Chapter 20

The reader may decide as to whether it is "_Very_ late; barely Homeric," or a late and deliberate piece of burlesque, [Footnote: Henry, _Classical Review_. March 1906.] or whether it is very Homeric, though the whole set of situations--a night of terror, an anxious chief, a nocturnal adventure--are unexampled in the poem.

The poet's audience of warriors must have been familiar with such situations, and must have appreciated the humorous, ruthless treatment of Dolon, the spoiled only brother of five sisters. Mr. Monro admitted that Dolon is Shakespearian, but added, "too Shakespearian for Homer." One may as well say that Agincourt, in Henry V., is "too Homeric for Shakespeare."

Mr. Monro argued that "the Tenth Book comes in awkwardly after the Ninth." Nitzsche thinks just the reverse. The patriotic warrior audience would delight in the _Doloneia_ after the anguish of Book IX.; would laugh with Odysseus at the close of his adventure, and rejoice with the other Achaeans (X. 505).

"The introductory part of the Book is cumbrous," says Mr. Monro. To us it is, if we wish to get straight to the adventure, just as the customary delays in Book XIX., before Achilles is allowed to fight, are tedious to us. But the poet's audience did not necessarily share our tastes, and might take pleasure (as I do) in the curious details of the opening of Book X. The poet was thinking of his audience, not of modern professors.

"We hear no more of Rhesus and his Thracians." Of Rhesus there was no more to hear, and his people probably went home, like Glenbuckie's Stewarts after the mysterious death of their chief in Amprior's house of Leny before Prestonpans (1745). Glenbuckie was mysteriously pistolled in the night. "The style and tone is unlike that of the Iliad ... It is rather akin to comedy of a rough farcical kind." But it was time for "comic relief." If the story of Dolon be comic, it is comic with the practical humour of the sagas. In an isolated nocturnal adventure and massacre we cannot expect the style of an heroic battle under the sunlight. Is the poet not to be allowed to be various, and is the scene of the Porter in _Macbeth_, "in style and tone," like the rest of the drama? (_Macbeth_, Act ii. sc. 3). Here, of course, Shakespeare indulges infinitely more in "comedy of a rough practical kind" than does the author of the _Doloneia_.

The humour and the cruelty do not exceed what is exhibited in many of the _gabes_, or insulting boasts of heroes over dead foes in other parts of the _Iliad_; such as the taunting comparison of a warrior falling from his chariot to a diver after oysters, or as "one of the Argives hath caught the spear in his flesh, and leaning thereon for a staff, methinks that he will go down within the house of Hades" (XIV. 455-457). The _Iliad_, like the sagas, is rich in this extremely practical humour.

Mr. Leaf says that the Book "must have been composed before the _Iliad_ had reached its present form, for it cannot have been meant to follow on Book IX. It is rather another case of a parallel rival to that Book, coupled with it only in the final literary redaction," which Mr. Leaf dates in the middle of the sixth century. "The Book must have been composed before the _Iliad_ had reached its present form," [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 424.] It is not easy to understand this decision; for, as Mr. Leaf had previously written, about Book IX. 60-68, "the posting of the watch is at least not necessary to the story, and it has a suspicious air of being merely a preparation for the next Book, which is much later, and which turns entirely upon a visit to the sentinels." [Footnote: _Companion,_ p.174.]

Now a military audience would not have pardoned the poet of Book IX. if, in the circumstances of defeat, with a confident enemy encamped within striking distance, he had not made the Achaeans throw forth their outposts. The thing was inevitable and is not suspicious; but the poet purposely makes the advanced guard consist of young men under Nestor's son and Meriones. He needs them for Book X. Therefore the poet of Book IX. is the poet of Book X. preparing his effect in advance; or the poet of Book X. is a man who cleverly takes advantage of Book IX., or he composed his poem of "a night of terror and adventure," "in the air," and the editor of 540 B.C., having heard it recited and copied it out, went back to Book IX. and inserted the advanced guard, under Thrasymedes and Meriones, to lead up to Book X.

On Mr. Leafs present theory, [Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p.424.] Book X., we presume, was meant, not to follow Book IX., but to follow the end of