The Iliad - 37

While deeper sorrows groan from each full heart,
And nature speaks at every pause of art.
First to the corse the weeping consort flew;
Around his neck her milk-white arms she threw,
“And oh, my Hector! Oh, my lord! (she cries)
Snatch’d in thy bloom from these desiring eyes!
Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone!
And I abandon’d, desolate, alone!
An only son, once comfort of our pains,
Sad product now of hapless love, remains!
Never to manly age that son shall rise,
Or with increasing graces glad my eyes:
For Ilion now (her great defender slain)
Shall sink a smoking ruin on the plain.
Who now protects her wives with guardian care?
Who saves her infants from the rage of war?
Now hostile fleets must waft those infants o’er
(Those wives must wait them) to a foreign shore:
Thou too, my son, to barbarous climes shall go,
The sad companion of thy mother’s woe;
Driven hence a slave before the victor’s sword
Condemn’d to toil for some inhuman lord:
Or else some Greek whose father press’d the plain,
Or son, or brother, by great Hector slain,
In Hector’s blood his vengeance shall enjoy,
And hurl thee headlong from the towers of Troy.[297]
For thy stern father never spared a foe:
Thence all these tears, and all this scene of woe!
Thence many evils his sad parents bore,
His parents many, but his consort more.
Why gav’st thou not to me thy dying hand?
And why received not I thy last command?
Some word thou would’st have spoke, which, sadly dear,
My soul might keep, or utter with a tear;
Which never, never could be lost in air,
Fix’d in my heart, and oft repeated there!”
Thus to her weeping maids she makes her moan,
Her weeping handmaids echo groan for groan.
The mournful mother next sustains her part:
“O thou, the best, the dearest to my heart!
Of all my race thou most by heaven approved,
And by the immortals even in death beloved!
While all my other sons in barbarous bands
Achilles bound, and sold to foreign lands,
This felt no chains, but went a glorious ghost,
Free, and a hero, to the Stygian coast.
Sentenced, ’tis true, by his inhuman doom,
Thy noble corse was dragg’d around the tomb;
(The tomb of him thy warlike arm had slain;)
Ungenerous insult, impotent and vain!
Yet glow’st thou fresh with every living grace;
No mark of pain, or violence of face:
Rosy and fair! as Phœbus’ silver bow
Dismiss’d thee gently to the shades below.”
Thus spoke the dame, and melted into tears.
Sad Helen next in pomp of grief appears;
Fast from the shining sluices of her eyes
Fall the round crystal drops, while thus she cries.
“Ah, dearest friend! in whom the gods had join’d[298]
The mildest manners with the bravest mind,
Now twice ten years (unhappy years) are o’er
Since Paris brought me to the Trojan shore,
(O had I perish’d, ere that form divine
Seduced this soft, this easy heart of mine!)
Yet was it ne’er my fate, from thee to find
A deed ungentle, or a word unkind.
When others cursed the authoress of their woe,
Thy pity check’d my sorrows in their flow.
If some proud brother eyed me with disdain,
Or scornful sister with her sweeping train,
Thy gentle accents soften’d all my pain.
For thee I mourn, and mourn myself in thee,
The wretched source of all this misery.
The fate I caused, for ever I bemoan;
Sad Helen has no friend, now thou art gone!
Through Troy’s wide streets abandon’d shall I roam!
In Troy deserted, as abhorr’d at home!”
So spoke the fair, with sorrow-streaming eye.
Distressful beauty melts each stander-by.
On all around the infectious sorrow grows;
But Priam check’d the torrent as it rose:
“Perform, ye Trojans! what the rites require,
And fell the forests for a funeral pyre;
Twelve days, nor foes nor secret ambush dread;
Achilles grants these honours to the dead.”[299]

[Illustration: ] FUNERAL OF HECTOR

He spoke, and, at his word, the Trojan train
Their mules and oxen harness to the wain,
Pour through the gates, and fell’d from Ida’s crown,
Roll back the gather’d forests to the town.
These toils continue nine succeeding days,
And high in air a sylvan structure raise.
But when the tenth fair morn began to shine,
Forth to the pile was borne the man divine,
And placed aloft; while all, with streaming eyes,
Beheld the flames and rolling smokes arise.
Soon as Aurora, daughter of the dawn,
With rosy lustre streak’d the dewy lawn,
Again the mournful crowds surround the pyre,
And quench with wine the yet remaining fire.
