Orationes 52

425. Best of men, Achilles, that you should be angry and resentful at the outrages done to you is in no way unreasonable—so far, then, at least. But I, for my part, if Agamemnon still even now held to the same opinion, or denied the wrongs he committed, would not be pleading with you, but would let you do whatever seemed good to you; but since concerning this very thing he both makes entreaties and gives some gifts and promises others, why should anyone press a man who confesses? But just as he concedes that you speak justly, so you too be persuaded by him as he pleads; and if not, how is it not absurd, first, to hold the same opinion as before toward one who no longer holds the same? And next, consider that you may not exact from us the penalty for what you blame in him. For if you are harsh toward all, tell me, in the name of Zeus, on what account; but if you release the others at least from blame, the danger is common to all. So how is it just for you to look on unmoved? In order, by Zeus, that he may be still more hated by all on this account? But I most fear that there may not be left those who will hate him—so thickly do men fall. And besides, how do you now think, in the name of the gods, that they are minded? I fear, indeed, that, with your excess, the opposite of what you wish may come about, and that, letting him go, they may then blame you. For do not think that he who first began the anger is to blame, but that he who is unwilling

426. even afterward to cease will seem to have deliberated moderately. And apart from these things, it is not for you, dear Achilles, to seek rather how someone may be justly hated than how the common cause may be saved. For if one must be harsh to the end, I, for my part, would say it should be toward the barbarians and the natural enemies. For our charges against these are far greater, and over greater matters. So how is it just to hate the man who grieved you on a single occasion, but, as for those who have been enemies from the moment they were born, not only to look on while they go unpunished, but even while they so far master your own comrades, and those in whose company you first appeared to them? Since now, if you have resolved utterly to destroy the camp, why do you not openly side with the barbarians, and let those from the city advance, while you yourself, attacking from Sigeum, put them in the middle between yourself and them? Because, by Zeus, these things are not endurable nor holy? Then the present aid too depends on these same calculations. For they perish no less while you keep quiet, and to the appearance is added the charge of idleness, by your seeming to look on at what is happening. So that the reproach becomes double instead of single; for you seem both to hate your kinsmen and to fear the battle. Not you, surely; rather, from the beginning choose one of two things: if the claims of anger prevail, use all your wrath; but if you know how to reckon, do not be divided in your judgment, nor hold off as from friends, while you give them up as enemies; but know that you are now doing far worse than if you came against us with the barbarians, by as much as betrayal is harder than open enmity.

And you—if envoys should now come from Priam about an alliance, you would not receive them in your tent; yet the very things those men would pray for, these you do, and you sit destroying our affairs by your wrath; and then, if you do not do this

427. by sword or fire, you think it something gentle. And you would not give equal hearing to them and to us; yet you stand equally aloof from both—or rather, you bring aid to neither, but in your judgment you incline toward them; so much the more do they have over us. And at the very height of your anger you were so statesmanlike that you did not even think Agamemnon himself ought to die—a great proof of this: at any rate you did not cut his throat, though it was in your power. But now you think that not one of the others ought to be left, though it were far better to save even him, undeserving as he is, along with the rest, than, on his account, to look on while all are utterly destroyed; and thus, indeed, you would also exact from him the penalty that is due. For tell me, what would you most pray for? Is it not that he be without repute, and ill spoken of, and held in hatred in the camp? This, then, will accrue to him from both quarters—from those who have perished up to now, and from those who will be saved from this point on. For he will seem to those men to have been the cause of this, having driven you from the alliance by his outrages; while you will be seen now to have alone of men saved these by your aid; so that, as for his share, no one of the Achaeans is saved, but, as for yours, no one has perished. Consider, then, the cause of the quarrel itself, that it arose for you against him from no other matter than on behalf of the Achaeans, that they might be saved. For you held the assembly for this reason, seeing the multitude of those perishing from the plague, and you urged Calchas to speak boldly if he knew anything. And when he came forward and said he feared lest, having provoked one mightier than himself, he should suffer some harm, you swore that you would surely not look on while this man suffered. And from this the seer

428. declared the guilty one, while Agamemnon was angry at both; but you did not desist until the necessary thing was done.

