No More Learning

"Thus the monarch spoke,
Then pledged the chief in a capacious cup,
Golden, and framed by art divine (a gift
Which to Almighty Jove lame Vulcan brought
Upon his nuptial day, when he espoused
The Queen of Love), the sire of gods bestow'd
The cup on Dardanus, who gave it next
To Ericthonius Tros received it then,
And left it, with his wealth, to be possess'd
By Ilus he to great Laomedon
Gave it, and last to Priam's lot it fell. "

84 Grote, i, p. 393, states the number of the Grecian forces at upwards
of 100,000 men. Nichols makes a total of 135,000.

85 "As thick as when a field
Of Ceres, ripe for harvest, waving bends
His bearded grove of ears, which way the wind
Sways them. "--Paradise Lost," iv. 980, sqq.

86 This sentiment used to be a popular one with some of the greatest
tyrants, who abused it into a pretext for unlimited usurpation of
power. Dion, Caligula, and Domitian were particularly fond of it,
and, in an extended form, we find the maxim propounded by Creon in
the Antigone of Sophocles. See some important remarks of Heeren,
"Ancient Greece," ch. vi. p. 105.

87 It may be remarked, that the character of Thersites, revolting and
contemptible as it is, serves admirably to develop the disposition
of Ulysses in a new light, in which mere cunning is less prominent.
Of the gradual and individual development of Homer's heroes,
Schlegel well observes, "In bas-relief the figures are usually in
profile, and in the epos all are characterized in the simplest
manner in relief; they are not grouped together, but follow one
another; so Homer's heroes advance, one by one, in succession before
us.
It has been remarked that the _Iliad_ is not definitively
closed, but that we are left to suppose something both to precede
and to follow it. The bas-relief is equally without limit, and may
be continued _ad infinitum,_ either from before or behind, on which
account the ancients preferred for it such subjects as admitted of
an indefinite extension, sacrificial processions, dances, and lines
of combatants, and hence they also exhibit bas-reliefs on curved
surfaces, such as vases, or the frieze of a rotunda, where, by the
curvature, the two ends are withdrawn from our sight, and where,
while we advance, one object appears as another disappears. Reading
Homer is very much like such a circuit; the present object alone
arresting our attention, we lose sight of what precedes, and do not
concern ourselves about what is to follow. "--"Dramatic Literature,"
p. 75.

88 "There cannot be a clearer indication than this description --so
graphic in the original poem--of the true character of the Homeric
agora. The multitude who compose it are listening and acquiescent,
not often hesitating, and never refractory to the chief. The fate
which awaits a presumptuous critic, even where his virulent
reproaches are substantially well-founded, is plainly set forth in
the treatment of Thersites; while the unpopularity of such a
character is attested even more by the excessive pains which Homer
takes to heap upon him repulsive personal deformities, than by the
chastisement of Odysseus he is lame, bald, crook-backed, of
misshapen head, and squinting vision. "--Grote, vol. i. p. 97.

89 According to Pausanias, both the sprig and the remains of the tree
were exhibited in his time. The tragedians, Lucretius and others,
adopted a different fable to account for the stoppage at Aulis, and
seem to have found the sacrifice of Iphigena better suited to form
the subject of a tragedy. Compare Dryden's "? neid," vol.