CHAPTER XXI.

GRECIAN EPIC.—HOMERIC POEMS.

At the head of the once abundant epical compositions of Greece, most of them unfortunately lost, stand the Iliad and Odyssey, with the immortal name of Homer attached to each of them, embracing separate portions of the comprehensive legend of Troy. They form the type of what may be called the heroic epic of the Greeks, as distinguished from the genealogical, in which latter species some of the Hesiodic poems—the Catalogue of Women, the Eoiai, and the Naupaktia—stood conspicuous. Poems of the Homeric character (if so it may be called, though the expression is very indefinite,)—being confined to one of the great events, or great personages of Grecian legendary antiquity, and comprising a limited number of characters, all contemporaneous, made some approach, more or less successful, to a certain poetical unity; while the Hesiodic poems, tamer in their spirit, and unconfined both as to time and as to persons, strung together distinct events without any obvious view to concentration of interest,—without legitimate beginning or end.[213] Between these two extremes there were many gradations: biographical poems, such as the Herakleia, or Theseïs, recounting all the principal exploits performed by one single hero, present a character intermediate between the two, but bordering more closely on the Hesiodic. Even the hymns to the gods, which pass under the name of Homer, are epical fragments, narrating particular exploits or adventures of the god commemorated.

[213] Aristot. Poet. c. 17-37. He points out and explains the superior structure of the Iliad and Odyssey, as compared with the semi Homeric and biographical poems: but he takes no notice of the Hesiodic, or genealogical.

Both the didactic and the mystico-religious poetry of Greece began in Hexameter verse,—the characteristic and consecrated measure of the epic:[214] but they belong to a different species, and burst out from a different vein in the Grecian mind. It seems to have been the more common belief among the historical Greeks, that such mystic effusions were more ancient than their narrative poems, and that Orpheus, Musæus, Linus, Olên, Pamphus, and even Hesiod, etc., etc., the reputed composers of the former, were of earlier date than Homer. But there is no evidence to sustain this opinion, and the presumptions are all against it. Those compositions, which in the sixth century before the Christian era passed under the name of Orpheus and Musæus, seem to have been unquestionably post-Homeric, nor can we even admit the modified conclusion of Hermann, Ulrici, and others, that the mystic poetry as a genus (putting aside the particular compositions falsely ascribed to Orpheus and others) preceded in order of time the narrative.[215]

[214] Aristot. Poetic. c. 41. He considers the Hexameter to be the _natural_ measure of narrative poetry: any other would be unseemly.

[215] Ulrici, Geschichte des Griechischen Epos, 5te Vorlesung, pp. 96-108; G. Hermann, Ueber Homer und Sappho, in his Opuscula, tom. vi. p. 89.

The superior antiquity of Orpheus as compared with Homer passed as a received position to the classical Romans (Horat. Art. Poet. 392).

Besides the Iliad and Odyssey, we make out the titles of about thirty lost epic poems, sometimes with a brief hint of their contents.

Concerning the legend of Troy there were five: the Cyprian Verses, the Æthiopis, and the Capture of Troy, both ascribed to Arktinus; the lesser Iliad, ascribed to Leschês; the Returns (of the Heroes from Troy), to which the name of Hagias of Trœzên is attached; and the Telegonia, by Eugammôn, a continuation of the Odyssey. Two poems,—the Thebaïs and the Epigoni (perhaps two parts of one and the same poem) were devoted to the legend of Thebês,—the two sieges of that city by the Argeians. Another poem, called Œdipodia, had for its subject the tragical destiny of Œdipus and his family; and perhaps that which is cited as Eurôpia, or verses on Eurôpa, may have comprehended the tale of her brother Kadmus, the mythical founder of Thebês.[216]

[216] Respecting these lost epics, see Düntzer, Collection of the Fragmenta Epicor. Græcorum; Wüllner, De Cyclo Epico, pp. 43-66; and Mr. Fynes Clinton’s Chronology, vol. iii. pp. 349-359.

The exploits of Hêraklês were celebrated in two compositions, each called Hêrakleia, by Kinæthôn and Pisander,—probably also in many others, of which the memory has not been preserved. The capture of Œchalia, by Hêraklês, formed the subject of a separate epic. Two other poems, the Ægimius and the Minyas, are supposed to have been founded on other achievements of this hero,—the effective aid which he lent to the Dorian king Ægimius against the Lapithæ, his descent to the under-world for the purpose of rescuing the imprisoned Thêseus, and his conquest of the city of the Minyæ, the powerful Orchomenus.[217]

[217] Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, pp. 256-266; Apollodôr. ii. 7, 7; Diodôr. iv. 37; O. Müller, Dorians, i. 28.

Other epic poems—the Phorônis, the Danaïs, the Alkmæônis, the Atthis, the Amazonia—we know only by name, and can just guess obscurely at their contents so far as the name indicates.[218] The Titanomachia, the Gigantomachia, and the Corinthiaca, three compositions all ascribed to Eumêlus, afford by means of their titles an idea somewhat clearer of the matter which they comprised. The Theogony ascribed to Hesiod still exists, though partially corrupt and mutilated: but there seem to have been other poems, now lost, of the like import and title.

[218] Welcker (Der Epische Kyklus, p. 209) considers the Alkmæônis as the same with the Epigoni, and the Atthis of Hegesinous the same with the Amazonia: in Suidas (v. Ὅμηρος) the latter is among the poems ascribed to Homer.

Leutsch (Thebaidos Cyclicæ Reliquiæ, pp. 12-14) views the Thebaïs and the Epigoni as different parts of the same poem.

Of the poems composed in the Hesiodic style, diffusive and full of genealogical detail, the principal were, the Catalogue of Women and the Great Eoiai; the latter of which, indeed, seems to have been a continuation of the former. A large number of the celebrated women of heroic Greece were commemorated in these poems, one after the other, without any other than an arbitrary bond of connection. The Marriage of Kêyx,—the Melampodia,—and a string of fables called Astronomia, are farther ascribed to Hesiod: and the poem above mentioned, called Ægimius, is also sometimes connected with his name, sometimes with that of Kerkops. The Naupaktian Verses (so called, probably, from the birthplace of their author), and the genealogies of Kinæthôn and Asius, were compositions of the same rambling character, as far as we can judge from the scanty fragments remaining.[219] The Orchomenian epic poet Chersias, of whom two lines only are preserved to us by Pausanias, may reasonably be referred to the same category.[220]

[219] See the Fragments of Hesiod, Eumêlus, Kinæthôn, and Asius, in the collections of Marktscheffel, Düntzer, Göttling, and Gaisford.

I have already, in going over the ground of Grecian legend, referred to all these lost poems, in their proper places.

[220] Pausan. ix. 38, 6; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conv. p. 156.

The oldest of the epic poets, to whom any date, carrying with it the semblance of authority, is assigned, is Arktinus of Milêtus, who is placed by Eusebius in the first Olympiad, and by Suidas in the ninth. Eugammôn, the author of the Telegonia, and the latest of the catalogue, is placed in the fifty-third Olympiad, B. C. 566. Between these two we find Asius and Leschês, about the thirtieth Olympiad,—a time when the vein of the ancient epic was drying up, and when other forms of poetry—elegiac, iambic, lyric, and choric—had either already arisen, or were on the point of arising, to compete with it.[221]

[221] See Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, about the date of Arktinus, vol i. p. 350.

It has already been stated in a former chapter, that in the early commencements of prose-writing, Hekatæus, Pherekydês, and other logographers, made it their business to extract from the ancient fables something like a continuous narrative, chronologically arranged. It was upon a principle somewhat analogous that the Alexandrine literati, about the second century before the Christian era,[222] arranged the multitude of old epic poets into a series founded on the supposed order of time in the events narrated,—beginning with the intermarriage of Uranus and Gæa, and the Theogony,—and concluding with the death of Odysseus by the hands of his son Telegonus. This collection passed by the name of the Epic Cycle, and the poets, whose compositions were embodied in it, were termed Cyclic poets. Doubtless, the epical treasures of the Alexandrine library were larger than had ever before been brought together and submitted to men both of learning and leisure: so that multiplication of such compositions in the same museum rendered it advisable to establish some fixed order of perusal, and to copy them in one corrected and uniform edition.[223] It pleased the critics to determine precedence, neither by antiquity nor by excellence of the compositions themselves, but by the supposed sequence of narrative, so that the whole taken together constituted a readable aggregate of epical antiquity.

[222] Perhaps Zenodotus, the superintendent of the Alexandrine library under Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the third century B. C.: there is a Scholion on Plautus, published not many years ago by Osann, and since more fully by Ritschl,—“Cæcius in commento Comœdiarum Aristophanis in Pluto,—Alexander Ætolus, et Lycophron Chalcidensis, et Zenodotus Ephesius, impulsu regis Ptolemæi, Philadelphi cognomento, artis poetices libros in unum collegerunt et in ordinem redegerunt. Alexander tragœdias, Lycophron comœdias, Zenodotus vero Homeri poemata et reliquorum illustrium poetarum.” See Lange, Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter, p. 56 (Mainz. 1837); Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, p. 8; Ritschl, Die Alexandrinischen Bibliotheken, p. 3 (Breslau, 1838).

Lange disputes the sufficiency of this passage as proof that Zenodotus was the framer of the Epic Cycle: his grounds are, however, unsatisfactory to me.

[223] That there existed a cyclic copy or edition of the Odyssey (ἡ κυκλικὴ) is proved by two passages in the Scholia (xvi. 195; xvii. 25), with Boeckh’s remark in Buttmann’s edition: this was the Odyssey copied or edited along with the other poems of the cycle.

Our word to _edit_—or _edition_—suggests ideas not exactly suited to the proceedings of the Alexandrine library, in which we cannot expect to find anything like what is now called _publication_. That magnificent establishment, possessing a large collection of epical manuscripts, and ample means of every kind at command, would naturally desire to have these compositions put in order and corrected by skilful hands, and then carefully copied for the use of the library. Such copy constitutes the cyclic _edition_: they might perhaps cause or permit duplicates to be made, but the ἔκδοσις or edition was complete without them.

Much obscurity[224] exists, and many different opinions have been expressed, respecting this Epic Cycle: I view it, not as an exclusive canon, but simply as an all-comprehensive classification, with a new edition founded thereupon. It would include all the epic poems in the library older than the Telegonia, and apt for continuous narrative; it would exclude only two classes,—first, the recent epic poets, such as Panyasis and Antimachus; next, the genealogical and desultory poems, such as the Catalogue of Women, the Eoiai, and others, which could not be made to fit in to any chronological sequence of events.[225] Both the Iliad and the Odyssey were comprised in the Cycle, so that the denomination of cyclic poet did not originally or designedly carry with it any association of contempt. But as the great and capital poems were chiefly spoken of by themselves, or by the title of their own separate authors, so the general name of _poets of the Cycle_ came gradually to be applied only to the worst, and thus to imply vulgarity or common-place; the more so, as many of the inferior compositions included in the collection seem to have been anonymous, and their authors in consequence describable only under some such common designation as that of the cyclic poets. It is in this manner that we are to explain the disparaging sentiment connected by Horace and others with the idea of a cyclic writer, though no such sentiment was implied in the original meaning of the Epic Cycle.

[224] Respecting the great confusion in which the Epic Cycle is involved, see the striking declaration of Buttmann, Addenda ad Scholia in Odysseum, p. 575: compare the opinions of the different critics, as enumerated at the end of Welcker’s treatise, Episch. Kyk. pp. 420-453.

[225] Our information respecting the Epic Cycle is derived from Eutychius Proclus, a literary man of Sicca during the second century of the Christian era, and tutor of Marcus Antoninus (Jul. Capitolin. Vit. Marc. c. 2),—not from Proclus, called Diadochus, the new-Platonic philosopher of the fifth century, as Heyne, Mr. Clinton, and others have imagined. The fragments from his work called Chrestomathia, give arguments of several of the lost cyclic poems connected with the Siege of Troy, communicating the important fact that the Iliad and Odyssey were included in the cycle, and giving the following description of the principle upon which it was arranged: Διαλαμβάνει δὲ περὶ τοῦ λεγομένου ἐπικοῦ κύκλου, ὃς ἄρχεται μὲν ἐκ τῆς Οὐράνου καὶ Γῆς ὁμολογουμένης μίξεως ... καὶ περατοῦται ὁ ἐπικὸς κύκλος, ἐκ διαφόρων ποιητῶν συμπληρούμενος, μέχρι τῆς ἀποβάσεως Ὀδυσσέως.... Λέγει δὲ ὡς τοῦ ἐπικοῦ κύκλου τὰ ποιήματα διασώζεται καὶ σπουδάζεται τοῖς πολλοῖς, οὐχ οὕτω διὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν, ὡς διὰ τὴν ~ἀκολουθίαν τῶν ἐν αὐτῇ πραγμάτων~ (ap. Photium, cod. 239).

This much-commented passage, while it clearly marks out the cardinal principle of the Epic Cycle (ἀκολουθία πραγμάτων), neither affirms nor denies anything respecting the excellence of the constituent poems. Proclus speaks of the taste common in his own time (σπουδάζεται τοῖς πολλοῖς): there was not much relish in his time for these poems as such, but people were much interested in the sequence of epical events. The abstracts which he himself drew up in the form of arguments of several poems, show that he adapted himself to this taste. We cannot collect from his words that he intended to express any opinion of his own respecting the goodness or badness of the cyclic poems.

The poems of the Cycle were thus mentioned in contrast and antithesis with Homer,[226] though originally the Iliad and Odyssey had both been included among them: and this alteration of the meaning of the word has given birth to a mistake as to the primary purpose of the classification, as if it had been designed especially to part off the inferior epic productions from Homer. But while some critics are disposed to distinguish the cyclic poets too pointedly from Homer, I conceive that Welcker goes too much into the other extreme, and identifies the Cycle too closely with that poet. He construes it as a classification deliberately framed to comprise all the various productions of the Homeric epic, with its unity of action and comparative paucity, both of persons and adventures,—as opposed to the Hesiodic epic, crowded with separate persons and pedigrees, and destitute of central action as well as of closing catastrophe. This opinion does, indeed, coincide to a great degree with the fact, inasmuch as few of the Hesiodic epics appear to have been included in the Cycle: to say that _none_ were included, would be too much, for we cannot venture to set aside either the Theogony or the Ægimius; but we may account for their absence perfectly well without supposing any design to exclude them, for it is obvious that their rambling character (like that of the Metamorphoses of Ovid) forbade the possibility of interweaving them in any continuous series. Continuity in the series of narrated events, coupled with a certain degree of antiquity in the poems, being the principle on which the arrangement called the Epic Cycle was based, the Hesiodic poems generally were excluded, not from any preconceived intention, but because they could not be brought into harmony with such orderly reading.

[226] The gradual growth of a contemptuous feeling towards the _scriptor cyclicus_ (Horat. Ars. Poetic. 136), which was not originally implied in the name, is well set forth by Lange (Ueber die Kyklisch. Dicht. pp. 53-56).

Both Lange (pp. 36-41), however, and Ulrici (Geschichte des Griech. Epos, 9te Vorles. p. 418) adopt another opinion with respect to the cycle, which I think unsupported and inadmissible,—that the several constituent poems were not received into it entire (_i. e._ with only such changes as were requisite for a corrected text), but cut down and abridged in such manner as to produce an _exact_ continuity of narrative. Lange even imagines that the cyclic Odyssey was thus dealt with. But there seems no evidence to countenance this theory, which would convert the Alexandrine literati from critics into logographers. That the cyclic Iliad and Odyssey were the same in the main (allowing for corrections of text) as the common Iliad and Odyssey, is shown by the fact, that Proclus merely names them in the series without giving any abstract of their contents: they were too well known to render such a process necessary. Nor does either the language of Proclus, or that of Cæcius as applied to Zenodotus, indicate any transformation applied to the poets whose works are described to have been brought together and put into a certain order.

The hypothesis of Lange is founded upon the idea that the (ἀκολουθία πραγμάτων) continuity of narrated events must necessarily have been exact and without break, as if the whole constituted one work. But this would not be possible, let the framers do what they might: moreover, in the attempt, the individuality of all the constituent poets must have been sacrificed, in such manner that it would be absurd to discuss their separate merits.

The continuity of narrative in the Epic Cycle could not have been more than approximate,—as complete as the poems composing it would admit: nevertheless, it would be correct to say that the poems were arranged in series upon this principle and upon no other. The librarians might have arranged in like manner the vast mass of tragedies in their possession (if they had chosen to do so) upon the principle of sequence in the subjects: had they done so, the series would have formed a _Tragic Cycle_.

What were the particular poems which it comprised, we cannot now determine with exactness. Welcker arranges them as follows: Titanomachia, Danaïs, Amazonia (or Atthis), Œdipodia, Thebaïs (or Expedition of Amphiaräus), Epigoni (or Alkmæônis), Minyas (or Phokaïs), Capture of Œchalia, Cyprian Verses, Iliad, Æthiopis, Lesser Iliad, Iliupersis or the Taking of Troy, Returns of the Heroes, Odyssey, and Telegonia. Wuellner, Lange, and Mr. Fynes Clinton enlarge the list of cyclic poems still farther.[227] But all such reconstructions of the Cycle are conjectural and destitute of authority: the only poems which we can affirm on positive grounds to have been comprehended in it, are, first, the series respecting the heroes of Troy, from the Cypria to the Telegonia, of which Proclus has preserved the arguments, and which includes the Iliad and Odyssey,—next, the old Thebaïs, which is expressly termed cyclic,[228] in order to distinguish it from the poem of the same name composed by Antimachus. In regard to other particular compositions, we have no evidence to guide us, either for admission or exclusion, except our general views as to the scheme upon which the Cycle was framed. If my idea of that scheme be correct, the Alexandrine critics arranged therein _all_ their old epical treasures, down to the Telegonia,—the good as well as the bad; gold, silver, and iron,—provided only they could be pieced in with the narrative series. But I cannot venture to include, as Mr. Clinton does, the Eurôpia, the Phorônis, and other poems of which we know only the names, because it is uncertain whether their contents were such as to fulfil their primary condition: nor can I concur with him in thinking that, where there were two or more poems of the same title and subject, one of them must necessarily have been adopted into the Cycle to the exclusion of the others. There may have been two Theogonies, or two Herakleias, both comprehended in the Cycle; the purpose being (as I before remarked), not to sift the better from the worse, but to determine some fixed order, convenient for reading and reference, amidst a multiplicity of scattered compositions, as the basis of a new, entire, and corrected edition.

[227] Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, pp. 37-41; Wuellner, De Cyclo Epico, p. 43, _seq._; Lange, Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter, p. 47; Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. p. 349.

[228] Schol. Pindar. Olymp. vi. 26; Athenæ. xi. p. 465.

Whatever may have been the principle on which the cyclic poems were originally strung together, they are all now lost, except those two unrivalled diamonds, whose brightness, dimming all the rest, has alone sufficed to confer imperishable glory even upon the earliest phase of Grecian life. It has been the natural privilege of the Iliad and Odyssey, from the rise of Grecian philology down to the present day, to provoke an intense curiosity, which, even in the historical and literary days of Greece, there were no assured facts to satisfy. These compositions are the monuments of an age essentially religious and poetical, but essentially also unphilosophical, unreflecting, and unrecording: the nature of the case forbids our having any authentic transmitted knowledge respecting such a period; and the lesson must be learned, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach of critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy from reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of evidence. After the numberless comments and acrimonious controversies[229] to which the Homeric poems have given rise, it can hardly be said that any of the points originally doubtful have obtained a solution such as to command universal acquiescence. To glance at all these controversies, however briefly, would far transcend the limits of the present work; but the most abridged Grecian history would be incomplete without some inquiry respecting _the Poet_ (so the Greek critics in their veneration denominated Homer), and the productions which pass now, or have heretofore passed, under his name.

[229] It is a memorable illustration of that bitterness which has so much disgraced the controversies of literary men in _all_ ages (I fear, we can make no exception), when we find Pausanias saying that he had examined into the ages of Hesiod and Homer with the most laborious scrutiny, but that he knew too well the calumnious dispositions of contemporary critics and poets, to declare what conclusion he had come to (Paus. ix. 30, 2): Περὶ δὲ Ἡσιόδου τε ἡλικίας καὶ Ὁμήρου, πολυπραγμονήσαντι ἐς τὸ ἀκριβέστατον οὔ μοι γράφειν ἡδὺ ἦν, ἐπισταμένῳ τὸ φιλαίτιον ἄλλων τε καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα ὅσοι κατ᾽ ἐμὲ ἐπὶ ποιήσει τῶν ἐπῶν καθεστήκεσαν.

Who or what was Homer? What date is to be assigned to him? What were his compositions?

A person, putting these questions to Greeks of different towns and ages, would have obtained answers widely discrepant and contradictory. Since the invaluable labors of Aristarchus and the other Alexandrine critics on the text of the Iliad and Odyssey, it has, indeed, been customary to regard those two (putting aside the Hymns, and a few other minor poems) as being the only genuine Homeric compositions: and the literary men called Chorizontes, or the Separators, at the head of whom were Xenôn and Hellanikus, endeavored still farther to reduce the number by disconnecting the Iliad and Odyssey, and pointing out that both could not be the work of the same author. Throughout the whole course of Grecian antiquity, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the Hymns, have been received as Homeric: but if we go back to the time of Herodotus, or still earlier, we find that several other epics also were ascribed to Homer,—and there were not wanting[230] critics, earlier than the Alexandrine age, who regarded the whole Epic Cycle, together with the satirical poem called Margitês, the Batrachomyomachia, and other smaller pieces, as Homeric works. The cyclic Thebaïs and the Epigoni (whether they be two separate poems, or the latter a second part of the former) were in early days currently ascribed to Homer: the same was the case with the Cyprian Verses: some even attributed to him several other poems,[231] the Capture of Œchalia, the Lesser Iliad, the Phokaïs, and the Amazonia. The title of the poem called Thebaïs to be styled Homeric, depends upon evidence more ancient than any which can be produced to authenticate the Iliad and Odyssey: for Kallinus, the ancient elegiac poet (B. C. 640), mentioned Homer as the author of it,—and his opinion was shared by many other competent judges.[232] From the remarkable description given by Herodotus, of the expulsion of the rhapsodes from Sikyôn, by the despot Kleisthenês, in the time of Solôn (about B. C. 580), we may form a probable judgment that the Thebaïs and the Epigoni were then rhapsodized at Sikyôn as Homeric productions.[233] And it is clear from the language of Herodotus, that in his time the general opinion ascribed to Homer both the Cyprian Verses and the Epigoni, though he himself dissents.[234] In spite of such dissent, however, that historian must have conceived the names of Homer and Hesiod to be nearly coextensive with the whole of the ancient epic; otherwise, he would hardly have delivered his memorable judgment, that they two were the framers of Grecian theogony.

[230] See the extract of Proclus, in Photius Cod. 239.

[231] Suidas, v. Ὅμηρος; Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. p. 330.

[232] Pausan. ix. 9, 3. The name of Kallinus in that passage seems certainly correct: Τὰ δὲ ἔπη ταῦτα (the Thebaïs) Καλλῖνος, ἀφικόμενος αὐτῶν ἐς μνήμην, ἔφησεν Ὅμηρον τὸν ποιήσαντα εἶναι· Καλλίνῳ δὲ πολλοί τε καὶ ἄξιοι λόγου κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔγνωσαν. Ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν ποίησιν ταύτην μετά γε Ἰλιάδα καὶ Ὀδύσσειαν ἐπαινῶ μάλιστα.

To the same purpose the author of the Certamen of Hesiod and Homer, and the pseudo-Herodotus (Vit. Homer, c. 9). The Ἀμφιαρέω ἐξελασία, alluded to in Suidas as the production of Homer, may be reasonably identified with the Thebaïs (Suidas, v. Ὅμηρος).

The cyclographer Dionysius, who affirmed that Homer had lived both in the Theban and the Trojan wars, must have recognized that poet as author of the Thebaïs as well as of the Iliad (ap. Procl. ad Hesiod. p. 3).

[233] Herodot. v. 67. Κλεισθένης γὰρ Ἀργείοισι πολεμήσας—τοῦτο μὲν, ῥαψῳδοὺς ἔπαυσε ἐν Σικυῶνι ἀγωνίζεσθαι, τῶν Ὁμηρείων ἐπέων εἵνεκα, ὅτι Ἀργεῖοί τε καὶ Ἄργος τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ὑμνέαται—τοῦτο δὲ, ἡρῴον γὰρ ἦν καὶ ἔστι ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ἀγορᾷ τῶν Σικυωνίων Ἀδρήστου τοῦ Ταλαοῦ, τοῦτον ἐπεθύμησε ὁ Κλεισθένης, ἐόντα Ἀργεῖον, ἐκβαλεῖν ἐκ τῆς χώρης. Herodotus then goes on to relate how Kleisthenês carried into effect his purpose of banishing the hero Adrastus: first, he applied to the Delphian Apollo, for permission to do so directly, and avowedly; next, on that permission being refused, he made application to the Thebans, to allow him to introduce into Sikyôn their hero Melanippus, the bitter enemy of Adrastus in the old Theban legend; by their consent, he consecrated a chapel to Melanippus in the most commanding part of the Sikyonian agora, and then transferred to the newly-imported hero the rites and festivals which had before been given to Adrastus.

