Book xvi. had Book ix. before him. The Achaeans are dying around the

ships, but till Hector approaches his own ships he will not fight in person. So he had vowed in Book ix. There is stern consistency, not discrepancy; but Grote finds inconsistency by agreeing with the Scholiast and Heyne in interpreting "_ἔφην γε_" (in its primary sense, "I said") "as equivalent to 'I thought' (διενοήθην), not as referring to any express antecedent declaration."[23] Mr. Leaf agrees, and thinks that the declaration of Achilles in Book ix. 650 "may well have been suggested by this very phrase." This very phrase may therefore, confessedly, mean that Achilles _did_ make an express declaration; and we have every right so to understand it. If we do, the supposed discrepancy vanishes. If we do not, we must suppose the poet of Book ix. to have been at once most scrupulously attentive to the words of his predecessor,--the author of Book i., of Book viii., and of the opening of Book xvi.--and at the same time absolutely regardless of that minstrel in the most important point. We only shift the insane error from one great poet to another.

Meanwhile Grote says that the poet of Book xi. _et seqq_. "could not have had present to his mind the main event of the ninth Book, the embassy, and its offers of atonement."[24]

Next, in xvi. lines 72, 73, Achilles says that the Achaeans would not be in such straits "if Agamemnon had been but kindly disposed to me." But, in Book ix., says Grote, Agamemnon was more than kindly, he offered to pay any price for reconciliation. So Achilles himself admitted in Book ix. Agamemnon would pay any price, but Achilles regarded this as mere hypocrisy: he would not believe that Agamemnon was "favourably disposed" in his heart. "He shall not deceive me, shall not persuade me." The poet has anticipated Grote's objection, but Grote does not understand.

Achilles is not really in heart reconciled to Agamemnon, even after he consents to take the gifts; is not reconciled till after the funeral games for Patroclus. At _this_ moment (xvi. 77) Achilles speaks of Agamemnon as "hateful."

In xvi. 83-86, to copy Grote's paraphrase, Achilles says to Patroclus, "Obey my words, so that you may procure for me honour and glory _from the body of the Greeks_, and that they may send back to me the damsel, giving me ample presents besides...."

Grote has oddly misunderstood the whole story. He says, "The ninth Book _has actually_ tendered to Achilles everything he demands and even more." Now Achilles had demanded only the massacre of the Greeks at the ships, and then recognition of what kind of king they have. In what passage does Achilles demand anything else? In none till, in Book xvi. 84, 85, he bids Patroclus fight, when he himself will receive Briseis and fair gifts: his revenge he has already enjoyed, but Phoenix had warned him that he would be dishonoured if he fought without receiving atonement.

Grote, in the spirit of his school, rejects later allusions to the offered atonement of Book ix. as interpolations thrust in for the sake of restoring harmony. Yet the cunning interpolators allowed the Great Discrepancy to stand! If we may reject whatever lines destroy our theory, criticism is an idle game of contradictory conjectures, each inquirer discerning interpolations in all passages that ruin his favourite hypothesis. After all Grote concludes, "The poem consists of a part original and other parts superadded; yet it is certainly not impossible that the author of the former may himself have composed the latter." If so, "the poet ... has not thought fit to recast the parts and events in such manner as to impart to the whole a pervading thread of _consensus_ and organisation such as we see in the _Odyssey_."[25] Thus the poet did not mind a ghastly discrepancy.

I trust that all who have not invincible prepossessions will see that