Is it not, then, absurd that those for whose preservation you then took up the quarrel, these you should now destroy through the quarrel; and that, while you think the disasters from fortune ought to be set right, you yourself should deliberately do the things by which we shall perish; and that the very things about which you then prayed to the gods, about these you should now be unwilling to reason with yourself; and that, on behalf of the barbarian priest, you should think the god ought to feel shame, but, on behalf of so great a multitude of your kinsmen, you should be unwilling to feel shame before the common gods, nor before holiness, nor before treaties; and that then you should give up your own captive, that the affairs of the Achaeans might be saved, but now, in return for her, should in turn destroy the Achaeans with their whole army? And indeed, if there were a choice of two—and let me have free speech, in the name of Zeus, for it is just, especially before a man who honours the truth—whether this girl ought to be safe, or the camp and the affairs of the Achaeans, you would not have asked of Zeus your own ancestor, nor of any other of the gods, that she be left in place of all. What then? If it is possible both to recover her and to save the Achaeans, will you choose both to give her up and to have destroyed these? And how is it not absurd to know how to exchange disaster for disaster, but, when it is possible to have both without loss, then to consent to be deprived of both? For it was not for the sons of Atreus alone to love their own wives. Who would say such a thing? But indeed, in this very point the nature of war deserves wonder. For if this had occurred to each man at the very beginning—that now Menelaus is gathering an army for the sake of his own wife—how, then, is it likely that I, leaving my own wife, and besides my wife my children and parents in old age and property and servants, should sail outside Greece, and, in addition

429. to these, should still run the risk on campaign over my life, which has come to be for all the most precious of all possessions, and which the best of the Greeks himself sets first—if each man had used these reckonings, the army would surely not have been gathered at all in the first place. But as it was, I think, there were these two things that moved us: that we had long been bound beforehand by the oaths, through the foresight, I think, of some god, and that all seemed to be commonly outraged by the men of another race, and that we must not allow it. And one might perhaps add a third: that one must obey one's commanders.

Let us not, then, consider now for what cause we took up the campaign from the beginning, but that it is not the act of the same men, then to make all else secondary, and now, before doing the things for which we came, to fall apart. For this is not consistent with the pretext of the campaign, but appears opposed to the very campaign; and besides, it is not even like it. But how—you shall hear gently. For I do not speak to convict you, but to console you. For if you were not recovering the woman, you might reasonably withdraw into these arguments; but as it is, he gives not only her, but seven besides her; for I pass over the rest, so great in number. And yet, if the Trojans were willing to give back Helen and all they went off carrying with her, we should have no quarrel with them; and if, indeed, they should add things from their own homes besides, no one would utter a sound, saying we ought not to accept. What is a great proof of this? We ourselves invited them to this at the very beginning, but none of them was willing to do it, while to you she of whom you were deprived comes back with much else. And if, again, a penalty must also be paid for the outrage, that man has paid one, and a very great one. For, apart from the destruction of so great a multitude of soldiers, how great a penalty do you think he gives you from his fear and his humiliation?

430. For nothing else now but his whole bearing has been laid aside; he has become a suppliant out of a king, and a slave out of a free man, and, if one must speak more truly, takes courage in pity, if he should win the best from fortune.

