public opinion is further seen in the circumstance that his solicitude for the rights of man is not strong enough to counteract his natural disposition to exult over the fallen. Thersites was a commoner who presumed to speak his mind among his betters,—when one of them, Odysseus, dealt him a smart blow on the back, and caused him to resume his seat in tears. Tis laughed for joy, saying in effect that it served Thersites right, and that he probably would not do it again. The Tory sentiment of this passage makes it appropriate to quote the version of it by the late Lord Derby:—
"The Greeks, despite their anger, laughed aloud,
And one to other said, 'Good faith, of all
The many works Ulysses well hath done,
Wise in the council, foremost in the fight,
He ne'er hath done a better, than when now
He makes this scurril babbler hold his peace.
Methinks his headstrong spirit will not soon
Lead him again to vilify the kings.'"
Here it might be said that Tis figures as the earliest authentic example of a being whose existence has sometimes been doubted by British anthropologists, the Conservative working-man. But, if we would be just to Tis in his larger Homeric aspects, we must allow that his sympathies are usually generous, and his utterances often edifying. As to the feeling with which Tis was regarded, Homer has a word for it which is hard to translate: he calls it aidos. This aidos—the sense of reverence or shame—is always relative to a standard of