Taking in conjunction all the points of this very curious tale, I venture to think that the rhapsodes incurred the displeasure of Kleisthenês by reciting, not the Homeric Iliad, but the _Homeric Thebaïs and Epigoni_. The former does not answer the conditions of the narrative: the latter fulfils them accurately.

1. It cannot be said, even by the utmost latitude of speech, that, in the Iliad, “Little else is sung except Argos and the Argeians,”—(“in illis ubique fere nonnisi Argos et Argivi celebrantur,”)—is the translation of Schweighäuser: Argos is rarely mentioned in it, and never exalted into any primary importance: the Argeians, as inhabitants of Argos separately, are never noticed at all: that name is applied in the Iliad, in common with the _Achæans_ and _Danaans_, only to the general body of Greeks,—and even applied to them much less frequently than the name of _Achæans_.

2. Adrastus is twice, and only twice, mentioned in the Iliad, as master of the wonderful horse Areion, and as father-in-law of Tydeus; but he makes no figure in the poem, and attracts no interest.

Wherefore, though Kleisthenês might have been ever so much incensed against Argos and Adrastus, there seems no reason why he should have interdicted the rhapsodes from reciting the Iliad. On the other hand, the Thebaïs and Epigoni could not fail to provoke him especially. For,

1. Argos and its inhabitants were the grand subject of the poem, and the proclaimed assailants in the expedition against Thêbes. Though the poem itself is lost, the first line of it has been preserved (Leutsch, Theb. Cycl. Reliq. p. 5; compare Sophoclês, Œd. Col. 380 with Scholia),—

Ἄργος ἄειδε, θεὰ, πολυδίψιον, ἔνθεν ἄνακτες, etc.

2. Adrastus was king of Argos, and the chief of the expedition. It is therefore literally true, that Argos and the Argeians were “the burden of the song” in these two poems.

To this we may add—

1. The rhapsodes would have the strongest motive to recite the Thebaïs and Epigoni at Sikyôn, where Adrastus was worshipped and enjoyed so vast a popularity, and where he even attracted to himself the choric solemnities which in other towns were given to Dionysus.

2. The means which Kleisthenês took to get rid of Adrastus indicates a special reference to the Thebaïs: he invited from Thêbes the hero Melanippus, the _Hector_ of Thêbes, in that very poem.

For these reasons, I think we may conclude that the Ὁμήρεια ἔπη, alluded to in this very illustrative story of Herodotus, are the Thebaïs and the Epigoni, not the Iliad.

[234] Herodot. ii. 117; iv. 32. The words in which Herodotus intimates his own dissent from the reigning opinion, are treated as spurious by F. A. Wolf, and vindicated by Schweighäuser: whether they be admitted or not, the general currency of the opinion adverted to is equally evident.

The many different cities which laid claim to the birth of Homer (seven is rather below the truth, and Smyrna and Chios are the most prominent among them,) is well known, and most of them had legends to tell respecting his romantic parentage, his alleged blindness, and his life of an itinerant bard, acquainted with poverty and sorrow.[235] The discrepancies of statement respecting the date of his reputed existence are no less worthy of remark; for out of the eight different epochs assigned to him, the oldest differs from the most recent by a period of four hundred and sixty years.

[235] The Life of Homer, which passes falsely under the name of Herodotus, contains a collection of these different stories: it is supposed to have been written about the second century after the Christian era, but the statements which it furnishes are probably several of them as old as Ephorus (compare also Proclus ap. Photium, c. 239).

The belief in the blindness of Homer is doubtless of far more ancient date, since the circumstance appears mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo where the bard of Chios, in some very touching lines, recommends himself and his strains to the favor of the Delian maidens employed in the worship of Apollo. This hymn is cited by Thucydidês as unquestionably authentic, and he doubtless accepted the lines as a description of the personal condition and relations of the author of the Iliad and Odyssey (Thucyd. iii. 104): Simonidês of Keôs also calls Homer a Chian (Frag. 69, Schneidewin).

There were also tales which represented Homer as the contemporary, the cousin, and the rival in recited composition, of Hesiod, who (it was pretended) had vanquished him. See the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, annexed to the works of the latter (p. 314, ed. Göttling; and Plutarch, Conviv. Sept. Sapient. c. 10), in which also various stories respecting the Life of Homer are scattered. The emperor Hadrian consulted the Delphian oracle to know who Homer was: the answer of the priestess reported him to be a native of Ithaca, the son of Telemachus and Epikastê, daughter of Nestôr (Certamen Hom. et Hes. p. 314). The author of this Certamen tells us that the authority of the Delphian oracle deserves implicit confidence.

Hellanikus, Damastes, and Pherekydês traced both Homer and Hesiod up to Orpheus, through a pedigree of ten generations (see Sturz, Fragment. Hellanic. fr. 75-144; compare also Lobeck’s remarks—_Aglaophamus_, p. 322—on the subject of these genealogies). The computations of these authors earlier than Herodotus are of value, because they illustrate the habits of mind in which Grecian chronology began: the genealogy might be easily continued backward to any length in the past. To trace Homer up to Orpheus, however, would not have been consonant to the belief of the Homêrids.

The contentions of the different cities which disputed for the birth of Homer, and, indeed, all the legendary anecdotes circulated in antiquity respecting the poet, are copiously discussed in Welcker, Der Epische Kyklos (pp. 194-199).

Thus conflicting would have been the answers returned in different portions of the Grecian world to any questions respecting the person of Homer. But there were a poetical gens (fraternity or guild) in the Ionic island of Chios, who, if the question had been put to them, would have answered in another manner. To them, Homer was not a mere antecedent man, of kindred nature with themselves, but a divine or semi-divine eponymus and progenitor, whom they worshipped in their gentile sacrifices, and in whose ascendent name and glory the individuality of every member of the gens was merged. The compositions of each separate Homêrid, or the combined efforts of many of them in conjunction, were the works of Homer: the name of the individual bard perishes and his authorship is forgotten, but the common gentile father lives and grows in renown, from generation to generation, by the genius of his self-renewing sons.

Such was the conception entertained of Homer by the poetical gens called Homêridæ, or Homêrids; and in the general obscurity of the whole case, I lean towards it as the most plausible conception. Homer is not only the reputed author of the various compositions emanating from the gentile members, but also the recipient of the many different legends and of the divine genealogy, which it pleases their imagination to confer upon him. Such manufacture of fictitious personality, and such perfect incorporation of the entities of religion and fancy with the real world, is a process familiar, and even habitual, in the retrospective vision of the Greeks.[236]

[236] Even Aristotle ascribed to Homer a divine parentage: a damsel of the isle of Ios, pregnant by some god, was carried off by pirates to Smyrna, at the time of the Ionic emigration, and there gave birth to the poet (Aristotel. ap. Plutarch. Vit. Homer. p. 1059).

Plato seems to have considered Homer as having been an itinerant rhapsode, poor and almost friendless (Republ. p. 600).

It is to be remarked, that the poetical gens here brought to view, the Homêrids, are of indisputable authenticity. Their existence and their considerations were maintained down to the historical times in the island of Chios.[237] If the Homêrids were still conspicuous, even in the days of Akusilaus, Pindar, Hellanikus, and Plato, when their productive invention had ceased, and when they had become only guardians and distributors, in common with others, of the treasures bequeathed by their predecessors,—far more exalted must their position have been three centuries before, while they were still the inspired creators of epic novelty, and when the absence of writing assured to them the undisputed monopoly of their own compositions.[238]

[237] Pindar, Nem. ii. 1, and Scholia; Akusilaus, Fragm. 31, Didot; Harpokration, v. Ὁμήριδαι; Hellanic. Fr. 55, Didot; Strabo, xiv. p. 645.

It seems by a passage of Plato (Phædrus, p. 252), that the Homêridæ professed to possess unpublished verses of their ancestral poet—ἔπη ἀποθέτα. Compare Plato, Republic, p. 599, and Isocrat. Helen, p. 218.

[238] Nitzsch (De Historiâ Homeri, Fascic. 1, p. 128, Fascic. 2, p. 71), and Ulrici (Geschichte der Episch. Poesie, vol. i. pp. 240-381) question the antiquity of the Homêrid gens, and limit their functions to simple reciters, denying that they ever composed songs or poems of their own. Yet these _gentes_, such as the Euneidæ, the Lykomidæ, the Butadæ, the Talthybiadæ, the descendants of Cheirôn at Peliôn, etc., the Hesychidæ (Schol. Sophocl. Œdip. Col. 489), (the acknowledged parallels of the Homêridæ), may be surely all considered as belonging to the earliest known elements of Grecian history: rarely, at least, if ever, can such gens, with its tripartite character of civil, religious, and professional, be shown to have commenced at any recent period. And in the early times, composer and singer were one person: often at least, though probably not always, the bard combined both functions. The Homeric ἀοιδὸς sings his own compositions; and it is reasonable to imagine that many of the early Homêrids did the same.

See Niebuhr, Römisch. Gesch. vol. i. p. 324; and the treatise, Ueber die Sikeler in der Odyssee,—in the Rheinisches Museum, 1828, p. 257; and Boeckh, in the Index of Contents to his Lectures of 1834.

“The sage Vyasa (observes Professor Wilson, System of Hindu Mythology, Int. p. lxii.) is represented, not as the author, but as the arranger and compiler of the Vedas and the Puránás. His name denotes his character, meaning _the arranger or distributor_ (Welcker gives the same meaning to the name _Homer_); and the recurrence of many Vyasas,—many individuals who new-modelled the Hindu scriptures,—has nothing in it that is improbable, except the fabulous intervals by which their labors are separated.” Individual authorship and the thirst of personal distinction, are in this case also buried under one great and common name, as in the case of Homer.

Homer, then, is no individual man, but the divine or heroic father (the ideas of worship and ancestry coalescing, as they constantly did in the Grecian mind) of the gentile Homêrids, and he is the author of the Thebaïs, the Epigoni, the Cyprian Verses, the Proœms, or Hymns, and other poems, in the same sense in which he is the author of the Iliad and Odyssey,—assuming that these various compositions emanate, as perhaps they may, from different individuals numbered among the Homêrids. But this disallowance of the historical personality of Homer is quite distinct from the question, with which it has been often confounded, whether the Iliad and Odyssey are originally entire poems, and whether by one author or otherwise. To us, the name of Homer means these two poems, and little else: we desire to know as much as can be learned respecting their date, their original composition, their preservation, and their mode of communication to the public. All these questions are more or less complicated one with the other.

Concerning the date of the poems, we have no other information except the various affirmations respecting the age of Homer, which differ among themselves (as I have before observed) by an interval of four hundred and sixty years, and which for the most part determine the date of Homer by reference to some other event, itself fabulous and unauthenticated,—such as the Trojan war, the Return of the Hêrakleids, or the Ionic migration. Kratês placed Homer earlier than the Return of the Hêrakleids, and less than eighty years after the Trojan war: Eratosthenês put him one hundred years after the Trojan war: Aristotle, Aristarchus, and Castor made his birth contemporary with the Ionic migration, while Apollodôrus brings him down to one hundred years after that event, or two hundred and forty years after the taking of Troy. Thucydidês assigns to him a date much subsequent to the Trojan war.[239] On the other hand, Theopompus and Euphoriôn refer his age to the far more recent period of the Lydian king, Gyges, (Ol. 18-23, B. C. 708-688,) and put him five hundred years after the Trojan epoch.[240] What were the grounds of these various conjectures, we do not know; though in the statements of Kratês and Eratosthenês, we may pretty well divine. But the oldest dictum preserved to us respecting the date of Homer,—meaning thereby the date of the Iliad and Odyssey,—appears to me at the same time the most credible, and the most consistent with the general history of the ancient epic. Herodotus places Homer four hundred years before himself; taking his departure, not from any fabulous event, but from a point of real and authentic time.[241] Four centuries anterior to Herodotus would be a period commencing with 880 B. C. so that the composition of the Homeric poems would thus fall in a space between 850 and 800 B. C. We may gather from the language of Herodotus that this was his own judgment, opposed to a current opinion, which assigned the poet to an earlier epoch.

[239] Thucyd. i. 3.

[240] See the statements and citations respecting the age of Homer, collected in Mr. Clinton’s Chronology, vol. i. p. 146. He prefers the view of Aristotle, and places the Iliad and Odyssey a century earlier than I am inclined to do,—940-927 B. C.

Kratês, probably placed the poet anterior to the Return of the Hêrakleids, because the Iliad makes no mention of Dorians in Peloponnêsus: Eratosthenês may be supposed to have grounded his date on the passage of the Iliad, which mentions the three generations descended from Æneas. We should have been glad to know the grounds of the very low date assigned by Theopompus and Euphoriôn.

The pseudo-Herodotus, in his life of Homer, puts the birth of the poet one hundred and sixty-eight years after the Trojan war.

[241] Herodot. ii. 53. Hêrakleides Ponticus affirmed that Lykurgus had brought into Peloponnêsus the Homeric poems, which had before been unknown out of Ionia. The supposed epoch of Lykurgus has sometimes been employed to sustain the date here assigned to the Homeric poems; but everything respecting Lykurgus is too doubtful to serve as evidence in other inquiries.

To place the Iliad and Odyssey at some periods between 850 B. C. and 776 B. C., appears to me more probable than any other date, anterior or posterior,—more probable than the latter, because we are justified in believing these two poems to be older than Arktinus, who comes shortly after the first Olympiad;—more probable than the former, because, the farther we push the poems back, the more do we enhance the wonder of their preservation, already sufficiently great, down from such an age and society to the historical times.

The mode in which these poems, and indeed all poems, epic as well as lyric, down to the age (probably) of Peisistratus, were circulated and brought to bear upon the public, deserves particular attention. They were not read by individuals alone and apart, but sung or recited at festivals or to assembled companies. This seems to be one of the few undisputed facts with regard to the great poet: for even those who maintain that the Iliad and Odyssey were preserved by means of writing, seldom contend that they were read.

In appreciating the effect of the poems, we must always take account of this great difference between early Greece and our own times,—between the congregation mustered at a solemn festival, stimulated by community of sympathy, listening to a measured and musical recital from the lips of trained bards or rhapsodes, whose matter was supposed to have been inspired by the Muse,—and the solitary reader, with a manuscript before him; such manuscript being, down to a very late period in Greek literature, indifferently written, without division into parts, and without marks of punctuation. As in the case of dramatic performances, in all ages, so in that of the early Grecian epic,—a very large proportion of its impressive effect was derived from the talent of the reciter and the force of the general accompaniments, and would have disappeared altogether in solitary reading. Originally, the bard sung his own epical narrative, commencing with a proœmium or hymn to one of the gods:[242] his profession was separate and special, like that of the carpenter, the leech, or the prophet: his manner and enunciation must have required particular training no less than his imaginative faculty. His character presents itself in the Odyssey as one highly esteemed; and in the Iliad, even Achilles does not disdain to touch the lyre with his own hands, and to sing heroic deeds.[243] Not only did the Iliad and Odyssey, and the poems embodied in the Epic Cycle, produce all their impression and gain all their renown by this process of oral delivery, but even the lyric and choric poets who succeeded them were known and felt in the same way by the general public, even after the full establishment of habits of reading among lettered men. While in the case of the epic, the recitation or singing had been extremely simple, and the measure comparatively little diversified, with no other accompaniment than that of the four-stringed harp,—all the variations superinduced upon the original hexameter, beginning with the pentameter and iambus, and proceeding step by step to the complicated strophês of Pindar and the tragic writers, still left the general effect of the poetry greatly dependent upon voice and accompaniments, and pointedly distinguished from mere solitary reading of the words. And in the dramatic poetry, the last in order of time, the declamation and gesture of the speaking actor alternated with the song and dance of the chorus, and with the instruments of musicians, the whole being set off by imposing visible decorations. Now both dramatic effect and song are familiar in modern times, so that every man knows the difference between reading the words and hearing them under the appropriate circumstances: but poetry, as such, is, and has now long been, so exclusively enjoyed by reading, that it requires an especial memento to bring us back to the time when the Iliad and Odyssey were addressed only to the ear and feelings of a promiscuous and sympathizing multitude. Readers there were none, at least until the century preceding Solôn and Peisistratus: from that time forward, they gradually increased both in number and influence; though doubtless small, even in the most literary period of Greece, as compared with modern European society. So far as the production of beautiful epic poetry was concerned, however, the select body of instructed readers, furnished a less potent stimulus than the unlettered and listening crowd of the earlier periods. The poems of Chœrilus and Antimachus, towards the close of the Peloponnesian war, though admired by erudite men, never acquired popularity; and the emperor Hadrian failed in his attempt to bring the latter poet into fashion at the expense of Homer.[244]

[242] The Homeric hymns are proœms of this sort, some very short, consisting only of a few lines,—others of considerable length. The Hymn (or, rather, one of the two hymns) to Apollo is cited by Thucydidês as the Proœm of Apollo.

The Hymns to Aphroditê, Apollo, Hermês, Dêmêtêr, and Dionysus, are genuine epical narratives. Hermann (Præf. ad Hymn. p. lxxxix.) pronounces the Hymn to Aphroditê to be the oldest and most genuine: portions of the Hymn to Apollo (Herm. p. xx.) are also very old, but both that hymn and the others are largely interpolated. His opinion respecting these interpolations, however, is disputed by Franke (Præfat. ad Hymn. Homeric. p. ix-xix.); and the distinction between what is genuine and what is spurious, depends upon criteria not very distinctly assignable. Compare Ulrici, Gesch. der Ep. Poes. pp. 385-391.

[243] Phemius, Demodokus, and the nameless bard who guarded the fidelity of Klytæmnêstra, bear out this position (Odyss. i. 155; iii. 267; viii. 490; xxi. 330; Achilles in Iliad, ix. 190).

A degree of inviolability seems attached to the person of the bard as well as to that of the herald (Odyss. xxii. 355-357).

[244] Spartian. Vit. Hadrian. p. 8; Dio Cass. lxix. 4: Plut. Tim. c. 36.

There are some good observations on this point in Näke’s comments on Chœrilus, ch. viii. p. 59:—

“Habet hoc epica poesis, vera illa, cujus perfectissimam normam agnoscimus Homericam—habet hoc proprium, ut non in possessione virorum eruditorum, sed quasi viva sit et coram populo recitanda: ut cum populo crescat, et si populus Deorum et antiquorum heroum facinora, quod præcipium est epicæ poeseos argumentum, audire et secum repetere dedidicerit, obmutescat. Id vero tum factum est in Græciâ, quum populus eâ ætate, quam pueritiam dicere possis, peractâ, partim ad res serias tristesque, politicas maxime—easque multo, quam antea, impeditiores—abstrahebatur: partim epicæ poeseos pertæsus, ex aliis poeseos generibus, quæ tum nascebantur, novum et diversum oblectamenti genus primo præsagire, sibi, deinde haurire, cœpit.”

Näke remarks, too, that the “splendidissima et propria Homericæ poeseos ætas, ea quæ sponte quasi suâ inter populum et quasi cum populo viveret,” did not reach below Peisistratus. It did not, I think, reach even so low as that period.

It will be seen by what has been here stated, that that class of men, who formed the medium of communication between the verse and the ear, were of the highest importance in the ancient world, and especially in the earlier periods of its career,—the bards and rhapsodes for the epic, the singers for the lyric, the actors and singers jointly with the dancers for the chorus and drama. The lyric and dramatic poets taught with their own lips the delivery of their compositions, and so prominently did this business of teaching present itself to the view of the public, that the name Didaskalia, by which the dramatic exhibition was commonly designated, derived from thence its origin.

Among the number of rhapsodes who frequented the festivals at a time when Grecian cities were multiplied and easy of access, for the recitation of the ancient epic, there must have been of course great differences of excellence; but that the more considerable individuals of the class were elaborately trained and highly accomplished in the exercise of their profession, we may assume as certain. But it happens that Socrates, with his two pupils Plato and Xenophon, speak contemptuously of their merits; and many persons have been disposed, somewhat too readily, to admit this sentence of condemnation as conclusive, without taking account of the point of view from which it was delivered.[245] These philosophers considered Homer and other poets with a view to instruction, ethical doctrine, and virtuous practice: they analyzed the characters whom the poet described, sifted the value of the lessons conveyed, and often struggled to discover a hidden meaning, where they disapproved that which was apparent. When they found a man like the rhapsode, who professed to impress the Homeric narrative upon an audience, and yet either never meddled at all, or meddled unsuccessfully, with the business of exposition, they treated him with contempt; indeed, Socrates depreciates the poets themselves, much upon the same principle, as dealing with matters of which they could render no rational account.[246] It was also the habit of Plato and Xenophôn to disparage generally professional exertion of talent for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, contrasting it often in an indelicate manner with the gratuitous teaching and ostentatious poverty of their master. But we are not warranted in judging the rhapsodes by such a standard. Though they were not philosophers or moralists, it was their province—and it had been so, long before the philosophical point of view was opened—to bring their poet home to the bosoms and emotions of an assembled crowd, and to penetrate themselves with his meaning so far as was suitable for that purpose, adapting to it the appropriate graces of action and intonation. In this their genuine task they were valuable members of the Grecian community, and seem to have possessed all the qualities necessary for success.

[245] Xenoph. Memorab. iv. 2, 10; and Sympos. iii. 6. Οἶσθά τι οὖν ἔθνος ἠλιθιώτερον ῥαψῴδων; ... Δῆλον γὰρ ὅτι τὰς ὑπονοίας οὐκ ἐπίστανται. Σὺ δὲ Στησιμβρότῳ τε καὶ Ἀναξιμάνδρῳ καὶ ἄλλοις πολλοῖς πολὺ δέδωκας ἀργύριον, ὥστε οὐδέν σε τῶν πολλοῦ ἀξίων λέληθε.

These ὑπονοῖαι are the hidden meanings, or allegories, which a certain set of philosophers undertook to discover in Homer, and which the rhapsodes were no way called upon to study.

The Platonic dialogue, called Iôn, ascribes to Iôn the double function of a rhapsode, or impressive reciter, and a critical expositor of the poet (Isokratês also indicates the same double character, in the rhapsodes of his time,—Panathenaic, p. 240); but it conveys no solid grounds for a mean estimate of the class of rhapsodes, while it attests remarkably the striking effect produced by their recitation (c. 6, p. 535). That this class of men came to combine the habit of expository comment on the poet with their original profession of reciting, proves the tendencies of the age; probably, it also brought them into rivalry with the philosophers.

The grounds taken by Aristotle (Problem. xxx. 10; compare Aul. Gellius, xx. 14) against the actors, singers, musicians, etc. of his time, are more serious, and have more the air of truth.

If it be correct in Lehrs (de Studiis Aristarchi, Diss. ii. p. 46) to identify those early glossographers of Homer, whose explanations the Alexandrine critics so severely condemned, with the rhapsodes, this only proves that the rhapsodes had come to undertake a double duty, of which their predecessors before Solôn would never have dreamed.

[246] Plato, Apolog. Socrat. p. 22, c. 7.

These rhapsodes, the successors of the primitive aœdi, or bards, seem to have been distinguished from them by the discontinuance of all musical accompaniment. Originally, the bard sung, enlivening the song with occasional touches of the simple four-stringed harp: his successor, the rhapsode, recited, holding in his hand nothing but a branch of laurel and depending for effect upon voice and manner,—a species of musical and rhythmical declamation,[247] which gradually increased in vehement emphasis and gesticulation until it approached to that of the dramatic actor. At what time this change took place, or whether the two different modes of enunciating the ancient epic may for a certain period have gone on simultaneously, we have no means of determining. Hesiod receives from the Muse a branch of laurel, as a token of his ordination into their service, which marks him for a rhapsode; while the ancient bard with his harp is still recognized in the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo, as efficient and popular at the Panionic festivals in the island of Delos.[248] Perhaps the improvements made in the harp, to which three strings, in addition to the original four, were attached by Terpander (B. C. 660), and the growing complication of instrumental music generally, may have contributed to discredit the primitive accompaniment, and thus to promote the practice of recital: the story, that Terpander himself composed music, not only for hexameter poems of his own, but also for those of Homer, seems to indicate that the music which preceded him was ceasing to find favor.[249] By whatever steps the change from the bard to the rhapsode took place, certain it is that before the time of Solôn, the latter was the recognized and exclusive organ of the old Epic; sometimes in short fragments before private companies, by single rhapsodes,—sometimes several rhapsodes in continuous succession at a public festival.

[247] Aristotel. Poetic. c. 47; Welcker, Der Episch. Kyklos; Ueber den Vortrag der Homerischen Gedichte, pp. 340-406, which collects all the facts respecting the aœdi and the rhapsodes. Unfortunately, the ascertained points are very few.

The laurel branch in the hand of the singer or reciter (for the two expressions are often confounded) seems to have been peculiar to the recitation of Homer and Hesiod (Hesiod, Theog. 30: Schol. ad Aristophan. Nub. 1367. Pausan. x. 7, 2). “Poemata omne genus (says Apuleius, Florid. p. 122, Bipont.) apta _virgæ_, lyræ, socco, cothurno.”

Not only Homer and Hesiod, but also Archilochus, were recited by rhapsodes (Athenæ, xii. 620; also Plato, Legg. ii. p. 658). Consult, besides, Nitzsch, De Historiâ Homeri, Fascic. 2, p. 114, _seq._, respecting the rhapsodes; and O. Müller, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. iv. s. 3.

