Ilion

“ Amidst the plain, in sight of Ilion, stands A rising mount, the work of human hands; (This for Myrinne’s tomb the immortals know, Though call’d Bateïa in the world below;) Beneath their chiefs in martial order here, The auxiliar troops and Trojan hosts appear.
The godlike Hector, high above the rest, Shakes his huge spear, and nods his plumy crest: In throngs around his native bands repair, And groves of lances glitter in the air.
Divine Æneas brings the Dardan race, Anchises’ son, by Venus’ stolen embrace, Born in the shades of Ida’s secret grove; (A mortal mixing with the queen of love;) ”

“ And all the gods that round old Saturn dwell Had heard the thunders to the deeps of hell. Well was the crime, and well the vengeance spared; Even power immense had found such battle hard. Go thou, my son! the trembling Greeks alarm, Shake my broad ægis on thy active arm, Be godlike Hector thy peculiar care, Swell his bold heart, and urge his strength to war: Let Ilion conquer, till the Achaian train Fly to their ships and Hellespont again: Then Greece shall breathe from toils.” The godhead said; His will divine the son of Jove obey’d. ”

“ Iris from Zeus meanwhile had descended to Ilion holy:
"Go," said he, "Iris the swift, and make speed from the seat of Olympus
Down into Ilion, bearing my message to generous Priam.
Forth to the ships let him fare with a ransom to soften Peleides—
Priam alone; not a man from the gates of the city attending:
Save that for driving the mules be some elderly herald appointed,
Who may have charge of the wain with the treasure, and back to the city
Carefully carry the dead that was slain by the godlike Achilles. ”

“ Shall Jove for one extend the narrow span, Whose bounds were fix’d before his race began? How many sons of gods, foredoom’d to death, Before proud Ilion must resign their breath! Were thine exempt, debate would rise above, And murmuring powers condemn their partial Jove. Give the bold chief a glorious fate in fight; And when the ascending soul has wing’d her flight, Let Sleep and Death convey, by thy command, The breathless body to his native land. His friends and people, to his future praise, A marble tomb and pyramid shall raise, And lasting honours to his ashes give ”

“ Yet if our chief for plunder only fight, The spoils of Ilion shall thy loss requite, Whene’er, by Jove’s decree, our conquering powers Shall humble to the dust her lofty towers.” ”

“ What power soe’er provokes our lifted hand, On this our hill no more shall hold his place; Cut off, and exiled from the ethereal race.”
Juno and Pallas grieving hear the doom, But feast their souls on Ilion’s woes to come. Though secret anger swell’d Minerva’s breast, The prudent goddess yet her wrath repress’d; But Juno, impotent of rage, replies: “What hast thou said, O tyrant of the skies! Strength and omnipotence invest thy throne; ’Tis thine to punish; ours to grieve alone. For Greece we grieve, abandon’d by her fate To drink the dregs of thy unmeasured hate. ”

“ Of Greece victorious, and proud Ilion lost?”
To whom the king: “On Greece no blame be thrown;
Arms are her trade, and war is all her own.
Her hardy heroes from the well-fought plains
Nor fear withholds, nor shameful sloth detains:
’Tis heaven, alas! and Jove’s all-powerful doom,
That far, far distant from our native home
Wills us to fall inglorious! Oh, my friend!
Once foremost in the fight, still prone to lend
Or arms or counsels, now perform thy best,
And what thou canst not singly, urge the rest.” ”

“ Have I, for this, shook Ilion with alarms,
Assembled nations, set two worlds in arms?
To spread the war, I flew from shore to shore;
The immortal coursers scarce the labour bore.
At length ripe vengeance o’er their heads impends,
But Jove himself the faithless race defends.
Loth as thou art to punish lawless lust,
Not all the gods are partial and unjust.”
The sire whose thunder shakes the cloudy skies,
Sighs from his inmost soul, and thus replies:
“Oh lasting rancour! oh insatiate hate
To Phrygia’s monarch, and the Phrygian state! ”

