THE ILIA D.

BOOK I.

THE ARGUMENT.

THE CONTENTION OF ACHILLES AND AGAMEMNON.

In the war of Troy, the Greeks having sacked some of the neighbouring towns, and taking from thence two beautiful captives, Chryseïs and Briseis, allotted the first to Agamemnon, and the last to Achilles. Chryses, the father of Chryseïs, and priest of Apollo, comes to the Grecian camp to ransom her; with which the action of the poem opens, in the tenth year of the siege. The priest being refused and insolently dismissed by Agamemnon, entreats for vengeance from his god, who inflicts a pestilence on the Greeks. Achilles calls a council, and encourages Chalcas to declare the cause of it, who attributes it to the refusal of Chryseïs. The king being obliged to send back his captive, enters into a furious contest with Achilles, which Nestor pacifies; however, as he had the absolute command of the army, he seizes on Briseïs in revenge. Achilles in discontent withdraws himself and his forces from the rest of the Greeks; and complaining to Thetis, she supplicates Jupiter to render them sensible of the wrong done to her son, by giving victory to the Trojans. Jupiter granting her suit, incenses Juno, between whom the debate runs high, till they are reconciled by the address of Vulcan.

The time of two-and-twenty days is taken up in this book; nine during the plague, one in the council and quarrel of the Princes, and twelve for Jupiter's stay with the Ethiopians, at whose return Thetis prefers her petition. The scene lies in the Grecian camp, then changes to Chrysa, and lastly to Olympus.

ACHILLES' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly Goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain :
Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore:

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Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,

Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!

Declare, O Muse! in what ill fated-hour

Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended power?
Latona's son' a dire contagion spread,

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And heap'd the camp with mountains of the dead;
The king of men2 his reverend priest defied,
And, for the king's offence, the people died.

For Chryses sought with costly gifts to gain
His captive daughter from the victor's chain.
Suppliant the venerable father stands;
Apollo's awful ensigns grace his hands:
By these he begs: and, lowly bending down,
Extends the sceptre and the laurel crown.
He sued to all, but chief implor'd for grace
The brother-kings' of Atreus' royal race:

Ye kings and warriors! may your vows be crown'd, 'And Troy's proud walls lie level with the ground;

'May Jove restore you, when your toils are o'er,
'Safe to the pleasures of your native shore.
But oh! relieve a wretched parent's pain,
And give Chryseïs to these arms again;
If mercy fail, yet let my presents move,
And dread avenging Phoebus, son of Jove.'

The Greeks in shouts their joint assent declare,
The priest to reverence, and release the fair.
Not so Atrides: he, with kingly pride,
Repuls'd the sacred sire, and thus replied:

Hence on thy life, and fly these hostile plains, 'Nor ask, presumptuous, what the king detains : Hence, with thy laurel crown, and golden rod, 'Nor trust too far those ensigns of thy god.

'Mine is thy daughter, priest, and shall remain;

And prayers, and tears, and bribes, shall plead in vain ;
Till time shall rifle every youthful grace,

And age

dismiss her from my cold embrace,

Apollo. Here the author, who first invoked the Muse as the Goddess of Memory, vanishes from the reader's view, and leaves her to relate the whole affair through the poem, whose presence from this time diffuses an air of majesty over the relation. And lest this shoul! be lost to our thoughts in the continuation of the story, he sometimes refreshes them with a new invocation at proper intervals. Pope. 2 Agamemnon.

A priest of the temple of Apollo Smintheus at Chryse, a town on the coast of Troas. His daughter is called Chryseïs, ver. 28. 4 Agamemnon and Menelaus.

B. 1.] THE CONTENTION OF ACHILLES AND AGAMEMNON.

'In daily labours of the loom employ'd,

'Or doom'd to deck the bed she once enjoy'd.
'Hence then! to Argos shall the maid retire,
'Far from her native soil, and weeping sire.'
The trembling priest along the shore return'd,
And in the anguish of a father mourn'd.
Disconsolate, not daring to complain,
Silent he wander'd by the sounding main :
Till, safe at distance, to his god he prays,

The god who darts around the world his rays.

'O Smintheus !5 sprung from fair Latona's line, Thou guardian power of Cilla the divine,

"Thou source of light! whom Tenedos adores,

And whose bright presence gilds thy Chrysa's shores;
If e'er with wreaths I hung tay sacred fane,

'Or fed the flames with fat of oxen slain;

God of the silver bow! thy shafts employ,

Avenge thy servant, and the Greeks destroy.'

Thus Chryses pray'd: the fav'ring power attends,

And from Olympus' lofty tops descends.

Bent was his bow, the Grecian hearts to wound;
Fierce as he mov'd, his silver shafts resound.
Breathing revenge, a sudden night he spread,
And gloomy darkness roll'd around his head.
The fleet in view, he twang'd his deadly bow,
And hissing fly the feather'd fates below.
On mules and dogs' th' infection first began;
And last, the vengeful arrows fix'd in man.

For nine long nights, through all the dusky air
The pyres thick-flaming shot a dismal glare.
But ere the tenth revolving day was run,
Inspir'd by Juno, Thetis' god-like son
Conven'd to council all the Grecian train;8

For much the goddess mourn'd her heroes slain."

