Book 5
5
But if an enemy, disparaging him, called him an effeminate warrior, and on this account Plato thinks that he really was an effeminate warrior, why should he not also class Agamemnon himself among the men void of prowess, since this line is spoken against him?— O monster, mix'd of insolence and fear, Thou dog in forehead, but in heart a deer! When wert thou known in ambush'd fights to dare, Or nobly face the horrid front of war? 'Tis ours the chance of fighting fields to try, Thine to look on and bid the valiant die.Ib. i. 225.
5
For it does not follow because something is said in Homer, that Homer himself says it. For how could Menelaus have been effeminate who, single-handed, kept Hector away from Patroclus, and who slew Euphorbus, and stripped him of his arms though in the very middle of the Trojan host? And it was foolish of him not completely to consider the entire line which he was finding fault with, in which Menelaus is called Raising the battle cry, βοὴν ἀγαθὸς, for that is an epithet which Homer is in the habit of giving only to the most valiant; for the ancients called war itself βοή.