The ideas of singing and speech are, however, often confounded, in reference to any verse solemnly and emphatically delivered (Thucydid. ii. 53)—φάσκοντες οἱ πρεσβύτεροι πάλαι ~ᾄδεσθαι~, Ἥξει Δωριακὸς πόλεμος καὶ λοιμὸς ἅμ᾽ αὐτῷ. And the rhapsodes are said to _sing_ Homer (Plato, Eryxias, c. 13; Hesych. v. Βραυρωνίοις); Strabo (i. p. 18) has a good passage upon song and speech.

William Grimm (Deutsche Heldensage, p. 373) supposes the ancient German heroic romances to have been recited or declaimed in a similar manner with a simple accompaniment of the harp, as the Servian heroic lays are even at this time delivered.

Fauriel also tells us, respecting the French Carlovingian Epic (Romans de Chevalerie, Revue des Deux Mondes, xiii. p. 559): “The romances of the 12th and 13th centuries were really sung: the _jongleur_ invited his audience to hear a _belle chanson d’histoire_,—‘le mot chanter ne manque jamais dans la formule initiale,’—and it is to be understood literally: the music was simple and intermittent, more like a recitative; the jongleur carried a rebek, or violin with three strings, an Arabic instrument; when he wished to rest his voice, he played an air or ritournelle upon this; he went thus about from place to place, and the romances had no existence among the people, except through the aid and recitation of these jongleurs.”

It appears that there had once been rhapsodic exhibitions at the festivals of Dionysus, but they were discontinued (Klearchus ap. Athenæ. vii. p. 275)—probably superseded by the dithyramb and the tragedy.

The etymology of ῥαψῳδὸς is a disputed point: Welcker traces it to ῥάβδος, most critics derive it from ῥάπτειν ἀοιδὴν, which O. Müller explains “to denote the coupling together of verses without any considerable divisions or pauses,—the even, unbroken, continuous flow of the epic poem,” as contrasted with the strophic or choric periods (_l. c._).

[248] Homer, Hymn to Apoll. 170. The κίθαρις, ἀοιδὴ, ὀρχηθμὸς, are constantly put together in that hymn: evidently, the instrumental accompaniment was essential to the hymns at the Ionic festival. Compare also the Hymn to Hermês (430), where the function ascribed to the Muses can hardly be understood to include non-musical recitation. The Hymn to Hermês is more recent than Terpander, inasmuch as it mentions the seven strings of the lyre, v. 50.

[249] Terpander,—see Plutarch, de Musicâ, c. 3-4; the facts respecting him are collected in Plehn’s Lesbiaca, pp. 140-160; but very little can be authenticated.

Stesander at the Pythian festivals sang the Homeric battles, with a harp accompaniment of his own composition (Athenæ. xiv. p. 638).

The principal testimonies respecting the rhapsodizing of the Homeric poems at Athens, chiefly at the Panathenaic festival, are Isokratês, Panegyric. p. 74; Lycurgus contra Leocrat. p. 161; Plato, Hipparch. p. 228; Diogen. Laërt. Vit. Solon. i. 57.

Inscriptions attest that rhapsodizing continued in great esteem, down to a late period of the historical age, both at Chios and Teôs, especially the former: it was the subject of competition by trained youth, and of prizes for the victor, at periodical religious solemnities: see Corp. Inscript. Boeckh, No. 2214-3088.

Respecting the mode in which the Homeric poems were preserved, during the two centuries (or as some think, longer interval) between their original composition and the period shortly preceding Solôn,—and respecting their original composition and subsequent changes,—there are wide differences of opinion among able critics. Were they preserved with or without being written? Was the Iliad originally composed as one poem, and the Odyssey in like manner, or is each of them an aggregation of parts originally self-existent and unconnected? Was the authorship of each poem single-headed or many-headed?

Either tacitly or explicitly, these questions have been generally coupled together and discussed with reference to each other, by inquiries into the Homeric poems; though Mr. Payne Knight’s Prolegomena have the merit of keeping them distinct. Half a century ago, the acute and valuable Prolegomena of F. A. Wolf, turning to account the Venetian Scholia which had then been recently published, first opened philosophical discussion as to the history of the Homeric text. A considerable part of that dissertation (though by no means the whole) is employed in vindicating the position, previously announced by Bentley, among others, that the separate constituent portions of the Iliad and Odyssey had not been cemented together into any compact body and unchangeable order until the days of Peisistratus, in the sixth century before Christ. As a step towards that conclusion, Wolf maintained that no written copies of either poem could be shown to have existed during the earlier times to which their composition is referred,—and that without writing, neither the perfect symmetry of so complicated a work could have been originally conceived by any poet, nor, if realized by him, transmitted with assurance to posterity. The absence of easy and convenient writing, such as must be indispensably supposed for long manuscripts, among the early Greeks, was thus one of the points in Wolf’s case against the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey. By Nitzsch and other leading opponents of Wolf, the connection of the one with the other seems to have been accepted as he originally put it; and it has been considered incumbent on those, who defended the ancient aggregate character of the Iliad and Odyssey, to maintain that they were written poems from the beginning.

To me it appears that the architectonic functions ascribed by Wolf to Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the Homeric poems, are nowise admissible. But much would undoubtedly be gained towards that view of the question, if it could be shown that, in order to controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting long written poems in the ninth century before the Christian era. Few things, in my opinion, can be more improbable: and Mr. Payne Knight, opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no less than Wolf himself.[250] The traces of writing in Greece, even in the seventh century before the Christian era, are exceedingly trifling. We have no remaining inscription earlier than the 40th Olympiad, and the early inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed: nor can we even assure ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonidês of Amorgus, Kallinus, Tyrtæus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric poets, committed their compositions to writing, or at what time the practice of doing so became familiar. The first positive ground, which authorizes us to presume the existence of a manuscript of Homer, is in the famous ordinance of Solôn with regard to the rhapsodes at the Panathenæa; but for what length of time, previously, manuscripts had existed, we are unable to say.

[250] Knight, Prolegom. Hom. c. xxxviii-xl. “Haud tamen ullum Homericorum carminum exemplar Pisistrati seculo antiquius extitisse, aut sexcentesimo prius anno ante C. N. scriptum fuisse, facile credam: rara enim et perdifficilis erat iis temporibus scriptura ob penuriam materiæ scribendo idoneæ, quum literas aut lapidibus exarare, aut tabulis ligneis aut laminis metalli alicujus insculpere oporteret.... Atque ideo memoriter retenta sunt, et hæc et alia veterum poetarum carmina, et per urbes et vicos et in principum virorum ædibus, decantata a rhapsodis. Neque mirandum est, ea per tot sæcula sic integra conservata esse, quoniam—per eos tradita erant, qui ab omnibus Græciæ et coloniarum regibus et civitatibus mercede satis amplâ conducti, omnia sua studia in iis ediscendis, retinendis, et rite recitandis, conferebant.” Compare Wolf, Prolegom. xxiv-xxv.

The evidences of early writing among the Greeks, and of written poems even anterior to Homer, may be seen collected in Kreuser (Vorfragen ueber Homeros, pp. 127-159, Frankfort, 1828). His proofs appear to me altogether inconclusive. Nitzsch maintains the same opinion (Histor. Homeri, Fasc. i. sect. xi. xvii. xviii.),—in my opinion, not more successfully: nor does Franz (Epigraphicê Græc. Introd. s. iv.) produce any new arguments.

I do not quite subscribe to Mr. Knight’s language, when he says that _there is nothing wonderful_ in the long preservation of the Homeric poems _unwritten_. It is enough to maintain that the existence, and practical use of long manuscripts, by all the rhapsodes, under the condition and circumstances of the 8th and 9th centuries among the Greeks, would be a greater wonder.

Those who maintain the Homeric poems to have been written from the beginning, rest their case, not upon positive proofs,—nor yet upon the existing habits of society with regard to poetry, for they admit generally that the Iliad and Odyssey were not read, but recited and heard,—but upon the supposed necessity that there must have been manuscripts,[251] to insure the preservation of the poems,—the unassisted memory of reciters being neither sufficient nor trustworthy. But here we only escape a smaller difficulty by running into a greater; for the existence of trained bards, gifted with extraordinary memory, is far less astonishing than that of long manuscripts in an age essentially non-reading and non-writing, and when even suitable instruments and materials for the process are not obvious. Moreover, there is a strong positive reason for believing that the bard was under no necessity for refreshing his memory by consulting a manuscript. For if such had been the fact, blindness would have been a disqualification for the profession, which we know that it was not; as well from the example of Demodokus in the Odyssey, as from that of the blind bard of Chios, in the hymn to the Delian Apollo, whom Thucydidês, as well as the general tenor of Grecian legend, identifies with Homer himself.[252] The author of that Hymn, be he who he may, could never have described a blind man as attaining the utmost perfection in his art, if he had been conscious that the memory of the bard was only maintained by constant reference to the manuscript in his chest.

[251] See this argument strongly put by Nitzsch, in the prefatory remarks at the beginning of his second volume of Commentaries on the Odyssey (pp. x-xxix). He takes great pains to discard all idea that the poems were written in order to be read. To the same purpose, Franz (Epigraphicê Græc. Introd. p. 32), who adopts Nitzsch’s positions,—“Audituris enim, non lecturis, carmina parabant.”

[252] Odyss. viii. 65; Hymn. ad Apoll. 172: Pseudo-Herodot. Vit. Homer. c. 3; Thucyd. iii. 104.

Various commentators on Homer imagined that, under the misfortune of Demodokus, the poet in reality described his own (Schol. ad Odyss. 1. 1; Maxim. Tyr. xxxviii. 1).

Nor will it be found, after all, that the effort of memory required, either from bards or rhapsodes, even for the longest of these old Epic poems,—though doubtless great, was at all superhuman. Taking the case with reference to the entire Iliad and Odyssey, we know that there were educated gentlemen at Athens who could repeat both poems by heart:[253] but in the professional recitations, we are not to imagine that the same person did go through the whole: the recitation was essentially a joint undertaking, and the rhapsodes who visited a festival would naturally understand among themselves which part of the poem should devolve upon each particular individual. Under such circumstances, and with such means of preparation beforehand, the quantity of verse which a rhapsode could deliver would be measured, not so much by the exhaustion of his memory, as by the physical sufficiency of his voice, having reference to the sonorous, emphatic, and rhythmical pronunciation required from him.[254]

[253] Xenoph. Sympos. iii. 5. Compare, respecting the laborious discipline of the Gallic Druids, and the number of unwritten verses which they retained in their memories, Cæsar, B. G. vi. 14; Mela. iii. 2; also Wolf, Prolegg. s. xxiv. and Herod. ii. 77, about the prodigious memory of the Egyptian priests at Heliopolis.

I transcribe, from the interesting Discours of M. Fauriel (prefixed to his Chants Populaires de la Grèce Moderne, Paris 1824), a few particulars respecting the number, the mnemonic power, and the popularity of those itinerant singers or rhapsodes who frequent the festivals or _paneghyris_ of modern Greece: it is curious to learn that this profession is habitually exercised by _blind_ men (p. xc. _seq._).

“Les aveugles exercent en Grèce une profession qui les rend non seulement agréables, mais nécessaires; le caractère, l’imagination, et la condition du peuple, étant ce qu’ils sont: c’est la profession de chanteurs ambulans.... Ils sont dans l’usage, tant sur le continent que dans les îles, de la Grèce, d’apprendre par cœur le plus grand nombre qu’ils peuvent de chansons populaires de tout genre et de toute époque. Quelques uns finissent par en savoir une quantité prodigieuse, et tous en savent beaucoup. Avec ce trésor dans leur mémoire, ils sont toujours en marche, traversent la Grèce en tout sens; ils s’en vont de ville en ville, de village en village, chantant à l’auditoire qui se forme aussitôt autour d’eux, partout où ils se montrent, celles de leurs chansons qu’ils jugent convenir le mieux, soit à la localité, soit à la circonstance, et reçoivent une petite rétribution qui fait tout leur revenu. Ils ont l’air de chercher de préférence, en tout lieu, la partie la plus inculte de la population, qui en est toujours la plus curieuse, la plus avide d’impressions, et la moins difficile dans le choix de ceux qui leur sont offertes. Les Turcs seuls ne les écoutent pas. C’est aux réunions nombreuses, aux fêtes de village connues sous le nom de _Paneghyris_, que ces chanteurs ambulans accourent le plus volontiers. Ils chantent en s’accompagnant d’un instrument à cordes que l’on touche avec un archet, et qui est exactement l’ancienne lyre des Grecs, dont il a conservé le nom comme la forme.

“Cette lyre, pour être entière, doit avoir cinq cordes: mais souvent elle n’en a que deux ou trois, dont les sons, comme il est aisé de présumer, n’ont rien de bien harmonieux. Les chanteurs aveugles vont ordinairement isolés, et chacun d’eux chante à part des autres: mais quelquefois aussi ils se réunissent par groupes de deux ou de trois, pour dire ensemble les mêmes chansons.... Ces modernes rhapsodes doivent être divisés en deux classes. Les uns (et ce sont, selon toute apparence, les plus nombreux) se bornent à la function de recueillir, d’apprendre par cœur, et de mettre en circulation, des pièces qu’ils n’ont point composées. Les autres (et ce sont ceux qui forment l’ordre le plus distingué de leur corps), à cette fonction de répétiteurs et de colporteurs des poésies d’autrui, joignent celle de poëtes, et ajoutent à la masse des chansons apprises d’autres chants de leur façon.... Ces rhapsodes aveugles sont les nouvellistes et les historiens, en même temps que les poëtes du peuple, en cela parfaitement semblables aux rhapsodes anciens de la Grèce.”

To pass to another country—Persia, once the great rival of Greece: “The Kurroglian rhapsodes are called _Kurroglou-Khans_, from _khaunden_, to sing. Their duty is, to know by heart all the _mejjlisses_ (meetings) of Kurroglou, narrate them, or sing them with the accompaniment of the favorite instrument of Kurroglou, the chungur, or sitar, a three-stringed guitar. Ferdausi has also his _Shah-nama-Khans_, and the prophet Mohammed his _Koran Khans_. The memory of those singers is truly astonishing. At every request, they recite in one breath for some hours, without stammering, beginning the tale at the passage or verse pointed out by the hearers.” (Specimens of the Popular Poetry of Persia, as found in the Adventures and Improvisations of Kurroglou, the Bandit Minstrel of Northern Persia, by Alexander Chodzko: London 1842, Introd. p. 13)

“One of the songs of the Calmuck national bards sometimes lasts a whole day.” (_Ibid._ p. 372.)

[254] There are just remarks of Mr. Mitford on the possibility that the Homeric poems might have been preserved without writing (History of Greece, vol. i. pp. 135-137).

But what guarantee have we for the exact transmission of the text for a space of two centuries by simply oral means? It may be replied, that oral transmission would hand down the text as exactly as in point of fact it was handed down. The great lines of each poem,—the order of parts,—the vein of Homeric feeling, and the general style of locution, and, for the most part, the true words,—would be maintained: for the professional training of the rhapsode, over and above the precision of his actual memory, would tend to Homerize his mind (if the expression may be permitted), and to restrain him within this magic circle. On the other hand, in respect to the details of the text, we should expect that there would be wide differences and numerous inaccuracies: and so there really were, as the records contained in the Scholia, together with the passages cited in ancient authors, but not found in our Homeric text, abundantly testify.[255]

[255] Villoison, Prolegomen. pp. xxxiv-lvi; Wolf, Prolegomen. p. 37. Düntzer, in the Epicor. Græc. Fragm. pp. 27-29, gives a considerable list of the Homeric passages cited by ancient authors, but not found either in the Iliad or Odyssey. It is hardly to be doubted, however, that many of these passages belonged to other epic poems which passed under the name of Homer. Welcker (Der Episch. Kyklus, pp. 20-133) enforces this opinion very justly, and it harmonizes with his view of the name of Homer as coextensive with the whole Epic cycle.

Moreover, the state of the Iliad and Odyssey, in respect to the letter called the Digamma, affords a proof that they were recited for a considerable period before they were committed to writing, insomuch that the oral pronunciation underwent during the interval a sensible change.[256] At the time when these poems were composed, the Digamma was an effective consonant, and figured as such in the structure of the verse: at the time when they were committed to writing, it had ceased to be pronounced, and therefore never found a place in any of the manuscripts,—insomuch that the Alexandrine critics, though they knew of its existence in the much later poems of Alkæus and Sapphô, never recognized it in Homer. The hiatus, and the various perplexities of metre, occasioned by the loss of the Digamma, were corrected by different grammatical stratagems. But the whole history of this lost letter is very curious, and is rendered intelligible only by the supposition that the Iliad and Odyssey belonged for a wide space of time to the memory, the voice, and the ear, exclusively.

[256] See this argument strongly maintained in Giese (Ueber den Æolischen Dialekt, sect. 14. p. 160, _seqq._). He notices several other particulars in the Homeric language,—the plenitude and variety of interchangeable grammatical forms,—the numerous metrical licenses, set right by appropriate oral intonations,—which indicate a language as yet not constrained by the fixity of written authority.

The same line of argument is taken by O. Müller (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. iv. s. 5).

Giese has shown also, in the same chapter, that all the manuscripts of Homer mentioned in the Scholia, were written in the Ionic alphabet (with Η and Ω as marks for the long vowels, and no special mark for the rough breathing), in so far as the special citations out of them enable us to verify.

At what period these poems, or, indeed, any other Greek poems, first began to be written, must be matter of conjecture, though there is ground for assurance that it was before the time of Solôn. If, in the absence of evidence, we may venture upon naming any more determinate period, the question at once suggests itself, what were the purposes which, in that stage of society, a manuscript at its first commencement must have been intended to answer? For whom was a written Iliad necessary? Not for the rhapsodes; for with them it was not only planted in the memory, but also interwoven with the feelings, and conceived in conjunction with all those flexions and intonations of voice, pauses, and other oral artifices, which were required for emphatic delivery, and which the naked manuscript could never reproduce. Not for the general public,—_they_ were accustomed to receive it with its rhapsodic delivery, and with its accompaniments of a solemn and crowded festival. The only persons for whom the written Iliad would be suitable, would be a select few; studious and curious men,—a class of readers, capable of analyzing the complicated emotions which they had experienced as hearers in the crowd, and who would, on perusing the written words, realize in their imaginations a sensible portion of the impression communicated by the reciter.[257]

[257] Nitzsch and Welcker argue, that because the Homeric poems were _heard_ with great delight and interest, therefore the first rudiments of the art of writing, even while beset by a thousand mechanical difficulties, would be employed to record them. I cannot adopt this opinion, which appears to me to derive all its plausibility from our present familiarity with reading and writing. The first step from the recited to the written poem is really one of great violence, as well as useless for any want then actually felt. I much more agree with Wolf when he says: “Diu enim illorum hominum vita et simplicitas nihil admodum habuit, quod scripturâ dignum videretur: in aliis omnibus occupati agunt illi, quæ posteri scribunt, vel (ut de quibusdam populis accepimus) etiam monstratam operam hanc spernunt tanquam indecori otii: carmina autem quæ pangunt, longo usu sic ore fundere et excipere consueverunt, ut cantu et recitatione cum maxime vigentia deducere ad mutas notas, ex illius ætatis sensu nihil aliud esset, quam perimere ea et vitali vi ac spiritu privare.” (Prolegom. s. xv. p. 59.)

Some good remarks on this subject are to be found in William Humboldt’s Introduction to his elaborate treatise _Ueber die Kawi-Sprache_, in reference to the oral tales current among the Basques. He, too, observes how great and repulsive a proceeding it is, to pass at first from verse sung, or recited, to verse written; implying that the words are conceived detached from the _Vortrag_, the accompanying music, and the surrounding and sympathizing assembly. The Basque tales have no charm for the people themselves, when put in Spanish words and read (Introduction, sect. xx. p. 258-259).

Unwritten prose tales, preserved in the memory, and said to be repeated nearly in the same words from age to age, are mentioned by Mariner, in the Tonga Islands (Mariner’s Account, vol. ii. p. 377).

The Druidical poems were kept unwritten by design, after writing was in established use for other purposes (Cæsar, B. G. vi. 13).

Incredible as the statement may seem in an age like the present, there is in all early societies, and there was in early Greece, a time when no such reading class existed. If we could discover at what time such a class first began to be formed, we should be able to make a guess at the time when the old Epic poems were first committed to writing. Now the period which may with the greatest probability be fixed upon as having first witnessed the formation even of the narrowest reading class in Greece, is the middle of the seventh century before the Christian era (B. C. 660 to B. C. 630),—the age of Terpander, Kallinus, Archilochus, Simonidês of Amorgus, etc. I ground this supposition on the change then operated in the character and tendencies of Grecian poetry and music,—the elegiac and iambic measures having been introduced as rivals to the primitive hexameter, and poetical compositions having been transferred from the epical past to the affairs of present and real life. Such a change was important at a time when poetry was the only known mode of publication (to use a modern phrase not altogether suitable, yet the nearest approaching to the sense). It argued a new way of looking at the old epical treasures of the people, as well as a thirst for new poetical effect; and the men who stood forward in it may well be considered as desirous to study, and competent to criticize, from their own individual point of view, the written words of the Homeric rhapsodes, just as we are told that Kallinus both noticed and eulogized the Thebaïs as the production of Homer. There seems, therefore, ground for conjecturing, that (for the use of this newly-formed and important, but very narrow class) manuscripts of the Homeric poems and other old epics—the Thebaïs and the Cypria as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey—began to be compiled towards the middle of the seventh century B. C.:[258] and the opening of Egypt to Grecian commerce, which took place about the same period, would furnish increased facilities for obtaining the requisite papyrus to write upon. A reading class, when once formed, would doubtless slowly increase, and the number of manuscripts along with it; so that before the time of Solôn, fifty years afterwards, both readers and manuscripts, though still comparatively few, might have attained a certain recognized authority, and formed a tribunal of reference, against the carelessness of individual rhapsodes.

[258] Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. pp. 368-373) treats it as a matter of _certainty_ that Archilochus and Alkman _wrote_ their poems. I am not aware of any evidence for announcing this as positively known,—except, indeed, an admission of Wolf, which is, doubtless, good as an _argumentum ad hominem_, but is not to be received as proof (Wolf, Proleg. p. 50). The evidences mentioned by Mr. Clinton (p. 368) certainly cannot be regarded as proving anything to the point.

Giese (Ueber den Æolischen Dialekt, p. 172) places the first writing of the separate rhapsodies composing the Iliad in the seventh century B. C.

We may, I think, consider the Iliad and Odyssey to have been preserved without the aid of writing, for a period near upon two centuries.[259] But is it true, as Wolf imagined, and as other able critics have imagined, also, that the separate portions of which these two poems are composed were originally distinct epical ballads, each constituting a separate whole and intended for separate recitation? Is it true, that they had not only no common author, but originally, neither common purpose nor fixed order, and that their first permanent arrangement and integration was delayed for three centuries, and accomplished at last only by the taste of Peisistratus conjoined with various lettered friends?[260]

[259] The songs of the Icelandic Skalds were preserved orally for a period longer than two centuries,—P. A. Müller thinks very much longer,—before they were collected, or embodied in written story by Snorro and Sæmund (Lange, Untersuchungen über die Gesch. der Nördischen Heldensage. p. 98; also, Introduct. pp. xx-xxviii). He confounds, however, often, the preservation of the songs from old time,—with the question, whether they have or have not an historical basis.

And there were, doubtless, many old bards and rhapsodes in ancient Greece, of whom the same might be said which Saxo Grammaticus affirms of an Englishman named Lucas, that he was “literis quidem tenuiter instructus, sed historiarum scientiâ apprime eruditus.” (Dahlmann, Historische Forschungen, vol. ii. p. 176.)

[260] “Homer wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small earnings and good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment; the Iliad he made for the men, the Odysseus for the other sex. These loose songs were not collected together into the form of an epic poem until 500 years after.”

Such is the naked language in which Wolf’s main hypothesis had been previously set forth by Bentley, in his “Remarks on a late Discourse of Freethinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,” published in 1713: the passage remained unaltered in the seventh edition of that treatise published in 1737. See Wolf’s Proleg. xxvii. p. 115.

The same hypothesis may be seen more amply developed, partly in the work of Wolfs pupil and admirer, William Müller, _Homerische Vorschule_ (the second edition of which was published at Leipsic, 1836, with an excellent introduction and notes by Baumgarten-Crusius, adding greatly to the value of the original work by its dispassionate review of the whole controversy), partly in two valuable Dissertations of Lachmann, published in the Philological Transactions of the Berlin Academy for 1837 and 1841.

This hypothesis—to which the genius of Wolf first gave celebrity, but which has been since enforced more in detail by others, especially by William Müller and Lachmann—appears to me not only unsupported by any sufficient testimony, but also opposed to other testimony as well as to a strong force of internal probability. The authorities quoted by Wolf are Josephus, Cicero, and Pausanias:[261] Josephus mentions nothing about Peisistratus, but merely states (what we may accept as the probable fact) that the Homeric poems were originally unwritten, and preserved only in songs or recitations, from which they were at a subsequent period put into writing: hence many of the discrepancies in the text. On the other hand, Cicero and Pausanias go farther, and affirm that Peisistratus both collected, and arranged in the existing order, the rhapsodies of the Iliad and Odyssey, (implied as poems originally entire, and subsequently broken into pieces,) which he found partly confused and partly isolated from each other,—each part being then remembered only in its own portion of the Grecian world. Respecting Hipparchus the son of Peisistratus, too, we are told in the Pseudo-Platonic dialogue which bears his name, that he was the first to introduce into Attica, the poetry of Homer, and that he prescribed to the rhapsodes to recite the parts of the Panathenaic festival in regular sequence.[262]

[261] Joseph, cont. Apion. i. 2; Cicero de Orator, iii. 34; Pausan. vii. 26, 6: compare the Scholion on Plautus in Ritschl, Die Alexandrin. Bibliothek, p. 4. Ælian (V. II. xiii. 14), who mentions both the introduction of the Homeric poems into Peloponnesus by Lykurgus, and the compilation by Peisistratus, can hardly be considered as adding to the value of the testimony: still less, Libanius and Suidas. What we learn is, that some literary and critical men of the Alexandrine age (more or fewer, as the case may be; but Wolf exaggerates when he talks of an _unanimous_ conviction) spoke of Peisistratus as having first put together the fractional parts of the Iliad and Odyssey into entire poems.