5 This surname of Apollo is derived by some from sminthos, the Phrygian name for a mouse, because he delivered the surrounding country from a plague of mice that had infested it. Others derive it from Sminthe, a town in Troas. 6 A town of Troas, not far from Chryse.

7 Heraclides Ponticus, in his most elegant treatise on the Allegories of Homer, remarks that the most accurate observations of physicians and philosophers, unite in testifying the commencement of pestilential disorders to be exhibited in the havoc of four-footed animals. Pope.

8 Achilles, it appears, had, as one of the principal leaders, the right of calling a public assembly; he does so on another occasion, B. xix. 35, 44, seq. The goddess had two reasons for her partiality to the Greeks; first, because she was in such high repute in Argos, that the whole country

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Th' assembly seated, rising o'er the rest, Achilles thus the king of men address'd:

'Why leave we not the fatal Trojan shore,
'And measure back the seas we cross'd before?

'The plague destroying whom the sword would spare,
'Tis time to save the few remains of war.
'But let some prophet or some sacred sage,
Explore the cause of great Apollo's rage;
'Or learn the wasteful vengeance to remove
"By mystic dreams, for dreams descend from Jove.
'If broken vows this heavy curse have laid,
'Let altars smoke, and hecatombs be paid.
'So heaven aton'd shall dying Greece restore,
'And Phœbus dart his burning shafts no more.
He said, and sat: when Chalcas thus replied
Chalcas the wise, the Grecian priest and guide,
That sacred seer, whose comprehensive view
The past, the present, and the future knew:
Uprising slow the venerable sage

Thus spoke the prudence and the fears of age:
'Belov'd of Jove, Achilles! would'st thou know
'Why angry Phœbus bends his fatal bow?
'First give thy faith, and plight a prince's word
Of sure protection, by thy pow'r and sword,
For I must speak what wisdom would conceal,

'And truths, invidious to the great, reveal.

'Bold is the task, when subjects, grown too wise, 'Instruct a monarch where his error lies;

For though we deem the short-liv'd fury past,

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'Tis sure, the mighty will revenge at last.'

To whom Pelides. From thy inmost soul

'Speak what thou know'st, and speak without control.

'Ev'n by that god I swear, who rules the day,

To whom thy hands the vows of Greece convey,

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And whose blest oracles thy lips declare ¿

Long as Achilles breathes this vital air,

No daring Greek, of all the numerous band,

Against his priest shall lift an impious hand:

Not ev'n the chief by whom our hosts are led,
The king of kings, shall touch that sacred head.'
Encouraged thus, the blameless man replies:

'Nor vows unpaid, nor slighted sacrifice,

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was said to be her temple: secondly, because Paris had decided against her when she stood candidate with Minerva and Venus for the prize of beauty. Minerva on the latter account patronised them also

Cowper

B. I.]

THE CONTENTION OF ACHILLES AND AGAMEMNON.

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But he, our chief, provok'd the raging pest,

Apollo's vengeance for his injured priest.

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'Nor will the god's awaken'd fury cease,

'But plagues shall spread, and funeral fires increase, Till the great king, without a ransom paid,

'To her own Chrysa send the black-ey'd maid.
Perhaps, with added sacrifice and prayer,
'The priest may pardon, and the god may spare.'
The prophet spoke; when, with a gloomy frown,
The monarch started from his shining throne;
Black choler fill'd his breast that boil'd with ire,
And from his eyeballs flash'd the living fire.
Augur accurs'd! denouncing mischief still,
'Prophet of plagues, for ever boding ill!

Still must that tongue some wounding message bring,
And still thy priestly pride provoke thy king?

For this are Phoebus' oracles explor'd,

'To teach the Greeks to murmur at their lord? For this with falsehoods is my honour stain'd; 'Is heaven offended, and a priest profan'd,

Because my prize, my beauteous maid, I hold,
And heav'nly charms prefer to proffer'd gold?

A maid, unmatch'd in manners as in face,

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Skill'd in each art, and crown'd with every grace

Not half so dear were Clytemnestra's charms,

'When first her blooming beauties bless'd my arms. 'Yet, if the gods demand her, let her sail;

'Let me be deem'd the hateful cause of all,

And suffer, rather than my people fall.

The prize, the beauteous prize, I will resign,

So dearly valued, and so justly mine.

But since for common good I yield the fair,
My private loss let grateful Greece repair;
Nor unrewarded let your prince complain,

'That he alone has fought and bled in vain.'
'Insatiate king!' (Achilles thus replies)

'Fond of the pow'r, but fonder of the prize!10

Wouldst thou the Greeks their lawful prey should yield, 'The due reward of many a well-fought field?

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10 Covetousness was one of the vices in Agamemnon's character. Thersites reproaches him with it, B. ii. 282, seq.; and Mercury, B. xxiv. 854, warns Priam, when he goes to beg Hector's body of Achilles, not to linger too long within the Grecian camp, lest Agamemnon should make him prisoner, and exact a large sum for his ransom.