The opening of the Ninth Book shows us the Greeks utterly disheartened inside their intrenchments. The threat of the dishonoured Achilles is fast being accomplished: they cannot stand before Hector. Agamemnon calls a hasty council, and proposes--in sad earnest, this time--that all should re-embark and sail home to Greece. The proposal is received in silence by all except Diomed. He boldly taunts the king with cowardice: the other Greeks may go home if they will, but he and his good comrade Sthenelus will stay and fight it out, even if they fight alone. Then Nestor takes the privilege of his age to remind Agamemnon that his insult to Achilles is the real cause of their present distress. Let an embassy be sent to him where he lies beside his ships, in moody idleness, to offer him apology and compensation for the wrong. The king consents; and Ajax, Ulysses, and Phœnix are chosen to accompany the royal heralds on this mission of reconciliation. Ajax--the chief who in all warlike points stands second only to Achilles himself in the estimation of the army--is a delegate to whom even the great captain of the Myrmidons must surely listen with respect. Phœnix has been a sort of foster-father to Achilles from his boyhood, intrusted with the care of him by his father Peleus, and has now accompanied him to the war by the old man’s special request, to aid him with advice and counsel. If any one in the camp has any influence over the headstrong prince, it will be the man who, as he says, has dandled him in his arms in his helpless infancy. And no diplomatic enterprise could be complete without the addition of Ulysses, the man of many devices and of persuasive tongue. The chiefs set forth, and take their way along the shore to the camp of the Myrmidons. They find Achilles sitting in his tent, solacing his perturbed spirit with playing on the lyre, to the music of which he sings the deeds of heroes done in the days of old--the exact prototype of those knightly troubadours of later times, who combined the accomplishments of the minstrel with the prowess of the soldier. His faithful henchman Patroclus sits and listens to the song. With graceful and lofty courtesy the chief of the Myrmidons rises from his seat, and lays his lyre aside, and welcomes his visitors. He will hear no message until they have shared his hospitality. He brings them in, and sets them down on couches spread with purple tapestry. Then, with the grand patriarchal simplicity of the days of Abraham, when no office done for a guest was held to be servile, he bids Patroclus fill a larger bowl, and mix the wine strong, and make good preparation of the flesh of sheep, and goats, and well-fed swine. The great hero himself divides the carcases, while his charioteer Automedon holds them. The joints are cooked above the heaped embers on ample spits under the superintendence of Patroclus; and when all is ready, they fall to with that wholesome