[262] Plato, Hipparch. p. 228.

Wolf and William Müller occasionally speak as if they admitted something like an Iliad and Odyssey as established aggregates prior to Peisistratus; but for the most part they represent him or his associates as having been the first to put together Homeric poems which were before distinct and self-existent compositions. And Lachmann, the recent expositor of the same theory, ascribes to Peisistratus still more unequivocally this original integration of parts in reference to the Iliad,—distributing the first twenty-two books of the poem into sixteen separate songs, and treating it as ridiculous to imagine that the fusion of these songs, into an order such as we now read, belongs to any date earlier than Peisistratus.[263]

[263] “Doch ich komme mir bald lächerlich vor, wenn ich noch immer die Möglichkeit gelten lasse, dass unsere Ilias in dem gegenwärtigen Zusammenhange der bedeutenden Theile, und nicht blos der wenigen bedeutendsten, jemals vor der Arbeit des Pisistratus gedacht worden sey.” (Lachmann, Fernere Betrachtungen über die Ilias, sect. xxviii. p. 32; Abhandlungen Berlin. Academ. 1841.) How far this admission—that for the _few most important_ portions of the Iliad, there _did_ exist an established order of succession prior to Peisistratus—is intended to reach, I do not know; but the language of Lachmann goes farther than either Wolf or William Müller. (See Wolf, Prolegomen. pp. cxli-cxlii, and W. Müller, Homerische Vorschule, Abschnitt vii. pp. 96, 98, 100, 102.) The latter admits that neither Peisistratus nor the Diaskeuasts could have made any considerable changes in the Iliad and Odyssey, either in the way of addition or of transposition; the poems as aggregates being too well known, and the Homeric vein of invention too completely extinct, to admit of such novelties.

I confess, I do not see how these last-mentioned admissions can be reconciled with the main doctrine of Wolf, in so far as regards Peisistratus.

Upon this theory we may remark, first, that it stands opposed to the testimony existing respecting the regulations of Solôn; who, before the time of Peisistratus, had enforced a fixed order of recitation on the rhapsodes of the Iliad at the Panathenaic festival; not only directing that they should go through the rhapsodies _seriatim_, and without omission or corruption, but also establishing a prompter or censorial authority to insure obedience,[264]—which implies the existence (at the same time that it proclaims the occasional infringement) of an orderly aggregate, as well as of manuscripts professedly complete. Next, the theory ascribes to Peisistratus a character not only materially different from what is indicated by Cicero and Pausanias,—who represent him, not as having put together atoms originally distinct, but as the renovator of an ancient order subsequently lost,—but also in itself unintelligible, and inconsistent with Grecian habit and feeling. That Peisistratus should take pains to repress the license, or make up for the unfaithful memory, of individual rhapsodes, and to ennoble the Panathenaic festival by the most correct recital of a great and venerable poem, according to the standard received among the best judges in Greece,—this is a task both suitable to his position, and requiring nothing more than an improved recension, together with exact adherence to it on the part of the rhapsodes. But what motive had he to string together several poems, previously known only as separate, into one new whole? What feeling could he gratify by introducing the extensive changes and transpositions surmised by Lachmann, for the purpose of binding together sixteen songs, which the rhapsodes are assumed to have been accustomed to recite, and the people to hear, each by itself apart? Peisistratus was not a poet, seeking to interest the public mind by new creations and combinations, but a ruler, desirous to impart solemnity to a great religious festival in his native city. Now such a purpose would be answered by selecting, amidst the divergences of rhapsodes in different parts of Greece, that order of text which intelligent men could approve as a return to the pure and pristine Iliad; but it would be defeated if he attempted large innovations of his own, and brought out for the first time a new Iliad by blending together, altering, and transposing, many old and well-known songs. A novelty so bold would have been more likely to offend than to please both the critics and the multitude. And if it were even enforced, by authority, at Athens, no probable reason can be given why all the other towns, and all the rhapsodes throughout Greece, should abnegate their previous habits in favor of it, since Athens at that time enjoyed no political ascendency such as she acquired during the following century. On the whole, it will appear that the character and position of Peisistratus himself go far to negative the function which Wolf and Lachmann put upon him. His interference presupposes a certain foreknown and ancient aggregate, the main lineaments of which were familiar to the Grecian public, although many of the rhapsodes in their practice may have deviated from it both by omission and interpolation. In correcting the Athenian recitations conformably with such understood general type, he might hope both to procure respect for Athens, and to constitute a fashion for the rest of Greece. But this step of “collecting the torn body of sacred Homer,” is something generically different from the composition of a new Iliad out of preëxisting songs the former is as easy, suitable, and promising, as the latter is violent and gratuitous.[265]

[264] Diogen. Laërt. i. 57.—Τὰ τε Ὁμήρου ~ἐξ ὑποβολῆς~ γέγραφε (Σόλων) ῥαψῳδεῖσθαι, οἷον ὅπου ὁ πρῶτος ἔληξεν, ἔκειθεν ἄρχεσθαι τὸν ἀρχόμενον, ὥς φησι Διευχίδας ἐν τοῖς Μεγαρικοῖς.

Respecting Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus, the Pseudo-Plato tells us (in the dialogue so called, p. 228),—καὶ τὰ Ὁμήρου ἔπη πρῶτος ἐκόμισεν εἰς τὴν γῆν ταυτηνὶ, καὶ ἠνάγκασε τοὺς ῥαψῳδοὺς Παναθηναίοις ~ἐξ ὑπολήψεως~ ἐφεξῆς αὐτὰ διϊέναι, ~ὥσπερ νῦν ἔτι~ οἵδε ποιοῦσι.

These words have provoked multiplied criticisms from all the learned men who have touched upon the theory of the Homeric poems,—to determine what was the practice which Solon found existing, and what was the change which he introduced. Our information is too scanty to pretend to certainty, but I think the explanation of Hermann the most satisfactory (“Quid sit ~ὑποβολὴ~ et ~ὑποβλήδεν~.”—_Opuscula_, tom. v. p. 300, tom. vii. p. 162).

Ὑποβολεὺς is the technical term for the prompter at a theatrical representation (Plutarch, Præcept. gerend. Reip. p. 813); ὑποβολὴ and ὑποβάλλειν have corresponding meanings, of aiding the memory of a speaker and keeping him in accordance with a certain standard, in possession of the prompter: see the words ἐξ ὑποβολῆς, Xenophon. Cyropæd. iii. 3, 37. Ὑποβολὴ, therefore, has no necessary connection with a series of rhapsodes, but would apply just as much to one alone; although it happens in this case to be brought to bear upon several in succession. Ὑπόληψις, again, means “the taking up in succession of one rhapsode by another:” though the two words, therefore, have not the same meaning, yet the proceeding described in the two passages, in reference both to Solôn and Hipparchus, appears to be in substance the same,—_i. e._ to insure, by compulsory supervision, a correct and orderly recitation by the successive rhapsodes who went through the different parts of the poem.

There is good reason to conclude from this passage that the rhapsodes before Solôn were guilty both of negligence and of omission in their recital of Homer, but no reason to imagine either that they transposed the books, or that the legitimate order was not previously recognized.

The appointment of a systematic ὑποβολεὺς, or prompter, plainly indicates the existence of complete manuscripts.

The direction of Solôn, that Homer should be rhapsodized under the security of a prompter with his manuscript, appears just the same as that of the orator Lykurgus in reference to Æschylus, Sophoklês, and Euripidês (Pseudo-Plutarch. Vit. x. Rhetor. Lycurgi Vit.)—εἰσήνεγκε δὲ καὶ νόμους—ὡς χαλκᾶς εἰκόνας ἀναθεῖναι τῶν ποιητῶν Αἰσχύλου, Σοφοκλέους, Εὐριπίδου, καὶ τὰς τραγῳδίας αὐτῶν ἐν κοινῷ γραψαμένους φυλάττειν, καὶ τὸν τῆς πόλεως γραμματέα παραναγιγνώσκειν τοῖς ὑποκρινομένοις· οὐ γὰρ ἐξῆν αὐτὰς (ἄλλως) ὑποκρίνεσθαι. The word ἄλλως, which occurs last but one, is introduced by the conjecture of Grysar, who has cited and explained the above passage of the Pseudo-Plutarch in a valuable dissertation—_De Græcorum Tragœdiâ, qualis fuit circa tempora Demosthenis_ (Cologne, 1830). All the critics admit the text as it now stands to be unintelligible, and various corrections have been proposed, among which that of Grysar seems the best. From his Dissertation, I transcribe the following passage, which illustrates the rhapsodizing of Homer ἐξ ὑποβολῆς:—

“Quum histriones fabulis interpolandis ægre abstinerent, Lycurgus legem supra indicatam eo tulit consilio, ut recitationes histrionum cum publico illo exemplo omnino congruas redderet. Quod ut assequeretur, constituit, ut dum fabulæ in scenâ recitarentur, scriba publicus simul exemplum civitatis inspiceret, juxta sive in theatro sive in postscenio sedens. Hæc enim verbi παραναγιγνώσκειν est significatio, posita præcipue in præpositione παρὰ, ut idem sit, quod _contra_ sive _juxta_ legere; id quod faciunt ii, _qui lecta ab altero vel recitata cum suis conferre cupiunt_.” (Grysar, p. 7.)

[265] That the Iliad or Odyssey were ever recited with all the parts entire, at any time anterior to Solôn, is a point which Ritschl denies (Die Alexandrin. Bibliothek, pp. 67-70). He thinks that before Solôn, they were always recited in parts, and without any fixed order among the parts. Nor did Solôn determine (as he thinks) the order of the parts: he only checked the license of the rhapsodes as to the recitation of the separate books: it was Pesistratus, who, with the help of Onomakritus and others, first settled the order of the parts and bound each poem into a whole, with some corrections and interpolations. Nevertheless, he admits that the parts were originally composed by the same poet, and adapted to form a whole amongst each other: but this primitive entireness (he asserts) was only maintained as a sort of traditional belief, never realized in recitation, and never reduced to an obvious, unequivocal, and permanent fact,—until the time of Peisistratus.

There is no sufficient ground, I think, for denying all entire recitation previous to Solôn, and we only interpose a new difficulty, both grave and gratuitous, by doing so.

To sustain the inference, that Peisistratus was the first architect of the Iliad and Odyssey, it ought at least to be shown that no other long and continuous poems existed during the earlier centuries. But the contrary of this is known to be the fact. The Æthiopis of Arktinus, which contained nine thousand one hundred verses, dates from a period more than two centuries earlier than Peisistratus: several other of the lost cyclic epics, some among them of considerable length, appear during the century succeeding Arktinus; and it is important to notice that three or four at least of these poems passed currently under the name of Homer.[266] There is no greater intrinsic difficulty in supposing long epics to have begun with the Iliad and Odyssey than with the Æthiopis: the ascendency of the name of Homer and the subordinate position of Arktinus, in the history of early Grecian poetry, tend to prove the former in preference to the latter.

[266] The Æthiopis of Arktinus contained nine thousand one hundred verses, as we learn from the Tabula Iliaca: yet Proklus assigns to it only four books. The Ilias Minor had _four_ books, the Cyprian Verses _eleven_, though we do not know the number of lines in either.

Nitzsch states it as a certain matter of fact, that Arktinus recited his own poem _alone_, though it was too long to admit of his doing so without interruption. (See his Vorrede to the second vol. of the Odyssey, p. xxiv.) There is no evidence for this assertion, and it appears to me highly improbable.

In reference to the Romances of the Middle Ages, belonging to the Cycle of the Round Table, M. Fauriel tells us that the German _Perceval_ has nearly twenty-five thousand verses (more than half as long again as the Iliad); the _Perceval_ of Christian of Troyes, probably more; the German _Tristan_, of Godfrey of Strasburg, has more than twenty-three thousand; sometimes, the poem is begun by one author, and continued by another. (Fauriel, Romans de Chevalerie, Revue des Deux Mondes, t. xiii. pp. 695-697.)

The ancient unwritten poems of the Icelandic Skalds are as much lyric as epic: the longest of them does not exceed eight hundred lines, and they are for the most part much shorter (Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der Nördischen Heldensage, aus P. A. Müller’s Sagabibliothek von G. Lange, Frankf. 1832, Introduct. p. xlii.).

Moreover, we find particular portions of the Iliad, which expressly pronounce themselves, by their own internal evidence, as belonging to a large whole, and not as separate integers. We can hardly conceive the Catalogue in the second book, except as a fractional composition, and with reference to a series of approaching exploits; for, taken apart by itself, such a barren enumeration of names could have stimulated neither the fancy of the poet, nor the attention of the listeners. But the Homeric Catalogue had acquired a sort of canonical authority even in the time of Solôn, insomuch that he interpolated a line into it, or was accused of doing so, for the purpose of gaining a disputed point against the Megarians, who, on their side, set forth another version.[267] No such established reverence could have been felt for this document, unless there had existed for a long time prior to Peisistratus, the habit of regarding and listening to the Iliad as a continuous poem. And when the philosopher Xenophanês, contemporary with Peisistratus, noticed Homer as the universal teacher, and denounced him as an unworthy describer of the gods, he must have connected this great mental sway, not with a number of unconnected rhapsodies, but with an aggregate Iliad and Odyssey; probably with other poems, also, ascribed to the same author, such as the Cypria, Epigoni, and Thebaïs.

[267] Plutarch, Solôn, 10.

We find, it is true, references in various authors to portions of the Iliad, each by its own separate name, such as the Teichomachy, the Aristeia (preëminent exploits) of Diomedês, or Agamemnôn, the Doloneia, or Night-expedition (of Dolon as well as of Odysseus and Diomedês), etc., and hence, it has been concluded, that these portions originally existed as separate poems, before they were cemented together into an Iliad. But such references prove nothing to the point; for until the Iliad was divided by Aristarchus and his colleagues into a given number of books, or rhapsodies, designated by the series of letters in the alphabet, there was no method of calling attention to any particular portion of the poem except by special indication of its subject-matter.[268] Authors subsequent to Peisistratus, such as Herodotus and Plato, who unquestionably conceived the Iliad as a whole, cite the separate fractions of it by designations of this sort.

[268] The Homeric Scholiast refers to Quintus Calaber ἐν τῇ Ἀμαζονομαχίᾳ, which was only one portion of his long poem (Schol. ad Iliad. ii. 220).

The foregoing remarks on the Wolfian hypothesis respecting the text of the Iliad, tend to separate two points which are by no means necessarily connected, though that hypothesis, as set forth by Wolf himself, by W. Müller, and by Lachmann, presents the two in conjunction. First, was the Iliad originally projected and composed by one author, and as one poem, or were the different parts composed separately and by unconnected authors, and subsequently strung together into an aggregate? Secondly, assuming that the internal evidences of the poem negative the former supposition, and drive us upon the latter, was the construction of the whole poem deferred, and did the parts exist only in their separate state, until a period so late as the reign of Peisistratus? It is obvious that these two questions are essentially separate, and that a man may believe the Iliad to have been put together out of preëxisting songs, without recognizing the age of Peisistratus as the period of its first compilation. Now, whatever may be the steps through which the poem passed to its ultimate integrity, there is sufficient reason for believing that they had been accomplished long before that period: the friends of Peisistratus found an Iliad already existing and already ancient in their time, even granting that the poem had not been originally born in a state of unity. Moreover, the Alexandrine critics, whose remarks are preserved in the Scholia, do not even notice the Peisistratic recension among the many manuscripts which they had before them: and Mr. Payne Knight justly infers from their silence that either they did not possess it, or it was in their eyes of no great authority;[269] which could never have been the case if it had been the prime originator of Homeric unity.

[269] Knight, Prolegg. Homer, xxxii. xxxvi. xxxvii. That Peisistratus caused a corrected MS. of the Iliad to be prepared, there seems good reason to believe, and the Scholion on Plautus edited by Ritschl (see Die Alexandrinische Bibliothek, p. 4) specifies the four persons (Onomakritus was one) employed on the task. Ritschl fancies that it served as a sort of Vulgate for the text of the Alexandrine critics, who named specially other MSS. (of Chios, Sinôpê, Massalia, etc.) only when they diverged from this Vulgate: he thinks, also, that it formed the original from whence those other MSS. were first drawn, which are called in the Homeric Scholia αἱ κοιναὶ, κοινότεραι (pp. 59-60).

Welcker supposes the Peisistratic MS. to have been either lost or carried away when Xerxês took Athens (Der Epische Kyklus, pp. 382-388).

Compare Nitzsch, Histor. Homer. Fasc. i. pp. 165-167; also his commentary on Odyss. xi. 604, the alleged interpolation of Onomakritus; and Ulrici, Geschichte der Hellen. Poes. Part i. s. vii. pp. 252-255.

The main facts respecting the Peisistratic recension are collected and discussed by Gräfenhan, Geschichte der Philologie, sect. 54-64, vol. i. pp. 266-311. Unfortunately, we cannot get beyond mere conjecture and possibility.

The line of argument, by which the advocates of Wolf’s hypothesis negative the primitive unity of the poem, consists in exposing gaps, incongruities, contradictions, etc., between the separate parts. Now, if in spite of all these incoherences, standing mementos of an antecedent state of separation, the component poems were made to coalesce so intimately as to appear as if they had been one from the beginning, we can better understand the complete success of the proceeding and the universal prevalence of the illusion, by supposing such coalescence to have taken place at a very early period, during the productive days of epical genius, and before the growth of reading and criticism. The longer the aggregation of the separate poems was deferred, the harder it would be to obliterate in men’s minds the previous state of separation, and to make them accept the new aggregate as an original unity. The bards or rhapsodes might have found comparatively little difficulty in thus piecing together distinct songs, during the ninth or eighth century before Christ; but it we suppose the process to be deferred until the latter half of the sixth century,—if we imagine that Solôn, with all his contemporaries and predecessors, knew nothing about any aggregate Iliad, but was accustomed to read and hear only those sixteen distinct epical pieces into which Lachmann would dissect the Iliad, each of the sixteen bearing a separate name of its own,—no compilation then for the first time made by the friends of Peisistratus could have effaced the established habit, and planted itself in the general convictions of Greece as the primitive Homeric production. Had the sixteen pieces remained disunited and individualized down to the time of Peisistratus, they would in all probability have continued so ever afterwards; nor could the extensive changes and transpositions which (according to Lachmann’s theory) were required to melt them down into our present Iliad, have obtained at that late period universal acceptance. Assuming it to be true that such changes and transpositions did really take place, they must at least be referred to a period greatly earlier than Peisistratus or Solôn.

The whole tenor of the poems themselves confirms what is here remarked. There is nothing either in the Iliad or Odyssey which savors of _modernism_, applying that term to the age of Peisistratus; nothing which brings to our view the alterations, brought about by two centuries, in the Greek language, the coined money, the habits of writing and reading, the despotisms and republican governments, the close military array, the improved construction of ships, the Amphiktyonic convocations, the mutual frequentation of religious festivals, the Oriental and Egyptian veins of religion, etc., familiar to the latter epoch. These alterations Onomakritus and the other literary friends of Peisistratus, could hardly have failed to notice even without design, had they then for the first time undertaken the task of piecing together many self-existent epics into one large aggregate.[270] Everything in the two great Homeric poems, both in substance and in language, belongs to an age two or three centuries earlier than Peisistratus. Indeed, even the interpolations (or those passages which on the best grounds are pronounced to be such) betray no trace of the sixth century before Christ, and may well have been heard by Archilochus and Kallinus,—in some cases even by Arktinus and Hesiod,—as genuine Homeric matter. As far as the evidences on the case, as well internal as external, enable us to judge, we seem warranted in believing that the Iliad and Odyssey were recited substantially as they now stand, (always allowing for partial divergences of text, and interpolations,) in 776 B. C., our first trustworthy mark of Grecian time. And this ancient date,—let it be added,—as it is the best-authenticated fact, so it is also the most important attribute of the Homeric poems, considered in reference to Grecian history. For they thus afford us an insight into the ante-historical character of the Greeks,—enabling us to trace the subsequent forward march of the nation, and to seize instructive contrasts between their former and their later condition.

[270] Wolf allows both the uniformity of coloring, and the antiquity of coloring, which pervade the Homeric poems; also, the strong line by which they stand distinguished from the other Greek poets: “Immo congruunt in iis omnia ferme in idem ingenium, in eosdem mores, in eandem formam sentiendi et loquendi.” (Prolegom. p. cclxv; compare p. cxxxviii.)

He thinks, indeed, that this harmony was _restored_ by the ability and care of Aristarchus, (“mirificum illum concentum revocatum Aristarcho imprimis debemus.”) This is a very exaggerated estimate of the interference of Aristarchus: but at any rate the _concentus_ itself was ancient and original, and Aristarchus only _restored_ it, when it had been spoiled by intervening accidents; at least, if we are to construe _revocatum_ strictly, which, perhaps, is hardly consistent with Wolf’s main theory.

Rejecting, therefore, the idea of compilation by Peisistratus, and referring the present state of the Iliad and Odyssey to a period more than two centuries earlier, the question still remains, by what process, or through whose agency, they reached that state? Is each poem the work of one author, or of several? If the latter, do all the parts belong to the same age? What ground is there for believing, that any or all of these parts existed before, as separate poems, and have been accommodated to the place in which they now appear, by more or less systematic alteration?

The acute and valuable Prolegomena of Wolf, half a century ago, powerfully turned the attention of scholars to the necessity of considering the Iliad and Odyssey with reference to the age and society in which they arose, and to the material differences in this respect between Homer and more recent epic poets.[271] Since that time, an elaborate study has been bestowed upon the early manifestations of poetry (Sagen-poesie) among other nations; and the German critics especially, among whom this description of literatures has been most cultivated, have selected it as the only appropriate analogy for the Homeric poems. Such poetry, consisting for the most part of short, artless effusions, with little of deliberate or far-sighted combination, has been assumed by many critics as a fit standard to apply for measuring the capacities of the Homeric age; an age exclusively of speakers, singers, and hearers, not of readers or writers. In place of the unbounded admiration which was felt for Homer, not merely as a poet of detail, but as constructor of a long epic, at the time when Wolf wrote his Prolegomena, the tone of criticism passed to the opposite extreme, and attention was fixed entirely upon the defects in the arrangement of the Iliad and Odyssey. Whatever was to be found in them of symmetry or pervading system, was pronounced to be decidedly post-Homeric. Under such preconceived anticipations, Homer seems to have been generally studied in Germany, during the generation succeeding Wolf, the negative portion of whose theory was usually admitted, though as to the positive substitute,—what explanation was to be given of the history and present constitution of the Homeric poems,—there was by no means the like agreement. During the last ten years, however, a contrary tendency has manifested itself; the Wolfian theory has been reëxamined and shaken by Nitzsch, who, as well as O. Müller, Welcker, and other scholars, have revived the idea of original Homeric unity, under certain modifications. The change in Goethe’s opinion, coincident with this new direction, is recorded in one of his latest works.[272] On the other hand, the original opinion of Wolf has also been reproduced within the last five years, and fortified with several new observations on the text of the Iliad, by Lachmann.

[271] See Wolf, Prolegg. c. xii. p. xliii. “Nondum enim prorsus ejecta et explosa est eorum ratio, qui Homerum et Callimachum et Virgilium et Nonnum et Miltonum eodem animo legunt, nec quid uniuscujusque ætas ferat, expendere legendo et computare laborant,” etc.

A similar and earlier attempt to construe the Homeric poems with reference to their age, is to be seen in the treatise called _Il Vero Omero_ of Vico,—marked with a good deal of original thought, but not strong in erudition (Opere di Vico, ed. Milan, vol. v. pp. 437-497).

[272] In the forty-sixth volume of his collected works, in the little treatise “_Homer, noch einmal_:” compare G. Lange, Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter (Mainz, 1837), Preface, p. vi.

The point is thus still under controversy among able scholars, and is probably destined to remain so. For, in truth, our means of knowledge are so limited, that no man can produce arguments sufficiently cogent to contend against opposing preconceptions; and it creates a painful sentiment of diffidence when we read the expressions of equal and absolute persuasion with which the two opposite conclusions have both been advanced.[273] We have nothing to teach us the history of these poems except the poems themselves. Not only do we possess no collateral information respecting them or their authors, but we have no one to describe to us the people or the age in which they originated; our knowledge respecting contemporary Homeric society, is collected exclusively from the Homeric compositions themselves. We are ignorant whether any other, or what other, poems preceded them, or divided with them the public favor; nor have we anything better than conjecture to determine either the circumstances under which they were brought before the hearers, or the conditions which a bard of that day was required to satisfy. On all these points, moreover, the age of Thucydidês[274] and Plato seems to have been no better informed than we are, except in so far as they could profit by the analogies of the cyclic and other epic poems, which would doubtless in many cases have afforded valuable aid.