The snowy bones his friends and brothers place
(With tears collected) in a golden vase;
The golden vase in purple palls they roll’d,
Of softest texture, and inwrought with gold.
Last o’er the urn the sacred earth they spread,
And raised the tomb, memorial of the dead.
(Strong guards and spies, till all the rites were done,
Watch’d from the rising to the setting sun.)
All Troy then moves to Priam’s court again,
A solemn, silent, melancholy train:
Assembled there, from pious toil they rest,
And sadly shared the last sepulchral feast.
Such honours Ilion to her hero paid,
And peaceful slept the mighty Hector’s shade.[300]


CONCLUDING NOTE.

We have now passed through the Iliad, and seen the anger of Achilles,
and the terrible effects of it, at an end: as that only was the subject
of the poem, and the nature of epic poetry would not permit our author
to proceed to the event of the war, it perhaps may be acceptable to the
common reader to give a short account of what happened to Troy and the
chief actors in this poem after the conclusion of it.
I need not mention that Troy was taken soon after the death of Hector
by the stratagem of the wooden horse, the particulars of which are
described by Virgil in the second book of the Æneid.
Achilles fell before Troy, by the hand of Paris, by the shot of an
arrow in his heel, as Hector had prophesied at his death, lib. xxii.
The unfortunate Priam was killed by Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles.
Ajax, after the death of Achilles, had a contest with Ulysses for the
armour of Vulcan, but being defeated in his aim, he slew himself
through indignation.
Helen, after the death of Paris, married Deiphobus his brother, and at
the taking of Troy betrayed him, in order to reconcile herself to
Menelaus her first husband, who received her again into favour.
Agamemnon at his return was barbarously murdered by Ægysthus, at the
instigation of Clytemnestra his wife, who in his absence had
dishonoured his bed with Ægysthus.
Diomed, after the fall of Troy, was expelled his own country, and
scarce escaped with his life from his adulterous wife Ægialé; but at
last was received by Daunus in Apulia, and shared his kingdom; it is
uncertain how he died.
Nestor lived in peace with his children, in Pylos, his native country.
Ulysses also, after innumerable troubles by sea and land, at last
returned in safety to Ithaca, which is the subject of Homer’s Odyssey.
For what remains, I beg to be excused from the ceremonies of taking
leave at the end of my work, and from embarrassing myself, or others,
with any defences or apologies about it. But instead of endeavouring to
raise a vain monument to myself, of the merits or difficulties of it
(which must be left to the world, to truth, and to posterity), let me
leave behind me a memorial of my friendship with one of the most
valuable of men, as well as finest writers, of my age and country, one
who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking
it is to do justice to Homer, and one whom (I am sure) sincerely
rejoices with me at the period of my labours. To him, therefore, having
brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to
have the honour and satisfaction of placing together, in this manner,
the names of Mr. CONGREVE, and of
March 25, 1720
A. POPE

Ton theon de eupoiia—to mae epi pleon me procophai en poiaetiki kai
allois epitaeoeimasi en ois isos a kateschethaen, ei aesthomaen emautan
euodos proionta.
M. AUREL ANTON _de Seipso_, lib. i. § 17.

END OF THE ILIAD


Footnotes

[1] “What,” says Archdeacon Wilberforce, “is the natural root of
loyalty as distinguished from such mere selfish desire of personal
security as is apt to take its place in civilized times, but that
consciousness of a natural bond among the families of men which gives
a fellow-feeling to whole clans and nations, and thus enlists their
affections in behalf of those time-honoured representatives of their
ancient blood, in whose success they feel a personal interest? Hence
the delight when we recognize an act of nobility or justice in our
hereditary princes
“‘Tuque prior, tu parce genus qui ducis Olympo,
Projice tela manu _sanguis meus_’
“So strong is this feeling, that it regains an engrafted influence even
when history witnesses that vast convulsions have rent and weakened it
and the Celtic feeling towards the Stuarts has been rekindled in our
own days towards the granddaughter of George the Third of Hanover.
“Somewhat similar may be seen in the disposition to idolize those
great lawgivers of man’s race, who have given expression, in the
immortal language of song, to the deeper inspirations of our
nature. The thoughts of Homer or of Shakespere are the universal
inheritance of the human race. In this mutual ground every man
meets his brother, they have been set forth by the providence of
God to vindicate for all of us what nature could effect, and that,
in these representatives of our race, we might recognize our common
benefactors.’—_Doctrine of the Incarnation_, pp. 9, 10.
