is paid, as a Nemesis sooner or later follows
surely, too, on the evil-doers.

But without multiplying evidence, as we easily might, from every part of
both Iliad and Odyssey, the sceptical and the believing forms of thought
and feeling on this very subject are made points of dramatic contrast,
to show off the opposition of two separate characters; and this is clear
proof that such thoughts and feelings must have been familiar to Homer's
hearers: if it were not so, his characters would have been without
interest to his age--they would have been individual, and not universal;
and no expenditure of intellect, or passion, would have made men care to
listen to him. The two persons who throughout the Iliad stand out in
relief in contrast to each other are, of course, Hector and Achilles;
and faith in God (as distinct from a mere recognition of him) is as
directly the characteristic of Hector as in Achilles it is entirely
absent. Both characters are heroic, but the heroism in them springs from
opposite sources. Both are heroic, because both are strong; but the
strength of one is in himself, and the strength of the other is in his
faith. Hector is a patriot; Achilles does not know what patriotism
means;--Hector is full of tenderness and human affection; Achilles is
self-enveloped. Even his love for Patroclus is not pure, for Patroclus
is as the moon to the sun of Achilles, and Achilles sees his own glory
reflected on his friend. They have both a forecast of their fate; but
Hector, in his great brave way, scoffs at omens; he knows that there is
a special providence in the fall of a sparrow, and defies augury. To do
his duty is the only omen for which Hector cares; and if death must be,
he can welcome it like a gallant man, if it find him fighting for his
country. Achilles is moody, speculative, and subjective; he is too proud
to attempt an ineffectual resistance to what he knows to be inevitable,
but he alternately murmurs at it and scorns it. Till his passion is
stirred by his friend's death, he seems equally to disdain the greatness
of life and the littleness of it; the glories of a hero are not worth
dying for; and like Solomon, and almost in Solomon's words, he complains
that there is one event to all--

[Greek: En de ie time e men kakos ee kai esthlos.]

To gratify his own spleen, he will accept an inglorious age in Thessaly,
in exchange for a hero's immortality; as again in the end it is but to
gratify his own wound