These same accretions are not merely magnificent in themselves, and rich in shining incidents, but they add incalculably to the general effect of the Epic. They contribute, in fact, a great part of its dramatic force and the whole of its moral purport. Without them it would be a bald and unfinished performance—the abortive realisation of a sublime conception. The arming of Agamemnon, for instance, and his feats of private valour, could never have been designed as the immediate sequel to the Promise of Zeus; while they constitute a most fitting climax to the series of the baffled Greek efforts for victory. They are admirably prepared for by the stories of the duel between Menelaus and Paris, of the broken pact, of the prowess of Diomed, of the nocturnal embassy to Achilles. Moreover, the irresistible might of Pelides is brought with tenfold impressiveness on the scene after the fighting powers of each of the other Achæan chiefs have been fully displayed, and proved fruitless. Above all, the Achillean drama itself would lose its profound significance by the retrenchment of the Ninth and two closing Books. For it was the implacability of the ‘swift-footed’ hero that was justly punished by the calamity of the death of Patroclus; and he showed himself implacable only when he haughtily rejected a formal offer of ample reparation.[13] At that point he became culpable; and might only win revenge at the cost of the acutest anguish of which his nature was capable. The Ninth Book, in short, constitutes the ethical crisis of the Iliad; and the moralising at second-hand, to the innermost core of its structure, of a work purporting to be already complete, is certainly a unique, if not an impossible phenomenon. Footnote 13: Mr. A. Lang urges this point with great effect in an article on ‘Homer and the Higher Criticism’ (_National Review_, Feb. 1892), published after the present Chapter had been sent to press.