xiv. 317-27), in which Jupiter details to Juno his various affairs

with goddesses and women. ‘This enumeration,’ says the Scholiast (A) on verse 327, ‘is inopportune, for it rather repels Juno than attracts her: and Jupiter, when greedy, through the influence of the Cestus, for the satisfaction of his passion, makes a long harangue.’ Heyne follows up the censure with a yet more sweeping condemnation. _Sanè absurdiora, quam hos decem versus, vix unquam ullus commentus est rhapsodus_[654]. And yet he adds a consideration, which might have served to arrest judgment until after further hearing. For he says, that the commentators upon them ought to have taken notice that the description belongs to a period, when the relations of man and wife were not such, as to prevent the open introduction and parading of concubines; and that Juno might be flattered and allured by a declaration, proceeding from Jupiter, of the superiority of her charms to those of so many beautiful persons.

[654] Obss. _in loc._

Heyne’s reason appears to me so good, as even to outweigh his authority: but there are other grounds also, on which I decline to bow to the proposed excision. The objections taken seem to me invalid on the following grounds;

1. For the reason stated by Heyne.

2. Because, in the whole character of the Homeric Juno, and in the whole of this proceeding, it is the political spirit, and not the animal tendency, that predominates. Of this Homer has given us distinct warning, where he tells us that Juno just before had looked on Jupiter from afar, and that he was disgusting to her; (v. 158) στυγερὸς δέ οἱ ἔπλετο θυμῷ. It is therefore futile to argue about her, as if she had been under the paramount sway either of animal desire, or even of the feminine love of admiration, when she was really and exclusively governed by another master-passion.

3. As she has artfully persuaded Jupiter, that he has an obstacle to overcome in diverting her from her intention of travelling to a distance, it is not at all unnatural that Jupiter should use what he thinks, and what, as Heyne has shown, he may justly think, to be proper and special means of persuasion.

4. The passage is carefully and skilfully composed; and it ends with a climax, so as to give the greatest force to the compliment of which it is susceptible.

5. All the representations in it harmonize with the manner of handling the same personages elsewhere in Homer.

6. The passage has that strong vein of nationality, which is so eminently characteristic of Homer. No intrigues are mentioned, except such as issued in the birth of children of recognised Hellenic fame. The gross animalism of Jupiter, displayed in the Speech, is in the strictest keeping with the entire context; for it is the basis of the transaction, and gives Juno the opportunity she so adroitly turns to account.

7. Those, who reject the passage as spurious, because the action ought not at this point to be loaded with a speech, do not, I think, bear in mind that a deviation of this kind from the strict poetical order is really in keeping with Homer’s practice on other occasions, particularly in the disquisitions of Nestor and of Phœnix. Such a deviation appears to be accounted for by his historic aims. To comprehend him in a case of this kind, we must set out from his point of departure, according to which, verse was not a mere exercise for pleasure, but was to be the one great vehicle of all knowledge: and a potent instrument in constructing a nationality. Thus, then, what the first aim rejected, the second might in given cases accept and even require. Now in this short passage there is a great deal of important historical information conveyed to us.

We may therefore with considerable confidence employ such evidence as the speech may be found to afford.

Let us, then, observe the forms of expression as they run in series,

οὐδ’ ὁπότ’ ἠρασάμην Ἰξιονίης ἀλόχοιο[655]. οὐδ’ ὅτε περ Δανάης καλλισφύρου Ἀκρισιώνης[656]. οὐδ’ ὅτε Φοίνικος κούρης τηλεκλείτοιο[657].

[655] Ver. 317.

[656] Ver. 319.

[657] Ver. 321.

~_Sense of Il._ xiv. 321.~

Taken grammatically, I presume the last verse may mean, (1) The daughter of the distinguished Phœnix: or (2) The daughter of a distinguished Phœnician: or (3) A distinguished Phœnician damsel.

_a._ Against the first it may be urged, that we have no other account from Homer, or from any early tradition, of this Phœnix, here described as famous.

_b._ Against the second and third, that Homer nowhere directly declares the foreign origin of any great Greek personage.

_c._ Also, that in each of the previous cases, Homer has used the proper name of a person nearly connected in order to indicate and identity the woman, whom therefore it is not likely that he would in this single case denote only by her nation, or the nation of her father.

_d._ Against the third, that, in the only other passage where he has to speak of a Phœnician woman, he uses a feminine form, Φοίνισσα: ἔσκε δὲ πατρὸς ἐμοῖο γυνὴ Φοίνισσ’ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ (Od. xv. 417). But Φοίνιξ is grammatically capable of the feminine, as is shown by Herod. i. 193[658].

[658] See Jelf’s Gr. Gramm. 103.

_e._ Also that Homer, in the few instances where he uses the word τηλεκλειτὸς, confines it to men. He, however, gives the epithet ἐρικυδὴς to Latona.

The arguments from the structure of the passage, and from the uniform reticence of Homer respecting the foreign origin of Greek personages, convince me that it is not on the whole warrantable to interpret Φοίνιξ in this place in any other manner, than as the name of the father of Minos.

The name Φοίνιξ, however, taken in connection with the period to which it applies--nearly three generations before the _Troica_--still continues to supply of itself no trifling presumption of the Phœnician origin of Minos.

It cannot, I suppose, be doubted that the original meaning of Φοίνιξ, when first used as a proper name in Greece, probably was ‘of Phœnician birth, or origin.’ But, if we are to judge by the testimony of Homer, the time, when Minos lived, was but very shortly after the first Phœnician arrivals in Greece; and his grandfather Phœnix, living four and a half generations before the _Troica_, was in all likelihood contemporary with, or anterior to, Cadmus. At a period when the intercourse of the two countries was in its infancy, we may, I think, with some degree of confidence construe this proper name as indicating the country of origin.

~_Collateral evidence._~

The other marks connected with Minos and his history give such support to this presumption as to bring the supposition up to reasonable certainty. Such are,

1. The connection with Dædalus.

2. The tradition of the nautical power of Minos.

3. The characteristic epithet ὀλοόφρων; as also its relation to the other Homeric personages with whose name it is joined.

4. The fact that Minos brought a more advanced form of laws and polity among a people of lower social organization; the proof thus given that he belonged to a superior race: the probability that, if this race had been Hellenic, Homer would have distinctly marked the connection of so distinguished a person with the Hellenic stem: and the apparent certainty that, if not Hellenic, it could only be Phœnician.

The positive Homeric grounds for believing Minos to be Phœnician are much stronger, than any that sustain the same belief in the case of Cadmus: and the negative objection, that Homer does not call him by the name of the country from which he sprang, is in fact an indication of the Poet’s uniform practice of drawing the curtain over history or legend, at the point where a longer perspective would have the effect of exhibiting any Greek hero as derived from a foreign source, and thus of confuting that claim to autochthonism which, though it is not much his way to proclaim such matters in the abstract, yet appears to have operated with Homer as a practical principle of considerable weight.

EXCURSUS II.

ON THE LINE ODYSS. V. 277.

I have the less scruple in making the verse Od. v. 277 the subject of a particular inquiry, because the chief elements of the discussion are important with reference to the laws of Homeric Greek, as well as with regard to that adjustment of the Outer Geography, which I have supported by a detailed application to every part of the narrative of the Odyssey, and which I at once admit is in irreconcilable conflict with the popular construction of the account of the voyage from Ogygia to Scheria, as far as it depends upon this particular verse.

The passage is[659] (the τὴν referring to Ἄρκτον in v. 273)

[659] Od. v. 276, 7.

τὴν γὰρ δή μιν ἄνωγε Καλυψὼ, δῖα θεάων, ποντοπορευέμεναι ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ χειρὸς ἔχοντα.

The points upon which the signification of the last line must depend, seem to be as follows:

1. The meaning of the important Homeric word ἀριστερός.

2. The form of the phrase ἀριστερὰ χειρὸς, which is an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον in Homer.

3. The force of the preposition ἐπὶ, particularly with the accusative.

The second of these points may be speedily dismissed. For (1) the only question that can arise upon it would be, whether (assuming for the moment the sense of ἀριστερὸς) ‘the left of his hand’ means the left of the line described by the onward movement of his body, or the left of the direction in which his hand, that is, his right or steering hand, points while upon the helm; which would be the exact reverse of the former. But, though the latter interpretation would be grammatically accurate, it is too minute and subtle, as respects the sense, to agree with Homer’s methods of expression. And (2) some of the Scholiasts report another reading, νηὸς, instead of χειρὸς, which would present no point of doubt or suspicion under this head.

We have then two questions to consider; of which the first is the general use and treatment by Homer of the word ἀριστερός.

~_Senses of δεξιὸς and ἀριστερός._~

It appears to me well worth consideration whether the δεξιὸς and ἀριστερὸς of Homer ought not, besides the senses of right and left, to be acknowledged capable of the senses of east and west respectively.

The word ἀριστερὸς takes the sense of _left_ by way of derivation and second intention only.

The word σκαιὸς is that, which etymologically and primarily expresses the function of the left hand. The use of this as the principal hand is abnormal, and places the body as it were _askew_ (compare σκάζω, _scævus_, _schief_)[660]. In Homer the only word used singly, i. e. without a substantive, to express the left hand is σκαιός. At the same time, we cannot draw positive conclusions from this fact, because ἀριστερὸς could not stand in the hexameter to represent a feminine noun singular, on account of the laws of metre, which in this point are inflexible.

[660] Liddell and Scott.

Σκαιῇ means the left hand in Il. i. 501. xvi. 734. xxi. 490. This adjective is but once used in Homer except for the hand: viz., in Od. iii. 295 we have σκαιὸν ῥίον for ‘the foreland on the left.’ But Σκαιαὶ πύλαι may have meant originally the left hand gates of Troy.

The application of δεξιὸς to the right hand (from which we may consider δεξιτερὸς as an adaptation for metrical purposes), is to be sufficiently accounted for, because it was the hand by which greetings were exchanged, and engagements contracted[661]. But it is not so with ἀριστερός: and while we contemplate the subject in regard only to the uses of the member, the word σκαιὸς remains perfectly unexceptionable, and even highly expressive and convenient, in its function of expressing the left hand.

[661] Il. ii. 341. x. 542.

It appears that the Greek augurs, in estimating the signification of omens, were accustomed to stand with their faces northwards; or rather, I presume, with their faces set towards a point midway between sunset and sunrise. The most common descriptions of omen in the time of Homer appear to have been (1) the flight of birds, and (2) the apparition of thunder and lightning. The test of a good moving omen was, that it should proceed from the west, and move to the east; and of a bad moving omen, that it should proceed from the east, and move to the west. Possibly we may trace in this conception the cosmogonical arrangement, which planted in the West the Elysian plain, and in the East the dismal and semi-penal domain of Aidoneus and Persephone. Possibly the brightness of the sun, which caused the East to be regarded as the fountain of light, may be the foundation of it: together, on the other hand, with that close visible association between the West and darkness, which the sunset of each day brought before the eyes of men; so that to lie πρὸς ζόφον meant to lie towards the West, and was the regular opposite of lying towards the sun[662].

[662] Od. ix. 25, 6.

Whatever may have been the basis of the doctrine of the augurs, there grew up an established association (1) between the west and what was ill-omened or evil, and through this (2) between what was ill-omened or evil and the left side of a man. The west was unlucky, because the science of augury made it so. The left hand was unlucky, because in the inspection of omens it was western. One half of the objects in the world, and of the actions of the human body, thus lay, from their position relatively to omens, under an incubus of ill-fortune. It was retrieved from this threatening condition, by an euphemism; by the application of a word not merely innocent[663], but preeminently good. Everything covered by the blight of evil omen was to be, not only not harmful, but ἀριστερὸς, better than the best. Consequently it would appear that the word ἀριστερὸς probably meant westerly, before it could mean on the left hand: because not the left hand only, but everything westerly, was within the range of the evil to which it was intended to apply a remedy.

[663] Compare the use of the word εὐώνυμος.

In a passage like Il. vii. 238, the meaning of δεξιὸς and ἀριστερὸς is, plainly, right and left. But what is it in the speech of Hector, where he tells Polydamas that he cares not for omens[664],

[664] Il. xii. 238-40.

εἴτ’ ἐπὶ δεξί’ ἴωσι πρὸς Ἠῶ τ’ Ἠέλιόν τε, εἴτ’ ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ τοίγε ποτὶ ζόφον ἠερόεντα.

In the first place, it is a more appropriate, because more direct, method of description with respect to birds of omen to say, they fly eastward or westward, than that they fly to the right or the left hand: since the sense of right and left has no determinate standard of reference, but requires the aid of an assumption that the person is actually looking to the north, so that the words may thus become equivalent to east and west. But in this case, which is one of warriors on the battle-field, would there not be something rather incongruous in interpolating the suggestion of their turning northwards as they spoke, in order to give the proper meaning to these two words? We must surely conceive of Hector standing on the battle-field with his face towards the enemy, if we are to take his posture into view at all. If he stood thus, he would look, as far as we can judge, to the west of north. Now the ζόφος was the north-west with Homer, and not the west: and, conversely, the Ἠὼς inclined to the south of east. In this way he would nearly have his face to the former, and his back to the latter; and if so the meaning of right and left would be not only farfetched, but wholly improper, while the meaning of east and west would be no less correct than natural.

I must add, that there are other places in Homer where difficulty arises, if we are only permitted to construe δεξιὸς and ἀριστερὸς by right and left. I will even venture to say, that there are passages in the Thirteenth Book which render the topography of the battle that it describes, not only obscure, but even contradictory, if ἀριστερὸς in them means _left_; and which become perfectly harmonious if we allowed to understand it as signifying _west_.

~_Illustrated from Il._ xiii.~

These are respectively Il. xiii. 675 and 765.

In order to apprehend the case, it will be necessary to follow closely the movement of the battle through most of the Book.

1. Il. xiii. 126-9: The Ajaxes are opposed to Hector, νηυσὶν ἐν μέσσῃσιν, 312, 16.

2. The centre being thus provided for, Idomeneus proceeds to the left, στρατοῦ ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ (326), which is the station of Deiphobus; and makes havock in this quarter.

3. Deiphobus, instead of fighting Idomeneus, thinks it prudent to fetch Æneas, who is standing aloof, 458 and seqq.

4. Summoned by Deiphobus, Æneas comes with him, attended also by Paris and Agenor, 490.

5. They conjointly carry on the fight at that point, with indifferent success (495-673), but no decisive issue.

6. Hector, in the centre, remains ignorant that the Trojans were being worsted νηῶν ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ by the Greeks, 675.

7. By the advice of Polydamas he goes in search of other chiefs to consider what is to be done; of Paris among the rest, whom he finds, μάχης ἐπ’ ἀριστερά (765). With them he returns to the centre, 753, 802, 809.

Now the following propositions are, I think, sound:

1. When Homer thus speaks of ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ in Il. xiii. 326, 675, and 765, respectively, he evidently means to describe in all of them the same side of the battle-field. Where Idomeneus is, in 329, thither he brings Æneas in 469, who is attended at the time by Paris, 490; and there Paris evidently remains until summoned to the centre in 765.

2. If Homer speaks with reference to any particular combatant, of his being on the left or the right of the battle, he ought to mean the Greek left or right if the person be Greek, and the Trojan left or right if the person be Trojan.

3. This is actually the rule by which he proceeds elsewhere. For in the Fifth Book, when Mars is in the field on the Trojan side, he says, Minerva found him μάχης ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ, Il. v. 355. What is the point thus described, and how came he there? The answer is supplied by an earlier part of the same Book. In v. 35, Minerva led him out of the battle. In v. 36, she placed him by the shore of the Scamander; that is to say, on the Trojan left, and in a position to which, he being a Trojan combatant, the Poet gives the name of μάχης ἐπ’ ἀριστερά.

Now ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ is commonly interpreted ‘on the left.’ But if it means on the left in Il. xiii., then the passages are contradictory: because this would place Paris on both wings, whereas he obviously is described as on the same wing of the battle throughout.

But if we construe ἀριστερὸς as meaning the west in all the three passages, then we have the same meaning at once made available for all the three places, so that the account becomes self-consistent again; and if the meaning be ‘on the west,’ then we may understand that Idomeneus most naturally betakes himself to the west, because that was the quarter of the Myrmidons, where the Greek line was deprived of support. If, however, it be said, that the Greek left is meant throughout, then the expression in v. 765 is both contrary to what would seem reasonable, and at variance with Homer’s own precedent in the Fifth Book.

Thus there is considerable reason to suppose that, in Homer, ἀριστερὸς may sometimes mean ‘west.’ So that _if_ ἐπὶ in Od. v. 277 really means ‘upon,’ the phrase will signify, that Ulysses was to have Arctus on the west side of him, which would place Ogygia in the required position to the east of north.

~_The force of ἐπὶ in Homer._~

The point remaining for discussion is at once the most difficult and the most important. What _is_ the true force of the Homeric ἐπί?

I find the senses of this preposition clearly and comprehensively treated in Jelf’s Greek Grammar, where the leading points of its various significations are laid down as follows[665]:

[665] Jelf’s Gr. Gr. Nos. 633-5.

1. Its original force is _upon_, or _on_.

2. It is applied to place, time, or causation. Of these three, when treating of a geographical question, we need only consider the first with any minuteness.

3. Ἐπὶ, when used locally, means with the genitive (_a_) _on_ or _at_, and (_b_) motion _towards_ a place or thing. With the dative (_a_) _on_ or _at_, and (_b_) _by_ or _near_. With the accusative (_a_) _towards_, and (_b_) ‘extension in space over an object, as well with verbs of rest as of motion.’ Of this sense examples are quoted in πλεῖν ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον for verbs of motion, and ἐπ’ ἐννέα κεῖτο πέλεθρα for verbs of rest. Both are from Homer, in Il. vii. 83, and Od. xi. 577.

The Homeric ἐπὶ δεξιὰ and ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ are also quoted as examples of this last-named sense. But in Od. v. 277, if the meaning be _on_ the left, it is plainly quite beyond these definitions: for so far from being an object extended over space, the star is, as it appears on the left, a luminous point, and nothing more. It was an extension over space, such as the eye has from a window over a prospect; but then that space is the space which lies over-against the star; so that if the space be on the left, the star must be looking towards the left indeed, but for that very reason set on the right. The difference here is most important in connection with the sense of the preposition. If ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ means _on_ the left, it is only on a single point of the left; if it means towards or over-against the right, it means towards or over-against the whole right. Now, the former of these senses is, I contend, utterly out of keeping with the whole Homeric use of ἐπὶ as a preposition governing the accusative: while the latter is quite in keeping with it.

~_Force of ἐπὶ with ἀριστερά._~

The idea of motion, physical or metaphysical, in some one or other of its modifications, appears to inhere essentially in the Homeric use of ἐπὶ with the accusative. In the great majority of instances, it is used with a verb of motion, which places the matter beyond all doubt. In almost all other instances, either the motion of a body, or some covering of space where there is no motion, are obviously involved. Thus the Zephyr (κελάδει[666]) whistles ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον. A hero, or a bevy of maidens, may shout ἐπὶ μακρόν[667]. The rim of a basket is covered with a plating of gold, χρυσῷ δ’ ἐπὶ χείλεα κεκράαντο: that is, the gold is drawn over it[668]. Achilles looks[669] ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον. The sun appears to mortals ἐπὶ ζείδωρον ἄρουραν[670]. Here we should apparently understand ‘spread,’ or some equivalent word. We have ‘animals as many as are born’ ἐπὶ γαῖαν[671]. Or, again, we have ‘may his glory be’ (spread) ἐπὶ ζείδωρον ἄρουραν[672]. Again: ἐπὶ δηρὸν δέ μοι αἰὼν ἔσσεται is, ‘I shall live long[673].’ And Achilles seated himself θῖν’ ἐφ’ ἁλὸς πολιῆς[674]. A dragon with a purple back is[675] ἐπὶ νῶτα δάφοινος. The shoulders of Thersites, compressed against his chest, are, ἐπὶ στῆθος συνοχωκότε[676]. The horses of Admetus stand even with the rod across their backs[677], σταφύλῃ ἐπὶ νῶτον ἐΐσας. I have not confined these examples to merely local cases, because a more varied illustration, I think, here enlarges our means of judgment. In every case, it appears, we may assert that extension, whether in time or space, is implied; and the proper word to construe ἐπὶ (except with certain verbs of motion, as, ‘he fell on,’ and the like) will be over, along, across, or over-against. Further, we have in Il. vi. 400, according to one reading, the preposition ἐπὶ combined with the verb ἔχειν, and governing the accusative. Andromache appears,

[666] Od. ii. 421.

[667] Od. vi. 117. Il. v. 101.

[668] Od. iv. 132.

[669] Il. i. 350.

[670] Od. iii. 3.

[671] Od. iv. 417.

[672] Od. vii. 332.

[673] Il. ix. 415.

[674] Il. i. 350.

[675] Il. ii. 308.

[676] Ibid. 318.

[677] Ibid. 765.

παῖδ’ ἐπὶ κόλπον ἔχουσ’ ἀταλάφρονα.

The recent editions read κόλπῳ: I suppose because the accusative cannot properly give the meaning _upon_ her breast. But we do not require that meaning. The sense seems to be, that Andromache was holding her infant _against_ her breast; that is, the infant was held to it by her hands from the opposite side. The idea of an infant _on_ her breast is quite unsuited to a figure declared to be in motion. But the sense may also be, stretched over or across her breast. Thus we always have extension involved in ἐπὶ with the accusative, whether in range of view or sound, steps of a gradual process, actual motion, pressure towards a point which is initial motion, or extension over space. But the Homeric use of ἐπὶ with the accusative will nowhere, I think, be found applicable to the inactive, motionless position of a luminous point simply as perceived in space. And if so, it cannot be allowable to construe ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ χειρὸς ἔχων, having (Arctus) _on_ his left hand.

The nearest parallel that I have found to the phrase in Od. v. 277, is the direction given by Idomeneus to Meriones, who had asked him (Il. xiii. 307) at what point he would like to enter the line of battle. Idomeneus, after giving his reasons, concludes with this injunction:

νῶϊν δ’ ὧδ’ ἐπ’ ἀριστέρ’ ἔχε στρατοῦ.

In the Odyssey, the order is to keep Arctus ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ χειρός. Here it is to keep Idomeneus (and Meriones himself, who preceded him), ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ στρατοῦ. The parallel is not complete, because in the latter case the object of the verb moves; in the former it does not move. Let us, however, consider the meaning of the latter passage, which is indisputable. It is ‘hold or keep us,’ not on the left, but ‘towards, looking and moving towards, the left of the army.’ Probably then they were coming from its right. Therefore, if for the moment we waive the question of motion, the order of Calypso was to keep Arctus looking towards the left of the ship: and accordingly Arctus was to look from its right.

We must, I apprehend, seek the key to the general meaning of this phrase from considering that idea of motion involved in the ordinary manifestation of omens, which appears to be the basis of the phrase itself. Now, it seems to be the essential and very peculiar characteristic of this phrase in Homer, and of the sister phrases ἐπιδέξια (whether written in one word or in two) and ἐνδέξια, that they very commonly imply a position different from that which they seem at first sight to suggest. For that which goes towards the left is naturally understood to go from the right, and _vice versâ_.

‘To’ and not ‘on’ is the essential characteristic of the Homeric ἐπὶ with the accusative. Accordingly, where ἐπὶ is so used with the words δεξιὰ or ἀριστερὰ, we may often understand an original position of the person or thing intended, generally opposite to the point or quarter expressed. In such a case as εὗρεν ... μάχης ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ we should join ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ with the subject of εὗρεν, and not with its object. Not A found B on the left, but A (coming) towards the left found B (there). Again, in Il. xiii. 675, νηῶν ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ should, I submit, be construed _towards_ the left, or in the direction of the left.

Now, while there is not a single passage in Homer that refuses to bear a construction founded on these principles, an examination of a variety of passages will, I believe, supply us with instances to show, that there is no other consistent mode of rendering the phrases ἀστράπτειν ἐπιδέξια; ἐέργειν ἐπ’ ἀριστερά; οἰνοχόειν, αἰτεῖν, δεικνύναι, ἐνδέξια; ἀριστερὸς ὄρνις, δεξιὸν ἐρώδιον, and others.

And although in some of these phrases the idea of motion is actually included, while the motion of omens was the original groundwork of them all, yet, as frequently happens, the effect remains when the cause has disappeared. A bird called δεξιὸς is one moving ἐπὶ δεξιά; and this, according to the law of omens, is _usually_ a bird from the left moving towards the right. And thus, by analogy, a star ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ is a star on the right not moving but looking towards the left. Once more, when we recollect that ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ habitually or very frequently means on the right as well as moving towards the left, it is not difficult to conceive so easy and simple a modification of this sense as brings it to being on the right, while also looking, instead of moving, towards the left. Lightning, which had appeared on the right, would I apprehend be ἀστραπὴ ἐπ’ ἀριστερά: Ἀρκτὸς ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ would be ‘Arctus on the right;’ and the introduction of the word ἔχειν cannot surely reverse the signification.

In later Greek, the expressions ἐνδέξια and ἐπιδέξια, with ἐπαριστερὰ, which seems to be the counterpart of both, the preposition ἐπὶ sometimes being divided from and sometimes united with its case, appear to be equivalent to our English phrases ‘on the right,’ and ‘on the left.’ But not so in Homer.

~_Illustrated from Il._ ii. 353. _Od._ xxi. 141.~

Let us now examine various places of the poems, where ἐνδέξια and ἐπὶ δεξιὰ (single or combined) cannot mean on the right, but may be rendered either (1) from the left, or (2) towards the right. Thus we have, Il. ii. 353,

ἀστράπτων ἐπιδέξι’, ἐναίσιμα σήματα φαίνων.

This means lightning on and from the left, so that the lightning passes, or seems to pass, towards the right. The analogy of this case to that of the star is very close; because it is rarely that lightning gives the semblance of motion: and this expression precisely exemplifies the observation, that these phrases often really imply a position of the subject exactly opposite to that which at first sight would be supposed.

Again, when Antinous bids the Suitors rise in turn for the trial of the bow, he says, Od. xxi. 141,

ὄρνυσθ’ ἑξείης ἐπιδέξια, πάντες ἑταῖροι·

and he goes to explain himself beyond dispute, by referring to the order observed by the cupbearer at the feast;

ἀρξάμενοι τοῦ χώρου, ὅθεν τέ περ οἰνοχοεύει. (142)

His meaning evidently is, Rise up, beginning on or from the left.

~_From Il._ i. 597. vii. 238. xii. 239, 249.~

The practice of the cupbearer is stated with respect to Vulcan, Il. i. 597:

αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖς ἄλλοισι θεοῖς ἐνδέξια πᾶσιν ᾠνοχόει.

So the κήρυξ (Il. vii. 183) goes round ἐνδέξια with the lots for the chieftains to draw. The beggar[678] in making his round follows the supreme law of luck, and goes ἐνδέξια. And as this meaning seems to be established, we must give the same sense, in Il. ix. 236, to ἐνδέξια σήματα φαίνων ἀστράπτει, as to the ἐνδέξια in Il. ii. 353, namely, that Jupiter displayed celestial signs on the left.

[678] Od. xvii. 365.

Again, Hector boasts of his proficiency in moving his shield so as to cover his person, Il. vii. 238,

οἶδ’ ἐπὶ δεξιὰ, οἶδ’ ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ νωμῆσαι βῶν.

We should translate this probably without much thought ‘to the right and to the left.’ But when we consider what sense is required by the idea to be conveyed, it is evident that ἐπὶ δεξιὰ means, from the left side of his person towards the right, and ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ from the right side of his person towards the left. That is to say, the first position before and during the motion, in each case, is at the side opposite to that indicated by the adjectives respectively.

Again, in a well known passage (Il. xii. 239.) Hector tells Polydamas that he cares not for omens, be they good or bad;

εἴτ’ ἐπὶ δεξί’ ἴωσι πρὸς Ἠῶ τ’ Ἠέλιόν τε, εἴτ’ ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ τοίγε, ποτὶ ζόφον ἠερόεντα.

Apart from the question, whether the sense of right and left is suitable to this passage at all, and assuming it to be so, the meaning is _from the left_ for ἐπὶ δεξιὰ and _from the right_ for ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ, on their way in each case to the opposite quarter.

Again, the portent which had drawn forth the observation of Hector was, (Il. xii. 219,)

αἰετὸς ὑψιπέτης, ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ λαὸν ἐέργων,

namely, an eagle appearing on the right and then moving towards the left. Now ἐέργω is not properly a verb of motion; and yet we see that ἐέργειν ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ means to close the army in from the right; that is to say, the eagle, which does the act ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ, is itself on the right.

There were in fact three things, which originally might, and commonly would, be included in each of these phrases. For example, in ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ,

1. Appearance at a particular point on the right; 2. Motion from that point towards the left; 3. Rest at another point on the left.

Of these the second named indicates the first and principal intention of the word; but when it passes to a second intention or derivative sense, it may include either the first point, or the third, or both. In the later Greek it appears rather to indicate the point of rest; but in the Homeric phrases of the corresponding word δεξιὸς, οἰνοχοεῖν ἐνδέξια, δεικνύναι ἐνδέξια, αἰτεῖν ἐνδέξια, ἀστραπτεῖν ἐπὶ δεξιὰ, ἐέργειν ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ, the starting-point, and not the resting-point, is the one brought into view. It is the commencement of the motion, in every one of these cases, which is indicated by the phrase, and not its close.

Being engaged upon this subject, I shall not scruple to examine one or two remaining passages, which may assist in its more thorough elucidation.

~_From Il._ xxiii. 335-7.~

I therefore ask particular attention to the passage in the Twenty-third Book of the Iliad, where Nestor instructs his son concerning his management in the chariot-race. On either side of a dry trunk upon the plain, there lay two white stones (xxiii. 329). They formed the goal, round which the chariots were to be driven, the charioteer keeping them on his left hand. The pith of the advice of Nestor is, that his son is to make a short and close turn round them, so as to have a chance of winning, in spite of the slowness of his team. The directions are (335-7):

αὐτὸς δὲ κλινθῆναι ἐϋπλέκτῳ ἐνὶ δίφρῳ ἦκ’ ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ τοῖϊν· ἀτὰρ τὸν δεξιὸν ἵππον κένσαι ὁμοκλήσας, εἶξαί τέ οἱ ἡνία χερσίν.

It is clear from the last line and a half that the goal was to be on his left hand. But what is the meaning of κλινθῆναι ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ τοῖϊν? Nothing can be more scientific than the precept. The horses are to make a sharp turn: the impetus in the driver’s body might throw him forward if he were not prepared: he is to do what every rider in a circus now does, to lean inwards; and that is expressed by leaning ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ, of the goal--for τοῖϊν must, I apprehend, be understood to agree with the dual λᾶε (329), and not the plural ἵππους (334); particularly because the word ἵππος is repeated immediately after it. The meaning then is, that he is desired to lean to the left of the goal, while all the time he keeps on its right. We should under the same circumstances say, ‘Lean gently towards the right side of the goal, as you are about to turn round it.’ He, meaning the same thing, says, ‘Lean towards the left; that is, lean _from the right_, or while keeping on the right, of the object named. Now this I take to be exactly the sense of Od. v. 277. Ulysses was bid to sail, having the Great Bear placed on his right, but looking from his right, and towards his left, as every star looks towards the quarter opposite to that in which it is itself seen. He is to have the star _e dextrâ_, because from that point it looks _ad sinistram_. It looks across him towards his left, just as Antilochus was to lean in the direction across the goal towards its left.

The whole of this interpretation without doubt depends upon the word τοῖϊν; and I do not presume to say that it is necessarily, under grammatical rules, to be understood of the goal, and not of the horses. But it is the more natural construction: and Homer often reverts merely by this demonstrative pronoun, without further indication, to a subject which he has only named some time back[679].

[679] So τήν δε, Il. i. 127, and particularly τὴν in Il. i. 389, meaning Chryseis, who has not been named since v. 372.

But if grammar leave that question in any degree open, I apprehend that physical considerations must decide it. It is impossible for the driver to lean to the left of his horses as they are rounding the goal. To the left of his chariot he may lean, as he stands upon it: but to their left he cannot, for they are considerably in advance of him; and in order to make the turn at all, they must, at each point of the curve, which is a curve to the left, be much further along the curve, and consequently much further to the left, than he can possibly be. It would be a parallel case, if there were two riders round a circus, one following the other, and the rider of the after horse were told to lean to the right of the fore horse. Therefore the word τοῖϊν can, I submit, only refer to the two stones, which form the goal.

~_From Il._ ii. 526.~

A line in the Greek Catalogue will enable us to carry the question still further. In Il. ii. 517, after the two Bœotian contingents, come the Phocians: and the Poet says, ver. 526,

Βοιωτῶν δ’ ἔμπλην ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ θωρήσσοντο.

I see that this is translated even by Voss ‘on the left.’ Now is not this contrary to all likelihood? Was not all propitious movement with Homer from left to right? Has not this been proved by the cases of the Immortals, the Omens, the Cupbearer, the Beggar, and the Herald? Is it likely, or is it even conceivable, that Homer should depart from this principle in his order of the army? Surely the meaning is this: Having fixed for himself geographically the order of his contingents, he has likewise to state their order of array upon the field; and accordingly by this line he informs us, that the Phocians, who were the second of the races he mentions, stood ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ of the Bœotians: he of course means us to understand that the Abantes, the third race, were ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ of the Locrians, and so on through the whole: or in other words, that he informs us he does not forget to follow, amidst the multitudinous detail of the Catalogue, the established, the religious, and the propitious order of enumeration, namely, the order which begins from the left, and moves towards the right.

Thus we must in this place translate ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ ‘towards, that is, looking towards the left of the Bœotians;’ or ‘looking to the Bœotians on their left,’ i. e. of the Phocians; the Phocians being, whichever construction we adopt, on the right, actually on the right, not the left of the Bœotians. The real force of the expression probably is this: that the Bœotians, having taken their ground, the Phocians came up and took theirs next to them on their right.

~_Application to Od._ v. 277.~

Now this case is precisely in point for Od. v. 277: because θωρήσσεσθαι is not properly a verb of motion: and in all likelihood it may be relied on independently of further details from Homer, because it brings the matter to an easy test, through the certainty which we may well entertain, that Homer would have the order of his army begin from left to right, like every other duly and auspiciously constituted order.

There is, however, another interpretation proposed as follows: they, the Phocians, took ground next (ἔμπλην) to the Bœotians on the left, i. e. of the army; the two together, as it were, forming its left wing. To this construction there seem to be conclusive objections:

1. Why should Homer tell us that the Bœotians and Phocians together constituted a division of the army, when he tells us nothing similar respecting any of the twenty-six contingents that remain? Neither of these races were particularly distinguished either politically or in arms.

2. It appears clear that the Bœotians and Phocians did not together form a division of the army: for, in the Thirteenth Book, the Bœotians fight in company with the Athenians or Ionians, the Locrians, Phthians, and Epeans, but not with the Phocians. Il. xiii. 685, 6.

3. Neither did the Bœotians belong to the left wing of the army at all: for they are found defending the centre of the ships against Hector and the Trojans, with the two Ajaxes in their front. Il. xiii. 314-16, 674-84, 685, 700; 701, 2; 719, 20.

4. There is nowhere the smallest sign, that the Greek army was divided into wings and centre at all.

5. The order of the Catalogue is a geographical order, and not that of a military arrangement. Therefore it was requisite for Homer to tell us how the troops were arranged in the Review. This he has effected by telling us that the Phocians, the second of his tribes, drew up on the right of the Bœotians: which we have only to consider tacitly repeated all through, and the order is thus both complete and propitious. But, according to the other construction, the Poet begins with an arrangement by wings, of which we hear nowhere else: and then he forthwith forgets and abandons it.

6. I do not think ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ can be construed to the left of the army. The army has nowhere been named. The phrases ἐπὶ δεξιὰ and ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ require us to have a subject clearly in view. It is frequently named, as in ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ μάχης. When it is connected with omens, it means to the west, and ἐπιδέξια the reverse. Again, οἰνοχοεῖν ἐπιδέξια is to begin pouring wine from the left, and towards the right end of the rank whom the cupbearer may be serving. The ‘army’ has not been mentioned since the reassembling in v. 207.

These objections appear to me fatal to the construction now under our view. They do not indeed touch the question whether ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ should be interpreted on the left, or (on the right and) towards the left. That must, I think, be decided by the general principles of augury duly applied to order and enumeration.

On the whole, then, I contend that it is wrong to construe Od. v. 277, ‘to sail with Arctus _on_ his left hand.’ It would be much more nearly right, and would, in fact, convey the meaning, though not in a grammatical manner, if we construed it ‘to sail with Arctus on his right hand.’ But the manner of construing it, grammatically and accurately, as I submit, is this: ‘to sail with Arctus looking towards the left (of his hand, or his left hand);’ that is to say, looking _from his right_. And generally, that the proper mode of construing ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ and ἐπὶ δεξιὰ in Homer is, _towards_ the left, _towards_ the right; or, conversely, _from_ the right, _from_ the left.

This meaning is in exact accordance with the North-eastern, and is entirely opposed to the North-western, hypothesis. And I venture to believe that, itself established by sufficient evidence from other passages in the poems, it enables us to give a meaning substantially, though perhaps not minutely self-consistent, though of course one not based upon the true configuration of the earth’s surface as it is now ascertained, to every passage in Homer which relates to the Outer Geography of the Odyssey.

Both ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ and ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ χειρὸς are used repeatedly in the Hymn to Mercury[680]. One of the passages resembles in its form that of the eagle, Il. xii. 219. It is this:

[680] Hymn. Merc. 153. Cf. 418, 424, 499.

κεῖτο, χέλυν ἐρατὴν ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ χειρὸς ἐέργων.

And probably the basis of the idea is the same. The really correct Greek expression for ‘on the left hand’ I take to be χειρὸς ἐξ ἀριστερᾶς, which is used by Euripides[681].

[681] Hecuba 1127.

~_Sense altered in later Greek._~

But in the later Greek the idea of the point of arrival prevailed over that of the point of departure: and, conventionally at least, the ἐπιδέξια, with its equivalent ἐνδέξια, came to mean simply ‘on the right,’ and ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ, ‘on the left.’ It is worth notice, that we have a like ambiguous use in English of the word _towards_. Sometimes towards the left means being on the left: sometimes it means moving from the right in the direction of the left: and a room ‘towards the south’ means one with its windows on the north, looking out over the south, like as the star Arctus looks out towards the left of Ulysses[682].

[682] I have observed that δεξιὸς ὄρνις means a bird flying from the left towards the right, and ἀριστερὸς ὄρνις, the reverse. Here however the force of the epithet is derived from immediate connection with the motion implied, and with the doctrine of omens: δεξιὸς ὦμος would of course be the right shoulder, and δεξιή, as we have seen, may stand alone to signify the right hand. And so in general with these words, when used as epithets, apart from a preposition implying motion, and from any relation to omens.

IV. AOIDOS.

SECT. I.

_On the Plot of the Iliad._

~_Theory of Grote on the Iliad._~

Although the hope has already been expressed at the commencement of this work, that for England at least, the main questions as to the Homeric poems have well nigh been settled in the affirmative sense; yet I must not pass by without notice the recently propounded theory of Grote. I refer to it, partly on account of the general authority of his work; for this authority may give a currency greater than is really due to a portion of it, which, as lying outside the domain of history proper, has perhaps been less maturely considered than his conclusions in general. But it is partly also because I do not know that it has yet been treated of elsewhere; and most of all because the discussion takes a positive form; for the answer to his argument, which perhaps may be found to render itself into a gratuitous hypothesis, depends entirely upon a comprehensive view of the general structure of the poem, and the reciprocal relation and adaptation of its parts.

Grote believes, that the poem called the Iliad is divisible into two great portions: one of them he conceives to be an Achilleis, or a poem having for its subject the wrath of Achilles, which comprises the First Book, the Eighth, and all from the Eleventh to the Twenty-second Books inclusive; that the Books from the Second to the Seventh inclusive, with the Ninth and Tenth, and the two last Books, are portions of what may be called an Ilias, or general description of the War of Troy, which have been introduced into the original Achilleis, most probably by another hand; or, if by the original Poet, yet to the destruction, or great detriment, of the poetic unity of his work.

In support of this doctrine he urges,

1. That the Books from the Second to the Seventh inclusive in no way contribute to the main action, and are ‘brought out in a spirit altogether indifferent to Achilles and his anger[683].’

[683] Grote’s Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 258 n.

2. That the Ninth Book, containing a full accomplishment of the wishes of Achilles in the First, by ‘atonement and restitution[684],’ is really the termination of the whole poem, and renders the continuance of his Wrath absurd: therefore, and also from the language of particular passages, it is plain that ‘the Books from the Eleventh downwards are composed by a Poet, who has no knowledge of that Ninth Book, (or, as I presume he would add, who takes no cognizance of it[685].’)

[684] Ibid. p. 241 n.

[685] Ibid. p. 244 n.

3. The Jupiter of the Fourth Book is inconsistent with the Jupiter of the First and Eighth.

4. The abject prostration of Agamemnon in the Ninth Book is inconsistent with his spirit and gallantry in the Eleventh.

5. The junction of these Books to the First Book is bad; as the Dream of Agamemnon ‘produces no effect,’ and the Greeks are victorious, not defeated[686].

[686] Ibid. p. 247.

6. For the latter of these reasons, the construction of the wall and fosse round the camp landwards is out of place.

7. The tenth Book, though it refers sufficiently to what precedes, has no bearing on what follows in the poem.

Grote has argued conclusively against the supposition that we owe the continuous Iliad[687] to the labours of Pisistratus, and shows that it must have been known in its continuity long before. He places the poems between 850 and 776 B. C.[688]; admits the splendour of much of the poetry which he thus tears from its context[689]; yet he apparently is not startled by the supposition, that the man, or the men, capable of composing poetry of the superlative kind that makes up his Achilleis, should be so blind to the primary exigencies of such a work for its effect as a whole, that he or they could also be capable of thus spoiling its unity by adding eight books, which do not belong to the subject, to fifteen others in which it was already completely handled and disposed of. And though our historian leans to the belief of a plurality of authors for the Iliad, he does not absolutely reject the supposition that it may be the work of one[690].

[687] Grote’s History of Greece, vol. ii. p. 210.

[688] Ibid. p. 178.

[689] Ibid. p. 260, 236, 267.

[690] Ibid. p. 269.

~_Offer of Il._ ix. _and its rejection_.~

As to the Ninth Book[691], he refers it more decisively to a separate hand; and he makes no difficulty about presuming that the Homerids could furnish men capable of composing (for example) the wonderful speech of Achilles from the 307th to the 429th line. Happy Homerids! and _felix prole virûm_, happy land that could produce them!

[691] Ibid.

It appears to me that these are wild suppositions. Against no supposition can there be stronger presumptions than against those which, by dissevering the prime parts of the poem, produce a multiplication of Homers; and however Grote may himself think that enlargements such as he describes, do not imply of necessity at least a double authorship, few indeed, I apprehend, will be found, while admitting his criticisms on the poem, to contend that it can still be the production of a single mind. Still less can I think that any one would now be satisfied with the sequence of Books proposed, or with the mutilated proportions, any more than with the reduced dimensions, of the work as a whole.

I will say not that the propounder of such a theory, but that such a propounder of any theory, is well entitled to have the question discussed, whether those proportions are indeed mutilated by the change, or whether they are, on the contrary, restored. Let me observe, however, at the outset, that it is the general argument with which only I shall be careful to deal. I do not admit the discrepancies[692] alleged; but neither is it requisite to examine each case in detail, since Grote concedes, that his own theory does not relieve him from conflict with particular passages of the poem.

[692] Note, pp. 240-4.

As respects the Ninth Book, this theory seems to proceed on a misconception of the nature of the offence taken by Achilles; as respects the others, upon a similar misconception of the measure which the Poet intends us to take of his hero’s greatness, and of the modes by which he means us to arrive at our estimate.

It takes time to sound the depths of Homer. Possibly, or even probably, many may share the idea that what Achilles resents is the mere loss of a captive woman, and that restitution would at once undo the wrong. But they misconceive the act, and the man also, to whom the wrong was done. The soul of Achilles is stirred from its depths by an outrage, which seems to him to comprehend all vices within itself. He is wounded in an attachment that had become a tender one; for he gives to Briseis the name of wife (ἄλοχον θυμάρεα), and avows his care and protection of her in that character. A proud and sensitive warrior, he is[693] insulted in the face of the army; and to the Greeks, whose governing sentiment was αἴδως, or honour, insult was the deadliest of all inflictions. Further, he is defrauded by the withdrawal of that which, by the public authority, presiding over the distribution of spoil, he had been taught to call his own; and he keenly feels the combination of deceit with insolence[694]. Justice is outraged in his person, when he alone among the warriors is to have no share of the booty. In this he rightly sees an ingratitude of threefold blackness; it is done by the man, for whose sake[695] he had come to Troy without an interest of his own; it is done to the man, whose hand, almost unaided, had earned the spoil which the Greeks divided[696]: lastly, it is done to him, on whose valour the fortunes of their host with the hopes of their enterprise principally depended, and whose mere presence on the field of itself drives and holds aloof the principal champions of Troy[697]. And, lastly, while the whole army is responsible by acquiescence and is so declared by him, (ἐπεί μ’ ἀφέλεσθέ γε δόντες, Il. i. 299,) the insult and wrong proceed from one, whose avarice and irresolution made him in the eyes of Achilles at once hateful and contemptible[698].

[693] ὕβρις, Il. i. 203, 214. ἐφυβρίζων, Il. ix. 368, also 646-8.

[694] Il. ix. 370-6: when he returns again and again to the word: ἐξαπατήσειν, 371; ἀπάτησε, 375; ἐξαπάφοιτο, 376.

[695] Il. i. 152.

[696] Ibid. 165-8.

[697] Il. v. 789.

[698] Il. i. 225-8.

Such is the deadly wrong, that lights up the wrath of Achilles. And, as he broods over his injuries, according to the law of an honourable but therefore susceptible, and likewise a fierce and haughty nature, the flame waxes hotter and hotter, and requires more and more to quench it. Thus there is a terrible progression and expansion in his revenge: and by degrees he arrives at a height of fierce vindictiveness, that minutely calculates the modes in which the suffering of its object can be carried to a _maximum_, yet so as to leave his own renown untouched, and open the widest field for the exercise of his valour. It is not vice, nor is it virtue, which Homer is describing in his Achilles; it is that strange and wayward mixture of regard for right and justice with self-love on the one side, and wrath on the other, which are so common among us men of meaner scale. The difference is, that in Achilles all the parts of the compound are at once deepened to a superhuman intensity, and raised to a scale of magnificence which almost transcends our powers of vision. We must, indeed, no more look for a didactic and pedantic consistency in the movement of his mind, than in shocks from an earthquake, or bursts of flame from a volcano. But a real consistency there is; and doubtless it could be measured by the rules of every day, if only every day produced an Achilles.

Let us now follow his course with close attention.

~_Restitution not the object of Achilles._~

It can hardly fail to draw remark, that the spirit of Achilles never from the first moment fastens on mere restitution, or on restitution at all, as its object. With his knowledge of his own might, which was enough to prompt him, had he not been restrained from heaven, to assail and slay Agamemnon on the spot, he nevertheless does not so much as entertain the thought of fighting to keep Briseis. His thought is far other than this: ‘I will not lift a finger against one of you for the girl, since you choose to take from me what you gave (298, 9). I will not hold what you think fit to grudge.’ While he adds, that they shall not touch an article of what is properly his own[699]. Not that he cares for mere possession or dispossession. Were that his thought, he would have lifted up the invincible arm for the retention of Briseis. But his thought is this, ‘One outrage you have done to justice and to me, and, encouraged as well as commanded by great deities, I bear it; but not even under their promises and injunctions will I endure that you shall sin again.’ The loss he had suffered now became quite a subordinate image in his mind; punishment of the offenders, and not restitution, was ever before his view. His first threat is that of withdrawal (Il. i. 169): which, he conceives, will put a stop to Agamemnon’s rapacious accumulations. Next (233) he swears the mighty oath that every Greek shall rue the day of his wrong, and look in vain to Agamemnon for protection against the sword of Hector. Again, in his prayer to Thetis, he intreats that she will induce Jupiter to drive the Greeks in rout and slaughter back upon the ships and the sea. He never dreams of the mere reparation of his wrong: when he refers to Briseis in the great oration of the Ninth Book, it is for the purpose of a slaying sarcasm against the Atreidæ; his soul utterly refuses to treat the affair in the manner of an action at law for damages; he looks for nothing less than the prostration of the Grecian host and its being brought to the very door of utter and final ruin, with the compound view of avenging wrong, glorifying justice, enhancing the sufferings of his foe, and magnifying the occasion and achievements of his own might, to be put forth when the proper time shall come.

