If the initial incident of the second book, whereby we pass out of the Achillêis into the Iliad, is awkward, so also the final incident of the seventh book, immediately before we come back into the Achillêis, is not less unsatisfactory,—I mean, the construction of the wall and ditch round the Greek camp. As the poem now stands, no plausible reason is assigned why this should be done. Nestor proposes it without any constraining necessity: for the Greeks are in a career of victory, and the Trojans are making offers of compromise which imply conscious weakness,—while Diomêdês is so confident of the approaching ruin of Troy, that he dissuades his comrades from receiving even Helen herself, if the surrender should be tendered. “Many Greeks have been slain,” it is true,[294] as Nestor observes; but an equal or greater number of Trojans have been slain, and all the Grecian heroes are yet in full force: the absence of Achilles is not even adverted to. [294] Iliad, vii. 327. Now this account of the building of the fortification seems to be an after-thought, arising out of the enlargement of the poem beyond its original scheme. The original Achillêis, passing at once from the first to the eighth,[295] and from thence to the eleventh book, might well assume the fortification,—and talk of it as a thing existing, without adducing any special reason why it was erected. The hearer would naturally comprehend and follow the existence of a ditch and wall round the ships, as a matter of course, provided there was nothing in the previous narrative to make him believe that the Greeks had originally been without these bulwarks. And since the Achillêis, immediately after the promise of Zeus to Thetis, at the close of the first book, went on to describe the fulfilment of that promise and the ensuing disasters of the Greeks, there was nothing to surprise any one in hearing that their camp was fortified. But the case was altered when the first and the eighth books were parted asunder, in order to make room for descriptions of temporary success and glory on the part of the besieging army. The brilliant scenes sketched in the books, from the second to the seventh, mention no fortification, and even imply its nonexistence; yet, since notice of it occurs amidst the first description of Grecian disasters in the eighth book, the hearer, who had the earlier books present to his memory, might be surprised to find a fortification mentioned immediately afterwards, unless the construction of it were specially announced to have intervened. But it will at once appear, that there was some difficulty in finding a good reason why the Greeks should begin to fortify at this juncture, and that the poet who discovered the gap might not be enabled to fill it up with success. As the Greeks have got on, up to this moment, without the wall, and as we have heard nothing but tales of their success, why should they now think farther