Refresh yourselves with sleep and a good meal, and then, order out the troops, and have at them: I for my part will be found in the van[730].’ Then it is that the Greeks understand their position, and, casting off hope from Achilles, place it in themselves. Hence that great development of valorous energies in the Eleventh Book, which proves that in equal fight, even though Achilles were absent, Troy had not a hope: so that the expedient of chance-wounds, disabling all the prime warriors but Ajax, is absolutely necessary in order to bring about the required amount of disaster. It appears to me, I confess, that this is a masterly adjustment, alike true in nature, and high in art. [730] Il. ix. 697-709. But first, after the great repulse, comes the pilot-balloon, the tentative effort, of the Doloneia. Next to the skill and power with which the Poet has discriminated the characters of his greater Greek heroes, I am tempted to admire the circumspection and precision, with which he has assigned their relative degrees of prominence in the action. To those who complain of the Doloneia for want of a purpose, I would reply that, in the first place, besides its merits as an operation with reference to the circumstances of the moment, (for it feeds the army, as it were, with milk, when they were not yet ready for strong meat,) it remarkably varies the tenour of the action, which without it would have fallen into something of sleepy sameness, by substituting stratagem for force, and night-adventure for the conflicts of the day. Let those who doubt this strike out the Tenth Book, and then consider how the course of the military transactions of the poem would stand without it: how much more justly the first moiety of the military action of the poem would stand liable to the imputation of monotony, which even now is of necessity the besetting danger of the whole poem. But more; I contend that the Doloneia constitutes, in the main, the ἀριστεῖα of Ulysses. His distinguished part in the Second Book is political only, and has no concern with his military qualifications. His ordinary military exploits elsewhere are secondary, and also scattered. To assign to him a great share in the field operations would have been a much less fine preparation, than the Iliad now affords, for his appearance in the Odyssey; and it would also have hazarded sameness as between his achievements and the other ἀριστεῖα of the great chiefs. Besides, there was little room in the field, as the martial art was then understood, for his distinctive qualities, self-reliance, presence of mind, fertility in resource. But military distinction, even in the time of Homer, lay in two great departments, one known as the fight (μάχη), the other as ambush (λόχος). The latter was of fully equal, nay, on account of its sharper trial of moral courage[731], it was even of still greater honour. To this class the night adventure essentially belonged. Here Ulysses is thoroughly at home.