[699] The ἄλλα, v. 300, must mean what he had not acquired by gift of the army; since in Il. 9. 335, as well as in i. 167, 356, he apparently speaks of Briseis as the only prize he had received.

~_The offer radically defective._~

The hero withdraws, and remains aloof. The Greeks, after a panic and a recovery, determine to carry on the war without him. But the hostile deities, less under restraint than the friendly ones, give active encouragement to the Trojan chiefs and army in the fight. They are discerned by the Greeks, who accordingly recede[700]. Finding that, instead of driving the Trojans to the city, on the contrary, even before the single fight of Hector and Ajax, they themselves had suffered loss, they supply their camp with the defences, which it had never needed while the name of Achilles and his prowess kept the enemy either within their walls, or in the immediate vicinity of the city. This happens in the Seventh Book, and it is the first note of the consequences of the Wrath. In the Eighth, they are more decidedly worsted under a divine influence, and are driven back upon their works, while the Trojans bivouac on the place of battle. The army had suffered no heavy loss: yet the infirm will of Agamemnon gives way: and, portending greater evils, he a second time counsels flight[701]. The advice is warmly repudiated by Diomed and the other chiefs. Still the course of their affairs is now by undeniable signs altered for the worse. Hereupon, Nestor advises an attempt to conciliate Achilles by offers of restitution and of gifts, with close union and incorporation into the family of Agamemnon. Now it is most important that we should observe, that gifts and kind words were the beginning and the end of this mission. There was no confession of wrong authorized by Agamemnon, or made by the Envoys, to Achilles. The woes of the Greeks are described: Achilles is exhorted to lay aside his Wrath: he is told of all the fine things he will receive upon his compliance: but not one word in the speech of Ulysses conveys the admission at length gained from Agamemnon in the Nineteenth Book, that he has offended. Therefore Achilles is not appeased: but, I must add, neither is justice satisfied, nor right re-established.

[700] Il. v. 605, 702.

[701] Il. ix. 26.

~_Apology needed also._~

Presents and promises were not what Achilles wanted. On the contrary, to his inflamed and inexorable spirit, being less than and different from the thing he sought, the very offer of them was matter of new exasperation. The very offer of them thus made seemed, and in some degree rightly seemed, to imply that they who tendered it must take him for a man, whose mind was cast in the same sordid mould as that of the king, who had given the offence. Gifts indeed Achilles must have, and abundance of them, when he is at last to be appeased: but it is not in order to swell an inventory of possessions: it is that the memory of them may dwell in his mind, and stand upon the record of his life, like the golden ornaments that he wore upon his manly person, namely, to exhibit and to make felt his glory.

I do not indeed presume to say we have evidence to show that Achilles would have relented at the period of the mission, if a frank confession of wrong, and apology for insult, had been made together with the proffer of the gifts. On the contrary, with his higher sentiments there mingled a towering passion of a vindictive order. It was as it were the corruption or abuse, not the basis, of the mood of the estranged Achilles: but it was there, and there, like everything Achillean, in colossal proportions. Still I think it has not been sufficiently observed that, as matter of fact, the proceeding of the Ninth Book was radically defective, because it treated the affair as (so to call it) one of mere merchandize, to be disposed of like the balance of an account.

When Achilles finds that the desire to avenge the death of Patroclus has become paramount within him, and in consequence renounces the Wrath[702], it is true that he does not stipulate for an apology. But neither does he stipulate for the gifts. Both however are given, and the apology comes first in the faltering speech of Agamemnon[703], who distinguishes between two kinds of atonement;

[702] Il. xix. 67.

[703] Ibid. 134-8.

ἂψ ἐθέλω ἀρέσαι, δόμεναί τ’ ἀπερείσι’ ἄποινα.

Were there any doubt about the reality of this distinction, it might be removed by evidence which the Odyssey supplies. Eurualus, who appears to have been one of the secondary kings in Scheria, had not yet atoned for his insult to Ulysses, when Alcinous recommended that all the twelve, who belonged to that order, should make a present to the departing stranger. But from Eurualus, he observes, something more is requisite; he must offer an apology as well as a gift[704];

[704] Od. viii. 390-415.

Εὐρύαλος δέ ἑ αὐτὸν ἀρεσσάσθω ἐπέεσσιν καὶ δώρῳ· ἐπεὶ οὔτι ἔπος κατὰ μοῖραν ἔειπεν.

And this is done accordingly, in the amplest and frankest manner.

All this should be borne in mind, when we estimate the consistency of the Poet through the medium of the conduct of Achilles.

It was not a moment’s light apprehension, suffered by Agamemnon and the army, that could avail to obliterate his resentment. They had scarcely tasted of the cup of bitterness; he required that they should drain it to the dregs. He will not hear of the return of Briseis: τῇ παριαύων τερπέσθω[705]. With a mixture of close argument, terrible denunciation, and withering sarcasm, he overpowers and silences the Envoys. Only Phœnix can address him, and that after a long pause and in tears.

[705] Il. ix. 336.

Yet the mighty spirit of Achilles sways to and fro in the tempest of its own emotions. Again he has threatened to depart: bidding them, with a bitterness that mounts far away into the region of the sublime, come the next day and see, if they think such a sight can be worth their seeing, his fleet speeding homeward across the broad Hellespont; or north Ægean. But this course of action would have balked his appetite for glory; which, as he knew[706], he could only buy, and that with his life, at Troy. Perhaps, too, he was softened by the respect of the Envoys, who were personally agreeable to him; perhaps grimly pleased with the awe that his Titanic passion had inspired; perhaps affected with a sympathetic feeling of regard by the straightforward bluntness of Ajax. At any rate it is plain that there followed upon the speech of the Telamoniad chief[707] a greater sign of yielding, than any which the paternal exhortations of Phœnix, or those most artfully drawn pictures by Ulysses[708] of the rage and fury of Hector, had sufficed to produce. In answer to Ulysses, to the bottom of whose astuteness his clear eye had pierced, he says, ‘I shall go[709].’ In answer to Phœnix[710], ‘To-morrow we will decide, whether to go or stay.’ In answer to Ajax, he makes a more sensible advance. He now so far relents as to tell them, he will bethink himself of battle; yet it shall only be when the hand of Hector, dealing death to Greeks, and flame to their vessels, shall have reached the tents and ships of the Myrmidons. Then it will be time enough: for then, at _his_ encampment and by _his_ dark ship, he trows that he will stay the course of Hector, however keen for fight[711].

[706] Il. i. 352-4.

[707] Il. ix. 624-42. Sup. Agorè, p. 111.

[708] Ibid. 237-43, and 304-6.

[709] Ibid. 357.

[710] Ibid. 617.

[711] Il. ix. 649-55.

~_Consistency maintained in and after Il._ ix.~

Thus far, then, we surely have no pretext for saying that Homer has departed from the purpose of his poem, of which the man Achilles is the centre and animating principle, and his Wrath with its terrible effects the theme. These effects are now developed up to a certain point: not such a point as really to endanger the army, or excite strong sympathy or apprehension on its behalf, but yet such a point as entirely to tame the irresolute egotism of Agamemnon, and drive his but half-masculine character into efforts again to lay hold upon the prop, which he had so rashly and lightly, as well as selfishly and unjustly, put away.

If we were to consider Achilles as engaged in a mere personal quarrel, we must condemn him, without any qualification whatever, for not accepting the reparation now tendered by Agamemnon. But if we bear in mind that the wrong done was a public wrong, that no confession of this wrong was made, that the other kings and leaders, and the whole army, became in some degree parties to it by their acquiescence, and that he was thus as much or more the vindicator of great public rights than the mere avenger of a personal offence, it is not so clear that the conduct of Achilles after the mission of the Ninth Book is incapable in principle of justification, according to the moral code of Greece. It must, however, undoubtedly remain amenable to severe censure on the score of excess: a culpability, for the penal notice of which Homer has made abundant provision in the sequel of the poem.

But this question is by the way: the main issue raised is as to the poetical consistency and effect of the structure, which Homer has chosen for his work. Upon this there is surely little room for doubt.

From the Ninth Book we commence afresh: Achilles in his moody seclusion, the Greeks in a manful determination to do their best; even Agamemnon is now roused to feel what he has brought upon the army, thrown back from his moral irresolution as a chief upon his personal courage as a soldier, and resolved to appear in the field, that he too may earn his laurels there.

And these intentions are gallantly fulfilled. The night foray of Diomed and Ulysses stands well, as one of the minor but safe measures, by which a skilful generalship often makes its first efforts to raise the spirits of a downcast army. Agamemnon then appears, and shows himself to be a warrior of a high, nay of the highest order of strength and valour. The other kings exert themselves with their wonted chivalry. But the decree of Jove, working through the accidents of war, drives three of the four great champions from the field, and leaves only Ajax; who, invincible wherever he is found, yet cannot be everywhere, nor, single handed, govern the result of battle along the whole extent of the line. And now come the great exertions and successes of the Trojans, especially Sarpedon and his Lycian contingent, Hector playing rather a conventional than a real part. Now it goes hard indeed with the Greeks; the fire touches the ships; Patroclus must go forth and die; and the Wrath is at an end, for it is drowned in the bitterness of the tears of Achilles.

With reference, then, to the main purpose of the poem, it proceeds regularly to its climax, and there is no limb of the Iliad separable from the body without destroying the symmetrical, masculine, and broad development of its general plan. I speak now of the principal fabric of the poem. Few who are not prepared to pull that in pieces will, I apprehend, accede to the proposal to shear it of the two last Books, which therefore hardly require a separate defence.

~_Skilful adjustment of conflicting aims._~

To me it appears well worthy of remark, with what extraordinary skill Homer has contrived to adjust his poem to the several aims which he had to keep in view. The grand one doubtless was the glory of his country in the person of Achilles[712]. Still he was bound not to sacrifice poetically the martial fame of the rest of Greece even to the first among them, whatever calamities he might make the army suffer on his account. To avoid this sacrifice, he was obliged to uphold the military character and power of the Greeks in their struggle with the Trojans, even when deprived of the prowess of their great champion Achilles. And yet he could not degrade Hector and the Trojans, or he would have reached the lame conclusion of adorning his own country’s heroes with a poor and unworthy triumph. Thus his course was to be steered among a variety of difficulties, all pressing upon him from opposite quarters.

[712] On the character of Achilles, I recommend reference to Colonel Mure, Lit. Greece, i. 273-91, and 304-14. In no part of his treatment of the poems has that excellent Homerist (if I may presume to say so) done better service. See likewise Professor Wilson’s Essays, Critique iv: and the Prælections of the Rev. J. Keble, i. 90-104. This refined work, which criticizes the poems in the spirit of a Bard, set an early example, at least to England, of elevating the tone of Homeric study.

We see at once how steadily he kept in view his pole-star; how he handled the events and characters of his poem so as to give the most powerful, or rather it may be said the most overpowering, impression of the greatness of his hero, which is lifted higher and higher by the whole movement of the work as it proceeds. Let us now examine whether, in giving full scope to his main purpose, he has been obliged to sacrifice others which were also important, nay, if the highest excellence was his aim, even indispensable.

The paramount glory of Achilles is established by this: first, that in the Ninth Book the whole army, as it were, lies at his feet, and is spurned from thence: secondly, that when he finally comes forth, it is not in deference to those who have insulted him, but it is under the burning impulses of his own heart. Let us now proceed to inquire whether the Poet has or has not satisfied two other great demands. Has he, as a Greek, done all that was required to glorify Greece, and is Achilles its crown only, or is he its substitute? Has he, as a man, vindicated the principles of the moral order, and of that retributive justice which, even in this world, visibly maintains at least a partial balance between human action and its consequences to the agent?

~_Glory given to Greece._~

We should look in vain, I think, for a finer and subtler exercise of poetic art, than in the mode in which Homer has contrived to convey to us, both the general, and in particular the military inferiority of the Trojans, as compared with the Greeks. Hardly any reader can be so superficial in his observation of the poem, as not to rise from it with this inferiority sufficiently impressed upon his mind. Yet there is not a passage or a word throughout, in which it is asserted. And why? Because every direct assertion that the Trojans were less valiant or less strong than their antagonists, would have been so much detracted from the glory of overcoming them. It was essential to the work of the Poet, that he should represent the contest as an arduous one. He might have done this in the coarse method, for which his theurgy would have afforded the materials: that is, by converting his Trojans into mere puppets, whose arm, at every turn of the narrative, merely represented the impelling force of some deity or other, and, independently of such extraneous aid, was powerless. But this would have destroyed the full-flushed humanity of Homer’s poem.

As it is, he has availed himself of the divine element to make up by its assistance for the comparative weakness of the Trojan chiefs: but it is only a subdued and occasional assistance, so that there is no glaring difference in point of free agency between the two parties. Nor can it be without a purpose, that the two deities, who appear in the field on behalf of the Trojans, namely, Venus and Mars, are sent off it both wounded, the one whining, and the other howling, by the prowess of Diomed. If the Greeks are to suffer by the gods, he takes care that it shall not be by those gods who are the mere national partisans of Troy, but by a higher agency; by the decree of Jupiter, now temporarily indeed, but effectively, set against them.

It is by an indefinitely great number of strokes and touches each indefinitely small, that Homer has gained his object. The Trojan successes are always effected with the concurrence of supernatural power; the Greeks not unfrequently without, and sometimes even against it[713].

[713] Il. xvi. 780.

He as it were sets up the Trojans, so to speak, by generalities; but he gives to the Greeks, with certain occasional exceptions, the whole detail of solid achievement. Sometimes he allows a panic of doubt and fear to seize their host, but he takes care to make the sentiment only flit like a momentary shade over the sun. Thus, when the assembled chieftains of the Greek army hesitate to accept the challenge of Hector[714],

[714] Il. vii. 93.

αἴδεσθεν μὲν ἀνήνασθαι, δεῖσαν δ’ ὑποδέχθαι.

But after a short interval, and a proper appeal, nine champions appear, each and all burning to meet Hector in single combat. Sometimes he contrives to direct his praises to martial appearance and exterior, but carefully avoids the real touches of heroic character; as when he bestows on Paris the noble simile of the στάτος ἵππος. Generally he pays off, as it were, the Trojans with high-sounding words, and reserves nearly all the true qualities of heroes, as well as their exploits, for the Achæans. With them are the sagacity, consistency, firmness, promptitude, enterprise, power of adapting means to ends, comprehensiveness of view, as well as main strength of hand. But by the expedients I have mentioned, the Trojans are raised to, and kept at and no more than at, the level necessary to make them worthy and creditable antagonists. One other engine for the purpose has been employed by him, namely, the real valour and manhood of the Lycian kings and forces[715], with whom he had evidently a strong and peculiar sympathy; whose chief, Sarpedon, is really a better man in war than Hector, though much less pretentious; and who, under this prince, achieve the only real, great, and independent success that is to be found on that side throughout the whole course of the poems, namely, the first forcing of the Greek entrenchments[716].

[715] Since the first portion of this work went to press, I have found from the recent and still unfinished work of Welcher, _Griechische Götterlehre_, i. 2. n., that philological evidence appears to have been recently obtained of a close relationship between the Lycians and the Greeks.

[716] Il. xii. 397-9.

The Trojan inferiority indeed lies very much more palpably in the chiefs, than in the common soldiers. Between the bulk of the army on the one side and on the other, Homer represents no great--at least no glaring difference. Sometimes the fight is carried on upon terms purely equal[717], as during the forenoon of the day in the Eleventh Book: where there is superiority, it is assigned to the Greeks[718] or to the Trojans[719], according as the exigencies of the poem may require. Still he contrives some note of difference so as to draw a line between the merit of the respective successes; thus, when the Trojans turn the Greeks to flight, there is commonly an intimation, in more or less general terms, of a divine agency stimulating them. Hostile weapons are indeed often turned aside on behalf of Greeks: but only in one instance, I think, do the Greeks derive decided advantage from a panic divinely inspired: it is when, in the Sixteenth Book, Jupiter instils into Hector the spirit of fear[720].

[717] Il. xi. 67-83.

[718] Ibid. 90.

[719] Il. viii. 336. xvi. 569. xvii. 596.

[720] Il. xvi. 656.

This absence of broad contrast between the two soldieries is in entire accordance with what we have seen reason to presume as to their composition; namely, that the rank and file on both sides was in all likelihood composed from kindred and Pelasgian races.

Yet a strong jealousy on behalf of his country is ever the predominant sentiment in the Poet’s mind; and accordingly he insinuates, with much art, suggestions which keep even the Trojan soldiery somewhat below the Greeks; while to the chieftains of the Greek army, though his laudatory epithets are nearly as high on the one side as on the other, he assigns in action an enormous superiority, both military and intellectual. Accordingly, when we come to cast up the results of the actual encounters, we are astounded at the littleness, the almost nothingness, of the Trojan achievements, and at the large havock wrought by their opponents, even during the period when Achilles was in estrangement[721].

[721] This would be best shown by a list of the considerable personages slain on the two sides respectively.

As regards the armies at large, observe the similes used in the Fourth Book[722]. The Greeks move in silence and discipline, like the swelling waves when the tempest is just beginning to gather: the Trojans, like innumerable sheep, who stand bleating in the fold while they are being milked[723]. In the Fifth Book, while it is mentioned, as if casually, that Apollo, Mars, and Eris, were stirring and keeping up the Trojans, it is subjoined, without ostensible reference to this intimation, but plainly in artful contrast with it, that the Greeks found sufficient incentives in the exhortations of the two Ajaxes, of Ulysses, and of Diomed[724]. Again, when Hector returns, after his battle with Ajax[725], to his comrades, we are told that they rejoiced in finding him restored to them in safety, contrary to their expectation, ἀέλπτοντες σόον εἶναι. On the other hand, it is added, the Greeks led Ajax to Agamemnon, exulting in his victory over Hector (κεχαρηότα νίκῃ). The Greeks feel no thankfulness, because they had, we are evidently to understand, felt no fear. And the chief rejoices in his victory, which it really was. It was, indeed, ended as a drawn battle, though Ajax had had the best of it at every stage; but not so much for the honour of Hector, as for the purposes of the poem, since Hector had to meet Achilles in the field, and he would have been degraded by encountering an antagonist that anybody else had palpably worsted. To state the paradox as Homer had to confront it, the problem was to make Ajax conqueror, without letting Hector be conquered.

[722] Ver. 421-38.

[723] Ver. 517-20.

[724] Il. v. 517-21.

[725] Il. vii. 307-12.

~_Inferiority glaring in the Chiefs._~

When we look to the case of the chieftains as a whole, the contrast is glaring. No first rate, or even second rate, Greek chieftain is ever killed in fair field: Tlepolemus, slain by Sarpedon, comes the nearest to that rank, but is not in it. Patroclus is only slain after being disarmed by Apollo: and here it seems to me as if for once the Poet had a little overshot his mark; for the artifice is gross, and covers the pretended exploit of Hector with indelible disgrace. In fact, Hector never once achieves a considerable success in the field: though only Achilles, the first Greek warrior, is allowed completely to overcome him[726], yet he is decidedly inferior in fight to both Diomed and Ajax, who jointly occupy the two next places, but as between whom Homer has not decisively marked the claim to precedence. In general terms, he gives it to Ajax more emphatically[727], but he details more and greater acts of prowess in favour of Diomed.

[726] Compare Il. ii. 768, with Il. v. 414.

[727] Il. xi. 185-209.

Even with Agamemnon Hector is admonished, on the part of Jupiter, not to contend: and he follows the advice. Of the Trojan chiefs who really fight, a large proportion are slain; Glaucus, Æneas, Deiphobus, and Polydamas are the most considerable who survive. No eminent Trojan in fact is ever allowed to display real heroism, except under circumstances where the issue is quite hopeless: accordingly Homer has never surrounded Hector with true heroic grandeur, in deed as well as word, until his final battle against Achilles, when he is at last brought to bay, and when his doom is certain. All the considerable injuries inflicted upon great Greek chieftains are from causes not implying personal prowess in their rivals: from the arrows of Pandarus or of Paris, or by the chance hit of some insignificant, or at the least secondary, but desperate Trojan, such as Socus, or such as Coon, struck even as he is himself receiving or about to receive his own death-blow[728]. But for these ignoble wounds, which were inflicted on many chiefs, including three prime heroes, Agamemnon, Diomed, and Ulysses, the Greeks, according to the agency of the poem as it stands, never would have been driven back upon their ships at all.

[728] Il. xi. 252, 437.

~_Conflicting exigencies of the plan._~

Now Homer’s difficulty in this matter was not simply that which has been heretofore pointed out, or which has been commonly supposed. His aim, says Heyne[729], in representing the disasters of the Greeks is, _ut per eas Achillis virtus insigniatur, quippe quâ destituti Achivi succumbunt, eâdem redditâ vincunt_. But this is surely a misstatement of the case. Homer has not represented the Greeks _plus_ Achilles as superior to the Trojans, and the Greeks _minus_ Achilles as inferior to them. This was what a vulgar artist, whose mind could only hold one idea at a time, would have done; nay, what it was difficult to avoid doing, for it was vital to Homer’s purpose that the vengeance of Achilles should be completely satiated: it was not to be thought of that this transcendent character, this ideal hero, should be balked by man of woman born; the whole web of the Poet’s thought would have been rent across, had there been failure in such a point. What was needful in this view could only be accomplished by the extremest calamities of the Greeks. These calamities he had to bring about, and yet to give to the Greeks a real superiority of military virtue. We have seen already how he effected the latter: how did he manage the former? Partly by giving Achilles, in right of his mother Thetis, such an interest in the courts of heaven, as to throw a preponderating divine agency for the time on the side of the Trojans; partly by a skilful use of the chances of war, in assigning to Troy a superiority in the comparatively ignoble skill (as it was then used) of the bow. Thus he causes the Greeks to be worsted, notwithstanding their superiority: by their being worsted, he satisfies the exigencies of his plot; by exhibiting their superiority, he fulfils the conditions of his own office as a national poet. To speak of the ingenuity of Homer may sound strange, for we are accustomed to associate his name with ideas of greater nobleness; but still his ingenuity, in this adjustment of conflicting demands upon him, appears to be such as has never been surpassed.

[729] Exc. ii. ad Il. xxiv. s. iv. vol. viii. p. 801. See, however, also p. 802.

~_Greeks superior even without Achilles._~

And here I, for one, cannot but admire the way in which Homer has made purposes, which others would have found conflicting, to serve as reciprocal auxiliaries. The Embassy of the Ninth Book certainly glorifies Achilles: but let us ask, does it not help also to glorify Greece? Let us consider what had happened. The withdrawal of Achilles was at once felt as a great blow; and it acted on the whole tone of the army. This appears in various ways. We read it in the home-sick impulses of the Second Assembly (b. ii.); in the advice of Nestor to take measures for securing the responsibility of officers and men (ii. 360-8); in the slackness of various chiefs during the Circuit of Agamemnon (b. iv.); in its being recorded to the honour of that leader (iv. 223) that he did not flinch from his duty; lastly, in the momentary reluctance of the Greek heroes to encounter Hector (vii. 93). All this is thoroughly natural. Having leant upon a prop, they were not at once aware of their remaining and intrinsic strength. They, like all persons who have not learned the habit of self-reliance, required to learn it with pain. Hence, after the very first touch of comparative weakness in the field, they conceive the idea of the rampart. They had not really been worsted: but their enemies had learned to face them; their position was now no longer what it had used to be, when Hector did not venture out in front of the Dardanian Gate. But the building of the rampart produced, as was natural, an increased weakness. Besides this, Jupiter, seeing that the tendency of events was not to give a sufficiently rapid and decisive triumph to Achilles, now inhibited those deities, who were friendly to Greece, from taking part, while he himself (viii. 75) alarmed and abashed the Greeks with his thunder. They thus feel themselves thrown one full stage further into weakness. What more natural, than that they should turn to Achilles, and try his disposition towards them? This is effected in the Ninth Book. They then become acquainted practically, for the first time, with the fierceness of the seven times heated furnace of the Wrath. This experience teaches them, that they must do or die. So at last, the bridge behind them being broken, Greece is put upon her mettle. The gallant Diomed becomes the spokesman at once of chivalry and of common sense. ‘You should not have asked him. By asking, you have emboldened and hardened him. Let him alone. Rely upon yourselves. Refresh yourselves with sleep and a good meal, and then, order out the troops, and have at them: I for my part will be found in the van[730].’ Then it is that the Greeks understand their position, and, casting off hope from Achilles, place it in themselves. Hence that great development of valorous energies in the Eleventh Book, which proves that in equal fight, even though Achilles were absent, Troy had not a hope: so that the expedient of chance-wounds, disabling all the prime warriors but Ajax, is absolutely necessary in order to bring about the required amount of disaster. It appears to me, I confess, that this is a masterly adjustment, alike true in nature, and high in art.

[730] Il. ix. 697-709.

But first, after the great repulse, comes the pilot-balloon, the tentative effort, of the Doloneia.

Next to the skill and power with which the Poet has discriminated the characters of his greater Greek heroes, I am tempted to admire the circumspection and precision, with which he has assigned their relative degrees of prominence in the action. To those who complain of the Doloneia for want of a purpose, I would reply that, in the first place, besides its merits as an operation with reference to the circumstances of the moment, (for it feeds the army, as it were, with milk, when they were not yet ready for strong meat,) it remarkably varies the tenour of the action, which without it would have fallen into something of sleepy sameness, by substituting stratagem for force, and night-adventure for the conflicts of the day. Let those who doubt this strike out the Tenth Book, and then consider how the course of the military transactions of the poem would stand without it: how much more justly the first moiety of the military action of the poem would stand liable to the imputation of monotony, which even now is of necessity the besetting danger of the whole poem. But more; I contend that the Doloneia constitutes, in the main, the ἀριστεῖα of Ulysses. His distinguished part in the Second Book is political only, and has no concern with his military qualifications. His ordinary military exploits elsewhere are secondary, and also scattered. To assign to him a great share in the field operations would have been a much less fine preparation, than the Iliad now affords, for his appearance in the Odyssey; and it would also have hazarded sameness as between his achievements and the other ἀριστεῖα of the great chiefs. Besides, there was little room in the field, as the martial art was then understood, for his distinctive qualities, self-reliance, presence of mind, fertility in resource. But military distinction, even in the time of Homer, lay in two great departments, one known as the fight (μάχη), the other as ambush (λόχος). The latter was of fully equal, nay, on account of its sharper trial of moral courage[731], it was even of still greater honour. To this class the night adventure essentially belonged. Here Ulysses is thoroughly at home. In the Doloneia, Diomed is merely the sword in the hand of Ulysses; who directs the operation, and overrules his brave companion when he thinks fit, as, for example, in the matter of the slaughter of Dolon. In what other way could Homer have given us an equally characteristic illustration of the military qualities of Ulysses?

[731] See Il. i. 226-8. xviii. 509-13. and especially xiii. 275-86: and Sup. Agorè, p. 92.

~_Harmony in relative prominence of the Chiefs._~

Now this view of the Doloneia fills up, I think, what must otherwise be admitted to be a gap in the poem. It being thus filled up, let us observe the accuracy with which shares in the action of the poem are assigned to the respective chiefs. Nestor has his own place apart as universal counsellor. Ulysses also, who, as the great twin conception to Achilles, must never be allowed to appear in a light of inferiority to any one, is so managed as not to eclipse the might of Ajax or the bravery of Diomed; and yet he has all his attributes kept entire for the great part he had to play in the Odyssey, and is never beaten, never baffled, never excelled. Then Ajax, Diomed, Agamemnon, Menelaus, even elderly Idomeneus, have each the stage made clear for them at different times, and with scope proportioned to their several claims upon us. The very intervals between their several appearances are made as wide as possible: for Diomed is in the Fifth and Eleventh Books, Ajax in the Seventh, Agamemnon in the Eleventh, Idomeneus in the Thirteenth[732], Menelaus in the Seventeenth. Ajax excels in sheer might, Diomed in pure gallantry of soul, and what is called _dash_; Agamemnon’s dignity as a warrior is most skilfully maintained, yet without his being brought into rivalry with those two still greater heroes, by Hector’s being counselled to avoid him. Menelaus, secondary in mere force, though with a spirit no less brave than gentle, is carried well through by the care taken that he shall only meet with appropriate adversaries, and the same pains are employed on behalf of Idomeneus. For Patroclus, as the friend and second self of Achilles, Homer’s fertile invention has secured a kind of distinction, which does not displace that of others, and which, notwithstanding, is eclipsed by none of them. He turns the Trojan host; he slays the great Sarpedon; he is himself slain only by foul play. I cannot vindicate the clumsy intervention of Apollo, and the meanness of the part played by Hector in this cardinal passage of his career; still I find it curious and instructive to observe in all this a new instance of the intense care, with which the Poet watches over the character especially of his Achilles. He exalts him, by exalting first those secondary eminences, far above which he keeps him towering. Therefore he would have Patroclus slain indeed, but not defeated, by Hector; and to this capital object he appears to have made, perhaps unavoidably, considerable sacrifices.

[732] He bears the chief part from 206. to 488.

Upon the whole, then, it would seem that Homer had to maintain a complex regard to a variety of objects. First of all there was the relation to observe between Achilles and all the other personages of his poem on both sides of the quarrel. Then in distributing his minor Alps, the other prime or distinguished Greek warriors, about this great Alp, he had to keep in mind and provide for their relations to one another, as well as to him. Lastly, he had to carry Hector and the Trojans so high, that to overcome their chief should be his crowning exploit, and yet so low, that they should not stand inconveniently between the Greeks and the view of such national heroes as Ulysses, Diomed, Ajax, and Agamemnon. Like Jupiter on Ida[733], from none of these objects has he ever removed his bright and watchful eye; for all of them he has made a provision alike deliberate and skilful.

[733] Il. xvi. 644.

It only remains to consider the outline of the plot in reference to the Providential Government of the world, and the administration of retributive justice; a subject which has been ably handled by Mr. Granville Penn[734].

[734] In his ‘Examination of the Primary Argument of the Iliad.’ Dedicated to Lord Grenville. 1821.

I am not able to admit that broad distinction, which is frequently drawn between the provision made for satisfying this great poetical and moral purpose in the Iliad and in the Odyssey respectively. In each I find it not only remarkable, but even elaborate. In each poem, Homer exhibits, above all things else, one chosen human character with the amplest development. But diversity is the key-note of the development in the Odyssey, grandeur or magnitude in the Iliad. The hurricane-like forces, that abound in the character of Achilles, entail a greater amount of aberration from the path of wisdom. But there is not wanting a proportionate retributive provision. Ulysses, after a long course of severe discipline patiently endured, has awarded to him a peaceful old age, and a calm death, in his Ithaca barren but beloved, with his people prospering around him. Achilles, on the other hand, is so loaded with gorgeous gifts that, wonderful as is their harmony in all points but one, that one is the centre. He has not the same unfailing and central solidity of moral equipoise. In himself gallant, just, generous, refined, still indignity can drive him into an extremity of pride and fierceness, which call for stern correction. Hence it comes about that, while the adversity of Ulysses is the way to peace, the transcendent glory of Achilles is attended by a series of devouring agonies; the rival excitements of fierce pain and fiercer pleasure accompany him along a path, which soon and suddenly descends into the night of dismal death. Alike in the one case and in the other, the balance of the moral order is preserved; and that Erinūs, who, in so many particular passages of the poems, makes miniature appearances in order to vindicate the eternal laws, such as the heroic age apprehended them, likewise presides in full development over the general action of each of these extraordinary poems.

~_Retributive justice in the two poems._~

Retributive justice, inseparably interwoven with human destiny (for thus much the Erinūs signified) tracks and dogs Achilles at every stage. Take him, for instance, as the Ninth Book shows him, at the very summit of his pride. It is in no light or joyous mood, that he repels the Envoys. Who among readers does not seem to _see_ his spirit writhe, when he describes the hot and bursting resentment in his breast, the stinging recollection of the outrages he has undergone[735]. Even by the irrepressible curiosity, which compels him to mount upon his ship for view, and to send out Patroclus to learn the course of the battle, Homer has shown us how false was any semblance of peace, that he could even now enjoy in his giddy elevation.

[735] Il. ix. 646-8.

The rampart is pierced, the ships are reached, the firebrand is hurled, and the first Greek ship burns. Achilles must not depart from his word: but his restlessness now conceives an expedient, the sending forth of Patroclus to the fight. At the same time, he takes every precaution that sagacity can suggest: he clothes his friend in his own armour, exhorts the Myrmidons to support him, above all enjoins him to confine himself to defensive warfare, and not to follow the Trojans, when repulsed, to the city. What then happens to him? That which often befalls ourselves: that when we have turned our back upon wisdom, wisdom turns her back upon us. Achilles insisted upon the disaster of his countrymen. When it came, it constrained him to send out his friend: and the calamity he had himself invoked was death to the man that he loved better than his own soul.

And why did Patroclus die? It was not that Achilles imprudently exposed him to risks beyond his strength. He was abundantly able to encounter Hector. Hector had no care, so long as the battle was by the ships, to encounter this chief. And Achilles had enjoined him to fight by the ships only, lest, if he attempted the city, a deity should take part against him[736]. Patroclus disobeyed, and perished accordingly. As Achilles had refused to follow the laws of wisdom for himself, so, when he carefully obeyed them, they were not to avail him for the saving of his friend. Heaven fought against Patroclus; Jupiter, after deliberation, tempted him from the ships, by causing Hector to fly towards the city; and the counsel of Achilles was now baffled as he had baffled the counsels of others, the dart was launched that was to pierce his soul to the quick.

[736] Il. xvi. 93.

~_Double conquest over Achilles._~

Thus his proud will was doomed to suffer. The suffering is followed by the reconciliation, and by the climax of his glory and revenge in the death of Hector. How in these Books we see him moving in might almost preternatural, with the whole world as it were, and all its forces, in subjection to his arm! But he has only passed from one excess of feeling into another: from a vindictive excess of feeling against the Greeks, to another vindictive excess of feeling against Hector. The mutilation and dishonour of the body of his slain antagonist now become a second idol, stirring the great deep of his passions, and bewildering his mind. Thus, in paying off his old debt to the eternal laws, he has already contracted a new one. Again, then, his proud will must be taught to bow. Hence, as Mr. Penn has well shown, the necessity of the Twenty-fourth Book with its beautiful machinery[737]. Achilles must surrender the darling object of his desire, the wreaking of his vengeance on an inanimate corpse. On this occasion, as before, he is subdued: and both times it is through the medium of his tender affections. But in both cases his evil gratification is cut short: and the authority of the providential order is reestablished. The Greeks pursue their righteous war: the respect which nature enjoins is duly paid to the remains of Hector, and the poem closes with the verse which assures us that this obligation was duly and peacefully discharged.

[737] See the ‘Primary Argument of the Iliad,’ pp. 241-73.

With these views, I find in the plot of the Iliad enough of beauty, order, and structure, not merely to sustain the supposition of its own unity, but to bear an independent testimony, should it be still needed, to the existence of a personal and individual Homer as its author.

SECT. II.

_The sense of Beauty in Homer; human, animal, and inanimate._

The idea of Beauty, especially as it is connected with its most signal known manifestation in the human form, and again the φθορὰ, or corruption of that idea, have each their separate course and history in the religion and manners, as well as in the arts, of Greece. By the idea of Beauty, I mean here the conception of it in the human mind as a pure and wonderful essence, nearly akin to the Divine; derived from heaven, and both continually and spontaneously tending to revert to its source. By the corruption of that idea, I mean the conception of it either mainly or wholly with reference to animal enjoyment; sometimes within, and sometimes beyond, the laws of Nature.

In the works of Homer, we find the first of these conceptions exceedingly prominent and powerful. It approaches almost to a worship: and yet is scarcely at all tainted with the second, scarcely presents the smallest deflection from the very loftiest type. In Homer, that is to say, in the Homeric descriptions of human characters and life, we never find Beauty and Vice pleasurably associated: he seems to have felt in the sanctuary of his mind as much at least as this, if not more; that a derogation from purity involved of itself a descent from the highest to a lower form of beauty: and therefore he never associates his highest descriptions of beauty with vice: differing in this not only from so many heathen, but even from many Christian authors.

~_The Dardanid traditions._~

But yet it is most remarkable that, even in Homer’s time, the level of popular tradition on the subject of beauty had begun to descend, and though he had escaped the taint, yet it had touched his age. Let us, for example, take that most striking series of traditions in the Dardanian royal family, which are recorded in the poems of Homer. That family appears to have had personal beauty for an almost entailed inheritance. Not only Hector, Deiphobus, Æneas, as well as Paris, possessed it, but Priam, even in his old age and affliction, was divinely beautiful as he entered the apartment of Achilles; and, as they sat at meat, and he admired Achilles, Achilles returned his admiration[738].

[738] Il. xxiv. 483, 631. Sup. Ilios, p. 216.

The line of traditions in this family, to which I now refer, affords the best illustration of the idea of beauty as ever striving, by an inner law, to rise to a heavenly life. There are four of these traditions: and as we pass from the older to the more recent, at each step that we make, we lose some grain of the first ethereal purity. The earliest of them all is the translation, since coarsely and without ground called the rape, of Ganymede: consistently indeed so called, according to the idea of the fable which has prevailed in later ages, but most absurdly, if it be applied to the tradition in the shape in which it stands with Homer. With him the tale of Ganymede is the most simple and perfect assertion of the principle that beauty, heavenly in its origin, is heavenly also in its destiny; and that the heaven-born and heaven-bound should contract no taint upon its intermediate passage. There were three sons, says Homer, born to Tros; Ilus was one, Assaracus another: and the third was Ganymede, a match for gods. Ganymede, the most beauteous of men, whom, for his beauty, and seemingly before he had come to maturity for succession, the gods snatched up and made the cupbearer of Jupiter, that he might dwell for ever among the Immortals[739]:

[739] Il. xx. 233-5.

ὃς δὴ κάλλιστος γένετο θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων· τὸν καὶ ἀνηρείψαντο θεοὶ Διὶ οἰνοχοεύειν κάλλεος εἵνεκα οἷο, ἵν’ ἀθανάτοισι μετείη.

The idea of sanctity, indeed, is not to be discovered here; its traces can only be found among the inspired records; the resemblance to the deity does not reach beyond the flesh and mind; yet the sum of the tale is full of interest. The other sons grew up, and became kings; he, that he might not linger, might not suffer, might not contract taint or undergo decay on earth, was taken up to that sphere, which is the proper home of all things beautiful and good.

The thought is somewhat related to that of the following remarkable lines by Emerson:

Perchance not he, but nature ailed; The world, and not the infant, failed. It was not ripe yet to sustain A genius of so fine a strain, Who gazed upon the sun and moon As if he came unto his own: And pregnant with his grander thought, Brought the old order into doubt. _His beauty once their beauty tried; They could not feed him, and he died,_ And wandered backward, as in scorn, To wait an Æon to be born.

Far as the tradition of Ganymede, according to Homer, is below that of Enoch, it is set by a yet wider distance above the later version of the same tale. Thus, in Euripides, we find him the Διὸς λέκτρων τρύφημα φίλον (Iph. Aul. 1037): and what is more sad is to find, that this utterly debased and depressed idea prevailed over the original and pure one, even to its extinction, and was adopted and propagated by the highest and the lowest poets of the Italian romance[740].

[740] For example, we might quote the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto; and the very vulgar poet, Forteguerra, in the Ricciardetto, vi. 23:

Il nettar beve, e Ganimede il mesce, Che tanto a Giuno sua spiace e rincresce.

Next in order to the tradition of Ganymede comes that of Tithonus, who, on account of his beauty, was carried up, not by the gods at large, to be as one of them, but by Aurora to become her husband, in which capacity he remained in the upper regions[741]. This is a step downwards; but the next is a stride. In the third tradition, so far as is known from the authentic works of Homer, Æneas is the son of Venus and Anchises, but without their standing in the relation of husband and wife. The particulars of the narrative are supplied in the early Hymn, which perhaps was the more readily ascribed to Homer, because it was believed to embody a primitive form of the tradition. Jupiter inspired Venus with a passion for Anchises, and, after having arrayed herself in fine vestments and golden ornaments, she presented herself to him as he was playing the lyre in solitude on Ida; when the connection was formed that gave birth to Æneas[742].

[741] Il. xi. 1. Od. v. 1.

[742] Hymn. ad Ven. 45-80.

The next fall is the greatest of all: according to the later tradition, Venus, to obtain a favourable judgment from Paris (of the next generation to Anchises), promised him a wife of splendid beauty and divine extraction, whom he was to obtain by treachery and robbery, as well as adultery; and filled him with what Homer pronounces an evil passion[743].

[743] Il. xxiv. 30.

The Poet, indeed, tells us nothing of this promise, which appears to imply powers far greater than any that the Homeric Aphrodite possessed. But he mentions the contest, informs us that Venus was the winner, makes Paris boast of her partiality, and introduces her as mentioning her own favours to Helen[744].

[744] Il. iii. 64, 440, 415.

Such was the downward course of all in the nature of man that belonged to the moral sphere, apart from the cherishing power of Divine Revelation; for the chronological order of these legends is also that of their descent, step by step, from innocence to vice.

Homer, as we have already seen, represents a very early and chaste condition of human thought. We have now to observe how strong and genuine, as well as pure, was his appetite for beauty.

Since here, as elsewhere, it is not the Poet’s usage to declare himself by express statements and elaborate descriptions, we must resort in the usual manner to secondary evidence; which, however, converging from many different and opposite quarters upon a single point, is perhaps more conclusive than mere statement, because it shows that we are not dealing with a simple opinion, but with a sentiment, a passion, and a habit, which penetrated through the Poet’s whole nature.

I shall notice Homer’s sense of beauty with reference, first and chiefly, to the human countenance and form; next, with respect to animals; and thirdly, with respect to inanimate objects and to combinations of them.

As regards the first and chief branch of this inquiry, we must notice to what persons, and in what degrees, Homer assigns beauty, from whom he withholds it; and how far he considers it to give a title to special notice, in cases where no other claim to such a distinction can be made good.

We may then observe that Homer does not commonly assign personal beauty to any human person, who is morally odious. In any questionable instance where he does so assign it, he seems to follow an historical tradition, or to be constrained by his subject. He has covered Thersites with every sort of deformity; and in the description of the persons and of the twelve dissolute women among the fifty domestic servants of Ulysses, there is barely a word that implies beauty[745].

[745] Od. xxii. 424-73.

Melantho indeed, the most conspicuous offender, is called in the Eighteenth Odyssey[746] καλλιπάρῃος. But it seems probable, that he followed a local tradition concerning her; for, if she had been simply a creation of his own, he certainly would not have represented her as the daughter of the old and faithful Dolius[747], who, with his six sons, bore arms for Ulysses.

[746] Od. xviii. 321-5.

[747] Od. xxiv. 496.

~_Treatment of the beauty of Paris._~

So also the beauty of Paris was an inseparable incident of the Trojan tale. Yet it is remarkable how little it is brought into relief. Where he is called beautiful, it is by way of sarcasm and reproach[748],

[748] Il. iii. 39.

Δύσπαρι, εἶδος ἄριστε.

The only passage, in which his beautiful appearance is described at all, is from the mouth of Venus[749], to whom Homer never intrusts anything, to be either said or done, that he wishes us to regard with favour.

[749] Ibid. 391.

Compelled, however, to set off the imposing exterior of this prince, if only for the purpose of heightening the contrast with his cowardice in action, he introduces him flourishing his pair of spears at the commencement of the Third Iliad; and what is more, when he again goes forth in his newly burnished arms at the close of the Sixth, bestows upon him one of the very noblest of his similes, that of the stall-kept horse, high fed and sleek in coat, who having broken away from his manger rushes neighing over the plain[750].

[750] Il. iii. 18. and vi. 506.

It was necessary, in order to make up the true portrait of Paris, that his exterior should be thus splendid, and his movements imposing; and it was also a part of the subtle plan, by which Homer made use of words and appearances to bring up the Trojan chieftains and people to some kind of level with the Greek. Yet there is something singular in the fact that Homer, who does not, I think, repeat his similes in any other remarkable case, reproduces the whole of this splendid passage in the Fifteenth Iliad for Hector[751]. There is here, we may rely upon it, some peculiar meaning. Possibly he grudged the exclusive appropriation of so splendid a passage to so despicable a person. There is also another singularity in his mode of proceeding. The simile is given to Hector without addition, and the poem proceeds

[751] Il. xv. 263.

ὣς Ἕκτωρ λαιψηρὰ πόδας καὶ γούνατ’ ἐνώμα.

But where he applies it to Paris, immediately after the conclusion of the noble passage he subjoins (Il. vi. 512.),

ὣς υἱὸς Πριάμοιο Πάρις κατὰ Περγάμου ἄκρης τεύχεσι παμφαίνων, ὥστ’ ἠλέκτωρ, ἐβεβήκει.

What is the meaning of ἠλέκτωρ? It is commonly taken as equivalent to ἠλέκτωρ Ὑπερίων, which means the Sun. I cannot but believe that Homer means by it to signify the cock, called in Greek ἀλέκτωρ. The ἠλέκτωρ Ὑπερίων, is used as a simile for Achilles; and it would be much against the manner of Homer to use the same simile for a Trojan, and that Trojan Paris. Whereas by the strut of the cock he may mean to reduce and modify the effect of the noble figure of the stall-horse.

~_Beauty of the Greek chiefs and nation._~

Achilles, who is not only the bravest but by far the most powerful man of the host, is also by far the most beautiful; and the very strongest terms are used to describe the impression which his appearance produced on Priam amidst the profoundest sorrow[752];

[752] Il. xxiv. 629.

θαύμαζ’ Ἀχιλῆα, ὅσσος ἔην, οἷός τε· θεοῖσι γὰρ ἄντα ἐῴκει.

It may be doubted, whether any other Poet would have ventured to combine the highest and most delicate beauty, with a strength and size approaching the superhuman. It was requisite for Achilles, as the ideal man, not only to want no great human gift, but also to have in unmatched degrees whatever gifts he possessed. The beauty of Achilles is the true counterpart to the ugliness and deformity of Thersites.

It appertains to the character of Ulysses, who comes next to Achilles, that he too should not be wanting in any thing that pertains to the excellence of human nature; while completeness and manifoldness is the specific character of his endowments, as unparalleled splendour is of those possessed by Achilles. Ulysses[753], therefore, is also beautiful. Again, the office and function of Agamemnon require him to be an object capable of attracting admiration and reverence. He, accordingly, is of remarkable beauty, but of the kind of beauty that has in it most of dignity[754];

[753] Od. xiii. 430-3.

[754] Il. iii. 169.

καλὸν δ’ οὕτω ἐγὼν οὔπω ἴδον ὀφθαλμοῖσιν, οὐδ’ οὕτω γεραρόν.

Homer never absolutely withholds beauty from any of his Greek heroes, yet he does not always expressly state that they possessed it. This endowment is, for instance, never given to Diomed, but it is ascribed to Ajax in the Eleventh Odyssey[755];

[755] Od. xi. 469.

ὃς ἄριστος ἔην εἶδός τε, δέμας τε, τῶν ἄλλων Δαναῶν, μετ’ ἀμύμονα Πηλείωνα.

It is probably because Diomed equals Ajax in chivalry, and very far excels him in mental gifts, that Homer has thrown weight into the scale of Ajax by assigning to him expressly, while he is silent about Diomed, the gift of a beautiful person.