And indeed, if one must mention these things too, consider this: it is among the absurdities that, when the army was being gathered then, you were so eager to take part in the affair that, the moment you saw the arms, you rushed to them and could not restrain yourself—and that too while you were a child and hidden among the maidens—but now, when you are of such an age, and have a son ripe to keep you company and to campaign, and have won the first repute among all, you should be unwilling to use your own arms, but seek pretexts through which you may give up everything; and that then you readily left the girl, than whom what is likely to be dearer to you, and whom you won as a wife of equal honour with yourself, but now, for the sake of another girl, you decide the opposite to yourself about the whole. Consider whether these things are not worthy even of Deidamia to praise—much less of any man whom it is honourable even to mention. And you say, indeed, that you have heard of the two fates from your mother, who knows best about them. But I am in doubt whether you say this in earnest or mocking us and out of some contentiousness of temper; for these are not words for you—I infer this from your many deeds. Nevertheless, even if you are most in earnest, it is possible for you, even with these things so, nonetheless to deliberate what is needful. For I, for my part, would say that your mother most of all means by these words to consent to them, since both your father and your teacher educated you, trying to make you thus; and then here, indeed, is the utterly dreadful thing—if, at the very words and the hearing, you were so strong as to choose good repute and the noble before safety and old age, but, when

431. you have agreed with her about the better fate, you will again become another from the beginning; and then you held the camp worth more than your own life, but now not even worth as much as the girl—or rather, than one of the things that befell concerning the girl. Thus, indeed, you would seem to hold the girl more precious than both, both than yourself and than the Achaeans. For how not than yourself too, if good repute is better than safety, and the girl better than good repute? And thus you would seem both to have proved your mother false, and to convict yourself of not knowing how to reckon. For to choose from the very beginning to sail home and live in quiet was a decision of judgment; but for one who has chosen the dangers of the campaign to change his mind about the same things is not to think the same; which least of all befits you, by as much as you, most of all men, practise virtue and the not lying. For surely you will not blame those who say one thing but think another, yet praise those who deliberate now this way, now that, about the same things, and are not the same men. And consider that, in camps too, so long as the generals do not assemble them, every man, so to speak, is his own master; but once he has taken his place in the ranks, this he must keep, or be considered base. But you will seem not to be deliberating about things in which you have a choice, but to be retreating from the things you yourself preferred, and all but to be deserting your post; which, even seeing it in a dream, you, I think, would reasonably be ashamed. These things you held to be just and noble, that a long life is not desirable for a man, unless there be added the doing of what is needful. But since the heralds went off leading the girl, then indeed, on this account, the matters of nature stand otherwise. You will not cease laying claim to two of the worst reproaches, cowardice and faithlessness—a thing which none of your enemies ever reproached you with.

And yet what would you be, in the name of the gods, if Agamemnon

432. fastened these things on you? For I hold that one ought to leave the end of all matters to the god, just as you see that all of us too have deliberated about ourselves. For this needs no subtle muse, but it is plain to all that peace is a more profitable prize than war, and that it is not possible for men fighting and running risks to pass through their lives without bloodshed. But it is not for this reason that we transgress our pledges; rather, the things over which the deity is master we leave to him, but whatever comes to reckoning and deliberation, in no place to value for oneself the worse part of a man. "By Zeus," you say, "but the gifts are not worthy of you, nor will he overwhelm you with his promises, even if he surpass the sand and the dust in number." Excellently, noble friend; and I recognize these arguments already. But I do not advise you to aid the Achaeans for the sake of the goods—whence? May I never look on your affairs so meanly—but for the sake of justice itself, and because it is fitting to act so. But whether you accept the goods as a token of friendship, or bid them farewell, I shall not contend; and about this marriage-alliance, deliberate at leisure—for let not this either carry you away. For I should be a child if I advised this—to think that he is not ungenerous in his gift and promises, but that there are other things that make your going forth incumbent on you. What things? Those which a little before you yourself enumerated, matters far finer than goods. For how is it not absurd and monstrous, if formerly, leading these Achaeans, you took twelve cities by sea and eleven by land, reckoning none of your private interests—not toil, not danger, not occupation, not the life which you say is dearest to you, if you should give it up—and made them masters of so many resources and so great prosperity; but now you will not even dare to come to their aid for their very

433. salvation? Whence, in the name of the gods, did you win the girl—to let the rest go? From the deeds by which you were benefiting us. Thus, at any rate, you took Lyrnessus too, in the multitude of the other places.

