William Gladstone - Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3

The λόχος or ambuscade.

In that epitome of human life, which Homer has presented to us on the Shield of Achilles, martial operations are of course included. The collective life of man is represented by two cities, one for peace and the other for war. Two armies appear beneath the walls of the latter; and one of these takes its post in an ambush 185 185 Il. xviii. 509, 13, 20. . Whenever persons were to be appointed out of an army for this duty, the noblest and bravest were chosen. Hence Achilles launches the double reproach against Agamemnon, that he has never had spirit enough to arm either with the soldiery at large for battle, or with the chiefs and prime warriors for ambuscade 186 186 Il. i. 226. . And the reason why the ambuscade stood thus high as the duty and the privilege of the best, is explained in an admirable speech of Idomeneus. It is simply because it involves a higher trial, through the patience it requires, of moral as opposed to animal courage.

The Cretan leader supposes the case to have occurred, when all the flower of the army are picked for an ambush. ‘There,’ he says, ‘is the true criterion of valour;

ἔνθα μάλιστ’ ἀρετὴ διαείδεται ἀνδρῶν·

and there it soon appears who is the hero, and who the coward; for the flesh of the poltroon turns to one colour and another, nor can he settle his mind so as to sit quiet, for his knees yield under him, and he shifts from resting on one foot to resting on the other; his heart is fluttering in his breast, and his teeth chatter, as he gives himself up for lost: but the brave man, from the moment when he takes his place in the ambush, neither changes colour, nor is over nervous; but only prays that the time may soon come for him to mingle in the fearful fight 187 187 Il. xiii. 276-86. .’ Then he goes on to commend Meriones as one suited for such a trial.

In exact conformity with what we should expect from these descriptions, it appears that Ulysses was the warrior who was preeminent in the λόχος, while Achilles towered so immeasurably above all others in the field. When the Greeks were concealed in the cavity of the Horse, and Helen came down from the city imitating the voices of their wives, Menelaus and Diomed were on the point of either going forth, or answering; but Ulysses restrained them. One Anticlos was still unwilling to be silent; and Ulysses, resolutely gagging him with his hand, ‘saved the lives of all the Achæans 188 188 Od. iv. 277-88. .’ In all this we again see how the poems of Homer are, like the Shield, an epitome of life. All the points of capital and paramount excellence, for which he could find no place in the hero of the one poem, he has fully represented in the hero of the other; and he has so exhausted, between the two, the resources of our nature, and likewise its appliances as they were then understood, that, had he produced yet a third Epic, not even he could have furnished a third protagonist to form its centre, who should have been worthy to count with Achilles and Ulysses among the undying ideals of human greatness.

We have now considered the Greek community of the heroic age, as it was divided in time of peace into classes, and as in time of war it resolved all its more potent and energetic elements into the form of a military order.

We have also examined the position and functions of the king; who was at once a person, a class, and a great political institution. It remains to consider two other political institutions of heroic Greece, which not only, with the king, made up the whole machinery both of civil and military administration for that period, but likewise supplied the essential germ, at least, of that form of constitution, on which the best governments of the continent of Europe have, two of them within the last quarter of a century, been modelled, with such deviations as experience has recommended, or the change of times has required. I mean the form of government by a threefold legislative body, having for one of its members, and for its head, a single person, in whose hands the executive power of the state is lodged. This form has been eminently favoured in Christendom, in Europe, and in England; and it has even survived the passage of the Atlantic, and the transition, in the United States of America, to institutions which are not only republican, but highly democratic.

The Greek Βουλὴ or Council.

Of these two Greek institutions, we will examine first the βουλὴ, or Council.

It was the usage of the Greeks to consider, in a small preliminary meeting of principal persons, which was called the βουλὴ, of the measures to be taken in managing the Assembly, or ἀγορή.

To the persons, who were summoned thither, the name of γέροντες appears to have been officially applied. It had thus become dissociated from the idea of age, its original signification: for Nestor was the only old man among the Greek senators. Idomeneus, indeed, was near upon old age: Ulysses was elderly (ὠμογέρων 189 189 Il. xxiii. 791. ), apparently not under fifty. The majority would seem to have been rather under middle life; so that γέρων was, when thus employed, a title, not a description. The βουλὴ was composed of the men of greatest rank and weight; and no more required an advanced age among the qualifications for it, than does the presbyterate of the Christian Church, though it too signifies eldership.

Before the great assembly of the Second Book, we are told, not that Agamemnon thought it would be well, as it were for the nonce, to consult the kings or seniors of the expedition; but, in language which indicates a fixed practice, that the choice of the place for the meeting was on this occasion by the ship of Nestor, whose great age possibly either made nearness convenient, or entitled him to this mark of honour:

These γέροντες were summoned 190 190 Il. ii. 408-9. again by Agamemnon before the sacrifice of the Second Book, which preceded the enumeration. On this occasion they are not called a βουλή; probably because they were not called for consultation.

The Council meets again in the Ninth Book 191 191 Il. ix. 10. 89. , by appointment of the Assembly, and sends the mission to Achilles 192 192 Il. x. 195. . In the same night, and perhaps under the same authority, the expedition of Ulysses and Diomed is arranged.

There is no βουλὴ indeed in the First Book, and none in the great Assembly of the Nineteenth: but then both of these were summoned by Achilles, not by Agamemnon, and neither of them were called for properly deliberative purposes 193 193 Il. i. 54. xix. 41. .

Again, Ulysses, in urging the Greeks not to quit the assembly of the Second Book prematurely, reminds them that they ought to know fully the views of Agamemnon, and that they have not all had the advantage of learning those views in the βουλή.

In the Seventh Book, the Council held under the roof of Agamemnon forms the plan for a pause to bury the dead, and erect the rampart. Accordingly, when just afterwards a herald arrives with a proposal from Troy, he finds the Greeks in their Assembly, doubtless an Assembly held to sanction the project of the kings. That this amounted to an institution of the Greeks, we may further judge from the familiar manner, in which Nestor mentions it in the Odyssey to Telemachus, on seeing him for the first time, (Od. iii. 127). ‘Ulysses and I,’ he says, ‘never differed:’ οὔτε ποτ’ εἰν ἀγορῇ δίχ’ ἐβάζομεν, οὔτ’ ἐνὶ βουλῇ 194 194 Il. vii. 344, 382. .