thy sister or a brother's wife or thy mother--though thy father is
gentle to me always as he were my own sire--thou didst restrain such
with words of persuasion and kindness and gentleness all thine own.
Wherefore I grieve for thee and for myself in anguish, for there is
no other friend in broad Troy kind and tender, but all shudder at me."

Then with many a tear they laid to his rest mighty Hector.

Such is the _Iliad_. To modern readers it very often seems a little
dull. Horace long ago pointed out that it is inevitable that a long
poem should flag; even Homer nods sometimes. Some of the episodes are
distinctly wearisome, for they are invented to give a place in this
national Epic to lesser heroes who could hardly be mentioned if
Achilles were always in the foreground. Achilles himself is not a
pleasing person; his character is wayward and violent; he is sometimes
childish, always liable to be carried away by a fit of pettishness and
unable to retain our real respect; further, a hero who is practically
invulnerable and yet dons divine armour to attack those who are no
match for him when he is without it falls below the ordinary
"sportsman's" level. Nor can we feel much reverence for many of the
gods; Hera is odious, Athena guilty of flat treachery, Zeus, liable to
allow his good nature to overcome his judgment--Apollo alone seems
consistently noble. More, we shall look in vain in the _Iliad_ for any
sign of the pure battle-joy which is so characteristic of northern
Epic poetry; the Greek ideal of bravery had nothing of the Berserker
in it. Perhaps these are the reasons why the sympathy of nearly all
readers is with the Trojans, who are numerically inferior, are aided
by fewer and weaker gods and have less mighty champions to defend
them.