As with individuals, so does Homer deal with masses. It may be observed that he has a lower class of epithets for the Trojans than the Greeks, and never allows them the benefit of the same national designations. Individual beauty in men is confined on both sides to the higher ranks; but no Trojan, however beautiful, is ever honoured with the title of ξανθός. Again, while he never gives to the Trojans as a body any epithet which describes them as possessed of beauty, he has assigned several expressions of this order to the Greek race. Such are the epithets καρηκομόωντες and ἑλίκωπες, and the phrase εἶδος ἀγητοὶ, (Il. v. 787. viii. 228.)

~_Beauty of Nireus and others._~

We have yet to examine how far Homer makes beauty a title to distinguished notice on behalf of those who have no other claim. The passage in the Catalogue, where Nireus is named[756], is highly curious with reference to this part of the subject. It is as follows:

[756] Il. ii. 671-5.

Νιρεὺς αὖ Σύμηθεν ἄγε τρεῖς νῆας ἐΐσας, Νιρεὺς, Ἀγλαΐης υἱὸς Χαρόποιό τ’ ἄνακτος, Νιρεὺς, ὃς κάλλιστος ἀνὴρ ὑπὸ Ἴλιον ἦλθεν τῶν ἄλλων Δαναῶν, μετ’ ἀμύμονα Πηλείωνα· ἀλλ’ ἀλαπαδνὸς ἔην, παῦρος δέ οἱ εἵπετο λαός.

These five lines form the largest of the merely personal descriptions contained in the Catalogue. Yet they are given to a man, of whom we are frankly told that he was a poor creature, and that he had but a small following. Even this does not show the whole strength of the case.

1. His ships were only three: no other commander, having so few, is named at all. The next smallest number is seven: these were the vessels of Philoctetes, and they seem to be named on account of his peculiar history and great merit.

2. This is the only instance, in which the contingent supplied by a single and wholly insignificant place is named by itself.

3. This is also one among very few cases of an ordinary birth, where the mother (Aglaïe) is named as well as the father (Charopos): the others are usually cases of reputed descent from deities or heroes.

4. The names given to both parents are taken from their personal beauty. They thus enhance the title of the son; and, as we cannot well suppose them connected with history, they were probably invented by the Poet for that purpose.

5. The repetition of the name of Nireus thrice, and in each case at the beginning of the verse, the most prominent and emphatic part of it according to the genius of the Greek hexameter, is plainly intentional.

6. All this care is taken in the most ingenious manner to mark a man, who did nothing to enable Homer to name him in any other part of the Iliad.

One and one only key is to be found, which will lay open the cause of these singular provisions: it is Homer’s intense love of beauty, which made it in his eyes of itself a title to celebrity. So he determined, apparently, that the paragon of form should be immortal; and he has given effect to his determination, for no reader of the Iliad can pass by the place without remembering Nireus.

In a less marked manner, he has given a kindred emphasis to the case of Nastes, who wore golden ornaments, and therefore was presumably of strikingly handsome person. With his brother Amphimachus he commanded the Carians, and his name is mentioned thrice (but that of his brother twice only), together with the fact that he wore gold like a girl[757].

[757] Il. ii. 867.

There is something, as it appears to me, most tender and refined, in this mode used by Homer of fastening attention through repetition of the word, which he wishes gently but firmly to stamp upon the memory. We have another instance of it in Il. xxii. 127,

ἅτε παρθένος ἠΐθεός τε, παρθένος ἠΐθεός τ’ ὀαρίζετον ἀλλήλοιϊν.

There is yet another passage which affords a striking proof of what may be called the worship of beauty in Homer. In the Seventeenth Iliad, Euphorbus, the son of Panthoos, falls by the hand of Menelaus. Homer gives him great credit for charioteering, the use of the spear, and other accomplishments; but he performs no other feat in the poem than that of wounding in the back the disarmed, and astounded, and heaven-deserted Patroclus. At best, we must call him a very secondary personage. Though his personal comeliness was not defaced like that of Paris by cowardice or vice, still he was of the same race that in Italy has taken its name from Zerbino. Yet Homer adorns his death with a notice, perhaps more conspicuous than any which he has attached to the death of any warriors of the Iliad, with the exceptions of Hector, Sarpedon, and Patroclus. Ten of the most beautiful lines of the poem are bestowed in lamenting him, chiefly by an unsurpassed simile, which compares the youth to a tender olive shoot, the victim, when its blossoms are overcharged with moisture, of a sudden hurricane. The Poet was moved to this tenderness by the remembrance of his beauty, of his hair, like the hair of the Graces, in its tresses bound with golden and silver clasps[758].

[758] Il. xvii. 50-60. Compare the sympathizing account of the death of the _young_ bridegroom Iphidamas (Il. xi. 241-3).

~_Beauty placed among the prime gifts._~

Although it is true that Homer eschews with respect to beauty, as well as in other matters, the didactic mode of conveying his impressions, yet he has placed them distinctly on record in the answer of Ulysses to Euryalus. Speaking not at all of women, but of men, he places the gift of personal beauty among the prime endowments that can be received from the providence of the gods, in a rank to which only two other gifts are admitted, namely, the power of thought (νόος or φρένες), and the power of speech (ἀγορητύς). In the idea of personal beauty, conveyed under the names εἶδος, μορφὴ, and χάρις, evidently included vigour and power, for it is to his supposed incapacity for athletic exercises[759], that the discourse has reference. Nor can it be said, that this full and large appreciation by Homer of the value of bodily excellence, was simply a worldly or a pagan, as opposed to a Christian, view.

[759] Od. viii. 167-77.

It is not true, on the one hand, that when we cease to entertain sufficiently elevated views of the destiny and prerogatives of the soul, our standard for the body rises either in proportion or at all. Nor is it true, on the other, that when we think highly of the soul, we ought in consequence to think meanly of the body, which is both its tabernacle and its helpmate. In truth, a somewhat sickly cast seems to have come over our tone of thought now for some generations back, the product, perhaps, in part of careless or emasculated teaching in the highest matters, and due also in part to the overcrowding of the several functions of our life. But Homer distinctly realized to himself what we know faintly or scarce at all, though nothing is more emphatically or conspicuously taught by our religion, namely, that the body is part and parcel of the integer denominated man.

But the quality of measure ran in rare proportion through all the conceptions of the Poet. Stature was a great element of beauty in the view of the ancients for women as well as for men: and their admiration of tallness, even in women, is hardly restrained by a limit. But Homer, who frequently touches the point, has provided a limit. Among the Læstrygonians, the women are of enormous size. Two of the crew of Ulysses, sent forward to make inquiries, are introduced to the queen. They find her ‘as big as a mountain,’ and are disgusted at her[760]:

[760] Od. x. 112.

τὴν δὲ γυναῖκα εὗρον ὅσην τ’ ὄρεος κορυφὴν, κατὰ δ’ ἔστυγον αὐτήν.

The large humanity of Homer is also manifested, among other signs, by his sympathy with high qualities in the animal creation. There is no passage of deeper pathos in all his works, not Andromache with her child, not Priam before Achilles, than that which recounts the death of the dog Argus[761]. The words too are so calm and still, they seem to grow faint and fainter, each foot of the verse falls as if it were counting out the last respirations, and, in effect, we witness that last slight and scarcely fluttering breath, with which life is yielded up:

[761] Od. xvii. 327.

Ἄργον δ’ αὖ κατὰ Μοῖρ’ ἔλαβεν μέλανος θανάτοιο, αὐτίκ’ ἰδόντ’ Ὀδυσῆα, ἐεικοστῷ ἐνιαυτῷ.

We may also trace the same sympathy in minor forms. As, for instance, where he says Telemachus went to the Ithacan assembly not unattended[762]:

[762] Od. ii. 10.

βῆ ῥ’ ἴμεν εἰς ἀγορὴν, παλάμῃ δ’ ἔχε χάλκεον ἔγχος, οὐκ οἶος.

We are certainly prepared to hear that some adviser, either divine or at the least human, some friend or faithful servant, was by his side: but no--it is simply that some dogs went with him:

ἅμα τῷγε κύνες πόδας ἀργοὶ ἕποντο.

There is no sign, however, that Homer attached the peculiar idea of beauty to the race of dogs in any remarkable degree. Indeed, it is only in certain breeds that the dog can be called by comparison a beautiful animal. What he always commends is their swiftness; and Homer’s ideas of beauty were nowhere more lively than in regard to motion. But we see the Poet’s feeling for form much more characteristically displayed in the case to which we shall now proceed.

~_Beauty in animals, especially horses._~

Among other inferences which the poems raise in respect to Homer himself, it can hardly be doubted that he was a great lover of horses, and felt their beauty, partially in colour, much more in form, and in movement most of all.

This was quite in keeping with the habits of his country and his race. Both the Trojans and the Greeks appear not only to have employed horses in such uses as war, journeys, races, and agricultural labour, but to have given attention to developing the breeds and points of the animal. In his Catalogue, Homer, at the close, invokes the Muse to inform him which were the best of the horses, as well as of the heroes, on the Greek side. He constantly uses epithets both for Trojans and Greeks connected with their successful care and training of the animal: εὔιππος, εὔπωλος, ταχύπωλος, ἱππόδαμος.

He not only treasures the traditions connected with the animal, but treats them as a part of history. Accordingly, when Diomed desires Sthenelus to make sure of the horses of Æneas he carefully proceeds to state, that it is because their sires were of the race that Jupiter gave to Tros. To them Anchises, without the knowledge of their owner Laomedon, brought his own mares, and so obtained a progeny of six: of whom he kept four himself, and gave two to his son Æneas (Il. v. 265-73) that he might take them to Troy.

Nay he goes back further yet: where, except in Homer, should we find a tradition like that of the mares of Erichthonius, fetched from a time five generations before his subject? Their children had Boreas for their sire. Three thousand mothers ranged over the plains of the Troad, and made their lord the wealthiest of men. So light was their footstep, that if they skimmed the sea it touched the tips only of the curling foam; and if they raced over the cornfield, the ripe ears sustained their tread without one being broken[763].

[763] Il. xx. 220-9.

~_As to movement, form, and colour._~

In other places Homer describes with no less of sympathetic emotion the vivid and fiery movements of the animal. The most remarkable of all is the noble simile of the stall-kept horse, whom every reader seems to see as with proud head and flowing mane, when he feels his liberty, he scours the boundless pastures.

That adaptation, or effort at adaptation, of sound to sense, which with poets in general (always excepting especially Dante and Shakespeare,) is a sign that they have applied their whole force to careful elaboration, is with Homer only a proof of a fuller and deeper flow of his sympathies: wherever we find it, we may be sure that his whole heart is in the passage. In this very simile how admirable is the transition from the fine stationary verse that describes the charger’s customary bathe,

εἰωθὼς λούεσθαι ἐϋρρεῖος ποταμοῖο,

to his rapid and easy bounding over the plain, when every dactyl marks a spring[764];

[764] Il. vi. 511.

ῥίμφα ἑ γοῦνα φέρει μετά τ’ ἤθεα καὶ νόμον ἵππων.

For this adaptation of metre to sense in connection with the movement of horses, we may take another example. To describe Agamemnon dealing destruction among the routed Trojans on foot, we have a line and a half of somewhat accelerated but by no means very rapid movement[765];

[765] Il. xi. 158.

ὣς ἄρ’ ὑπ’ Ἀτρείδῃ Ἀγαμέμνονι πῖπτε κάρηνα Τρώων φευγόντων.

But when he comes to the Trojan horses in their flight, we have two lines, dactylic to the utmost extent that the metre will allow, except in one half-foot;

πολλοὶ δ’ ἐριαύχενες ἵπποι κείν’ ὄχεα κροτάλιζον ἀνὰ πτολέμοιο γεφύρας, ἡνιόχους ποθέοντες ἀμύμονας.

Then, coming back to the dead charioteers, he visibly slackens again;

οἱ δ’ ἐπὶ γαίῃ κείατο, γύπεσσιν πολὺ φίλτεροι ἢ ἀλόχοισιν.

To exhibit numerically the relative distribution of times in these members of the sentence, we have these three very different proportions;

In the first, 13 long syllables to 8 short.

In the second, 16 long syllables to 22 short.

In the third, 11 long syllables to 10 short.

He has imparted much of the same glowing movement to the speech, which in the Nineteenth Iliad is assigned to the Immortal horses of Achilles; though the subject includes a reference to the death of their master[766]. In nearly every line, throughout the passage, that relates to their own motion, the number of dactyls is at the maximum, and in the ten lines there are eighty-six short syllables to sixty long ones; a proportion, which I doubt our finding elsewhere in Homer, except it be among the similes, to which Homer seems in many cases to give a peculiarly elastic prosodial movement.

[766] Il. xix. 408-17.

Rhesus, king of the Thracians, who arrives at Troy after the commencement of the Wrath, becomes sufficiently distinguished for the central point of interest in the Doloneia, by virtue chiefly of his horses. They are the most beautiful, says Dolon, and the largest that I have ever seen[767];

[767] Il. x. 437.

λευκότεροι χιόνος, θείειν δ’ ἀνέμοισιν ὁμοῖοι.

The justice of this panegyric is corroborated by the emphatic expression of Nestor, who pronounces them,

αἰνῶς ἀκτίνεσσιν ἐοικότες ἠελίοιο·

and their unparalleled excellence forms the subject of the speech of the old king, on the return of Ulysses and Diomed to the camp[768].

[768] Il. x. 544-53.

It is not only, however, in elaborate pictures that Homer shows his feeling for horses, but also, and not less markedly, in minor touches. Does he not speak with the manifest feeling of a skilled admirer of the animal, when he describes the pair driven by Eumelus, rapid as birds, the same in shade of colour, the same in years, the same to a hair’s breadth in height across their backs[769]?

[769] Il. ii. 764.

ποδώκεας, ὄρνιθας ὣς, ὄτριχας, οἰέτεας, σταφύλῃ ἐπὶ νῶτον ἐΐσας.

Again, we are met by the same feeling which, in a bolder flight, made the horses of Rhesus weep, when Pandarus falls headlong from the chariot of Æneas, and his arms rattle over him in death. The horses, instead of plunging or starting off, with a finer feeling tremble by the corpse[770];

[770] Il. v. 295.

παρέτρεσσαν δέ οἱ ἵπποι ὠκύποδες.

We may trace the same disposition, under a lighter and more amusing form, in what had already passed between Æneas and Pandarus. Pandarus had excused himself for not having brought a chariot and horses to Troy, on account of his fears about finding forage for them where such crowds were to be gathered into a small space; at the same time describing, rather boastfully, his father Lycaon’s eleven carriages with a pair for each. (Il. v. 192-203.) Æneas replies by inviting him into his chariot when he will see what Trojan horses are like. Then, he continues, do you fight, and I will drive; or, as you may choose, do you drive, and I will fight. Pandarus immediately replies, that Æneas had better by all means be the driver of his own horses.

Then again, Homer will have the utmost care taken of them; and, so to speak, he looks to it himself. When he describes them as unemployed, he specifies their food; those of Achilles during the Wrath stand[771],

[771] Il. ii. 776.

λωτὸν ἐρεπτόμενοι ἐλεόθρεπτόν τε σέλινον.

But those of Lycaon, which had remained at home, were[772]

[772] Il. v. 196.

κρῖ λευκὸν ἐρεπτόμενοι καὶ ὀλύρας.

To each he gives the appropriate provender: to the former, in an encampment, what the grassy marsh by its side afforded: to the latter, in a king’s palace, the grain, or hard food, of their proper home.

And so in the night-adventure of the Tenth Book, when Ulysses drags away the bodies of those Thracians whom Diomed has slain, it is to make a clear path for the horses of Rhesus which were to be carried off, that they may not take fright from treading on corpses[773];

[773] Il. x. 489-93.

νεκροῖς ἀμβαίνοντες· ἀήθεσσον γὰρ ἔτ’ αὐτῶν.

Throughout the chariot-race, in the Twenty-third Book, we find them uppermost in the Poet’s mind, though the drivers, being his prime heroes, are not wholly forgotten.

Even as to colour, of which Homer’s perceptions appear to have been so vague, it may be remarked, that he employs it somewhat more freely with reference to horses, than to other objects having definite form or powers of locomotion.

But his liveliest conceptions of them are with respect to motion, form, and feelings: and I suppose there is no poem like the Iliad for characteristic touches in respect to any of the three.

~_Beauty in inanimate nature._~

It has been much debated whether the ancients generally, and whether Homer in particular, had any distinct idea of beauty in landscape.

It may be admitted, even in respect to Homer, that his similes, to which one would naturally look for proof, less commonly refer to the eye than to other faculties. They commonly turn upon sound, motion, force, or multitude: rarely, in comparison, upon colour, or even upon form; still more rarely upon colour or form in such combinations as to constitute what we call the picturesque.

It seems to me, that we may draw the best materials of a demonstration in this case from comparing his descriptions of the form of scenery by means of the outlines of countries, with his use of other epithets which he employs to denote beauty.

The country of Lacedæmon was mountainous, and it is hence termed by Homer in the Odyssey and in the Catalogue, κοιλή. (Il. ii. 581, Od. iv. 1.)

But it is also termed by him ἐρατεινὴ (Il. iii. 239), and this, it may be observed, in a speech of Helen’s; to whom, while she was at Troy, the image of it in memory could hardly, perhaps, be agreeable from any moral association. We are, therefore, led to refer it to the physical conformation or beauty of the district.

Next, we have pretty clear proof that in Homer’s mind the epithet ἐρατεινὴ was one proper to describe beauty in the strictest sense. For he says of Helen, with regard to her daughter Hermione[774]:

[774] Od. iv. 13.

ἐγείνατο παῖδ’ ἐρατεινὴν, Ἑρμιόνην, ἣ εἶδος ἔχε χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης.

‘She had a lovely (ἐρατεινὴν) daughter, endowed with the beauty of golden Aphrodite.’ And I observe but few passages in Homer, perhaps only one (Od. xxiii. 300), when ἐρατεινὸς does not naturally and properly bear this sense. A sense etymologically analogous to our own use of the word _lovely_, which we employ to indicate not only beauty, but a high degree of it.

It therefore appears to be clear that Homer called Lacedæmon ἐρατεινὴ, because it was shaped in mountain and valley, and because countries so formed present a beautiful appearance to the eye, as compared with countries of other forms less marked. It is applied to Emathia (Il. xiv. 225) and to Scheria (Od. vii. 79), both mountainous; to the city Ilios, (Il. v. 210), which stood on ground high and partially abrupt near the roots of Ida; and I do not find it in any place of the poems associated with flat lands.

The other instance which I shall cite seems to present the argument in a complete form, within the compass of a single line.

When describing Ithaca in the Odyssey, Telemachus says it is[775],

[775] Od. iv. 606.

αἰγίβοτος, καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπήρατος ἱπποβότοιο.

Here we may assume that by αἰγίβοτος, goat-feeding, he means mountainous, and even sharp and rocky; moreover consequently, in comparison, barren, so that it could not be agreeable in the sense of being profitable. On the other hand, the horse is an animal ill-suited to range among rocks; and by ἱππόβοτος Homer always means a district or country sufficiently open and plain to be suitable for feeding horses in numbers. Now, in saying that Arran is more ἐπήρατος than southern Lancashire, we should leave no doubt upon the mind of any reader as to the meaning; which must surely be that it offers more beauty to the eye. Just such a comparison does Homer make of the scenery of Ithaca as it was with what it would have been, if the island had been flat.

I ought however to notice the very forced interpretation of Damm, which is this: _μᾶλλον ἐπήρατος, sc. ἐμοὶ, nam est patria mea; et ad μᾶλλον subintelligit τοῦ σοῦ Ἄργεος φίλη μοι ἔστι_.

Homer was better versed in the art of wedding words to thought, than such an interpretation supposes. For, according to it, the thought of Homer was this; ‘Though you rule over broad and open Argos, my mountainous Ithaca is dearer to me, _because it is my country_.’ So that he has left out the point of the sentence, without the faintest trace to guide his reader. The idea of the sentence, which is prolonged through many verses, turns entirely on the difference between an open and a steep rocky country as such, and not in the least on native attachments. And Telemachus, who is lauding the richness and fertility of Argos, and apologizing for the barrenness of Ithaca, not ungracefully, in passing, throws in, by way of compensation, the element of beauty, as one possessed by Ithaca, and as one which it must miss if it were flat.

Indeed, we here trace the usual refinement of Homer in this, that Telemachus does not say, True, your Argos is rich, but my Ithaca is picturesque: but, after commending the fertility of broad Argos, he says, ‘In Ithaca we have no broad runs[776], and nothing like a meadow: it will feed nothing but goats, yet it is more picturesque than if _it_, a little speck of that kind, were flat and open.’

[776] He uses the phrase δρόμοι εὐρέες. It is curious to find the word _runs_, so recently re-established as the classical word for the large open spaces of pasturage in the regions of Australasia.

The word ἐπήρατος is less frequently used in Homer than ἐρατεινός; but we have it in six places besides this. There is only one of them where it is capable of meaning dear, in connection with the idea of country[777]. In another it means enjoyable or splendid, being applied to the banquet[778]. In the other places it is applied to a town on the Shield, a cavern in Ithaca (twice), and the garments put upon Venus in Cyprus; and in those four places it can only mean fair or beautiful.

[777] Il. xxii. 121.

[778] Il. ix. 228.

We are not, then, justified in limiting Homer’s sense of natural beauty to what was associated with utility[779]. On the contrary, it appears plainly to extend to beauty proper, and even to that kind of beauty in nature which we of the present day most love.

[779] See Mr. Cope’s Essay on the Picturesque among the Greeks; Cambridge Essays, 1856. p. 126.

I have dealt thus far with the most doubtful part of the question, and have ventured to dissent from Mr. Ruskin, whose authority I admit, and of whose superior insight, as well as of his extraordinary powers of expression, I am fully conscious.

~_Germ of feeling for the picturesque._~

Mr. Ruskin thinks[780] that ‘Homer has no trace of feeling for what we call the picturesque’; that Telemachus apologizes for the scenery of Ithaca; and that rocks are never loved but as caves. I think that the expressions I have produced from the text show that these propositions cannot be sustained. At the same time I admit that the feeling with Homer is one in the bud only: as, indeed, until within a very few generations, it has lain undeveloped among ourselves. Homer may have been the father of this sentiment for his nation, as he was of so much besides. But the plant did not grow up kindly among those who followed him.

[780] Ruskin’s Modern Painters, part iv. chap. xiii. pp. 189-92.

I assent entirely, on the other hand, to what Mr. Ruskin has said respecting his sense of orderly beauty in common nature. The garden of Alcinous is truly Dutch in its quadrangular conceptions; but it is plain that the Poet means us to regard it as truly beautiful[781]. Symmetry, serenity, regularity, adopted from the forms of living beauty which were before him, enter largely into Homer’s conceptions of one form, at least, of inanimate beauty.

[781] Od. vii. 112-32.

The scenery of the cave of Calypso[782] is less restrained in its cast, than is the garden in Scheria; but even here Homer introduces four fountains, which compose a regular figure, and are evidently meant to supply an element of form which was required by the fashionable standard.

[782] Od. v. 63-75.

Another element of landscape, as we understand it, is, that the natural objects which it represents should be in rather extensive combination; and our established traditions would also require that the view of them should be modified by the rendering of the atmosphere, especially with reference to the scale of distances.

It is very difficult to find instances of extended landscape in Homer. But I think that we have at least one, in the famed simile, where he compares the Trojan watchfires on the plain to the calm night, which by the light of moon and stars exhibits a breadth of prospect to the rejoicing shepherd’s eye. Here are certainly tranquillity and order; but with them we seem also to have both extent and atmosphere; to which even bold and even broken outline must be added by those who, like myself, are not prepared to surrender to the destroying ὄβελος the line[783]

[783] Il. viii. 557.

ἔκ τ’ ἔφανεν πᾶσαι σκοπιαὶ, καὶ πρώονες ἄκροι.

Upon the whole, considering Homer’s early date, and the very late development among the moderns of a taste for scenery of the picturesque and romantic order, I do not know that we are entitled even at first sight to challenge him as inferior to any modern of analogous date in this province. Yet we may fairly pronounce that he is inferior to himself; that is to say, he appears to have a sense of beauty, in the region of inanimate nature, certainly less keen in proportion than that, with which he looked upon the animated creation.

What is deficient in him with respect to landscape may however, in all likelihood, be more justly referred to positive than to negative causes.

~_Causes adverse to a more developed feeling._~

It may be questioned whether the disposition to appreciate still nature, especially in large and elaborated combinations, may not in part depend upon conditions that were not to be found in the age of Homer. I should say, if the expression may be allowed, that we of this generation take landscape medicinally. Human life grows with the course of ages; and, especially in our age, it has grown to be excited and hurried. But nature has a reacting tendency towards repose; and, even in the case of the grosser stimulants, it seems to be their soothing power which most helps to recommend them. Besides the fact, however, that we have wants which the Greeks had not, this subject may be regarded in a broader view.

The mind of Homer and the mind of his age were not addicted even to contemplation, far less to introspection. Of ideas properly subjective there are very few indeed to be found in the poems. We have one such furnished by the passage where he equates thought to a wing, in a simile for the swift ships of the Phæacians,

ὡσεὶ πτέρον ἠὲ νόημα.

And another, the most remarkable that he supplies, when in more detail he uses the motion of a thought for an illustration of the rapid flight of Juno[784].

[784] Il. xv. 80.

Even when it became speculative, the Greek mind did not give a subjective turn to its speculations. It was probably Christianity which, by the stimulus it applied to the general conscience, first gave mankind the introspective habit on a large scale; and mixed causes may often render the tendency excessive and morbid. But the tendency of the heroic age, standing at its maximum in Homer, was to pour life outward, nay almost to force it into every thing. The fountain from within overflowed; and its surplus went to make inanimate nature breathe. The profuse and easy fertility of Homer in simile surely of itself demonstrates a wonderful observation and appreciation of nature; but, as has been remarked, these similes are very rarely indeed _still_ similes. They delight in sound, in multitude, above all in motion. The automatic chairs of Vulcan, the living theatre of the Shield of Achilles, that oldest mirror of our world, the bounding armour of the same hero, what are all these but the proofs of that redundant energy of life, whose first resistless impulse it was to carry the vital fire of Prometheus into every object that it encountered, and which, not yet having felt the palsying touch of exhaustion, lay under no necessity of curative provisions for repose? Therefore, while admitting the defect of Homer with respect to colour, and admitting also that landscape (if we are to understand by it the elaborate combination of natural objects reaching over considerable distances) is a great addition to the enjoyment and wealth of mankind, I think the capital explanation of the question raised is to be found, not in the want of any space, or of any faculty, in the mind of Homer, but in the fact that the space and the faculties were all occupied with more active and vivifying functions; that the beautiful forms in nature, which we see as beautiful forms only, were to him the hem of the garments, as it were, of that life with which all nature teemed. Accordingly, the general rule of the poems is, that where we should be passive, he is active; that which we think it much to contemplate with satisfaction, he is ever at work, with a bolder energy and a keener pleasure, to vivify. We deal with external nature, as it were unrifled; he saw in it only the residue which remained to it, after it had at every point thrown off its cream in supernatural formations. His uplifting and vitalizing process is everywhere at work. Animate nature is raised even to divinity; and inanimate nature is borne upward into life.

If, then, Homer sees less in the mere sensible forms of natural objects than we do, it probably is in a great degree because the genius of his people and his own genius had taught him to invest them with a soul, which drew up into itself the best of their attractions. Mr. Ruskin most justly tells us, with reference to the sea, that he cuts off from the material object the sense of something living, and fashions it into a great abstract image of a sea-power[785]. Yet it is not, I think, quite true, that the Poet leaves in the watery mass no element of life. On the contrary, I should say the key to his whole treatment of external nature is to be found in this one proposition: wheresoever we look for figure, he looks for life. His waves (as well as his fire) when they are stirred[786], shout, in the very word (ἰάχειν) that he gives to the Assembly of Achæans: when they break in foam, they put on the plume of the warrior’s helmet[787] (κορύσσεσθαι): when their lord drives over them, they open wide for joy[788]: and when he strides upon the field of battle, they, too, boil upon the shore, in an irrepressible sympathy with his effort and emotion[789].

[785] Modern Painters, part iv. ch. xiii. p. 174.

[786] Il. xxiii. 216. i. 482.

[787] Il. iv. 424.

[788] Γηθοσύνῃ δὲ θάλασσα διΐστατο, Il. xiii. 29.

[789] Il. xiv. 392.

SECT. III.

_Homer’s perceptions and use of Number._

While the faculties of Homer were in many respects both intense and refined in their action, beyond all ordinary, perhaps we might say beyond all modern, examples, there were other points in which they bear the marks of having been less developed than is now common even among the mass of many civilized nations. In the power of abstraction and distinct introspective contemplation, it is not improbable that he was inferior to the generality of educated men in the present day. In some other lower faculties, he is probably excelled by the majority of the population of this country, nay even by many of the children in its schools. I venture to specify, as examples of the last-named proposition, the faculties of number, and of colour. It may be true of one or both of these, that a certain indistinctness in the perception of them is incidental everywhere to the early stages of society. But yet it is surprising to find it where, as with Homer, it accompanies a remarkable quickness and maturity not only of great mental powers, but of certain other perceptions more akin to number and colour, such as those of motion, of sound, and of form. But let us proceed to examine, in the first place, the former of these two subjects.

It may be observed at the outset, that probably none of us are aware to how great an extent our aptitudes with respect to these matters are traditionary, and dependent therefore not upon ourselves, but upon the acquisitions made by the human race before our birth, and upon the degree in which those acquisitions have circulated, and have been as it were filtered through and through the community, so as to take their place among the elementary ideas, impressions, and habits of the population. For such parts of human knowledge, as have attained to this position, are usually gained by each successive generation through the medium of that insensible training, which begins from the very earliest infancy, and which precedes by a great interval all the systematic, and even all the conscious, processes of education. Nor am I for one prepared by any means to deny that there may be an actual ‘traducianism’ in the case: on the contrary, in full consistency with the teaching of experience, we may believe that the acquired aptitudes of one generation may become, in a greater or a less degree, the inherited and inborn aptitudes of another.

We must, therefore, reckon upon finding a set of marked differences in the relative degrees of advancement among different human faculties in different stages of society, which shall be simply referable to the source now pointed out, and distinct altogether from such variations as are referable to other causes. It is not difficult to admit this to be true in general: but the question, whether in the case before us it applies to number and colour, can of course only be decided by an examination of the Homeric text.

Yet, before we enter upon this examination, let us endeavour to throw some further light upon the general aspect of the proposition, which has just been laid down.

Of all visible things, colour is to our English eye the most striking. Of all ideas, as conceived by the English mind, number appears to be the most rigidly definite, so that we adopt it as a standard for reducing all other things to definiteness; as when we say that this field or this house is five, ten, or twenty times as large as that. Our merchants, and even our schoolchildren, are good calculators. So that there is a sense of something strikingly paradoxical, to us in particular, when we speak of Homer as having had only indeterminate ideas of these subjects.

~_Conceptions of Number not always definite._~

There are however two practical instances, which may be cited to illustrate the position, that number is not a thing to be as matter of course definitely conceived in the mind. One of these is the case of very young children. To them the very lowest numbers are soon intelligible, but all beyond the lowest are not so, and only present a vague sense of multitude, that cannot be severed into its component parts. The distinctive mark of a clear arithmetical conception is, that the mind at one and the same time embraces the two ideas, first of the aggregate, secondly of each one of the units which make it up. This double operation of the brain becomes more arduous, as we ascend higher in the scale. I have heard a child, put to count beads or something of the sort, reckon them thus: ‘One, two, three, four, a hundred.’ The first words express his ideas, the last one his despair. Up to four, his mind could contain the joint ideas of unity and of severalty, but not beyond; so he then passed to an expression wholly general, and meant to express a sense like that of the word multitude.

But though the transition from number definitely conceived to number without bounds is like launching into a sea, yet the conception of multitude itself is in one sense susceptible of degree. We may have the idea of a limited, or of an unbounded, multitude. The essential distinction of the first is, that it might possibly be counted; the notion of the second is, that it is wholly beyond the power of numeration to overtake. Probably even the child, to whom the word ‘hundred’ expressed an indefinite idea, would have been faintly sensible of a difference in degree between ‘hundred’ and ‘million,’ and would have known that the latter expressed something larger than the former. The circumscribing outline of the idea apprehended is loose, but still there is such an outline. The clearness of the double conception is indeed effaced; the whole only, and not the whole together with each part, is contemplated by the mind; but still there is a certain clouded sense of a real difference in magnitude, as between one such whole and another.

And this leads me to the second of the two illustrations, to which reference has been made. That loss of definiteness in the conception of number, which the child in our day suffers before he has counted over his fingers, the grown man suffers also, though at a point commonly much higher in the scale. What point that may be, depends very much upon the particular habits and aptitudes of the individual. A student in a library of a thousand volumes, an officer before his regiment of a thousand men upon parade, may have a pretty clear idea of the units as well as of the totals; but when we come to a thousand times a thousand, or a thousand times a million, all view of the units, for most men, probably for every man, is lost: the million for the grown man is in a great degree like the hundred for the child. The numerical term has now become essentially a symbol; not only as every word is by its essence a symbol in reference to the idea it immediately denotes; but, in a further sense, it is a symbol of a symbol, for that idea which it denotes, is itself symbolical: it is a conventional representation of a certain vast number of units, far too great to be individually contemplated and apprehended. As we rise higher still from millions, say for example, into the class of billions, the vagueness increases. The million is now become a sort of new unit, and the relation of two millions to one million, is thus pretty clearly apprehended as being double; but this too becomes obscured as we mount, and even (for example) the relation of quantity between ten billions of wheat-corns, and an hundred billions of the same, is far less determinately conveyed to the mind, than the relation between ten wheat-corns and one. At this high level, the nouns of number approximate to the indefinite character of the class of algebraic symbols called known quantities.

In proportion as our conception of numbers is definite, the idea of them, instead of being suited for an address to the imagination, remains unsuited for poetic handling, and thrives within the sphere of the understanding only. But when we pass beyond the scale of determinate into that of practically indeterminate amounts, then the use of numbers becomes highly poetical. I would quote, as a very noble example of this use of number, a verse in the Revelations of St. John. ‘And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands[790].’ As a proof of the power of this fine passage, I would observe, that the descent from ten thousand times ten thousand to thousands of thousands, though it is in fact numerically very great, has none of the chilling effect of anticlimax, because these numbers are not arithmetically conceived, and the last member of the sentence is simply, so to speak, the trail of light which the former draws behind it.

[790] Rev. v. 11.

Now we must keep clearly before our minds the idea, that this poetical and figurative use of number among the Greeks at least preceded what I may call its calculative use. We shall find in Homer nothing that can strictly be called calculation. He repeatedly gives us what may be termed the factors of a sum in multiplication; but he never even partially combines them, even as they are combined for example in Cowper’s ballad,

John Gilpin’s spouse said to her dear, Though wedded we have been These _twice ten_ tedious years, yet we No holiday have seen.

Reference has been made to the convenience which we find in using number as a measure of quantity, and as a means of comparing things of every species in their own kind. But we never meet with this use of it in Homer. He has not even the words necessary to enable him to say, ‘This house is five times as large as that.’ If he had the idea to express, he would say, Five houses, each as large as that, would hardly be equal to this. The word τρὶς may be called an adverb of multiplication; but it is never used for these comparisons. Indeed, Damm observes, that in a large majority of instances it signifies an indefinite number, not a precise one. Τετράκις is found only once, and in a sense wholly indeterminate: the passage is[791] τρισμάκαρες Δαναοὶ καὶ τετράκις. Πεντάκις does not even exist. Ajax lifts a stone, not ‘twice as large as a mortal of to-day could raise’, but so large that it would require two such mortals to raise it. All Homer’s numerical expressions are in the most elementary forms; such forms, as are without composition, and refuse all further analysis.

[791] Od. v. 306.

~_Greek estimate of the discovery of Number._~

His use of number appears to have been confined to simple addition: and it is probable that all the higher numbers which we find in the poems, were figurative and most vaguely conceived. If we are able to make good the proof of these propositions from the Homeric text, we shall then be well able to understand the manner in which Numeration, or the science of number, is spoken of by the Greeks of the historic age as a marvellous invention. It appears in Æschylus, as among the very greatest of the discoveries of Prometheus[792]:

[792] Æsch. Prom. V. 468. see also Soph. Naupl. Fragm. v.

καὶ μὴν ἀριθμὸν, ἔξοχον σοφισμάτων, ἐξεῦρον αὐτοῖς·

he goes on to add,

γραμμάτων τε συνθέσεις.

So that the use of numbers by rule was to the Greek mind as much a discovery as the letters of the alphabet, and is even described here as a greater one: much as in later times men have viewed the use of logarithms, or of the method of fluxions or the calculus. In full conformity with this are the superlative terms, in which Plato speaks of number. Number, in fact, seems to be exhibited in great part of the Greek philosophy, as if it had actually been the guide of the human mind in its progress towards realizing all the great and cardinal ideas of order, measure, proportion, and relation.

Up to what point human intelligence, in the time of Homer, was able to push the process of simple addition, we do not precisely know. It is not, however, hastily to be assumed that, in any one of his faculties, Homer was behind his age; and it is safer to believe that the poems, even in these points, represent it advantageously. Now, in one place at least, we have a primitive account of a process of addition. The passage is in the Fourth Odyssey, where Menelaus relates, how Proteus counted upon his fingers the number of his seals[793]. That it was a certain particular number is obvious, because when four of them had been killed by Eidothee, their skins were put upon Menelaus and his three comrades, and the four Greeks were then counted into the herd, so that the word ἀριθμὸς here evidently means a definite total. This addition by Proteus, however, was not addition in the proper arithmetical sense, and would be more properly called enumeration: it was probably effected simply by adding each unit singly, in succession, to the others, with the aid of the fingers, (proved through the word πεμπάσσεται,) but not by the aid of any scale or combination of units, either decimal or quinal. In the word δεκὰς we have, indeed, the first step towards a decimal scale; but we have not even that in the case of the number five, there being no πεντὰς or πεμπτάς. The meaning of πεμπάσσεται evidently is, not that he arranged the numeration in fives, but that, by means of the fingers of one hand, employed upon those of the other, he assisted the process of simple enumeration.

[793] Od. iv. 412, 451.

~_Highest numerals of the poems._~

Homer’s highest numeral is μύριοι. He describes the Myrmidons as being μύριοι[794], though, if we assume a mean strength of about eighty-five for their crews, the force would but little have exceeded four thousand: and at the _maximum_ of one hundred and twenty for each ship, it would only come to six thousand. Again, Homer uses the expression μύρια ᾔδη, to denote a person of instructed and accomplished mind[795].

[794] Il. xxiii. 29.

[795] Od. ii. 16.

Next to the μύρια, the highest numerals employed in the poems are those contained in the passage where the Poet says that the howl of Mars, on being wounded by Diomed, was as loud as the shout of an army of nine thousand or ten thousand men[796]:

[796] Il. v. 860.

ὅσσον τ’ ἐννεάχιλοι ἐπίαχον ἢ δεκάχιλοι ἀνέρες ἐν πολέμῳ.

But it is clear that the expressions are purely poetical and figurative. For he never comes near the use of such high numbers elsewhere; and yet it obviously lay in his path to use these, and higher numbers still, when he was describing the strength of the Greek and Trojan armies.

The highest Homeric number, after those which have been named, is found in the three thousand horses of Erichthonius. This we must also consider poetical, because it is so far beyond the ordinary range of the poems, and in some degree likewise because of the obvious unlikelihood of his having possessed that particular number of mares[797].

[797] Il. xxi. 251.

Only thrice, besides the instances already quoted, does Homer use the fourth power of numbers; it is in the case of the single thousand. A thousand measures of wine were sent by Euneos as a present to Agamemnon and Menelaus. A thousand watch-fires were kindled by the Trojans on the plain. Iphidamas, having given an hundred oxen in order to obtain his wife, then promised a thousand goats and sheep out of his countless herds[798]. In all these three cases, it is more than doubtful whether the word thousand is not roughly and loosely used as a round number. The combination of the thousand sheep and goats with the hundred oxen, immediately awakens the recollection that even the Homeric hecatomb, though meaning etymologically an hundred oxen, practically meant nothing of the kind, but only what we should call a lot or batch of oxen. Again, it is so obviously improbable that the Trojans should in an hurried bivouac have lighted just a thousand fires, and placed just fifty men by each, that we may take this passage as plainly figurative, and as conveying no more than a very rude approximation, of such a kind as would be inadmissible where the practice of calculation is familiar. It is then most likely, that in the remaining one of the three passages, the Poet means only to convey that a large and liberal present of wine was sent by Euneus, as the consideration for his being allowed to trade with the army. There is certainly more of approximation to a definite use of the single thousand, than of the three, the nine, or the ten: but this difference in definiteness is in reality a main point in the evidence. Most of all does this become palpable, when we consider how strange is in itself the omission to state the numbers of the combatants on either side of this great struggle: an omission so strange, of what would be to ourselves a fact of such elementary and primary interest, that we can hardly account for it otherwise than by the admission, that to the Greeks of the Homeric age the totals of the armies, even if the Poet himself could have reckoned them, would have been unintelligible.

[798] Il. vii. 571. viii. 562. xi. 244.

Among all the numbers found in Homer, the highest which he appears to use with a clearly determinate meaning, is that of the three hundred and sixty fat hogs under the care of Eumæus in Ithaca[799];

[799] Od. xiv. 20.

οἱ δὲ τριηκόσιοί τε καὶ ἑξήκοντα πέλοντο.

The reason for considering this number as having a pretty definite sense in the Poet’s mind (quite a different matter, let it be borne in mind, from the question whether the circumstance is meant to be taken as historical) is, that it stands in evident association with the number of days, as it was probably then reckoned, in the year. It seems plain that he meant to describe the whole circle of the year, where he says, that for each of the days and nights which Jupiter has given, or, in his own words[800],

[800] Od. xiv. 93.

ὅσσαι γὰρ νύκτες τε καὶ ἡμέραι ἐκ Διός εἰσιν,

the greedy Suitors are not contented with the slaughter of one animal, or even of two. Eumæus then gives an account of the wealth of Ulysses in live stock, both within the isle and on the mainland, from whence the animals were supplied: and adds, that from the Ithacan store a goatherd took down daily a fat goat, while he himself as often sent down a fat hog. I have dwelt thus particularly on the detail of this case, because it may fairly be inferred from the correspondence between the number of the hogs and the days of the year, that for once, at all events, the Poet intended to speak, though somewhat at random, yet in a degree arithmetically, and that of so high a number as 360.

There are other cases of lower numbers in different parts of the poems, where it may be argued, with varying measures of probability, that Homer had a similar intention.

~_The ἑκατομβὴ and numerals of value._~

The word ἑκατομβὴ, without doubt, affords a striking proof of vagueness in the ideas of the heroic age with respect to number: and this vagueness extends, yet apparently in varying degrees, to the adjective ἑκατομβοῖος. I have elsewhere[801] referred to adjectives of this formation as indicative of the fact, that for those generations of mankind oxen may be said to have constituted a measure of value; and this fact certainly involves an aim at numerical exactitude. It seems, indeed, on general grounds far from improbable, that the business of exchange may have been the original guide of our race into the art, and thus into the science, of arithmetic.

[801] Agorè, p. 82.

In the description of the Shield of Minerva, which had an hundred golden drops or tassels, we are told that each of them was ἑκατομβοῖος, or worth an hundred oxen. This use of the word must be regarded as strongly charged with figure. Minerva was arming to mingle among men upon the plain of Troy[802], and it is not likely, therefore, that the Poet would represent her in dimensions utterly inordinate. He judiciously reserves this license of exaggeration without bounds for scenes where he is beyond the sphere of relations properly human, as for example, the Theomachy and the Under-world. Now we may venture to take the Homeric value of an ox before Troy at half an ounce of gold. In the prizes of the wrestling match, where a tripod was worth twelve oxen, a highly skilled woman (πολλὰ δ’ ἐπίστατο ἔργα) was worth four[803]. Two ounces of gold would be a low price for such a person in almost any age. According to this computation, each drop on the Ægis of Minerva would weigh fifty ounces: the whole would weigh above 300 lbs. _avoirdupois_, and if we were to assume the purely ornamental fringe in a work of this kind to weigh one tenth part of the whole, the Ægis itself would weigh nearly a ton and a half. _Primâ facie_, this is susceptible of explanation in either of two ways: the one, that the numbers are used poetically and not arithmetically; the other, that of sheer intentional exaggeration in bulk. The rules of the Poet, as they are elsewhere applied, oblige us to reject the latter solution, and consequently throw us back upon the former.

[802] Il. ii. 450.

[803] Il. xxiii. 703, 5.

~_The numerals of value._~

Again, we are told that, when Diomed obtained the exchange of arms from Glaucus, he gave a suit of copper, and obtained in return a suit of gilt[804];

[804] Il. vi. 236.

χρύσεα χαλκείων, ἑκατόμβοι’ ἐννεαβοίων.

Here there seems to be a mixture of the metaphorical and the arithmetical use. For, on the one hand, it is singular that he should have chosen numbers which require the aid of a fraction to express their relation to one another. He could certainly not have meant to say that the values of the two suits were precisely as 100:9, or as 11⅑:1. And yet, on the one hand, he could scarcely use the term ἐννεαβοῖα, except with reference to the known and usual value of a suit of armour, while the ἑκατομβοῖα, from its use in other places, must be suspected of having no more than a merely indeterminate force.

With this fractional relation of 100:9, may be compared the arrangement at the feast in Pylos, where each division of five hundred persons was supplied with nine oxen. These numbers, however, are probably less vague than in some other cases: for the provision stated, though large, is not beyond what a rude plenty might suggest on a great public occasion.

Again, Lycaon, when captured for the second time by Achilles, reminds that hero of what he had fetched or been worth to him on the former occasion[805]: ἑκατόμβοιον δέ τοι ἦλφον. Here we have a decisive proof of the figurative use of number. Had the young prince been ransomed by Priam, a great price, no doubt, would have been given. But Achilles sold him into Lemnos, ἄνευθεν ἄγων πατρός τε φίλων τε: and to the Lemnians he could hardly have value but as a labourer, although indeed it chanced that he was afterwards redeemed, by a ξεῖνος of Priam[806], at a high price. We cannot, then, suppose that he had brought any such return as would be represented by a full hundred of oxen.

[805] Il. xxi. 79.

[806] Il. xxi. 42.

The evidence thus far, I think, tends powerfully to support the hypothesis, that there is an amount of vagueness in Homer’s general use of numbers, unless indeed as to very low ones, which cannot be explained otherwise than as metaphorical or purely poetical: and that his mind never had before it any of those processes, simple as they are to all who are familiar with them, of multiplication, subtraction, or division.

I admit it to be possible, that his manner of treating number may have been owing to his determination to be intelligible, and to the state of the faculties of his hearers, as much as, or even more than, his own. But to me the supposition of the infant condition even of his faculties with respect to number, though at first sight startling, approves itself on reflection as one thoroughly in conformity with analogy and nature. Indeed the experience of life may convince us that to this hour we should be mistaken, if we supposed arithmetical conceptions to be uniform in different minds; that the relations of number are faintly and imperfectly apprehended, except by either practised or else peculiarly gifted persons; and that, in short, there is nothing more mysterious than arithmetic to those who do not understand it. As one illustration of this opinion, I will cite the difficulty which most educated persons, when studying history, certainly feel in mastering its chronology; while to those who are apt at figures it is not only acquired with ease, but it even serves as the _nexus_ and support of the whole chain of events.

There were several occasions, upon which it would have been most natural and appropriate for Homer to use the faculty of multiplication; yet on no one of these has he used it. He constantly supplies us with the materials of a sum, but never once performs the process.

