His plausibly concealed
Trojan sympathies, and more particularly the aggravated exaggeration
with which the flight of Hector is described, suggest to me, coming
as they do from an astute and humorous writer, that he may have been
a Trojan, at any rate by the mother's side, made captive, enslaved,
compelled to sing the glories of his captors, and determined so to
overdo them that if his masters cannot see through the irony others
sooner or later shall. This, however, is highly speculative, and
there are other views that are perhaps more true, but which I cannot
now consider.
I will now ask you to form your own opinions as to whether Homer is
or is not a shrewd and humorous writer.
Achilles, whose quarrel with Agamemnon is the ostensible subject of
the poem, is son to a marine goddess named Thetis, who had rendered
Jove an important service at a time when he was in great
difficulties. Achilles, therefore, begs his mother Thetis to go up
to Jove and ask him to let the Trojans discomfit the Greeks for a
time, so that Agamemnon may find he cannot get on without Achilles'
help, and may thus be brought to reason.
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