“ Far more than heirs of all our parents’ fame,
Our glories darken their diminish’d name.”
To him Tydides thus: “My friend, forbear;
Suppress thy passion, and the king revere:
His high concern may well excuse this rage,
Whose cause we follow, and whose war we wage:
His the first praise, were Ilion’s towers o’erthrown,
And, if we fail, the chief disgrace his own.
Let him the Greeks to hardy toils excite,
’Tis ours to labour in the glorious fight.”
He spoke, and ardent, on the trembling ground
Sprung from his car: his ringing arms resound. ”

“ When the last blaze sent Ilion to the skies. [R. 67]
⁠Rowz'd by the light, old Dulness heav'd the head;
Then snatch'd a sheet of Thulè [R. 68] from her bed,
Sudden she flies, and whelms it o'er the pyre;
260 Down sink the flames, and with a hiss expire.
⁠Her ample presence fills up all the place;
A veil of fogs dilates her awful face:
Great in her charms! as when on Shrieves and May'rs
She looks, and breathes herself into their airs. ”

“ Then Ilioneus made answer, saying, “Great King, we have not gone astray in our journey, nor have storms driven us out of the way. Of set purpose are we come to this land. For we were driven away by ill-fortune from our country, of which things we doubt not, O King, that thou knowest the certainty. For who is there under [Pg 156] the whole heaven who knoweth not what a storm of destruction came forth from the land of Greece and overthrew the great city of Troy, Europe and Asia setting themselves in arms against each other? And now are we come to ask for a parcel of land whereon we may dwell ”

“ And if this man were to come, a corpse, to the great city of king Priam, and we should hale him forth from out the battle, straightway then would the Argives give back the goodly armour of Sarpedon, and we should bring his body into Ilios; for such a man is he whose squire hath been slain, one that is far the best of the Argives by the ships, himself and his squires that fight in close combat. But thou hadst not the courage to stand before great-hearted Aias, facing him eye to eye amid the battle-cry of the foemen, nor to do battle against him, seeing he is a better man than thou. ”

“ So perish ye, till we be come to the city of sacred Ilios, ye in flight, and I making havoc in your rear. Not even the fair-flowing river with his silver eddies shall aught avail you, albeit to him, I ween, ye have long time been wont to sacrifice bulls full many, and to cast single-hooved horses while yet they lived. into his eddies. Howbeit even so shall ye perish by an evil fate till ye have all paid the price for the slaying of Patroclus and for the woe of the Achaeans, whom by the swift ships ye slew while I tarried afar. ”

“ Hector, seeing thou straitly biddest us tell thee true, neither is she gone to any of thy sisters or thy brothers' fair-robed wives, nor yet to the temple of Athene, where the other fair-tressed Trojan women are seeking to propitiate the dread goddess; but she went to the great wall of Ilios, for that she heard the Trojans were sorely pressed, and great victory rested with the Achaeans. So is she gone in haste to the wall, like one beside herself ”

“ The author of the Iliad absorbed the spirit of this primitive poetry in the greater compass of his epic creation, as Shakspeare has absorbed the Elizabethan pastoral within the all-embracing compass of his representation. Much of the imagery of the Iliad, several incidents casually introduced in connexion with the names of obscure persons perishing in battle, some of the supernatural events glanced at, as of the meeting of Aphrodite with Anchises while tending his herds on the spurs of Ida,—a subject of allusion also in the Sicilian idyl,—are of a pastoral character and origin. ”

“ Appian and others consider the Liburnians and Istrians as Illyrian, and Herodotus even includes under that name the Eneti or Veneti at the extremity of the Adriatic Gulf. ... The Illyrians generally were poor, rapacious, fierce and formidable in battle. They shared with the remote Thracian tribes the custom of tattooing their bodies and of offering human sacrifices: moreover, they were always ready to sell their military service for hire, like the modern Albanian Schkipetars, in whom probably their blood yet flows, though with considerable admixture from subsequent immigrations. ”

“ And this moreover will I say to thee, and do thou lay it to thy heart; whene’er I too be of eager mind to lay waste a city where is the race of men that are dear to thee, hinder thou not my wrath, but let me be, even as I yield to thee of free will, yet with soul unwilling. For of all cities beneath sun and starry heaven that are the dwelling of mortal men, holy Ilios was most honoured of my heart, and Priam and the folk of Priam of the good ashen spear. ”