[2] Εἰκος δέ μιν ἦν καὶ μνημόσυνα πάντων γράφεσθαι. Vit. Hom. in
Schweigh. Herodot. t. iv. p. 299, sq. § 6. I may observe that this
Life has been paraphrased in English by my learned young friend
Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, and appended to my prose translation of the
Odyssey. The present abridgement however, will contain all that is of
use to the reader, for the biographical value of the treatise is most
insignificant.
[3] _I.e._ both of composing and reciting verses for as Blair
observes, “The first poets sang their own verses.” Sextus Empir. adv.
Mus. p. 360 ed. Fabric. Οὐ ἀμελει γέ τοι καὶ οἰ ποιηταὶ μελοποιοὶ
λέγονται, καὶ τὰ Ὁμήρου ἕπη τὸ πάλαι πρὸς λύραν ἤδετο.
“The voice,” observes Heeren, “was always accompanied by some
instrument. The bard was provided with a harp on which he played a
prelude, to elevate and inspire his mind, and with which he
accompanied the song when begun. His voice probably preserved a medium
between singing and recitation; the words, and not the melody were
regarded by the listeners, hence it was necessary for him to remain
intelligible to all. In countries where nothing similar is found, it
is difficult to represent such scenes to the mind; but whoever has had
an opportunity of listening to the improvisation of Italy, can easily
form an idea of Demodocus and Phemius.”—_Ancient Greece_, p. 94.
[4] “Should it not be, since _my_ arrival? asks Mackenzie, observing
that “poplars can hardly live so long”. But setting aside the fact
that we must not expect consistency in a mere romance, the ancients
had a superstitious belief in the great age of trees which grew near
places consecrated by the presence of gods and great men. See Cicero
de Legg II I, sub init., where he speaks of the plane tree under which
Socrates used to walk and of the tree at Delos, where Latona gave
birth to Apollo. This passage is referred to by Stephanus of
Byzantium, _s. v._ N. T. p. 490, ed. de Pinedo. I omit quoting any of
the dull epigrams ascribed to Homer for, as Mr. Justice Talfourd
rightly observes, “The authenticity of these fragments depends upon
that of the pseudo Herodotean Life of Homer, from which they are
taken.” Lit of Greece, pp. 38 in Encycl. Metrop. Cf. Coleridge,
Classic Poets, p. 317.
[5] It is quoted as the work of Cleobulus, by Diogenes Laert. Vit.
Cleob. p. 62, ed. Casaub.
[6] I trust I am justified in employing this as an equivalent for the
Greek λέσχαι.
[7] Ὡς εἰ τοὺς Ὁμήρους δόξει τρέφειν αὐτοῖς, ὅμιλον πολλόν τε και
ἀχρεοῖν ἕξουσιν. ἐι τεῦθεν δὲ και τοὔνομα Ὁμηρος ἐπεκράτησε τῷ
Μελησιγενεῖ ἀπὸ τῆς συμφορης. οἱ γὰρ Κυμαῖοι τοὺς τυφλοὺς Ὁμήρους
λέγουσιν. Vit. Hom. _l. c._ p. 311. The etymology has been condemned
by recent scholars. See Welcker, Epische Cyclus, p. 127, and
Mackenzie’s note, p. xiv.
[8] Θεστορίδης, θνητοῖσιν ἀνωἷστων πολεών περ, οὐδὲν ἀφραστότερον
πέλεται νόου ἀνθρώποισιν. Ibid. p. 315. During his stay at Phocœa,
Homer is said to have composed the Little Iliad, and the Phocœid. See
Muller’s Hist. of Lit., vi. § 3. Welcker, _l. c._ pp. 132, 272, 358,
sqq., and Mure, Gr. Lit. vol. ii. p. 284, sq.
[9] This is so pretty a picture of early manners and hospitality, that
it is almost a pity to find that it is obviously a copy from the
Odyssey. See the fourteenth book. In fact, whoever was the author of
this fictitious biography, he showed some tact in identifying Homer
with certain events described in his poems, and in eliciting from them
the germs of something like a personal narrative.
[10] Διὰ λόγων ἐστιῶντο. A common metaphor. So Plato calls the parties
conversing δαιτύμονες, or ἐστιάτορες, Tim. i. p. 522 A. Cf. Themist.
Orat. vi. p. 168, and xvi. p. 374, ed. Petav. So διηγήμασι σοφοῖς ὁμοῦ
καὶ τερπνοῖς ἡδίω τὴν θοινην τοῖς ἑστιωμένοις ἐποίει, Choricius in
Fabric. Bibl. Gr. T. viii. P. 851. λόγοις γὰρ ἑστίᾳ, Athenæus vii p
275, A.