[273] “Non esse totam Iliadem aut Odysseam unius poetæ opus, ita extra dubitationem positam puto, ut qui secus sentiat, eum non satis lectitasse illa carmina contendam.” (Godf. Hermann, Præfat. ad Odysseam, Lips. 1825, p. iv.) See the language of the same eminent critic in his treatise “Ueber Homer und Sappho,” Opuscula, vol. v. p. 74.

Lachmann, after having dissected the two thousand two hundred lines in the Iliad, between the beginning of the eleventh book, and line five hundred and ninety of the fifteenth, into four songs, “in the highest degree different in their spirit,” (“ihrem Geiste nach höchst verschiedene Lieder,”) tells us that whosoever thinks this difference of spirit inconsiderable,—whosoever does not feel it at once when pointed out,—whosoever can believe that the parts as they stand now belong to one artistically constructed Epos,—“will do well not to trouble himself any more either with my criticisms or with epic poetry, because he is too weak to understand anything about it,” (“weil er zu schwach ist etwas darin zu verstehen:”) Fernere Betrachtungen Ueber die Ilias: Abhandl. Berlin. Acad. 1841, p. 18, § xxiii.

On the contrary, Ulrici, after having shown (or tried to show) that the composition of Homer satisfies perfectly, in the main, all the exigencies of an artistic epic,—adds, that this will make itself at once evident to all those who have any sense of artistical symmetry; but that, for those to whom that sense is wanting, no conclusive demonstration can be given. He warns the latter, however, that they are not to deny the existence of that which their shortsighted vision cannot distinguish, for everything cannot be made clear to children, which the mature man sees through at a glance (Ulrici, Geschichte des Griechischen Epos, Part i. ch. vii. pp. 260-261). Read also Payne Knight, Proleg. c. xxvii, about the insanity of the Wolfian school, obvious even to the “homunculus e trivio.”

I have the misfortune to dissent from both Lachmann and Ulrici; for it appears to me a mistake to put the Iliad and Odyssey on the same footing, as Ulrici does, and as is too frequently done by others.

[274] Plato, Aristotle, and their contemporaries generally, read the most suspicious portions of the Homeric poems as genuine (Nitzsch, Plan und Gang der Odyssee, in the Preface to his second vol. of Comments on the Odyssey, pp. lx-lxiv).

Thucydidês accepts the Hymn to Apollo as a composition by the author of the Iliad.

Nevertheless, no classical scholar can be easy without _some_ opinion respecting the authorship of these immortal poems. And the more defective the evidence we possess, the more essential is it that all that evidence should be marshalled in the clearest order, and its bearing upon the points in controversy distinctly understood beforehand. Both these conditions seem to have been often neglected, throughout the long-continued Homeric discussion.

To illustrate the first point: Since two poems are comprehended in the problem to be solved, the natural process would be, first, to study the easier of the two, and then to apply the conclusions thence deduced as a means of explaining the other. Now, the Odyssey, looking at its aggregate character, is incomparably more easy to comprehend than the Iliad. Yet most Homeric critics apply the microscope at once, and in the first instance, to the Iliad.

To illustrate the second point: What evidence is sufficient to negative the supposition that the Iliad or the Odyssey is a poem originally and intentionally one? Not simply particular gaps and contradictions, though they be even gross and numerous; but the preponderance of these proofs of mere unprepared coalescence over the other proofs of designed adaptation scattered throughout the whole poem. For the poet (or the coöperating poets, if more than one) may have intended to compose an harmonious whole, but may have realized their intention incompletely, and left partial faults; or, perhaps, the contradictory lines may have crept in through a corrupt text. A survey of the whole poem is necessary to determine the question; and this necessity, too, has not always been attended to.

If it had happened that the Odyssey had been preserved to us alone, without the Iliad, I think the dispute respecting Homeric unity would never have been raised. For the former is, in my judgment, pervaded almost from beginning to end by marks of designed adaptation; and the special faults which Wolf, W. Müller, and B. Thiersch,[275] have singled out for the purpose of disproving such unity of intention, are so few, and of so little importance, that they would have been universally regarded as mere instances of haste or unskilfulness on the part of the poet, had they not been seconded by the far more powerful battery opened against the Iliad. These critics, having laid down their general presumptions against the antiquity of the long epopee, illustrate their principles by exposing the many flaws and fissures in the Iliad, and then think it sufficient if they can show a few similar defects in the Odyssey,—as if the breaking up of Homeric unity in the former naturally entailed a similar necessity with regard to the latter; and their method of proceeding, contrary to the rule above laid down, puts the more difficult problem in the foreground, as a means of solution for the easier. We can hardly wonder, however, that they have applied their observations in the first instance to the Iliad, because it is in every man’s esteem the more marked, striking, and impressive poem of the two,—and the character of Homer is more intimately identified with it than with the Odyssey. This may serve as an explanation of the course pursued; but be the case as it may in respect to comparative poetical merit, it is not the less true, that, as an aggregate, the Odyssey is more simple and easily understood, and, therefore, ought to come first in the order of analysis.

[275] Bernhard Thiersch, Ueber das Zeitalter und Vaterland des Homer (Halberstadt, 1832), Einleitung, pp. 4-18.

Now, looking at the Odyssey by itself, the proofs of an unity of design seem unequivocal and everywhere to be found. A premeditated structure, and a concentration of interest upon one prime hero, under well-defined circumstances, may be traced from the first book to the twenty-third. Odysseus is always either directly or indirectly kept before the reader, as a warrior returning from the fulness of glory at Troy, exposed to manifold and protracted calamities during his return home, on which his whole soul is so bent that he refuses even the immortality offered by Calypsô;—a victim, moreover, even after his return, to mingled injury and insult from the suitors, who have long been plundering his property, and dishonoring his house; but at length obtaining, by valor and cunning united, a signal revenge, which restores him to all that he had lost. All the persons and all the events in the poem are subsidiary to this main plot: and the divine agency, necessary to satisfy the feeling of the Homeric man, is put forth by Poseidôn and Athênê, in both cases from dispositions directly bearing upon Odysseus. To appreciate the unity of the Odyssey, we have only to read the objections taken against that of the Iliad,—especially in regard to the long withdrawal of Achilles, not only from the scene, but from the memory,—together with the independent prominence of Ajax, Diomêdês, and other heroes. How far we are entitled from hence to infer the want of premeditated unity in the Iliad, will be presently considered; but it is certain that the constitution of the Odyssey, in this respect, everywhere demonstrates the presence of such unity. Whatever may be the interest attached to Penelopê, Telemachus, or Eumæus, we never disconnect them from their association with Odysseus. The present is not the place for collecting the many marks of artistical structure dispersed throughout this poem; but it may be worth while to remark, that the final catastrophe realized in the twenty-second book,—the slaughter of the suitors in the very house which they were profaning,—is distinctly and prominently marked out in the first and second books, promised by Teiresias in the eleventh, by Athênê in the thirteenth, and by Helen in the fifteenth, and gradually matured by a series of suitable preliminaries, throughout the eight books preceding its occurrence.[276] Indeed, what is principally evident, and what has been often noticed, in the Odyssey, is, the equable flow both of the narrative and the events; the absence of that rise and fall of interest which is sufficiently conspicuous in the Iliad.

[276] Compare i, 295; ii. 145 (νήποινοί κεν ἔπειτα δόμων ἔντοσθεν ὄλοισθε); xi. 118; xiii. 395; xv. 178; also xiv. 162.

To set against these evidences of unity, there ought, at least, to be some strong cases produced of occasional incoherence or contradiction. But it is remarkable how little of such counter-evidence is to be found, although the arguments of Wolf, W. Müller, and B. Thiersch stand so much in need of it. They have discovered only one instance of undeniable inconsistency in the parts,—the number of days occupied by the absence of Telemachus at Pylus and Sparta. That young prince, though represented as in great haste to depart, and refusing pressing invitations to prolong his stay, must, nevertheless, be supposed to have continued for thirty days the guest of Menelaus, in order to bring his proceedings into chronological harmony with those of Odysseus, and to explain the first meeting of father and son in the swine-fold of Eumæus. Here is undoubtedly an inaccuracy, (so Nitzsch[277] treats it, and I think justly) on the part of the poet, who did not anticipate, and did not experience in ancient times, so strict a scrutiny; an inaccuracy certainly not at all wonderful; the matter of real wonder is, that it stands almost alone, and that there are no others in the poem.

[277] Nitzsch, Plan und Gang der Odyssee, p. xliii, prefixed to the second vol. of his Commentary on the Odysseis.

“At carminum primi auditores non adeo curiosi erant (observes Mr. Payne Knight, Proleg. c. xxiii.), ut ejusmodi rerum rationes aut exquirerent aut expenderent; neque eorum fides e subtilioribus congruentiis omnino pendebat. Monendi enim sunt etiam atque etiam Homericorum studiosi, veteres illos ἀοιδοὺς non linguâ professoriâ inter viros criticos et grammaticos, aut alios quoscunque argutiarum captatores, carmina cantitasse, sed inter eos qui sensibus animorum libere, incaute, et effuse indulgerent,” etc. Chap. xxii-xxvii. of Mr. Knight’s Prolegomena, are valuable to the same purpose, showing the “homines rudes et agrestes,” of that day, as excellent judges of what fell under their senses and observation, but careless, credulous, and unobservant of contradiction, in matters which came only under the mind’s eye.

Now, this is one of the main points on which W. Müller and B. Thiersch rest their theory,—explaining the chronological confusion by supposing that the journey of Telemachus to Pylus and Sparta, constituted the subject of an epic originally separate (comprising the first four books and a portion of the fifteenth), and incorporated at second-hand with the remaining poem. And they conceive this view to be farther confirmed by the double assembly of the gods, (at the beginning of the first book as well as of the fifth,) which they treat as an awkward repetition, such as could not have formed part of the primary scheme of any epic poet. But here they only escape a small difficulty by running into another and a greater. For it is impossible to comprehend how the first four books and part of the fifteenth can ever have constituted a distinct epic; since the adventures of Telemachus have no satisfactory termination, except at the point of confluence with those of his father, when the unexpected meeting and recognition takes place under the roof of Eumæus,—nor can any epic poem ever have described that meeting and recognition without giving some account how Odysseus came thither. Moreover, the first two books of the Odyssey distinctly lay the ground, and carry expectation forward, to the final catastrophe of the poem,—treating Telemachus as a subordinate person, and his expedition as merely provisional towards an ulterior result. Nor can I agree with W. Müller, that the real Odyssey might well be supposed to begin with the fifth book. On the contrary, the exhibition of the suitors and the Ithakesian agora, presented to us in the second book, is absolutely essential to the full comprehension of the books subsequent to the thirteenth. The suitors are far too important personages in the poem to allow of their being first introduced in so informal a manner as we read in the sixteenth book: indeed, the passing allusions of Athênê (xiii. 310, 375) and Eumæus (xiv. 41, 81) to the suitors, presuppose cognizance of them on the part of the hearer.

Lastly, the twofold discussion of the gods, at the beginning of the first and fifth books, and the double interference of Athênê, far from being a needless repetition, may be shown to suit perfectly both the genuine epical conditions and the unity of the poem.[278] For although the final consummation, and the organization of measures against the suitors, was to be accomplished by Odysseus and Telemachus jointly, yet the march and adventures of the two, until the moment of their meeting in the dwelling of Eumæus, were essentially distinct. But, according to the religious ideas of the old epic, the presiding direction of Athênê was necessary for the safety and success of both of them. Her first interference arouses and inspires the son, her second produces the liberation of the father,—constituting a point of union and common origination for two lines of adventures, in both of which she takes earnest interest, but which are necessarily for a time kept apart in order to coincide at the proper moment.

[278] W. Müller is not correct in saying that, in the first assembly of the gods, Zeus promises something which he does not perform: Zeus does not _promise_ to send Hermes as messenger to Kalypsô, in the first book, though Athênê urges him to do so. Zeus, indeed, requires to be urged twice before he dictates to Kalypsô the release of Odysseus, but he had already intimated, in the first book, that he felt great difficulty in protecting the hero, because of the wrath manifested against him by Poseidôn.

It will thus appear that the twice-repeated agora of the gods in the Odyssey, bringing home, as it does to one and the same divine agent, that double start which is essential to the scheme of the poem, consists better with the supposition of premeditated unity than with that of distinct self-existent parts. And, assuredly, the manner in which Telemachus and Odysseus, both by different roads, are brought into meeting and conjunction at the dwelling of Eumæus, is something not only contrived, but very skilfully contrived. It is needless to advert to the highly interesting character of Eumæus, rendered available as a rallying-point, though in different ways, both to the father and the son, over and above the sympathy which he himself inspires.

If the Odyssey be not an original unity, of what self-existent parts can we imagine it to have consisted? To this question it is difficult to imagine a satisfactory reply: for the supposition that Telemachus and his adventures may once have formed the subject of a separate epos, apart from Odysseus, appears inconsistent with the whole character of that youth as it stands in the poem, and with the events in which he is made to take part. We could better imagine the distribution of the adventures of Odysseus himself into two parts,—one containing his wanderings and return, the other handling his ill-treatment by the suitors, and his final triumph. But though either of these two subjects might have been adequate to furnish out a separate poem, it is nevertheless certain that, as they are presented in the Odyssey, the former cannot be divorced from the latter. The simple return of Odysseus, as it now stands in the poem, could satisfy no one as a final close, so long as the suitors remain in possession of his house, and forbid his reunion with his wife. Any poem which treated his wanderings and return separately, must have represented his reunion with Penelopê and restoration to his house, as following naturally upon his arrival in Ithaka,—thus taking little or no notice of the suitors. But this would be a capital mutilation of the actual epical narrative, which considers the suitors at home as an essential portion of the destiny of the much-suffering hero, not less than his shipwrecks and trials at sea. His return (separately taken) is foredoomed, according to the curse of Polyphemus, executed by Poseidôn, to be long deferred, miserable, solitary, and ending with destruction in his house to greet him;[279] and the ground is thus laid, in the very recital of his wanderings, for a new series of events which are to happen to him after his arrival in Ithaka. There is no tenable halting-place between the departure of Odysseus from Troy, and the final restoration to his house and his wife. The distance between these two events may, indeed, be widened, by accumulating new distresses and impediments, but any separate portion of it cannot be otherwise treated than as a fraction of the whole. The beginning and the end are here the data in respect to epical genesis, though the intermediate events admit of being conceived as variables, more or less numerous: so that the conception of the whole may be said without impropriety both to precede and to govern that of the constituent parts.

[279] Odyss. ix. 534.—

Ὀψὲ κακῶς ἔλθοι, ὀλέσας ἀπὸ πάντας ἑταίρους, Νηὸς ἐπ᾽ ἀλλοτρίης, εὕροι δ᾽ ἐν πήματα οἴκῳ— Ὣς ἔφατ᾽ εὐχόμενος· (the Cyclops to Poseidôn) τοῦ δ᾽ ἔκλυε Κυανοχαίτης.

The general result of a study of the Odyssey may be set down as follows: 1. The poem, as it now stands, exhibits unequivocally adaptation of parts and continuity of structure, whether by one or by several consentient hands: it may, perhaps, be a secondary formation, out of a preëxisting Odyssey of smaller dimensions; but, if so, the parts of the smaller whole must have been so far recast as to make them suitable members of the larger, and are noway recognizable by us. 2. The subject-matter of the poem not only does not favor, but goes far to exclude, the possibility of the Wolfian hypothesis. Its events cannot be so arranged as to have composed several antecedent substantive epics, afterwards put together into the present aggregate. Its authors cannot have been mere compilers of preëxisting materials, such as Peisistratus and his friends: they must have been poets, competent to work such matter as they found, into a new and enlarged design of their own. Nor can the age in which this long poem, of so many thousand lines, was turned out as a continuous aggregate, be separated from the ancient, productive, inspired age of Grecian epic.

Arriving at such conclusions from the internal evidence of the Odyssey,[280] we can apply them by analogy to the Iliad. We learn something respecting the character and capacities of that early age which has left no other mementos except these two poems. Long continuous epics (it is observed by those who support the views of Wolf), with an artistical structure, are inconsistent with the capacities of a rude and non-writing age. Such epics (we may reply) are _not inconsistent_ with the early age of the Greeks, and the Odyssey is a proof of it; for in that poem the integration of the whole, and the composition of the parts, must have been simultaneous. The analogy of the Odyssey enables us to rebut that preconception under which many ingenious critics sit down to the study of the Iliad, and which induces them to explain all the incoherences of the latter by breaking it up into smaller unities, as if short epics were the only manifestation of poetical power which the age admitted. There ought to be no reluctance in admitting a presiding scheme and premeditated unity of parts, in so far as the parts themselves point to such a conclusion.

[280] Wolf admits, in most unequivocal language, the compact and artful structure of the Odyssey. Against this positive internal evidence, he sets the general presumption, that no such constructive art can possibly have belonged to a poet of the age of Homer: “De Odysseâ maxime, cujus admirabilis summa et compages pro præclarissimo monumento Græci ingenii habenda est.... Unde fit ut Odysseam nemo, cui omnino priscus vates placeat, nisi perlectam e manu deponere queat. At illa ars id ipsum est, quod _vix ac ne vix quidem cadere_ videtur in vatem, singulas tantum rhapsodias decantantem,” etc. (Prolegomen. pp. cxviii-cxx; compare cxii.)

That the Iliad is not so essentially one piece as the Odyssey, every man agrees. It includes a much greater multiplicity of events, and what is yet more important, a greater multiplicity of prominent personages: the very indefinite title which it bears, as contrasted with the speciality of the name, _Odyssey_, marks the difference at once. The parts stand out more conspicuously from the whole, and admit more readily of being felt and appreciated in detached recitation. We may also add, that it is of more unequal execution than the Odyssey,—often rising to a far higher pitch of grandeur, but also, occasionally, tamer: the story does not move on continuously; incidents occur without plausible motive, nor can we shut our eyes to evidences of incoherence and contradiction.

To a certain extent, the Iliad is open to all these remarks, though Wolf and William Müller, and above all Lachmann, exaggerate the case in degree. And from hence has been deduced the hypothesis which treats the parts in their original state as separate integers, independent of, and unconnected with, each other, and forced into unity only by the afterthought of a subsequent age; or sometimes, not even themselves as integers, but as aggregates grouped together out of fragments still smaller,—short epics formed by the coalescence of still shorter songs. Now there is some plausibility in these reasonings, so long as the discrepancies are looked upon as the whole of the case. But in point of fact they are not the whole of the case: for it is not less true, that there are large portions of the Iliad which present positive and undeniable evidences of coherence as antecedent and consequent, though we are occasionally perplexed by inconsistencies of detail. To deal with these latter, is a portion of the duties of the critic. But he is not to treat the Iliad as if inconsistency prevailed everywhere throughout its parts; for coherence of parts—symmetrical antecedence and consequence—is discernible throughout the larger half of the poem.

Now the Wolfian theory explains the gaps and contradictions throughout the narrative, but it explains nothing else. If (as Lachmann thinks) the Iliad originally consisted of sixteen songs, or little substantive epics, (Lachmann’s sixteen songs cover the space only as far as the 22d book, or the death of Hector, and two more songs would have to be admitted for the 23d and 24th books),—not only composed by different authors, but by each[281] without any view to conjunction with the rest,—we have then no right to expect any intrinsic continuity between them; and all that continuity which we now find must be of extraneous origin. Where are we to look for the origin? Lachmann follows Wolf, in ascribing the whole constructive process to Peisistratus and his associates, at a period when the creative epical faculty is admitted to have died out. But upon this supposition, Peisistratus (or his associates) must have done much more than omit, transpose, and interpolate, here and there; he must have gone far to rewrite the whole poem. A great poet might have recast preëxisting separate songs into one comprehensive whole, but no mere arrangers or compilers would be competent to do so: and we are thus left without any means of accounting for that degree of continuity and consistence which runs through so large a portion of the Iliad, though not through the whole. The idea that the poem, as we read it, grew out of atoms not originally designed for the places which they now occupy, involves us in new and inextricable difficulties, when we seek to elucidate either the mode of coalescence or the degree of existing unity.[282]

[281] Lachmann seems to admit one case in which the composer of one song manifests cognizance of another song, and a disposition to give what will form a sequel to it. His fifteenth song (the Patrokleia) lasts from xv. 592 down to the end of the 17th book: the sixteenth song (including the four next books, from eighteen to twenty-two inclusive) is a continuation of the fifteenth, but by a different poet. (Fernere Betrachtungen über die Ilias, Abhandl. Berlin. Acad. 1841, sect. xxvi. xxviii. xxix. pp. 24, 34, 42.)

This admission of premeditated adaptation to a certain extent breaks up the integrity of the Wolfian hypothesis.

[282] The advocates of the Wolfian theory, appear to feel the difficulties which beset it; for their language is wavering in respect to these supposed primary constituent atoms. Sometimes Lachmann tells us, that the original pieces were much finer poetry than the Iliad as we now read it; at another time, that it cannot be now discovered what they originally were: nay, he farther admits, (as remarked in the preceding note,) that the poet of the sixteenth song had cognizance of the fifteenth.

But if it be granted that the original constituent songs were so composed, though by different poets, as that the more recent were adapted to the earlier with more or less dexterity and success, this brings us into totally different conditions of the problem. It is a virtual surrender of the Wolfian hypothesis, which, however, Lachmann both means to defend, and does defend with ability; though his vindication of it has, to my mind, only the effect of exposing its inherent weakness by carrying it out into something detailed and positive. I will add, in respect to his Dissertations, so instructive as a microscopic examination of the poem,—1. That I find myself constantly dissenting from that critical feeling, on the strength of which he cuts out parts as interpolations, and discovers traces of the hand of distinct poets; 2. That his objections against the continuity of the narrative are often founded upon lines which the ancient scholiasts and Mr. Payne Knight had already pronounced to be interpolations; 3. That such of his objections as are founded upon lines undisputed, admit in many cases of a complete and satisfactory reply.

Admitting then premeditated adaptation of parts to a certain extent as essential to the Iliad, we may yet inquire, whether it was produced all at once, or gradually enlarged,—whether by one author, or by several; and, if the parts be of different age, which is the primitive kernel, and which are the additions.

Welcker, Lange, and Nitzsch[283] treat the Homeric poems as representing a second step in advance, in the progress of popular poetry. First, comes the age of short narrative songs; next, when these have become numerous, there arise constructive minds, who recast and blend together many of them into a larger aggregate, conceived upon some scheme of their own. The age of the epos is followed by that of the epopee,—short, spontaneous effusions preparing the way, and furnishing materials, for the architectonic genius of the poet. It is farther presumed by the above-mentioned authors, that the pre-Homeric epic included a great abundance of such smaller songs,—a fact which admits of no proof, but which seems countenanced by some passages in Homer, and is in itself no way improbable. But the transition from such songs, assuming them to be ever so numerous, to a combined and continuous poem, forms an epoch in the intellectual history of the nation, implying mental qualities of a higher order than those upon which the songs themselves depend. Nor is it to be imagined that the materials pass unaltered from their first state of isolation into their second state of combination. They must of necessity be recast, and undergo an adapting process, in which the genius of the organizing poet consists; nor can we hope, by simply knowing them as they exist in the second stage, ever to divine how they stood in the first. Such, in my judgment, is the right conception of the Homeric epoch,—an organizing poetical mind, still preserving that freshness of observation and vivacity of details which constitutes the charm of the ballad.

[283] Lange, in his Letter to Goethe, Ueber die Einheit der Iliade, p. 33 (1826); Nitzsch, Historia Homeri, Fasciculus 2, Præfat. p. x.

Nothing is gained by studying the Iliad as a congeries of fragments once independent of each other: no portion of the poem can be shown to have ever been so, and the supposition introduces difficulties greater than those which it removes. But it is not necessary to affirm that the whole poem as we now read it, belonged to the original and preconceived plan.[284] In this respect, the Iliad produces, upon my mind, an impression totally different from the Odyssey. In the latter poem, the characters and incidents are fewer, and the whole plot appears of one projection, from the beginning down to the death of the suitors: none of the parts look as if they had been composed separately, and inserted by way of addition into a preëxisting smaller poem. But the Iliad, on the contrary, presents the appearance of a house built upon a plan comparatively narrow, and subsequently enlarged by successive additions. The first book, together with the eighth, and the books from the eleventh to the twenty-second, inclusive, seem to form the primary organization of the poem, then properly an Achillêis: the twenty-third and twenty-fourth books are, perhaps, additions at the tail of this primitive poem, which still leave it nothing more than an enlarged Achillêis. But the books from the second to the seventh, inclusive, together with the tenth, are of a wider and more comprehensive character, and convert the poem from an Achillêis into an Iliad.[285] The primitive frontispiece, inscribed with the anger of Achilles, and its direct consequences, yet remains, after it has ceased to be coextensive with the poem. The parts added, however, are not necessarily inferior in merit to the original poem: so far is this from being the case, that amongst them are comprehended some of the noblest efforts of the Grecian epic. Nor are they more recent in date than the original; strictly speaking, they must be a little more recent, but they belong to the same generation and state of society as the primitive Achillêis. These qualifications are necessary to keep apart different questions, which, in discussions of Homeric criticism, are but too often confounded.