“ Then Hermes fastened on his feet the fair sandals of gold with which he flies, fast as the wind, over sea and land, and in his hand he took the rod with which he opens and closes, as he wills, the eyes of men. And he flew down and lighted on the plain of Troy, taking on him the likeness of a fair youth.
But when they had driven past the great Tomb of Ilus, they stopped the horses and the mules, to let them drink of the river. And darkness came over the land; and then the herald spied Hermes, and said:—
Her'-mes. ”

“ Thirdly, as a poetical composition, the Lay of the Niebelungen will not bear comparison for a moment with the two great Greek works of the same class; it is even, in our opinion, inferior to its nearest modern counterpart, the Cid. The author of the Iliad possessed a soul as sunny and as fiery as those lovely island-fringed coasts that gave him birth; and in describing battles he rushes on himself to the charge, like some old French-eating Marshal Blucher, the incarnation of the whirlwind of battle which he guides. ”

“ But no favourable omen comes from heaven. The god, whether or no he accepts the offering, gives no sign. Nevertheless—we may suppose with a certain wilfulness which is part of his character—Agamemnon proceeds to set the battle in array; and the second book of the Iliad closes with the long muster-roll of the Greek{v.i-47} clans under their respective kings or chiefs on the one side, and of the Trojans and their allies on the other, which in our introduction has already been partly anticipated. ”

“ Filled are thy huts with bronze, and women full many are in thy huts, chosen spoils that we Achaeans give thee first of all, whensoe'er we take a citadel. Or dost thou still want gold also, which some man of the horse-taming Trojans shall bring thee out of Ilios as a ransom for his son, whom I haply have bound and led away or some other of the Achaeans? Or is it some young girl for thee to know in love, whom thou wilt keep apart for thyself? Nay, it beseemeth not one that is their captain to bring to ill the sons of the Achaeans. ”

“ Hector, most fair to look upon, in battle art thou sorely lacking. In good sooth 'tis but in vain that fair renown possesseth thee that art but a runagate. Bethink thee now how by thyself thou mayest save thy city and home aided only by the folk that were born in Ilios; for of the Lycians at least will no man go forth to do battle with the Danaans for the city's sake, seeing there were to be no thanks, it seemeth, for warring against the foemen ever without respite. ”

“ These legends lived in the ballads of the Aeolic minstrels, and from them passed The “Iliad” and
the “Odyssey.”southward into Ionia, where the Ionian poets gradually shaped them into higher artistic forms. Among the seven places which claimed to be the birthplace of Homer, that which has the best title is Smyrna. Homer himself is called “son of Meles”—the stream which flowed through old Smyrna, on the border between Aeolia and Ionia. The tradition is significant in regard to the origin and character of the Iliad, for in the Iliad we have Achaean ballads worked up by Ionian art. ”

“ Then again the messenger, Argeiphontes, spake to him: "Yea verily, old sire, all this hast thou spoken according to right. But come, tell me this, and declare it truly, whether thou art bearing forth these many treasures and goodly unto some foreign folk, where they may abide for thee in safety, or whether by now ye are all forsaking holy Ilios in fear; so great a warrior, the noblest of all, hath perished, even thy son; for never held he back from warring with the Achaeans." ”

“ We will speak first of the temples and the sculpture of Ionia. The Ionians were a people far more susceptible than were the Dorians to oriental influences. The dress, the art, the luxury of western Asia attracted them with irresistible force. We may suspect, as Brunn has suggested, that Ionian artists worked in the great Assyrian and Persian palaces, and that the reliefs which adorn the walls of those palaces were in part their handiwork. Some of the great temples of Ionia have been excavated in recent years, notably those of Apollo at Miletus, of Hera at Samos, and of Artemis at Ephesus. ”

“ Even as in heaven about the gleaming moon the stars shine clear, when the air is windless, and forth to view appear all mountain peaks and high headlands and glades, and from heaven breaketh open the infinite air, and all stars are seen, and the shepherd joyeth in his heart; even in such multitudes between the ships and the streams of Xanthus shone the fires that the Trojans kindled before the face of Ilios. A thousand fires were burning in the plain and by each sat fifty men in the glow of the blazing fire. ”