[11] It was at Bolissus, and in the house of this Chian citizen, that
Homer is said to have written the Batrachomyomachia, or Battle of the
Frogs and Mice, the Epicichlidia, and some other minor works.
[12] Chandler, Travels, vol. i. p. 61, referred to in the Voyage
Pittoresque dans la Grèce, vol. i. P. 92, where a view of the spot is
given of which the author candidly says,— “Je ne puis répondre d’une
exactitude scrupuleuse dans la vue générale que j’en donne, car étant
allé seul pour l’examiner je perdis mon crayon, et je fus obligé de
m’en fier à ma mémoire. Je ne crois cependant pas avoir trop à me
plaindre d’elle en cette occasion.”
[13] A more probable reason for this companionship, and for the
character of Mentor itself, is given by the allegorists, viz.: the
assumption of Mentor’s form by the guardian deity of the wise Ulysses,
Minerva. The classical reader may compare Plutarch, Opp. t. ii. p.
880; _Xyland_. Heraclid. Pont. Alleg. Hom. p. 531-5, of Gale’s Opusc.
Mythol. Dionys. Halic. de Hom. Poes. c. 15; Apul. de Deo Socrat. s. f.
[14] Vit. Hom. § 28.
[15] The riddle is given in Section 35. Compare Mackenzie’s note, p.
xxx.
[16] Heeren’s Ancient Greece, p. 96.
[17] Compare Sir E. L. Bulwer’s Caxtons v. i. p. 4.
[18] Pericles and Aspasia, Letter lxxxiv., Works, vol ii. p. 387.
[19] Quarterly Review, No. lxxxvii., p. 147.
[20] Viz., the following beautiful passage, for the translation of
which I am indebted to Coleridge, Classic Poets, p. 286.
“Origias, farewell! and oh! remember me
Hereafter, when some stranger from the sea,
A hapless wanderer, may your isle explore,
And ask you, maid, of all the bards you boast,
Who sings the sweetest, and delights you most
Oh! answer all,—‘A blind old man and poor
Sweetest he sings—and dwells on Chios’ rocky shore.’”
_See_ Thucyd. iii, 104.
[21] Longin., de Sublim., ix. § 26. Ὅθεν ἐν τῇ Ὀδυσσείᾳ παρεικάσαι τις
ἂν καταδυομένῳ τὸν Ὅμηρον ἡλίῳ, οδ δίχα τῆς σφοδρότητος παραμένει το
μέγεθος.
[22] See Tatian, quoted in Fabric. Bibl. Gr. v. II t. ii. Mr.
Mackenzie has given three brief but elaborate papers on the different
writers on the subject, which deserve to be consulted. See Notes and
Queries, vol. v. pp. 99, 171, and 221. His own views are moderate, and
perhaps as satisfactory, on the whole, as any of the hypotheses
hitherto put forth. In fact, they consist in an attempt to blend those
hypotheses into something like consistency, rather than in advocating
any individual theory.
[23] Letters to Phileleuth; Lips.
[24] Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 191, sqq.
[25] It is, indeed not easy to calculate the height to which the
memory may be cultivated. To take an ordinary case, we might refer to
that of any first rate actor, who must be prepared, at a very short
warning, to ‘rhapsodize,’ night after night, parts which when laid
together, would amount to an immense number of lines. But all this is
nothing to two instances of our own day. Visiting at Naples a
gentleman of the highest intellectual attainments, and who held a
distinguished rank among the men of letters in the last century, he
informed us that the day before he had passed much time in examining a
man, not highly educated, who had learned to repeat the whole
Gierusalemme of Tasso, not only to recite it consecutively, but also
to repeat those stanzas in utter defiance of the sense, either
forwards or backwards, or from the eighth line to the first,
alternately the odd and even lines—in short, whatever the passage
required; the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more
than to the sense, had it at such perfect command, that it could
produce it under any form. Our informant went on to state that this
singular being was proceeding to learn the Orlando Furioso in the same
manner. But even this instance is less wonderful than one as to which
we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty years
ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland. No such person can
have forgotten the poor, uneducated man Blind Jamie who could actually
repeat, after a few minutes consideration any verse required from any
part of the Bible—even the obscurest and most unimportant enumeration
of mere proper names not excepted. We do not mention these facts as
touching the more difficult part of the question before us, but facts
they are; and if we find so much difficulty in calculating the extent
to which the mere memory may be cultivated, are we, in these days of
multifarious reading, and of countless distracting affairs, fair
judges of the perfection to which the invention and the memory
combined may attain in a simpler age, and among a more single minded
people?—Quarterly Review, _l. c._, p. 143, sqq.
