more crowded with fierce combatants. He hesitates, apparently, which side he shall aid—for he has no intention of observing for himself the neutrality which he has so strictly enjoined upon others. So he weighs in a balance the fates of Greek and Trojan: the former draws down the scale, while the destiny of Troy mounts to heaven. The metaphor is reversed, according to our modern notions; it is the losing side which should be found wanting when weighed in the balance. And so Milton has it in the passage which is undoubtedly founded on these lines of Homer. “The Omnipotent,” says Milton,

And Gabriel bids Satan look up, and mark the warning:—

In accordance with this decision the Thunderer sends his lightnings down upon the host of the Greeks, and throws them into terror and confusion. Nestor, still in the thickest of the fray, has one of his chariot-horses killed by a shaft from the bow of Paris; and while he is thus all but helpless, Diomed sees the terrible Hector bearing down on the old chief in full career. He bids Nestor mount with him, and together they encounter the Trojan prince, against whom Diomed hurls his spear: he misses Hector, but kills his charioteer. As Diomed presses on, a thunderbolt from Jupiter ploughs the ground right in front of his startled horses. Nestor sees in this omen the wrath of heaven; and at his entreaty Diomed reluctantly allows him to turn the horses, and retires, pursued by the loud taunts of Hector, who bids the Greek “wench” go hide herself. Thrice he half turns to meet his jesting enemy, and thrice the roll of the angry thunder warns him not to dare the wrath of the god. Hector in triumph shouts to his comrades to drive the Greeks back to their new trenches, and burn their fleet. He calls to his horses by name (he drove a bright bay and a chestnut, and called them Whitefoot and Firefly), and bids them do him good suit and service now, if ever, in return for all the care they have had from Andromache, who has fed them day by day with her own hands, even before she would offer the wine-cup to their thirsty master. The Greeks are driven back into their trenches, where they are rallied by the royal brothers Agamemnon and Menelaus in person. They have too on their side a bowman as good as Pandarus or Paris, who now does them gallant service. It is Teucer, the younger brother of the huge Ajax. The description of his manner of fight would suit almost exactly the light archer and his pavoise-bearer of the medieval battle:—

Eight times he draws his bow, and every arrow reaches its mark in a Trojan. Twice he shoots at Hector, but each time the shaft is turned aside, and finds some less renowned victim. Of these the last is Hector’s charioteer—the second who in this day’s battle has paid the forfeit of that perilous honour. Hector leaps down to avenge his death, and Teucer, felled to the ground by a huge fragment of rock, is carried off the field with a broken shoulder, still covered by the shield of Ajax. The Greeks remain penned within their stockade, and nothing but the approach of night saves their fleet from destruction. The victorious Trojans bivouac on the field, their watch-fires lighting up the night; for Hector’s only fear now is lest his enemies should embark and set sail under cover of the darkness, and so escape the fate which he is confident awaits them on the morrow. Mr Tennyson has chosen for translation the fine passage describing the scene, which closes the Eighth Book:—

CHAPTER VI.

THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES.

The opening of the Ninth Book shows us the Greeks utterly disheartened inside their intrenchments. The threat of the dishonoured Achilles is fast being accomplished: they cannot stand before Hector. Agamemnon calls a hasty council, and proposes—in sad earnest, this time—that all should re-embark and sail home to Greece. The proposal is received in silence by all except Diomed. He boldly taunts the king with cowardice: the other Greeks may go home if they will, but he and his good comrade Sthenelus will stay and fight it out, even if they fight alone. Then Nestor takes the privilege of his age to remind Agamemnon that his insult to Achilles is the real cause of their present distress. Let an embassy be sent to him where he lies beside his ships, in moody idleness, to offer him apology and compensation for the wrong. The king consents; and Ajax, Ulysses, and Phœnix are chosen to accompany the royal heralds on this mission of reconciliation. Ajax—the chief who in all warlike points stands second only to Achilles himself in the estimation of the army—is a delegate to whom even the great captain of the Myrmidons must surely listen with respect. Phœnix has been a sort of foster-father to Achilles from his boyhood, intrusted with the care of him by his father Peleus, and has now accompanied him to the war by the old man’s special request, to aid him with advice and counsel. If any one in the camp has any influence over the headstrong prince, it will be the man who, as he says, has dandled him in his arms in his helpless infancy. And no diplomatic enterprise could be complete without the addition of Ulysses, the man of many devices and of persuasive tongue. The chiefs set forth, and take their way along the shore to the camp of the Myrmidons. They find Achilles sitting in his tent, solacing his perturbed spirit with playing on the lyre, to the music of which he sings the deeds of heroes done in the days of old—the exact prototype of those knightly troubadours of later times, who combined the accomplishments of the minstrel with the prowess of the soldier. His faithful henchman Patroclus sits and listens to the song. With graceful and lofty courtesy the chief of the Myrmidons rises from his seat, and lays his lyre aside, and welcomes his visitors. He will hear no message until they have shared his hospitality. He brings them in, and sets them down on couches spread with purple tapestry. Then, with the grand patriarchal simplicity of the days of Abraham, when no office done for a guest was held to be servile, he bids Patroclus fill a larger bowl, and mix the wine strong, and make good preparation of the flesh of sheep, and goats, and well-fed swine. The great hero himself divides the carcases, while his charioteer Automedon holds them. The joints are cooked above the heaped embers on ample spits under the superintendence of Patroclus; and when all is ready, they fall to with that wholesome appetite which has been the characteristic of most heroes in classical and medieval times, Achilles carving for his guests, while Patroclus deals out the bread. Professor Wilson’s remarks on the scene are characteristic:—

“In nothing was the constitution of the heroes more enviable than its native power—of eating at all times, and without a moment’s warning. Never does a meal to any distinguished individual come amiss. Their stomachs were as heroic as their hearts, their bowels magnanimous. It cannot have been forgotten by the reader, who hangs with a watering mouth over the description of this entertainment, that about two hours before these three heroes, Ulysses, Ajax, and old Phœnix, had made an almost enormous supper in the pavilion of Agamemnon. But their walk