at which she could feel

how much grievous trouble you have given her by your peevishness by voice and by action, in the day and in the night, and how much anxiety you have caused her when you were ill?" "But I have never said or done any thing to her," replied Lamprocles, ashamed." Do you think it, then," inquired Socrates, a more difficult thing for you to listen to what she says than for actors to listen when they utter the bitterest reproaches against one another in tragedies?" "But actors, I imagine, endure such reproaches easily, because they do not think that, of the speakers, the one who utters reproaches utters them with intent to do harm, or that the one who utters threats, utters them with any evil purpose." Yet you are displeased at your mother, although you well know that whatever she says, she not only says nothing with intent to do you harm, but that she wishes you more good than any other human being. Or do you suppose that your mother meditates evil toward you?" "No, indeed," said Lamprocles, "that I do not imagine." "Do you then say that this mother," rejoined Socrates, "who is so benevolent to you, who, when you are ill takes care of you to the utmost of her power, that you may recover your health, and that you may want nothing that is necessary for you, and who, besides, entreats the gods for many blessings on your head, and pays vows for you, is a harsh mother? For my part, I think that if you cannot endure such a mother, you can. not endure any thing that is good. But tell me," continued he, "whether you think that you ought to pay respect to any other human being, or whether you are resolved to try to please nobody, and to follow or obey neither a general nor any other commander?" "No, indeed," replied Lamprocles, "I have formed no such resolutions." Are you then willing," inquired Socrates, "to cultivate the good-will of your neighbor, that he may kindle a fire for you when you want it, or aid you in obtaining some good, or if you happen to meet with any misfortune, may assist you with willing and ready help?" "I am," replied he. "Or would it make no difference," rejoined Socrates, "whether a fellow-traveler, or fellow-voyager, or any other person that you met with, should be your friend or enemy? Or do you think that you ought to cultivate their good-will?" "I think that I ought," replied Lamprocles. "You are then prepared," returned Socrates, "to pay attention to such persons; and do you think that you ought to pay no respect to your mother, who loves you more than any one else? Do you not know that the state takes no account of any other species of ingratitude, nor allows any action at law for it, overlooking such as receive a favor and make no return for it, but that if a person does not pay due regard to his parents, it imposes a punishment on him, rejects his services, and does not allow him to hold

the archonship, considering that such a person cannot piously perform the sacrifices offered for the country, or discharge any other duty with propriety and justice. Indeed, if any one does not keep up the sepulchers of his dead parents, the state inquires into it in the examination of candidates for office. You, therefore, my son, if you are wise, will entreat the gods to pardon you if you have been wanting in respect toward your mother, lest, regarding you as an ungrateful person, they should be disinclined to do you good; and you will have regard, also, to the opinion of men, lest, observing you to be neglectful of your parents, they should all condemn you, and you should then be found destitute of friends; for if men surmise that you are ungrateful toward your parents, no one will believe that if he does you a kindness he will meet with gratitude in return."

Our readers will be interested in comparing and contrasting Xenophon, as reporter of Socrates, with Plato, hereafter to be presented acting in the same ostensible capacity.

III.
HOMER.

I. THE ILIAD. II. THE ODYSSEY.

HOMER'S Iliad is, as every body knows, one of the masterpieces of human genius. It is, indeed, beyond dispute the most famous among poems. The literature that has accumulated in all languages about it makes its pre-eminence permanent and secure. It is hardly possible to imagine any mutations in human affairs, with the uncalculated changes of that different order, short of the new heavens and the new earth, foreshadowed in revelation, that can dislodge the Iliad of Homer from its position as the leading poem of the world.

This is here said without any implication intended as to the right of the Iliad to occupy the position. In literature, .

as in other spheres, often it is might that makes right. Possession is nine points in the law. And possession, in Homer's case, establishes his title to his fame. The title will never be successfully disputed. Any challenge of the fame serves but to confirm the fame. For the fame consists largely in the literature of discussion, of criticism, of translation, of annotation, of allusion, and even of sheer skepticism, that has been built up, and still continues to be built up, scarce less actively now than ever, about this remarkable name. The fact that Greek is virtually a dead language-virtually, we say, for the Greek language nominally lives still, in the mouths of the people of Greece, and virtually dead, we call it, nevertheless, since as yet, though there are omens which we have already alluded to, of imminent change, no great productions of the human mind get themselves uttered in it -the very fact that the speech of Homer is a dead speech, helps make Homer's fame immortal, and immortally first among poems in presumptive rank of genius. The world. can never grow any farther away from the Iliad than it is to-day. Our readers will be glad to come into some closer acquaintance with this great monument of the human mind.

