The Illiad - Book Two - 46

by Homer

Thus said the people. Then Ulysses rose, sceptre in hand, and
Minerva in the likeness of a herald bade the people be still,
that those who were far off might hear him and consider his
council. He therefore with all sincerity and goodwill addressed
them thus:--

"King Agamemnon, the Achaeans are for making you a by-word among
all mankind. They forget the promise they made you when they set
out from Argos, that you should not return till you had sacked
the town of Troy, and, like children or widowed women, they
murmur and would set off homeward. True it is that they have had
toil enough to be disheartened. A man chafes at having to stay
away from his wife even for a single month, when he is on
shipboard, at the mercy of wind and sea, but it is now nine long
years that we have been kept here; I cannot, therefore, blame the
Achaeans if they turn restive; still we shall be shamed if we go
home empty after so long a stay--therefore, my friends, be
patient yet a little longer that we may learn whether the
prophesyings of Calchas were false or true.

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Continued next week. Tomorrow's installment from Kim by Rudyard Kipling.

More About This Book

From the earliest days of Ancient Greece, the author(s) of this poem were contemporaries of the writers of the Bible's Old Testament.

Summary of Second Book: Jove sends a lying dream to Agamemnon, who thereon calls the chiefs in assembly, and proposes to sound the mind of his
army--In the end they march to fight--Catalogue of the Achaean and Trojan forces.

Painting: The Wrath of Achilles by Michael Drolling, 1819.

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