It is not, then, likely that the army is an appendage of the girl, but the girl of the camp and of the rest of affairs. And most absurd of all: if Chryses, recovering his daughter, was not moved to pray any further against us as enemies, but ceased from his anger—a man who was a barbarian and a natural enemy and who had run the risk also for her very preservation—but you, both recovering the very woman, and besides her receiving so many others, and besides the women, goods, cities, land, kinship—things which, when you ought to admire them, I do not allow, but you cannot blame them—will you remain forever in your exasperation? And he prayed together with the god to stop the plague for us, but you will be unwilling to stop the difficulties of the war? But he displayed his power to the Achaeans from both—both from those whom by his curse he destroyed in numbers, and from those whom by his prayer he saved, all of them—and you will think it right to imitate the priest from one side only, and that the side of those who perish? But it was far better to display your strength by saving all than, having done the other thing, to flee for the rest; and you would think it dreadful to betray the camp on condition of recovering your own captive, but you will not consent to save the camp together with recovering your own. But Hector advances over everything with fire and sword, and it is a small thing for him to take Troy; while you will remain in your tent singing to the lyre? Will you remain singing the deeds of others? But it is better to furnish others your own deeds to sing about, over some good outcome. But the wrath, by Zeus—this wrath that you rage—will you hymn it like a god? I fear you may be singing funeral dirges for the Achaeans, thus untimely making melody before all time has run out.

434. Then you say you are a lover of life, and you slander yourself. And who, in the name of the gods, is so childish as to be persuaded that Achilles is content to live and on this account stays out of range of the missiles, because it is not possible for the dead to rise again? But if we were listening to Epeius the Phocian, what other words than these should we be hearing? And yet what do I say? That man, boxing, would more gladly die than yield to anyone. These things, then, may be turned upon Thersites and whoever is like him; but you, my good man, do not mock, nor lay claim to a baseness which in no way belongs to you; for you will persuade neither us nor, as I think, yourself. But will you drag down your ships and sail off and be gone? Then are you not ashamed before the Nereids, your kinswomen on your mother's side, sailing the sea now so unlike before—then gathering for the camp resources of glory and power, now having brought ruin upon all? And by which of your kinsmen are these things deemed worthy of you—those of the sea, or those on land, who once, having come here, did not depart before they helped the war-leader take the city? And what name, in the name of the gods, will you give to the sacrifice you say you will offer tomorrow? Is it a thank-offering, or what do you call it? Then are you not ashamed to make the gods themselves witnesses of such great baseness, sacrificing and pouring libations and singing paeans over the disasters of the Greeks, declaring that you hold off from all that is theirs, while looking out upon the plain, full of the corpses of those ranked under you, I know not how many days back? And what will be the manner of your voyage? Or what will be the talk of those who see or those who hear? "Achilles sails home"? Bringing what spoils, or leading what first-fruits, or to crown what of his home, whether of his private or his public affairs? It is fine, indeed, now to touch at Scyros. And what will you say to your own son? In what will you seem to your wife to be the better for what you have said? And why do I speak of Scyros or of a wife?

435. But what will the Trojans say? Is it not that you flee in fear, seeing no safety if you remain? Worthy, is it not?—that the old age of Priam and of Nestor put together should result in such disgrace.