~_Silence as to the numbers of the armies._~

The first example in the Iliad is supplied by that passage of the unhappy speech of Agamemnon to the Assembly in the Second Book, which causes the fever-fit of home-sickness. He compares the strength of the Greek army with that of the Trojans; and he only effects the purpose by this feeble but elaborate contrivance. ‘Should the Greeks and Trojans agree to be numbered respectively, and should the Trojans properly so called be placed one by one, but the Greeks in tens, and every Trojan made cupbearer to a Greek ten, many of our tens would be without a cupbearer[807].’ In the first place, the fact that he calls this ascertaining of comparative force numbering ἀριθμηθημέναι is remarkable; for it would not have shown the numbers of either army; nor even the difference, by which the Greeks exceeded a tenfold ratio to the Trojans; but simply, by leaving an unexhausted residue, the fact that they were more, whether by much or by little, than ten times as many as the besieged. Secondly, it seems plain that, if Homer had known what was meant by multiplication, he would have used the process in this instance, in lieu of the elaborate (yet poetical) circumlocution which he has adopted; and would have said the Greeks were ten times, or fifteen times, or twenty times, as many as the inhabitants of Troy.

[807] Il. ii. 123-8.

After this, Ulysses reminds the Assembly of the apparition of the dragon they had seen at Aulis. The phrase χθιζά τε καὶ πρώιζα, which he employs, may grammatically either belong to the epoch of the gathering at Aulis, or to the time of the plague, which had carried off a part of the force a fortnight or three weeks before. In whichever connection of the two we place it, it affords an instance of extreme indefiniteness in the use of two adverbs which are at once expressive of time and of number; for on one supposition he must use them to express whole years, and on the other they must mean near a fortnight, and therefore a certain number of days.

The next case is remarkable. It is that of the Catalogue.

The resolution, which introduces it, was not a resolution to number the host; but simply to make a careful division and distribution of the men under their leaders, with a view to a more effective responsibility, both of officers and men[808]. But when the Poet comes to enumerate the divisions, it is evidently a great object with him to make known the relative forces, and thus the relative prominence and power, of the different States of Greece. Yet nothing can be more imperfect than the manner in which the enumerating portion of his task is executed. In the first place, we trace again the old habit of the loose and figurative use of numbers. For Homer could hardly mean us to take literally all the numbers of ships, which he has stated in the Catalogue: since, in every case where they come up to or exceed twenty, they run in complete decades without odd numbers; subject to the single exception of the twenty-two ships of Gouneus. Podalirius and Machaon have thirty, the Phocians forty, Achilles fifty, Menelaus sixty, Diomed eighty, Nestor ninety, Agamemnon an hundred: the only full multiple of ten omitted being the utterly intractable ἑβδομήκοντα. But again, he gives us no effectual clue to the numbers of the crews. Each of the fifty ships of the Bœotians had one hundred and twenty men, and each of the seven ships of Philoctetes had fifty[809]. Thus he supplies us with the two factors of the sum, which would find the number of men, in each of these two cases; but in neither case does he perform the sum; and such is the uniform practice throughout the poems. For the Greek force generally, he has not even given us the factors. It has indeed been conjectured, that fifty may have been the smallest ship’s company, and one hundred and twenty the largest: but this is mere conjecture; and even if it be well founded, still we do not know whether the generality of the ships were about the mean, or nearer one or the other of the extremes. Again, it would appear probable from the Odyssey, that these numbers, of fifty and one hundred and twenty, are exclusive at least of pilots and commanders, if not also of the stewards[810] and the minor officers[811]; for the number mentioned by Alcinous[812] is fifty-two; and although he says that all were to sit down to row, the texts when compared cannot but suggest, that the number fifty was an usual complement of oars, and that the two were the captain and pilot respectively[813].

[808] Il. ii. 362-8.

[809] Il. ii. 509, 719.

[810] Il. xix. 44.

[811] Il. ii. 362, 5.

[812] Od. viii. 35.

[813] Sup. Agorè, p. 135.

Plainly, there must have been very great inequalities in the crews of the Greek armament; or Homer could not have said, after giving Agamemnon an hundred ships, that he had by far the largest force of all the chiefs[814];

[814] Il. ii. 577.

ἅμα τῷγε πολὺ πλεῖστοι καὶ ἄριστοι λαοὶ ἕποντ’.

For Diomed and Idomeneus have each eighty ships, and Nestor has ninety, so that their numbers would come very near Agamemnon’s, unless their ships were smaller. But to sum up this discussion. It is evident that, if only we suppose the Greeks of Homer’s time to have had a definite and well developed sense of number, the mention by Homer of the amount of force in the Trojan expedition would have been a fact of the highest national interest and importance. Yet he has left us nothing, which can be said even definitely to approximate to a record of it, though the enumeration of the Catalogue appears almost to force the subject upon him. The fair inferences seem to be, that he did not understand the calculative use of numbers at all, or beyond some very limited range; and that, even within that range, he for the most part employed them poetically and ornamentally; they were decorative and effective, like epithets to his song, but they were not statistical; as expressions of force they were no more than (as it were) tentative, and that but very rudely.

I am further confirmed in the belief of Homer’s indeterminate conception of number, from the strange result to which the contrary opinion would lead. He tells us of the Trojan bivouac[815];

[815] Il. viii. 562.

χίλι’ ἄρ’ ἐν πεδίῳ πυρὰ καίετο· πὰρ δὲ ἑκάστῳ εἵατο πεντήκοντα.

In this case he has given us again the factors of a sum in multiplication, though not the product. Did he mean them to be taken literally? If he did, then it is indeed strange that, although he says nothing whatever on the subject of number in the Trojan Catalogue, yet he has here supplied us with all the particulars necessary for estimating the Trojan force, while as to the Greek army, we remain unable to say whether it amounted to fifty thousand, or to half, or to twice or thrice that number. But it is quite plain from the total absence of specified numbers in the Trojan Catalogue, that he had no desire, as indeed he had no occasion, to give an accurate account of the Trojan force. On the other hand it appears, from the details of the Greek Catalogue, that he did wish to describe the amount of the force on that side, as far as he could conceive or convey it. If all this be so, then nothing can show more clearly than the thousand Trojan watch-fires, with their fifty men at each, Homer’s figurative manner of employing numerical aggregations. If however we admit the figurative use, we at once find everything harmonious. He describes the Trojans by the method of bold enhancement, at a juncture of the poem where it is his purpose to make them terrible to the Greek imagination.

The instance of Proteus in the Odyssey has already been referred to: but one more marked is afforded by the description that Eumæus gives of the herds and flocks of Ulysses. This, again, is one of the instances where the spirit and gist of the passage almost required that a total should be stated. For the object is to give a telling account. The wealth of this prince, says the Poet, was boundless; none of the heroes, whether of Ithaca or of the fertile continent, had so much; no, nor had any twenty of them. Then he mentions how many herds of cattle, goats, and swine, and flocks of sheep there were, but gives no numbers of any of the herds, nor any total: though, shortly before, the poem had mentioned the three hundred and sixty fat hogs under the care of Eumæus, and had also given us the sows in the usual manner, stating that there were twelve sties with fifty in each; but not specifying anywhere the total of six hundred which these figures yield when multiplied together[816].

[816] Od. xiv. 13-20.

Again, then the result of all these passages, as well as of more which might be quoted, is, I think, to show that Homer’s conceptions of number, and his use of number, especially when beyond a very low limit, were so indeterminate, that they may not improperly be called figurative.

~_Hesiod’s age of the Nymphs._~

In support and in illustration of this belief with respect to Homer, I would once more refer to the curious fragment ascribed to Hesiod respecting the age of the Nymphs with beauteous locks, which begins,

ἐννέα τοι ζώει γενεὰς λακέρυζα κορώνη ἀνδρῶν ἡβώντων.

In the Etymol. Magn. 13. 36, the reading is γερώντων; and Ausonius, following this authority in his Eighteenth Idyll, makes the γενεὴ no less than 96 years. But the sense of γενεὴ is fixed by Homer’s account of Nestor, and otherwise, in such a way as greatly to favour the reading ἡβώντων. The word therefore means the term between birth and the prime of life, which may well be taken at thirty years. Then comes a table as follows.

The age of the daw = 9 ages of men.

The age of the stag = 4 of daws = 36 of men.

The age of the crow = 3 of stags = twelve of daws = 108 of men.

The age of the palm = 9 of crows = 27 of stags = 108 of daws = 972 of men.

The age of the Nymph = 10 of palms = 90 of crows = 270 of stags = 1080 of daws = 9720 of men.

And if the γενεὴ be 30 years, the age of the Nymphs = 30 × 9720 = 291,600 years. But the point most remarkable for us is, that while Hesiod, if Hesiod it be, supplies us with the whole of the first factors after the γενεὴ, for this long sum, he does not actually perform one single multiplication; nor does he even define the γενεὴ, which is the first and most vital element of all.

He has thus given us at once a very pretty poetical invention for expressing approximately the age of Nymphs, who are Jove-born indeed, yet are not immortal, and a remarkable proof of the indefiniteness of numerical conceptions, and of total unacquaintance with the rules of arithmetic[817].

[817] I subjoin the rest of this curious fragment;

ἔλαφος δέ τε τετρακόρωνος· τρεῖς δ’ ἐλάφους ὁ κόραξ γηράσκεται· αὐτὰρ ὁ φοίνιξ ἐννέα τοὺς κόρακας· δέκαδ’ ἡμεῖς τοὺς φοίνικας νύμφαι ἐϋπλόκαμοι, κοῦραι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο.

It is noticed by Pliny, (Nat. Hist. vii. 48.) who terms it fabulous; but it is with more propriety, I think, to be called poetical.

One consequence of the proposition I have advanced with respect to Homer is, to destroy altogether a supposed discrepancy between the Iliad and the Odyssey, which has often been paraded as a reason, among others, for assigning them to different authors. It is truly alleged that, in the Catalogue[818], Crete is called ἑκατόμπολις; and that in the Nineteenth Odyssey[819] we are told of it,

[818] Il. ii. 649.

[819] Od. xix. 173.

ἐν δ’ ἄνθρωποι πολλοὶ, ἀπειρέσιοι, καὶ ἐννήκοντα πόληες.

Each of these words appears to be interpreted as strictly, as it would be if caught by an auditor in the accounts of some delinquent Joint-Stock Company; and thus, forsooth, a diversity of authors for the two poems is to be made good. Now it is not a little odd, if both these poets looked at the subject with the eye of statisticians, that while each found a different number of cities in Crete, yet each found an even, and more or less a round number. But why is ἑκατόμπολις to be more strictly interpreted than ἑκατομβή? And again, if we are to construe ἐννήκοντα statistically, what are we to do with the very word that precedes it, namely, ἀπειρέσιοι? The simple fact of the juxtaposition of that word with the ἐννήκοντα πόληες should surely have sufficed to show, that the whole manner of speech was (what we now call) poetical. So regarding it, I venture even to say that the effect of a comparison with the epithet in the Catalogue is to establish, not a discrepancy in point of fact, but rather a similarity in the measure of figurative conception and expression: so that in consequence, as far as it is worth any thing, it rather tends to prove the identity, than the diversity, of authorship between the two poems.

A second consequence, which must be drawn from the foregoing conclusions, is this; that we shall do wrong to search the poems of Homer for any scheme of chronology. The minute enumerations of the Mosaic books have perhaps given the tone to our ordinary historical inquiries: but, at least with respect to Homer, it must appear an erroneous course to use his numerical statements as literal, when they are applied to time, after we have had so much evidence of their generally ornamental and figurative character.

When Homer has occasion to define distance, he does not attempt to do it by a fixed measure, but by reference always to human or other action: it is as far as a man can throw a spear, (δουρὸς ἐρώη); or as far as a man’s cry can be heard (ὅσον τε γέγωνε βόησας); or as far, when we come to larger spaces, as we can sail within a certain time; if I make a good passage, says Achilles[820], I may get to Phthia on the third day: and again, we hear of the distance that a ship can perform within the day[821]. The horses of the gods in Homer clear, at each bound, a space as large as the eye can cover along the surface of the sea. As he comes to speak of points more remote and less known, he becomes greatly more vague, and says of Egypt, that even the birds do not get back from it within the year[822]: without doubt drawing his idea from those birds which periodically migrate.

[820] Il. ix. 362.

[821] ὅσσον τε πανημερίη νηῦς ἤνυσε, Od. iv. 356.

[822] Od. iii. 322. With this compare the Tempest, Act ii. Sc. 1; where, be it observed, Shakespeare is treating his subject as one of Dreamland.

_Ant._ Who’s the next heir of Naples?

_Seb._ Claribel.

_Ant._ She that is queen of Tunis: she, that dwells Ten leagues beyond man’s life; she that from Naples Can have no note, unless the sun were post, (The man i’ th’ moon ’s too slow,) till new-born chins Be rough and razorable.

~_No scheme of Chronology in Homer._~

As with spaces, so with times. The year indeed by its revolution forms itself into a natural whole, and is thus in a manner self-defined. So the waxing and waning moon defines the month. But even with these well marked terms Homer deals loosely; for the birth of infants is promised to take place after the revolution of a year from the time of conception[823].

[823] Od. xi. 248.

~_Case of the three decades of years._~

I do not remember that he ever mentions a very high number of days or of years, but his use of both days and years, when it does not embrace terms defined by custom, has the marks of being highly poetical. Take for instance the principal and almost only statements of the poem, that can claim to be called chronological. They are those which represent the period of the siege as a decade of years, preceded by a decade of preparation, and followed by a third decade for the vicissitudes of the Return. Here are three terms of years, all found in a Poet, who does not elsewhere deal in terms of years at all. Of history, or what purports to be such, Homer has given us a great deal, and he has placed it in the exactest and clearest order. But in no one instance, out of all his prior history, does he found himself on any numerical definitions of time. Moreover, these three terms of years are all exactly equal, which heightens the unlikelihood of their being historical. Lastly, the three terms are just of the number of years required to make up what was, according to all appearances, the Homeric term of a γενεὴ, or generation of men.

The passage, on which the proof of this last assertion must principally be founded, is that in the First Book[824], which describes the age of Nestor;

[824] Il. i. 250-2.

τῷ δ’ ἤδη δύο μὲν γενεαὶ μερόπων ἀνθρώπων ἐφθίαθ’, οἵ οἱ πρόσθεν ἅμα τράφεν ἠδ’ ἐγένοντο ἐν Πύλῳ ἠγαθέῃ, μετὰ δὲ τριτάτοισιν ἄνασσεν.

I take the word γενεὴ to mean here, ‘the term of thirty years,’ but with the necessary qualification of ‘_or_ thereabouts;’ and for the following reasons:

Nestor is represented in the Iliad as the oldest of the Greek chieftains of the first order. Yet Ulysses[825] was elderly, ὠμογέρων. Idomeneus, again, was older than Ulysses, as is plain from the more marked manner in which his advance in years is described. He is μεσαιπόλιος[826], and not fully ablebodied, as appears from his somewhat limited share in military operations; but Nestor is evidently older than Idomeneus, as he always addresses the whole body with the authority that belongs to the most extended experience, and as he never takes an active part, either in battle or in the games. We must, accordingly, suppose Nestor to be represented as at this time an old man of seventy, or from that to seventy-five.

[825] Il. xxiii. 791.

[826] Il. xiii. 361.

Now the passage implies that he was in the third γενεὴ, and in the midst, i. e. not at either extremity, of it: the words are μετὰ τριτάτοισιν. No lower number than thirty years will place Nestor fairly among, or in the midst of, the third generation from his birth. If, for example, we take five and twenty years as the term, he would have been not so much among the third as on the eve of arriving within the fourth generation. But neither can we assign to γενεὴ any meaning, which shall make it sensibly exceed thirty years. For as we may say with confidence that the Nestor of the Iliad is over seventy, so, on the other hand, we may fairly compute that he is under eighty; inasmuch as, though he takes no part in exertions actually athletic, he spares himself nothing else. He is found by Agamemnon, when the commander in chief goes his rounds, on the field and at the head of his division: he is wakeful for the night council, and he goes about awaking others[827]. Retaining so large a share of bodily activity, he is still not represented as possessed of strength in such a degree as to border upon the marvellous; he is simply, in regard to corporal qualities, what would now be called a remarkably fine old gentleman. But if instead of thirty we were to take forty years, then, in order to have well entered into the third term he must have been already much beyond eighty, indeed, probably beyond ninety, in the Iliad, and above an hundred in the Odyssey; an age, which, as he retains in that poem all his mental powers, we may be quite sure Homer did not mean to assign to him. If, then, γενεὴ meant any term of years, it must, in all likelihood, have been somewhere about thirty years.

[827] Il. x. 157.

Homer has been careful, in the case of Nestor, to mark, by an appropriate change of expressions, the difference between his age in the two poems respectively. In the Iliad he is exercising the kingly office _among_ the third generation since his birth. In the Odyssey he is said to have exhausted the three terms[828];

[828] Od. iii. 245. The meaning may be that he had _reigned_ for above two generations: but in the Iliad no more is implied than that he had _lived_ well into a third.

τρὶς γὰρ δή μίν φασιν ἀνάξασθαι γενε’ ἀνδρῶν.

That lucidity and accuracy in Homer’s expressions, to which we are so often beholden, may stand us yet further in good stead. Two γενεαὶ had passed, not of men at large, but of _the_ men οἵ οἱ πρόσθεν ἅμα τράφεν ἠδ’ ἐγένοντο, of those who were bred and born with him, of his contemporaries. Now this proves that by γενεὴ Homer does not mean the full duration of human life, but that average interval between the successions of men, which general experience places at about thirty years. For if Homer had meant by γενεὴ the whole time required for the dying out of a generation, Nestor could not have outlived two generations of contemporaries. In this sense, his contemporaries were manifestly not two generations, but one, or little more. But if the Poet meant the usual interval at which child succeeds to, or rather follows upon, father, the expression is clear; for the meaning is, that he had seen two of these terms of years, or successions, pass over those who were born at the same time with himself. And in fact this sense of the term γενεὴ is much closer to its etymology than any other. We may, then, on the whole, pretty safely assume it to be a term of years, having the number thirty, so to speak, for its pivot. And thus the three decades of the war become yet more inadmissible as historical expressions, because they are under the strongest suspicion of being poetically employed in order to make up the γενεὴ, so far at least as they and it can be considered to approximate to an actual number at all.

In full conformity with this reasoning, it has been shown by Mure, that the events of the third decade, with their times, instead of ten years only, make up eight years and seven months[829]: and he proceeds in the same direction with the foregoing argument so far, at least, as to observe, that the decades and their arrangement are conceived ‘in a mixed spirit of hyperbole and method,’ which commonly marks the genius of heroic romance[830].

[829] Lit. Greece, i. 460. ii. 139.

[830] Ibid. ii. 138.

That, however, which enables me with great confidence at once to urge Homer’s historical authority, and yet to decline recognising him as a chronologist at all, is the fact, that he nowhere founds his history at all in chronology, or in the numbering of events by years, more than he numbers distances by miles, but that he arranges the succession of occurrences by the γενεαὶ or succession of human generations. On these generations we must look as the real time-keeping organism of his works: and the time with its elastic periods, although indeterminate in its details, is kept by him most accurately and effectually as a whole; so that his generations, which are dispersedly recorded in various parts of the poems, always tally when they meet. This is not the place for the proof of the assertion: I only refer to it, because it may help to dispel the illusion apt to possess the mind with respect to Homer’s decades. We, with our definite numerical ideas, may naturally consider that if an author of our own day had said a war lasted in preparation, action, and return, each ten years, and if it was afterwards found perhaps to have lasted (say) only for ten years altogether or little more, such an author would have proved himself unworthy of belief: he would have broken faith with us. But Homer does not break faith with us in using numbers poetically; they belong to his pictorial and not to his historical apparatus, and in connection with this pictorial apparatus it is that he constantly employs them. I doubt if there is any exception to be made to the broad assertion, that, unless in the single case of the war, with the preceding and following decades, Homer never applies number to narrative. And yet the poems are full of independent narratives. Of all these, very few indeed are left unfixed in date; and in every case the date, when found, is found, of course with a certain margin, by means of the order of generations.

~_Difficulties of the literal interpretation._~

Now this view of Homer’s mode of chronology will serve, I think, to explain some difficulties that have heretofore led to much of needless perplexity. If I am right, it will follow that we must not adopt these decades as a guide to determine arithmetically the order of events, because Homer has never conceived them arithmetically, but has conceived them rather as we conceive millions or billions. Hence they are more justly to be viewed as a drapery thrown loosely over his action, than as a rigid framework into which it must at all costs be made to fit. Let us apply this to various cases; and among them to those of Telemachus and Neoptolemus respectively. Ulysses left Telemachus a mere child, νέον γεγαῶτ’ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ[831]. He comes back and finds him not a full man, for if he had been a full man, he would have been guilty of a rooted cowardice beyond excuse, which there is no sign that Homer meant to impute to him; but yet he was approaching manhood. Still he is contemptuously called νέος παῖς[832] by Antinous. Upon the whole, the case of Telemachus would perhaps, according to the analogy of the poems, best fall in with an absence of not more than fifteen years, though it does not absolutely exclude nineteen. Here there may be a slight, yet there is not a glaring, discrepancy. But in another case, that of the number of the days for which Telemachus was absent, Mure has shown how little Homer cares to follow the lapse of time, in a case where it does not essentially touch the general order of the poem, with the precision that he observes in everything that he treats historically[833]. I cannot treat this as a difficulty with respect to the question of authorship, or admit it to be one: it is his childlike and indeterminate but poetical habit of handling numbers for effect, just as a painter handles colour. On the other hand, in the case of Argus, on whom dark death laid hold[834],

[831] Od. xii. 112, 144.

[832] Od. iv. 665.

[833] Mure, Hist. Lit. Greece, vol. i. p. 437.

[834] Od. xvii. 327.

αὐτίκ’ ἰδόντ’ Ὀδυσῆα ἐεικοστῷ ἐνιαυτῷ,

he precisely coincides with his own decades. Yet I believe he does this not from any sense of the necessity of such coincidence, but because in that incomparable passage he had the extreme old age of a dog to represent, and to this the expression of the twentieth year was suited. When, however, we come to the case of Neoptolemus, we find this to be one extremely difficult of adjustment for any critic, who would insist upon a merely numerical precision in Homer. We must indeed dismiss from our minds the tales about the concealment of a beardless Achilles at Scyros, under a female disguise; from which he was extracted by the art of Ulysses. Of these stories Homer knows nothing; though it seems probable that the grace and beauty of the great warrior, as he stands in Homer, may have been connected with, or may have suggested, them. But what the Poet does represent is, that Achilles went to Troy when without experience in war, that he was put under a certain tutelage of Phœnix his original teacher, and now one of his lieutenants, that Patroclus as his senior was desired by Peleus to give him good advice, and that he is called νήπιος[835]. Yet his son Neoptolemus succeeds him in command before the close of the war, and attains to very high distinction. It is yet more needful to be observed, that his distinction is in council, as well as in the field[836]. The age of Achilles is, indeed, presumably somewhat raised by the fact, that Phœnix seems to represent himself as a good deal younger than Peleus, who, he says, treated him as a father might have done[837]. And again, Achilles is never represented as a young man in the Iliad, while Diomed is so represented. Still there is a decided incompatibility in the statements as to Achilles and his son, if we suppose that Homer carried in his mind the effect of his three decades, as determining precisely the growth of Neoptolemus in years and strength; for Neoptolemus is more advanced at the end of the war, than his illustrious father had been at its beginning. Mure has been at the pains[838] to arrange all these matters which depend on the decades chronologically, without, I think, removing the impression that mere chronology is considerably strained by them, and that if strictly judged, the narrative is, to all appearance, chargeable with some few years of maladjustment. It seems to me more near the truth to consider the three decades, together making up a γενεὴ, as a distribution of time which the Poet adopted for its symmetry and grandeur, since it represented the war as absorbing an age or generation of men: but not to hold him bound to adjust the relations of all the events he narrates with reference to a minute regularity of progression, which he seems not to have taken into account, and which his hearers were probably quite incapable of appreciating. If we wish to test his historical credit, we may try him by his own scheme of chronology, namely, his genealogies. His legends embrace some seven generations. The same characters are produced and reproduced in many of them; but they are nowhere presented in such a way as to be inconsistent with their order of succession according to the ordinary laws of human nature.

[835] Il. ix. 438. and xi. 783.

[836] Od. xi. 510-12.

[837] Il. ix. 481.

[838] Lit. Greece, ii. 141.

~_Uses of the proposed interpretation._~

The application of these considerations to the poems will assist in explaining difficulties, which it has been thought worth while by learned men to raise.

For instance; while we take the three decades of years historically, we are perplexed by such questions as, How it came about that the Greeks[839] never had been mustered till nine years had passed. Secondly, how it was that the Trojans had never until then seen them in such force[840]; whereas we know that multitudes of the Greek army had died[841]; and there is no sign that any such communication with their native country took place during the course of the war, as might have sufficed to replenish their ranks. Thirdly, why the Trojans had remained so closely shut within the walls, and yet at the same time the Greeks had so seldom come near them, that Priam should not have learnt to know Agamemnon and his compeers by sight during so long a period; and this although Achilles may probably have been absent, for considerable intervals, on his predatory expeditions. Fourthly, how it came about that the great number of allies speaking various tongues, who had gathered round Priam to assist him, should, like the Greek army, not have been marshalled at an earlier time.

[839] Il. ii. 360.

[840] Il. ii. 799.

[841] Il. i. 52. ii. 302.

But if we suppose the term of ten years to be in the main a figurative expression for conveying the idea of effort lengthened in duration, as well as extraordinary in intensity, difficulties like these, which at the worst are perhaps not very serious, either wholly vanish, or are reduced to insignificant proportions. We are then at liberty to suppose that, without at all departing from the general truth of history, Homer felt himself authorized to compress, to expand, or to group the events of the war, in such a manner as he thought best for the concentration of interest, and for the production of adequate poetical and national effect.

SECT. IV.

_Homer’s Perceptions and Use of Colour._

The subject of the Homeric numbers has been discussed at considerable length, on account of its connection with important questions of history. That of colours may, even on its own merits, deserve a careful examination. This inquiry will resemble, however, the former discussion in the appearance of paradox, which the argument may seem to present. Next to the idea of number, there is none perhaps more definite to the modern mind generally, as well as in particular to the English mind, than that of colour. That our own country has some special aptitude in this respect, we may judge from the comparatively advantageous position, which the British painters have always held as colourists among other contemporary schools. Nothing seems more readily understood and retained by very young children among us, than the distinctions between the principal colours. In regard to one point, the case of numbers is here reversed. There the idea becomes indefinite as we ascend in the scale, here it is as we descend. Colour becomes doubtful as it becomes faint, more and more clear as it is accumulated and heightened. But the facility with which we discriminate colour in all its marked forms, is probably the result of traditional aptitude, since we seem to find, as we go far backward in human history, that the faculty is less and less mature.

I am conscious that the subject, which is now before us, in reality deserves a scientific investigation, which I am not capable of affording to it: and also that we are, as yet, far from being able to render the language of the ancients for colour into our own with the confidence, which we can feel in almost every other department of interpretation. My endeavours will be limited, firstly, to a collection of ‘_realien_,’ or facts of the poems, in the case of Colour: and, secondly, to pointing out what appears to be the basis of the ideas and perceptions of Homer respecting it, and the relation of that basis to the ideas of the later Greeks.

Among the signs of the immaturity which I have mentioned, the following are found in the poems of Homer:

I. The paucity of his colours.

II. The use of the same word to denote not only different hues or tints of the same colour, but colours which, according to us, are essentially different.

III. The description of the same object under epithets of colour fundamentally disagreeing one from the other.

IV. The vast predominance of the most crude and elemental forms of colour, black and white, over every other, and the decided tendency to treat other colours as simply intermediate modes between these extremes.

V. The slight use of colour in Homer, as compared with other elements of beauty, for the purpose of poetic effect, and its absence in certain cases where we might confidently expect to find it.

Each of these topics will deserve a distinct notice.

~_Homeric adjectives of Colour._~

I. First, then, with respect to the paucity of his colours. We find, I think, scarcely more than the following words which can with certainty be described as adjectives of colour properly so called:

1. λευκός. 2. μέλας. 3. ξανθός. 4. ἐρυθρός. 5. πορφύρεος. 6. κυάνεος. 7. φοίνιξ. 8. πόλιος.

There are other words which are taken from objects that have colour, and to most of which I shall hereafter refer: but which can hardly, in consistency with the whole evidence from the text of Homer, be classed as adjectives of definite colour.

Now we must at once be struck with the poverty of the list which has just been given, upon comparing it with our own list of primary colours, which has been determined for us by Nature, and which is as follows:

1. Red. 2. Orange. 3. Yellow. 4. Green. 5. Blue. 6. Indigo. 7. Violet.

To these we are to add--

8. White, the compound of all colours; 9. Black, the negative or absence of them all.

Out of these nine, three at least stand unrepresented. For πόλιος can mean none of them: and φοίνιξ can do no more than double either πορφύρεος, or ξανθὸς, or ἐρυθρός. The most favourable presumptions would perhaps arrange the Homeric list as follows:

1. λευκὸς, white. 2. μέλας, black. 3. ξανθὸς, yellow. 4. ἐρυθρὸς, red. 5. πορφύρεος, violet. 6. κυάνεος, indigo.

And thus orange, green, and blue would remain without any corresponding terms. But, in truth, when we examine further into Homer’s mode of employing his adjectives of colour in detail, we shall perceive that he is by no means so rich as this classification would allow.

The other words which will presently be considered, but which have very slight claims indeed to be treated as adjectives of definite colour, are as follows:

1. χλωρός. 2. αἰθαλόεις. 3. ῥοδόεις. 4. ἰόεις. 5. οἴνοψ. 6. μιλτοπάρηος. 7. αἴθων. 8. ἀργός. 9. αἴολος. 10. γλαυκός. 11. χάροπος. 12. σιγαλόεις. 13. μαρμάρεος.

Along with each of these adjectives, which are the chief though not quite the only ones of their class in Homer, I shall take the cognate words, such as verbs or compounds, which may belong to them.

~_Applications of them._~

II. Let us now review the particular applications which Homer has made of these words respectively. Among them, however, it will not be necessary to include λευκὸς and μέλας, because those epithets indicate ideas which have at all times been used, to a considerable extent, by way of approximation only.

1. ξανθὸς is applied by Homer to the following objects:

_a._ horses, ἵππων ξανθὰ κάρηνα, Il. ix. 407.

_b._ hair of men, ξανθὸς Μενέλαος, _passim_: Achilles, Il. i. 197.

_c._ hair of women, ξανθὴ Ἀγαμήδη, Il. xi. 739; Δημήτηρ, Il. v. 500.

2. ἐρυθρὸς is evidently the same word with the Latin _ruber_, and with our own ‘ruddy,’ as well as probably the German _roth_.

It is used by Homer for

_a._ Copper in Il. ix. 365. _b._ Nectar, Il. xix. 38. _c._ Wine, Od. v. 93. _d._ Blood: in ἐρυθαίνω, Il. x. 484.

3. πορφύρεος again is the Latin _purpura_, and our ‘purple,’ as well as our ‘porphyry.’ In the uses of this word we shall find for the first time a startling amount of obvious discrepancy: and it will require to be considered in the proper place, whether this discrepancy is to be referred to a bold exercise of the Poet’s art, or to an undeveloped knowledge and a consequently defective standard of colour.

The word πορφύρεος is employed as follows for objects of sense:

_a._ Blood, Il. xvii. 361.

_b._ Dark cloud, ibid. 551.

_c._ Wave of a river when disturbed, Il. xxi. 326.

_d._ Wave of the sea, Il. i. 482; and the disturbed sea, Il. xvi. 391.

_e._ The ball with which the Phæacian dancers played, Od. viii. 373.

_f._ Garments, as Il. viii. 221; Od. iv. 115.

_g._ Carpets, as Od. xxi. 151; Il. xxiv. 645.

_h._ The rainbow, Il. xvii. 547.

_i._ Metaphorically it is applied to Death, Il. v. 83: and, as it would appear, to bloody death only.

Further, the verb πορφύρω is applied

_a._ to the sea darkening, Il. xiv. 16. _b._ to the mind brooding, Il. xx. 551.

Again, the compound ἁλιπόρφυρος is applied

_a._ to wool, Od. vi. 53. _b._ to garments woven of it, Od. xiii. 108.

In this epithet we have the additional idea of the sea introduced; and it literally means ‘sea-purple.’ But I postpone any remark with respect to Homer’s particular intention in the use of the word, until we come to the epithets derived from ἴον, a violet.

Three forms of colour at least seem to be comprehended under this group of words;

1. The redness of blood.

2. The purple proper, as of the sea in Il. i. 482. To this also probably belongs the rainbow, of whose seven colours three may be said to belong to the family of blue: and which is termed blue by Shakespeare.

3. The grey and leaden colour of a dark cloud when about to burst in storm, and of a river when disturbed.

We shall hereafter see reason to suppose that the word may also and often mean what is tawny or brown.

~_Of κύανος and κυάνεος._~

4. The word κυάνεος is very important in this inquiry; and unfortunately it is not less obscure.

It at once throws us back on the prior question, what was κύανος? But this question remains almost wholly undetermined[842]; so that we must follow, as well as we can, the Homeric applications of the word itself, together with its adjective and its compounds. These are very numerous. First we have the substantive κύανος introduced in three places: in each of which it evidently belongs to a combination of colours as well as of substances.

[842] See note at the end of the Section.

_a._ Once it is κύανος simply. The interior wall of the hall of Alcinous is covered with sheets of copper[843]; and round the top is a θριγκὸς or fringe of κύανος. Od. vii. 87.

[843] Ibid.

_b._ Twice it is μέλας κύανος. On the breast-plate of Agamemnon there are twenty stripes or layers of tin, twelve of gold, and ten μέλανος κυάνοιο. Il. xi. 24, Also;

_c._ Upon his shield there were ten rounds of copper; and then, apparently on the face of the shield within these, twenty white bosses (ὄμφαλοι λευκοὶ) made of tin, if such be the meaning of κασσίτερος: in the centre of all, there was one boss μέλανος κυάνοιο. Il. xi. 35.

Passing now to κυάνεος, we come next to three passages where it may be questioned whether they describe colour only, or substance only, or both.

_d._ Upon the breastplate of Agamemnon, which has ten layers of black κύανος, there are on either side three κυάνεοι δράκοντες (Il. xi. 26). These are compared to the rainbow, which, as we have already seen, is described elsewhere as πορφυρεή.

_e._ On the silver-plated belt of Agamemnon there is a κυάνεος δράκων. Il. xi. 38, 9.

_f._ Around the golden vineyard on the shield of Achilles, with its silver stakes, there is a fence of κασσίτερος and a trench (κάπετος) described as κυανέη. Il. xviii. 564.

The other applications at once appear to have reference to colour only.

_g._ To the eyebrows of Jupiter and Juno. Il. i. 528. xv. 102. xvii. 209.

_h._ To a dark cloud of vapour; but not to a storm-cloud. Il. xxiii. 188. v. 345. xx. 418.

_i._ To the hair of Hector, Il. xxii. 402; and to the beard of Ulysses, when he is restored to beauty by Minerva. Od. xvi. 176. With this we may compare the hyacinthine hair of Ulysses in Od. vi. 231.

_j._ To the serried masses of the Greeks: πυκιναὶ κίνυντο φάλαγγες κυάνεαι. Il. iv. 281. Now this epithet must have been derived from their arms, and these would probably be composed in the main of two elements, not easy to combine in a common idea of colour; firstly, copper, which is ruddy; and secondly, the hides of oxen upon the shields and elsewhere. Homer never (except in Il. xiii. 703, and Od. xiii. 32) describes these animals by any epithet of colour. In those two passages they are βόε οἴνοπε. This epithet will be considered presently. In the meantime, we may assume it as probable, that a dark colour would predominate, and that accordingly we should so understand κυάνεαι: but the leaning towards _blue_, which so often characterizes the epithet, thus entirely escapes. The word is also applied to the Trojan host, in Il. xvi. 66.

_k._ Thetis puts on mourning garments for Patroclus, when about to appear to Achilles, Il. xxiv. 93.

κάλυμμ’ ἕλε δῖα θεάων κυάνεον· τοῦ δ’ οὔτι μελάντερον ἔπλετο ἔσθος.

Here Homer is careful to inform us that the κάλυμμα, or hood and mantle, was the blackest garment possible; and, since in Il. iv. 287 we find that he was acquainted with pitch, we need not scruple to assume that here he speaks literally, and either means a real black, which, nevertheless, he also calls κυάνεον, or sees no difference between the genuine black and the colour of κύανος.

_l._ When the wave of Charybdis retires, the shore appears ψάμμῳ κυανέῃ. Now the colour of sea-sand, when it has just been left by the wave, is a dull but also rather a light brown.

We take now the compounds.

1. κυανοχαίτης is applied

_a._ To Neptune, e. g. Il. xv. 174.

_b._ To a mare, Il. xx. 224.

2. κυανῶπις is applied to Amphitrite, or the sea, beating on rocks, Od. xii. 60.

3. κυανόπεζα is used for the foot of a beautiful table (Il. xi. 628). Here possibly substance may be designated rather than colour. Metal at the foot would give steadiness to a table.

4. We have κυανόπρωρος and κυανοπρώρειος for the prow of a ship. Evidently it is the coloured prow: for otherwise the prow would be of the same hue with the rest of the ship. (Il. xv. 693, _et alibi_.) So the prows of ships are called μιλτοπάρηοι, in Il. ii. 637, and Od. ix. 125. Now μίλτος was red earth or ochre; and yet it seems that Homer uses μιλτοπάρηος as equivalent to κυανόπρωρος. For the first epithet is applied in the Catalogue to the ships led by Ulysses; and the second in Od. x. 127 to the vessel in which he sailed.

The uses of this group of words thus appear to exhibit a degree of indefiniteness, hardly reconcilable with the supposition that Homer possessed accurate ideas of colour. There is no one colour that can cover them all. The hood of Thetis is closely akin to black; the prow of a ship to at least a dull red; the sand is of russet or a lightish brown; the cloud a leaden grey; the hair and eyebrows are of a deep but not a dull colour; the cornice in the hall of Alcinous must have been in relief and contrast as compared with the copper wall, and sufficiently light or clear to strike the eye at a distance, in an interior lighted at night only from the ground. With perhaps this exception, the word ‘dark’ will cover all the uses of κυάνεος: but dark derives its force from a relation to light, and not to colour.

~_Of φοίνιξ, πόλιος._~

5. Φοίνιξ in Homer is clearly a word descriptive of colour: but it as clearly partakes of the indefinite character attaching to the other words of the class.

_a._ The blood drawn by Pandarus from Menelaus is compared to the colour φοίνιξ, used for staining ivory. In this simile, the sense leans to red, especially as the hue of ivory is so near to that of flesh (Il. iv. 141). It is mentioned in other places, probably with the same sense, as an ornamental dye.

_b._ In Il. xxiii. 454, we learn that one of the horses of Diomed was φοίνιξ, with a round white mark on his forehead. Whether we render this bay or chestnut, it is materially different from the red colour of blood.

_c._ Φοίνιος is used for blood, Od. xviii. 96.

_d._ As is φοινὸς in Il. xvi. 159.

_e._ And φοινικόεις in Il. xxiii. 716. This word is also applied to a cloak, Il. x. 133.

_f._ A dragon or serpent, borne by an eagle, is φοινήεις, apparently because dappled or streaked with his own blood, Il. xii. 200-6, 218-21.

_g._ Ships are φοινικοπάρηοι, Od. xi. 123, and xxiii. 272: this word is apparently synonymous with μιλτοπάρηοι.

_h._ The serpent is δάφοινος ἐπὶ νῶτα, Il. ii. 308. And we have the δάφοινον δέρμα λέοντος, Il. x. 23.

On the whole, we trace here not less than three senses: that in which φοίνιξ is applied to the horse, which appears to be the equivalent of ξανθὸς, the more prevailing word: next, that of the tawny and dull-coloured lion’s hide: then that of the brighter but yet deep colour of blood, which is freely called πορφύρεος. So that φοίνιξ merely renders other words, and does not at all assist to make up deficiencies in the Homeric vocabulary for the expression of colour.

Considered as an epithet of colour, the word δάφοινος, meaning blood-red, is inappropriate to the dragon or serpent, and further serves to illustrate that vagueness, of which the signs multiply as we proceed.

6. πόλιος is applied in Homer as follows:

_a._ To human hair in connection with old age, Il. xxii. 74 _et alibi_.

_b._ To the sea, Il. i. 350 _et passim_. It remains to inquire, whether this refers to the sea, or to the foam upon it.

_c._ To iron, Il. ix. 366. xx. 261. Od. xxi. 3, 81. xxiv. 167.

_d._ To the hide of a wolf, which Dolon put on for his nocturnal expedition, Il. x. 334. The meaning of the word here appears to be not ‘gray’ but ‘white.’ It is Homer’s evident intention to exhibit Dolon as a sort of simpleton[844] (x. 316, 17); and accordingly he takes a white covering, which makes him visible to the eye by night, so that Ulysses saw him (φράσατο, 339).

[844] The celebrated Hunter noticed that Homer had made Dolon an only son with five sisters, as a proof of the Poet’s sagacity in observation: having himself found, that youths under such circumstances are generally more or less effeminate. I owe this information to one of the most distinguished living members of the profession, which Hunter himself adorned. It was also a favourite remark, I believe, with Mr. Rogers.

The last, then, of these four uses is _white_. The first clearly inclines to the same idea. The second might bear either of two senses. But iron cannot be brought nearer to white, even if we assume it to be always polished, than a bluish grey; which, in truth, is somewhat distant from white. It will, moreover, be seen, that Homer also describes iron as αἴθων, and as ἰόεις.

~_The quasi-adjectives of colour._~

I now come to the class of words, in dealing with which it will be shown that they have not in general even the pretensions of those that have preceded to be treated as adjectives of definite colour.

7. χλωρὸς is used in Homer,

_a._ Chiefly in a metaphorical sense, as directly descriptive of fear.

_b._ For the paleness of the face derived from fear, as in χλωροὶ ὑπαὶ δείους, Il. x. 376 and xv. 4. This use discloses to us the basis of the last-named metaphor.

_c._ For twigs, apparently when fresh-pulled by Eumæus to make a bed for Ulysses, who was an unexpected guest; Od. xvi. 47.

_d._ For honey, Il. xi. 630: where it must mean either pale, or fresh.

_e._ For the olive-wood club of the Cyclops in Od. ix. 320, 379. Here, for the first time, we find the word applied to an object that might perhaps be called green. But still there are two observations to be made. First, even the leaf of the olive is rather grey than green: and this is the bark, not the leaf, which is yet more grey, and yet less green. Secondly, the governing idea is not the greenness, but the newness: for Ulysses says that he heated it in the ashes until it was about to take fire, χλωρός περ ἐών; although freshly cut, and still seething with the sap.

_f._ The derivative χλωρηῒς is applied to the nightingale in Od. xix. 518, as a lover of the woods: and here the idea of greenness seems to be rather less faintly indicated.

Upon the whole, then, χλωρὸς indicates rather the absence than the presence of definite colour, although it is derived from χλοὴ, meaning young herbage. If regarded as an epithet of colour, it involves at once an hopeless contradiction between the colour of honey on the one side, and greenness on the other. Again, the more we assume it to mean green, the more startling it becomes that it could have taken paleness, as is manifestly the case, for its governing idea. Next to paleness, it serves chiefly for freshness, i. e. as opposed to what is stale or withered: a singular combination with the former sense. The idea of green we scarcely find, unless once, connected with this word in the poems of Homer: and yet it is a remarkable fact that there is no other word in the poems that can even be supposed to represent a colour, which, not the rainbow only, but every day nature, presents so largely to the eye.

8. I take next the word αἰθαλόεις. The Homeric sense of this word seems somewhat to resemble that of κυάνεος; although there is the difference between them, that the derivation here is from αἰθάλη, soot.

This epithet is applied by Homer, in sufficient conformity, as is contended, with the idea of soot,

_a._ To the interior of the palace of Ulysses, Od. xxii. 239, and to that of Priam, Il. ii. 415. In the latter case the word will, as it appears from the context, bear to be construed with reference to the state of a house blackened by a conflagration.

_b._ To the dark ash κόνις αἰθαλόεσσα, which Achilles poured over his head, Il. xviii. 23, and which, in ver. 25, is called μέλαινα τέφρη: this material Laertes also used for the same purpose in Od. xxiv. 315. Yet the propriety of the second of these two applications depends, first, upon the rather hardy supposition, that both Achilles and Laertes had by them, at the moment of their sorrow, the remains of a wood-fire; and, secondly, upon the assumption that the word κόνις may mean fire-ashes as well as dust in general. But we may doubt both of these assumptions; while, if κόνις means ‘dust,’ and αἰθαλόεις ‘sooty,’ it becomes plain that this epithet is used, like others, with very great latitude.

9. It may be admitted that, at a first view, the words ῥοδόεις and ῥοδοδάκτυλος would appear to be in the strictest sense epithets of colour. But it still would seem that they add nothing to Homer’s defective means of expressing it: and not only so, but, in fact, scanty as is their use, it is so little congruous, that we are driven to suppose he must have employed these words in a sense not only elastic, but altogether indeterminate and purely figurative.

Ῥοδοδάκτυλος, or rosy-fingered, has become, through Homer’s example and authority, a classical epithet for the morning. It is, however, more open to criticism than is usually the case with the Homeric epithets. There is nothing strange in personifying Morn, in order to embellish her with an epithet belonging to personal beauty; but redness, applied to the fingers, and not merely to their tips, is more than equivocal in this respect, since that colour is only even admissible in the interior of the hand, which is the part not seen, and therefore presumably the part not intended in ῥοδοδάκτυλος.

There are certain very fugitive tints of the sky, which approach to the hue of the rose: but if Homer had the colour of that flower definitely in his view, it is most singular that he should never use it, either for the human form or otherwise, except on this and one other occasion only.

The nature of that other occasion is yet more strange. Hector’s corpse is anointed, in Il. xxiii. 186, with rosy oil, ῥοδόεντι ἐλαίῳ. It does not appear allowable to follow Damm in rendering this as oil _made from_ roses: for we have no such thing as ἔλαιον in Homer, except from the olive-tree. It therefore applies to the hue of olive oil: and no conceivable use of an epithet could be more conclusive to show an extreme vagueness in the Poet’s ideas of colour, as well as probably in those of his age.

10. The violet, no less than the rose, has supplied Homer with epithets, which he has used in such a manner as to deprive them of all specific force as vehicles for the expression of a peculiar colour.

There is certainly a great temptation, when we find in Homer the ἰοειδέα πόντον, to give him credit for the full meaning of this very beautiful epithet, which he uses thrice for the sea (Il. ix. 298, Od. v. 55, xi. 106), and never in any other connection. But when we examine his employment of cognate words, it is obvious that he can mean little more by the epithet, than to convey a rather vague idea of darkness.

For he uses ἰόεις as an epithet for iron (Il. xxiii. 850): and ἰοδνεφὴς, first for the wool (Od. iv. 135) with which Helen is spinning. Here we might be tempted to presume a purple dye. Yet it would be a somewhat strained supposition: for what title have we to say that dyeing was in use among the Greeks of the Homeric age? Do we hear of any dye except that of the φοίνιξ, a name which tends to indicate a foreign character? And does not the introduction of the Mæonian or Carian woman in the simile of Il. iv. 141, to stain the ivory--a most simple example of the art, or scarcely an example at all--afford a strong presumption, that the art was foreign to Greece? Such is apparently the true inference: but, if it be the true one, then we at once lose the specific force of purple for all the mantles, carpets, and the like, in the poems; and we are only entitled to presume them to have been woven of a dark wool.

This construction is supported by the second and only other passage, in which Homer has used the word ἰοδνεφής. For here (Od. ix. 426) he speaks of the living sheep of Polyphemus as

καλοί τε μεγάλοι τε, ἰοδνεφὲς εἶρος ἔχοντες.

This passage appears evidently to apply to what we term black sheep, which are more strictly of a dark brown. So viewed, it affords another most striking token of the indeterminateness of Homeric colours, that the name of the violet can be employed with such a signification. And it also seems to carry forward the proof that the πορφύρεαι χλαῖναι, the ῥήγεα, and all other woven objects with that epithet annexed, were in reality either black or brown.

11. Homer employs the word οἴνοψ with evident relation to colour; but it is for two objects only, viz.

_a._ For oxen, in Il. xiii. 703, and Od. xiii. 32.

_b._ For the sea, without reference to any peculiar state of it, in Il. i. 350, _et alibi_.

