Page:Iliad Buckley.djvu/34

 

BOOK THE SECOND.

 

ARGUMENT.

Jove sends a dream to Agamemnon, in consequence of which he re-assembles the army. Thersites is punished for his insolent speech, and the troops are restrained from seeking a return homeward. The catalogue of the ships and the forces of the confederates follows.

The rest, then, both gods and horse-arraying men,^[1] slept all the night: but Jove sweet sleep possessed not; but he was pondering in his mind how he might honor Achilles, and destroy many at the ships of the Greeks. But this device appeared best to him in his mind, to send a fatal dream^[2] to Agamemnon, the son of Atreus. And addressing him, he spoke winged words:

"Haste away, pernicious dream, to the swift ships of the Greeks. Going into the tent of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, utter very accurately every thing as I shall command thee. Bid him arm the long-haired Achæns^[3] with all their array; for now perhaps he may^[4] take the wide-wayed city of the Trojans; for the immortals who possess the Olympian mansions no longer think dividedly, for Juno, supplicating, hath bent all [to her will]. And woes are impending over the Trojans."

Thus he spake: and the dream^[5] accordingly departed, as

1. See Anthon, who observes that "fighting from on horseback was not practiced in the Homeric times."
2. Some would personify Oneirus, as god of dreams.
3. Observe the distinction, for the Abantes, verse 542, and the Thracians, iv. 533, wore their hair differently.
4. κεν limits the assertion to probability, so that Jupiter does not utter a direct falsehood.
5. In defense of this cheating conduct of Jove, at which Plato was much scandalized, Coleridge, p. 154, observes: "The οὖλος ὄνειρος was a lying spirit, which the father of gods and men had a supreme right to commission for the purpose of working out his ultimate will."