Neither is Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, to be approved or deemed to have given his pupil good counsel when he told him that he should take the gifts of the Greeks and assist them[27]; but that without a gift he should not lay aside his anger. Neither will we believe or acknowledge Achilles himself to have been such a lover of money that he took Agamemnon's gifts, or that when he had received payment he restored the dead body of Hector, but that without payment he was unwilling to do so[28]. [Footnote 26: Quoted by Suidas as attributed to Hesiod.] [Footnote 27: Il. ix. 515.] [Footnote 28: Ib. xxiv. 175.] *391A* Undoubtedly, he said, these are not sentiments which can be approved. [Sidenote: The impious behaviour of Achilles to Apollo and the river-gods; his cruelty.] Loving Homer as I do[29], I hardly like to say that in attributing these feelings to Achilles, or in believing that they are truly attributed to him, he is guilty of downright impiety. As little can I believe the narrative of his insolence to Apollo, where he says, 'Thou hast wronged me, O far-darter, most abominable of deities. Verily I would be even with thee, if I had only the power[30];' *391B* or his insubordination to the river-god[31], on whose divinity he is ready to lay hands; or his offering to the dead Patroclus {75} of his own hair[32], which had been previously dedicated to the other river-god Spercheius, and that he actually performed this vow; or that he dragged Hector round the tomb of Patroclus[33], and slaughtered the captives at the pyre[34]; of all this I cannot believe that he was guilty, any more than I can *391C* allow our citizens to believe that he, the wise Cheiron's pupil, the son of a goddess and of Peleus who was the gentlest of men and third in descent from Zeus, was so disordered in his wits as to be at one time the slave of two seemingly inconsistent passions, meanness, not untainted by avarice, combined with overweening contempt of gods and men. [Footnote 29: Cf. _infra_, x. 595.] [Footnote 30: Il. xxii. 15 sq.] [Footnote 31: Ib. xxi. 130, 223 sq.] [Footnote 32: Il. xxiii. 151.] [Footnote 33: Ib. xxii. 394.] [Footnote 34: Ib. xxiii. 175.] You are quite right, he replied. [Sidenote: The tale of Theseus and Peirithous.]