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BOOK THE NINTH.

 

ARGUMENT.

By advice of Nestor, Agamemnon sends Ulysses, Phœnix, and Ajax, to the tent of Achilles to sue for a reconciliation. Notwithstanding the earnest appeal of Phœnix, their errand proves fruitless.

Thus the Trojans indeed kept guard: but a mighty^[1] Flight, the companion of chill Fear, seized upon the Greeks; and all the chiefs were afflicted with intolerable grief. And as two winds, the north and south, which both blow from Thrace,^[2] rouse the fishy deep, coming suddenly [upon it]; but the black billows are elevated together; and they dash much sea-weed out of the ocean; so was the mind of the Greeks distracted within their bosoms.

But Atrides, wounded to the heart with great sorrow, kept going round, giving orders to the clear-voiced heralds, to summon each man by name to an assembly, but not to call aloud; and he himself toiled among the first. And they sat in council, grieved, and Agamemnon arose, shedding tears, like a black-water fountain, which pours its gloomy stream from a lofty rock. Thus he, deeply sighing, spoke words to the Greeks:

"O friends, leaders and chieftains over the Greeks, Jove,

1. "In Il. I. 2, the θεσπεσίη Φῠζα of the Achæans is not to be explained as a supernatural flight, occasioned by the gods. It is a great and general flight, caused by Hector and the Trojans. For although this was approved of and encouraged by Jupiter, yet his was only that mediate influence of the deity without which in general nothing took place in the Homeric battles."—Buttm. Lexil. p. 358. Cf. Coleridge, p. 160.
2. Wood, p. 46, explains this from the situation of Ionia. Heyne, however, observes, "comparatio e mente poetæ instituitur, non ex Agamemnonis persona.