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whether they move to left or right. One omen alone is best, to fight for native land." fessor Gildersleeve pronounced this last verse

the world's greatest verse of poetry." It is translated by Pope with a superb couplet:

Without a sign his sword the brave man draws, And asks no omen but his country's cause.

This however misses the simple dignity of the original, since Homer used but six words. It seems to me that Chapman missed the tone absolutely in his: "One augury is given to order all men best of all: Fight for thy countrie's right." The Earl of Derby's rendering is nearly perfect:

The best of omens is our country's cause.

On another occasion Hector inspired his men with the words: "It is glorious to die fighting for one's native land," and this has been repeated by Horace in the verse:

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,

a motto which has been a favorite inscription on military monuments.

During the struggle for the body of Patro

clus deep night spread over the field, when Ajax in anguish prayed that Zeus might slay him, if he only gave him light. This has been adapted by Longfellow:

The prayer of Ajax was for light;

Through all that dark and desperate fight, The blackness of that noonday night,

He asked but for the return of sight,

To see his foeman's face.11

When the warriors were preparing for battle down in the plain, the old men too feeble to fight sat on the walls "chirping like grasshoppers," as they discussed the merits of the different chieftains, or sat in silence while Helen pointed out and named for them Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax, and Idomeneus. Longfellow with wonderful aptness drew on this scene for his poem, Morituri Salutamus, delivered on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation from college:

As ancient Priam at the Scaean gate
Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state

With the old men, too old or weak to fight,
Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight

To see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield,
Of Trojans and Achaians in the field;

So from the snowy summits of our years
We see you in the plain, as each appears,
And question of you; asking, 'Who is he
That towers above the others? Which may be
Atreides, Menelaus, Odysseus,

Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus? ›

When the corpse of Patroclus came back to his tent Briseis uttered a dirge of bitter sorrow, grieving in his death, and all the women joined therein: "apparently weeping for Patroclus, but in truth each wept for her own sorrows.'

When a laugh was forced from the angry Hera it is said that "She laughed with her lips but there was no joy in her face."

Andromache described the cup of charity which is doled out to orphans, as: "a drink which moistens the lips but does not reach to the palate."

When Hector challenged the best of the Greeks to meet him in single combat: "They all remained silent, ashamed to refuse but afraid to accept."

The aim of education was to make one "a speaker of words and a doer of deeds."

When Achilles mourned for Patroclus he said: "I shall never forget him, so long as I

share the lot of the living, and if they forget the dead in Hades, even there will I remember my beloved companion."

Bellerophon carried to Lycia a secret order for his own death, a thing which suggested to Young in his Night Thoughts:

He whose blind thought futurity denies,
Unconscious bears, Bellerophon! like thee
His own indictment: he condemns himself.

Zeus uttered the amazingly frank statement: There is nothing more wretched than man, nothing of all the things which breathe and move on the face of the earth." This sentiment is very like the words of Achilles: "The gods have decreed that wretched mortals should live in sorrow, while they themselves are free from cares.'

The following verses are much quoted and self-explanatory:

Potent is the combined strength even of frail men. Sleep which is the brother of death.

The purposes of great men are subject to change. Whoever obeys the gods, him they especially hear. When two go together, one thinks before the other. Good is the advice of a companion.

War is impartial and slays the slayer.

Zeus does not bring to pass all the purposes of men. Even a wood-chopper accomplishes more by skill than by strength.

A fool can understand, when the thing is done. Whatever word you utter, just such a word you will be obliged to hear.

The actors of the Iliad, excepting gods and priests, are all warriors or their dependents and the poem is drawn with a military setting, but the real greatness of that poem is in the portrayal of powerful human emotions rather than in military exploits.

No blood is shed in the first three books of the Iliad and there is no fighting in the last two. Strange as it may seem only a minor part of the poem is given to actual warfare, while most of the great scenes are without fighting.

Even those books which are most martial, such as the fifth, have long stretches in which no blood is shed.

The world has always been interested in wars and in warriors, so that many of the most famous names of history belong to military heroes. Homer wisely chose this absorb