Book Six

THE BOOK OF THE CHIEFTAINS

BUT from their midst up rearing a brow that no crown could ennoble,

Male and kingly of front like a lion conscious of puissance

Rose a form august, the monarch great Agamemnon.

Wroth he rose yet throwing a rein on the voice of his passion,

Governing the beast and the demon within by the god who is mighty.

"Happily for thy life and my fame that thou comst with the aegis of heaven

Shadowing thy hoary brows, thou herald of pride and of insult.

Well is it too for his days who sent thee that other and nobler

Heaven made my heart than his who insults and a voice of the immortals¹

Cries to my soul forbidding its passions. O hardness of virtue

Thus to be seized and controlled as in fetters by Zeus and Athene.

Free is the peasant to smite in the pastures the mouth that has wronged him,

Chained in his soul is Atrides. Bound by their debt to the fathers,

Curbed by the god in them painfully move the lives of the noble,

Forced to obey the eye that watches within in their bosoms.

Ever since Zeus Cronion turned in our will towards the waters,

¹ Alternative to lines 4-9 :

Wroth he rose with a reddened brow as reddens the forehead

Wide of the heavens with a glory of wrath on the eve of a* tempest.

"Well is it, herald, that sacred thou comst with the aegis of heaven

Sheltering thy hoary brows ; for thy age should not shield thee nor pardon, +

Shame to the ancient years and the Argive tongue that can utter

Words like these into Argive ears from the mouth of a Hellene.

Well is it too for the length of his days who sent thee, O envoy,

Voicing** his pride, the haughty J chief of a barbarous nation,

One who imagines that sole upon earth he is brave and a fighter.

Well for his days that my strength is restrained by a voice that within me."

* some

 Alternative : Well is it, herald, that sacred thou comst and protected of heaven.

                           Bearing this stab to Achaia nor fearest insulting her princes.

                                                ++insolent

** Voice of 

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Scourged by the heavens in my dearest, wronged by men and their clamours

Griefs untold I have borne in Argos and Aulis and Troas,

Yoked to the sacred toil of the Greeks for their children and country,

Bound by the gods to a task that is heavy, a load that is bitter.

Seeing the faces¹ of foes in the mask of a friend I was silent.

Hateful I hold him who sworn to a cause that is holy and common

Broods upon private wrongs or serving his² lonely ambition

Studies to reap his gain from the labour and woe of his fellows.

Mire is the man who hears not the gods when they cry to his bosom.

Grief and wrath I coerced nor carried my heart to its record,

All that has hurt its chords and wounded the wings of my spirit.

Nobler must kings be than natures of earth on whom Zeus lays no burden.

Other is Peleus' son than the race of his Aeacid fathers,

Nor like his sire of the wise-still heart deep-sighted and patient

Bearing the awful ruin of the gods, but hastes to his longings ;

Dire is his wrath and pursued by the band of his giant ambitions.

Measure and virtue forsake him as Ate grows in his bosom.

Yet not for tyrant wrong nor to serve as a sword for our passions

Zeus created our strength, but that earth might have help from her children.

Not of our moulding its gifts to our soul nor were formed by our labour.

When did we make them, and where were they forged, in what workshop or furnace ?³

Found in what aeon of Time, that pride should bewilder the mortal ?

Bowed to our will are the folk and our prowess dreadful and godlike ?

Shadows are these of the gods which the deep heavens cast on our spirits.

Transient we made not ourselves, but at birth from the first we were fashioned

Valiant or fearful and as was our birth by the gods and their thinkings

Formed, so already enacted and fixed by their wills are our fortunes.

What were the strength of Atrides and what were the craft of Odysseus

Save for their triumphing gods ? They would fail and be helpless as infants.

Stronger a woman, wiser a child were, favoured by Heaven.

Ceased not Sarpedon slain who was son of Zeus and unconquered ?

Not to Achilles he fell, but Fate and the gods were his slayers.

Kings, to the arrogant shaft that was launched, the unbearable insult

Armoured wisdoms oppose, let not Ate seize on your passions.

Be not as common souls, O you who are Greece and her fortunes,

¹ eyes

² Alternative to "serving his" : lured by a

³ Alternative to "or furnace" : of being

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Nor of your spirits of wrath take counsel but of Athene.

