Chapter 153

Then Odysseus, rich in counsel, stripped him of his rags and leaped on the great threshold with his bow and quiver full of arrows, and poured forth all the swift shafts there before his feet, and spake among the wooers.

But the florid style of speech, which has beauty and capacity for creating delight and pleasure, like a flower, is frequent in our poet; his poetry is full of such examples. The kinds of phrasing have much novelty in Homer, as we shall go on to show, by giving a few examples from which the rest may be gathered.

Every type of style practised among men is either historical, theoretic, or political. Let us examine whether the beginnings of these are to be found in him. Historical style contains a narration of facts. The elements of such a narration are character, cause, place, time, instrument, action, feeling, manner. There is no historical narration without some of these. So it is with our poet, who relates many things in their development and happening. Sometimes in single passages can be found relations of this kind.

Of character, as the following (I. v. 9):--

There was one Dores 'mid the Trojan host, The priest of Vulcan, rich, of blameless life; Two gallant sons he had, Idaeus named And Phegeus, skilled in all the points of war.

He describes features, also, as in the case of Thersites (I. ii. 217):--

With squinting eyes, and one distorted foot, His shoulders round, and buried in his breast His narrow head, with scanty growth of hair.

And many other things, in which he often pictures the type or appearance or character, or action or fortune of a person, as in this verse (I. xx. 215):--

Dardanus first, cloud-compelling Zeus begot,--and the rest.

There is in his poetry description of locality; where he speaks about the island near that of the Cyclops, in which he describes the look of the place, its size, its quality, and the things in it, and what is near it. Also, when he describes the things adjacent to the island of Calypso (O. v. 63):--

And round about the cave there was a wood-blossoming alder and poplar, and sweet-smelling cypress.

And what follows. And innumerable other things of the same kind.

Time narratives are found as follows (I. ii. 134):--

Already now nine weary years have passed.

And (I. ii. 303):--

Not long ago, when ships of Greece were met at Aulis charged with evil freight for Troy.

Then there are the causes, in which he shows why something is coming to pass or has come to pass. Such are the things said at the beginning of the "Iliad" (I. i. 8):--

Say then, what god the fatal strife provoked Jove's and Latona's son; he filled with wrath Against the King, with deadly pestilence The Camp afflicted--and the people died For Chryses' sake, his priest, whom Atreus' son With scorn dismissed,

--and the rest. In this passage he says the cause of the difference between Achilles and Agamemnon was the plague; but the plague was caused by Apollo, and his wrath was due to the insult put upon his priest.

Description of the instrument he gives, as when he tells of the shield made by Vulcan for Achilles. And there is a briefer one on the spear of Hector (I. viii. 493):--

In his hand His massive spear he held twelve cubits long, Whose glittering point flash'd bright with hoop of gold Encircled round.

Narrations of fact are of several kinds, some like the following (I.