THE NEW THEORY OF ACHILLES'S SHIELD. 325 



length and labored character of the description. Even 

 Grote, whose theory is that Homer's original poem was 

 not an Iliad., but an A.chilleis^ has admitted the force 

 of this argument. He finds clear evidence that from 

 Book II. to Book XX., Homer has been husbanding 

 his resources for the more effective description of the 

 final conflict. He therefore concedes the possibility 

 that the " Shield of Achilles " may be an interpolation 

 perhaps the work of another hand. 



It appears to me, however, that the mere length of 

 the description is no argument against the genuineness 

 of the passage. Events have, indeed, been hastening 

 to a crisis up to the end of Book XYIL, and the action 

 is checked in a marked manner by the ' Oplopoeia " in 

 Book XYIII. Yet it is quite in Homer's manner to 

 introduce, between two series of important events, an 

 interval of comparative inaction, or at least of events 

 wholly different in character from those of either series. 

 "We have a marked instance of this in Books IX. and 

 X. Here the appeal to Achilles and the night-adven- 

 ture of Diomed and Ulysses are interposed between 

 the first victory of the Trojans and the great struggle 

 in which Patroclus is slain, and Agamemnon, Ulysses, 

 Diomed, Machaon, and Eurypylus wounded.* In fact 



* Another well-known instance, where "Patroclus sent in hot haste 

 for news by a man of the most fiery impatience, is button-held by Nes- 

 tor, and though he has no time to sit down, yet is obliged to endure 

 a speech of 152 lines," is accounted for by Gladstone in a different 

 manner. 