Merit the burden laid by Zeus, his demand from your natures

Suffer, O hearts of his seed, O souls who are chosen and mighty,

All forgetting but Greece and her good ; resolve what is noble.

I will not speak nor advise, for 'tis known we are rivals and foemen."

Calmed by his words and his will he sat down mighty and kinglike ;

But Menelaus arose, the Spartan, the husband of Helen,

Atreus' younger son from a lesser womb, in his brilliance

Dwarfed by the other's port, yet tall was he, gracile and splendid,

As if a panther might hunt by a lion's side in the forest.

Smiting his thigh with his firm-clenched hand he spoke mid the Argives:

"Woe to me, shameless, born to my country a cause of affliction,

Since for my sake all wrongs must be borne and all shames be encountered ;

And for my sake you have spun through the years down the grooves of disaster

Bearing the shocks of the Trojans and ravaged by Zeus and by Hector,

Slaughtered by Rhesus and Memnon, Sarpedon and Penthesilea ;

Or by the Archer pierced, the hostile dreadful Apollo,

Evilly and the days of the Greeks remote from their kindred—

Slain on an alien soil by Asian Xanthus and Ida.

Doomed to the pyre we have toiled for a woman ungracious who left us

Passing serenely my portals to joy in the chambers of Troya.

Here let it cease, O my brother ! how much wilt thou bear for this graceless

Child of thy sire, cause still of thy griefs and never of blessing ?

Easily Zeus afflicts who trouble their hearts for a woman ;

But in our ships that sailed close-fraught with this dolorous Ate

Worse was the bane they bore which King Peleus begot on white Thetis.

Evil ever was sown by the embrace of the gods with a mortal !

Alien a portent is born and a breaker of men and their labours,

One who afflicts with his light or his force mortality's weakness

Stripping for falsehoods their verities, shaking the walls they erected.

Neither without him his fellows can prosper nor will his spirit

Fit in the frame of things earthly but shatters their rhythm and order

Rending the measures just that the wise have decreed for our growing.

So have our mortal planning's broken in this fateful Achilles

And with our blood and our anguish Heaven has fostered his greatness.

It is enough ; let the dire gods choose between Greece and their offspring.

Even as he bids us, aloof let our hosts twixt the ships and the Xanthus

Stand from the shock and the cry where Hellene meets with Eoan,

Troy and Pthia locked, Achilles and Penthesilea,

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Nor any more than watchers care who line an arena;

Calm like the impartial gods they approve the bravest and swiftest.

So let him fight ! The fates shall preserve him he vaunts of or gather,

Even as death shall gather us all for memory's clusters,

All in their day who were great or were little, heroes or cowards.

So shall he slay or be slain, a boon to mankind and his country.

Since if he mow down this flower of bale, this sickle by Hades

Whirled if he break—for the high gods ride on the hiss of his spear-shaft,—

Ours is the gain who shall break rejoicing through obdurate portals

Praising Pallas alone and Hera daughter of Heaven.

But if he sink in this last of his fights, as they say it is fated,—

Nor do I deem that the man has been born in Asia or Hellas

Who in the dreadful field can prevail against Penthesilea,—

If to their tents the Myrmidons fleeing cumber the meadows

Slain by a girl in her speed and leaving the corpse of their leader,

Ours is the gain, we are rid of a shame and a hate and a danger.

True is it, Troy shall exultant live on in the shadow of Ida,

Yet shall our hearts be light because earth is void of Achilles.

And for the rest of the infinite loss, what we hoped, what we suffered,

Let it all go, let the salt floods swallow it, fate and oblivion

Bury it out in the night; let us sail o'er the waves to our country

Leaving Helen in Troy since the gods are the friends of transgressors."

So Menelaus in anger and grief miscounselled the Argives.

       Great Idomeneus next, the haughty king of the Cretans,

Raised his brow of pride in the lofty Argive assembly.

Tall like a pine that stands up on the slope of The scallion mountains

Over peering a cascade's edge and is seen from the valleys,

Such he seemed to their eyes who remembered Greece and her waters,

Heard in their souls the torrent's leap and the wind on the hill-tops.

"Long¹ have I marvelled at heart² to behold in this levy of heroes

Armies so many, chieftains so warlike suffer in silence

Pride of a single man when he thunders and lightens in Troas.