[284] Even Aristotle, the great builder-up of the celebrity of Homer as to epical aggregation, found some occasions (it appears) on which he was obliged to be content with simply excusing, without admiring, the poet (Poet. 44 τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀγαθοῖς ὁ ποιητὴς ἡδύνων ἀφανίζει τὸ ἄτοπον.)

And Hermann observes justly, in his acute treatise De Interpolationibus Homeri (Opuscula, tom. v. p. 53),—“Nisi admirabilis illa Homericorum carminum suavitas lectorum animos quasi incantationibus quibusdam captos teneret, non tam facile delitescerent, quæ accuratius considerata, et multo minus apte quam quis jure postulet composita esse apparere necesse est.”

This treatise contains many criticisms on the structure of the Iliad, some of them very well founded, though there are many from which I dissent.

[285] In reference to the books from the second to the seventh, inclusive, I agree with the observations of William Müller, Homerische Vorschule, Abschnitt viii. pp. 116-118.

If we take those portions of the poem which I imagine to have constituted the original Achillêis, it will be found that the sequence of events contained in them is more rapid, more unbroken, and more intimately knit together in the way of cause and effect, than in the other books. Heyne and Lachmann, indeed, with other objecting critics, complains of the action in them as being too much crowded and hurried, since one day lasts from the beginning of the eleventh book to the middle of the eighteenth, without any sensible halt in the march throughout so large a portion of the journey. Lachmann, likewise, admits that those separate songs, into which he imagines that the whole Iliad may be dissected, cannot be severed with the same sharpness, in the books subsequent to the eleventh, as in those before it.[286] There is only one real halting-place from the eleventh book to the twenty-second,—the death of Patroclus; and this can never be conceived as the end of a separate poem,[287] though it is a capital step in the development of the Achillêis, and brings about that entire revolution in the temper of Achilles which was essential for the purpose of the poet. It would be a mistake to imagine that there ever could have existed a separate poem called Patrocleia, though a part of the Iliad was designated by that name. For Patroclus has no substantive position: he is the attached friend and second of Achilles, but nothing else,—standing to the latter in a relation of dependence resembling that of Telemachus to Odysseus. And the way in which Patroclus is dealt with in the Iliad, is, (in my judgment,) the most dexterous and artistical contrivance in the poem,—that which approaches nearest to the neat tissue of the Odyssey.[288]

[286] Lachmann, Fernere Betrachtungen über die Ilias, Abhandlungen Berlin. Acad. 1841, p. 4.

After having pointed out certain discrepancies which he maintains to prove different composing hands, he adds: “Nevertheless, we must be careful not to regard the single constituent songs in this part of the poem as being distinct and separable in a degree equal to those in the first half; for they all with one accord harmonize in one particular circumstance, which, with reference to the story of the Iliad, is not less important even than the anger of Achilles, viz. that the three most distinguished heroes, Agamemnôn, Odysseus, and Diomêdês, all become disabled throughout the whole duration of the battles.”

Important for the story of the _Achillêis_, I should say, not for that of the _Iliad_. This remark of Lachmann is highly illustrative for the distinction between the original and the enlarged poem.

[287] I confess my astonishment that a man of so much genius and power of thought as M. Benjamin Constant, should have imagined the original Iliad to have concluded with the death of Patroclus, on the ground that Achilles then becomes reconciled with Agamemnôn. See the review of B. Constant’s work, De la Religion, etc., by O. Müller, in the Kleine Schriften of the latter, vol. ii. p. 74.

[288] He appears as the mediator between the insulted Achilles and the Greeks, manifesting kindly sympathies for the latter without renouncing his fidelity to the former. The wounded Machaon, an object of interest to the whole camp, being carried off the field by Nestor,—Achilles, looking on from his distant ship, sends Patroclus to inquire whether it be really Machaon; which enables Nestor to lay before Patroclus the deplorable state of the Grecian host, as a motive to induce him and Achilles again to take arms. The compassionate feelings of Patroclus being powerfully touched, he is hastening to enforce upon Achilles the urgent necessity of giving help, when he meets Eurypylus crawling out of the field, helpless with a severe wound, and imploring his succor. He supports the wounded warrior to his tent, and ministers to his suffering; but before this operation is fully completed, the Grecian host has been totally driven back, and the Trojans are on the point of setting fire to the ships: Patroclus then hurries to Achilles to proclaim the desperate peril which hangs over them all, and succeeds in obtaining his permission to take the field at the head of the Myrmidons. The way in which Patroclus is kept present to the hearer, as a prelude to his brilliant but short-lived display, when he comes forth in arms,—the contrast between his characteristic gentleness and the ferocity of Achilles,—and the natural train of circumstances whereby he is made the vehicle of reconciliation on the part of his offended friend, and rescue to his imperiled countrymen,—all these exhibit a degree of epical skill, in the author of the primitive Achillêis, to which nothing is found parallel in the added books of the Iliad.

The great and capital misfortune which prostrates the strength of the Greeks, and renders them incapable of defending themselves without Achilles, is the disablement, by wounds, of Agamemnôn, Diomêdês, and Odysseus; so that the defence of the wall and of the ships is left only to heroes of the second magnitude (Ajax alone excepted), such as Idomeneus, Leonteus, Polypœtês, Merionês, Menelaus, etc. Now, it is remarkable that all these three first-rate chiefs are in full force at the beginning of the eleventh book: all three are wounded in the battle which that book describes, and at the commencement of which Agamemnôn is full of spirits and courage.

Nothing can be more striking than the manner in which Homer concentrates our attention in the first book upon Achilles as the hero, his quarrel with Agamemnôn, and the calamities to the Greeks which are held out as about to ensue from it, through the intercession of Thetis with Zeus. But the incidents dwelt upon from the beginning of the second book down to the combat between Hector and Ajax in the seventh, animated and interesting as they are, do nothing to realize this promise. They are a splendid picture of the Trojan war generally, and eminently suitable to that larger title under which the poem has been immortalized,—but the consequences of the anger of Achilles do not appear until the eighth book. The tenth book, or Doloneia, is also a portion of the Iliad, but not of the Achillêis: while the ninth book appears to me a subsequent addition, nowise harmonizing with that main stream of the Achillêis which flows from the eleventh book to the twenty-second. The eighth book ought to be read in immediate connection with the eleventh, in order to see the structure of what seems the primitive Achillêis; for there are several passages in the eleventh and the following books, which prove that the poet who composed them could not have had present to his mind the main event of the ninth book,—the outpouring of profound humiliation by the Greeks, and from Agamemnôn, especially, before Achilles, coupled with formal offers to restore Brisêis, and pay the amplest compensation for past wrong.[289] The words of Achilles (not less than those of Patroclus and Nestor) in the eleventh and in the following books, plainly imply that the humiliation of the Greeks before him, for which he thirsts, is as yet future and contingent; that no plenary apology has yet been tendered, nor any offer made of restoring Brisêis; while both Nestor and Patroclus, with all their wish to induce him to take arms, never take notice of the offered atonement and restitution, but view him as one whose ground for quarrel stands still the same as it did at the beginning. Moreover, if we look at the first book,—the opening of the Achillêis,—we shall see that this prostration of Agamemnôn and the chief Grecian heroes before Achilles, would really be the termination of the whole poem; for Achilles asks nothing more from Thetis, nor Thetis anything more from Zeus, than that Agamemnôn and the Greeks may be brought to know the wrong they have done to their capital warrior, and humbled in the dust in expiation of it. We may add, that the abject terror in which Agamemnôn appears in the ninth book, when he sends the supplicatory message to Achilles, as it is not adequately accounted for by the degree of calamity which the Greeks have experienced in the preceding (eighth) book, so it is inconsistent with the gallantry and high spirit with which he shines at the beginning of the eleventh.[290] The situation of the Greeks only becomes desperate when the three great chiefs, Agamemnôn, Odysseus, and Diomêdês, are disabled by wounds;[291] this is the irreparable calamity which works upon Patroclus, and through him upon Achilles. The ninth book, as it now stands, seems to me an addition, by a different hand, to the original Achillêis, framed so as both to forestall and to spoil the nineteenth book, which is the real reconciliation of the two inimical heroes: I will venture to add, that it carries the pride and egotism of Achilles beyond even the largest exigences of insulted honor, and is shocking to that sentiment of Nemesis which was so deeply seated in the Grecian mind. We forgive any excess of fury against the Trojans and Hector, after the death of Patroclus; but that he should remain unmoved by restitution, by abject supplications, and by the richest atoning presents, tendered from the Greeks, indicates an implacability such as neither the first book, nor the books between the eleventh and seventeenth, convey.

[289] Observe, for example, the following passages:—

1. Achilles, standing on the prow of his ship, sees the general army of Greeks undergoing defeat by the Trojans, and also sees Nestor conveying in his chariot a wounded warrior from the field. He sends Patroclus to find out who the wounded man is: in calling forth Patroclus, he says (xi. 607),—

Δῖε Μενοιτιάδη τῷ ᾽μῷ κεχαρισμένε θυμῷ, Νῦν οἴω περὶ γούνατ᾽ ἐμὰ στήσεσθαι Ἀχαιοὺς Λισσομένους· χρείω γὰρ ἱκάνεται οὔκετ᾽ ἀνεκτός.

Heyne, in his comment, asks the question, not unnaturally, “Pœnituerat igitur asperitatis erga priorem legationem, an homo arrogans expectaverat alteram ad se missam iri?” I answer, neither one nor the other: the words imply that he had received _no embassy_ at all. He is still the same Achilles who in the first book paced alone by the seashore, devouring his own soul under a sense of bitter affront, and praying to Thetis to aid his revenge: this revenge is now about to be realized, and he hails its approach with delight. But if we admit the embassy of the ninth book to intervene, the passage becomes a glaring inconsistency for that which Achilles anticipates as future, and even yet as contingent, _had actually occurred_ on the previous evening; the Greeks _had_ supplicated at his feet,—they _had proclaimed_ their intolerable need,—and he had spurned them. The Scholiast, in his explanation of these lines, after giving the plain meaning, that “Achilles shows what he has long been desiring, to see the Greeks in a state of supplication to him,”—seems to recollect that this is in contradiction to the ninth book, and tries to remove the contradiction, by saying “that he had been previously mollified by conversation with Phœnix,”—ἤδη δὲ προμαλαχθεὶς ἦν ἐκ τῶν Φοίνικος λόγων,—a supposition neither countenanced by anything in the poet, nor sufficient to remove the difficulty.

2. The speech of Poseidôn (xiii. 115) to encourage the dispirited Grecian heroes, in which, after having admitted the injury done to Achilles by Agamemnôn, he recommends an effort to heal the sore, and intimates “that the minds of good men admit of this healing process,” (Ἀλλ᾽ ἀκεώμεθα θᾶσσον· ἀκεσταί τε φρένες ἐσθλῶν,) is certainly not very consistent with the supposition that this attempt to heal _had been made_ in the best possible way, and that Achilles had manifested a mind implacable in the extreme on the evening before,—while the mind of Agamemnôn was already brought to proclaimed humiliation, and needed no farther healing.

3. And what shall we say to the language of Achilles and Patroclus, at the beginning of the sixteenth book, just at the moment when the danger has reached its maximum, and when Achilles is about to send forth his friend?

Neither Nestor, when he invokes and instructs Patroclus as intercessor with Achilles (xi. 654-790), nor Patroclus himself, though in the extreme of anxiety to work upon the mind of Achilles, and reproaching him with hardness of heart,—ever bring to remembrance the ample atonement which had been tendered to him; while Achilles himself repeats the original ground of quarrel, the wrong offered to him in taking away Brisêis, continuing the language of the first book; then, without the least allusion to the atonement and restitution since tendered, he yields to his friend’s proposition, just like a man whose wrong remained unredressed, but who was, nevertheless, forced to take arms by necessity (xvi. 60-63):—

Ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν προτετύχθαι ἐάσομεν, οὔδ᾽ ἄρα πως ἦν Ἀσπερχὲς κεχολῶσθαι ἐνὶ φρεσίν· ἤτοι ἔφην γε Οὐ πρὶν μηνιθμὸν καταπαύσεμεν, ἀλλ᾽ ὁπόταν δὴ Νῆας ἐμὰς ἀφίκηται ἀϋτή τε πτόλεμός τε.

I agree with the Scholiast and Heyne in interpreting ἔφην γε as equivalent to διενοήθην,—not as referring to any express antecedent declaration.

Again, farther on in the same speech, “The Trojans (Achilles says) now press boldly forward upon the ships, for they no longer see the blaze of my helmet: but if Agamemnôn _were favorably disposed towards me_, they would presently run away and fill the ditches with their dead bodies” (71):—

... τάχα κεν φεύγοντες ἐναύλους Πλήσειαν νεκύων, εἴ μοι κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων Ἤπια εἰδείη· νῦν δὲ στράτον ἀμφιμάχονται.

Now here again, if we take our start from the first book, omitting the ninth, the sentiment is perfectly just. But assume the ninth book, and it becomes false and misplaced; for Agamemnôn is then a prostrate and repentant man, not merely “favorably disposed” towards Achilles, but offering to pay any price for the purpose of appeasing him.

4. Again, a few lines farther, in the same speech, Achilles permits Patroclus to go forth, in consideration of the extreme peril of the fleet, but restricts him simply to avert this peril and do nothing more: “Obey my words, so that you may procure _for me honor_ and glory from _the body of Greeks_, and that they may send back to me the damsel, giving me ample presents besides: when you have driven the Trojans from the ships, come back again”:—

Ὡς ἄν μοι τιμὴν μεγάλην καὶ κῦδος ἄροιο Πρὸς πάντων Δαναῶν· ἀτὰρ οἳ περικαλλέα κούρην Ἄψ ἀπονάσσωσι, προτὶ δ᾽ ἀγλαὰ δῶρα πόρωσιν· Ἐκ νηῶν ἐλάσας, ἰέναι πάλιν (84-87).

How are we to reconcile this with the ninth book, where Achilles declares that he does not care for being honored by the Greeks, ix. 604? In the mouth of the affronted Achilles, of the first book, such words are apt enough: he will grant succor, but only to the extent necessary for the emergency, and in such a way as to insure redress for his own wrong,—which redress he has no reason as yet to conclude that Agamemnôn is willing to grant. But the ninth book _has actually_ tendered to him everything which he here demands, and even more (the daughter of Agamemnôn in marriage, without the price usually paid for a bride, etc.): Brisêis, whom now he is so anxious to repossess, was then offered in restitution, and he disdained the offer. Mr. Knight, in fact, strikes out these lines as spurious; partly, because they contradict the ninth book, where Achilles has actually rejected what he here thirsts for (“Dona cum puellâ jam antea oblata aspernatus erat,”)—partly because he thinks that they express a sentiment unworthy of Achilles; in which latter criticism I do not concur.

5. We proceed a little farther to the address of Patroclus to the Myrmidons, as he is conducting them forth to the battle: “Fight bravely, Myrmidons, that we may bring honor to Achilles; and that the wide-ruling Agamemnôn may know the mad folly which he committed, when he dishonored the bravest of the Greeks.”

To impress this knowledge upon Agamemnôn was no longer necessary. The ninth book records his humiliating confession of it, accompanied by atonement and reparation. To teach him the lesson a second time, is to break the bruised reed,—to slay the slain. But leave out the ninth book, and the motive is the natural one,—both for Patroclus to offer, and for the Myrmidons to obey: Achilles still remains a dishonored man, and to humble the rival who has dishonored him is the first of all objects, as well with his friends as with himself.

6. Lastly, the time comes when Achilles, in deep anguish for the death of Patroclus, looks back with aversion and repentance to the past. To what point should we expect that his repentance would naturally turn? Not to his primary quarrel with Agamemnôn, in which he had been undeniably wronged,—but to the scene in the ninth book, where the maximum of atonement for the previous wrong is tendered to him and scornfully rejected. Yet when we turn to xviii. 108, and xix. 55, 68, 270, we find him reverting to the primitive quarrel in the first book, just as if it had been the last incident in his relations with Agamemnôn: moreover, Agamemnôn (xix. 86), in _his_ speech of reconciliation, treats the past just in the same way,—deplores his original insanity in wronging Achilles.

7. When we look to the prayers of Achilles and Thetis, addressed to Zeus in the first book, we find that the consummation prayed for is,—honor to Achilles,—redress for the wrong offered to him,—victory to the Trojans until Agamemnôn and the Greeks shall be made bitterly sensible of the wrong which they have done to their bravest warrior (i. 409-509). Now this consummation is brought about in the ninth book. Achilles can get no more, nor does he ultimately get more, either in the way of redress to himself or remorseful humiliation of Agamemnôn, than what is here tendered. The defeat which the Greeks suffer in the battle of the eighth book (Κόλος Μάχη) has brought about the consummation. The subsequent and much more destructive defeats which they undergo are thus causeless: yet Zeus is represented as inflicting them reluctantly, and only because they are necessary to honor Achilles (xiii. 350; xv. 75, 235, 598; compare also viii. 372 and 475).

If we reflect upon the constitution of the poem, we shall see that the fundamental sequence of ideas in it is, a series of misfortunes to the Greeks, brought on by Zeus for the special purpose of procuring atonement to Achilles and bringing humiliation on Agamemnôn: the introduction of Patroclus superadds new motives of the utmost interest, but it is most harmoniously worked into the fundamental sequence. Now the intrusion of the ninth book breaks up the scheme of the poem by disuniting the sequence: Agamemnôn is on his knees before Achilles, entreating pardon and proffering reparation, yet the calamities of the Greeks become more and more dreadful. The atonement of the ninth book comes at the wrong time and in the wrong manner.

There are four passages (and only four, so far as I am aware) in which the embassy of the ninth book is alluded to in the subsequent books: one in xviii. 444-456, which was expunged as spurious by Aristarchus (see the Scholia and Knight’s commentary, _ad loc._); and three others in the following book, wherein the gifts previously tendered by Odysseus as the envoy of Agamemnôn are noticed as identical with the gifts actually given in the nineteenth book. I feel persuaded that these passages (vv. 140-141, 192-195, and 243) are specially inserted for the purpose of establishing a connection between the ninth book and the nineteenth. The four lines (192-195) are decidedly better away: the first two lines (140-141) are noway necessary; while the word χθιζὸς (which occurs in both passages) is only rendered admissible by being stretched to mean _nudius tertius_ (Heyne, _ad loc._).

I will only farther remark with respect to the ninth book, that the speech of Agamemnôn (17-28), the theme for the rebuke of Diomêdês and the obscure commonplace of Nestor, is taken verbatim from his speech in the second book, in which place the proposition, of leaving the place and flying, is made, not seriously, but as a stratagem (ii. 110, 118, 140).

The length of this note can only be excused by its direct bearing upon the structure of the Iliad. To show that the books from the eleventh downwards are composed by a poet who has no knowledge of the ninth book, is, in my judgment, a very important point of evidence in aiding us to understand what the original Achillêis was. The books from the second to the seventh inclusive are insertions into the Achillêis, and lie apart from its plot, but do not violently contradict it, except in regard to the agora of the gods at the beginning of the fourth book, and the almost mortal wound of Sarpêdon in his battle with Tlepolemus. But the ninth book overthrows the fundamental scheme of the poem.

[290] Helbig (Sittl. Zustände des Heldenalters, p. 30) says, “The consciousness in the bosom of Agamemnôn that he has offered atonement to Achilles strengthens his confidence and valor,” &c. This is the idea of the critic, not of the poet. It does not occur in the Iliad, though the critic not unnaturally imagines that it _must_ occur. Agamemnôn never says, “I was wrong in provoking Achilles, but you see I have done everything which man could do to beg his pardon.” Assuming the ninth book to be a part of the original conception, this feeling is so natural, that we could hardly fail to find it, at the beginning of the eleventh book, numbered among the motives of Agamemnôn.

[291] Iliad, xi. 659; xiv. 128; xvi. 25.

It is with the Grecian agora, in the beginning of the second book, that the Iliad (as distinguished from the Achillêis) commences,—continued through the Catalogue, the muster of the two armies, the single combat between Menelaus and Paris, the renewed promiscuous battle caused by the arrow of Pandarus, the (Epipôlêsis, or) personal circuit of Agamemnôn round the army, the Aristeia, or brilliant exploits of Diomêdês, the visit of Hector to Troy for the purposes of sacrifice, his interview with Andromachê, and his combat with Ajax,—down to the seventh book. All these are beautiful poetry, presenting to us the general Trojan war, and its conspicuous individuals under different points of view, but leaving no room in the reader’s mind for the thought of Achilles. Now, the difficulty for an enlarging poet, was, to pass from the Achillêis in the first book, to the Iliad in the second, and it will accordingly be found that here is an awkwardness in the structure of the poem, which counsel on the poet’s behalf (ancient or modern) do not satisfactorily explain.

In the first book, Zeus has promised Thetis, that he will punish the Greeks for the wrong done to Achilles: in the beginning of the second book, he deliberates how he shall fulfil the promise, and sends down for that purpose “mischievous Oneirus” (the Dream-god) to visit Agamemnôn in his sleep, to assure him that the gods have now with one accord consented to put Troy into his hands, and to exhort him forthwith to the assembling of his army for the attack. The ancient commentators were here perplexed by the circumstance that Zeus puts a falsehood into the mouth of Oneirus. But there seems no more difficulty in explaining this, than in the narrative of the book of 1 Kings (chap. xxii. 20), where Jehovah is mentioned to have put a lying spirit into the mouth of Ahab’s prophets,—the real awkwardness is, that Oneirus and his falsehood produce no effect. For in the first place, Agamemnôn takes a step very different from that which his dream recommends,—and in the next place, when the Grecian army is at length armed and goes forth to battle, it does not experience defeat, (which would be the case if the exhortation of Oneirus really proved mischievous,) but carries on a successful day’s battle, chiefly through the heroism of Diomêdês. Instead of arming the Greeks forthwith, Agamemnôn convokes first a council of chiefs, and next an agora of the host. And though himself in a temper of mind highly elate with the deceitful assurances of Oneirus, he deliberately assumes the language of despair in addressing the troops, having previously prepared Nestor and Odysseus for his doing so,—merely in order to try the courage of the men, and with formal instructions, given to these two other chiefs, that they are to speak in opposition to him. Now this intervention of Zeus and Oneirus, eminently unsatisfactory when coupled with the incidents which now follow it, and making Zeus appear, but only appear, to realize his promise of honoring Achilles as well as of hurting the Greeks,—forms exactly the point of junction between the Achillêis and the Iliad.[292]

[292] The intervention of Oneirus ought rather to come as an immediate preliminary to book viii. than to book ii. The first forty-seven lines of book ii would fit on and read consistently at the beginning of book viii, the events of which book form a proper sequel to the mission of Oneirus.

The freak which Agamemnôn plays off upon the temper of his army, though in itself childish, serves a sufficient purpose, not only because it provides a special matter of interest to be submitted to the Greeks, but also because it calls forth the splendid description, so teeming with vivacious detail, of the sudden breaking up of the assembly after Agamemnôn’s harangue, and of the decisive interference of Odysseus to bring the men back, as well as to put down Thersitês. This picture of the Greeks in agora, bringing out the two chief speaking and counselling heroes, was so important a part of the general Trojan war, that the poet has permitted himself to introduce it by assuming an inexplicable folly on the part of Agamemnôn; just as he has ushered in another fine scene in the third book,—the Teichoskopy, or conversation, between Priam and Helen on the walls of Troy,—by admitting the supposition that the old king, in the tenth year of the war, did not know the persons of Agamemnôn and the other Grecian chiefs. This may serve as an explanation of the delusion practised by Agamemnôn towards his assembled host; but it does not at all explain the tame and empty intervention of Oneirus.[293]

[293] O. Müller, (History of Greek Literature, ch. v. § 8,) doubts whether the beginning of the second book was written “by the ancient Homer, or by one of the later Homerids:” he thinks the speech of Agamemnôn, wherein he plays off the deceit upon his army, is “a copious parody (of the same words used in the ninth book) composed by a later Homerid, and inserted in the room of an originally shorter account of the arming of the Greeks.” He treats the scene in the Grecian agora as “an entire mythical comedy, full of fine irony and with an amusing plot, in which the deceiving and deceived Agamemnôn is the chief character.”

The comic or ironical character which is here ascribed to the second book appears to me fanciful and incorrect; but Müller evidently felt the awkwardness of the opening incident, though his way of accounting for it is not successful. The second book seems to my judgment just as serious as any part of the poem.

I think also that the words alluded to by O. Müller in the ninth book are a transcript of those in the second, instead of the reverse, as he believes,—because it seems probable that the ninth book is an addition made to the poem after the books between the first and the eighth had been already inserted,—it is certainly introduced after the account of the fortification, contained in the seventh book, had become a part of the poem: see ix. 349. The author of the Embassy to Achilles fancied that that hero had been too long out of sight, and out of mind,—a supposition for which there was no room in the original Achillêis, when the eighth and eleventh books followed in immediate succession to the first, but which offers itself naturally to any one on reading our present Iliad.

