Agamemnon next, addressing the assembly, says that posterity will think it a shameful thing that the Achaeans raised the siege of a town with a population much smaller than their own army; but allies from many cities help the Trojans, and are too strong for him, whether posterity understands that or not. "Let us flee with our ships!" On this the host break up, in a splendid passage of poetry, and rush to launch the ships, the passion of _nostalgie_ carrying away even the chiefs, it appears--a thing most natural in the circumstances. But Athene finds Odysseus in grief: "neither laid he any hand upon his ship," as the others did, and she encouraged him to stop the flight. This he does, taking the sceptre of Agamemnon from his unnerved hand. He goes about reminding the princes "have we not heard Agamemnon's real intention in council?" (II. 188-197), and rating the common sort. The assembly meets again in great confusion; Thersites seizes the chance to be insolent, and is beaten by Odysseus. The host then arms for battle. The poet has thus shown Agamemnon in the colours which he wears consistently all through the _Iliad_. He has, as usual, contrasted with him Odysseus, the type of a wise and resolute man. This contrast the poet maintains without fail throughout. He has shown us the temper of the weary, home-sick army, and he has persuaded us that he knows how subtle, dangerous, and contagious a thing is military panic. Thus, at least, I venture to read the passage, which, thus read, is perfectly intelligible. Agamemnon is no personal coward, but the burden of the safety of the host overcomes him later, and he keeps suggesting flight in the ships, as we shall see. Suppose, then, we read on from II. 40 thus: "The Dream left him thinking of things not to be, even that on this day he shall take the town of Priam.... But he awoke from sleep with the divine voice ringing in his ears. (_Then it seemed him that some dreams are true and_ some _false, for all do_ not _come through the Gate of_ Horn.) So he arose and sat up and did on his soft tunic, and his great cloak, and grasped his ancestral sceptre ... and bade the clear-voiced heralds summon the Achaeans of the long locks to the deliberative assembly." He then, as in II. 53-75 told his Dream to the preliminary council, and proposed that he should try the temper of the host by proposing flight--which, if it began, the chiefs were to restrain--before giving orders to arm. The test of the temper of the host acted as it might be expected to act; all rushed to launch the ships, and the princes were swept away in the tide of flight, Agamemnon himself merely looking on helpless. The panic was contagious; only Odysseus escaped its influence, and redeemed the honour of the Achaeans, as he did again on a later day.