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

First, it would appear to have belonged to the Assembly, not indeed to distribute the spoil, but to consent to its distribution by the chief commander, and his brother-leaders. To the former it is imputed in the Ninth Book. But in the First Book Achilles says to him in the Assembly, We the Greeks (Ἀχαιοὶ) will requite you three and four-fold, when Troy is taken 228 228 Il. i. 127. . It is probable that he here means to speak of the chiefs alone, (but only so far as the act of distribution is concerned,) because Thersites uses the very same expression (ἅς τοι Ἀχαιοὶ πρωτίστῳ δίδομεν 229 229 ii. 227. ) in the Second Book. Therefore the division of booty was probably made on the king’s proposal, with the aid of the chiefs, but with the general knowledge and consent of the army, and in right of that consent on their part.

It must be remembered all along, that the state of political society, which Homer represents to us, is that in which the different elements of power wear their original and natural forms; neither much altered as yet by the elaborate contrivances of man, nor driven into their several extremes by the consequences of long strife, greedy appetite, and furious passions, excited by the temptations which the accumulation of property presents.

In those simple times, when the functions of government were few, and its acts, except perhaps the trial of private causes, far between, there was no formal distribution of political rights, as if they could be made the object of ambitious or contentious cupidity: but the grand social power that moved the machine was in the determinations of the ἀγορὴ, however informally declared.

Grote has observed, that in the Homeric ἀγορὴ no division of affirmative and negative voices ever takes place. It would require a volume to discuss all that this remark involves and indicates. I will however observe that the principle surely cannot be made good from history or in philosophy, that numbers prevail by an inherent right. Decision by majorities is as much an expedient, as lighting by gas. In adopting it as a rule, we are not realizing perfection, but bowing to imperfection. We follow it as best for us, not as best in itself. The only right to command, as Burke has said, resides in wisdom and virtue. In their application to human affairs, these great powers have commonly been qualified, on the one hand by tradition and prepossession, on the other hand by force. Decision by majorities has the great merit of avoiding, and that by a test perfectly definite, the last resort to violence; and of making force itself the servant instead of the master of authority. But our country still rejoices in the belief, that she does not decide all things by majorities. The first Greeks neither knew the use of this numerical dogma, nor the abuse of it. They did not employ it as an instrument, and in that they lost: but they did not worship it as an idol, and in that they greatly gained. Votes were not polled in the Olympus of Homer; yet a minority of influential gods carry the day in favour of the Greeks against the majority, and against their Head. There surely could not be a grosser error than to deny every power to be a real one, unless we are able both to measure its results in a table of statistics, and to trace at every step, with our weak and partial vision, the precise mode by which it works towards its end.

Great decisions all taken there.

We have seen, in the first place, that all the great decisions of the War were taken in the Assembly of the Greeks. And here the first reflection that arises is, how deeply this method of political action must have been engrained in their habits and ideas, when it could survive the transition from peace to war, and, notwithstanding its palpable inconveniences in a camp, form the practical rule of its proceedings under the eye of the enemy.

The force of this consideration is raised to the utmost height by the case of the Night Assembly in the Ninth Book. The Trojans, no longer confined to their walls, are lying beside a thousand watch-fires, just outside the rampart. Some important measure is absolutely demanded on the instant by the downcast condition of the less than half-beaten, but still thoroughly discouraged army. Yet not even under these circumstances would Agamemnon act individually, or with the kings alone. He sends his heralds round the camp (Il. ix. 11), to summon an Assembly noiselessly, and man by man. Can there be a more conclusive proof of the vigour, with which the popular principle entered into the idea of the Homeric polities? If it be said that such an operation could hardly be effected at night without stir, I reply that if it be so, the argument for the power and vitality of the Assembly is but strengthened: for Homer was evidently far more careful to speak in harmony with the political tone of his country than to measure out time by the hour and minute, or place by the yard, foot, and inch; as valuing not the latter methods less, but the former more.

The Greek army, in fact, is neither more nor less than, so to speak, the State in uniform. As the soldier of those days was simply the citizen armed, so the armament was the aggregate of armed citizens, who, in all except their arms and the handling of them, continued to be what they had been before. But when we find that in such great emergencies political ideas did not give way to military expediency, we cannot, I think, but conclude that those ideas rested on broad and deep foundations.

It further tends to show the free nature of the relation between the Assembly and the Commander-in-chief, that it might be summoned by others, as well as by him. We are told explicitly in the First Book, that Achilles called it together, as he did again in the Nineteenth for the Reconciliation. On the second of these occasions, it may have been his purpose that the reparation should be as public as had been the insult: at any rate there was a determination to make the reconciliation final, absolute, and thorough. But, at the former time, the act partook of the nature of a moral appeal from Agamemnon to the army. It illustrated, in the first place, the principle of publicity so prevalent in the Greek polities. That which Calchas had to declare, he must declare not in a ‘hole and corner,’ but on his responsibility, liable to challenge, subject to the δήμου φάτις if he told less than the truth, as well as to the resentment of the sovereign if he should venture on divulging it entire. But secondly, it shows that Achilles held the Greeks at large entitled and bound to be parties to the transaction. He meant that the Greeks should see his wrong. Perhaps he hoped that they would intercept its infliction. This at any rate is clear: he commenced the debate with measured reproofs of Agamemnon 230 230 Il. i. 121-9. ; but afterwards he rose, with a wider scope, to a more intense and a bitterer strain 231 231 Ibid. 149-71. .

When he found that the monarch was determined, and when he had repressed the access of rage which tempted him to summary revenge, he began to use language not now of mere invective against Agamemnon, but of such invective as tended to set him at odds with the people. Then further on, perhaps because they did not echo back his sentiments, and become active parties to the terrible fray, he both taunts and threatens them. For he begins 232 232 Ibid. 225. , ‘Coward that thou art! Never hast thou dared to arm with the people for the fight, or with the leaders for the ambush.’ And then 233 233 Ibid. 231. . ‘Devourer of the people! over what nobodies thou rulest! or surely this would be the last of your misdeeds.’ Again, in the peroration 234 234 Ibid. 239. , ‘By this mighty oath, every man among you shall lament the absence of Achilles.’