THE ILIAD OF HOMER TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER POPE EDITED BY THE REV. J. S. WATSON, M.A. AND ILLUSTRATED WITH THE ENTIRE SERIES OF FLAXMAN'S DESIGNS LONDON 1909 2681. GEORGE BELL AND SONS LONDON: PORTUGAL ST., KINGSWAY CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO. NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER & Co, INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON HOMER AND HIS WORKS. THE city of TROY was the metropolis of Troas, a country on the shores of the Hellespont, watered by the rivers Satnois and Rhodius on the south and north, and Scamander and Simois in the middle part. How long this city flourished is unknown, but it seems certain that it arrived at a high degree of wealth and power. Its first king is said to have been Teucer, and its last Priam, who, by his wife Hecuba, had nineteen children. The second son of Priam, Paris or Alexander, was, on account of a dream of his mother, denoting that he should set fire to Troy, brought up in obscurity as a shepherd. In this condition. he is said to have decided the contest among the three goddesses for the prize of beauty. Afterwards, discovering his origin, and being acknowledged by his father, he made a voyage to Greece, where, being entertained by Menelaus, king of Sparta, he became enamoured of his queen, Helen, the most beautiful woman of her age, and fled with her to Troy, where she was received into the family of Priam as a daughter-in-law. But Menelaus was less disposed to be satisfied with his loss, than Paris and Priam with their gain, and prevailed on the most eminent leaders and princes of Greece to join with him in an expedition to Troy to recover his wife by force of arms. Of the troops collected for the expedition, which is said to have been two years in preparation, Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus, and king of Mycena and a large portion of the Peloponnesus, was chosen commander-in-chief. The other most remarkable leaders were Achilles, from Phthiotis in Thessaly; Ajax, son of Telamon, from Salamis; Ajax, son of Oileus, from Locri; Ulysses, from Ithaca; Diomed from Argos; and Nestor from Pylos. There were many others of inferior note. When the Grecian host, which filled twelve hundred such vessels as were then in use, arrived on the coast of Troas, they proceeded, it appears, to lay siege to the city of Troy. But the Trojans, headed by Hector, the son of Priam, with Æneas, a Trojan chief, Sarpedon king of Lycia, Pandarus of Zeleia, Pylæmenes of Paphlagonia, and other auxiliaries, made so resolute and vigorous a resistance, that the siege or blockade was protracted for ten years. It is supposed by Thucydides,' however, that the whole of this period was not occupied in attacks on the town, but that the Greeks, when the provisions which they brought with them were exhausted, applied themselves, for subsistence, to the cultivation of the neighbouring land, and to predatory excursions, leaving before the walls of Troy only just a sufficient number to keep up the form of a siege. Had their whole force, under the command of such able leaders, maintained continuous assaults on the city, it is not likely that the inhabitants, however resolute or skilful, would have succeeded in delaying the capture of it for so long a period. It was in the tenth year of the siege that discord arose between Agamemnon and Achilles, from the following cause. A pestilence spread through the Grecian army, and Calchas, the chief augur of the Greeks, being consulted respecting the origin of it, declared that it proceeded from Apollo, whose priest Chryses, having come to the camp to offer ransom for his daughter, (who had been taken prisoner by Achilles at the capture of the neighbouring city of Lyrnessus, and had been assigned, in the distribution of the spoil, to Agamemnon,) had been dismissed with a contumelious refusal by Agamemnon, and had in consequence called down the anger of Apollo on the Grecian army. Calchas foretold that the pestilence would not cease till Apollo should be appeased by the surrender of the captive to her father; and Aga B. i. c. 11 |