Achilles answers, "My mother, that prayer hath the Olympian accomplished for me. But what delight have I therein, since Patroclus is dead?"[13] Observe that the critics, and even Miss Stawell, think Achilles too sweet to refuse atonement in Book ix. There is not much sweetness of soul in his furious desire for the complete destruction of the Greeks in his very last words to his friend in Book xvi. Thus, from first to last, Achilles asks nothing less than what Zeus, in Book viii., just prior to the impeached Book ix., declares that he shall receive,--the massacre of the Achaeans among the sterns of their ships. Grote has misstated the facts of the case. He represents that the Embassy of Book ix. offered Achilles all his heart's desire. This they did not and could not do, they had not been slain among the ships; they had not been put in deadly stress; and Achilles would be inconsistent if he accepted atonement before he got revenge, before instant ruin was upon the Achaeans. "Agamemnon," says Achilles in Book ix., "shall not persuade me" (by gifts richer than he offers), "_till he have paid me back all the bitter despite_."[14] A payment in gold and lands and women Achilles disdains: he will not take it till he has a payment in revenge. This he has insisted on in Book i., this Zeus has promised in Book viii., and this inexorableness is the sin and stumbling-block of Achilles. Customary law and public opinion acknowledged his right to apology and atonement, but condemned his insistence, after these had been duly offered, on a bloody revenge. All the world recognised the facts before Grote went hunting for discrepancies, and bagged the greatest of all,--which is no discrepancy! The whole story, including Book ix., is absolutely consistent. Grote argued that Agamemnon, by his offers, had done all that was necessary. He _had_, according to customary law; but Achilles had set his heart, in Book i. as in Book ix., on much more, on "a contented revenge." In Book ix. he had not enjoyed his revenge, and he said as much. Had he yielded in Book ix., the prophecy of Zeus in Book viii. would have been falsified;[15] the doom of Zeus would have been frustrated; the bitter word of Achilles would have been broken; he would have deserved no heart-breaking disaster. Grote sees nothing of all this, nor do his followers.