Heeren steers between the two opinions, observing that, “The
Dschungariade of the Calmucks is said to surpass the poems of Homer
in length, as much as it stands beneath them in merit, and yet it
exists only in the memory of a people which is not unacquainted
with writing. But the songs of a nation are probably the last
things which are committed to writing, for the very reason that
they are remembered.”— _Ancient Greece_. p. 100.
[26] Vol. II p. 198, sqq.
[27] Quarterly Review, _l. c._, p. 131 sq.
[28] Betrachtungen über die Ilias. Berol. 1841. See Grote, p. 204.
Notes and Queries, vol. v. p. 221.
[29] Prolegg. pp. xxxii., xxxvi., &c.
[30] Vol. ii. p. 214 sqq.
[31] “Who,” says Cicero, de Orat. iii. 34, “was more learned in that
age, or whose eloquence is reported to have been more perfected by
literature than that of Peisistratus, who is said first to have
disposed the books of Homer in the order in which we now have them?”
Compare Wolf’s Prolegomena 33, §.
[32] “The first book, together with the eighth, and the books from the
eleventh to the twenty-second inclusive, seems to form the primary
organization of the poem, then properly an Achilleïs.”—Grote, vol. ii.
p. 235
[33] K. R. H. Mackenzie, Notes and Queries, p. 222 sqq.
[34] See his Epistle to Raphelingius, in Schroeder’s edition, 4to.,
Delphis, 1728.
[35] Ancient Greece, p. 101.
[36] The best description of this monument will be found in Vaux’s
“Antiquities of the British Museum,” p. 198 sq. The monument itself
(Towneley Sculptures, No. 123) is well known.
[37] Coleridge, Classic Poets, p. 276.
[38] Preface to her Homer.
[39] Hesiod. Opp. et Dier. Lib. I. vers. 155, &c.
[40] The following argument of the Iliad, corrected in a few
particulars, is translated from Bitaubé, and is, perhaps, the neatest
summary that has ever been drawn up:—“A hero, injured by his general,
and animated with a noble resentment, retires to his tent; and for a
season withdraws himself and his troops from the war. During this
interval, victory abandons the army, which for nine years has been
occupied in a great enterprise, upon the successful termination of
which the honour of their country depends. The general, at length
opening his eyes to the fault which he had committed, deputes the
principal officers of his army to the incensed hero, with commission
to make compensation for the injury, and to tender magnificent
presents. The hero, according to the proud obstinacy of his character,
persists in his animosity; the army is again defeated, and is on the
verge of entire destruction. This inexorable man has a friend; this
friend weeps before him, and asks for the hero’s arms, and for
permission to go to the war in his stead. The eloquence of friendship
prevails more than the intercession of the ambassadors or the gifts of
the general. He lends his armour to his friend, but commands him not
to engage with the chief of the enemy’s army, because he reserves to
himself the honour of that combat, and because he also fears for his
friend’s life. The prohibition is forgotten; the friend listens to
nothing but his courage; his corpse is brought back to the hero, and
the hero’s arms become the prize of the conqueror. Then the hero,
given up to the most lively despair, prepares to fight; he receives
from a divinity new armour, is reconciled with his general and,
thirsting for glory and revenge, enacts prodigies of valour, recovers
the victory, slays the enemy’s chief, honours his friend with superb
funeral rites, and exercises a cruel vengeance on the body of his
destroyer; but finally appeased by the tears and prayers of the father
of the slain warrior, restores to the old man the corpse of his son,
which he buries with due solemnities.’—Coleridge, p. 177, sqq.
[41] Vultures: Pope is more accurate than the poet he translates, for
Homer writes “a prey to dogs and to _all_ kinds of birds. But all
kinds of birds are not carnivorous.
[42] _i.e._ during the whole time of their striving the will of Jove
was being gradually accomplished.
[43] Compare Milton’s “Paradise Lost” i. 6
“Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Horeb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd.”
[44] _Latona’s son: i.e._ Apollo.
[45] _King of men:_ Agamemnon.
[46] _Brother kings:_ Menelaus and Agamemnon.
