CHAPTER XXI.

GRECIAN EPIC. HOMERIC POEMS.

Two classes of epic poetry—Homeric—Hesiodic.—Didactic and mystic Hexameter poetry—later as a genus than the epic.—Lost epic poems.—Epic poets and their probable dates.—Epic cycle.—What the epic cycle was—an arrangement of the poems according to continuity of narrative.—Relation of the epic cycle to Homer.—What poems were included in the cycle.—The Iliad and Odyssey are the only poems of the cycle preserved.—Curiosity which these two poems provoke—no data to satisfy it.—Different poems ascribed to Homer.—Nothing known, and endless diversity of opinion, respecting the person and date of Homer.—Poetical gens of the Homêrids.—Homer, the superhuman eponymus and father of this gens.—What may be the dates of the Iliad and Odyssey.—Date assigned by Herodotus the most probable.—Probable date of the Iliad and Odyssey between 850 and 776 B. C.—Epic poems recited to assembled companies, not read by individuals apart.—Lyric and choric poetry, intended for the ear.—Importance of the class of rhapsodes, singers, and reciters.—Rhapsodes condemned by the Socratic philosophers—undeservedly.—Variations in the mode of reciting the ancient epic.—At what time the Homeric poems began to be written.—Prolegomena of Wolf—raised new questions respecting the Homeric text—connected unity of authorship with poems written from the beginning.—The two questions not necessarily connected, though commonly discussed together.—Few traces of writing, long after the Homeric age.—Bards or rhapsodes of adequate memory, less inconsistent with the conditions of the age than long MSS.—Blind bards.—Possibility of preserving the poems by memory, as accurately as in fact they were preserved.—Argument from the lost letter Digamma.—When did the Homeric poems begin to be written?—Reasons for presuming that they were first written about the middle of the seventh century B. C.—Condition of the Iliad and Odyssey down to the reign of Peisistratus.—Theory of Wolf.—Authorities quoted in its favor.—Objections against it.—Other long epic poems besides the Iliad and Odyssey.—Catalogue in the Iliad—essentially a part of a long poem—its early authority.—Iliad and Odyssey were entire poems long anterior to Peisistratus, whether they were originally composed as entire or not.—No traces in the Homeric poems, of ideas or customs belonging to the age of Peisistratus.—Homeric poems. 1. Whether by one author or several. 2. Whether of one date and scheme.—Question raised by Wolf—Sagen-poesie.—New standard applied to the Homeric poems.—Homeric unity—generally rejected by German critics in the last generation—now again partially revived.—Scanty evidence—difficulty of forming any conclusive opinion.—Method of studying the question of Homeric unity.—Odyssey to be studied first, as of more simple and intelligible structure than the Iliad—Odyssey—evidences of one design throughout its structure.—Exhibits very few marks of incoherence or contradiction.—Chronological reckoning in the Odyssey, inaccurate in one case.—Inference erroneously drawn from hence, that the parts of the poem were originally separate.—Double start and double stream of events, ultimately brought into confluence in the Odyssey.—Skill displayed in this point by the poet.—Difficulty of imagining the Odyssey broken up into many existing poems or songs.—Structure of the Odyssey—essentially one—cannot have been pieced together out of preëxisting epics.—Analogy of the Odyssey shows that long and premeditated epical composition consists with the capacities of the early Greek mind.—Iliad—much less coherent and uniform than the Odyssey.—Incoherence prevails only in parts of the poem—manifest coherence in other parts.—Wolfian theory explains the former, but not the latter.—Theory of Welcker, Lange, and Nitzsch.—Age of the Epos preparatory to that of the Epopee.—Iliad essentially an organized poem—but the original scheme does not comprehend the whole poem.—Iliad—originally an Achillêis built upon a narrower plan, then enlarged.—Parts which constitute the primitive Achillêis exhibit a coherent sequence of events.—Disablement of Agamemnôn, Odysseus, and Diomêdês, all in the battle of the eleventh book.—The first book concentrates attention upon Achilles, and upon the distress which the Greeks are to incur in consequence of the injury done to him.—Nothing done to realize this expectation until the eighth book.—Primitive Achillêis includes books i, viii, xi to xxii.—Ninth book an unsuitable addition.—Transition from the Achillêis into the Iliad, in the beginning of the second book.—Transition from the Iliad back into the Achillêis at the end of the seventh book.—Fortification of the Grecian camp.—Zeus in the fourth book, or Iliad, different from Zeus in the first and eighth, or Achillêis.—Continuous Achillêis—from the eleventh book onward.—Supposition of an enlarged Achillêis is the most consonant to all the parts of the poem as it stands.—Question of one or many authors—difficult to decide.—Odyssey all by one author, Iliad probably not.—Difference of style in the last six books—may be explained without supposing difference of authorship.—Last two books—probably not parts of the original Achillêis.—Books ii. to vii. inclusive.—Book x.—Odyssey—probably by a different author from the Iliad—but perhaps of the same age.—Real character of the Homeric poems—essentially popular.—Addressed to unlettered minds, but touching those feelings which all men have in common.—No didactic purpose in Homer. 118-209