Doubtless the nations that follow his cry are many and valiant,

Doubtless the winds of the north have made him a runner and spearman.

Shall not then force be the King ? is not strength the seal of the godhead ?

This my soul replies, 'Agamemnon the Atreid only

Choosing for leader and king I have come to the toil and the warfare.

¹ Oft

²  Alternative to "at heart" : O Greeks,

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Pay with her temples charred and her golden mansions in ruins,

Pay with the shrieks of her ravished virgins, the groans of the aged

Burned in their burning homes for our holiday. Music and dancing

Shall be in Troy of another sort than she loved in her greatness,

Merry with conquered gold and insulting the world with her flutings.

All that she boasted of, statue and picture, all shall be shattered;

Out of our shame she chiselled them, rich with our blood they were coloured

This not the gods from Olympus crowding, this not Achilles,

This not your will, O ye Greeks, shall deny to the Locrian Ajax.

Even though Pallas divine with her aegis counselling mercy

Cumbered my path I would push her aside to leap on my victims.

Learn shall all men on that day how a warrior deals with his foemen."

Darting flames from his eyes the barbarian sate and there rose up

Frowning Tydeus's son, the Tirynthian, strong Diomedes.

"Ajax Oileus, thy words are foam on the lips of a madman.

Cretan Idomeneus, silence the vaunt that thy strength can fulfil not.

Strong art thou, fearless in bated, but not by thy spear-point, O hero,

Hector fell, nor Sarpedon, nor Troilus leading the war-cry.

These were Achilles' deeds which a god might have done out of heaven.

Him we upbraid who saved, nor would any now who revile him

Still have a living tongue for ingratitude but for the hero.

Much to the man forgive who has saved his race and his country:

Him shall the term less centuries praise when we are forgotten.

Curb then your speech, crush down in your hearts the grief and the choler;

Has not Atrides curbed who is greatest of all in our nations

Wrath in the heart and the words that are winged for our bale from our bosoms ?

For as a load to be borne were these passions given to mortals.

Honour Achilles, conquer Troy by his god-given valour.

Now of our discords and griefs debate not for joy of our foemen !

First over Priam's corpse stand victors in Ilion's ramparts;

Discord then let arise or concord solder our nations."

Rugged words and few as fit for the soul that he harboured

Great Tydides spoke and ceased; and there rose up impatient

Tall mid the spears of the north the hero king Prothoënor,

Prince in Cadmeian Thebes who with Leitus led on his thousands;

"Loudly thou vauntest thy freedom Ionian Minos recalling,

Lord of thy southern isles who gildst with thy tribute Mycenae !

We have not bowed our neck to Pelops' line or at Argos'

Iron heel have not crouched nor clasped like thy time-wearied nations,

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Python-befriended, gripped in the coils of an iron protection,

Bondage soothed by a name and destruction masked as a helper.

We are the young and lofty and free-souled sons of the Northland.

Nobly Peleus, the Aeacid, seer of a vaster Achaia,

Pride and his strength and his deeds renouncing for joy of that vision,

Yielded his hoary right to the sapling stock of Atrides.

Noble, we gave to that nobleness freely our grandiose approval.

Not as a foe then, O King, who angered sharpens his arrows,

Fits his wrath and hate to the bow and aims at the heart-strings

But from the Truth that is seated within me compelling my accents,

Taught by my fathers stern not to lie nor to hide what I harbour,

Truth the goddess I speak, nor constrain the voice in my bosom.

Monarch, I own thee first of the Greeks save in valour and counsel.

Brave but less than Achilles, wise but not as Odysseus,

First still in greatness and calm and majesty. Yet, Agamemnon,

Love of thy house and thy tribe disfigures the king in thy nature;

Thou thy brother prefer rest, thy friends and thy nation unjustly,

Even as a common man whose heart is untaught by Athene,

Beastlike favours his brood forgetting the law of the noble.

Therefore Ajax grew wroth and Teucer sailing abandoned

Over the angry seas this stern fierce toil of the nations;

Therefore Achilles has turned in his soul and gazed towards the Orient.

Yet are we fixed in our truth like hills in heaven, Atrides;

Greece and her safety and good in our passions strive to remember.

Nor of this stamp was thy brother's speech; such words Lace daemon

Hearing may praise in her kings; we speak not in Thebes what is shameful.

