The Iliad of Homer


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84 Grote, i, p. 393, states the number of the Grecian forces at upwards  
of 100,000 men. Nichols makes a total of 135,000.  
85 "As thick as when a field  
Of Ceres, ripe for harvest, waving bends  
His bearded grove of ears, which way the wind  
Sways them."--Paradise Lost," iv. 980, sqq.  
8
6 This sentiment used to be a popular one with some of the greatest  
tyrants, who abused it into a pretext for unlimited usurpation of  
power. Dion, Caligula, and Domitian were particularly fond of it,  
and, in an extended form, we find the maxim propounded by Creon in  
the Antigone of Sophocles. See some important remarks of Heeren,  
"Ancient Greece," ch. vi. p. 105.  
8
7 It may be remarked, that the character of Thersites, revolting and  
contemptible as it is, serves admirably to develop the disposition  
of Ulysses in a new light, in which mere cunning is less prominent.  
Of the gradual and individual development of Homer's heroes,  
Schlegel well observes, "In bas-relief the figures are usually in  
profile, and in the epos all are characterized in the simplest  
manner in relief; they are not grouped together, but follow one  
another; so Homer's heroes advance, one by one, in succession before  
us. It has been remarked that the Iliad is not definitively  
closed, but that we are left to suppose something both to precede  
and to follow it. The bas-relief is equally without limit, and may  
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