If the initial incident of the second book, whereby we pass out of the Achillêis into the Iliad, is awkward, so also the final incident of the seventh book, immediately before we come back into the Achillêis, is not less unsatisfactory,—I mean, the construction of the wall and ditch round the Greek camp. As the poem now stands, no plausible reason is assigned why this should be done. Nestor proposes it without any constraining necessity: for the Greeks are in a career of victory, and the Trojans are making offers of compromise which imply conscious weakness,—while Diomêdês is so confident of the approaching ruin of Troy, that he dissuades his comrades from receiving even Helen herself, if the surrender should be tendered. “Many Greeks have been slain,” it is true,[294] as Nestor observes; but an equal or greater number of Trojans have been slain, and all the Grecian heroes are yet in full force: the absence of Achilles is not even adverted to.

[294] Iliad, vii. 327.

Now this account of the building of the fortification seems to be an after-thought, arising out of the enlargement of the poem beyond its original scheme. The original Achillêis, passing at once from the first to the eighth,[295] and from thence to the eleventh book, might well assume the fortification,—and talk of it as a thing existing, without adducing any special reason why it was erected. The hearer would naturally comprehend and follow the existence of a ditch and wall round the ships, as a matter of course, provided there was nothing in the previous narrative to make him believe that the Greeks had originally been without these bulwarks. And since the Achillêis, immediately after the promise of Zeus to Thetis, at the close of the first book, went on to describe the fulfilment of that promise and the ensuing disasters of the Greeks, there was nothing to surprise any one in hearing that their camp was fortified. But the case was altered when the first and the eighth books were parted asunder, in order to make room for descriptions of temporary success and glory on the part of the besieging army. The brilliant scenes sketched in the books, from the second to the seventh, mention no fortification, and even imply its nonexistence; yet, since notice of it occurs amidst the first description of Grecian disasters in the eighth book, the hearer, who had the earlier books present to his memory, might be surprised to find a fortification mentioned immediately afterwards, unless the construction of it were specially announced to have intervened. But it will at once appear, that there was some difficulty in finding a good reason why the Greeks should begin to fortify at this juncture, and that the poet who discovered the gap might not be enabled to fill it up with success. As the Greeks have got on, up to this moment, without the wall, and as we have heard nothing but tales of their success, why should they now think farther laborious precautions for security necessary? We will not ask, why the Trojans should stand quietly by and permit a wall to be built, since the truce was concluded expressly for burying the dead.[296]

[295] Heyne treats the eighth book as decidedly a separate song, or epic; a supposition which the language of Zeus and the agora of the gods at the beginning are alone sufficient to refute, in my judgment (Excursus 1, ad lib. xi. vol. vi. p. 269). This Excursus, in describing the sequence of events in the Iliad, passes at once and naturally from book eighth to book eleventh.

And Mr. Payne Knight, when he defends book eleventh against Heyne, says, “Quæ in undecimâ rhapsodiâ Iliadis narrata sunt, haud minus ex ante narratis pendent: neque rationem pugnæ commissæ, neque rerum in eâ gestarum nexum atque ordinem, quisquam intelligere posset, nisi _iram et secessum_ Achillis, et _victoriam_ quam Trojani inde consecuti erant, antea cognosset.” (Prolegom. c. xxix.)

Perfectly true: to understand the eleventh book, we must have before us the first and the eighth (which are those that describe the anger and withdrawal of Achilles, and the defeat which the Greeks experience in consequence of it); we may dispense with the rest.

[296] O. Müller (Hist. Greek Literat. ch. v. § 6) says, about this wall: “Nor is it until the Greeks are _taught by the experience of the first day’s fighting_, that the Trojans can resist them in open battle, that the Greeks build the wall round their ships.... This appeared to Thucydidês so little conformable to historical probability, that, without regard to the authority of Homer, he placed the building of these walls immediately after the landing.”

It is to be lamented, I think, that Thucydidês took upon him to determine the point at all as a matter of history; but when he once undertook this, the account in the Iliad was not of a nature to give him much satisfaction, nor does the reason assigned by Müller make it better. It is implied in Müller’s reason that, before the first day’s battle, the Greeks did not believe that the Trojans _could_ resist them in open battle: the Trojans (according to him) never had maintained the field, so long as Achilles was up and fighting on the Grecian side, and therefore the Greeks were quite astonished to find now, for the first time, that they _could_ do so.

Now nothing can be more at variance with the tenor of the second and following books than this supposition. The Trojans come forth readily and fight gallantly; neither Agamemnôn, nor Nestor, nor Odysseus consider them as enemies who cannot hold front; and the circuit of exhortation by Agamemnôn (Epipôlêsis), so strikingly described in the fourth book, proves that _he_ does not anticipate a very easy victory. Nor does Nestor, in proposing the construction of the wall, give the smallest hint that the power of the Trojans to resist in the open field was to the Greeks an unexpected discovery.

The reason assigned by Müller, then, is a fancy of his own, proceeding from the same source of mistake as others among his remarks; because he tries to find, in the books between the first and eighth, a governing reference to Achilles (the point of view of the Achillêis), which those books distinctly refuse. The Achillêis was a poem of Grecian disasters up to the time when Achilles sent forth Patroclus; and during those disasters, it might suit the poet to refer by contrast to the past time when Achilles was active, and to say that _then_ the Trojans did not dare even to present themselves in battle-array in the field, whereas _now_ they were assailing the ships. But the author of books ii. to vii. has no wish to glorify Achilles: he gives us a picture of the Trojan war generally, and describes the Trojans, not only as brave and equal enemies, but well known by the Greeks themselves to be so.

The building of the Grecian wall, as it now stands described, is an unexplained proceeding, which Müller’s ingenuity does not render consistent.

The tenth book, or Doloneia, was considered by some of the ancient scholiasts,[297] and has been confidently set forth by the modern Wolfian critics, as originally a separate poem, inserted by Peisistratus into the Iliad. How it can ever have been a separate poem, I do not understand. It is framed with great specialty for the antecedent circumstances under which it occurs, and would suit for no other place; though capable of being separately recited, inasmuch as it has a definite beginning and end, like the story of Nisus and Euryalus in the Æneid. But while distinctly presupposing and resting upon the incidents in the eighth book, and in line 88 of the ninth, (probably, the appointment of sentinels on the part of the Greeks, as well of the Trojans, formed the close of the battle described in the eighth book,) it has not the slightest bearing upon the events of the eleventh or the following books: it goes to make up the general picture of the Trojan war, but lies quite apart from the Achillêis. And this is one mark of a portion subsequently inserted,—that, though fitted on to the parts which precede, it has no influence on those which follow.

[297] Schol. ad Iliad. x. 1.

If the proceedings of the combatants on the plain of Troy, between the first and the eighth book, have no reference either to Achilles, or to an Achillêis, we find Zeus in Olympus still more completely putting that hero out of the question, at the beginning of the fourth book. He is in this last-mentioned passage the Zeus of the Iliad, not of the Achillêis. Forgetful of his promise to Thetis, in the first book, he discusses nothing but the question of continuance or termination of the war, and manifests anxiety only for the salvation of Troy, in opposition to the miso-Trojan goddesses, who prevent him from giving effect to the victory of Menelaus over Paris, and the stipulated restitution of Helen,—in which case, of course, the wrong offered to Achilles would remain unexpiated. An attentive comparison will render it evident that the poet who composed the discussion among the gods, at the beginning of the fourth book, has not been careful to put himself in harmony either with the Zeus of the first book, or with the Zeus of the eighth.

So soon as we enter upon the eleventh book, the march of the poem becomes quite different. We are then in a series of events, each paving the way for that which follows, and all conducing to the result promised in the first book,—the reappearance of Achilles, as the only means of saving the Greeks from ruin,—preceded by ample atonement,[298] and followed by the maximum both of glory and revenge. The intermediate career of Patroclus introduces new elements, which, however, are admirably woven into the scheme of the poem, as disclosed in the first book. I shall not deny that there are perplexities in the detail of events, as described in the battles at the Grecian wall, and before the ships, from the eleventh to the sixteenth books, but they appear only cases of partial confusion, such as may be reasonably ascribed to imperfections of text: the main sequence remains coherent and intelligible. We find no considerable events which could be left out without breaking the thread, nor any incongruity between one considerable event and another. There is nothing between the eleventh and twenty-second books, which is at all comparable to the incongruity between the Zeus of the fourth book and the Zeus of the first and eighth. It may, perhaps, be true, that the shield of Achilles is a superadded amplification of that which was originally announced in general terms,—because the poet, from the eleventh to the twenty-second books, has observed such good economy of his materials, that he is hardly likely to have introduced one particular description of such disproportionate length, and having so little connection with the series of events. But I see no reason for believing that it is an addition materially later than the rest of the poem.

[298] Agamemnôn, after deploring the misguiding influence of Atê, which induced him to do the original wrong to Achilles, says (xix. 88-137),—

Ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεὶ ἀασάμην καί μευ φρένας ἐξέλετο Ζεὺς, Ἄψ ἐθέλω ἀρέσαι, δόμεναί τ᾽ ἀπερείσι᾽ ἄποινα, etc.

It must be confessed, that the supposition here advanced, in reference to the structure of the Iliad, is not altogether free from difficulties, because the parts constituting the original Achillêis[299] have been more or less altered or interpolated, to suit the additions made to it, particularly in the eighth book. But it presents fewer difficulties than any other supposition, and it is the only means, so far as I know, of explaining the difference between one part of the Iliad and another; both the continuity of structure, and the conformity to the opening promise, which are manifest when we read the books in the order i. viii. xi. to xxii, as contrasted with the absence of these two qualities in books ii. to vii. ix. and x. An entire organization, preconceived from the beginning, would not be likely to produce any such disparity, nor is any such visible in the Odyssey;[300] still less would the result be explained by supposing integers originally separate, and brought together without any designed organization. And it is between these three suppositions that our choice has to be made. A scheme, and a large scheme too, must unquestionably be admitted as the basis of any sufficient hypothesis. But the Achillêis would have been a long poem, half the length of the present Iliad, and probably not less compact in its structure than the Odyssey. Moreover, being parted off only by an imaginary line from the boundless range of the Trojan war, it would admit of enlargement more easily, and with greater relish to hearers, than the adventures of one single hero; while the expansion would naturally take place by adding new Grecian victory,—since the original poem arrived at the exaltation of Achilles only through a painful series of Grecian disasters. That the poem under these circumstances should have received additions, is no very violent hypothesis: in fact, when we recollect that the integrity both of the Achillêis and of the Odyssey was neither guarded by printing nor writing, we shall perhaps think it less wonderful that the former was enlarged,[301] than that the latter was not. Any relaxation of the laws of epical unity is a small price to pay for that splendid poetry, of which we find so much between the first and the eighth books of our Iliad.

[299] The supposition of a smaller original Iliad, enlarged by successive additions to the present dimensions, and more or less interpolated (we must distinguish _enlargement_ from _interpolation_,—the insertion of a new rhapsody from that of a new line), seems to be a sort of intermediate compromise, towards which the opposing views of Wolf, J. H. Voss, Nitzsch, Hermann, and Boeckh, all converge. Baumgarten-Crusius calls this smaller poem an Achillêis.

Wolf, Preface to the Göschen edit. of the Iliad, pp. xii-xxiii; Voss, Anti-Symbolik, part ii. p. 234; Nitzsch, Histor. Homeri, Fasciculus i. p. 112; and Vorrede to the second volume of his Comments on the Odyssey, p. xxvi: “In the Iliad (he there says) many single portions may very easily be imagined as parts of another whole, or as having been once separately sung.” (See Baumgarten-Crusius, Preface to his edition of W. Müller’s Homerische Vorschule, pp. xlv-xlix.)

Nitzsch distinguishes the Odyssey from the Iliad, and I think justly, in respect to this supposed enlargement. The reasons which warrant us in applying this theory to the Iliad have no bearing upon the Odyssey. If there ever was an Ur-Odyssee, we have no means of determining what it contained.

[300] The remarks of O. Müller on the Iliad (in his History of Greek Literature) are highly deserving of perusal: with much of them I agree, but there is also much which seems to me unfounded. The range of combination, and the far-fetched narrative stratagem which he ascribes to the primitive author, are in my view inadmissible (chap. v. § 5-11):—

“The internal connection of the Iliad (he observes, § 6) rests upon the union of certain parts; and neither the interesting introduction, describing the defeat of the Greeks up to the burning of the ship of Protesilaus, nor the turn of affairs brought about by the death of Patroclus, nor the final pacification of the anger of Achilles, could be spared from the Iliad, when the fruitful seed of such a poem had once been sown in the soul of Homer, and had begun to develop its growth. But the plan of the Iliad is certainly very much extended beyond what was actually necessary; and in particular, the preparatory part, consisting of the _attempts_ on the part of _the other heroes to compensate for the absence of Achilles_, has, it must be owned, been drawn out to a disproportionate length, so that the suspicion that there were later insertions of importance applies with greater probability to the first than to the last books.... A design manifested itself at an early period to make this poem complete in itself, so that all the subjects, descriptions, and actions, which could alone give interest to a poem _on the entire war_, might find a place within the limits of its composition. For this purpose, it is not improbable that many lays of earlier bards, who had sung single adventures of the Trojan war, were laid under contribution, and the finest parts of them incorporated in the new poem.”

These remarks of O. Müller intimate what is (in my judgment) the right view, inasmuch as they recognize an extension of the plan of the poem beyond its original limit, manifested by insertions in the first half; and it is to be observed that, in his enumeration of those parts, the union of which is necessary to the internal connection of the Iliad, nothing is mentioned except what is comprised in books i. viii. xi. to xxii. or xxiv. But his description of “_the preparatory part_,” as “_the attempts of the other heroes to compensate for the absence of Achilles_,” is noway borne out by the poet himself. From the second to the seventh book, Achilles is scarcely alluded to; moreover, the Greeks do perfectly well without him. This portion of the poem displays, not “the _insufficiency_ of all the other heroes without Achilles,” as Müller had observed in the preceding section, but the perfect _sufficiency_ of the Greeks under Diomêdês, Agamemnôn, etc. to make head against Troy; it is only in the eighth book that their _insufficiency_ begins to be manifested, and only in the eleventh book that it is consummated by the wounds of the three great heroes. Diomêdês is, in fact, exalted to a pitch of glory in regard to contests with the gods, which even Achilles himself never obtains afterwards, and Helenus the Trojan puts him above Achilles (vi. 99) in terrific prowess. Achilles is mentioned two or three times as absent, and Agamemnôn, in his speech to the Grecian agora, regrets the quarrel (ii. 377), but we never hear any such exhortation as, “Let us do our best to make up for the absence of Achilles,”—not even in the Epipôlêsis of Agamemnôn, where it would most naturally be found. “Attempts to compensate for the absence of Achilles” must, therefore, be treated as the idea of the critic, not of the poet.

Though O. Müller has glanced at the distinction between the two parts of the poem (an original part, having chief reference to _Achilles and the Greeks_; and a superinduced part, having reference to _the entire war_), he has not conceived it clearly, nor carried it out consistently. If we are to distinguish these two points of view at all, we ought to draw the lines at the end of the first book and at the beginning of the eighth, thus regarding the intermediate six books as belonging to the picture of _the entire war_ (or the Iliad as distinguished from the Achillêis): the point of view of the Achillêis, dropped at the end of the first book, is resumed at the beginning of the eighth. The natural fitting together of these two parts is noticed in the comment of Heyne, ad viii. 1: “Cæterum _nunc_ Jupiter aperte solvit Thetidi promissa, dum reddit causam Trojanorum bello superiorem, ut Achillis desiderium Achivos, et pœnitentia injuriæ ei illatæ Agamemnonem incessat (cf. i. 5). Nam quæ _adhuc_ narrata sunt, partim continebantur in fortunâ belli utrinque tentatâ ... partim valebant ad narrationem variandam,” etc. The first and the eighth books belong to one and the same point of view, while _all_ the intermediate books belong to the other. But O. Müller seeks to prove that a portion of these intermediate books belongs to one common point of view with the first and eighth, though he admits that they have been enlarged by insertions. Here I think he is mistaken. Strike out anything which can be reasonably allowed for enlargement in the books between the first and eighth, and the same difficulty will still remain in respect to the remainder; for _all_ the incidents between those two points are brought out in a spirit altogether indifferent to Achilles or his anger. The Zeus of the fourth book, as contrasted with Zeus in the first or eighth, marks the difference; and this description of Zeus is absolutely indispensable as the connecting link between book iii. on the one side and books iv. and v. on the other. Moreover, the attempt of O. Müller, to force upon the larger portion of what is between the first and eighth books the point of view of the Achillêis, is never successful: the poet does not exhibit in those books “insufficient efforts of other heroes to compensate for the absence of Achilles,” but a general and highly interesting picture of the Trojan war, with prominent reference to the original ground of quarrel. In this picture, the duel between Paris and Menelaus forms naturally the foremost item,—but how far-fetched is the reasoning whereby O. Müller brings that striking recital within the scheme of the Achillêis! “The Greeks and Trojans are for the first time struck by an idea, which might have occurred in the previous nine years, if the Greeks, _when assisted by Achilles_, had not, from _confidence in their superior strength_, considered every compromise as unworthy of them,—namely, to decide the war by a single combat between the authors of it.” Here the causality of Achilles is dragged in by main force, and unsupported either by any actual statement in the poem or by any reasonable presumption; for it is _the Trojans_ who propose the single combat, and we are not told that they had ever proposed it before, though they would have had stronger reasons for proposing it during the presence of Achilles than during his absence.

O. Müller himself remarks (§ 7), “that from the second to the seventh book Zeus appears as it were to have forgotten his resolution and his promise to Thetis.” In other words, the poet, during this part of the poem, drops the point of view of the Achillêis to take up that of the more comprehensive Iliad: the Achillêis reappears in book viii,—again disappears in book x,—and is resumed from book xi. to the end of the poem.

[301] This tendency to insert new homogeneous matter by new poets into poems already existing, is noticed by M. Fauriel, in reference to the _Romans_ of the Middle Ages:—

“C’est un phénomène remarquable dans l’histoire de la poésie épique, que cette disposition, cette tendance constante du goût populaire à amalgamer, à lier en une seule et même composition le plus possible des compositions diverses,—cette disposition persiste chez un peuple, tant que la poésie conserve un reste de vie; tant qu’elle s’y transmet par la tradition et qu’elle y circule à l’aide du chant ou des récitations publiques. Elle cesse partout où la poésie est une fois fixée dans les livres, et n’agit plus que par la lecture,—cette dernière époque est pour ainsi dire, celle de la propriété poétique—celle où chaque poëte prétend à une existence, à une gloire, personnelles; et où la poésie cesse d’être une espèce de trésor commun dont le peuple jouit et dispose à sa manière, sans s’inquiéter des individus qui le lui ont fait.” (Fauriel, Sur les Romans Chevaleresques, leçon 5me, Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. xiii. p. 707.)

M. Fauriel thinks that the Shah Nameh of Ferdusi was an amalgamation of epic poems originally separate, and that probably the Mahabharat was so also (_ib._ 708).

The question respecting unity of authorship is different, and more difficult to determine, than that respecting consistency of parts, and sequence in the narrative. A poem conceived on a comparatively narrow scale may be enlarged afterwards by its original author, with greater or less coherence and success: the Faust of Goethe affords an example even in our own generation. On the other hand, a systematic poem may well have been conceived and executed by prearranged concert between several poets; among whom probably one will be the governing mind, though the rest may be effective, and perhaps equally effective, in respect to execution of the parts. And the age of the early Grecian epic was favorable to such fraternization of poets, of which the Gens called Homerids probably exhibited many specimens. In the recital or singing of a long unwritten poem, many bards must have conspired together, and in the earliest times the composer and the singer were one and the same person.[302] Now the individuals comprised in the Homerid Gens, though doubtless very different among themselves in respect of mental capacity, were yet homogeneous in respect of training, means of observation and instruction, social experience, religious feelings and theories, etc., to a degree much greater than individuals in modern times. Fallible as our inferences are on this point, where we have only internal evidence to guide us, without any contemporary points of comparison, or any species of collateral information respecting the age, the society, the poets, the hearers, or the language,—we must nevertheless, in the present case, take coherence of structure, together with consistency in the tone of thought, feeling, language, customs, etc., as presumptions of one author; and the contrary as presumptions of severalty; allowing, as well as we can, for that inequality of excellence which the same author may at different times present.

[302] The remarks of Boeckh, upon the possibility of such coöperation of poets towards one and the same scheme are perfectly just:—

“Atqui quomodo componi a variis auctoribus successu temporum rhapsodiæ potuerint, quæ post prima initia directæ jam ad idem consilium et quam vocant unitatem carminis sint ... missis istorum declamationibus qui populi universi opus Homerum esse jactant ... tum potissimum intelligetur, ubi gentis civilis Homeridarum propriam et peculiarem Homericam poesin fuisse, veteribus ipsis si non testibus, at certe ducibus, concedetur.... Quæ quum ita sint, non erit adeo difficile ad intelligendum, quomodo, post prima initia ab egregio vate facta, in gente sacrorum et artis communione sociatâ, multæ rhapsodiæ ad unum potuerint consilium dirigi.” (Index Lection. 1834, p. 12.)

I transcribe this passage from Giese (Ueber den Æolischen Dialekt, p. 157), not having been able to see the essay of which it forms a part.

Now, the case made out against single-headed authorship of the Odyssey, appears to me very weak; and those who dispute it, are guided more by their _à priori_ rejection of ancient epical unity, than by any positive evidence which the poem itself affords. It is otherwise with regard to the Iliad. Whatever presumptions a disjointed structure, several apparent inconsistencies of parts, and large excrescence of actual matter beyond the opening promise, can sanction,—may reasonably be indulged against the supposition that this poem all proceeds from a single author. There is a difference of opinion on the subject among the best critics, which is, probably, not destined to be adjusted, since so much depends partly upon critical feeling, partly upon the general reasonings, in respect to ancient epical unity, with which a man sits down to the study. For the champions of unity, such as Mr. Payne Knight, are very ready to strike out numerous and often considerable passages as interpolations, thus meeting the objections raised against unity of authorship, on the ground of special inconsistencies. Hermann and Boeckh, though not going the length of Lachmann in maintaining the original theory of Wolf, agree with the latter in recognizing diversity of authors in the poem, to an extent overpassing the limit of what can fairly be called interpolation. Payne Knight and Nitzsch are equally persuaded of the contrary. Here, then, is a decided contradiction among critics, all of whom have minutely studied the poems since the Wolfian question was raised. And it is such critics alone who can be said to constitute authority; for the cursory reader, who dwells upon the parts simply long enough to relish their poetical beauty, is struck only by that general sameness of coloring which Wolf himself admits to pervade the poem.[303]

[303] Wolf, Prolegom. p. cxxxviii. “Quippe _in universum_ idem sonus est omnibus libris; idem habitus sententiarum, orationis, numerorum,” etc.

Having already intimated that, in my judgment, no theory of the structure of the poem is admissible which does not admit an original and preconcerted Achillêis,—a stream which begins at the first book and ends with the death of Hector, in the twenty-second, although the higher parts of it now remain only in the condition of two detached lakes, the first book and the eighth,—I reason upon the same basis with respect to the authorship. Assuming continuity of structure as a presumptive proof, the whole of this Achillêis must be treated as composed by one author. Wolf, indeed, affirmed, that he never read the poem continuously through without being painfully impressed with the inferiority[304] and altered style of the last six books,—and Lachmann carries this feeling farther back, so as to commence with the seventeenth book. If I could enter fully into this sentiment, I should then be compelled, not to deny the existence of a preconceived scheme, but to imagine that the books from the eighteenth to the twenty-second, though forming part of that scheme, or Achillêis, had yet been executed by another and an inferior poet. But it is to be remarked, first, that inferiority of poetical merit, to a certain extent, is quite reconcilable with unity of authorship; and, secondly, that the very circumstances upon which Wolf’s unfavorable judgment is built, seem to arise out of increased difficulty in the poet’s task, when he came to the crowning cantos of his designed Achillêis. For that which chiefly distinguishes these books, is, the direct, incessant, and manual intervention of the gods and goddesses, formerly permitted by Zeus,—and the repetition of vast and fantastic conceptions to which such superhuman agency gives occasion; not omitting the battle of Achilles against Skamander and Simois, and the burning up of these rivers by Hêphæstus. Now, looking at this vein of ideas with the eyes of a modern reader, or even with those of a Grecian critic of the literary ages, it is certain that the effect is unpleasing: the gods, sublime elements of poetry when kept in due proportion, are here somewhat vulgarized. But though the poet here has not succeeded, and probably success was impossible, in the task which he has prescribed to himself,—yet the mere fact of his undertaking it, and the manifest distinction between his employment of divine agency in these latter cantos as compared with the preceding, seems explicable only on the supposition that they _are_ the latter cantos, and come in designed sequence, as the continuance of a previous plan. The poet wishes to surround the coming forth of Achilles with the maximum of glorious and terrific circumstance; no Trojan enemy can for a moment hold out against him:[305] the gods must descend to the plain of Troy and fight in person, while Zeus, who at the beginning of the eighth book, had forbidden them to take part, expressly encourages them to do so at the beginning of the twentieth. If, then, the nineteenth book (which contains the reconciliation between Achilles and Agamemnôn, a subject naturally somewhat tame) and the three following books (where we have before us only the gods, Achilles, and the Trojans, without hope or courage) are inferior in execution and interest to the seven preceding books (which describe the long-disputed and often doubtful death-struggle between the Greeks and Trojans without Achilles), as Wolf and other critics affirm,—we may explain the difference without supposing a new poet as composer; for the conditions of the poem had become essentially more difficult, and the subject more unpromising. The necessity of keeping Achilles above the level, even of heroic prowess, restricted the poet’s means of acting upon the sympathy of his hearers.[306]

[304] Wolf, Prolegomen. p. cxxxvii. “Equidem certe quoties in continenti lectione ad istas partes (_i. e._ the last six books) deveni, nunquam non in iis talia quædam sensi, quæ nisi illæ tam mature cum ceteris coaluissent, quovis pignore contendam, dudum ab eruditis detecta et animadversa fuisse, immo multa ejus generis, ut cum nunc Ὁμηρικώτατα habeantur, si tantummodo in Hymnis legerentur, ipsa sola eos suspicionibus νοθείας adspersura essent.” Compare the sequel, p. cxxxviii, “ubi nervi deficiant et spiritus Homericus,—jejunum et frigidum in locis multis,” etc.