Shame fuller thoughts have never escaped from lips that were high-born.

We will not send forth earth's greatest to die in a friendless bated,

Nor will forsake the daughter of Zeus and white glory of Hellas,

Helen the golden-haired Tyndarid, left for the joy of our foemen,

Chained to Paris' delight, earth's goddess the slave of the Phrygian,

Though Menelaus the Spartan abandon his wife to the Trojans

And from the field where he lavished the unvalued blood of his people

Flee to a hearth dishonoured. Not the Astrid's sullied grandeurs,

Greece to defend we have toiled through the summers and lingering autumns

Blind with our blood; for our country we bleed, repelling her foemen.

Dear is that loss to our veins and still that expense we would lavish,

Claiming its price from the heavens, though thou sail with thy brother and cohorts.

Weakling, flee ! take thy southern ships, take thy Spartan levies.

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Still will the Greeks fight on in the Troad helped by thy absence.

For though the beaches vast grow empty, the tents can be numbered

Standing friendless and few on the huge and hostile Champaign.

Always a few will be left whom the threatening of Fate cannot conquer,

Always earth has sons¹ whose courage waits not on fortune;

Hellas' heart will be firm confronting the threat of the victor,

Sthenelus war and Tydides, Odysseus and Locrian Ajax,

Thebes' unconquered sons and the hero chiefs of the northland.

Stern and persistent as Time or the seas and as deaf to affliction

We will clash on in the fight unsatisfied, fain of the war-cry,

Helped by the gods and our cause through the dawns and the blood-haunted evenings,

Rising in armour with morn and outstaying the red of the sunset,

Till in her ashes Troy forgets that she lusted for empire

Or in our own the honour and valour of Greece are extinguished."

So Prothoënor spoke nor pleased with his words Agamemnon;

But to the northern kings they were summer rain on the visage.

Last Laertes' son, the Ithacan, war-wise Odysseus,

Rose up wide-acclaimed; like an oak was he stunted in stature,

Broad-shouldered, firm-necked, lone and sufficient, as on some island

Regnant one peak whose genial streams flow down to the valley,

Dusk on its slopes are the olives, the storms but in vain at its shoulders,—

Such he stood and pressed the earth with his feet like one vanquished,

Striving, but held to his will. So Atlas might seem were he mortal,

Atlas whose vastness free from impatience suffers the heavens,

Suffering spares the earth, the thought-haunted motionless Titan,

Bearer of worlds. In those jarring tribes no man was his hater;

For as the Master of all guides humanity, so this Odysseus

Dealt with men and helped and guided them, careful and selfless,

Crafty, tender and wise,—like the Master who bends o'er his creatures,

Suffers their sins and their errors and guides them screening his guidance;

Each through his nature He leads and the world by the lure of His wisdom.

"Princes of Argolis, chiefs of the Locrian's, spears of the northland,

Warriors vowed to a sacred hate and a vengeance that's holy,

Stateless still is that hate, that vengeance cries for its victims,

Still is the altar un laden, the priest yet waits with the death-knife.

Who while the rites are unfinished, the gods unsatisfied, impious

Turns in his heart to the feuds of the house and his strife with his equals ?

¹ Alternative to "earth has sons" : souls are born

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None will approve the evil that fell from the younger Atrides;

But it was anger and sorrow that spoke, it was not Menelaus.

Who would return from Troy and arrive with his war-wasted legions

Back to his home in populous city or orcharded island;

There from his ships disembarked look round upon eyes that grow joyless

Seeking a father or husband slain, a brother heart-treasured,

Mothers in tears for their children, and when he is asked 'O our chieftain,

What dost thou bring back in place of our dead to fill hearts that are empty?'

Who then will say, T bring back my shame and the shame of my nation;

Troy yet stands confronting her skies and Helen in Troya' ?

Nor for such foil will I go back to Ithaca or to Laertes,

Rather far would I sail in my ships past southern Cythera,

Turning away in silence from waters where on some headland

Gazing south o'er the waves my father waits for my coming,

Leaving Sicily's shores and on through the pillars of Gades.

Far I would sail whence sound of me never should come to Achaia

Out into tossing worlds and weltering reaches of tempest

Dwarfing the swell of the wide-wayed Aegean,—Oceans unbounded

Either by cliff or by sandy margin, only the heavens

Ever receding before my keel as it ploughs on for ever

Frail and alone in a world of waves. Even there would I venture

Seeking some island unknown, not return with shame to my fathers.