There is no small difficulty in combining these two uses by reference to the idea of a common colour. The sea is blue, grey, or green. Oxen are black, bay, or brown. I do not refer to their lighter colours, which are excluded by the nature of the epithet. It is remarkable that, among colours properly so called, Homer has none whatever, derived from the name of an object, that are light, unless it be in the case of the rose. The violet, the unknown κύανος, the φοίνιξ, the αἰθαλὴ, the ἁλιπόρφυρος, the πορφύρη, whatever else they may be, are all dark. And to this class οἴνοψ evidently belongs.

Wine is mentioned by Homer in nearly one hundred and forty places: in the majority of them it has an epithet: but only ten times is it described by an epithet of colour. Of these two are used for it, ἐρυθρὸς and μέλας; so that he plainly conceived of it as dark, but probably without a determinate hue. He more frequently calls it αἴθοψ: but this word, which fluctuates between the ideas of flame and smoke, either means tawny, or else refers to light, and not to colour, and bears the sense of sparkling.

Thus then οἴνοψ, like so many other words that we have gone through, vaguely indicates a dark hue, but cannot be referred to any one of the known principal colours.

12. The word μιλτοπάρηος has already been disposed of in connection with κυάνεος and φοίνιξ.

13. αἴθων is applied in Homer

_a._ to horses, as in Il. ii. 839; viii. 185.

_b._ to iron, as in Od. i. 184.

_c._ to a lion, as in Il. x. 23.

_d._ to copper utensils, as in Il. ix. 123; xxiv. 233.

_e._ to a bull, Il. xvi. 488; and to oxen, Od. xviii. 371.

_f._ to an eagle, Il. xv. 690.

With this word we may take its compound αἴθοψ. It is used

_a._ for wine, as we have seen.

_b._ for copper, Il. iv. 495 _et alibi_.

_c._ for smoke, Od. x. 152.

We have also the Αἰθίοπες, men of the tawny or swarthy countenance, beneath the Southern sun.

In what manner are we to find a common thread upon which to hang the colours of iron, copper, horses, lions, bulls, eagles, wine, swarthy men, and smoke? We must here again adopt the vague word ‘dark,’ a word of light and not of colour, for the purpose. But as the idea of αἴθω includes flame struggling with smoke, so there may be a flash of light upon the dark object. Ψολόεις, sooty or smutty, belongs to the same group with αἰθαλόεις and αἴθων, and need not, therefore, be separately discussed.

All the remainder of the words noted for examination are to be dealt with in two groups, each referable to a single idea: the first that of motion, and the second that of light.

14, 15. Among adjectives of motion, which have sometimes been improperly treated as adjectives of colour, are ἄργος and αἴολος. The former acquires an affinity to _white_, because it may signify an object which, from being rapidly moved, assumes in the light the appearance of whiteness[845], and along with it may be placed its derivatives ἀργεννὸς, ἀργεστὴς, ἀργὴς, ἀργινόεις, ἀργιόδους, ἀργίπους, and ἀργικέραυνος. The latter, as in αἴολος ὄφις, αἴολος ἵππος, κορυθαίολος, πόδας αἴολος, seems to mean whatever from the same cause appears to shift its hues.

[845] See Achæis, or Ethnology, p. 383.

16. Of those adjectives of light in Homer, which have also been taken for adjectives of colour, the most important is γλαυκός. Its uses, however, are only as follows:

_a._ γλαυκὴ θάλασσα, Il. xvi. 34.

_b._ Γλαυκῶπις, the standing epithet, and even a proper name, of Minerva, Il. viii. 406.

_c._ γλαυκιόων; applied to the eye of a lion, when, reaching the height of his wrath, he makes his rush at the hunters, Il. xx. 172.

The last of these passages seems effectually to fix the sense of the term. The word γλαυκιόων describes a progression. The lion does not enhance the colour of his eye as he waxes angry. If, for example, γλαυκὸς can be taken as blue, it certainly does not become more blue: on the contrary, rage, when kindling fire in the eye, rather subdues its peculiar tint by flooding it with a vivid light. So the word seems clearly to refer to the brightening flash of the eye under the influence of passion. Of light and its movement, as also of sound, and of beautiful form, Homer’s conceptions are even more distinct and lively, than those of colour are, if not dull, yet at least indeterminate.

Γλαυκὸς is derived from γλαύσσω; and has for its root λάω, to see. The meaning of bright or flashing will suit the sea, as well as the epithet blue. And it suits Minerva far better. ‘Blue-eyed’ would be for her but a tame epithet. The luminous eye, on the contrary, entirely accords with her character, and belongs to a marked trait of those primitive traditions, which she appears to represent[846].

[846] See Olympus, sect. ii. p. 53. Welcker (_Griechische Götterlehre_, vi. 63, p. 300) treats the name Ἀθήνη as immediately akin to αἰθὴρ and the idea of light.

17. Χάροπος is applied to the lion in Od. xi. 611; and it is the proper name of the father of Nireus in the Catalogue, while his mother is Ἀγλαΐη. From this latter use we see that χάροπος is not in Homer an epithet of colour; since he never describes the face by means of colour. Its etymology refers us to gladsomeness; and this is much more connected, in the Poet’s mind, with light than with colour.

18, 19. Besides these we have

σιγαλόεις, glossy, like σίαλος, or fat; and μαρμάρεος, applied

_a._ to a web, Il. iii. 126.

_b._ to the Ægis, Il. xvii. 594.

_c._ to the sea, Il. xiv. 273.

_d._ to the rim of the Shield, Il. xviii. 480.

We have also the μαρμαρυγαὶ ποδῶν (Od. viii. 265), or twinkling of the feet in the dance: and the verb μαρμαίρω is applied to the eyes of Venus (Il. iii. 397), to arms (Il. xii. 195 _et alibi_), and to the golden palace of Neptune (Il. xiii. 22). The marble, from which the words are derived, was white: but that signification would not suit any of the uses of the words, except the web of Helen. The sense, that will suit them, is one derived from the idea of light, that of glittering or sparkling.

Lastly: ἠεροειδὴς (Il. v. 770; Od. xiii. 103) is so evidently an atmospheric epithet only, that it requires no detailed discussion. It is worthy of note, as it indicates the idea of atmospheric transparency.

~_Conflict of colours in the same object._~

III. We might have attained to some nearly similar results, by taking the names of substantives in Homer, and considering the differences in the epithets of colour by which he describes them.

Thus, for example, iron is violet, grey, and αἴθων or tawny. There is a certain opposition between the first and second: a very marked one between the second and third. When considered as names of colour, they cannot be reconciled, but they may perhaps be made in some degree to harmonize by introducing the element of light. Iron is dark or tawny if in the shade: while under light it may appear grey.

Again, the dragon, or serpent, which is δάφοινος in Il. ii. 308, is also κυάνεος in Il. xi. 26; and is compared to the rainbow, which is πορφυρέη in Il. xvii. Δάφοινος, being applied to the lion’s hide in Il. x. 23, is essentially of a dull colour, but the rainbow is as essentially bright. Here, again, the only mode of harmonizing is by the supposition that Homer really regulates the use of those epithets according to light; and thus the same object may be dull and bright in different positions.

Again, κέραυνος is in composition white (ἀργικέραυνος): but it is also ψολοεὶς, smutty. In truth it is neither: but its near connection both with light and with darkness will admit of its being referred to either.

~_Great predominance of white and black._~

IV. I have next to notice the vast predominance in Homer of the two simple opposites, white and black, which may be called, perhaps, the elemental forms of colour: white being the compound of the seven prismatic colours in their natural proportions, and black the absence, or simple negative, of them all.

The adjective μέλας, or ‘black,’ is used, in its different degrees, cases, and numbers, about one hundred and seventy times. Besides this, we have the verb μελαίνω, and several compounds from the adjective. It also forms a very frequent element in proper names.

The word λευκὸς, or ‘white,’ is used nearly sixty times: its compound λευκώλενος forty more, but almost all of these as the stock-epithet of Juno, which should not be taken into the account. We have also λευκαίνω, λεύκασπις, and some proper names. But this by no means exhausts Homer’s means of expressing whiteness. For that purpose he also uses μαρμάρεος, σιγαλόεις, perhaps πόλιος, and an extensive group of words having ἀργὸς for its centre. In all, whiteness, or something intended for it, may perhaps be thus expressed one hundred times or more.

Now assuming for the moment that adjectives of colour, in the prismatic sense of the word, are found in Homer, still it is remarkable how rarely they are found, in comparison with whiteness and blackness.

For example: except as a proper name, and as the stock-epithet of Menelaus, ξανθὸς is, I think, hardly found ten times in Homer. Ἰόεις, and its cognate words, come but six times: ῥοδόεις is an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον: μίλτος is only introduced in its compound twice; yet it is probably the best _red_ in Homer: ἐρυθρὸς and ἐρυθαίνω come but thirteen times: πορφύρεος and the kindred words are found in all twenty-three times; but it has, I think, been shown that this word was wanting, with Homer, in the ingredient of specific colour, and only implied what was dark, whether brown, crimson, purple, or even black.

~_Omissions to specify colour._~

V. It remains to complete this circle of evidence, by adducing cases where Homer’s omission to name colour, or to describe by means of it, is deserving of remark.

1. Homer’s similes are so rich in the use of all sensible imagery, that we might have expected to find colour a frequent and prominent ingredient in them. But it is not so. They turn chiefly, I think, upon the following ideas:

1. Motion. 2. Force. 3. Form. 4. Sound. 5. Symmetry. 6. Number. 7. Light and Darkness. 8. Very rarely, upon Colour.

In the greater part of them colour is not even mentioned. I have seen the similes of the poems reckoned at two hundred: and I have found it difficult to note more than three which turn upon colour, even when it is vaguely conceived.

The first is the blood of Menelaus, compared to a crimson dye, on the cheek-piece of a horse, Il. iv. 141.

The second, the meditations of Nestor, likened to the darkening of the sea before a storm, Il. xiv. 16-22.

Thirdly, the cloud in which Minerva is wrapped is compared to the rainbow, Il. xvii. 547-52.

Of these the second is very indefinite: the idea of the first, as we have seen, was inaccurately and loosely conceived: and the third is one of the most striking proofs of the want of a close discrimination of colours in Homer.

Yet here again we may find life and beauty in the passage, if only we construe it of a cloud illuminated by the rays falling on it. Indeed, generally the element of light brings us back to Homer’s usual definiteness, when his use of colour makes him obscure.

2. Again, in the numerous and very exact epithets by which the Poet has described the form and appearance of different countries, we scarcely find any epithet of colour. Out of about sixty of these epithets in the Greek Catalogue, there are but three that refer to colour, and these all mention whiteness only (ἀργινόεις, Il. ii. 647, 656, and λευκός, ibid. 735).

~_In the case of the horse._~

3. It is most singular that, though Homer so loved the horse that he is never weary of using him with his whole heart for the purposes of poetry, yet in all his animated and beautiful descriptions of this animal, colour should be so little prominent. It is said, indeed, that Homer tells us the horses of Eumelus corresponded in colour (ὅτριχες Il. ii. 765); but what the colour was we know not; and the question may also be raised, whether the epithet employed does not more properly indicate similarity in the fineness of their coat. Perhaps the only cases, where colour is distinctly assigned to horses, are the following two:

First, that of the horses of Rhesus. There the colour is the negative one of whiteness, which seems, with its counterpart blackness, to have been so much more present to the mind of Homer than any intermediate colour. These horses were (Il. x. 437) λευκότεροι χιόνος. And afterwards Nestor in a noble line declares them like, not to anything having colour, but to the rays of the sun (Il. x. 547). Thus reappears the old identification in Homer’s mind of light and colour. There is, however, another reason to which it may be suspected that we owe the mention of colour in this instance: namely, that the whiteness is intended to make them visible in the gloom, and thus to assist the capture by night.

The second case is, that of the horse of Diomed in the chariot-race. Here Idomeneus mentions the bay or chestnut colour (Il. xxiii. 454) with the white mark, but then it is the only means of identifying the master, which is essential to his purpose in the speech. Apart from these special reasons, Homer speaks indeed twice of the ξανθὰ κάρηνα of horses; this, however, is of horses in the abstract. Nestor (Il. xi. 680) mentions a set of one hundred and fifty mares all with colour, that is to say, ξανθαί: a new proof of the lax use of the word, as they would hardly be all alike.

Among the four horses of Hector (Il. viii. 185), the two of the Atreidæ (Il. xxiii. 295), and the three of Achilles (xvi. 475) we find only the name Xanthus which is clearly referable to colour: and this is in truth the only colour which, besides white, he ever gives to his horses. For it is more probable that by the name Βάλιος he meant to refer to the effect of light from rapidity of motion: while Αἴθη in Il. xxiii. 409, Αἴθων and Λάμπος (Il. viii. 485) may signify brightness or darkness indeed, but neither of these is colour.

Again, in the magnificent simile of the στάτος ἵππος there is no colour. The three thousand horses of Erichthonius (Il. x. 221) have no colour. The horses of Diomed (Il. v. 257) have none. Nor have the heaven-born horses of Tros, nor those which Anchises bred from them (Il. v. 265. _et seqq._). None of the teams for the race in Il. xxiii. have colour. Lastly; Homer abounds in characteristic and set epithets for horses, such as ὠκὺς, ὠκύπους, ποδώκης, μώνυξ, ἐριαύχην, ἀερσίπους, ἐΰσκαρθμος, ὑψήχης, καλλίθριξ, ταχὺς, and others; but none of them are taken from colour.

Yet colour is in horses a thing so prominent that it seems, wherever they are at all individualized, almost to force itself into the description. Let us take two examples allied in their beauty, although separated in birth by twenty-two hundred years. The first is from Euripides, where the Chorus in _Iphigenia in Aulide_ describes the Grecian host before embarcation[847].

[847] Eurip. Iph. in Aul. 213-22.

ὁ δὲ διφρηλάτας βοᾶτ’ Εὔμηλος Φερητιάδας, ᾧ καλλίστους εἰδόμαν χρυσοδαιδάλτους στομίοισι πώλους κέντρῳ θεινομένους, τοὺς μὲν μέσ- σους ζυγίους, λευκοστίκτῳ τριχὶ βαλιοὺς, τοὺς δ’ ἐξὼ σειραφόρους, ἀντήρεις καμπαῖσι δρόμων πυῤῥότριχας, μονόχαλα δ’ ὑπὸ σφυρὰ ποικιλοδέρμονας.

The second, also eminently beautiful, is from Macaulay, where in the ‘Battle of the Lake Regillus’, after the deadly conflict of Mamilius and Herminius, he describes what then happened to their steeds.

Fast, fast, with heels wild spurning, The _dark-grey_ charger fled; He burst through ranks of fighting men, He sprang o’er heaps of dead....

But like a graven image _Black_ Auster kept his place, And ever wistfully he looked Into his master’s face.

How characteristically the element of colour enters into these admirable descriptions.

4. It is not, however, the case of the horse alone, on which an argument may be founded. Homer abounds with notices of other animals, both domesticated and wild. We have oxen, dogs, goats, hogs, and sheep. None of his stock epithets for them are drawn from colour; and we have seen that by his wine-coloured oxen, and his violet-coloured sheep, he, in all likelihood, means no more than dark or tawny. His epithets for wild animals are of the same character when they occur, and similarly depend on the scale of degrees between light and darkness, not upon colour. Once he mentions a white goose (Od. xv. 161); but it is borne on high in the talons of an eagle, and the object evidently is to create a clear visual image.

5. I would not lay overmuch stress on the fact, that Homer never refers to colour in connection with the human frame, unless as regards the hair, which is either ξανθὸς or κυάνεος: expressions which, as we shall see, are apparent exceptions, and not real ones. The olive hue of the Mediterranean latitudes makes colour a less prominent element in human beauty for a Greek climate, than it is for ours. Still its almost entire exclusion is an element in the case. One instance that I have noticed, which introduces it, adds to the general mass of testimony. When Minerva (Od. xvi. 175) restores the beauty of Ulysses, the expression is ἂψ δὲ μελαγχροιὴς γένετο. Now this certainly does not mean that his flesh became black again. It can only signify that he resumed the olive tint, which was associated with personal vigour and beauty. So that even the μέλας of Homer means dark, and is indefinite: as might indeed be shown by many other instances.

6. Lastly, it seems to deserve remark, that there is not one single epithet of Iris taken from colour. She is once, and only once, χρυσόπτερος (Il. viii. 398); but this is in virtue of her office, and has no relation to the rainbow; as, indeed, gold with Homer always belongs to light rather than to colour. All her other epithets, without exception, are taken from motion only. She is swift (ὠκέα and τάχεια), swift of foot (πόδας ὠκέα), swift as the wind (ποδήνεμος), storm-footed (ἀελλόπους[848]), but from colour she derives no part whatever of her Homeric costume. Now though the chain of traditions which identified Iris with the rainbow was broken[849], yet the traces of it were not wholly lost. For Homer treated the rainbow, physically, as a prophet of storm (Il. xvii. 548): and again, we find that she was still tempest-footed. This epithet can only be derived from her original relation to the rainbow. It is therefore highly instructive, that none of her traits of colour should have been preserved.

[848] Il. xviii. 409. xxiv. 159.

[849] See Olympus, sect. ii. p. 157.

Lastly, let us take the case of the sky, or the heavens. Here Homer had before him the most perfect example of blue. Yet he never once so describes the sky. His οὐρανὸς is starry (Il. i. 317), or broad (Il. iii. 364), or great (Il. i. 497), or iron (Od. xv. 328), or copper (Od. iii. 2. Il. xvii. 425); but it is never blue. This is an important piece of negative testimony.

We have now before us a pretty large, though I by no means venture to suppose it a complete, collection of the facts of the case.

~_Causes of this peculiar treatment._~

I submit that they warrant the two following propositions:

1. That Homer’s perceptions of the prismatic colours, or colours of the rainbow, which depend on the decomposition of light by refraction, and _a fortiori_ of their compounds, were, as a general rule, vague and indeterminate.

2. That we must therefore seek another basis for his system of colour.

But a few words may be permitted on the cause which has led to his treatment of the subject in a manner so different from that of the moderns.

Are we justified in referring it to his reputed blindness?

Are we to suppose a defect in his organization, or in that of his countrymen?

Or are we to reject altogether the idea of defect, and to treat his use of colour as one conceived in the spirit which, with even the most perfect knowledge, would properly belong to his art?

The mere tradition of Homer’s blindness is hardly relevant. The presumption of it drawn from the poems, because they make Demodocus blind, is inappreciably minute. The testimony of the Hymn to Apollo is ancient[850]; but, as his blindness (if he really was blind) allowed of the most vivid conceptions of light, it will not account for defectiveness in his conceptions of colour. The vigorous apprehension and accurate description of sensible objects in the poems demonstrate, that we cannot seek in this hypothesis for an explanation of what may be either singular, crude, or irregular.

[850] Hymn. ad Apoll. v. 172.

Neither can we resort to the supposition of anything, that is to be properly called a defect in his organization; when we bear in mind his intense feeling for form, and when we observe his effective and powerful handling of the ideas of light and dark.

~_License of Poetry as to colour._~

Our answer to the third question must also, I think, be in the negative. It is true, indeed, that much of merely literal discrepancy as to colour might be understood to appertain to the license of poetry. There is high poetical effect in what may be called straining epithets of colour. But it seems essential to that effect,

(1.) That the straining should be the exception, and not the rule.

(2.) That there should be a fixed standard of the colour itself, so that the departures from it may be measured. Otherwise the result is not license, but confusion. Shakespeare with high effect says[851],

[851] Macbeth ii. 3.

Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood.

Here the idea is not that silver is of the same colour as skin, nor gold as blood; but that the relation of colour between silver and gold may be compared with that between skin and blood: the skin throws the blood into relief, as a ground of silver would throw out a projection of gold. In license of this kind we can always trace both a rule and an aim. The rule is relaxed only for the particular occasion. The effect produced is that of tenderness, dignity, and purity. Had Shakespeare been describing the horrible carnage of a battlefield, he probably would have spoken of black or foul gore instead of using a brightening figure.

Now this purpose is not traceable in Homer’s use of certain words, if we are required to treat them as adjectives of colour. There is no Poet, whose _rationale_ is commonly more accessible; but these cases, upon such a principle, do not admit of a _rationale_ at all.

Take for instance his use of the rainbow. It is (1) πορφυρέη, and (2) like a δράκων, which is κυάνεος. Of these, the first may be construed dark with a hue of crimson; the second, dark with a hue of deep blue or indigo. Surely we have here, viewing it as a whole, a most inadequate treatment of the colours of the rainbow. Shakespeare indeed says[852],

[852] Troilus and Cressida, i. 3, _sub_ fin.

His crest, that prouder than blue Iris bends;

and again, in the Tempest, Ceres addresses Iris thus[853];

[853] Tempest, iv. 1. The rainbow is mentioned as of many colours, in Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 5, Winter’s Tale, iv. 3, and King John, iv. 2.

And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown My bosky acres....

But (1) blue differs from πορφύρεος, which is essentially dark, and is not blue. (2) Blue, taken largely, represents three of the seven prismatic colours: i. e. indigo and purple along with itself. (3) In the last quoted passage, Iris is also called ‘many-coloured messenger,’ and with ‘saffron wings.’ How different an effect do these words give, as they form a whole, from that of the simile in Il. xvii. In what manner then are we to understand Homer? I answer, in the way of metaphor; and with reference to light and dark, not to prismatic colour. The δράκοντες on the buckler and belt are dark and terrible: so is the storm of which Iris is the type, and it is in viewing the rainbow as a type of what is awful, that we are to find the reason of Homer’s simply treating it as dark, and not as a series and system of colours. Perhaps we ought not to overlook the possibility that Homer may also mean to compare the shifting hues of the serpent with the varied appearance of the rainbow.

Again, let us take his use of μελαγχροίης. Now the question is, did Homer mean by this simply to express darkness, that is to say was _dark_ his idea of μέλας, or did he, with the specific idea of black in his mind, use the term which denoted it poetically for the olive complexion of Ulysses? Surely the former: for the latter use of it would have been bad. It would have been straining the figure in the wrong direction. For blackness would be a fitting trope only where the object was to describe something awful or repulsive.

But beauty of form in Homer always leans to light hues and not to dark ones, whence the Greeks are ξανθοὶ, and the Trojan Hector, though beautiful, is κυάνεος only. Therefore it was not Homer’s object to give an enhanced idea of darkness in the tints of Ulysses. And yet, if μέλας for him meant specifically black, then μελαγχροίης was the height of exaggeration in the wrong sense. But if by μέλας he only understood dark, that was a fair description of the olive tint, as compared with the withered and shrivelled skin of old age.

We have other proofs from the poems that Homer conceived of μέλας as dark, and not specifically as black. The former idea accords best with his calling earth μέλας, when it is fresh behind the plough (Il. xviii. 548): and his calling blood μέλας, not stagnant gore, but blood fresh as it comes spurting from the wound (Il. i. 303),

αἶψά τοι αἷμα κελαινὸν ἐρωήσει περὶ δουρί·

and again, the fresh blood of Venus herself: μελαίνετο δὲ χρόα καλόν (Il. v. 354). It would be bad poetry to call the blood of Venus _black_, for the same reasons which make it good poetry in Shakespeare to call the blood of Duncan golden. So the μέλας πόντος of Il. xxiv. 79 is evidently no more than dark; though in vii. 64 we may properly say the sea blackens.

So again with wine-coloured oxen, smutty thunder-bolts, violet-coloured sheep, and many more, it is surely conclusive against taking them for descriptions of prismatic colours or their compounds, that they would be bad descriptions in their several kinds.

~_Homer’s means of training in colour._~

We must then seek for the basis of Homer’s system with respect to colour in something outside our own. And it may prepare us the more readily to acknowledge such a basis elsewhere, if we bear in mind, that many of the great elements and sources of colour for us presented themselves differently to him. The olive hue of the skin kept down the play of white and red. The hair tended much more uniformly, than with us, to darkness. The sense of colour was less exercised by the culture of flowers. The sun sooner changed the spring-greens of the earth into brown. Glass, one of our instruments of instruction, did not exist. The rainbow would much more rarely meet the view. The art of painting was wholly, and that of dyeing was almost, unknown; and we may estimate the importance of this element of the case by recollecting how much, with the advance of chemistry, the taste of this country in colour has improved within the last twenty years. The artificial colours, with which the human eye was conversant, were chiefly the ill-defined, and anything but full-bodied, tints of metals. The materials, therefore, for a system of colour did not offer themselves to Homer’s vision as they do to ours. Particular colours were indeed exhibited in rare beauty, as the blue of the sea and of the sky. Yet these colours were, so to speak, isolated fragments; and, not entering into a general scheme, they were apparently not conceived with the precision necessary to master them. It seems easy to comprehend that the eye may require a familiarity with an ordered system of colours, as the condition of its being able closely to appreciate any one among them.

I conclude, then, that the organ of colour and its impressions were but partially developed among the Greeks of the heroic age.

In lieu of this, Homer seems to have had, firstly some crude conceptions of colour derived from the elements; secondly and principally, a system in lieu of colour, founded upon light and upon darkness, its opposite or negative. We have seen that the μέλας of Homer, which is applied to fine olive tints in the skin, and which joins hands with κυάνεος and πορφύρεος, means dark, the absence of light. On the other hand, the basis of whiteness is clearly indicated to us in the etymology of λευκὸς, which is the same as that of λεύσσω to see, and of λύκη light in λυκαβὰς the year, the walk or course of light; as well as in the cognate words, which appear to have their root in the Sanscrit _loch_, from whence _lochan_, an eye[854].

[854] Pritchard’s Celtic Nations, p. 219.

~_His system one of light and dark._~

As a general proposition, then, I should say that the Homeric colours are really the modes and forms of light[855], and of its opposite or rather negative, darkness: partially affected perhaps by ideas drawn from the metals, like the ruddiness of copper, or the sombre and dead blue of κύανος, whatever the substance may have been; and here and there with an inceptive effort, as it were, to get hold of other ideas of colour.

[855] Vid. Göthe, _Geschichte der Farbenlehre_, Works, vol. 53, p. 21. (Stuttgart, 1833.)

Under the application of this principle, I believe that all, or nearly all, the Homeric words will fall into their places: and that we shall find that the Poet used them, from his own standing-ground, with great vigour and effect. We can now see why λευκὸς and μέλας with their kindred words have such an immense predominance: though white and black are the limiting ratios of colour, rather than colour itself.

Of the transparent and opaque, or _chiaroscuro_, we cannot expect to hear from Homer: yet, as has been observed, a rudiment of it may be contained in the highly poetical ἠεροειδὲς of the cave or sea; and again in the δνοφερὴ νὺξ (Od. xiii. 269), since νέφος is the basis of the epithet.

When we speak of colour proper, we speak of an effect which is produced by the decomposition of light, and which, so long as the eye can discharge its function, is complete, whatever the quantity, or the incidence, of light upon the object said to have colour may happen to be.

When we speak of light, shade, and darkness, we refer to the quantity of light, not decomposed, which falls upon that object, and to the mode of its incidence.

Of light, shadow, and darkness thus regarded, Homer had lively and most poetical conceptions. This description of objects by light and its absence tax his materials to the uttermost. His iron-grey, his ruddy, his starry heaven, are so many modes of light. His wine-coloured oxen and sea, his violet sheep, his things tawny, purple, sooty, and the rest, give us in fact a rich vocabulary of words for describing what is dark so far as it has colour, but what also varies between dull and bright, according to the quantity of light playing upon it. Here (for example) is the link between his αἴθοψ κάπνος and his αἴθοψ οἶνος.

As these words all follow in the train, so to speak, of μέλας, even so λευκὸς is attended by its own family, all falling under the meaning of the English adjective _light_. On the one hand χλωρὸς and πόλιος; on the other μαρμάρεος, ἀργὸς, and σιγαλόεις, all mean _light_; but the first two are dull, and represent the twilight of colour, or debateable ground between it and its negative, while the last three are bright and glistering.

Nothing can be more poetical than Homer’s ideas of dark and light. It was a redundancy of life in these ideas, that made him associate light with motion; as in those fine lines (Il. ii. 437),

ὣς τῶν ἐρχομένων ἀπὸ χαλκοῦ θεσπεσίοιο αἴγλη παμφανόωσα δι’ αἰθέρος οὐρανὸν ἷκεν.

And, again, in the Arming of Achilles (Il. xix. 362),

αἴγλη δ’ οὐρανὸν ἷκε, γέλασσε δὲ πᾶσα περὶ χθών.

So, on the other hand, the idea of darkness went to animate metaphysical conceptions, as in black fate, black death, black clouds of death, black pains (Il. ii. 859, 834. xvi. 350. iv. 117).

Naturalists tell us, that there exist kinds of creatures respecting which it is known, that their organs are sensitive to light and darkness, but with no perception whatever either of colour or of form[856]. So far as respects form, Homer perceived keenly such forms as were beautiful: but of mere geometrical form he may have had very indistinct ideas, if we are to judge from his epithets for the form of a shield. The parallel is nearer in the case of colour; for even his perceptions were as yet undigested; as if they were novel, not aided by tradition, acquired very much by himself, and fixed as yet neither by custom nor nomenclature.

[856] Wilson’s Five Gateways of Knowledge, p. 4.

From the remains which have reached us of the colours of the ancients, it has been found practicable to treat of them in precise detail[857]. But, in examining the question from the works of Homer, we must bear in mind, first, their very early date, and, secondly, the likelihood that heroic Greece may probably have been far behind some countries of the east in the use and in the idea of colour, which has always had a privileged home there.

[857] See, for instance, ‘Ancient and Modern Colours, by William Linton.’ London 1852.

~_Colour in the later Greek language._~

The tendency, however, to a mixture of the two questions of light and colour appears to be traceable more or less in the popular language, and likewise in the philosophy, of the later Greeks.

In the classical period, the hues of the eye were divided, as μέλας the darkest, χάροπος the intermediate, and γλαυκὸς the lightest.

The word πράσινος, leek-green, appears to be quite adequate to the expression of the colour. It is used by Aristotle; but I do not know that it is found in the poets or writers of the best age. For the classical Greek the idea of greenness is expressed by χλωρὸς, as far as it is expressed at all. Now this word seems inadequate on two grounds. First, its predominant idea is that of ‘fresh’ or ‘recent;’ which is but accidentally, and not invariably, the property of those objects in nature that are green.

When we find the word χλωρὸς applied alike to objects of a green colour, and to others that have no colour, (or else not in respect of their colour,) but yet which are fresh or newly sprung, we are led to conclude that it was for freshness, and not for greenness, that the word was generally used. This idea is confirmed by two circumstances. First, that when χλωρὸς does signify colour, as in the case of paleness, (where it cannot mean what is fresh,) it signifies the most indefinite and feeble colour, little more indeed than a negative.

The meaning of χλωρὸν δεός is probably ashy-pale fear. In the green of the olive we see the point of connection between this use of the term on the one hand, and natural verdure on the other. So that the image of the colour green, to the Greeks, was neither lively and bright on the one hand, nor was it strong and deep on the other.

The second circumstance is this: that the word χλωρὸς is applied by the later Greeks to objects that have a colour, but a colour which is _not_ green: and this by authors who had the full use of sight. Thus, in Euripides, (Hecuba 124,) we have αἵματι χλωρῷ for blood freshly shed. It seems plain that, when the epithet could be thus used, colour could only be very carelessly and faintly conceived in the minds either of those who used the expression, or of those to whom it was addressed.

I shall not open the general subject of the treatment of colour by the later Greeks, or by the Latin poets. But that it continued to be both faint and indefinite down to a very late period, and in a degree which would now be deemed very surprising, we may judge both from the general tenour of the Æneid, and from the remarkable verse of Albinovanus, an Augustan poet, which applied the epithet ‘purpureus’ to snow;

Brachia purpureâ candidiora nive.

Neither do I enter into the question, whether the shadows of white may afford any ground for this epithet: because an answer, drawn from the secrets as it were of science or art, could not avail for the interpretation of the works of a poet, who must describe for the common eye.

So we may note the ‘cervix rosea’ of Horace[858], and of Virgil[859].

[858] Hor. Od. I. 13. 2.

[859] Virg. Æn. i. 402.

~_Greek philosophy of colour._~

Such examination as I have been able to make would lead me to suppose whatever of this kind was crude or defective in the common ideas of Greece was not without points of correspondence in its philosophy.

The treatise Περὶ χρωμάτων, popularly ascribed to Aristotle, would appear to belong to some other author. It, however, in conformity with Greek ideas[860], bases the system of colour not, as we do, upon the prismatic decomposition of light, but upon the four elements; of which it declares air, water, and even earth when dry, to be white, fire to be ξανθὸς or yellow; from the mixtures of these arise all other colours, and σκότος, or black, is the absence of light.

[860] Vid. Göthe, _Farbenlehre_, Works, vol. 53. p. 23.

Dr. Prantl, a recent editor of this Treatise, has, in a learned Essay of his own, gathered together the systems of the various Greek writers upon colour; and especially that of Aristotle, from the testimony afforded by his _Meteorologica_ and other works. It exhibits a curious combination of the aim at scientific exactness, with the want of the physical knowledge which is, in such matters, its necessary basis. Its leading ideas appear to be as follows.

If we pass by the mere metaphysical portion of the subject, the basis of colour is laid theoretically in transparency and motion. With the idea of whiteness are associated dryness and heat; and with blackness their counterparts, wet and cold[861]. The air is white, fire the highest form of white; water is black[862], earth the highest negation of colour, and blackest of all. All other colours are treated as intermediate between white and black[863]. An analogy prevails between the intervals of the principal colours, and those of sound, taste (χυμὸς), and other sensible objects. There are seven colours[864]: namely,

[861] Prantl’s Aristoteles über die Farben, pp. 101, 3.

[862] Ibid. pp. 104, 6.

[863] Ibid. p. 109. Ar. Metaph. I. 7. 1057 a. 23.

[864] Ibid. p. 116. Ar. de Sens. 4. 442 a. 12.

1. μέλαν black. 2. ξανθὸν gold. 3. λευκὸν white. 4. φοινικοῦν red. 5. ἁλουργὸν violet. 6. πράσινον green. 7. κυανοῦν blue.

The φαιὸν or grey is a mode of black (μέλαν τι); and the ξανθὸν is ingeniously described as having the same relation to light, which richness (λιπαρὸν) has to sweetness (γλυκύ). Red, φοινικοῦν or πορφυροῦν, is light seen through black. This is the most positive colour after ξανθόν; then comes green, and then (ἁλουργὸν) violet[865]. He proceeds, ἔτι δὲ τὸ πλεῖον οὔκετι φαίνεται; meaning, I suppose, that the κυανοῦν (the same thing is said by Prantl of ὄρφνιον, which he translates brown) is so closely akin to the negative, or blackness, as to be indistinguishable from it. Thus Aristotle appears to treat grey as outside his scale altogether; he gives πορφυροῦν sometimes to red and sometimes to blue[866]; and ὄρφνιον or brown is wholly omitted. His order likewise varies: for, in different passages, ἁλουργὸν and πράσινον change places.

[865] Ibid. p. 118. Met. III. 4. 374 b. 31.

[866] Comp. Met. I. 5. 342 b. 4. with III. 4. 374 a. 27.

~_Nature of our advantage over Homer._~

This condition of the philosophy of colour, so many centuries after Homer, and in the mind of such a man as Aristotle, may assist in explaining to us the undeveloped state of Homer’s perceptions in this particular department.

There appears to be a remarkable contrast between such undigested ideas, and the solidity, truth, and firmness of the remains of colour that have come down to us from the ancients. The explanation, I suppose, is, that those, who had to make practical use of colour, did not wait for the construction of a philosophy, but added to their apparatus from time to time all substances which, having come within their knowledge, were found to produce results satisfactory and improving to the eye. And even so Homer, though his organ was little trained in the discrimination of colours, and though he founded himself mainly upon mere modifications of light apart from its decomposition, yet has made very bold and effective use of these limited materials. His figures in no case jar, while they never fail to strike. Nor are we to suppose that we see in this department an exception to that comparative profusion of power which marked his endowments in general, and that he bore, in the particular point, a crippled nature; but rather we are to learn that the perceptions so easy and familiar to us are the results of a slow traditionary growth in knowledge and in the training of the human organ, which commenced long before we took our place in the succession of mankind. We exemplify, even in this apparently simple matter, the old proverbial saying: ‘The dwarf sees further than the giant, for he is lifted on the giant’s shoulders.’

_Note on the meaning of κύανος and χαλκός._

The first impression from the Homeric text is likely to be that κύανος is a metal. For the substantive is mentioned but thrice in Homer; and always in immediate connection with metals.

1. Il. xi. 24. Upon the buckler of Agamemnon there are, with twelve οἶμοι, folds, rims, or plies, of gold, and twenty of tin, ten of κύανος (μέλανος κυάνοιο).

2. Il. xi. 34. On the shield of the king, there were twenty white bosses of tin, and, in the middle, one of κύανος (μέλανος κυάνοιο).

3. Od. vii. 86. The walls of the palace of Alcinous were coated with χαλκὸς within, and round about them there was a cornice or fringe (θριγκὸς) of κύανος.

There is no doubt that, in later Greek at least, the word acquired other significations: such as _lapis lazuli_, the blue cornflower, the rockbird (also as being blue), and, lastly, a blue dye or lacquer[867]. But, moreover, it seems impossible to identify the κύανος of Homer with any metal in particular.

[867] Liddell and Scott _in voc._ Millin, Minéralogie Homérique, p. 149.

Some have asserted the κύανος of Homer to be steel[868]. But to this there seem to be conclusive objections. It appears very doubtful, whether the Greeks were acquainted with the process of making steel in masses by the immersion of iron in water. The English translation of Beckmann’s History of Inventions ascribes the knowledge of the process to Homer; but apparently in error[869]. There is no allusion whatever to it: for it is not at all implied by the elementary process of the manufacture of a tool in Od ix. 391-3. It was only by fire that iron could be made malleable at all: and no doubt it was known that by its immersion in water hardness was restored or increased (τὸ γὰρ αὖτε σιδήρου γε κράτος ἐστίν). But we have no trace either of the repetition of the process on the same piece of metal, or of its application to unmanufactured iron, or of a new denomination for iron when thus heated and cooled. On the contrary, in this passage the metal when fully hardened is still declared to be σίδηρος: and we have nowhere in Homer any trace of a relation between κύανος and σίδηρος, except the merely negative one, that neither of them is cast into the furnace for making the Shield of Achilles.

[868] Friedreich, Realien, § 21. p. 86.

[869] Vol. ii. p. 325.

Again, the hardness of iron was such as apparently met all their wishes, and almost of itself constituted a difficulty. Hence it is used along with stones as a symbol of hardness; ἐπεὶ οὔ σφι λίθος χρὼς ἠὲ σίδηρος[870]. Again, we do not find it worked up with other metals; for example, on the buckler or shield of Agamemnon. As we have seen, it is not used by Vulcan in making the shield of Achilles. The god casts into the fire gold and silver, copper and tin; lead being apparently excluded as too soft, and iron as too hard for working in masses with the other metals. But the idea of hardness is never associated with κύανος; and, if it had been hard like steel, certainly it would not have been a suitable material for the intricate forms of dragons.

[870] Il. iv. 510.

Again, the adjective κυάνεος means in colour what is blue and what is deep; and by no means corresponds with the ordinary colour of steel. All this, besides the strength of the negative evidence, seems inconsistent with the idea that κύανος can have been steel.

The Compiler of the Index to Eustathius makes κύανος (_in voc._) simply a dark metal. But Millin argues that κύανος without an epithet is tin, and that with the epithet μέλας it is lead. He observes that Pliny[871] appears to call tin by the name of _plumbum_ simply, and lead by the name of _plumbum nigrum_: so that the double use of κύανος and κασσίτερος for tin would be like that of _plumbum_ and _stannum_ for the same metal in Latin. This idea treats the substance as taking its name from the colour: and is so far sustained by the use of the German _blei_, which I presume is the same word as _blau_, for lead. But it would be singular that Homer should thus have double names for two metals, which of all classes of objects have perhaps been most commonly designated by single ones. And this hypothesis is not in accordance with the evident meaning of κυάνεος in Homer; since the word indicates a dark and deep hue very far from that of tin, which Homer describes as white. The after use of κύανος is equally adverse to the interpretation suggested.

[871] H. N. xxxiv. 16. s. 47.

The most probable interpretation for this difficult word appears to be that which is also in accordance with its subsequent use and description as a colour. From Linton’s ‘Ancient and Modern Colours,’ (p. 21,) it appears that there was a κύανος αὐτοφυὴς, which was a _native_ blue carbonate of copper: and that, according to the express testimony of Dioscorides, this was obtained by the ancients from the copper-mines: κύανος δὲ γεννᾶται μὲν ἐν Κύπρῳ ἐκ τῶν χαλκουργῶν μετάλλων, v. 106. This interpretation would account for our finding κύανος in Homer: for the rarity of its use: for the dark colour and the affinity to πορφύρεος. Such a substance would make a good relief for the cornice in the palace of Alcinous, against the copper-plated walls: and would stand well in the rest of the passages where it appears to be placed in relief with other metals, Il. xviii. 564, xi. 39, and even on the buckler of Agamemnon, xi. 24. For on this buckler, though the serpents, called κυάνεοι, are evidently placed in contrast with the οἶμοι, and though among the οἶμοι there are ten of κύανος, yet, as they are combined with twelve of gold and twenty of tin, the general effect would be one such as we need not suppose Homer to have rejected. This blue carbonate is still found among other copper-ores, but less in our deep mines, than in the shallow ones worked by the ancients. I understand from a gentleman versed in metallurgy, that in its purest form it is crystalline, rarely massive or earthy, of a deep azure, brittle, easily powdered, and thus readily converted to use as a pigment.

I should therefore suppose that the κύανος is not a metal: that the οἶμοι on the buckler mean lines or bands coloured in pigment: and that the boss on the shield is probably a nodule of the substance in its native state. We can thus understand why κύανος is not used either with the gold, silver, χαλκὸς, and tin, in the forge of Vulcan, or with the gold, silver, iron, and χαλκὸς of the chariot of Juno[872]. We can also understand why, though κύανος is not used in the forge, yet the trench round the vineyard on the shield of Achilles is κυανεή[873]. This interpretation is also in conformity with the Homeric employment of the adjective κυάνεος.

[872] Il. xviii. 474. v. 722.

[873] Ibid. 564.

I understand that there is, in the _Museo Borbonico_ at Naples, a spoon or ladle, with a boss on the end of the handle, which is formed of this native blue carbonate of copper bored through for the purpose.

Of the four significations given to χαλκὸς in Homer (copper, brass, bronze, and iron[874]), I adhere to the first. It cannot be iron, (1) because it is never mentioned as hard in the same way with it, (2) because it is so much more common, (3) because these metals are expressly distinguished one from the other, as in Il. v. 723.

[874] Eustath. Il. i. p. 93.

Neither can the χαλκὸς of Homer be bronze. Not, however, from absolute want of hardness: for I learn from competent authority that very good cutting instruments (not, of course, equal to steel) may be made in a bronze composed of 87½ parts copper, and 12½ parts tin. But for the following reasons:

1. Homer always speaks of it as a pure metal along with other pure metals, even where Vulcan casts it into the furnace to be wrought; Il. xviii. 474.

2. Again, because, although we must not argue too confidently from Homer’s epithets of colour, yet in this case we may lay considerable stress not only on his χαλκὸς ἐρυθρὸς (since the ἐρυθρὸς of Homer leans to brightness), but upon the ἤνοψ and νώροψ, which mean bright and gleaming. These epithets of light would not apply to bronze: nor would Homer plate with bronze the walls of the palace of Alcinous. Neither does it appear likely that he would give us a heaven of bronze among the imposing imagery of battle, Il. xvii. 424.

3. It does not appear that Homer knew anything at all of the fusion or alloying of metals.

We have, then, to conclude that χαλκὸς was copper, hardened by some method; as some think by the agency of water: or else, and more probably, according to a very simple process, by cooling slowly in the air. (See Millin, Minéralogie Homérique, pp. 126-32.)

SECT. V.[875]

[875] The substance of this and the two following Sections formed two Articles in the Quarterly Review, Nos. 201 and 203, for January and July respectively, 1857. They are reprinted with the obliging approval of Mr. Murray.

_Homer and some of his Successors in Epic Poetry: in particular, Virgil and Tasso._

~_Milton and Dante in relation to Homer._~

The great Epic poets of the world are members of a brotherhood still extremely limited, and, as far as appears, not likely to be enlarged. It may indeed well be disputed, with respect to some of the existing claimants, whether they are or are not entitled to stand upon the Golden Book. There will also be differences of opinion as to the precedence among those, whose right to appear there is universally confessed. Pretensions are sometimes advanced under the influence of temporary or national partialities, which the silent action of the civilized mind of the world after a time effectually puts down. Among these there could be none more obviously untenable, than that set up on behalf of Milton in the celebrated Epigram of Dryden, which seemed to place him at the head of the poets of the world, and made him combine all the great qualities of Homer and of Virgil. Somewhat similar ideas were broached by Cowper in his Table Talk. The lines, as they are less familiarly remembered, may be quoted here:

Ages elapsed ere Homer’s lamp appeared, And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard; To carry Nature lengths unknown before, To give a Milton birth, asked ages more.

But this great master is also subject to undue depreciation, as well as flattered by extravagant worship. I myself have been assured in a company composed of Professors of a German University, who were ardent admirers of Shakespeare, that within the sphere of their knowledge Milton was only regarded as of equal rank with Klopstock. It is not, I trust, either national vanity or religious prejudice, nor is it the mere wonder inspired by the wide range of his attainments and performances, which makes England claim that he should be numbered in the first class of epic poets; in that class of which Homer is the head, distinguished before all competitors by a clear and even a vast superiority.

It would be difficult to institute any satisfactory comparison between Milton and Homer; so different, so wanting in points of contact, are the characters partly of the men, and even much more of their works. Perhaps the greatest and the most pervading merit of the Iliad is, its fidelity and vividness as a mirror of man and of the visible sphere in which he lived, with its infinitely varied imagery both actual and ideal. But that which most excites our admiration in Milton is the elasticity and force of genius, by which he has travelled beyond the human sphere, and bodied forth to us new worlds in the unknown, peopled with inhabitants who must be so immeasurably different from our own race. Homer’s task was one, which admitted of and received what we may call a perfect accomplishment; Milton’s was an undertaking beyond the strength of man, incapable of anything more than faint adumbration, and one of which, the more elevated the spectator’s point of view, the more keenly he must find certain defects glare upon him. The poems of Milton give us reason to think that his conceptions of character were masculine and powerful; but the subject did not admit of their being effectually tested. For his nearest approaches to perfection in his art, we must look beyond his epics.

A comparison between Milton and Dante would be somewhat more practicable, but it would not accord with the composition of the group, which I shall here attempt to present, and which has Homer for its centre. On the other hand, Dante might, far better than Milton, be compared with Homer; for while he is in the Purgatorio and Paradiso far more heavenly than Milton, he is also throughout the _Divina Commedia_ truly and profoundly human. He is incessantly conversant with the nature and the life of man; and though for the most part he draws us, as Flaxman has drawn him, in outline only, yet by the strength and depth of his touch he has produced figures, for example, Francesca and Ugolino, that have as largely become the common property of mankind, if not as Achilles and Ulysses, yet as Lear and Hamlet. Still the theological basis, and the extra-terrene theatre, of Dante’s poem remove him to a great distance from Homer, from whom he seems to have derived little, and with whom we may therefore feel assured he could have been but little acquainted.

The poets, whom it is most natural to compare with Homer, are those who have supplied us in the greatest abundance with points of contact between their own orbits and his, and who at the same time are such manifest children of genius as to entitle them to the honour of being worsted in such a conflict. These conditions I presume to be most clearly fulfilled by Virgil and Tasso; and we may begin with the elder of the pair.

Perhaps Chapman has gone too far when he says ‘Virgil hath nothing of his own, but only elocution; his invention, matter, and form, being all Homer’s[876].’ Yet no small part of this sweeping proposition can undoubtedly be made good.

[876] Commentary on Il. ii.