[47] _Smintheus_ an epithet taken from sminthos, the Phrygian name
for a _mouse_, was applied to Apollo for having put an end to a plague
of mice which had harassed that territory. Strabo, however, says, that
when the Teucri were migrating from Crete, they were told by an oracle
to settle in that place, where they should not be attacked by the
original inhabitants of the land, and that, having halted for the
night, a number of field-mice came and gnawed away the leathern straps
of their baggage, and thongs of their armour. In fulfilment of the
oracle, they settled on the spot, and raised a temple to Sminthean
Apollo. Grote, “History of Greece,” i. p. 68, remarks that the
“worship of Sminthean Apollo, in various parts of the Troad and its
neighboring territory, dates before the earliest period of Æolian
colonization.”
[48] _Cilla_, a town of Troas near Thebe, so called from Cillus, a
sister of Hippodamia, slain by Œnomaus.
[49] A mistake. It should be,
“If e’er I roofed thy graceful fane,”
for the custom of decorating temples with garlands was of later date.
[50] _Bent was his bow_ “The Apollo of Homer, it must be borne in
mind, is a different character from the deity of the same name in the
later classical pantheon. Throughout both poems, all deaths from
unforeseen or invisible causes, the ravages of pestilence, the fate of
the young child or promising adult, cut off in the germ of infancy or
flower of youth, of the old man dropping peacefully into the grave, or
of the reckless sinner suddenly checked in his career of crime, are
ascribed to the arrows of Apollo or Diana. The oracular functions of
the god rose naturally out of the above fundamental attributes, for
who could more appropriately impart to mortals what little
foreknowledge Fate permitted of her decrees than the agent of her most
awful dispensations? The close union of the arts of prophecy and song
explains his additional office of god of music, while the arrows with
which he and his sister were armed, symbols of sudden death in every
age, no less naturally procured him that of god of archery. Of any
connection between Apollo and the Sun, whatever may have existed in
the more esoteric doctrine of the Greek sanctuaries, there is no trace
in either Iliad or Odyssey.”—Mure, “History of Greek Literature,” vol.
i. p. 478, sq.
[51] It has frequently been observed, that most pestilences begin with
animals, and that Homer had this fact in mind.
[52] _Convened to council_. The public assembly in the heroic times is
well characterized by Grote, vol. ii. p 92. “It is an assembly for
talk. Communication and discussion to a certain extent by the chiefs
in person, of the people as listeners and sympathizers—often for
eloquence, and sometimes for quarrel—but here its ostensible purposes
end.”
[53] Old Jacob Duport, whose “Gnomologia Homerica” is full of curious
and useful things, quotes several passages of the ancients, in which
reference is made to these words of Homer, in maintenance of the
belief that dreams had a divine origin and an import in which men were
interested.
[54] Rather, “bright-eyed.” See the German critics quoted by Arnold.
[55] The prize given to Ajax was Tecmessa, while Ulysses received
Laodice, the daughter of Cycnus.
[56] The Myrmidons dwelt on the southern borders of Thessaly, and took
their origin from Myrmido, son of Jupiter and Eurymedusa. It is
fancifully supposed that the name was derived from myrmaex, an _ant_,
“because they imitated the diligence of the ants, and like them were
indefatigable, continually employed in cultivating the earth; the
change from ants to men is founded merely on the equivocation of their
name, which resembles that of the ant: they bore a further resemblance
to these little animals, in that instead of inhabiting towns or
villages, at first they commonly resided in the open fields, having no
other retreats but dens and the cavities of trees, until Ithacus
brought them together, and settled them in more secure and comfortable
habitations.”—Anthon’s “Lempriere.”
[57] Eustathius, after Heraclides Ponticus and others, allegorizes
this apparition, as if the appearance of Minerva to Achilles, unseen
by the rest, was intended to point out the sudden recollection that he
would gain nothing by intemperate wrath, and that it were best to
restrain his anger, and only gratify it by withdrawing his services.
The same idea is rather cleverly worked out by Apuleius, “De Deo
Socratis.”
[58] Compare Milton, “Paradise Lost,” bk. ii:
“Though his tongue
Dropp’d manna.”
So Proverbs v. 3, “For the lips of a strange woman drop as an
honey-comb.”
[59] Salt water was chiefly used in lustrations, from its being
supposed to possess certain fiery particles. Hence, if sea-water could
not be obtained, salt was thrown into the fresh water to be used for
the lustration. Menander, in Clem. Alex. vii. p.713, hydati
perriranai, embalon alas, phakois.
[60] The persons of heralds were held inviolable, and they were at