If, then, the nineteenth book (which contains the reconciliation between Achilles and Agamemnôn, a subject naturally somewhat tame) and the three following books (where we have before us only the gods, Achilles, and the Trojans, without hope or courage) are inferior in execution and interest to the seven preceding books (which describe the long-disputed and often doubtful death-struggle between the Greeks and Trojans without Achilles), as Wolf and other critics affirm,—we may explain the difference without supposing a new poet as composer; for the conditions of the poem had become essentially more difficult, and the subject more unpromising. The necessity of keeping Achilles above the level, even of heroic prowess, restricted the poet’s means of acting upon the sympathy of his hearers.[306] [304] Wolf, Prolegomen. p. cxxxvii. “Equidem certe quoties in continenti lectione ad istas partes (_i. e._ the last six books) deveni, nunquam non in iis talia quædam sensi, quæ nisi illæ tam mature cum ceteris coaluissent, quovis pignore contendam, dudum ab eruditis detecta et animadversa fuisse, immo multa ejus generis, ut cum nunc Ὁμηρικώτατα habeantur, si tantummodo in Hymnis legerentur, ipsa sola eos suspicionibus νοθείας adspersura essent.” Compare the sequel, p. cxxxviii, “ubi nervi deficiant et spiritus Homericus,—jejunum et frigidum in locis multis,” etc. [305] Iliad, xx. 25. Zeus addresses the agora of the gods,— Ἀμφοτέροισι δ᾽ ἀρήγετ᾽, ὅπη νόος ἐστὶν ἑκάστου· Εἰ γὰρ Ἀχιλλεὺς οἶος ἐπὶ Τρώεσσι μαχεῖται, Οὐδὲ μίνυνθ᾽ ἕξουσι ποδώκεα Πηλείωνα. Καὶ δέ τέ μιν καὶ πρόσθεν ὑποτρομέεσκον ὁρῶντες· Νῦν δ᾽ ὅτε δὴ καὶ θυμὸν ἑταίρου χώεται αἰνῶς, Δείδω μὴ καὶ τεῖχος ὑπὲρ μόρον ἐξαλαπάξῃ. The formal restriction put upon the gods by Zeus at the beginning of the eighth book, and the removal of that restriction at the beginning of the twentieth, are evidently parts of one preconceived scheme. It is difficult to determine whether the battle of the gods and goddesses in book xxi. (385-520) is to be expunged as spurious, or only to be blamed as of inferior merit (“improbanda tantum, non resecanda—hoc enim est illud, quo plerumque summa criseôs Homericæ redit,” as Heyne observes in another place, Obss. Iliad. xviii. 444). The objections on the score of non-Homeric locution are not forcible (see P. Knight, _ad loc._), and the scene belongs to that vein of conception which animates the poet in the closing act of his Achillêis.