With an extraordinary amount of admitted imitation and of obvious similarity on the surface, the Æneid stands, as to almost every fundamental particular, in the strongest contrast with the Iliad. As to metre, figures, names, places, persons and times, the two works, where they do not actually concur, stand in as near relations one to another, as seem to be attainable without absolute identity of subject; yet it may be doubted whether any two great poems can be named, which are so profoundly discordant upon almost every point that touches their interior spirit; upon everything that relates to the truth of our nature, to the laws of thought and action, and to veracity in the management of the higher subjects, such as history, morality, polity, and religion.

~_Contrast between form and spirit in the Æneid._~

The immense powers of Virgil as a poet had been demonstrated before he wrote the Æneid. He had shown their full splendour in the Georgics; though the ἦθος, or (so to speak) the heart, even of that great work was touched with paralysis by his Epicurean and self-centring philosophy. The Æneid does not bear a fainter impression of his genius. The wonderfully sustained beauty and majesty of its verse, the imposing splendour of its most elaborate delineations, the power of the author in unfolding, when he strives to do it, the resources of passion, and even perhaps the skill which he has shown in the general construction of his plot, cannot be too highly praised. But while its general nature as an epic (for the epic poem is preeminently ethical) brought its defects into fuller view, the particular object he proposed to himself was fatal to the attainment of the very highest excellence. While Homer sang for national glory, the poem of Virgil is toned throughout to a spirit of courtierlike adulation. No muse, however vigorous, can maintain an upright gait under so base a burden.

~_Catalogue in the Iliad and in the Æneid._~

And yet, in regard to its external form, the Æneid is perhaps, as a whole, the most majestic poem that the European mind has in any age produced. We often hear of the lofty march of the Iliad; but though its versification is always appropriate and therefore never mean, it only rises into stateliness, or into a high-pitched sublimity, when Homer has occasion to brace his energies for an effort. He is invariably true to his own conception of the bard[877], as one who should win and delight the soul of the hearer; and so, when he has strung himself, like a bow, for some great passage of his action, ‘has brought the string to the breast, the iron to the wood,’ and has hit his mark, straightway he unbends himself again. Thus he ushers in with true grandeur the marshalling of the Greek army in the Second Book, partly by the invocation of the Muses, and partly by an assemblage of no less than six consecutive similes, which describe respectively the flash of the Greek arms, the resounding tramp, the swarming numbers, the settling down of the ranks as they form the line, the busy marshalling by the commanders, the majesty of Agamemnon preeminent among them[878]. Having done this, he sets himself about the Catalogue, with no contempt indeed of poetical embellishment by epithets, and with an occasional relief by short legends, but still in the main as a matter of business, historical, geographical, and topographical. And thus he proceeds, with perfect tranquillity, for near three hundred lines, until his work is done. We then find that he has given us, together with a most minute account of the forces, a living map of the territories occupied by the Greek races of the age. But Virgil, in his imitation of the Homeric Catalogue (upon which there will be further occasion to comment hereafter, with reference to other matters), has pursued a course quite different. Waiving Homer’s gorgeous introduction, which pours from a single point a broad stream of splendour over the whole, Virgil with vast, and indeed rather painful, effort, carries us through his long-drawn list at a laboriously-sustained elevation. To vary the wearisome task, he uses every diversity of turn that language and grammar can supply[879]. He passes from nominative to vocative, and from vocative to nominative. Somebody was present, and then somebody was not absent. Arms and accoutrements are got up as minutely, as if he had been a careful master of costumes dressing a new drama for the stage. That we may never be let down for a moment, he distributes here and there the similes, which Homer accumulated at the opening, and introduces, between the accounts of military contingents, legends of twenty or more lines. Upon the whole, the level of his verse through the Catalogue, instead of being, like Homer’s, decidedly lower, is even higher than is usual with him. There is not in it, I think, a single verse approaching to the _sermo pedestris_. His reader misses that tranquillizing relief so agreeable in Homer, which varies as it were the play of the muscles, and freshens the faculties for a return to higher efforts. Virgil seems to treat us, as horses at a certain stage of their decline are treated by experienced drivers, who keep them going from fear that, if they once let them stop or slacken, they will be unable to get up their pace again. He never unbends his bow. But a table-land may be as flat, and even wearisome, as a plain; and the ornaments in the Æneid frequently are not, and indeed could hardly be, more ornamental than the passages which they purport to embellish.

[877] Od. xvii. 385.

[878] Il. ii. 455-83.

[879] See also Lessing’s Laocoon, c. xviii. respecting the Shield in the Æneid.

The difference of the two Catalogues cannot be more clearly exhibited than by comparing Homer’s description of the very first contingent, that from Bœotia[880], with Virgil’s opening paragraph about Mezentius; or Homer’s last and nearly simplest, on the Magnesians[881], with the description of Camilla, (certainly a description of remarkable beauty,) with which is closed the glittering procession of the Italian army in the Æneid.

[880] Il. ii. 494-510. Æn. vii. 647-54.

[881] Il. ii. 756-9. Æn. vii. 803-17.

The sustained stateliness of diction, metre, and rhythm in the Æneid is a feat, and an astounding feat; but it is more like the performance of a trained athlete, between trick and strength, than the grandeur of free and simple Nature, such as it is seen in the ancient warrior, in Diomed or Achilles; or in Homer, the ancient warrior’s only bard. Different persons will, according to their temperaments, be apt to treat this augustness of diction as a merit or a fault: all, however, must acknowledge it to be a wonder. In this respect Virgil has been followed with no ordinary power, but yet not equalled, by Tasso. And the impression, created in this respect by the Æneid as it stands, must be heightened when we remember that it is still an unfinished poem, and that the author had at his decease by no means brought it, and the later books of it in particular, up to what he considered the proper standard.

The immense and untold amount of imitation in Virgil has perhaps tended to make us less than duly sensible of his vast original powers; and the mean and feeble effects produced by the character, if we can call it a character, of his Æneas, cheat us into an untrue supposition that he could not have possessed a real power of this the highest kind of delineation.

~_Character of Æneas._~

It is perhaps hardly possible to exhaust the topics of censure which may be justly used against the Æneas of Virgil. His moral deficiencies are not (so to speak) hidden amidst the accomplishments of a manly intellect, nor his intellectual mediocrity redeemed by any fresh and genuine virtues. He is not, to our knowledge, a statesman; nay more, he is not a warrior; for we feel that his battles and feats of war are the poet’s, and not his: and when he appears in arms we are tempted to ask, ‘Son of Venus, what business have you here?’ The violent exaggerations, by which Virgil attempts to vamp up his hero’s martial character, only produce the ψυχρὸν of Longinus; a cold reaction, approaching to a shudder, through the reader’s mind. As, for instance, when in the Shades below, the poet represents the Greek chieftains[882] as trembling and flying at the sight of him, the nobleness of the verses cannot excuse either the tasteless solecism of the thought, or the profanation offered to the memory of Homer in the person of his heroes, who indeed often made Æneas tremble, but never trembled at him themselves. But Virgil goes further yet, when he makes Diomed assert[883] that, having been engaged in single combat with Æneas, he knows by experience how terrible a warrior he will prove; and that, had there been two more such men, Troy would have conquered Greece, and not Greece Troy. Now, Æneas never in the Iliad even once executes a real feat of war; and as to the single combat between the two chiefs, Diomed first knocked him down with a stone[884], and then, after he had been carried off and apparently set to rights by his mother, he was thrice saved from the deadly charge of the same warrior by the single intervention of Apollo, who by divine force arrested the attack. In passing, it may be observed that, since Virgil could, with impunity, as it appears, so far as his popularity was concerned, thus mutilate and falsify the author from whose wealth he so largely borrowed, either the knowledge of Greek literature in its head and father, Homer, must have been very low among even the educated Romans, or else their standard of taste must have been seriously debased before they could accept such compliments.

[882] At Danaûm proceres, etc.--Æn. vi. 489.

[883] Æn. xi. 282-7.

[884] Il. v. 302-10.

It is common to find fault with Æneas for his vile conduct to Dido, and for the wretched excuse he offers in his own behalf, when he encounters her offended spirit in the regions of Aidoneus and Persephone. But the truth is, that this fairly exhibits and illustrates not only the total unreality of this particular character, but, as will be further noticed presently, the feeble and deteriorated conception of human nature at large, which Virgil seems to have formed. Man has been treated by him as, on the whole, but a shallow being: he had not sounded the depths of the heart, nor measured either the strength of good or the strength of evil that may abide in it. The Virgilian Æneas is a made up thing, far fitter to stand among the νεκύων ἀμένηνα κάρηνα, than among men of true flesh and blood.

Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; Thou hast no speculation in those eyes Which thou dost glare with[885].

[885] Macbeth iii. 3.

Nor can we draw an apology for the defects of this primary character in Virgil from the Æneas of Homer. The Dardanian Prince is indeed in the Iliad, as to everything essential, a taciturn and background figure. He is placed very high in station and authority, and, as we have seen[886], he may probably have been, by the dignity of lineal descent, the head of the whole Trojan race. But Homer pays him off with generalities; for, as no Poet is greater in the really creative work of character, so none better understands how, where the purpose of his poem requires it, to take a lay figure, and stuff him out with straw. In what may be called the vital action of the Iliad, Æneas has no considerable share, either martial or political. He is very far indeed behind the noble Sarpedon in the first capacity, and Polydamas in the second, as well as Hector in both. Still, if there is in the Homeric Æneas nothing grand, nothing vigorous, nothing profound, there is on the other hand nothing over-prominent or pretentious, and therefore nothing mean, nothing inconsistent, nothing untrue. All the Homeric characters, down to Thersites, are drawn each in its way with a master’s hand; Æneas forms no exception: on the contrary, we have to admire the skill with which, in a kind of middle distance, his outline is filled up, and he is kept entirely clear of any confusion with either those greater characters on the Trojan side, who have been named, or with the effeminate Paris. This is the more worthy of note, because, as the favourite child of Venus, he bore a qualified and dim resemblance to her chief minion; as we may see by certain traits of his very negative bearing in the field, and by Apollo’s putting him (if the phrase may be allowed) to bed in Pergamus[887], when he had been rescued from Diomed, just as Venus had done with Paris, after she had saved him in the Third Book from Menelaus[888].

[886] Achæis, or Ethnology, sect. ix. p. 491.

[887] Il. v. 445.

[888] Il. iii. 382.

Neither did Virgil fail in the delineation of his hero, or ‘protagonist,’ from simple want of power to portray human character. No such want can be ascribed to the poet of the Fourth Book of the Æneid. And if it be true that, amidst all the stormy wildness and intensity of the passion of Dido, there is something not quite natural--something that recalls the very remarkable imitation of it in the ‘Duchesse de la Vallière’ of Madame de Genlis, and leaves us almost at a loss to say which of the two has most the character of a copy, and which of an original--what are we to say of the genuine and manly character of Turnus? The whole of that sketch is as good and true as we can desire; and the noble speech in particular, in which he rebukes the trim cowardice of Drances, is a work of such extraordinary power and merit, that it is fit (and this I take for the summit of all eulogies) even to have been spoken by the Achilles of Homer. In vigorous reasoning, in biting sarcasm, in chivalrous sentiment, and in indignant passion, it presents a combination not easily to be matched; and it is, as a whole, admirably adapted to the oratorical purpose, for which it is presumed to have been delivered. But, indeed, from our first view of Turnus to our last, we do not find in him a single trait feeble in itself, or unworthy of the masculine idea and intention of the portrait, except where, in the very last passage of his life, his free agency seems to be taken, as it were by force, out of his hands.

~_The false position of Virgil._~

The failure in the Æneas of Virgil cannot be compared with the case of any modern romance, such as the Waverley or Old Mortality of Scott, where the hero may be an insipid person. All the greater modern inventors have been compelled to lay their foundations in the palpable breadth of some historic event: it was the prouder distinction of the Homeric epic, that it had a living centre; it hung upon a man; there was enough of vital power in Homer for this end: his Achilles and his Ulysses were each an Atlas, that sustained the world in which they also moved. Virgil made his poem an Æneid, instead of following the example of the Cyclic poets; he thus pledged himself to his readers, that Æneas should be its centre, its pole, its inward light and life. But he did not keep his word: he had drawn the bow of Homer without Homer’s force. He marks perhaps the final transition from the old epic of the first class to the new. After him we have the epics of fact, the Pharsalia, the Thebaid, and so forth. But Æneas stands before us with the pretensions of Achilles and Ulysses; and the failure is great in proportion to the gigantic scale of the attempt. When, in the Italian romance, the character of the ideal man, as shown in Orlando, again became the basis of new epic poems, we again find in the protagonist great weakness indeed, as compared with Achilles and Ulysses; but strength and success as compared with the Æneas of Virgil.

Upon the whole we are thrown back on the supposition that this crying vice of the Æneid, the feebleness and untruth of the character of Æneas, was due to the false position of Virgil, who was obliged to discharge his functions as a poet in subjection to his dominant obligations and liabilities as a courtly parasite of Augustus. As the entire poem, so the character of its hero, was, before all other things, an instrument for glorifying the Emperor of Rome. It at once followed, that in all respects must that character be such as to avoid suggesting a comparison disadvantageous to the person whose dignity, for political ends, had already been elevated even into the unseen world; nay, whose forestalled divinity was to be kept in a relation of absolute and broad superiority to the image of his human ancestor. Æneas is himself addressed in the action of the Æneid, as

Dîs genite, et geniture deos.

In order to arrive at the disastrous effects of this mental servitude, take, first, the measure of the cold and unheroic character of Augustus; then estimate the degree of relative superiority, which it was essential to Virgil’s position that he should preserve for him throughout; and thus we may come to some practical conception of the straitness of the space within which Virgil had to develop his Æneas, or, in other words, to run his match against Homer. All the faults, and all the faultiness, of his poem may be really owing, in a degree none can say how great, to this original falseness of position.

On account of the personal principle on which the ancient epic was constructed, failure in the character of the hero must almost of necessity have entailed failure in the poem. Most of all would this follow in a case where, as in the Æneid, the hero is never out of view, and where the action does not, as in the Iliad, travel away from his person, in order then to enhance the splendour and effectiveness of his reappearance. Thus the falseness of Virgil’s position was not confined to an individual character, but extended to his entire work. Living, too, in an age less natural and more critical than that of Homer, he provided against criticism, so far as regarded its merely technical functions, more, and he studied nature less. He had to construct his epic for a court, and a corrupt court, not for mankind at large; it followed, that he could not take his stand upon those deep and broad foundations in human nature itself, which gave Homer a position of universal command. Hence as a general rule he does not sing from the heart, nor to the heart. His touches of genuine nature are rare. Such of them as occur have been carefully noted and applauded, for he is always studious to set them off by choice and melodious diction. For my own part, I find scarcely any among them so true as the simile of the mother labouring with her maidens at night, which he owes to Homer[889]:

[889] Hom. Il. xii. 433.

Castum ut servare cubile Conjugis, et possit parvos educere natos[890].

[890] Æn. viii. 407-13.

~_As to religion, liberty, and nationality._~

With rare exceptions, the reader of Virgil finds himself utterly at a loss to see at any point the soul of the poet reflected in his work. We cannot tell, amidst the splendid phantasmagoria, where is his heart, where lie his sympathies. In Homer a genial spirit, breathed from the Poet himself, is translucent through the whole; in the Æneid we look in vain almost for a single ray of it. Again, Virgil lived at a time when the prevailing religion had lost whatever elements of real influence that of Homer’s era either possessed in its own right, or inherited from pristine tradition. It was undermined at once by philosophy and by licentiousness; and it subsisted only as a machinery, a machinery, too, already terribly discredited, for civil ends. Thus he lost one great element of truth and nature, as well as of sublimity and pathos. The extinction of liberty utterly deprived him of another. Homer saw before him both a religion and a polity young, fresh, and vigorous; for Virgil both were practically dead: and whatever this world has of true greatness is so closely dependent upon them, that it was not his fault if his poem felt and bears cogent witness to the loss. Even the sphere of personal morality was not open to him; for what principle of truth or righteousness could he worthily have glorified, without passing severe condemnation on some capital act of the man, whom it was his chief obligation to exalt?

And once more. Homer sang to his own people of the glorious deeds of their sires, to whom they were united by fond recollection, and by near historic and local ties. This was at once a stimulus and a check; it cheered his labour, and at the same time it absolutely required him to study moral harmony and consistency. Virgil sang to Romans of the deeds of those who were not Romans, and whom only a most hollow fiction connected with his hearers, through the dim vista of a thousand years, and under circumstances which made the pretence to historical continuity little better than ridiculous. Or rather, he sang thus, not to Romans, but to their Emperor; he had to bear in mind, not the great fountains of emotion in the human heart, but his town-house on the Esquiline, and his country-house on the road from Naples to Pozzuoli. In dealing with Greeks, with Trojans, with Carthaginians, he again lost Homer’s double advantage: he had nothing to give a healthy stimulus to his imagination, and nothing to bring him or to keep him to the standard of truth and nature. And here, perhaps, we hit upon some clue to the superior character and attractions of Turnus. The Poet was now for once upon true national ground: he was an Italian minstrel, singing to Italians, whether truly or mythically is of less consequence, about an Italian hero. Thus he had something like the proper materials to work with; and the result is one worthy of his noble powers, though it has the strange consequence of setting all the best sympathies of his readers, and of implying that his own were already set, in direct opposition to the ostensible purpose of his poem.

It appears, however, as if this great and splendid Poet, being thrown out of his true bearings in regard to all the deeper sources of interest on which an epic writer must depend, such as religion, patriotism, and liberty, became consequently reckless, alike in major and in minor matters, as to all the inner harmonies of his work, and contented himself with the most unwearied and fastidious labours in its outward elaboration, where he could give scope to his extraordinary powers of versification and of diction without fear of stumbling upon anything unfit for the artificial atmosphere of the Roman court. The consequence is, that a vein of untruthfulness runs throughout the whole Æneid, as strong and as remarkable as is the genuineness of thought and feeling in the Homeric poems. Homer walks in the open day, Virgil by lamplight. Homer gives us figures that breathe and move, Virgil usually treats us to waxwork. Homer has the full force and play of the drama, Virgil is essentially operatic. From Virgil back to Homer is a greater distance, than from Homer back to life.

~_Homer is misapprehended through Virgil._~

But more. Virgil is at once the copyist of Homer, and, for the generality of educated men, his interpreter[891]. In all modern Europe taken together, Virgil has had ten who read him, and ten who remember him, for one that Homer could show. Taking this in conjunction with the great extent of the ground they occupy in common, we may find reason to think that the traditional and public idea of Homer’s works, throughout the entire sphere of the Western civilization, has been formed, to a much greater degree than could at first be supposed, by the Virgilian copies from him. This is only to say, in other words, that it has been sadly impaired, not to say seriously falsified; for there is scarcely a point of vital moment, in which Virgil follows Homer faithfully, or represents him either fairly or completely. Now this traditional idea is not only the stock idea that governs the indifferent public, but it is likewise the idea with which the individual student starts, and which governs him until he has reached such a point in his progress as to discover the necessity, and be conscious moreover of the strength, to throw it off. This, however, is a point that, from the nature of human life and its pursuits, very few students indeed can reach at all. Elsewhere we shall see, with what evil and untrue effect Virgil has handled some of the Homeric characters. It is the same in every minor trait; and it seems strange that so great a Poet should not have had enough of reverence for another Poet, greater still and enshrined in almost the worship of all ages, to have restrained him from such constant and wanton, as well as wilful, mutilations of the Homeric tradition. It would, however, appear that Virgil’s miscarriages are not all due to carelessness, in the common sense of it. In many instances, unless so far as they can be referred to the necessities that press upon a courtier, it would seem as if they must be ascribable to torpor in the faculties, or defect in the habit of mind, by which Homer should have been appreciated. Nay, sometimes he appears to have been moved simply by metrical convenience to alter the traditions of Homer. Let us take first a minor instance to test this assertion.

[891] In Dibdin’s ‘Editions of the Greek and Latin Classics,’ we find nineteen editions of Virgil between 1469 and 1478. The _Princeps_ of Homer was only printed in 1488. Panzer, according to Dibdin, enumerates ninety editions of Virgil in the 15th century (ii. 540.). Mr. Hallam says (Lit. Eur., i. 420.), ‘Ariosto has been _after Homer_ the favourite poet of Europe.’ I presume this distinguished writer does not mean to imply that Homer has been more read than any other poet. Can his words mean that Homer has been more approved? It is worth while to ask the question: for the judgments of Mr. Hallam are like those of Minos, and reach into the future.

Nothing can be more marked than the prominence of the Scamander as compared with the Simois in Homer. The Simois is named by him only six times, and none of the passages show it to have been a considerable stream. In the Twenty-first Book[892], Scamander invites Simois to join him in pouring forth the flood which was to bear away Achilles, but his ‘brother’ neither replies, nor takes part in the action. It would appear, indeed, from geographical considerations, which belong to the topography of the Troad, that in the summer Simois was probably dry. This entirely accords with the passage in which this river supplies ἀμβροσίη[893], a figure, as may be presumed, of grass, for the horses of Juno. At any rate, that passage is at variance with the idea of the river as a tearing torrent. Again, Homer mentions[894] that many heroes fell, he does not say in, but about, the stream: above all, he does not say they fell into its waters, but in the dust of it, or near it:

[892] Il. xxi. 307, et seqq.

[893] Il. v. 777.

[894] Il. xii. 22.

καὶ Σιμόεις, ὅθι πολλὰ βοάγρια καὶ τρυφάλειαι κάππεσον ἐν κονίῃσι.

Again, Scamander is personified as the god Xanthus, and plays a great part in the action: Simois is not personified at all. Scamander is δῖος, διοτρεφὴς and much besides: Simois has no epithets. Simoeisius is the son of Anthemion, a person of secondary account; but Scamandrius is the name given by Hector to his boy. Simois, for all we know, may have been either a dry bed, or little better than a rivulet; but armed men are thrown into Scamander, and whirled by him to the sea. Lastly, the plain where the Greek army was reviewed is λειμὼν Σκαμάνδριος, πέδιον Σκαμάνδριον. Now a right conception of these rivers is not altogether an insignificant affair, but is material to the clearness of our ideas upon the military action of the poem. What then has Virgil done with them? He has simply reversed the Homeric representation. Xanthus is with him the unmarked river, Simois is the mighty torrent. Witness these passages:

Mitto ea, quæ muris bellando exhausta sub altis, Quos Simois premat ille viros. (Æn. xi. 256.)

Again:

Victor apud rapidum Simoenta sub Ilio alto. (Æn. v. 261.)

And most of all, the passage which he has directly carried off from Homer, and corrupted it on his way (Æn. i. 104):

Ubi tot Simois correpta sub undis Scuta virûm galeasque et fortia corpora volvit.

And why all this? Plainly, I apprehend, because, while Scamander was a word disqualified from entering into the Latin hexameter, Xanthus also was somewhat less convenient than Simois for the march of his resounding verse. Now this is a sample in small things of what Virgil has done in nearly all things, both small and great.

~_Νεκυΐα of Homer and Virgil._~

There are instances in which Virgil is popularly thought to profit by the comparison with Homer, and where, notwithstanding, a full consideration may lead to a reversal of the sentence. The νεκυΐα of the Eleventh Odyssey, for example, is thought inferior to that of the Sixth Æneid. To bring them fairly together, we should perhaps put out of view the philosophical and prophetical part of the latter[895]; but whether we do it or not is little material in the comparison. In either way, the _Inferno_ of Virgil is, upon the whole, a stage procession of stately and gorgeous figures; but it has no consistent or veracious relation to any idea of the future or unseen state actually operative among mankind. Yet there existed such an idea, at least in the times of which Virgil was treating, if not at the period when he lived. It was surely a subject of the deepest interest, and of the most solemn pathos. What we are as men here depends very much on our conception of what we are hereafter to be. There is nothing more touching in all the history of the race of Adam, than its blind and painful feeling after a future still invisible. There is no witness to the comparative degradation of a race or age, so sure as its having ceased to yearn towards any thing beyond the grave. Homer has shown us in the Eleventh Odyssey[896], that, together with his keen sense of the present and visible, he felt the full force of this mysterious drawing towards the unseen. He is plainly as much in earnest here, as in any part of the poems. Virgil, on the other hand, succeeds in investing his hell with almost unequalled pomp, approximating at times to splendour. Homer attempts nothing of the kind; but he produces a perfect and profound impression of those regions, according to the idea in his own mind: they are shadowy, gloomy, cold, above all, and in one word, dismal. Virgil contrives to leave the reader convinced that _he_ is a very great artist: Homer lets all such matters take care of themselves. But while Virgil creates no impression at all on the mind as to the World of Shades, no image of the timid, vague, and dim belief that was entertained respecting it, Homer has set it all before us with a truthfulness never equalled or approached. And yet Virgil abounds in details and measurements which Homer avoids. Tartarus is twice as deep as the distance from earth to sky[897], and the Hydra has fifty mouths. Yet the details of the one give no impression of reality, while the utter local vagueness and dreaminess of the other is far more definite in its effect, because it is made to minister to the appropriate ideas of sadness, sympathy, and awe. As to particular passages, the appearance of Dido is full of grandeur; but her silence, the basis of it, is borrowed from that of Ajax; while in the Odyssey the striding of Achilles in silence over the meadow of asphodel, when he swells with exultation upon hearing that his son excelled in council and in war, is perhaps one of the most sublime pieces of human representation, which Homer himself ever has produced.

[895] Æn. vi. 724-893.

[896] We cannot safely assume the second Νεκυΐα of Od. xxiv. to be free from interpolations.

[897] Homer has used this figure; but in an entirely different connection, Il. viii. 13-16.

~_Ethnological dislocations._~

Let us now give an instance of Virgil’s utter indifference to historic truth and consistency. It is the more remarkable, because as he was pretending to derive the Julian family from the stock of Æneas, there would apparently have been some advantage in adhering strictly to the Homeric distinctions as to races on both sides in the Trojan war. But this appears to be entirely beneath his attention. For instance, he calls the Homeric Greeks Pelasgi[898]. It may be said he was guided by the Italian traditions, which connected the Greek and Pelasgian names as early colonists of that country. But first, some regard should be paid to Homer in matters which concern Troy; and it is rather violent to call the Greeks Pelasgi, when the only Pelasgi named in the war by the Poet are placed on the side of their enemies. Secondly, as it was his purpose throughout to depress the Greeks, why should he thus thrust them into view as one with an Italian race? Above all, why do this in a case, where Homer had himself supplied a link between Italy and Troy? Again, Virgil calls the Greek camp _Dorica_ castra[899]. But the Dorians at the period of the Trojan war were utterly insignificant, and are never once named by Homer in connection with the contest. Again, Virgil calls Diomed, and the city of Arpi founded by him, Ætolian, and makes him complain that he was not allowed to go back to Calydon[900], simply because his father Tydeus, as a son of Œneus, had been of Ætolian extraction; though he commanded the Argives, and had nothing whatever to do with the Ætolians of Homer. Again, following a late and purposeless tradition, he calls Ulysses Æolides[901], though Homer has given the descent of Ulysses[902] without in any manner attaching it to the line of the Æolids, a collection of families whose descent, on account probably of their historical importance, he is more than ordinarily careful to mark.

[898] Æn. vi. 503.

[899] Æn. ii. 27. vi. 88.

[900] Æn. xi. 239-270.

[901] Æn. vi. 529.

[902] Od. xvi. 118.

With cases of simple inaccuracy, to which I do not seek to attach undue weight, we may connect the manner in which he confounds, on the other side, the distinctions of the Trojan races, so accurately marked by Homer. In the Twentieth Iliad, the genealogy of the reigning families of Troy and of Dardania is given with great precision. The distinction between Trojans and Dardanians is preserved through the Iliad, though the Trojan name is sometimes, but rarely, used to include the whole indigenous army, and sometimes it even signifies the entire force, including the allies, which opposed the Greek army. We might here, however, suppose that it would have been in the interest of Virgil’s aim to maintain, or even sharpen, the distinction between the Dardanian line, which was at most but indirectly worsted by the Greeks, and the line of Ilus, which fatally both sinned and suffered in the conflict of the _Troica_. But, on the contrary, he is still less discriminating in the use of names here, than he has been for the Greeks. The companions of Æneas are sometimes Teucri, Trojani, or Trojugenæ--sometimes Æneadæ, sometimes Dardanidæ. In the first of these names he entirely contravenes Homer, who produces a Teucer eminent among the Greeks, but nowhere connects the name with Troy, while Virgil makes a Cretan Teucer[903] the founder of the Trojan race. I grant that he here founds himself upon what may be called a separate tradition, though it is vague and slender, of a Teucrian race in Troas. In the two last appellations, without any authority, he wholly alters the effect of the Greek patronymic, and changes the mere family-name into a national appellation. Then again they appear as the Pergamea gens[904]. But Pergamus in Homer was simply the citadel of Troy, and is a correlative to πύργος[905]: the English might almost as well be called the people of the Tower. Not content yet, he will also have the Trojans to be Phryges:

[903] Æn. iii. 104.

[904] Æn. vi. 63.

[905] Scott and Liddell, in voc.

Phrygibusque adsis pede, diva, secundo[906];

[906] Æn. x. 255. Cf. i. 618, Phrygius Simois; vii. 597, _et alibi_.

though in Homer the Phrygians are a people both ethnologically and politically separate[907] from the Trojan races. Again as to Æneas himself. He is called Rhæteius heros[908]; but if Virgil chose thus to designate his hero by reference to a single point of the Trojan territory, it should have been one with which he was locally connected, whereas the dominions of his family were not near the promontory or upon the coast, but among the hills at the other extreme of the country. Then again Æneas is Laomedontius heros[909]; but Laomedon was of the branch of Ilus, while Æneas belonged to that of Assaracus; and was moreover perjured, while the line of Assaracus was marked with no such taint. So we have again--

[907] Il. iii. 184.

[908] Il. xii. 436.

[909] Il. viii. 18.

Dardanus, Iliacæ primus pater urbis et auctor[910];

[910] Ibid. 134. Cf. vi. 650.

but Dardanus founded Dardania, while Ilium did not exist until the time of his great grandson Ilus. And here Virgil seems wholly to forget that he had himself made Teucer the head of the race[911]. In describing the migration of this hero from Crete to Troas, he says:

[911] Æn. iii. 104.

Nondum Ilium et arces Pergameæ steterant; habitabant vallibus imis[912].

[912] Æn. iii. 109.

Here he not only rejects Homer, who places Dardanus and the original settlement among the mountains, but likewise represents what is in itself improbable, since eminences, and not bottoms, were commonly sought by the first colonists with a view to security. Choosing to depart from Homer, he does not even agree with Apollodorus[913]. Lastly, he is not less neglectful of the actual topography; for he implies that Ilium is among the hills, while it was, according to Homer’s express words and according to universal opinion, on the plain as opposed to the hills. Again we have from Virgil the allusion--

[913] Apollod. III. xii. 1.

quibus obstitit Ilium, et ingens Gloria Dardaniæ[914].

[914] Æn. vi. 63.

Here is another case of metre against history, and in all such cases history must go (as is said) to the wall. _Ilium_ would not satisfactorily admit the genitive case; there could therefore be no glory of Ilium, and on this account Virgil liberally assigns vast renown to Dardania, which was a place of no renown whatever. But he is quite as ready, it must be admitted, to contradict himself as he is to contradict Homer. In Æn. ii. 540, he gives it to be understood that the city of Troy alone was the kingdom of Priam, and that the Greek camp was beyond it, for he makes Priam say of his return from the camp,

meque in mea regna remisit.

But a very little further on he calls Priam (v. 556),

tot quondam populis regnisque superbum Regnatorem Asiæ.

Each account is alike inaccurate: Priam had more than a city, but his dominions were confined to a mere nook of Asia Minor. And again, before quitting this part of the subject, let us observe how, in the case of Anchises, he departs from Homer, even where it would have served the purpose of his story to follow him closely. The Anchises of Homer is an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν; he does not appear at Troy among the δημογέροντες of the city, or of Priam’s court, which would have made him a secondary figure; he resides at Dardania as an independent sovereign, and it seems not unlikely that in lineal dignity, at least, he was even before Priam. But the Anchises of Virgil is resident in Troy[915]; and is therefore, of course, to be taken for a subject of Priam. Here the alteration very much lowers the rank of Æneas, and so far, therefore, of Augustus.

[915] Æn. ii. 634.

The effect of all this is, without any real gain either moral or poetical, entirely to bewilder the mind of the reader of the Æneid, in regard to a subject of real interest both historical and ethnological, with respect to which Homer has left on record a most careful and clear representation. It must indeed be admitted, that the intervening poets had set many examples of similar license; indeed they had made irregularity a rule; but they had no such powerful reasons as Virgil had for imitating, in some points at least, the precision of Homer, and besides, he has perhaps exceeded them all in the multitude and variety of his departures from it. On the other hand, some allowance, I admit, should be made for the less flexible character of the Latin tongue, which might have made the peculiar accuracy of Homer a real difficulty to Virgil.

I have thus minutely traced out this course of inconsistency and contradiction in particular instances, because they are highly illustrative of the character of Virgil’s work, if not of his mind. After the political and courtly idea of the poem, he seems to have abandoned all solicitude except for its form and sound, and to have been totally indifferent as to presenting any veracious, or if that word imply too much credulity, any self-consistent pattern, of manners, places, events, or characters.

Virgil must, materially at least, have saturated himself with the Iliad before he planned the Æneid, for his borrowing is alike incessant and diversified; and this it is which renders it so singular that he should at once have exposed himself to the double charge of servilely imitating and of gratuitously disfiguring his original.

If we look to the action of the Twelfth Book of the Æneid, it is all made up from Homer cut in pieces and recast. It begins with the idea of the single combat, borrowed from the Third and Seventh Iliads. Then come the pact and the breach of it by Juturna, under Juno’s influence, which are borrowed from the treachery of Pandarus, prompted by Minerva, under the same instigation. Next, the flight of Turnus before Æneas is borrowed from that of Hector before Achilles. After this, Turnus is disabled by a divine agency, like Patroclus before Hector; a downfall brought about in the one case, as in the other, without peril and without honour, so that here we have a copy even of one among the few points where the Iliad was little worthy to be imitated. Lastly, the thought of Pallas in the mind of Æneas (more highly wrought, however, and very effective), plays the part of the recollection of Patroclus[916] in the mind of Achilles.

[916] Il. xxii. 331-47.

~_Unfaithful imitations of detail._~

Both here and elsewhere, the imitations in detail are too numerous to be noted. Some of them even descend to a character which, independently of their minuteness, approaches the ludicrous. The very dung, in which the Oilean Ajax loses his footing[917], in the Twenty-third Iliad, is reproduced in the Fifth Æneid, that Nisus may flounder in it. But even here we may note two characteristic differences. Homer trips up a personage, whom he has no particular occasion to set off favourably. Virgil chooses for the object of derision Nisus, on whom, in the beautiful episode which soon after follows, he is about to concentrate all the tenderest sympathies of his hearers. And again, Homer makes Ajax slip where, as he says, the oxen had just been slain over Patroclus: Virgil has no such probable cause to allege for the presence of the obnoxious material[918], but says _cæsis forte juvencis_. Now the Trojans had in fact left the tomb of Anchises, and had gone to a chosen spot to celebrate the foot-races[919]; so that even his gore and ordure are quite out of place.

[917] Il. xxiii. 775-81. Æn. v. 333, 356.

[918] Ibid. 329.

[919] Ibid. 286-90.

So again, of all the _formulæ_ in Homer, it is not very clear why Virgil should have chosen to recall the rather commonplace line

αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ πόσιος καὶ ἐδήτυος ἐξ ἔρον ἕντο

in his own more ambitious and resounding verse,

Postquam exemta fames, et amor compressus edendi[920];

[920] Æn. viii. 185.

but it is still more singular that, instead of saying that hunger and thirst were satisfied, he should leave out thirst altogether, and fill up his hexameter by mentioning hunger twice over.

Still it seems not a little strange, notwithstanding the power of the disabling causes which have been enumerated, that, with so vast an amount of material imitation, Virgil should not have acquired, even by accident or by sheer force of use, some traits of nearer resemblance in feeling, and in ethical handling, to his great original.

His maltreatment of the Homeric characters is most conspicuous, perhaps, in the instance of Helen. This case, indeed, deserves a separate consideration of the causes which have reduced a beautiful, touching, and remarkably original portrait to a gross and most common caricature. But Ulysses, as the prince of policy, had perhaps a better claim to be comprehended by a Roman at the court of Augustus. Yet the Ulysses of Virgil simply represents the naked ideas of hardness, cunning, and cruelty. He is never named but to be abused; and, though the mention of him is not very frequent, it is easy to construct from the poem a pretty large catalogue of vituperative epithets, unmitigated by any single one of an opposite character. He is _durus_, _dirus_, _sævus_, _pellax_, _fandi fictor_, _artifex_, _inventor scelerum_, and _scelerum hortator_. Even physical circumstances, however, and those too of the broadest notoriety, Virgil entirely overlooks. Nothing can be more at variance with the effeminate character of the Homeric Paris, his impotence in fight, and his distinction limited to the bow, which was then the coward’s weapon, than to represent him as possessed of vast physical force. Yet even on this Virgil has ventured. In the games of the Fifth Book, when Æneas invites candidates for the pugilistic encounter, the huge Dares immediately presents himself, and he is described as the only person who could box with Paris[921]!

[921] Æn. v. 370.

Solus qui Paridem solitus contendere contra.

Heyne urges by way of apology the authority of Hyginus, who was no more than the contemporary of Virgil himself; and presumes that Virgil followed authorities now lost: a sorry defence, because the representation is inconsistent not merely with the facts, but with the essential idea of the Paris of Homer, and therefore proves that Virgil did not try or care to understand the character, or to be faithful to his master.

~_Maltreatment of Mythology and Ethics._~

But it is time to give some instances, which show an utter disregard of either mythological or moral consistency.

In the Eighth Æneid, Æneas and Anchises are much troubled in mind; and so it appears they must have continued,

Nî signum cœlo Cytherea dedisset aperto; Namque improviso vibratus ab æthere fulgor Cum sonitu venit[922].

[922] Æn. viii. 523.

This idea of a _Cytherea tonans_ is as incongruous as it is novel. To preserve the characteristic attributes of the several deities of the Pagan mythology contributes to beauty, and was therefore at least an obligation imposed by the poetic art; but Virgil is not content with simply departing from it by taking the management of thunder and lightning out of the hands of Jupiter and the highest deities; he cannot be satisfied without giving it to Venus. With her Homeric character, and with any consistent conception of her attributes, it is utterly irreconcilable.

But again, in the Second Æneid, Virgil makes Venus address to her son the following majestic lines, when he was about to slay Helen amidst the conflagration of Troy:

Non tibi Tyndaridis facies invisa Lacænæ Culpatusve Paris: Divûm inclementia, Divûm Has evertit opes, sternitque a culmine Trojam[923].

[923] Æn. ii. 601.

In which he plainly imitates the words of Priam,

οὔτι μοι αἰτίη ἐσσὶ, θεοί νύ μοι αἴτιοί εἰσιν, οἵ μοι ἐφώρμησαν πόλεμον πολύδακρυν Ἀχαιῶν[924].

[924] Il. iii. 164.

Now, even with reference to the acquittal of Helen, the cases are quite dissimilar. What Homer puts into the mouth of Priam, Virgil stamps with the authority of a deity: what Priam says of the Homeric Helen, who had been carried off by Paris, and whose general character was very far from depraved, the Venus of Virgil says of a hardened traitress as well as adulteress. Again, what Priam says relative to himself, ‘_I_ do not blame thee,’ seems in the Æneid to resemble the unlimited enunciation of an abstract proposition. But, above all, let us notice how lamentably Virgil has mauled the sentiment by introducing Paris into the passage, of whose moral guilt, if there be such a thing as moral guilt upon earth, there could be no doubt, and whom Homer, with true poetic justice, has taken care to punish by making him the object of the general reprobation and hatred of his countrymen[925]. In acquitting such an offender, and throwing the charge of his crimes upon the Immortals, by the mouth, too, of one belonging to their number, Virgil has given into the worst form of fatalism, that namely which annihilates all moral sanctions and ideas as applicable to human conduct.

[925] Il. iii. 453, and elsewhere.

And this he has done with no plea whatever which might have been drawn, _valeat quantum_, from the exigencies of his poem. Paris was not before the eye of Æneas: Venus was not dissuading her son from taking vengeance upon Paris; he is forced into our sight; the allusion is as irrelevant with reference to the purpose of the passage, as it is blameworthy in an ethical point of view; and in all probability the mention of him is introduced for no other reason than that it supplied Virgil with a hemistich to fill up a gap in an extremely fine passage, and to secure its prosodial equilibrium, to which the balance of moral sanctions is sacrificed without remorse.

As it is with the management of his gods, so with his conception of human nature; Virgil seems to have lost the sight of its higher prerogatives, and especially of the great and noble truth, that it is susceptible of divine influences without the loss of its free agency. The poems of Homer, notwithstanding their copious theurgy, are throughout eminently and entirely human. Their human agency is adorned and elevated (as well as unhappily lowered and darkened), it is even modified and controlled, but never inwardly mutilated, curtailed or superseded, by the interference of the Immortals. But, in regard to his relations with the deities, Æneas is a mere puppet; and the gallant spirit of Turnus on his last battlefield is, as it were, put down within him by main force from heaven.

~_Æneas and Dido in the Shades._~

Thus for example, Virgil is not ashamed to introduce to us Æneas in the shades below apologizing to Dido for his black desertion of her by saying, ‘he could not help it, the gods compelled him; and really he never thought she would take it so much to heart.’

Invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi; Sed me jussa deûm ... Imperiis egere suis; nec credere quivi Hunc tantum tibi me discessu ferre dolorem[926].

[926] Æn. vi. 460.

Compare with this the extraordinary truth, beauty, and manfulness of the speech, in which Ulysses takes his farewell of Calypso[927]. This is its tenour: ‘Be not incensed; I know Penelope is less beautiful than thou; yet is my desire, from day by day, towards my home; and if I be wrecked upon my way, this too I will endure, even as I have endured much before.’ In Virgil’s hands, the chief would probably have shuffled off the responsibility from himself upon the shoulders of the gods. Never shall we find one of Homer’s heroes doing this, either beforehand, as by saying, ‘I do not wish to do it, but I am ordered,’ or retrospectively. There is one exception; it is when Agamemnon says that Ἄτη, the goddess of Mischief, with Jupiter, had misled him[928], and that he was not himself to blame. But Agamemnon, alone among the Greek heroes, had in his character a strong element of what we call shabbiness; and what is more, he uses this plea only after making reparation, and not, as Æneas does, in lieu of any. To resume, however, the thread. Sometimes the Homeric heroes are pious, sometimes disobedient; sometimes bold, and sometimes fearful; sometimes they submit to overpowering force, sometimes they struggle even against destiny; but they never appear before us shorn of the first attribute of manhood, its free will.

[927] Od. v. 215-24.

[928] Il. xix. 86. When Achilles (270) as it were countersigns this, it is evidently in his character of a high-bred gentleman; a character, of which he gives so many proofs in the poem.

It seems then that Virgil really did not care to form the habit, and thus commonly failed in the power, of working the higher springs of our nature. He puts the clay into the fire, but the pitcher does not always come out such as he intended it; not even when, instead of trusting, like Homer, to simple action as the vehicle of his meaning, he uses the precautionary measure of describing it.

Thus he prepares us to expect in Mezentius a monster of impiety, cruelty, and brutality, from the account and the epithets by which he is introduced to us[929]. In words scattered here and there, this ‘contemptor divûm’ is made to sustain his impious character. _Dextra mihi deus_, he says; and again _nec divûm parcimus ulli_[930]. But these are really mere black patches, set upon a character with which they do not accord; they remain patches still, and not parts of it. Practically, Mezentius proceeds in the poem only as an affectionate father, and as a gallant warrior, should do; and there is no more of real impiety in him, than there is of real piety in Æneas. Nay, here again Virgil shows his contempt of consistency. For, when Mezentius slays Orodes, who prophesied that his conqueror would meet with a similar fate upon the field of battle, Mezentius replies in the most decorous manner (copying the very language of Achilles to the dying Hector[931]),

[929] Æn. vii. 648; viii. 7, 482.

[930] Æn. x. 773, 880.

[931] Il. xxii. 365.

Nunc morere. Ast de me divûm pater atque hominum rex Viderit[932].

[932] Æn. x. 743.

~_Woman characters of Homer and Virgil._~

Though Virgil is esteemed a woman-hater, he has availed himself of the use of female characters to a degree only exceeded, so far as I recollect, by the highly susceptible Tasso. His celestial machinery is principally worked by Juno and by Venus: we miss altogether in him that jovial might of the Homeric Jupiter, which is recalled in the historic portraits of king Henry the Eighth of England. Of mortals we have, besides the mute Lavinia, and minor or transitory personages, Dido, Juturna, Amata, Camilla. All these play very marked parts in the poem; indeed, they supply the mainsprings of the action; and the characters of all are drawn with great spirit and success, while the Passion of Dido will probably always be quoted as the most magnificent witness, which the whole range of the poem affords, to the original power and genius of its author. Yet even in these, his signal successes, it is curious to notice the dissimilarity between Virgil and Homer. Homer, too, has been eminently successful in his women. His greater studies of Helen, Andromache, and Penelope are fully sustained by the truth and force of all the less conspicuous delineations: Hecuba, Briseis, the incomparable Nausicaa, the faithful Euryclea, the pert and heartless Melantho. But how different are the works of the two poets! In all Virgil’s women (as on the other hand his men are apt to be effeminate) there is a tinge of the masculine. Many a woman would stab herself for love like Dido; but none, not even in France, with her pomp, apparatus, and self-consciousness. Their fates, too, are all of a violent character. Amata, as well as Dido, commits suicide; Camilla is slain; Juturna is immortal indeed, but is dismissed from earth with what for her comes nearest to an image of death; with defeat, mortification, shame. But on the contrary, the feminineness of Homer’s women has never been surpassed. In Hecuba alone, at one single point in the story, there is an apparent exception; yet it is no great violence done to nature, if we find in her after Hector’s death the wild ferocity of the dam deprived of her offspring, and if revenge then drives her for a moment into the temper of a cannibal. Elsewhere beyond doubt, even in Melantho, the feminine character is not wholly obliterated, but is left at the point where in actual life licentiousness and vanity might leave it. In Helen, Andromache, Nausicaa, it reaches a perfection which has never been surpassed, unless by Shakespeare, in human song. There is, however, something to be observed, which is more striking and characteristic. The Virgilian delineations of women tell us absolutely nothing, or next to nothing, of the social position of womankind either at the epoch of Æneas or at any other; a matter which has stood so differently in different ages and states of mankind, yet which has at all times been one of the surest tests for distinguishing a true and healthy from a hollow civilization. But the Homeric poems furnish a picture of this interesting subject not a whit less complete than any other picture they contain. The Woman of the heroic age of Greece stands before us in that immortal verse no less clear, no less truly drawn, no less carefully shaded, than the Warrior, the Statesman, and the King.

These are great matters: but Virgil is also as careless, as Homer is careful, of minor proprieties. For instance, he describes the Italian smiths engaged in preparing suits of armour upon the invasion of Æneas. Some, he says, make breastplates of brass; and he continues,

Aut leves ocreas lento ducunt argento[933].

[933] Æn. vii. 633.

Here, we presume, his purpose was to represent the hammering process by a heavy spondaic line--in evident imitation of Homer, who has done it still more completely in the

θώρηκας ῥήξειν δηΐων ἀμφὶ στήθεσσιν[934].

[934] Il. ii. 544.

But Homer always gains his metrical objects without injuring the sense; Virgil, on the contrary, has committed an error, by representing silver (a most rare and valuable metal, especially in the Trojan times) as used in large masses for making armour; and a grosser solecism, by representing the greaves as made of far finer material than the breastplates. Perhaps he was helped into this error by a careless reminiscence, that Homer had in some way connected silver with the greaves. This is not, however, in armour as generally used, but in the case of some of the greatest chiefs, including Paris, whose dandyism, we know, extended particularly to his arms. Nor are even his greaves made of, or even plated with, silver, but only the clasps of them:

κνημῖδας μὲν πρῶτα περὶ κνήμῃσιν ἔθηκεν καλὰς, ἀργυρέοισιν ἐπισφυρίοις ἀραρυίας[935].

