BOOK II.
Power of
mythical
tradition.
further, his friend has fallen by the hand of Hcktor, and Achilleus makes his deadly oath that the funeral rites shall not be performed over his body until the head and the arms of Hektor can be placed by its side, the submission of the Argive chiefs is accepted not from any notion that his inaction has sprung from an exorbitant selfishness, but because his own grief and unbounded fury for the loss of his friend drive him to do the things to which the chiefs would urge him by the less exciting arguments of a cooler patriotism. Now that his WTath is thus kindled, the strife shall indeed be ended in the blood of his enemies. Hektor shall die, though the death of Achilleus may follow ever so closely upon it, and the blood of twelve human victims, deliberately reserved for the frightful sacrifice, shall stream on the pyre of Patroklos.
As the portrait of a human being, the picture is from first to last inexpressibly revolting; and it is only when we take the story to pieces and trace the origin of its several portions, that we begin to see how there lay on the poet a necessity not less constraining than that which forced Achilleus to his fitful fury and his early doom, a necessity which compelled him to describe under the guise of human warriors the actions of the hosts which meet for their great battle every morning in the heavens. Regarded thus, there is scarcely a single feature, utterly perplexing though it may be on the supposition that we are dealing with a human portrait, which is not seen to be full of life and meaning. We are no longer perplexed to know why Patroklos, who can move in the armour of Achilleus, yet cannot wield his spear, why the horses which Zeus gave to Peleus are the offspring of the west-wind and the happy Podarge, and why their mother feeds in a meadow by the side of the ocean stream.^ All is now plain. The Myrmidons must be compared with the wolves which appear almost everywhere in the myths of Phoibos Apollon ; their tongues and their cheeks must be red as with blood. We see at once why Patroklos can return safe from the fight only if he does strictly the bidding of Achilleus, for Patroklos is but the son of Klymene, who must not dare to whip the horses of Helios. When at length Patro- klos goes forth and encounters Sarpedon, it is curious to trace the inconsistencies which are forced upon the poet as he interweaves several solar myths together. On the one side is the Zeus who has sworn to Thetis that he will avenge the wrongs done to Achilleus, — a promise which cannot be fulfilled by allowing his friend to be slaugh- tered, on the other the Zeus whose heart is grieved for the death of his own child Sarpedon. His vow to Thetis binds him to shield Patroklos from harm ; his relation to the brave Lykian chieftain
• //. xvi. 150.
