The Iliad

BACCHUS.
AJAX DEFENDING THE GREEK SHIPS.
CASTOR AND POLLUX.
Buckles.
DIANA.
SLEEP AND DEATH CONVEYING THE BODY OF SARPEDON TO LYCIA.
AESCULAPIUS.
FIGHT FOR THE BODY OF PATROCLUS.
VULCAN FROM AN ANTIQUE GEM.
THETIS ORDERING THE NEREIDS TO DESCEND INTO THE SEA.
JUNO COMMANDING THE SUN TO SET.
TRIPOD.
THETIS AND EURYNOME RECEIVING THE INFANT VULCAN.
VULCAN AND CHARIS RECEIVING THETIS.
THETIS BRINGING THE ARMOUR TO ACHILLES.
HERCULES.
THE GODS DESCENDING TO BATTLE.
CENTAUR.
ACHILLES CONTENDING WITH THE RIVERS.
THE BATH.
ANDROMACHE FAINTING ON THE WALL.
THE FUNERAL PILE OF PATROCLUS.
CERES.
HECTOR'S BODY AT THE CAR OF ACHILLES.
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS.
IRIS ADVISES PRIAM TO OBTAIN THE BODY OF HECTOR.
FUNERAL OF HECTOR.





INTRODUCTION.


Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of
scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most
part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual
character of our education, we must continually forget, and emancipate
ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old
notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily
unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and anxiety to
acquire.

And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which
progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which
persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu of
their conventional value. The same principles which have swept away
traditional abuses, and which are making rapid havoc among the revenues of
sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from attractive
superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in society. The
credulity of one writer, or the partiality of another, finds as powerful a
touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the healthy scepticism of a
temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams of conservatism, or the
impostures of pluralist sinecures in the Church. History and tradition,
whether of ancient or comparatively recent times, are subjected to very
different handling from that which the indulgence or credulity of former
ages could allow. Mere statements are jealously watched, and the motives
of the writer form as important an ingredient in the analysis of his
history, as the facts he records. Probability is a powerful and
troublesome test; and it is by this troublesome standard that a large
portion of historical evidence is sifted. Consistency is no less
pertinacious and exacting in its demands. In brief, to write a history, we
must know more than mere facts. Human nature, viewed under an induction of
extended experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history.
Historical characters can only be estimated by the standard which human
experience, whether actual or traditionary, has furnished. To form correct
views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a great
whole--we must measure them by their relation to the mass of beings by whom
they are surrounded, and, in contemplating the incidents in their lives or
condition which tradition has handed down to us, we must rather consider
the general bearing of the whole narrative, than the respective
probability of its details.

It is unfortunate for us, that, of some of the greatest men, we know
least, and talk most. Homer, Socrates, and Shakespere(1) have, perhaps,
contributed more to the intellectual enlightenment of mankind than any
other three writers who could be named, and yet the history of all three
has given rise to a boundless ocean of discussion, which has left us
little save the option of choosing which theory or theories we will
follow. The personality of Shakespere is, perhaps, the only thing in which
critics will allow us to believe without controversy; but upon everything
else, even down to the authorship of plays, there is more or less of doubt
and uncertainty. Of Socrates we know as little as the contradictions of
Plato and Xenophon will allow us to know. He was one of the _dramatis
personae_ in two dramas as unlike in principles as in style. He appears as
the enunciator of opinions as different in their tone as those of the
writers who have handed them down. When we have read Plato _or_ Xenophon,
we think we know something of Socrates; when we have fairly read and
examined both, we feel convinced that we are something worse than
ignorant.

It has been an easy, and a popular expedient, of late years, to deny the
personal or real existence of men and things whose life and condition were
too much for our belief. This system--which has often comforted the
religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of Strauss for those
of the New Testament--has been of incalculable value to the historical
theorists of the last and present centuries. To question the existence of
Alexander the Great, would be a more excusable act, than to believe in
that of Romulus. To deny a fact related in Herodotus, because it is