[935] Il. iii. 330.

Virgil is careful enough as to geography, when he deals with countries under the eye of his hearers. But he can scarcely be excused for inverting the Homeric order of the mountains piled up by the giants. Homer places Mount Pelion on Ossa, and Ossa on Olympus:

Ὄσσαν ἐπ’ Οὐλύμπῳ μέμασαν θέμεν, αὐτὰρ ἐπ’ Ὄσσῃ Πήλιον εἰνοσίφυλλον[936].

[936] Od. xi. 315.

This description is in conformity with the proportionate heights of the mountains, among which Olympus is the highest, Ossa the next, Pelion the least. But Virgil makes Pelion the base, and Olympus the _apex_:

Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam Scilicet, atque Ossæ frondosum involvere Olympum[937].

[937] Georg. i. 281.

It is not simply that Homer is here geographically accurate, and Virgil the reverse. Homer has adopted the pyramidal structure, which satisfies the eye, and lays a firm and obvious road, so to speak, to the skies. Virgil does not. He subjoins to his description the verse,

Ter pater extructos disjecit fulmine montes.

But Jupiter might have spared himself the trouble: the mountains would have tumbled of themselves.

~_Confusion of natural Phenomena._~

Before parting from the subject, it may be well to give another example of the indifference of Virgil to the association between poetry, and the order of external nature as such. In the Fourth Æneid, he speaks of Mercury as passing over Mount Atlas on his way to Carthage; from what point I do not now inquire. The lines are these[938];

[938] Æn. iv. 248-51.

Atlantis, cinctum assidue cui nubibus atris Piniferum caput et vento pulsatur et imbri; Nix humeros infusa tegit: tum flumina mento Præcipitant senis, et glacie riget horrida barba.

His pine-bearing head, girt with clouds, is beaten by wind and rain. So far so good. But while such is the temperature of the air at the summit, it grows colder, not warmer, as we descend: for snow covers his shoulders. This is the second image. Next, we mount again to his mouth, which discharges rivers over his chin: and not even here have we done with incongruity, for his beard, although thus watered from above, is rough and stiff with ice. Now such a confusion, as is here exhibited, of images which nature always exhibits in a fixed and very imposing order, is, we may be assured, no mere casual error, but indicates a rooted indifference about matters which the poets of nature study, not only with accuracy, but with an accuracy which is the fruit of their reverence and love.

The Dolopes of Homer are a part of the Myrmidons, for they are the subjects of Phœnix[939], and Phœnix commands the fifth division of the Myrmidons: they are named by Virgil as a separate race[940]. The Rhadamanthus of Homer appears to have been conceived by the Poet as a mild and benevolent character, for he is placed in the Plains of the Blest, while Minos administers severer justice in the under-world. But the Rhadamanthus of Virgil is the judge of the infernal regions, and is the image of rigour; while his Minos[941] has the very mild and also secondary function of dealing, in the vestibule of the Shades, with the cases of such persons as had been unjustly condemned on earth[942]. Again, where Homer uses exaggeration to enhance effect, Virgil carries it far into caricature. In the Iliad, Diomed[943] heaves a stone, of a weight that ‘two men such as are nowadays (οἷοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσι) could scarcely lift.’ He allows for a short interval since the Trojan war, and says that two ordinary men of his day could scarcely lift what warriors of extraordinary strength, by an extraordinary effort, then raised and hurled. In another place, Ajax flings a stone, such as even a man in the fullest vigour could now scarcely hold[944]. Again, Hector discharges against the Greek rampart one which two strong men could hardly raise with a lever; but then he is specially aided by Jupiter[945]. Now in the Fifth Æneid, Æneas gives to Mnestheus, as a prize, a breastplate which he himself had won, the spoil of Demoleos. This Demoleos[946] was no hero, for he is never named by Homer; again, the Demoleos of Virgil wore the breastplate when he chased the Trojans flying in all directions (‘palantes,’ Æn. v. 265), so that it must have been light to him: there was no time at all for human degeneracy, since they are still his contemporaries that are on the stage; and yet such was the weight of this breastplate, that two men together could scarcely carry it on their shoulders.

[939] Il. ix. 484, and xvi. 196.

[940] Æn. ii. 7.

[941] Æn. vi. 432.

[942] Although it may be a deviation from the direct path, yet, having noticed in so much detail the unfaithfulness of Virgil to his original, I will also give an instance of the accuracy of Horace. In the Seventh Ode of the First Book, he has occasion to refer to the places made famous in Homeric song; and Athens with him is Palladis urbs; so Argos (ἱππόβοτον) is _aptum equis_, Mycænæ (πολύχρυσος) _dites_, Larissa (ἐριβώλαξ) _opima_. Lacedæmon is _patiens_, an epithet corresponding with no particular word in Homer, but not contradicted by any; it had acquired the character since his time.

[943] Il. v. 303. See also Il. xx. 285.

[944] Il. xii. 382.

[945] Ibid. 445-50.

[946] Homer names a Demoleon, son of Agenor; but he is slain fighting for the Trojans. Il. xx. 395.

‘Vix illam famuli Phegeus Sagarisque ferebant Multiplicem, connixi humeris[947].’

[947] Æn. vi. 233.

Let it not be thought that the varied examples, which have here been quoted, are either irrelevant or without serious significance. There cannot, surely, be a more decided error than to treat accuracy in matters of this kind as a matter of sheer indifference. It is not only inseparable from the function of the primitive Poet as the historian of his subject, but it appertains also to the perfection of his poetic nature, that he should have a nice sense of proportion even in figurative language. I have dwelt, however, upon minor points, not for their own sake, but because the manner in which Virgil handles them appears to throw no unimportant light upon the frame and temper of his work at large, and of the later as compared with the earliest poetry.

~_Contrast of principal aims._~

In diction, Virgil is ornate and Homer simple; in metre, Virgil is uniform and sustained, Homer free and varied; in the faculty of invention, for which the historical office of early poetry still leaves ample room, Homer is inexhaustible, while, from the needless accumulation of imitations in every sort and size, Virgil gives ground to suspect that he was poor, at least by comparison. The first thought of Homer was his subject, and the second his nation; the first thought of Virgil was his Emperor and the court around the throne, the second the elaboration of his verse. Characters, feelings, facts, were used by Virgil for producing on the mind the effect of scenic representation; the end of Homer, on the contrary, was to give adequate vent, in and through these things poetically conceived and handled, to his own yearnings, and to the sympathies of his hearers[948]. The intercommunion of spirit between the poet and those to whom he sang, was not in him a sordid quest of popularity; it was only an expression of the truth that he founded both his composition and his hopes upon the basis of a great effort to be the organ of the general heart of mankind. All this we may discern in his notices, informal as they are, of the profession of the minstrel:

[948] The aim of the poet as such is finely, but somewhat too exclusively, expressed in the Sonnet of Filicaja, _Dietro a questi ancor io_.

ἢ καὶ θέσπιν ἀοιδὸν, ὅ κεν τέρπῃσιν ἀείδων[949]·

[949] Od. xvii. 385.

in the names he assigns to them, where they were not historical characters, Δημόδοκος, and Φήμιος Τερπιάδης; in the moral uprightness with which he invests them; for, though it was the office of Phemius to delight, his heart was never with the licentious and guilty band that held the palace of Ulysses:

ὅς ῥ’ ἤειδε μετὰ μνηστῆρσιν ἀνάγκῃ[950].

[950] Od. xxii. 331.

And again, in the offices of guardianship which they exercised; for Agamemnon, when he left his home for Troy, carefully enjoined upon the bard of his palace the care of Clytemnestra; and his advice, with her own right sense, for a time stood her in good stead[951]. Such was the bard in the living description of Homer; such he was represented in the Poet himself, never thrust into view, but ever understood, ever perceived, through his works. On the other hand, the character of the bard, as exhibited in Virgil, is what may be termed professional: the fire and power of genius may be in him, but they must work only under conventional forms, and for ends prescribed according to the spirit of that lower and narrower utility which is, not logically perhaps, but yet very effectively, denominated utilitarianism. A remarkably high form of exterior art, with a radical inattention to substance, both of facts and laws, has been the result in the case of Virgil. And it is rather significant, that this great Poet has nowhere placed upon his canvass the figure of the bard amidst the abodes of man; as if the very type had perished from the earth in those degenerate days, and the memory of him could not be recalled. An effete and corrupted age could no longer conceive a mind like the mind of Homer; an Æolian harp so finely strung, that it answers to the faintest movement of the air by a proportionate vibration: with every stronger current its music rises, along an almost immeasurable scale, which begins with the lowest and softest whisper, and ends in the full swell of the organ.

[951] Od. iii. 267.

~_Change in the idea of the Poet’s office._~

By a false association of ideas, we have come to place accuracy and genius in antagonism to one another. It is Homer who may best undeceive us: except indeed that most complete solution which the mind gladly perceives when, ascending to the Author of all being, it finds in Him alone the source and the perfection, alike of Order and of Light; alike of the most minute, and of the most gigantic operations. But among men Homer best exemplifies this union. It is not indeed the precision of dry facts, terminating upon itself: it is the precision of sympathies, of sympathies with nature and with man, to which the minute and scrupulous adjustments of Homer are to be referred; and this precision is probably due by no means to conscious effort, but to the spontaneous operations of the soul. In this view his far-famed, but not even yet fully fathomed, accuracy is no deduction from his greatness, but is in truth a proof of the near approach to perfection in the organization of his faculties. The later poets have too often torn asunder, what in him was harmoniously combined. They have conferred upon their art a deadly gift, in claiming first an exemption _ad libitum_ from the laws, not only of dry fact, but of Truth in its higher sense, of harmony and self-consistency, and of all, except a merely external beauty, which was meant to be the vehicle and not the substitute for all those great and discarded qualities. In this work of laceration, Virgil has borne no secondary share.

Upon the whole, though it is doubtless natural that Virgil should be compared with Homer, the mind is astonished at finding that he should so often even have gained a preference. We may account for his being chosen as Dante’s guide, by their being countrymen, and by the almost universal ignorance of Greek when Dante wrote. It is far more staggering to find Saint Augustine emphatically call him[952] _Poeta magnus omniumque præclarissimus atque optimus_; for he was no stranger to Greek influences, inasmuch as the philosophy of Plato had a very high place in his estimation[953]. Nor can this be readily accounted for, except by the advantage which Virgil had through writing in the Latin tongue, and by the very great decay of poetical tastes and perceptions.

[952] De Civ. Dei, i. 3.

[953] Ibid. viii. 4-11.

Still let us not do wrong to the memory of him, who thrilled with an immeasurable love, as he bore the sacred vessels of the Muses; and who has received so unequivocally the seal of that approbation of mankind, prolonged through ages, which comes near to an infallible award. It is but fair to admit, that we must not measure the relative rank of Homer and Virgil simply by the comparative merits of their epic works. Homer lived in the genial and joyous youth of a poetic nation and a poetic religion, and amid the influences of the soul of freedom: Virgil among a people always matter-of-fact rather than poetical, in an age and a court where the heart and its emotions were chilled, where liberty was dead, where religion was a mockery, and the whole higher material of his art had passed from freshness into the sear and yellow leaf. Whether Virgil, if he had lived the life of Homer in Homer’s country and Homer’s time, could have composed the Iliad and the Odyssey, may be more than doubtful; but it is indisputably clear that Homer could not have produced them, if it had been his misfortune to live at the date and in the sphere of Virgil.

I pass on now to make some attempt at comparison between the work of Tasso and the Iliad of Homer. But although the relation between the subjects appears to recommend the choice of Tasso for this purpose rather than any other Italian poet, I have to confess, that as far as the qualities of the men are concerned, both Bojardo and Ariosto are in my estimation more Homeric than Tasso; as being nearer to nature in its truest sense, as not conveying the same impression of perpetual effort and elaboration, as exempt from the temptation to the conceits so unhappily frequent in the _Gerusalemme_, and generally as working with a freer and broader touch, and exhibiting a more vigorous and elastic movement.

~_The War of Troy and the Crusades._~

There is, however, a striking resemblance between the relation in which the Trojan war stood to Greece, and that of the Crusades to Western Europe. The political unity and collective existence of Greece was greatly due to the first, that of Christendom to the second. The combination of races and of chiefs, the arduous character and extraordinary prolongation of the effort, the chivalry displayed, the disorganizing effects upon the countries which supplied the invading army, the representation in each of Europe against Asia, of Western mankind meeting Eastern mankind in arms, and the proof of superior prowess in the former, establish many broad and deep analogies between the subjects of these poems. In both struggles, too, the object purported to be the recovery of that which the East had unrighteously acquired: and into both what is called sentiment far more largely entered, than is common in the history of the wars which have laid desolate our earth.

~_Exaggeration as used by Homer and by Tasso._~

As Godfrey is Tasso’s version of Agamemnon, so the Rinaldo of Tasso occupies a place in the Jerusalem, similar to that of Achilles in the Iliad. Now the whole character of Achilles, mental and corporeal, which ranks at least among the most wonderful of all the works of Homer, is colossal and vast, but is not unduly exaggerated. Although the son of Peleus evidently was of great bodily size, yet Homer never calls him by the epithets μέγας and πελώριος, but reserves them for Ajax, because they suggest a predominance of the animal over the incorporeal element, which, in the case of Achilles, the Poet utterly eschews. The character of Rinaldo as a warrior (and in no other respect does he present any salient point) is, as will be shown, exaggerated unduly, but yet does not leave the impression of the vast or colossal, because the excess beyond common nature is not in harmony with the rest of the delineation.

Thus the strength of Achilles is the very highest; none can use his spear. But Rinaldo, in the assault of the Tower, does the work of a battering-ram. He takes up and carries a beam, of which we are told,

Nè così alte mai, nè così grosse Spiega l’ antenne sue ligura nave[954].

[954] Gerus. xix. 36.

With this he breaks the bars, and beats down the gates; and the stanza proceeds:

Non l’ ariète di far più si vanti, Non la bombarda, fulmine di morte[955].

[955] Ibid. 37.

No such excess of muscular power as this is ascribed to Achilles; and yet a much more lively impression of grandeur in his martial character is left upon the mind of the reader; the fact being that mere exaggeration freezes, while the adjusted representation of greatness warms.

The largest size assigned by Homer to any even of his mythological personages who are in relations with man, and this only in the Shades below, is in the case of Otus and Ephialtes. At nine years old, when they were put to death, they were nine cubits broad, nine fathoms (fifty-four feet) high[956]. These were they, who piled the mountains up to heaven. They are among the few figures absolutely gigantic, which appear in Homer; but they hover only in the distance through the mists of the Under-world, and in describing even them he has adhered strictly to the limits of what may be termed the gigantesque. Further on, he describes Tityus as reaching over nine acres; but he nowhere presents any such person to us in active motion, or in any relation with man on earth. In Il. xxi. however, occurs a passage which it is more easy to impugn; for Mars, who had marched about among the Trojans and the Greeks in battle without driving either friends or foes from their propriety by his bulk, and had fought with Diomed in the plain of Troy on terms favourable to that hero, when overthrown by Minerva in the battle of the gods, covers seven acres (407). Although Homer has skilfully avoided localizing the conflict, this may be thought to wear the aspect of a poetical incongruity; because in the Mars of the Theomachy we cannot wholly forget the Mars of the plain. As a general rule, however, Homer does not employ vast size, except in cases where it can suggest no comparison with objects of ordinary dimensions, and where, accordingly, it in no way jars with our customary standard.

[956] Od. xi. 311.

But if there be incongruity in the dimensions of the prostrate Mars of Homer, what shall we say to Tasso, who, carefully setting out in detail that his infernal assembly is held within the four walls of the palace of Pluto, describes the sub-terranean monarch, when he sits in actual council, as exceeding in mass, and that immeasurably, any mountain whatever?

Nè tanto scoglio in mar, nè rupe alpestra, Nè pur Calpe s’ innalza, o ’l magno Atlante, Ch’ anzi lui non paresse un picciol colle[957].

[957] Gerus. iv. 6.

Thus, where Homer is in excess, Tasso multiplies upon him by a thousandfold. This is not grandeur, but extravagance; nor is it vastness, but indistinctness, of which an impression is left upon the mind. The passage is followed by a description of the countenance and gorge of Pluto, which all readers must remember, but which all readers must likewise wish they could forget. In general it is curious to compare the very sparing use which Homer has made of mere bulk as a poetical engine, with the boundless redundance of it, not only even to nausea in such writers as Fortiguerra, who vulgarize everything they touch, but even in a patriarch of Italian romance like Bojardo.

It would not, however, repay the trouble to be entailed by the perusal, were I to draw out in detail a comparison between the diction, taste, figures, and all other incidents of poetic handling, in Tasso, and those of Homer. It is better to direct attention to what more easily admits of being brought into juxtaposition--that is, the general structure and movement of the poems, and the manner in which the greater laws of the poetic art are applied to the respective subjects.

Mr. Hallam adopts an opinion of Voltaire, that in the choice of his subject Tasso has been superior to Homer; and adds, that ‘in the variety of occurrences, in the change of scenes and images, and of the trains of sentiment connected with them in the reader’s mind, we cannot place the Iliad on a level with the Jerusalem;’ that, by unity of subject and place, the poem of Tasso has a coherence and singleness not to be found in the Æneid; and that, while we expect the victory of the Christians, ‘we acknowledge the probability and adequacy of the events that delay it[958].’

[958] Hallam’s Literature of Europe, ii. 268.

Of the Italians themselves, some place the work of Tasso at the very head of all Epic compositions: others maintain, that it was surpassed by the Orlando Furioso. Tiraboschi, while declining to weigh the poems against each other generally, yet compares the poets, and gives the higher place to Ariosto[959]. Neither the agitated, struggling, and dependent life of Tasso, nor the character of the time in which he lived, were favourable to the attainment of the very summit of poetic excellence. The freshness of the morning of Christian civilization in Italy had worn away. The romantic poetry, which seemed so congenial to that country, and which had attained to such high perfection, had now run its course: it was rather an effort against nature, than a movement in the line of it, when Tasso wrought upon a subject which required him to bridle his country’s freer Muse, and train her to historic grandeur and severity. He has left us the undoubted work of a great mind, adorned with abundant and, in some respects, extraordinary beauties; yet many would own themselves not to have experienced from the Jerusalem that peculiar sort of satisfaction, which any work of simple tenour, if nearly approaching perfection in its kind, even though that kind be somewhat below the epic, never fails to impart to the mass of its readers.

[959] Lett. Ital., vol. vii.

Granting it to be true, that the Siege of Jerusalem is a nobler subject than the Wrath of Achilles, together with all that it includes of the siege of Troy, yet neither is the Siege of Jerusalem, with the high elements it comprehends, really the staple of the subject matter of Tasso, nor is the Siege of Troy the real subject of the poem of Homer. Tasso had evidently studied with attention the Iliad as well as the Æneid; and he has taken largely from, or worked largely after, both, but a great deal more, as far as I have seen, from the former than the latter. In which selection, doubtless, he chose well. The copy of a copy is pretty sure to be a vulgar work. Without noticing at present anything except what governs the main action, it may be observed, that the Wrath of Achilles is reproduced in the Offence, given and taken, of Rinaldo: and the relation of the one to Godfrey is evidently suggested by that of the other to Agamemnon.

~_Achilles the subject of the Iliad._~

It is needful here to return to a topic, which I have already more lightly touched. We may reckon it among the chief distinctions of Homer, that he has been able to make of the individual man the broad basis of the most heroical among epic songs. The weak thread of the Æneid is really sustained by something that lies behind the figure of Æneas, namely, by its hanging on the splendid fortunes of Rome; the Odyssey is toned more nearly to the colour of a domestic painting; but in the Iliad, the man Achilles is the power whose action propels, and whose inaction stops, the world-wide conflict before Troy. The Poet has accomplished this great feat by dint of powers, that have given to the character of his hero on the one hand dimensions absolutely colossal, and, on the other, the finest lines that miniature itself could require.

For efforts of such a range as this, after-poets had not the necessary strength. They had not such command over the high-born material, of which man is formed, as to make their mode of treating it in one single figure the main stake, on which the fortune of their entire works was to depend. Men like Tasso sought and found a basis, less elevated indeed and splendid, but equally solid, and far more accessible, in the great events of history, or in the multitude of associations, alike noble and familiar, which belonged to them. These, which with Homer had been organically, and not mechanically alone, grouped about the one great Humanity of his poem, now became the central stem of the epic; and the properly and strictly personal element, which had been primary, became no more than accessory. But events are made for man, and not man for events; and we can scarcely doubt that the transition from the older epic, which gathered all its interests around the human soul as a centre, to the newer, which exhibits the human soul itself in a subordinate relation to external history or fortune, has been a transition downwards. It may be said, that Achilles is not the subject of the Iliad, in the same sense as Ulysses of the Odyssey. It is at any rate true that the action of the Odyssey is more directly related to the hero, than that of the Iliad. And so precise is the working of Homer’s intellect in all that appertains to poetical consistency, that a distinction of shade, just proportioned to this difference, is perhaps perceptible in the very _exordia_ of the two poems, μῆνιν ἄειδε Θεὰ, and ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον. The one seems to propose the Wrath of the Man: the other the Man himself. But substantially the proposition is questionable: Achilles is in effect, as truly as Ulysses, the life and strength, the chief glory and beauty, of his own poem.

It might perhaps be doubted, whether even the Liberation of Jerusalem was a finer subject for Christendom, than the siege of Troy for the Greek race. For it is a mistake to suppose that because the Redemption of mankind infinitely transcends all other transactions, the poetry which is composed about it will therefore be excellent in proportion. But at any rate this is not the question. Homer’s subject is, indeed, the Titanic passion of Achilles, and to this subject every Book of the Iliad, some of them positively and some negatively, but every one of them effectively, contributes; but is the Liberation of Jerusalem the true subject of the poem of Tasso?

~_Subject of the Gerusalemme more doubtful._~

The three first Cantos, with the ninth, the eleventh, and the nineteenth, are the only ones, which are in strictness occupied with the proper theme of the Jerusalem. The fifth, fifteenth, and sixteenth, and large portions at the least of the other eleven, are taken from the Siege, and are given to the truancy, or erratic and separate adventures, of those who ought to have carried it on; mainly of the two principal Christian warriors, Rinaldo and Tancredi. In short, near a moiety of the work is occupied, not with the Liberation of Jerusalem at all, but with the events which draw away the champions pledged to it, upon errands of a character the most incongruous with the grand design.

Will it be answered, that in the same manner Achilles disappears from the eye of the spectator during one moiety of the Iliad? The apparent parallel is wholly false. For the subject of the Iliad is the passion of Achilles; and the whole movement of the poem in his absence bears directly upon the enhancement and elevation of that subject. It exhibits to us the successive efforts of the Greeks, and of their most redoubted chieftains, one by one, to make up for the seclusion of Achilles from the fighting host. It was impossible for Homer more effectually to magnify his hero, than by recounting fully these exploits and their failure. In showing the perils and calamities brought about by his absence, they deeply impress us with the grandeur and efficacy of his presence, and prepare us for the reappearance of something more than man: of something which, but for a most skilful preparatory mechanism, we should probably have repelled as an unnatural exaggeration. But the love-born vagaries of the warriors of Tasso are mere impediments to the conquest of Jerusalem, and have no effect whatever in enhancing the poetical greatness of the achievement which was to crown the work, while they seriously deduct from the power and effectiveness, already in the case of Rinaldo but moderate, of the characters assigned to the warriors themselves.

It may therefore be true, as Mr. Hallam has said, that the events in Tasso spring naturally one from another; but so may a series of successive turnings off the line of a road we have been travelling, when taken singly, produce no serious, and even no sensible, deviation; yet their effect, when taken together, may be wholly to change our direction, and prevent us from making any way at all towards our point. Without doubt, each incident of an epic poem ought to follow naturally in the train of that which directly precedes it; but it is far more important that it should bear a legitimate relation to the central design, and should magnify, not detract from, the grandeur of that on which the whole fabric principally depends.

But there are surely many other objections to the mode, which Tasso has adopted, of impeding and retarding the accomplishment of his main action. Considering the nature of his theme, and the solemnity of the sanctions under which the Crusades were undertaken, although we have no right to ask that passion and infirmity should be banished from the camp, yet the wholesale entanglement of the very first warriors in love affairs, their rushing in a mass, with few exceptions besides greyheads of the camp, upon the track of Armida, their compelling Godfrey to allow the interests of this treacherous beauty to interrupt the august purpose of their undertaking, and then the very large proportion of the poem occupied in unravelling the web thus tangled, form, to my view at least, a bad poetical mixture of the intrusive with the Christian elements of the design.

Nor let it here be said, that even so our great Achilles stays the progress of the Greeks towards triumph for the love of a weak woman. We need not dwell on such distinctions as that Briseis was a noble and worthy, but Armida an unworthy object of attachment; that Achilles was but one, while Tasso touches all, who by age were capable, with the same phrensy. It is not even this worthy attachment alone, that acts upon Achilles: that is not the main stress of the tempest which so rends the strong heaving oak when he cries,

ἀλλά μοι οἰδάνεται κραδίη χόλῳ, ὁππότ’ ἐκείνων μνήσομαι, ὥς μ’ ἀσύφηλον ἐν Ἀργείοισιν ἔρεξεν Ἀτρείδης, ὡσεί τιν’ ἀτίμητον μετανάστην[960].

[960] Il. ix. 646.

In Achilles, baffled love is surmounted by the image of agonizing pride, pierced through and through; and high over this again towers his hatred of the meanness of Agamemnon, and his sense of Justice, stung to the very inmost quick. Even supposing the question to be open, whether Homer has mixed his ingredients in due or in undue proportions, at all events there is no essential conflict among them. But such a conflict becomes visible and glaring, when a scope is assigned to the impulses and sway of personal passion upon an army devoted to God and to the highest aim, such as it is quite impossible to exemplify, nay to suppose, in any army that has ever been banded together for any even of the meaner ends of earthly policy.

Again, although Tasso’s poem is eminently Christian in its general intention, who does not feel that, instead of gathering our main sympathies and interest by means of his accessory circumstances round his principal subject, he has too effectually severed them from it, and has left it so bare and naked, that his liberation of Jerusalem is after all very like a common capture and sack; very like what, _mutatis mutandis_, the capture of it by the Saracens must have been? We leave him with our minds full of Tancredi and Clorinda, of Rinaldo and Armida, of Gildippe and Odoardo; but the associations, which these names suggest, connect themselves with any subject, rather than with the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre; and the respected Godfrey, with his plans, has, at most points of the poem, little more share in our thoughts than the Jupiter of the Iliad, as he feasts remotely grand on Olympus, or sits on Ida for the convenience of a nearer view.

~_Relative places of Rinaldo and Tancredi._~

Besides these objections of irrelevant interpolation, incongruous mixture, and divided interests, it may be observed that the relative prominence of the heroes of Tasso is not clearly pronounced. No one can doubt as to the question, who is the first, and by far the first, figure of the Iliad. Achilles ever haunts us, either in recollection or by sight; at any rate, he stands among and above his brother chieftains, as Saul out-topped by head and shoulders the people of Israel. But it is not easy to say who is the hero or protagonist of the Jerusalem. Although the interest which he attracts is inferior, yet the virtues, intellect, and moral force of Godfrey stand high and clear beyond those of all the other more prominent personages: he bears himself so meekly in his high office, and yet so perfectly and so exclusively exhibits the political spirit, that by mere moral and official greatness he stands, in any general view of the poem, an inconvenient neighbour and a dangerous rival to the two other figures, for one of whom the title of hero must have been designed. Taking, next, the yet more serious question between Tancredi and Rinaldo, which of this pair is intended to command the chief interest? Apparently, in Tasso’s intention, it is Rinaldo; because without him the main action stops, with him it proceeds. And yet the poet has assigned to Tancredi the deadly single combat with, and the triumph so powerfully described over, Argante, the only really great and terrible champion on the Mahometan side. How would the Iliad stand, if Diomed had killed Hector, and had left to Achilles only Æneas or Sarpedon?

Tasso here seems himself to have felt an incongruity, and to have sought to compensate Rinaldo in quantity for the (comparatively) deficient quality of his conquests. In the final assault he slays a multitude of the enemy like sheep[961]; when, as the poet says, in a manner surely far beneath his theme, the taste of victory had excited in him the appetite of carnage[962].

[961] Gerus. xx. 55.

[962] Ibid. 54.

Nor is it only in the distribution of military glory, that Rinaldo appears to have suffered for the advantage of Tancred. On one occasion indeed, immediately after the death of Gernando, Tasso has degraded Tancred for the advantage of Rinaldo. For the poet makes this warrior plead, that the offence of Rinaldo should be considered according to the quality of him who committed it, and that there can be no such thing as true justice without respect of persons:

Or ti sovvegna Saggio signor, chi sia Rinaldo, e quale; ... non dee chi regna Nel castigo con tutti esser uguale. Vario è l’ istesso error ne’ gradi vari; E sol l’ egualità giusta è co’ pari[963].

[963] Gerus. v. 36.

It was acting on an opinion of this kind, in the case of the Master of Stair after the Massacre of Glencoe, that left uneffaced a deep stain on the memory of William III. and of Scotland. Doubtless there have been periods when, even in Christian countries, such sentiments have been professed as well as practised; but can there have been any period when the utterance of them from the mouth of a knight, who is exhibited to us as a pattern, would not have caused a revulsion in the minds of ordinary hearers or readers?

~_The Woman-characters of Tasso._~

The Jerusalem is greatly overstocked with interesting couples; so much so, that at times we almost seem to be reading a Pastoral poem. Taken singly, the details of these love-stories are worked up with infinite art and beauty, and are the most effective and successful portions of the whole Epic; but the aggregate is so much too large, that it chills the general tone, as well as weakens the broader effects. The excess of quantity is, indeed, gross and glaring. Tasso has followed the Christian Romancers in employing largely the idea of the woman-warrior, practically unknown to Homer, introduced with great spirit but no very elevated moral effect in Virgil, carried by Bojardo and Ariosto to its perfection; and, without doubt, a conception far more suitable to the standard of those great poets of fancy, than to the lofty level of the Epic or the higher drama, which deal with the greatest powers and the deepest problems of our nature. Still, as to the manner of employing it, we need not deny that high praise must be accorded to the Clorinda of Tasso. It is indeed easy to criticize the religious incidents of her death, and not easy to understand what business she has after death in a tree of the enchanted wood; or why, when that wood becomes the prey of the carpenters, she is so unceremoniously overlooked in her uncomfortable abode. But as to the main exhibition of the character, she follows Bradamante without degeneracy: pure, upright, chivalrous, thoroughly martial, and yet not grossly masculine. She falls to the lot of Tancred. But besides the Sofronia, the Erminia, and the Gildippe, in the second degree of prominence, there is projected on the picture another person yet more conspicuous than even Clorinda, namely, Armida; so different that they can hardly be compared, and yet inconveniently jarring from the similarity of their relations to the great heroes of the poem. Both, too, are lovely; both figure in the camp. Notwithstanding, however, the profusion of charms, which Tasso has called into existence to set off the person and the powers of Armida, nothing can be more unsatisfactory than her character itself, except its place in the poem, and her particular relation to Rinaldo. When every one else is ravished by her overpowering attractions, he remains insensible: and yet afterwards, with no poetical justification for the change, he becomes desperately enamoured of her. Here we see that feebleness in the conception and exhibition of character, which depresses the flight of Tasso, which excludes him from a place in the class, quite as open to poets as to philosophers, the class of the greatest masters of thought and of human nature.

~_The Armida of Tasso._~

We become acquainted with Armida, the beautiful enchantress, first in the guise of a forlorn damsel, who implores succour from the Christian heroes; and this is perhaps the most successful portion of the _rôle_ assigned to her. Then she appears as the Circe of her own gardens: then she is a Dido without an Æneas, for the escape of Rinaldo from the disgraceful servitude into which she had inveigled him bears no resemblance to the fond and deep passion of the Carthaginian queen, which grew out of an honourable hospitality afforded to the Trojans in distress. With a disagreeable amount of likeness in detail, the copy still misses the original, and loses all that force and majesty of intense passion to which here, and here alone, Virgil has been enabled to ascend. Then instead of that tragic end of Dido, in which, though with an attitude somewhat theatrical, softness and fierceness are so wonderfully blended, so that she does not forfeit sympathy even in her keenest longings for revenge, Armida has recourse to an expedient which is wholly debased and vulgar. She simply offers herself for sale, promising to be the prize of any warrior of the Egyptian camp, who shall execute her vengeance on Rinaldo for the offence of having escaped out of her toils.

Nor have we yet done with the doublings of her tortuous path. She sees Rinaldo pass her in the battle; and, not without infinite doubting, shoots an arrow at him. It is perhaps difficult to define in language what it is, that constitutes the difference between the mental struggles of genuine passion, and mere incongruous vacillation. We see the former in Dido; and one sign of it is a certain progression. Where the law of nature is followed, perpetual fluctuation is not allowed; by degrees, though they may be slow and many, the mind is worked up to a strong resolve, where it abides: its agitation and seeming reflux is but the receding wave of the advancing tide; and when once a strong purpose is full-formed after struggle in a truly powerful nature, whether of man or woman, it must not be changed. Now this is what we miss in Armida. She is ever playing at backwards and forwards. Thrice she draws the bow, thrice she relaxes it: at last she discharges the arrow, but with it a wish that it may miss:

Lo stral volò; ma con lo strale un voto Subito uscì, che vada il colpo a voto[964].

[964] Gerus. xx. 63.

Not unnaturally, this unsatisfactory passage leads us to one of the worst of all the provoking conceits that disfigure from time to time the beautiful pages of this poem:

Tanto poteva in lei, benchè perdente, (Or che potria vittorioso?) amore[965].

[965] Ib. 64.

Yet, after all this, revenge again gets the upper hand, and her eye follows the arrow with avidity, hoping it may strike. She then repeats the shot again and again, and while doing it is again herself shot in return by love:

E mentre ella saetta, Amor lei piaga[966].

[966] Ib. 65.

Again the same alternation is reiterated; but her champions fail. She flies. She resumes the part of Dido; apostrophizes her own weapons in a speech of near thirty lines, entreating them to despatch her. Rinaldo then arrests her arm; and yet once more, in stanzas replete with beauty of diction, we have the same unsatisfactory and indecisive mixture of ill-assorted emotions, without the strength either of harmony or of contrast, founded on no natural law, connected by no moral or mental tie, ordered to no end or consummation. However, he vows himself her adorer, and she gives herself up to his disposal:

Ecco l’ ancella tua; d’ essa a tuo senno Dispon, gli disse; e le fia legge il cenno[967].

[967] Ib. 136.

And so we leave them. But unhappily we cannot, in leaving them, forget that she is a Mahometan and a sorceress; that her frauds have been the great scandal of the army, and the main obstacle to the completion of its design; that she has never throughout the whole poem exhibited a single quality containing in it the elements of just moral attraction; and that this triumph of mere corporeal form, without one solitary note of inward loveliness, is achieved over the greatest of the warriors of Christ, when engaged, under the immediate and special direction of the Almighty, in the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre from infidel dominion. With all these circumstances before us, it must be admitted that a more lame and unsatisfactory contribution to the climax of a great Christian poem could hardly have been contrived. Nor is the impression much amended by the dedication of the eight last stanzas of the work to the completion of the victory by Godfrey. A reader may, on the contrary, well feel perturbed by the sharpness of the transition, and by the air of unconsciousness with which, in gathering up the threads of the action, Tasso has brought into close neighbourhood matters so heterogeneous, that they form a kind of moral chaos. And the observation applies to the close of the poem, which may well have accompanied it throughout its course; that the sympathies of the reader are not evoked and managed with due, or with any, reference to the greatness and nobleness of the objects, but, on the contrary, are allured into the wrong quarter. Homer has carefully contrived, in the case of Paris, that even his extraordinary personal attractions shall do nothing to give him a hold upon our favour, while he has given his warmest sympathies to the beauty of the innocent, though comparatively insignificant, Euphorbus[968]. How tame and flat, on the contrary, has Tasso made the stainless Erminia, whom indeed he altogether forgets before the poem closes; and what efforts of art has he not used to gather admiring interest around the character and fate of the heartless, even when enamoured, Armida. Nay, more, with some brilliant exceptions, especially that noble one of the first view of Jerusalem, how cold and slack, how uninteresting to the reader, is the movement of the main action of the poem, compared with that of the love-stories which invade and engross so inordinate a portion of the ground. We seem to feel that, after all, the Siege of Jerusalem is not the principal business in hand; it is the task which must somehow or other be got through, but it is not the life and pulse, the light and joy of the poem. As the Siege of Troy was the instrument of Homer, to enable him to develop his Achilles, so the much higher subject of the Crusade is the tool of Tasso to enable him to exhibit his workmanship, chiefly in connection with love-stories, upon very inferior persons and performances. The relative values of the setting and the jewel are totally different in the two cases.

[968] Il. xvii. 51.

~_The affront of Gernando._~

Besides the first great hindrance to the prosecution of the siege in the seductive power of Armida when she appears in the camp, there is a second, namely, the slaughter of Gernando by Rinaldo, upon a personal affront. It has here been objected to the first, that the effect assigned to it is out of proportion to all example and to all likelihood, though it may be suitable to the passionate susceptibilities of Tasso’s individual mind; and that this disproportion jars peculiarly from the more than usual elevation of the subject. Is the second obstacle more happily conceived?

Rinaldo, in the Fifth Canto, unlike his companions, has proved impregnable to the assaults of Armida’s mingled beauty and art:

Ma perch’ a lui colpi d’ amor più lenti Non hanno il petto oltra la scorza inciso, Nè molto impaziente è di rivale, Nè la donzella di seguir gli cale[969].

[969] Gerus. v. 12.

He rather aspires to succeed to the fallen Dudone in the immediate command of the forces. Yet even with respect to this, his ambition purports to be under the guidance of high principle:

I gradi primi Più meritar che conseguir desio[970].

[970] Ibid. 151.

Presently the Norwegian Prince Gernando, moved by jealousy, insults him; on which Rinaldo there and then gives him the lie, and slays him.

It is hardly possible to measure the inferiority of this combination, as respects poetic art and effect, to the scene of the First Book of the Iliad, with which it must naturally be compared: where Achilles is stung, and stung at once in every fibre of his deep, proud, and impassioned nature, by the mingled meanness and tyranny of Agamemnon. The affront in Homer is so contrived that it shall contain all the highest elements of provocation: avarice, tyranny, injustice, ingratitude, on the one side are made to exacerbate the wounds inflicted by public degradation, and by the sudden loss of a beloved object, on the other. But the insult of Gernando to Rinaldo is an every-day insult of the streets: yet an American duellist could not have been more summary in his proceedings, than is the great Christian champion. The brutal provocation instantly breaks down both the piety and the moral firmness of Rinaldo. It is not so with Achilles. In him there is a conscious force of self-command, which absolutely, though not relatively to his passion, is even beyond that of other men; and though unequal, indeed, yet is all but not unequal to controlling that tempestuous flood of wrath. Nothing can be grander than the picture of this his first great mental convulsion. We must quote the lines:

ὣς φάτο· Πηλείωνι δ’ ἄχος γένετ’, ἐν δέ οἱ ἦτορ στήθεσσιν λασίοισι διάνδιχα μερμήριξεν, ἢ ὅγε φάσγανον ὀξὺ ἐρυσσάμενος παρὰ μηροῦ τοὺς μὲν ἀναστήσειεν, ὁ δ’ Ἀτρείδην ἐναρίζοι, ἠὲ χόλον παύσειεν, ἐρητύσειέ τε θυμόν[971].

[971] Il. i. 188.

Then, while the strong current eddies to and fro within him, and while his fingers, playing instinctively on the handle of his sword, cause its blade to be seen, comes the warning vision of Pallas to him, and to him alone. This admonition restores the disturbed balance of his mind; and, his inward wound assuaged with the promise of a future revenge, to be wrought out for him by the self-condemning hands of the inflicters and abettors of the wrong, he moodily foregoes the reckoning of blood.

Such is the solid, the Cyclopian structure of the fabric, into which Homer has built his characters. Had the hero of Tasso indeed been endowed with a sublimity of passion beyond or like that of Achilles, we might not have been entitled to call him strictly to account for the slaughter of Gernando. But the truth is, that he is a somewhat jejune and feeble character; and his offence in this instance is not from the excess of the impelling, but from the defect, or rather the utter absence, of the restraining power.

Gioberti, in a posthumous work[972], remarks that the heroes of Paganism are more effective than those of Christianity, because the standard by which they are measured is lower, the idea imperfect instead of perfect. There is, I believe, much both of truth and of depth in this observation. It is no more than justice that Tasso should have the benefit of it, which is not inconsiderable.

[972] _La Riforma Cattolica_, lately published at Turin, with an excellent preface by Massari.

~_Differing modes of describing personages._~

Such, however, as his heroes are, he takes the precaution to describe them in outline at a very early stage indeed of his proceedings, namely, in the stanzas 8-10 of the First Canto. He here places before us Godfrey, Baldwin, Tancred, Boemondo, and Rinaldo; and he resumes from time to time the business of describing them. Bojardo and Ariosto avoid this; but it is probably because they were dealing with characters of well-known type, already familiar to their audience. Homer, who drew so much more powerfully, had more to describe than any of them. And yet it may be said he never describes characters at all, with the very slight exceptions of Nestor, in a few words, and Thersites with somewhat more detail: the latter, it is evident, because he wanted to concentrate contempt and disgust upon his qualities, for exhibiting which in action he could not afford to such a wretch any extended space: the former, perhaps because he has thought it better for effect to abstain from marking him through the poem by distinctive epithets, and could produce a certain roundness of figure, highly suitable to the personage, in this way with more convenience. But, in general, Homer’s characters are described by their actions only, with the aid of choice and characteristic epithets, and here and there of some small but pointed allusion, not from themselves nor from the Poet, but in the speeches of others. Thus he grapples with the full scale of the demands of the dramatic art. Others could not follow him. We must not blame Tasso for a proceeding quite necessary by way of clue to his poem; rather, indeed, we should praise the ingenious manner in which he has effected his purpose, by a survey which the Almighty takes of the Christian camp; a proceeding alike conducive to the religious character of his poem, not always so well cared for, and to the supply of the first necessities of his readers.

In the details of his battles, Tasso is a great and skilful describer. Perhaps in this point alone, out of so many, he may be termed superior to Homer. At least we may be disposed to think he has nothing so unsatisfactory under this head as the death of Patroclus. It may be another question how far he is indebted for instruction in this department to his great countrymen, especially Ariosto, and also whether he has anywhere equalled the magnificent account of that terrible contest with Rodomonte, which, in the Furioso, sums up Ruggiero’s triumphs.

As nearly all the greater situations and combinations of the Gerusalemme, and its general framework, have been suggested by the ancients, so the minor imitations are too numerous for notice. Many of Tasso’s similes are extremely beautiful and finished; and he has followed Homer in employing them to relieve the narrative of battle; but he has not observed the same judicious parsimony in other parts of his poem; he has apparently not perceived, certainly not followed, the general rules of Homer in the distribution of this ornament, and the result has been that they produce a somewhat cloying effect.

Like Virgil, he has been betrayed into imitating Homer in certain cases, where the whole reason of the case was changed: as, for instance, in the Invocation before the Catalogue, and in the wish expressed for multiplied organs of speech. To Homer, a reciting poet, the Catalogue was a great effort of memory, and it therefore justified the special application to the Muse: to Tasso it must have been one of the easier parts of his performance. As respects the second point, what can be more reasonable in the case of an unwritten composition? what less so, when the poet works with pen and ink? Nor is the case much mended by supposing that Tasso had in mind his recitations, unless the recitation had been, not the accident, but the rule, so that the poem would itself, in the ordinary course of thought, be conceived of as associated with the act of reciting.

Tasso seems, however, to have fallen into a more serious error in introducing a Second Catalogue into his poem. The first may be defended by the same reasoning, which so amply warrants that of Homer. But what interest could Christendom or Italy feel in the detailed muster-roll of the Egyptian army?

~_The Return of Rinaldo._~

If in the Jerusalem the Wrath is beneath the standard of the Iliad, so is the Return. On the side of Rinaldo, indeed, it is most just and right, that he should be extricated from the entanglements of the seductive Armida: but, on the side of Godfrey, there is the same sorry management of all the moral elements of the case. In Homer, Achilles was justly and most deeply offended: on every principle known to the creed of Paganism, or to Greek life and experience, he justly resented the offence: the utmost that can be imputed to him is a decided excess in the indulgence of a thoroughly righteous feeling: and this was terribly expiated by the bloody death of that friend, who was to him as a second self. But the gross offence of Agamemnon is dealt with according to the most righteous rules; and he is compelled by word and gift to appease the man whom he had robbed, insulted, and striven to degrade. While he is brought both to restitution and to apology, how different is the arrangement of Tasso’s poem! Rinaldo was wronged by Gernando: but Godfrey had done no more than his duty: he was the minister of public justice, of lawful authority, and of military discipline: in respect to him, and likewise in respect to the army, Rinaldo was the offender, Godfrey and public right were only the sufferers; yet Godfrey and public right give way under the pressure of adversity, and the offender comes back in a kind of triumph.

If it has been found possible in the case of Virgil to institute a more minute comparison with Homer, this cannot be attempted in the case of Tasso, for his work hardly admits of juxta-positions in detail. We have already noticed the abundant stock of real analogies between the subject of the Trojan expedition, and that of the Crusades. Tasso himself, in his anxiety to follow Homer, even added to them, by feigning a centralization of the Christian enterprise, which I fear did not really exist. But to imitate is one thing, to be like is another; and it still remains hard really to compare the poems, far harder the poets. In order to see this clearly, let us ascend a height, and view the scene which lies before us. How vast a deluge of time and of events has swept away the very world in which Homer lived, and the worlds that succeeded his: the place of nativity is changed, the great gulf of time is stretched between, the language is another, the religion new, all the chains of association have been taken to pieces and re-forged, all the old chords of feeling are now mute, and others that give forth a different music are strung in their stead. And there is also, it must be confessed, a great and sharp descent from the stature of Homer, as a creative poet, to that of Tasso. Yet he too is a classic of Italy, and a classic of the world; and if for a moment we feel it a disparagement to his country that she suffers in this one comparison, let her soothe her ruffled recollection by the consciousness, that though Tasso has not become a rival to Homer, yet he shares this failure with every epic writer of every land. On the other hand, no modern poet, dealing with similar subject-matter, has been equal to Tasso. None has erected, upon similar foundations to his, a fabric so lofty and so durable, so rich in beauty and in grace: so well entitled, if not to vie with the very greatest achievement of the ages that went before him, at least to challenge or to win the admiration of those generations that have succeeded. But his defeat is, after all, his greatest victory. To lose the match against Homer is a higher prize than to win it from his other competitors. Few indeed are the sons of genius, and elect among the elect, who can be brought into comparison with that sire and king of verse; and Tasso, we are persuaded, would bear against none a grudge for thus far, in his own words, limiting his honours:

e ciò fia sommo onore; Questi già con Gernando in gara venne[973].

[973] Ger. v. 20.

SECTION VI.

_Some principal Homeric characters in Troy._

_Hector: Helen: Paris._

To one only among the countless millions of human beings has it been given to draw characters, by the strength of his own individual hand, in lines of such force and vigour, that they have become, from his day to our own, the common inheritance of civilized man. That one is Homer. Ever since his time, besides finding his way into the usually impenetrable East, he has provided literary capital and available stock in trade for reciters and hearers, for authors and readers of all times and of all places within the limits of the Western world;

Adjice Mæoniden, a quo, ceu fonte perenni, Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.

