ἀλλὰ μάλ’ οὐκ Ἀχιλῆϊ χόλος φρεσὶν, ἀλλὰ μεθήμων· ἦ γὰρ ἂν, Ἀτρείδη, νῦν ὕστατα λωβήσαιο[241]. [241] Il. ii. 241, 2. For here the wretch apes Achilles, whom (for the sake of damaging Agamemnon) he affects to patronize, and, over and above the pretension to speak of his feelings as if he had been taken into his confidence on the occasion, he actually closes with the very line which Achilles, at the moment of high passion, had used in the Assembly of the First Book (i. 232). If we consider the selection of topics each by themselves, with reference to effect, the speech is not without a certain εὐστοχία: he hits the avarice of Agamemnon hard (226); and his responsibility as a ruler (234): while pretending to incite the courage of the Greeks (235), he flatters their home-sickness and faint-heartedness by counselling the return (236); and, in supporting Achilles, he plausibly reckons on being found to have taken the popular side. But if we regard it, as every speech should be regarded, with reference to some paramount purpose, it is really senseless and inconsequent. Dwelling as he does upon the wrong done to Achilles, and asserting the placability of that chieftain, he ought to have ended with recommending an attempt to compensate and appease him; instead of which he recommends the Return, which had been just abandoned. But the real extravagance of the speech comes out only in connection with his self-love; when, like many better men, he wholly loses whatever sense of the ridiculous he might possess. It is not only ‘the women whom we give you’ (227); ‘the service which we render you’ (238), but it is also ‘the gold[242] that some Trojan may bring to ransom his son, whom I, or else some other Greek, may have led captive.’ I, Thersites, or some other Greek! The only Greek, of whom we hear in the Iliad as having made and sold on ransom captives during the war, is Achilles[243]; and it is with him that Thersites thus couples himself. Upon this, Ulysses, perceiving that he stands in opposition to the prevailing sentiment of the Assembly, silences him by a judicious application of the sceptre to his back and shoulders: yet not even Thersites does he silence by force, until he has first rebuked him by reasoning[244]. [242] Il. ii. 229-31. [243] xxi. 40, 79. xxii. 44. [244] 246-56. Such are the facts of the case of Thersites. Are we to infer from it, with Grote, that Homer has made him ugly and execrable because he was a presumptuous critic, though his virulent reproaches were substantially well founded, and that his fate, and the whole circumstances of this Assembly, show ‘the degradation of the mass of the people before the chiefs[245]?’ [245] Grote’s Hist. Greece, vol. ii. 95, 6.