Instead of arming the Greeks forthwith, Agamemn6n con-
vokes first a council of chiefs, and next an agora of the
host. And though himself in a temper of mind highly elate
with the deceitM assurances of Oneirus, he deuberately
assumes the language of despair in addressing* the troops,
having previou3y prepared Nestor and Odysseus for his
doing so — merely in order to try the courage of the men,
and*with formal instructions given to these two other chiefs
chat they are to speak in opposition to him. Now this
intervention of Zeus and Oneirus, eminently unsatisfactory
when coupled with the incidents which now follow it, and
making Zeus appear, but only appear, to realise his pro-
mise of honouring Achilles as well as of hurting the



186 HISTOBT OF GREECE. Pabt I,

Greeks, — forms exactly the point of junction between the
Achilleis and the Iliad. ^

The freak which Agamemnon plays off upon the temper
of his army, though in itself childish, serves a sufficient
purpose, not only because it provides a special matter of
interest to be submitted to the Greeks, but also because it
calls forth the splendid description, so teeming with viva-
cious detail, of the sudden breaking up of the assembly
after Agamemndn's harangue, and of the decisive interfe-
rence of Odysseus to bring the men back, as well as to put
down Thersites. This picture of the Greeks in agora,
briilgin^ out the two chief speaking and counselling heroes,
was so important a part of the general Trojan war, that
the poet has permitted himself to introduce it by assuming
an inexplicable folly on the part of Agamemn6n; just as he
has ushered in another fine scene in the third book — the
Teichoskopy or conversation between Priam and Helen on
the walls of Troy — by admitting the supposition that the
old king in the tentn year of the war did not know the
persons of Agamemnon and the other Grecian chiefs. This
may serve as an explanation of the delusion practised by
Affamemn6n towards his assembled host; but it does not at
all explain the tame and empty intervention of Oneirus.*

*■ The inteWention of Oneirus the scene in the Grecian agora as

ought rather to come as an im- *'an entire mythical eomedy, full

mediate preliminary to book yiii. of fine irony and with an amnsing

than to book ii. 