[305] Iliad, xx. 25. Zeus addresses the agora of the gods,—

Ἀμφοτέροισι δ᾽ ἀρήγετ᾽, ὅπη νόος ἐστὶν ἑκάστου· Εἰ γὰρ Ἀχιλλεὺς οἶος ἐπὶ Τρώεσσι μαχεῖται, Οὐδὲ μίνυνθ᾽ ἕξουσι ποδώκεα Πηλείωνα. Καὶ δέ τέ μιν καὶ πρόσθεν ὑποτρομέεσκον ὁρῶντες· Νῦν δ᾽ ὅτε δὴ καὶ θυμὸν ἑταίρου χώεται αἰνῶς, Δείδω μὴ καὶ τεῖχος ὑπὲρ μόρον ἐξαλαπάξῃ.

The formal restriction put upon the gods by Zeus at the beginning of the eighth book, and the removal of that restriction at the beginning of the twentieth, are evidently parts of one preconceived scheme.

It is difficult to determine whether the battle of the gods and goddesses in book xxi. (385-520) is to be expunged as spurious, or only to be blamed as of inferior merit (“improbanda tantum, non resecanda—hoc enim est illud, quo plerumque summa criseôs Homericæ redit,” as Heyne observes in another place, Obss. Iliad. xviii. 444). The objections on the score of non-Homeric locution are not forcible (see P. Knight, _ad loc._), and the scene belongs to that vein of conception which animates the poet in the closing act of his Achillêis.

[306] While admitting that these last books of the Iliad are not equal in interest with those between the eleventh and eighteenth, we may add that they exhibit many striking beauties, both of plan and execution, and one in particular may be noticed as an example of happy epical adaptation. The Trojans are on the point of ravishing from the Greeks the dead body of Patroclus, when Achilles (by the inspiration of Hêrê and Iris) shows himself unarmed on the Grecian mound, and by his mere figure and voice strikes such terror into the Trojans that they relinquish the dead body. As soon as night arrives, Polydamas proposes, in the Trojan agora, that the Trojans shall retire without farther delay from the ships to the town, and shelter themselves within the walls, without awaiting the assault of Achilles armed on the next morning. Hector repels this counsel of Polydamas with expressions,—not merely of overweening confidence in his own force, even against Achilles,—but also of extreme contempt and harshness towards the giver; whose wisdom, however, is proved by the utter discomfiture of the Trojans the next day. Now this angry deportment and mistake on the part of Hector is made to tell strikingly in the twenty-second book, just before his death. There yet remains a moment for him to retire within the walls, and thus obtain shelter against the near approach of his irresistible enemy, but he is struck with the recollection of that fatal moment when he repelled the counsel which would have saved his countrymen: “If I enter the town, Polydamas will be the first to reproach me, as having brought destruction upon Troy on that fatal night when Achilles came forth, and when I resisted his better counsel.” (Compare xviii. 250-315; xxii. 100-110; and Aristot. Ethic. iii. 8.)

In a discussion respecting the structure of the Iliad, and in reference to arguments which deny all designed concatenation of parts, it is not out of place to notice this affecting touch of poetry, belonging to those books which are reproached as the feeblest.

The last two books of the Iliad may have formed part of the original Achillêis. But the probability rather is, that they are additions; for the death of Hector satisfies the exigencies of a coherent scheme, and we are not entitled to extend the oldest poem beyond the limit which such necessity prescribes. It has been argued on one side by Nitzsch and O. Müller, that the mind could not leave off with satisfaction at the moment in which Achilles sates his revenge, and while the bodies of Patroclus and Hector are lying unburied,—also, that the more merciful temper which he exhibits in the twenty-fourth book, must always have been an indispensable sequel, in order to create proper sympathy with his triumph. Other critics, on the contrary, have taken special grounds of exception against the last book, and have endeavored to set it aside as different from the other books, both in tone and language. To a certain extent, the peculiarities of the last book appear to me undeniable, though it is plainly a designed continuance, and not a substantive poem. Some weight also is due to the remark about the twenty-third book, that Odysseus and Diomêdês, who have been wounded and disabled during the fight, now reappear in perfect force, and contend in the games: here is no case of miraculous healing, and the inconsistency is more likely to have been admitted by a separate enlarging poet, than by the schemer of the Achillêis.

The splendid books from the second to v. 322 of the seventh,[307] are equal, in most parts, to any portion of the Achillêis, and are pointedly distinguished from the latter by the broad view which they exhibit of the general Trojan war, with all its principal personages, localities, and causes,—yet without advancing the result promised in the first book, or, indeed, any final purpose whatever. Even the desperate wound inflicted by Tlepolemus on Sarpêdon, is forgotten, when the latter hero is called forth in the subsequent Achillêis.[308] The arguments of Lachmann, who dissects these six books into three or four separate songs,[309] carry no conviction to my mind; and I see no reason why we should not consider all of them to be by the same author, bound together by the common purpose of giving a great collective picture which may properly be termed an Iliad. The tenth book, or Doloneia, though adapted specially to the place in which it stands, agrees with the books between the first and eighth in belonging only to the general picture of the war, without helping forward the march of the Achillêis; yet it seems conceived in a lower vein, in so far as we can trust our modern ethical sentiment. One is unwilling to believe that the author of the fifth book, or Aristeia of Diomêdês, would condescend to employ the hero whom he there so brightly glorifies,—the victor even over Arês himself,—in slaughtering newly-arrived Thracian sleepers, without any large purpose or necessity.[310] The ninth book, of which I have already spoken at length, belongs to a different vein of conception, and seems to me more likely to have emanated from a separate composer.

[307] The latter portion of the seventh book is spoiled by the very unsatisfactory addition introduced to explain the construction of the wall and ditch: all the other incidents (the agora and embassy of the Trojans, the truce for burial, the arrival of wine-ships from Lemnos, etc.) suit perfectly with the scheme of the poet of these books, to depict the Trojan war generally.

[308] Unless, indeed, we are to imagine the combat between Tlepolemus and Sarpêdon, and that between Glaukus and Diomêdês, to be separate songs; and they are among the very few passages in the Iliad which are completely separable, implying no special antecedents.

[309] Compare also Heyne, Excursus ii. sect. ii. ad Iliad. xxiv. vol. viii. p. 783.

[310] Subsequent poets, seemingly thinking that the naked story, (of Diomêdês slaughtering Rhêsus and his companions in their sleep,) as it now stands in the Iliad, was too displeasing, adopted different ways of dressing it up. Thus, according to Pindar (ap. Schol. Iliad. x. 435), Rhêsus fought one day as the ally of Troy, and did such terrific damage, that the Greeks had no other means of averting total destruction from his hand on the next day, except by killing him during the night. And the Euripidean drama, called _Rhêsus_, though representing the latter as a new-comer, yet puts into the mouth of Athênê the like overwhelming predictions of what he would do on the coming day, if suffered to live; so that to kill him in the night is the only way of saving the Greeks (Eurip. Rhês. 602): moreover, Rhêsus himself is there brought forward as talking with such overweening insolence, that the sympathies of man, and the envy of the gods, are turned against him (_ib._ 458).

But the story is best known in the form and with the addition (equally unknown to the Iliad) which Virgil has adopted. It was decreed by fate that, if the splendid horses of Rhêsus were permitted once either to taste the Trojan provender, or to drink of the river Xanthus, nothing could preserve the Greeks from ruin (Æneid, i. 468, with Servius, _ad loc._):—

“Nec procul hinc Rhesi niveis tentoria velis Agnoscit lacrymans: primo quæ prodita somno Tydides multâ vastabat cæde cruentus: Ardentesque avertit equos in castra, priusquam Pabula gustassent Trojæ, Xanthumque bibissent.”

All these versions are certainly improvements upon the story as it stands in the Iliad.

While intimating these views respecting the authorship of the Iliad, as being in my judgment the most probable, I must repeat that, though the study of the poem carries to my mind a sufficient conviction respecting its structure, the question between unity and plurality of authors is essentially less determinable. The poem consists of a part original, and other parts superadded; yet it is certainly not impossible that the author of the former may himself have composed the latter; and such would be my belief if I regarded plurality of composers as an inadmissible idea. On this supposition, we must conclude that the poet, while anxious for the addition of new, and for the most part, highly interesting matter, has not thought fit to recast the parts and events in such manner as to impart to the whole a pervading thread of _consensus_ and organization, such as we see in the Odyssey.

That the Odyssey is of later date than the Iliad, and by a different author, seems to be now the opinion of most critics, especially of Payne Knight[311] and Nitzsch; though O. Müller leans to a contrary conclusion, at the same time adding that he thinks the arguments either way not very decisive. There are considerable differences of statement in the two poems in regard to some of the gods: Iris is messenger of the gods in the Iliad, and Hermês in the Odyssey: Æolus, the dispenser of the winds in the Odyssey, is not noticed in the twenty-third book of the Iliad, but, on the contrary, Iris invites the winds, as independent gods, to come and kindle the funeral pile of Patroclus; and, unless we are to expunge the song of Demodokus in the eighth book of the Odyssey as spurious, Aphroditê there appears as the wife of Hêphæstus,—a relationship not known to the Iliad. There are also some other points of difference enumerated by Mr. Knight and others, which tend to justify the presumption that the author of the Odyssey is not identical either with the author of the Achillêis or his enlargers, which G. Hermann considers to be a point unquestionable.[312] Indeed, the difficulty of supposing a long coherent poem to have been conceived, composed, and retained, without any aid of writing, appears to many critics even now, insurmountable, though the evidences on the other side, are, in my view, sufficient to outweigh any negative presumption thus suggested. But it is improbable that the same person should have powers of memorial combination sufficient for composing two such poems, nor is there any proof to force upon us such a supposition.

[311] Mr. Knight places the Iliad about two centuries, and the Odyssey one century, anterior to Hesiod: a century between the two poems (Prolegg. c. lxi.)

[312] Hermann, Præfat. ad Odyss. p. vii.

Presuming a difference of authorship between the two poems, I feel less convinced about the supposed juniority of the Odyssey. The discrepancies in manners and language in the one and the other, are so little important, that two different persons, in the same age and society, might well be imagined to exhibit as great or even greater. It is to be recollected that the subjects of the two are heterogeneous, so as to conduct the poet, even were he the same man, into totally different veins of imagination and illustration. The pictures of the Odyssey seem to delineate the same heroic life as the Iliad, though looked at from a distinct point of view: and the circumstances surrounding the residence of Odysseus, in Ithaka, are just such as we may suppose him to have left in order to attack Troy. If the scenes presented to us are for the most part pacific, as contrasted with the incessant fighting of the Iliad, this is not to be ascribed to any greater sociality or civilization in the real hearers of the Odyssey, but to the circumstances of the hero whom the poet undertakes to adorn: nor can we doubt that the poems of Arktinus and Leschês, of a later date than the Odyssey, would have given us as much combat and bloodshed as the Iliad. I am not struck by those proofs of improved civilization which some critics affirm the Odyssey to present: Mr. Knight, who is of this opinion, nevertheless admits that the mutilation of Melanthius, and the hanging up of the female slaves by Odysseus, in that poem, indicate greater barbarity than any incidents in the fights before Troy.[313] The more skilful and compact structure of the Odyssey, has been often considered as a proof of its juniority in age: and in the case of two poems by the same author, we might plausibly contend that practice would bring with it improvement in the combining faculty. But in reference to the poems before us, we must recollect, first, that in all probability the Iliad (with which the comparison is taken) is not a primitive but an enlarged poem, and that the primitive Achillêis might well have been quite as coherent as the Odyssey; secondly, that between different authors, superiority in structure is not a proof of subsequent composition, inasmuch as, on that hypothesis, we should be compelled to admit that the later poem of Arktinus would be an improvement upon the Odyssey; thirdly, that, even if it were so, we could only infer that the author of the Odyssey had _heard_ the Achillêis or the Iliad; we could not infer that he lived one or two generations afterwards.[314]

[313] Knight, Prolegg. 1, c. Odyss. xxii. 465-478.

[314] The arguments, upon the faith of which Payne Knight and other critics have maintained the Odyssey to be younger than the Iliad, are well stated and examined in Bernard Thiersch,—Quæstio de Diversâ Iliadis et Odysseæ Ætate,—in the Anhang (p. 306) to his work Ueber das Zeitalter und Vaterland des Homer.

He shows all such arguments to be very inconclusive; though the grounds upon which he himself maintains identity of age between the two appear to me not at all more satisfactory (p. 327): we can infer nothing to the point from the mention of Telemachus in the Iliad.

Welcker thinks that there is a great difference of age, and an evident difference of authorship, between the two poems (Der Episch. Cyclus, p. 295).

O. Müller admits the more recent date of the Odyssey, but considers it “difficult and hazardous to raise upon this foundation any definite conclusions as to the person and age of the poet.” (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. v. s. 13.)

On the whole, the balance of probabilities seems in favor of distinct authorship for the two poems, but the same age,—and that age a very early one, anterior to the first Olympiad. And they may thus be used as evidences, and contemporary evidences, for the phenomena of primitive Greek civilization; while they also show that the power of constructing long premeditated epics, without the aid of writing, is to be taken as a characteristic of the earliest known Greek mind. This was the point controverted by Wolf, which a full review of the case (in my judgment) decides against him: it is, moreover, a valuable result for the historian of the Greeks, inasmuch as it marks out to him the ground from which he is to start in appreciating their ulterior progress.[315]

[315] Dr. Thirlwall has added to the second edition of his History of Greece a valuable Appendix, on the early history of the Homeric poems (vol. i. pp. 500-516); which contains copious information respecting the discrepant opinions of German critics, with a brief comparative examination of their reasons. I could have wished that so excellent a judge had superadded, to his enumeration of the views of others, an ampler exposition of his own. Dr. Thirlwall seems decidedly convinced upon that which appears to me the most important point in the Homeric controversy: “That before the appearance of the earliest of the poems of the Epic Cycle, the Iliad and Odyssey, even if they did not exist precisely in their present form, had at least reached their present compass, and were regarded each as a complete and well-defined whole, not as a fluctuating aggregate of fugitive pieces.” (p. 509.)

This marks out the Homeric poems as ancient both in the items and in the total, and includes negation of the theory of Wolf and Lachmann, who contend that, as a total, they only date from the age of Peisistratus. It is then safe to treat the poems as unquestionable evidences of Grecian antiquity (meaning thereby 776 B. C.), which we could not do if we regarded all congruity of parts in the poems as brought about through alterations of Peisistratus and his friends.

There is also a very just admonition of Dr. Thirlwall (p. 516) as to the difficulty of measuring what degree of discrepancy or inaccuracy might or might not have escaped the poet’s attention, in an age so imperfectly known to us.

Whatever there may be of truth in the different conjectures of critics respecting the authorship and structure of these unrivalled poems, we are not to imagine that it is the perfection of their epical symmetry which has given them their indissoluble hold upon the human mind, as well modern as ancient. There is some tendency in critics, from Aristotle downwards,[316] to invert the order of attributes in respect to the Homeric poems, so as to dwell most on recondite excellences which escape the unaided reader, and which are even to a great degree disputable. But it is given to few minds (as Goethe has remarked[317]) to appreciate fully the mechanism of a long poem; and many feel the beauty of the separate parts, who have no sentiment for the aggregate perfection of the whole.

[316] There are just remarks on this point in Heyne’s Excursus, ii. sect. 2 and 4, ad Il. xxiv. vol. viii. pp. 771-800.

[317] “Wenig Deutsche, und vielleicht nur wenige Menschen aller _neuern_ Nationen, haben Gefühl für ein æsthetisches Ganzes: sie loben und tadeln nur stellenweise, sie entzücken sich nur stellenweise.” (Goethe, Wilhelm Meister: I transcribe this from Welcker’s Æschyl. Trilogie, p. 306.)

What ground there is for restricting this proposition to _modern_ as contrasted with _ancient_ nations, I am unable to conceive.

Nor were the Homeric poems originally addressed to minds of the rarer stamp. They are intended for those feelings which the critic has in common with the unlettered mass, not for that enlarged range of vision and peculiar standard which he has acquired to himself. They are of all poems the most absolutely and unreservedly popular: had they been otherwise, they could not have lived so long in the mouth of the rhapsodes, and the ear and memory of the people: and it was _then_ that their influence was first acquired, never afterwards to be shaken. Their beauties belong to the parts taken separately, which revealed themselves spontaneously to the listening crowd at the festival,—far more than to the whole poem taken together, which could hardly be appreciated unless the parts were dwelt upon and suffered to expand in the mind. The most unlettered hearer of those times could readily seize, while the most instructed reader can still recognize, the characteristic excellence of Homeric narrative,—its straightforward, unconscious, unstudied simplicity,—its concrete forms of speech [318] and happy alternation of action with dialogue,—its vivid pictures of living agents, always clearly and sharply individualized, whether in the commanding proportions of Achilles and Odysseus, in the graceful presence of Helen and Penelope, or in the more humble contrast of Eumæus and Melanthius; and always, moreover, animated by the frankness with which his heroes give utterance to all their transient emotions and even all their infirmities,—its constant reference to those coarser veins of feeling and palpable motives which belong to all men in common,—its fulness of graphic details, freshly drawn from the visible and audible world, and though often homely, never tame, nor trenching upon that limit of satiety to which the Greek mind was so keenly alive,—lastly, its perpetual junction of gods and men in the same picture, and familiar appeal to ever-present divine agency, in harmony with the interpretation of nature at that time universal.

[318] The κινούμενα ὀνόματα of Homer were extolled by Aristotle; see Schol. ad Iliad. i. 481; compare Dionys. Halicarn. De Compos. Verbor. c. 20. ὥστε μηδὲν ἡμῖν διαφέρειν γινόμενα τὰ πράγματα ἢ λεγόμενα ὁρᾶν. Respecting the undisguised bursts of feeling by the heroes, the Scholiast ad Iliad, i. 349 tells us,—ἕτοιμον τὸ ἡπωϊκον πρὸς δάκρυα,—compare Euripid. Helen. 959, and the severe censures of Plato, Republ. ii. p. 388.

The Homeric poems were the best understood, and the most widely popular of all Grecian composition, even among the least instructed persons, such (for example) as the semibarbarians who had acquired the Greek language in addition to their own mother tongue. (Dio Chrysost. Or. xviii. vol. i. p. 478; Or. liii. vol. ii. p. 277, Reisk.) Respecting the simplicity and perspicuity of the narrative style, implied in this extensive popularity, Porphyry made a singular remark: he said, that the sentences of Homer _really_ presented much difficulty and obscurity, but that ordinary readers fancied they understood him, “because of the general clearness _which appeared_ to run through the poems.” (See the Prolegomena of Villoison’s edition of the Iliad, p. xli.) This remark affords the key to a good deal of the Homeric criticism. There doubtless were real obscurities in the poems, arising from altered associations, customs, religion, language, etc., as well as from corrupt text; but while the critics did good service in elucidating these difficulties, they also introduced artificially many others, altogether of their own creating. Refusing to be satisfied with the plain and obvious meaning, they sought in Homer hidden purposes, elaborate innuendo, recondite motives even with regard to petty details, deep-laid rhetorical artifices (see a specimen in Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhetor. c. 15, p. 316, Reiske; nor is even Aristotle exempt from similar tendencies, Schol. ad Iliad. iii. 441, x. 198), or a substratum of philosophy allegorized. No wonder that passages, quite perspicuous to the vulgar reader, seemed difficult to them.

There could not be so sure a way of missing the real Homer as by searching for him in these devious recesses. He is essentially the poet of the broad highway and the market-place, touching the common sympathies and satisfying the mental appetencies of his countrymen with unrivalled effect; but exempt from ulterior views, either selfish or didactic, and immersed in the same medium of practical life and experience, religiously construed, as his auditors. No nation has ever yet had so perfect and touching an exposition of its early social mind as the Iliad and Odyssey exhibit.

In the verbal criticism of Homer, the Alexandrine literati seem to have made a very great advance, as compared with the glossographers who preceded them. (See Lehrs, De Studiis Aristarchi, Dissert. ii. p. 42.)

It is undoubtedly easier to feel than to describe the impressive influence of Homeric narrative: but the time and circumstances under which that influence was first, and most powerfully felt, preclude the possibility of explaining it by comprehensive and elaborate comparisons, such as are implied in Aristotle’s remarks upon the structure of the poems. The critic who seeks the explanation in the right place will not depart widely from the point of view of those rude auditors to whom the poems were originally addressed, or from the susceptibilities and capacities common to the human bosom in every stage of progressive culture. And though the refinements and delicacies of the poems, as well as their general structure, are a subject of highly interesting criticism,—yet it is not to these that Homer owes his wide-spread and imperishable popularity. Still less is it true, as the well-known observations of Horace would lead us to believe, that Homer is a teacher of ethical wisdom akin and superior to Chrysippus or Crantor.[319] No didactic purpose is to be found in the Iliad and Odyssey; a philosopher may doubtless extract, from the incidents and strongly marked characters which it contains, much illustrative matter for his exhortations,—but the ethical doctrine which he applies must emanate from his own reflection. The Homeric hero manifests virtues or infirmities, fierceness or compassion, with the same straightforward and simple-minded vivacity, unconscious of any ideal standard by which his conduct is to be tried;[320] nor can we trace in the poet any ulterior function beyond that of the inspired organ of the Muse, and the nameless, but eloquent, herald of lost adventures out of the darkness of the past.

[319] Horat. Epist. i. 2, v. 1-26:—

“Sirenum voces, et Circes pocula nosti: Quæ si cum sociis stultus cupidusque bibisset, Vixisset canis immundus, vel amica luto sus.”

Horace contrasts the folly and greediness of the companions of Ulysses, in accepting the refreshments tendered to them by Circe, with the self-command of Ulysses himself in refusing them. But in the incident as described in the original poem, neither the praise nor the blame, here implied, finds any countenance. The companions of Ulysses follow the universal practice in accepting hospitality tendered to strangers, the fatal consequences of which, in their particular case, they could have no ground for suspecting; while Ulysses is preserved from a similar fate, not by any self-command of his own, but by a previous divine warning and a special antidote, which had not been vouchsafed to the rest (see Odyss. x. 285). And the incident of the Sirens, if it is to be taken as evidence of anything, indicates rather the absence, than the presence, of self-command on the part of Ulysses.

Of the violent mutations of text, whereby the _Grammatici_ or critics tried to efface from Homer bad ethical tendencies (we must remember that many of these men were lecturers to youth), a remarkable specimen is afforded by Venet. Schol. ad Iliad. ix. 453; compare Plutarch, de Audiendis Poetis, p. 95. Phœnix describes the calamitous family tragedy in which he himself had been partly the agent, partly the victim. Now that an Homeric hero should confess guilty proceedings, and still more guilty designs, without any expression of shame or contrition, was insupportable to the feelings of the critics. One of them, Aristodemus, thrust two negative particles into one of the lines; and though he thereby ruined not only the sense but the metre, his emendation procured for him universal applause, because he had maintained the innocence of the hero (καὶ οὐ μόνον ηὐδοκίμησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐτιμήθη, ὡς εὐσεβῆ τηρήσας τὸν ἥρωα). And Aristarchus thought the case so alarming, that he struck out from the text four lines, which have only been preserved to us by Plutarch (Ὁ μὲν Ἀρίσταρχος ἔξειλε τὰ ἔπη ταῦτα, ~φοβηθείς~). See the Fragment of Dioscorides (περὶ τῶν παρ᾽ Ὁμήρῳ Νόμων) in Didot’s Fragmenta Historicor. Græcor. vol. ii. p. 193.

[320] “C’est un tableau idéal, à coup sûr, que celui de la société Grecque dans les chants qui portent le nom d’Homère: et pourtant cette société y est toute entière reproduite, avec la rusticité, la férocité de ses mœurs, ses bonnes et ses mauvaises passions, sans dessein de faire particulièrement ressortir, de célébrer tel ou tel de ses mérites, de ses avantages, ou de laisser dans l’ombre ses vices et ses maux. Ce mélange du bien et du mal, du fort et du faible,—cette simultanéité d’idées et de sentimens en apparence contraires,—cette variété, cette incohérence, ce développement inégal de la nature et de la destinée humaine,—c’est précisément là ce qu’il y a de plus poétique, car c’est le fond même des choses, c’est la vérité sur l’homme et le monde: et dans les peintures idéales qu’en veulent faire la poésie, le roman et même l’histoire, cet ensemble, si divers et pourtant si harmonieux, doit se retrouver: sans quoi l’idéal véritable y manque aussi bien que la réalité.” (Guizot, Cours d’Histoire Moderne; Leçon 7me, vol. i. p. 285.)

HISTORY OF GREECE.