But you will not do these things; you will remain until Hector comes to your tents and ships, killing all in turn, and then you will show them who you are? If you have so great a superiority, how is it not shameful to let that moment come, and not to use your abundance for the salvation of all, but only when no one is left? But if the matter is already becoming hard, then aid must be given while it is possible. And I distrust not even that—that you alone are sufficient against all the barbarians, and even mightier still. I think, however, that the matter of the right moment makes all the difference, not only in this respect—that it is better to display this superiority when you have spectators and witnesses—but still also in that other respect: that then you will seem to aid yourself and to defend yourself out of necessity, but now to go forth on behalf of those who have called you, and to aid these; so that you will gain no small thing by the favour. And, in general, it is not possible to be steward of the war as far as you wish. But many things might come about which you wish, along with things which you would not consent to. Someone will fall, even of those very dear to you. And the others I pass over; but we ourselves here, whom you addressed as dearest, and at sight of whom you rose, and for whom you set up the mixing-bowl and bade it be stronger—what prevents us too from lying tomorrow at that hour, mingled together with the rest, and that, from the men with whom you now pour libations, the earth should run with blood, and victory-bowls be set up in Hector's quarters, and paeans be sung while you are still alive, O Zeus? And what if, together with the tents being held and the ships being set on fire, they should slaughter this much-longed-for girl,

436. or, taking her captive, lead her back again to themselves? Or is she now the sum of all your affairs? And I should gladly learn from you, if Agamemnon had then taken her and killed her, or even if she had remained with you, what he ought to do now, or how many blood-prices he should pay down to find you well-disposed—if, when he now restores her alive and, besides, swears the very things you would most wish, you will then not cease, but will come to such a pitch of anger that, unless you exact the penalty from all, by nations and by cities and by each single person, you will think life unlivable for yourself. Take care lest you come to hate the very girl, when on her account the camp is destroyed root and branch.

And I wish to tell you also a saying of your teacher Chiron, which he once spoke on Pelion to one of the men from Aetolia. He said that nothing finer could come to a man than moderate anger, but nothing more shameful than excessive anger; which, having grieved one's enemies in return, is done with them, but always and continually destroys the one who holds it. But you—neither do anything further, nor suffer anything yourself. And consider that nature has set limits, as it were, to all things, and that nothing among men is immortal—not war, not peace, not favour, not anger, nor any other of all things. Or was a release found for the friendship that subsisted between you and the king, but will none appear, in turn, for the anger? And indeed it is far better to deem friendships immortal than, when they pass under fortune, to be unwilling to procure releases of the enmity. For these two goddesses go round about all the affairs of men, Nemesis and Justice, not allowing one to think greater than his nature, but easily making the great small, if anyone takes no account of them. And you have the example of this near at hand: he who then thought greater than you, than whom does he not now think less? And you must consider that in word you hear these things from us, but in truth and in fact it is Hector who sends an embassy and converses with you;

437. who, as for all the other ways in which he commits outrage and insult—what could one say? But he threatens to take you sleeping. And, in any case, that his own ancestor Dardanus is in no way worse than your Aeacus, and that you feign the wrath, but in truth dread him. How are these things endurable for me to hear? Who will exact the penalty for these on your behalf? Will you not rise up, in the name of the gods? Will you not be vexed that you have not long since? Will you not count as a loss all the time you have wasted? Will you not, if you must be angry even for the girl's sake, let loose your wrath upon the Trojans, the authors of all this? For if those men had not stirred up anything from the beginning, what of all things, greater or lesser, of these troubles would have happened here? And consider that Peleus stands midway between Aeacus and you—that Aeacus to whom once the affairs of the Greeks came. And to you this too belongs in the fairest way: for imitating your ancestor's resolve, you surpass him in your bearing. For he, by praying, brought benefit, but you, by aiding in deed, will fulfil the prayers of all. And reckon these things, too, in addition: we shall presently go forth from the tent—with what feet, in the name of Zeus, if these things should not be approved by you too? What words shall we speak when we have departed, or what answers shall we give? For all, surely, are waiting eagerly, in case they may, gladly thronging round, learn the news, one from one quarter, another from another. What must we say to them? Answer: pour a libation with us to Zeus the Saviour, that this may not be the last of the present time, but, feeling shame before the common need, and before us the envoys, and before the season of the embassy, this night, or even before these stars and the gods and the heroes common to the Greeks, putting off your anger like a sickness, show yourself to the barbarians together with the sun.