Well might they wonder how souls like theirs begot us for their offspring.

Fighters¹ war-afflicted, princes² banded by heaven,

Wounds and defeat you have borne ; bear too their errors who lead you.

Mortals are kings and have hearts ; our leaders too have their passions.

Then if they err, yet still obey lest anarchy fostered,

Discord and deaf rebellion that speed like a poison through kingdoms,

Break all this army in pieces while Ate mocking at mortals

Trails to a shameful end this noble³ essay of the nations.

Who among men has not thoughts that he holds for the wisest, though foolish ?

Who, though feeble and nought, esteems not his strength o'er his fellow's ?

Therefore the wisest and strongest choose out a king and a leader,

Not as a perfect arbiter armed with impossible virtues

Far o'er our heads and our ken like a god high-judging his creatures,

¹ Chieftains

² champions

³ lofty

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But as a man among men who is valiant, wise and far-seeing,

One of ourselves and the knot of our wills and the sword of our action.

Him they advise and obey and cover his errors with silence.

Not Agamemnon the Atreid, Greeks, we obey in this mortal ;

Greece we obey ; for she walks in his gait and commands by his gestures.

Evil he works then who loosens this living knot of Achaia,

Falling apart from his nation ; who, wed to a solitary virtue,

Deeming he does but right, renounces the yoke of his fellows,—

Errs more than hearts of the mire that in blindness and weakness go stumbling.

Man when he spurns his kind, when he equals himself with the deathless,

Even in his virtues sins and, erring, calls up Ate :

For among men we were born, not as wild beasts sole in a fastness.

Oft with a name are misled the passionate hearts of the noble ;

Chasing highly some image of good they trample its substance.

Evil is worked, not justice, when into the mould of our thinkings

God we would force and enchain to the throb of our hearts the immortals,—

Justice and Virtue, her sister ; for where is justice mid creatures

Perfectly ? Even the gods are betrayed by our clay to a semblance.

Evil not good he sows who lifted high o'er his fellows

Dreams by his light or his force to compel this deity earth-born,

Evil though his wisdom exceeded the gathered light of the millions,

Evil though his single fate were vaster than Troy and Achaia.

Less is our gain from gods upon earth than from men in our image ;

Just is the slow and common march, not a lonely swiftness

Far from our human reach that is vowed to impossible strivings.

 Better the stumbling leader of men than inimitable paces.

If he be Peleus' son and his name the Pthian Achilles,

Worse is the bane : lo, the Ilian battlefield red with his errors !

Yet, O ye Greeks, if the heart returns that was loved, though it wandered,

Though with some pride it return and reproaching the friends that it fled from,

Be not less fond than heart-satisfied parents who yearn o'er that coming,

Smile at its pride and accept the wanderer. Happier music

Never has beat on my grief-vexed ears than the steps of Achilles

Turning back to this Greece and the cry of his strength in its rising.

Zeus is awake in this man who is dreadful and world-slaying puissance

Gave in an hour of portentous birth to the single Achilles.

Taken today are Ilion's towers, a dead man is Priam.

Cross not the hero's will in his hour, Agamemnon Atrides,

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Cross not the man whom the gods have chosen to work out their purpose

Then when he rises ; his hour is his, though thine be all morrows.

First in the chambers of Paris' delight let us stable our horses,

Afterwards bale that is best shall be done persuading Achilles ;

Doubt not the gods' decisions, awful, immutable, ruthless.

Flame shall lick Troy's towers and the limbs of her old men and infants.

O not today, not now remember the faults of the hero !

Follow him rather bravely and blindly as children their leader,

Guide your fate through the war-surge loud in the wake of his exploits,

Rise, O ye kings of the Greeks ! leave debate for the voices of battle.

Peal forth the war-shout, pour forth the spear-sleet, surge towards Troya.

1 lion falls today ; we shall turn in our ships to our children."

So Odysseus spoke and the Achaians heard him applauding ;

Ever the pack by the voice of the mighty is seized and attracted !

Then from his seat Agamemnon arising his staff to the herald

Gave and around him arose the Kings of the west and its leaders.

Loud their assembly broke with a stern and martial rumour.

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