let them be receivers of gifts or lovers of money.
Certainly not.
Neither must we sing to them of
‘Gifts persuading gods, and persuading reverend kings26.’
Condemnation of Achilles and Phoenix. Neither is Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, to be approved or deemed to have given his pupil good counsel when he told him that he should take the gifts of the Greeks and assist them27; but that without a gift he should not lay aside his anger. Neither will we believe or acknowledge Achilles himself to have been such a lover of money that he took Agamemnon’s gifts, or that when he had received payment he restored the dead body of Hector, but that without payment he was unwilling to do so28.
Undoubtedly, he said, these are not sentiments which can be approved.
Loving Homer