Every body will have heard the noise of the wrangle that has been made, especially of late, concerning the authorship of the Iliad, and concerning the reality of the existence of the man whom we know by the name of Homer. Whether, in fact, the Iliad is properly to be regarded as one poem, whether it may not better be considered a collection of different pieces, strung together in a kind of mechanical continuity, not constituting any true organic unity, whether such a personage as Homer ever actually lived, and whether, if he did, he ever composed the Iliad-these are some of the startling, the staggering questions that have been not only seriously, but almost acrimoniously, debated by recent scholars. We shall not at this stage trouble our readers with any thing beyond the present allusion to this redoubtable controversy. The one

fact that stands, and stands foursquare to all the winds that blow, is the Iliad itself. Here is the Iliad, whoever wrote it, and whatever it is. Let us go at once about our task of comprehending it as well as we can.

The Iliad is so entitled from the word Ilium, which is the alternative name of Troy. The title is not a perfectly happy one, but no matter for that. It is the title. Nobody will ever succeed in substituting another. We could not call the poem the Troad, if we wanted to, for that word is already appropriated for the country or region of Asia Minor in which Ilium, or Troy, was situated. Since the poet's own opening lines give for the subject of the poem the wrath of Achilles [A-kil'les], we might have as our title, The Achillead, or, likening the word in form to the name of Virgil's epic, The Ene'id, The Achilleid.

The siege of Troy is sometimes said to be the subject of the Iliad. This, however, is not exactly the case. Not the siege the siege occupied ten years-but an episode of the siege, namely, the wrath, or fit of sulks, as one might very suitably call it, of Achilles, is the real subject. The time covered by the poem is short, less than two months. The action belongs to the last year of the siege; but the end of the siege, the downfall of Troy, does not come within the plan of the poem.

What occasioned the siege was the rape of Helen. Helen was the lovely wife and queen of Men-e-la'us, a Grecian king. Young prince Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, was visiting Menelaus, and he abused his privilege of guestship by seducing his host's wife to elope with him to Troy. Adding a peculiar baseness to his perfidy, Paris bore off considerable treasure along with the lady. cause with outraged Menelaus. preparation for war, and then, solemn requisition in vain for the return of both the beauty and the booty, the confederate kings mustered their forces

All Greece made common Having first spent years in through embassy, made

The

and sailed across to the plain of Troy to besiege the city. Ten years almost, the weary siege had prolonged itself, and now, on an occasion well suited to bring out the fiercely animal appetites which animated the leading combatants, Achilles gets angry and sulks in his tent, his fellow chieftains meantime trying their fortune in fight without him. occasion is the arbitrary interference of Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the confederate Greeks, to deprive Achilles of a female captive, Bri-se'is, and usurp her to himself. It being conceded that either marauder had a right to the lady, Achilles seems to have been indignant with

reason.

And

Such is the occasion of the famous wrath of Achilles. the wrath of Achilles is the subject of the most renowned of poems. One cannot help feeling a little revolt at the unworthiness of the theme. The sentiment of such a revolt Milton does not hesitate, in his large, free, lordly way, to express, in a passage of Paradise Lost. He is letting slip a bit of his autobiography-with that lofty egotism of his, whose very audacity vindicates it, to the admiring and sympathetic reader. Milton admits his reader to his confidence about his own meditation and choice of a subject for the exercise of his poetical genius. Of the theme finally chosen by him, he says:

Sad task! yet argument

Not less but more heroic than the wrath

Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall.

The whole passage would interest our readers. found in the opening of the ninth book.

It is to be

Our preamble has now been sufficient; and we begin at once with the poem itself-premising, however, yet this one thing more, that the final issue of the Trojan affair, in the poem and beyond it, is as follows: The Greeks suffer cruelly under Achilles's withdrawal from the fight, until in sheer