Chapter 18

possible) might be a _remanie_ representative of an earlier lay to the same general effect. Some Greek Shakespeare, then, treated an older poem on the theme of Book IX. as Shakespeare treated old plays, namely, as a canvas to work over with a master's hand. Probably Mr. Monro would not have gone _so_ far in the case of Book XXIV., _The Repentance_ of Achilles. He thought it in too keen contrast with the brutality of Book XXII. (obviously forgetting that in Book XXIV. Achilles is infinitely more brutal than in Book XXII.), and thought it inconsistent with the refusal of Achilles to grant burial at the prayer of the dying Hector, and with his criminal treatment of the dead body of his chivalrous enemy. But in Book XXIV. his ferocity is increased. Mr. Leaf shares Mr. Monro's view; but Mr. Leaf thinks that a Greek audience forgave Achilles, because he was doing "the will of heaven," and "fighting the great fight of Hellenism against barbarism." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad,_ vol.-ii. p. 429. 1902.] But the Achzeans were not Puritans of the sixteenth century! Moreover, the Trojans are as "Hellenic" as the Achzeans. They converse, clearly, in the same language. They worship the same gods. The Achzeans cannot regard them (unless on account of the breach of truce, by no Trojan, but an ally) as the Covenanters regarded "malignants," their name for loyal cavaliers, whom they also styled "Amalekites," and treated as Samuel treated Agag. The Achaeans to whom Homer sang had none of this sanguinary Pharisaism.

Others must decide on the exact value and import of Odyssean grammar as a test of lateness, and must estimate the probable amount of time required for the development of such linguistic differences as they find in the _Odyssey_ and _Iliad_. In undertaking this task they may compare the literary language of America as it was before 1860 and as it is now. The language of English literature has also been greatly modified in the last forty years, but our times are actively progressive in many directions; linguistic variations might arise more slowly in the Greece of the Epics. We have already shown, in the more appropriate instance of the _Chancun de Willame_, that considerable varieties in diction and metre occur in a single MS. of that poem, a MS. written probably within less than a century of the date of the poem's composition.

We can also trace, in _remaniements_ of the _Chanson DE ROLAND_, comparatively rapid and quite revolutionary variations from the oldest--the Oxford--manuscript. Rhyme is substituted for assonance; the process entails frequent modernisations, and yet the basis of thirteenth-century texts continues to be the version of the eleventh century. It may be worth the while of scholars to consider these parallels carefully, as regards the language and prosody of the Odyssean Books of the _Iliad_, and to ask themselves whether the processes of alteration in the course of transmission, which we know to have occurred in the history of the Old French, may not also have affected the _ILIAD_, though why the effect is mainly confined to four Books remains a puzzle. It is enough for us to have shown that if Odyssean varies from Iliadic language, in all other respects the two poems bear the marks of the same age. Meanwhile, a Homeric scholar so eminent as Mr. T. W. Allen, says that "the linguistic attack upon their age" (that of the Homeric poems) "may be said to have at last definitely failed, and archaeology has erected an apparently indestructible buttress for their defence." [Footnote: _Classical Review, May_ 1906, p. 194.]