Like the sun, which furnishes with its light the close courts and alleys of London, while himself unseen by their inhabitants, Homer has supplied with the illumination of his ideas millions of minds that were never brought into direct contact with his works, and even millions more, that have hardly been aware of his existence. As the full flow of his genius has opened itself out into ten thousand irrigating channels by successive subdivision, there can be no cause for wonder, if some of them have not preserved the pellucid clearness of the stream. Like blood from the great artery of the heart of man, as it returns through innumerable veins, it is gradually darkened in its flow. The very universality of the tradition has multiplied the causes of corruption. That which, as to documents, is a guarantee, because their errors correct one another, as to ideas is a new source of danger, because every thing depends upon constant reference to the finer touches of an original, which has escaped from view. And this universality is his alone. An Englishman may pardonably think that his great rival in the portraiture of character is Shakespeare--a Briton may even go further, and challenge, on behalf of Sir Walter Scott, a place in this princely choir, second to no other person but these. Yet the fame of Hamlet, Othello, Lady Macbeth, or Falstaff, and much more that of Varney, or Ravenswood, or Caleb Balderston, or Meg Merrilies, has not yet come, and may never come, to be a world-wide fame. On the other hand, that distinction has long been inalienably secured to every character of the first class, who appears in the Homeric poems. He has conferred upon them a deathless inheritance.

But, through waywardness and infirmity, mankind corrupts that with which it sympathizes, and undermines what it obeys. The same law of waste and decomposition, which from day to day corrodes the works of nature, operates also in divers manners and degrees upon the creations of mind. As the portraitures of individual character, to be found in the works of the great masters of the imaginative faculty, are among the very highest of these creations, so, because they are the greatest, they are the most difficult to render into other forms, and to transfuse through new media. Among the ancient sculptures it is easier to find a good Faun than a good Venus, while again those works, which embody the very highest ideals, are not only rare, but are in most instances unique. In like manner the Punch and the Harlequin, the broad characters of primitive spectacle and farce, readily become national, and are transmitted, spontaneously as it were, through ages without substantial change; but the finer and nobler representations of man, requiring greater effort, and a different order of mind to comprehend, as well as to project them, rapidly degenerate in the very points on which their peculiar excellence depends.

Other causes, besides mental impotence in the recipient, contribute towards this result. One main agent is, the inability or the disinclination of mankind to go back to originals. For the mass, a modernizing process is commonly in demand, is readily furnished, and is itself again and again varied from age to age. It is always easier to derive from what is itself derivative, than to go up to the fountain-head. Into the business of every profession, including (now more than ever) that of letters, necessity drives her adamantine clamps: and the βάναυσον and the φορτικὸν, or slang and the clap-trap, maintain a too successful struggle to depress its higher and more genial aims.

~_Causes of injury to Homeric characters._~

It is not difficult to point out reasons why the characters of Homer should have been peculiarly exposed to injury from the lapse of time. Most of all from two causes; because they were of such extraordinary and refined merit, and because of the form in which they were conveyed. Not only did they bear the stamp that the highest genius alone could affix, but nothing less than care, sympathy, and manly effort, could enable men to comprehend them. For they were not exhibited in the set forms of descriptive passages, which might be learnt by rote, but they were wrought out in the fine, as well as deep and strong lines of life and action; and none of them could be defined in terms, until they had first been profoundly felt within. We were to become acquainted with them as friends, by living with them through their varied fortunes; not as strangers, by some letter of introduction, that sets forth their birth, parentage, calling, and qualifications. For earnest and hearty attention they provided the richest possible reward; by the careless they were to be enjoyed indeed, but scarcely to be apprehended. To the eyes of such men there is little or nothing to discriminate, as between Agamemnon, Ajax, Diomed, Menelaus, and Patroclus; and if Nestor is a good deal older, Ulysses a good deal more cunning, and Achilles even more valiant than the rest, a single touch disposes of these differences, and enables us to reduce all the eight nearly to a common type. A prior examination of particular instances will best prepare us for weighing the force of those other causes, besides the weakness of human nature, and the excellence of the works in the general sense of the words, that contributed to depress and deface the Homeric characters.

In the present Section, then, I propose to invite attention to a few Homeric characters, as they stand in the poems, which, as far as I am able to judge, stand in need as yet of further elucidation.

Perhaps there is no one particular in which Colonel Mure has rendered such important service to the modern Homeridæ, as in his account of the Homeric characters. In general, I shall best discharge my duty by simply referring the reader to his pages. I venture, however, to think, that while the paramount subject of the great Grecian characters is incomparably handled by him throughout, some exception may be taken to his representation of a part of the Trojan personages; of Hector, for example, and more particularly (if she may be placed in this class) of Helen. At least, I presume to regard some of them as fairly capable of being presented in another light, and I shall proceed at once to make the attempt with Hector.

~_Relation of Orlando to Hector._~

I. ‘In the character of this hero,’ says Mure, ‘good and evil are so curiously blended that it is hard to say which element predominates[974].’ Is there not a different view of the composition of qualities, which Mure has thus placed in equipoise?

[974] Character of Hector, Lit. Greece, vol. i. p. 347.

It is indeed eminently true, as in the same place he proceeds to observe, that in order to maintain what may be called the conventional balance, or stage-equality, which was necessary in order to give interest to his poem, Homer has magnified the prowess of Hector, in general terms, as of the highest transcendental order: but that in actual achievement he is greatly surpassed by the leading Greek heroes. Indeed, in many places of the Iliad it even seems questionable, whether Hector is a hero at all.

How successful Homer’s art has been in thus paying off the Trojan champion with generalities, while he nevertheless reserved the true palm of military virtue to his own countrymen, we may, perhaps, best judge from considering the effect which the picture has had upon the poets of Italy, and upon European opinion at large, in more recent times. With the former, the name of Hector seems to be the prime type of the heroic character. Thus Tasso celebrates--

‘Il buon Foresto, dell’ Italia Ettorre[975].’

[975] Ger. xvii. 69.

And further. Beyond the Alps, Orlando was the prime warrior or protagonist, as well as the finest character, of the mediæval romance, until it was modified by Ariosto, whose courtly object it was to elevate Ruggiero above him. But with the poets who followed Ariosto, Ruggiero seems to have been put by as an interpolation, and Orlando to have resumed his paramount place. Now the character of Orlando is plainly modelled upon the traditional idea of Hector, with the Christian element attached to and pervading it. That Hector was thus chosen, in preference to Achilles or any Greek hero, may be owing, among other causes, to these. First, that the Roman poets, Virgil especially, had taught Italians to look to Troy as the cradle of their grandeur. Secondly, that the character of Hector, from the large infusion into it of moral and of passive ingredients, was better fitted for coalescing with the Christian ideas. And thirdly, that, as the part assigned to Italian patriotism in the middle ages was commonly defensive, in this point also Hector offered a more appropriate model. There is more, however, to observe; for it may be thought that, among the Trojans, Æneas would have offered a better groundwork for Italian poets. But here we may remark how the genuine and masculine birth outlives the spurious. The natural Hector of Homer thrust aside the pale and sickly automaton of the Æneid, even in Italy, its adopted country. The latter was so artificial and effete, that it would not even bear copying: the former had a foundation in truth, upon which the structure of exaggeration could be reared. Thus Hector became, after two thousand years, the central power of a new and splendid literature.

But when we turn back to the verse of Homer, and put together the evidence in the case piece by piece, surprise is excited by the contrast between the pretensions of Hector, having its basis in general descriptions and in the later tradition, on the one side, and on the other the actual performances, in the Iliad itself, of the Trojan champion. First, there is Achilles, his known superior; of whom, as a warrior, he comes within no measurable distance. But besides this, he suffers virtual defeat at the hands, once of Diomed, and twice of Ajax; glaringly as to the former, and not doubtfully as to the latter: for though the first battle is interrupted, and is taken for a drawn one, yet Ajax has had the best of it at every point, and, while the Trojans are too happy upon the mere escape of his opponent without bodily harm, Homer carries him to the tent of Agamemnon rejoicing in his victory (κεχαρηότα νίκῃ[976]). It is yet more worthy of note, that Hector is never permitted in actual fight to overcome any one considerable Greek. In the case of Patroclus, the Poet has even laid this fact much too barely open; for he makes Hector little, if anything, more than the mere executioner of death upon an unarmed man. Menelaus, who stood in what we may call the third rank of Grecian heroes, is indeed, on one occasion, withdrawn from conflict with him, as being too greatly inferior to risk the fight; but the conflict for the body of Patroclus[977] is so contrived as to show even this prince holding the field with success in despite of the Trojan chief; and, during the absence of Achilles and Patroclus from the contest, no less than nine other Greek warriors offer themselves to meet him in single combat[978].

[976] Il. vii. 312.

[977] Ibid. 109.

[978] Ibid. 161.

The greatest exploit of Hector, in the whole Iliad, is the bursting open of the gates of the Greek rampart[979]. But if we compare this with the feat of Sarpedon, who had just before opened a breach by tearing down the battlement[980], we must give a decided preference to the Lycian hero; for he performs his achievement in the teeth of Ajax and Teucer, who are on the spot; while there is not a single Greek commander present when Hector breaks through the gates. The comparative feebleness of Hector’s military character is, however, most pointedly shown in the Eleventh Book, when Jupiter determines to give effect to the decision that honour shall be done to him[981]. In the first place, he receives a friendly warning to keep out of the way as long as Agamemnon remains on the field. He accordingly enters the battle only when Agamemnon has retired; but he is forthwith driven out of it by Diomed[982]. When he again returns to it, the Greeks under Machaon baffle all his efforts, until that very secondary chieftain has been disabled by an arrow from the bow of Paris[983]. And according to all human appearances, the Trojans must have been defeated and shut up in the city by the Greeks even without Achilles, such was the superiority of Achæan arms, had not Homer called in the inferior agency of stones and arrows to wound three of the four chief remaining Grecian warriors, namely Diomed, Agamemnon, and Ulysses; besides Eurypylus and Machaon[984].

[979] Il. xii. 445-71.

[980] Ib. 392-407.

[981] Il. xi. 186-90.

[982] Il. xi. 349-67.

[983] Ib. 502-7.

[984] Ib. 660.

The only occasion when Hector comes out as a really great and gallant warrior is that one when he is certain to be, and is accordingly, worsted by the overpowering might and divine arms of Achilles. For here Homer could safely give him ample scope without endangering or obscuring the fame of that hero, to whom, with art never surpassed, he has given an immeasurable, but yet not a forced or unnatural, preeminence.

~_Hector second-rate as a hero._~

The place of Hector, then, as a fighting hero, is certainly no more than second-rate; but so far, I venture to think, is Homer from having almost equally weighted in his character the scales of good and evil respectively, that, with the exception of his boastfulness, it is hard to fasten on him so much as a single fault. This boastfulness, and the disproportion between pretension and performance, is not altogether confined to him, but extends in some measure to the other Trojan warriors, except Sarpedon; for example, to Polydamas, Æneas, and Paris. Some of the best Greeks too, particularly Diomed, are touched with it[985]. And perhaps, in our more elaborated and artificial condition of society, we are not quite fair judges how far this practice, which may seem to stand in sharp contrast with the prevailing modesty of the Homeric heroes, may have been with them not a substitute for, but a kind of embellishment and auxiliary to, their strength of soul and hand. With us it is justly suspected of implying a tendency to fall short in performance: with them it may have appertained to that straightforwardness in the expression of inward emotions, which made them (for example) weep so freely whenever the chord of sorrow was touched within them.

[985] Il. vi. 127.

So conspicuous is this quality, says Mure, that the name of the Trojan chief is to this day synonymous in our own tongue with ‘bluster’ or ‘swagger[986].’ But it is remarkable that the very same thing has happened in the case of the word ‘rodomontade,’ which is derived from Rodomonte, the most powerful, next to Ruggiero, of all the heroes of the Furioso. This circumstance seems to make probable, what, without it, would be only possible, namely, that we misconstrue the phrases; and that, according to the true meaning, a rodomontader is a man passing himself off for a Rodomonte: and one who hectors is a man falsely pretending to be a Hector.

[986] Mure, i. 352.

Another very high authority, Lord Grenville, intimately acquainted with the poems of Homer, supplies a marked example of the blinding force of literary traditions. For in his ‘Nugæ Metricæ[987],’ he says: ‘A hectoring fellow is ... strangely distorted in its use to express a meaning almost the opposite of its original.’ And he adds in a note: ‘The Hector of Homer unites, we know,

[987] p. 85.

The mildest manners with the bravest mind.’

The disposition of the Trojan chief to brag is, however, the more offensive, because it vents itself so much in the first person singular; because in the case of Patroclus it seems to be associated with an act at least unmanly; and because upon many occasions Hector shows even more than a prudential regard to his personal safety.

What is more strange is, that his ordinary strain of boasting is chequered with passages of more genuine modesty and humility than are to be found in the speech of any other chieftain on either side. As for example, when he acknowledges his marked inferiority to Achilles;

οἶδα δ’ ὅτι σὺ μὲν ἐσθλὸς, ἐγὼ δὲ σέθεν πολὺ χείρων[988].

[988] Il. xx. 434.

But above all, in the incomparable verse of his prayer over his infant son;

καὶ ποτέ τις εἴπῃ, πατρός γ’ ὅδε πολλὸν ἀμείνων[989].

[989] Il. vi. 479.

~_Hector’s moral character._~

Homer is of all poets the most free from any thing that can be called trick; but perhaps it may be that the same necessity of his position, which obliged him to magnify Trojan prowess in words, while it falls so short in deeds, has found its way from the narrative into the dramatic part of the poem. If so, then in Hector’s boasts we may recognise Homer working out his own general purpose rather than conforming with perfect fidelity to tradition, or finishing an ideally perfect portrait with the power and exactitude, which he has applied to his greater Grecian heroes. Yet, be the cause what it may that has led Homer to exhibit in Hector the disagreeable gift of a bragging disposition, Mure appears to show less than his usual precision when he ascribes to Hector in one place a partial[990], and in another a total, indifference to the moral guilt of his brother Paris.

[990] Vol. i. pp. 349, 60.

Whatever may be the reason, the fact undoubtedly is, that neither on the Trojan, nor even on the Greek side, do we find displayed such a sense of the shameful crime of Paris as we might have anticipated from a first view of the manners and feelings of the age. As far as regards the Poet himself, we may read his indignant sense of it in the portraiture he has been careful to give of Paris himself, and of his ill fame among his countrymen; but, undoubtedly, although his act is everywhere described as the cause of war, it is nowhere spoken of, among those who had suffered by it, with the passion and indignation which we might suppose it would have aroused. Of all the Greeks, only Menelaus alludes to it as an act of guilt. Various causes may be assigned for this with more or less confidence. A probable one is, as we have seen[991], that the act partook of the character of an abduction or rape, in which enterprise and force gild or hide the ugly features of crime. An unpopular form of criminality might then, as now, come off the more easily from being covered by another which is popular. It also without doubt appears, that another reason may be the length of time which, in any view of the case, must have elapsed since the act had taken place. But perhaps the solution of the question is to be mainly found in this consideration, common to modern with ancient times, that the causes of war are apt to be swallowed up in its circumstances. In entering upon the arbitrement of the sword, men do not choose a fixed position, but they embark upon a stream, always powerful and often ungovernable. When once the armament was on the shores of the Hellespont, there would be on both sides the motive of military honour, and, besides this, with the Trojans, the defence of their families and homes, with the Greeks the hope of plunder and of license. Hence, even after the Greeks are weakened and discouraged by the secession of Achilles, it is not from them, but from the Trojans, that a proposal proceeds for deciding the case of Helen by single combat. Hence, upon the shameful escape of Paris from fulfilling this engagement, after his defeat by Menelaus, we find little expression of indignation on one side, and no confession of wrong on the other. But the criticism of Mure seems to amount to this; that it was a capital fault on the part of Hector, not to have his mind constantly full of a question, which was rarely thought of at all by any one on either side, except Paris and Menelaus, the persons most directly interested.

[991] See sup. Ilios, pp. 196-205.

It is plain, however, that Homer has represented Hector as keenly feeling and resenting, not only his brother’s cowardice, but his sensuality. Twice does he address him as mad with lust, and as a deceiver of women[992]: out of his five speeches addressed to Paris, only one is not reproachful; and in the only one which extends beyond a few lines he barbs his reproaches on the score of cowardice by fully setting forth his guilt, both morally and as towards his country, in that, being a coward, he was also a ravisher[993]. The charge, however, also takes a more specific form. We see that Hector was greatly delighted, ἐχάρη μέγα when his rebuke[994] had stirred up Paris to offer to stake the whole issue on a single combat with Menelaus. But it is said, why, when the battle had been lost, did not Hector enforce the terms of the bargain? The answer seems to be this. We stand here at a juncture in the poem, where its theurgy supersedes its human mechanism. It is presumable that this very thing was about to be done, when the order of events was interrupted by the counsel of the gods. Agamemnon had at the close of the Third Book in due course demanded Helen. Jupiter immediately apprehended the consequences; he saw that if faith were kept, Achilles would neither be avenged nor glorified; and he accordingly invited the assembly on Olympus to determine, whether Helen should be rendered back or not. When this had been settled in the negative, the question was how to prevent it; and it was done, on the suggestion of Juno, by causing Pandarus to renew the war without the privity of Hector. This shows pretty clearly that the restoration of Helen was about to take place, had not the gods interfered; and therefore amply suffices to relieve Hector from reproach, who, it may be observed, takes no part until, when the armies have been long in conflict, he has been stung by the reproaches of Sarpedon (v. 493). If censure be due to the arrangement, it must be lodged against the Poet, and not against one of his personages, who simply does not appear because there is no part for him to play.

[992] Il. iii. 39 and xiii. 769.

[993] Il. iii. 46-51.

[994] Ib. 76.

~_His responsibilities beyond his strength._~

Let us now proceed to a somewhat more general view of the character of Hector.

He occupies in the Homeric tradition a place altogether peculiar, as, at the time of the poem, the sole eminently warlike member of an unwarlike family; as the general of a divided and incongruous army; and as singly responsible in chief for the safety of his country, while he has not been invested with the dignity and power of king. As to the first of these points, we have the direct testimony of Homer:

οἶος γὰρ ἐρύετο Ἴλιον Ἕκτωρ[995].

[995] Il. vi. 403.

Of his brothers, Deiphobus alone is represented as in any degree deserving or sharing his confidence. Of his relatives, Polydamas appears to have been a rival in the council, Æneas in the succession to political supremacy: and these were the two most considerable persons of the class. It has, I conceive, been shown to be probable, that Paris was his senior[996]; and that he held his place in Troy by merit against age. His uneasy relations with his allies might be inferred from their constituting the great bulk of his force, even were they not more distinctly betokened by the reproach of Sarpedon, and by the speech in which he himself enters on the subject. Together with his power over the army, he had the virtual charge of the safety of the state, and we see signs of his influence there; but yet he did not direct the policy of Troy: for the only important measure, which is recorded as having been taken by the Trojans, namely the rejection of the proposals of Antenor to give back Helen to the Greeks, was taken in his absence and without his knowledge. Thus we see in Hector’s case, abundantly accumulated, the elements of a false position. And, in a word, in order to estimate his character aright, we must keep in full view that inferiority of the Trojans, subjects not less than princes, as respects political genius and organization, to which the Iliad, when carefully examined, bears ample testimony.

[996] Ilios, pp. 219-23.

Under the weight of public charge, as Agamemnon in the Greek camp, so, and yet more, Hector on the Trojan side, appears to reel; so, and yet more; for, in Hector’s case, political power is crippled by his not being in actual possession of the supreme station, while responsibility is edged and enhanced by his being not only the head to devise, but also the right hand to execute. In neither of the two, however, do we find strong will, definiteness, and constancy of purpose, or unfailing courage. But Agamemnon has the advantage of both wiser counsels around him, and stronger arms than his own near his side. Hector has little aid. Sarpedon alone of the Trojan commanders (for Æneas really does nothing) can be called a warrior of note; and his inferiority to Patroclus, notwithstanding his thorough gallantry, is decorated rather than hidden by the stage machinery of divine consultations on the subject of his death. But as Sarpedon in the field plays a part much inferior to the corresponding one of Diomed or Ajax, so Polydamas, the Nestor of the Trojans, is not equal to his kindly and genial counterpart. Four times he gives his counsel in the field. Twice he prefaces it with personal imputations (xii. 211, and xiii. 726); and when, in the Twelfth Book (211), he recommends the abandonment of the assault on the ships in deference to an omen, feeling and judgment are alike on the side of Hector’s reply, who overturns his augury by the known (though, as they proved, deceitful) counsels of Jupiter, and emphatically pleads against doubtful signs the indubitable dictates of patriotism.

~_His bright side in the affections._~

The prophetic gift, for whatever reason, is assigned pretty largely by Homer to the Trojans. Without entering into the case of Cassandra, it attaches to Helenus, and also (xii. 238) apparently to Polydamas, who undertakes to interpret a sign. Hector himself had the weight of prescience on his breast, for he tells Andromache[997] that he well knows the day of ruin is at hand; and, when he is at the point of death, he prognosticates the coming fate of Achilles. The concentrated strain of his duties and his previsions is too much for the strength of a character which, from the intellectual or dramatic point of view, is impulsive, fluctuating, and unequal, and which must therefore undoubtedly be set down as so far secondary. But when we pass from intellect to moral tone, from διάνοια to ἦθος, we certainly find in Hector one among the most touching, the most human, of all the delineations of masculine character in the Iliad. In him alone has Homer presented to us that most commanding and most moving combination, of a woman’s gentleness and deep affection with warlike and heroic strength. If the hand of Hector was far weaker than that of the son of Peleus, the tempestuous griefs of Achilles do not open to us a character nearly so attractive as the depth of the gentle affections of Hector, and the mildness warmed into such brilliancy by his martial fame. ‘Thy love to me was wonderful; passing the love of women[998].’ The constancy and tenacity of the attachments of Ulysses come out in his relations to Penelope and Telemachus: but, dwelling harmoniously in a character of far broader scope and more varied sensibilities, the peculiar element of a tenderness matching that of woman is the only one they do not contain. Hector is neither a warrior nor a statesman after the primary, that is the Achæan, type: but for a model of intensity and softness in the love of a father and a husband, it is to him that we must repair, in the incomparable scene by the Scæan gate; incomparable, unless we may compare it with that other scene, so near at hand, where the sight of young Polydorus slain, piercing him to the heart, raised him in his last hour to the heights of heroism; and where the interest and sympathy, that he has attracted all along, are absorbed into admiration of the real sublimity of that closing hour, when he resolved to be for ever famous at least in his too certain death.

[997] Il. vi. 447.

[998] 2 Samuel i. 26.

Probably a main reason why Hector has become the groundwork of the modern Orlando is, that no one of the Homeric heroes exhibits a combination of qualities supplying so appropriate a basis for the character of a Christian hero; a tone so sensibly approximating to that of the gospel. Partly because of those acts of piety towards the Immortals, which can hardly receive in the case of Hector any but a favourable construction, and which drew down the all but unanimous compassion of the Olympian assembly on his remains; but partly also, and yet more, in that mild, just, and tender estimate of character, which not only secured his constant gentleness of demeanour towards Helen, but made him her protector against the acrimony of others, and rendered him considerate and kind even to Paris[999], so soon as he saw him disposed at length to be personally active in the mortal struggle he had brought upon his country. There is, perhaps, no virtue more especially Christian, than the temper which thus equitably and gently makes allowances for human weakness, particularly if it be weakness by the effects of which we ourselves have suffered.

[999] Il. vi. 521.

The employment, however, of Hector for the purposes of Christian poetry has certainly had the effect of perverting for us the true Homeric tradition. But, in order to understand this, we must throw aside the Hector of our proverbs or our plays, travel back to the Iliad, and set out anew from the starting-point of its great author. We must there be content to take him not as a pure effort of imagination aimed at the production of an ideal man, but as a part of the poem of Homer, subordinated like every other part of it to its main purpose, as well as to the general laws of historical consistency. In modelling the several heroes, he made the exigencies of his Hector yield to the exigencies of his Achilles, who could have no real competitor. Nor, with the fine characteristic sense he has everywhere shown of the national differences between Greek and Trojan, could he build up his Hector on the same foundations with his Greek heroes, or give him that strength and tenacity of tissue which belongs to the European and Achæan character. He could not equip him with either the dauntless chivalry in battle, or the profound unswerving sagacity in council, which were reserved for the kings of his own race, and for those most nearly allied to them. He has imparted to the character of the chief Trojan hero, no less than to that of the Trojan people at large, a decided Asiatic tinge, which modifies their community of colour with the properly European races. In such characters, instinct and sentiment take oftentimes the place of inquiry and reflection, and impulse does the work of conviction: the ideas of right, order, consistency, moral dignity and self-respect, are less clearly, less symmetrically, conceived. Though in particular cases, such as that of Hector, the deficiency may be made up by a liberal and full development of the most affectionate emotions, we feel, in comparing it with the Greeks, that we are dealing with a more contracted type of manhood: as if morally, no less than locally, we had gone back with Homer one full stage nearer to the cradle of our race, and had arrested and fixed the human character at the very point where it is neither child nor man.

~_Inequality of his character._~

The character of Hector, as it has been here interpreted, does not give that satisfaction to the mind, which thorough clearness and oneness would impart. His intellectual qualities and his affections are not on the same scale; his martial character jars even with itself. Yet perhaps in these very circumstances we may upon consideration find but fresh reason to admire the skill of Homer, and that rarely erring instinct which forbade him to forget his whole in running after his details.

His first object seems to have been to give the fullest and boldest prominence to the colossal shape, moral as well as physical, of Achilles, and therefore to tone down whatever could diminish its effect. And here the point of danger evidently lay in Agamemnon; the chief of the army was too likely to be the chief of the poem. Accordingly he has broken the unity of that character, and has chequered it with weakness in various forms. But this was not all: he had to keep the Greeks before the Trojans, as well as Achilles before the Greeks; not only that he might consult his popularity, but that he might indulge the genial vein of his poesy, and follow the impulses of his patriotism, in maintaining high above all question their intellectual and martial superiority. Had this, however, been all, his task would have been easy; he would then have had only to depress their opponents in all the properties that attract admiration. But if he had simply done this, if he had cut off the interest and sympathies of his readers from the Trojans by general disparagement, he would have deprived Greek valour of its choicest crown. It is a noble necessity of war that, even in the interest of countrymen, we cannot do injustice to adversaries, without feeling the offence recoil on our own heads.

Thus it was impossible for Homer to make his Trojan hero at once great and consistent; and if he has made Hector unequal, it was to avoid making him mean. By chequering his martial daring with boastfulness, and with occasional weakness of purpose, he has effectually provided against any interference, from this quarter, to the prejudice of those chieftains whose praises he was to sing in the courts and throngs of Greece. Thus he has left the field quite clear for expatiating on their military virtues; and if, for sufficient reasons, he has departed from his rule in the case of Agamemnon, who receives his compensation in superiority of rank and power, all his other Greek characters, bearing forward parts in the poem, are constructed in faultless conformity to the idea, or modification of an idea, which he had selected for the basis of each. There is not a flaw in the picture of Achilles, Diomed, Ajax, Nestor, Menelaus, or Ulysses. Not that all these are of a type equally elevated, or alike wonderful; but that there is no one thing in any of them which does not manifestly conform to its type, and no one thing consequently which jars with any other. Having thus given to his countrymen a clear and marked ascendancy in what then at least were the only great and governing elements of human society, the strong mind, and the strong hand, he does his best for the Trojans with what remained, that is to say, with the softer affections of domestic life, adding only so much of the martial element as was needful to make them no discreditable adversaries for his countrymen. Thus, consistently with all his poetic objects, he has been enabled to present us, to say nothing of the highly respectable character of Hecuba, with the three unsurpassed pictures of Priam, of Andromache, and perhaps even most, of Hector.

~_The character of Helen._~

II. Let us now pass on to a production never surpassed by the mind or hand of man.

The character of Argeian Helen occupies a large place in Grecian history, and is of extreme importance to the entire structure of the Iliad. On behalf of the first of these propositions, we call as witnesses her temple at Sparta, and the Encomium of Isocrates. As to the second, the reason is expressed in some of Homer’s noblest oratory:

τί δὲ δεῖ πολεμιζέμεναι Τρώεσσιν Ἀργείους; τί δὲ λαὸν ἀνήγαγεν ἐνθάδ’ ἀγείρας Ἀτρείδης; ἢ οὐχ Ἑλένης ἕνεκ’ ἠϋκόμοιο[1000];

[1000] Il. ix. 337.

Was she a vicious woman and a seductress, or was she more nearly a victim and a penitent? Do the laws of poetical verisimilitude and beauty, as they were understood by Homer, allow us to suppose that he intended to represent his countrymen, of whom he has presented to us so lofty a conception, as agitating the world, forsaking home, pouring forth their blood, and throwing their country into certain confusion, for the sake of a vile and worthless character? Certainly there were periods, when in the Greek mind the worship of beauty was so thoroughly dissociated from all which beauty ought to typify, that an Iliad so constructed might have been approved. But these were periods long after Homer’s flesh had mouldered in the grave.

The present inquiry has nothing to do with the opinion that Helen was, or that she was not, an historical personage. For my own part, I know of no reason except discrepancies of mere traditional chronology for disbelieving her existence. These seem to arise entirely from the practice of putting on a par with Homer tales of very inferior authority to his. But even apart from this, considering what, under ordinary circumstances, the chronology of pre-historic times is likely to be, and how many more chances there are for the preservation of great events in outline, than for a careful adjustment of their relative times, I cannot but think that difficulties arising from other legends as to Helen, and bearing simply upon time, form a very insufficient reason for the wholesale rejection of belief in her existence. Even if, however, she never existed at all, it still is not one whit the less reasonably to be presumed, that Homer in fictions concerning her would be governed here and elsewhere by all the laws, including the moral laws, of his art.

Neither is it now the question, whether Helen was the model of an heroic character. That is probably inconsistent, for the earliest times of Greece, with her adulterous relation to Paris and afterwards to Deiphobus. But there is a vast space between a faultless and a worthless woman. The idea of Helen represented by the later tradition, from the Greek tragedians downwards, is strictly the latter idea: and this representation has naturally occupied the popular mind, which is deprived of the power of access to the remote Homeric picture. Now it seems to be plain that, if this representation be substantially true, it is a great reproach to the bard of the Iliad as a bard, and stamps him as one, who has done his best to poison morality at its fountain-head. For there can be no question, that he has made his Helen highly attractive, and that he intends her to possess our sympathies. Is it then true, or is it false? Let us proceed to examine the evidence.

In the Iliad we meet more than once with the line,

τίσασθαι δ’ Ἑλένης ὁρμήματά τε στοναχάς τε[1001]·

[1001] Il. ii. 356, 590.

and expositors, in order to avoid ascribing to Helen any personal wrongs, or the representation of her as rather a sufferer than an offender, have resorted to a forced construction of the passage, and have interpreted the words as referring to the expedition undertaken, and the griefs suffered, _on account of_ Helen[1002].

[1002] See Heyne on Il. ii. 356. G. C. Crusius (Hanover. 1845, on do.) Chapman translates in the same sense; but Voss refers the outsetting and the groans to Helen herself; so too the Scholiasts.

~_Homer’s intention with respect to it._~

Unless this forced construction be the one intended by Homer, the popular conception of her must at once explode. According to the direct and natural construction, the Greeks made war to avenge the wrong she had suffered, and the groans which that wrong had drawn from her. And it is to be observed that this line[1003] is put into the mouth of Menelaus, whom it is very natural to represent as most eager to avenge the wrongs of his wife, but somewhat far-fetched to represent as thinking of revenge for the trouble of the expedition he had so keenly promoted. The line, in fact, unless justifiably strained by these expositors, is conclusive in support of the belief that the only evil which can justly be imputed to the Homeric Helen simply amounts to this, that she was not a woman of perfect virtue backed by absolute and indomitable heroism. Pope has rather rudely approximated towards rectifying the prevalent impression in a note[1004], where he observes that in all she says of herself ‘there is scarce a word that is not big with repentance and good nature.’

[1003] Il. ii. 590.

[1004] On Pope’s Il. iii. 165.

Before examining the direct evidence with respect to the Homeric Helen, let us advert to some which is indirect. And in the first place it may be observed, that Menelaus never expresses the slightest resentment against her, or appears to have considered her as having in any manner injured him. Next, Priam, whose character is evidently intended to attract a good deal of our sympathy and respect, treated her as a daughter:

ἑκυρὸς δὲ, πατὴρ ὣς, ἤπιος αἰεί[1005].

[1005] Il. xxiv. 770.

Nor was this a mere figure; for in the Third Book he addresses her as φίλον τέκος[1006], and makes her sit down by his side. In conformity with this picture, her sister-in-law Laodice addresses her as νύμφα φίλη[1007]. Priam goes on to acquit her of all responsibility in his eyes with regard to the war:

[1006] Il. iii. 162.

[1007] Ibid. 130.

οὔτι μοι αἰτίη ἐσσὶ, θεοί νύ μοι αἴτιοί εἰσιν.

And that this was not meant to cover Paris, we may learn from the many passages, which show us how the general sentiment of Troy detested him. Had Helen been of the character which is commonly imputed to her, such an absolution as this would probably not have been ascribed to Priam; while most certainly it would not have been recorded to the honour of Hector that he always restrained those, who were disposed to taunt her on account of the woes she had brought upon Troy[1008].

[1008] Il. xxiv. 768-72.

She describes herself indeed as the object of general horror in Troy (πάντες δέ με πεφρίκασιν[1009]). But these words do no more than state the impression, at a moment of agony, on her own humbled and self-mistrusting mind: while, even had they given a faithful picture of the manner in which she was regarded by the Trojans, still they might well be explained with reference to the woes of which she had been at least the occasion, and the sentiment they describe might as naturally have been felt, even had she been the lawfully obtained wife of Paris.

[1009] Ibid. 775.

There are two other passages, which may seem at first sight to betoken a state of mind adverse to her among the Greeks. But the explanation of them is simply this, that the cause of woe is naturally enough denounced on account of the misfortunes it has entailed, irrespective of the question whether or in what degree it may be a guilty cause[1010]. Thus Achilles calls Helen ῥιγεδάνη, ‘that horrible Helen;’ but it is only when her abduction has produced to him the bitter and harrowing affliction of the death of Patroclus. When he mentions her in the magnificent speech of the Ninth Book to the envoys, she is Ἑλένη ἠΰκομος, ‘the fair-haired Helen.’ Now, if she had been vile, the course of his argument must have constrained him then to state it. For he was reasoning thus: May I not resent the loss of Briseis, who was dear to me (θυμαρής[1011]), when the sons of Atreus have made their loss of Helen the cause of the war? Had Helen been worthless, it would have added greatly to the stringency of his argument to have drawn the contrast in that particular, between the woman whom Agamemnon had taken away, and the woman that he was seeking, by means of the convulsive struggle of a nation, to recover.

[1010] Il. xvi.

[1011] Il. ix. 336.

The other passage is in Od. xxiii., where Penelope, after the recognition of her husband, speaks of Helen in these words:--

τὴν δ’ ἤτοι ῥέξαι θεὸς ὤρορεν ἔργον ἀεικές[1012].

[1012] Od. xxiii. 222.

But even in this only passage where the act of Helen is so described, several points are to be observed. First, it is referred to a preternatural influence, which is not the manner of this Poet in cases at least of deep and deliberate crime; secondly, no epithet of infamy is applied to her; thirdly, we must observe the drift of the speaker. Penelope is excusing herself to Ulysses, for her own extreme caution and reserve in admitting his identity. Therefore she is naturally led to enhance the dreadful nature of the occurrence where a wife gives herself over into the power of any man, other than one known to be her husband; and this, whether the act be voluntary or involuntary. Accordingly she refers to the act of Helen rather than to the agent, and treats it as horrible; but avoids charging it as wilful.

~_Homer’s Epithets for Helen._~

On the other hand, we may observe that the general tenour of the epithets bestowed upon Helen leans on the whole towards the laudatory sense.

She is

εὐπατέρεια, the high-born; Il. vi. 292; Od. xxii. 227; most probably agreeing in sense with the next phrase.

Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα, the child of Jupiter; Il. iii. 199; _et alibi_.

κούρη Διὸς, the daughter of Jupiter; Il. iii. 426.

δῖα γυναικῶν, the excellent, or flower of women; Il. iii. 171, 228; and Od. iv. 305; xv. 106.

καλλιπάρῃος, of the beautiful cheeks; Od. xv. 123.

καλλίκομος; Od. xv. 58; ἠΰκομος; Il. iii. 329, _et alibi_, the fair-haired.

λευκώλενος, the white-armed; Il. iii. 121; Od. xxii. 227.

τανύπεπλος, the well-rounded; Il. iii. 228; _et alibi_.

And lastly, Ἀργείη, the Argive; Il. ii. 161; and in no less than twelve other places.

No one of these appellations carries the smallest taint or censure. The epithet δῖα in all probability applies to her personal beauty and majesty, as we find it used of Paris and of Clytemnestra. It would appear, however, that the use of the term Argive or Argeian, in many passages where it is not required for mere description, has a special force. For Homer never exhibits that which is simply Greek in any other than an honourable light; and in calling Helen Argeian, he certainly expresses something of general sympathy towards her. No other person, except only Juno, is called Argeian. Plainly the effect of his epithets for her as a whole is quite out of harmony with the ideas, which the later tradition has attached to her name. A yet more marked indication in her favour, than any of them taken singly will supply, may be derived from his likening her, in the palace of Menelaus, to Diana:

ἤλυθεν, Ἀρτέμιδι χρυσηλακάτῳ εἰκυῖα[1013].

[1013] Od. iv. 122.

He certainly would not have associated by this comparison one, of whom he meant us to think ill, with the chaste and even severe majesty of his ever-pure Diana (Ἄρτεμις ἁγνή).

So much with regard to the designations applied to Helen in the Iliad and Odyssey. Next, with regard to her demeanour. It is admitted to be, so far as the matter of chastity is concerned, without any fault other than the inevitable one of her position. Besides other qualities that will be noticed presently, she appears in the light of a refined and feeling, a blameless and even matronly person; a character, which, as we shall see, her abduction by Paris from Menelaus did not disentitle her to bear.

We must beware of applying unconditionally, to women placed under conditions widely different, ideas so specifically Christian as those that belong to the absolute sanctity of the marriage tie. We must rather look for the moral aspect of the case in the opinions of the period, and in the particular circumstances which attended the rupture of the bond in the given instance, than assume it from the naked fact that there was a rupture.

~_The case of Bathsheba._~

It may seem not unfair to compare the case of Helen with the somewhat similar case of Bathsheba among the Jews. If on the one hand we are bound to bear in mind the inferior station of the latter personage, on the other it is to be remembered that the Greeks were further removed from the light of Divine Revelation. Now we are not accustomed to look upon the character of Bathsheba as infamous, though she lived with King David as one among his wives, while Uriah, her former husband, who had been robbed of her, was sent to certain death on her account; and this, so far as we are informed, without awakening in her any peculiar emotions of sympathy, sorrow, reluctance, or remorse. And this, as I take it, mainly for two reasons--first, that we have no signs of any passion, and in particular of any antecedent passion, for the offending king on her part; secondly, that she does not appear to have been otherwise than passively a party to the abduction.

It is in the capacity of wife, and only wife, to Paris that Helen appears to us in the Iliad: where she herself speaks of Menelaus as her πρότερος πόσις[1014].

[1014] Il. iii. 429 cf. 163. See Ilios, pp. 200, 203.

Now the presumed reasons for not regarding the character of Bathsheba as infamous apply with nearly equal force to Helen. Indeed the character of Helen in one point stands higher in Homer than that of Bathsheba in the Old Testament, because she lived with Paris as a recognised and only wife, and because of her gentleness, and especially of her repentance. Of these as to Bathsheba, we know nothing; but such pleas as tell for her tell in the main also for Helen. We have no indication, either in the Iliad or in the Odyssey, of her having at any time felt either passion or affection towards the worthless Paris. Above all, as it will be attempted to prove, the language of the poems not only does not sustain the idea that she willingly left the house of her husband Menelaus, but it shows something which closely approaches to the direct contrary.

But there is no method of measuring so accurately the view and intention of Homer as to the impression we were meant to receive of Helen, as by comparing the language he applies to her with the widely different terms in which he describes the conduct of Clytemnestra, in conjunction with Ægisthus, during the absence of Agamemnon:

τὴν δ’ ἐθέλων ἐθέλουσαν ἀνήγαγεν ὅνδε δόμονδε[1015].

[1015] Od. iii. 272.

In speaking of her own abduction, Helen indeed uses the word ἤγαγε[1016]. And again in her sharp expostulation with Aphrodite, she says, ‘What, will you take me (ἄξεις) to some other Phrygian or Mæonian city, where you may have a favourite[1017]?’ Now this by no means implies her having acted freely; the word ἄγειν is that commonly applied to the carrying off captives from a conquered city, as φέρειν is to the removal of inanimate objects. Undoubtedly in one of her passages of self-reproach she says[1018]:

[1016] Od. iv. 262; Il. xxiv. 764.

[1017] Il. iii. 400-2.

[1018] Ibid. 174.

υἱέϊ σῷ ἑπόμην, θάλαμον γνωτούς τε λιποῦσα.

But, in the first place, it is neither here nor anywhere else said that her flight was voluntary; and on the other hand, without doubt, it is not to be pretended that she had resisted with the spirit of a martyr. The real question is as to the first and fatal act of quitting her husband, whether it was premeditated, and whether it was of her free choice. Now both branches of this question appear to be conclusively decided by the word ἁρπάξας in the following passage[1019], spoken by Paris:

[1019] Ibid. 442-4.

οὐ γὰρ πώποτέ μ’ ὧδέ γ’ Ἔρως φρένας ἀμφεκάλυψεν, οὐδ’ ὅτε σε πρῶτον Λακεδαίμονος ἐξ ἐρατεινῆς ἔπλεον ἁρπάξας ἐν ποντοπόροισι νέεσσιν.

And the rest of the passage corroborates the evidence, by showing that she was free from any act of guilt at the time when the voyage was commenced. The representation of Menelaus himself, in the Thirteenth Iliad, accords with the speech of Paris. He charges that Prince and his abettors not with having corrupted his wife, but with having carried her off,

οἵ μευ κουριδίην ἄλοχον καὶ κτήματα πολλὰ μὰψ οἴχεσθ’ ἀνάγοντες, ἐπεὶ φιλέεσθε παρ’ αὐτῇ[1020].

[1020] Il. xiii. 626.

Again, in the only place where Helen refers jointly to her own share and to that of Paris in the matter[1021], she distinguishes their respective parts, saying to Hector, ‘You have had to toil on account of me, shameless that I am, and Ἀλεξάνδρου ἑνεκ’ ἄτης, on account of the sin of Paris.’

[1021] Il. vi. 355.

~_Picture of Helen in Il._ iii.~

Let us now follow the character of Helen, as it is exhibited in life and motion before us by the Poet. In the Third Book, when Paris is about to encounter Menelaus, Iris, in the form of her sister-in-law Laodice, announces the fact to Helen, and lets her know that her own fate is suspended on the issue, which will decide whether she is to be the wife of Paris or of Menelaus. Laodice finds her busied in embroidery, which is to represent the War of Greeks and Trojans. The expression, νύμφα φίλη, with which the disguised goddess addresses her, is a sign that she was held in respect, and that when she speaks[1022] in the last Book of the taunts and skits of which she was the object, we must understand her to use the natural exaggeration of impassioned grief. At the call of the seeming Laodice, moved apparently by tenderness towards her former husband[1023], Helen goes forth, clad in a robe of simple white[1024]. On her reaching the walls Priam calls her to his side, that she may tell him the name of a kingly warrior, who proves to be Agamemnon. In doing this, he gently acquits her of all responsibility for the war. She answers in a speech of uncommon grace, ‘that she dreads while she reveres and loves him: would that she had miserably died rather than leave her family, her nuptial bed, her infant, and her friends. But this could not be; so that she ever pined away in tears.’ She designates herself here and elsewhere[1025] as κύων, and also as κύνωπις, brazen-faced or shameless; but yet she appears at all times to have retained the fond recollection of her home and friends[1026], and to have lived in grave and sorrowful retirement. Everywhere she seems not only not to avoid, but to search for, the opportunity of bitter self-accusation. Thus, when she has pointed out the Greek chieftains whom she knew personally, she proceeds, ‘but I do not see my brothers, Castor and Polydeuces: perhaps they came not from Greece; perhaps, though here, yet on account of my infamy and reproach, they will not appear in fight[1027].’

[1022] Il. xxiv. 768.

[1023] Il. iii. 139.

[1024] See Damm on ἀργεννός.

[1025] Il. vi. 344, 356; Od. iv. 145.

[1026] Od. iv. 184, 254.

[1027] Il. iii. 236-42. Cf. Il. iii. 404. and xxiv.

Paris, after his defeat, is removed by Aphrodite from the field: Menelaus remains as victor. But Helen still tarries upon the wall, evidently hoping that the hour of her restoration had now at last arrived. The goddess Venus then appears to her, disguised in the form of an aged servant; and endeavours to attract her by a glowing description of Paris, in his beauty and his splendid garments. By this address Helen was alarmed[1028]: and her alarm almost became stupefaction, when she perceived the features of the deity. But a strong reaction followed: so that she made a bitter and stinging reply. Gentle on all other occasions, she is here sharp and sarcastic. She[1029] reproaches Venus with having come to prevent Menelaus from taking her home in right of his victory; then bids her assume to herself the odious character she sought to force on one who had too long borne it, and utterly refuses to go. Venus hereupon intimidates her, by a threat of making her hateful alike to Greek and Trojan, and so bringing her to miserable destruction. She then obeys, covering her face in shame and indignation; and when placed by the goddess in front of Paris in their chamber, she sharply reproaches him; but the real delicacy of her character is maintained in this, that she does it ὄσσε πάλιν κλίνασα, with averted and downcast eyes. In what follows, she is but the reluctant instrument of a passion, which Homer seems to have described in this place, contrary to his wont, with the distinct purpose of raising indignation to the highest pitch, and covering Paris with a contempt and shame proportioned to the crime he had committed, and to the miseries of which by crime he had been the cause.

[1028] The expression is θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ὄρινεν. The verb is used by Homer most commonly to denote apprehension (as in Il. iv. 208. xv. 7. xvi. 280, 509. xviii. 223); though it also sometimes signifies other kinds of excitement, such as anger or surprise.

[1029] 383-98.

Upon the whole, this delineation of Helen in the Third Book may well be taken as one of the most masterly parts of the Iliad. The extreme fineness and delicacy of its shading mark it as an immortal work of genius, and the gentleness of Helen towards Priam, with her severity to herself, and her sternness both to the corrupter, and to the goddess that aided and inspired him, form a moral picture of the most striking truth and beauty. Indeed, if the question be asked, where does Paganism come nearest to the penitential tone and the profound self-abasement that belong to Christianity, we might find it difficult to point out an instance of approximation so striking as is, here and elsewhere, the Helen of Homer.

~_In Il._ vi. _Il._ xxiv. _Od._ iv.~

In three other places of the poems, Helen is put prominently forward.

In the Sixth Book, before Hector repairs to the field, he goes to the palace of Paris to summon him forth. He finds the effeminate prince handling uselessly his arms, while Helen is superintending the beautiful works of her women[1030]. By and by it appears that, sensible of the shame of her husband’s cowardice, though without interest in his fame, she has been persuading him to go forth and fight; and she takes the opportunity of Hector’s presence to offer him a chair that he may rest from his fatigues; to revile herself as, next to her husband, the cause of them; and, while grieving that she had outlived her infancy, to lament also that, if she was to live at all, she had not been united to one less impervious to the sentiment of honour.

[1030] Il. vi. 321-5.

Again, Homer has thought her not unworthy of the third place, with Andromache and Hecuba, as mourners over the mighty Hector, in the deeply touching description of the return of his remains to Troy[1031]. The tenour of this speech is kept in the exactest harmony with what has gone before.

[1031] Il. xxiv. 760-75.

We now bid adieu to the Helen of Homer in her sorrow and shame among the Trojans. But the Poet presents her to us again in prosperity and domestic peace, as the Queen of Menelaus; who, though not the heir of the high throne of Agamemnon, yet held a station in Greece, after the Return, of highly elevated influence. This is a picture, which it would not have been in accordance with the usual course of Homer to set before us, had his mind attached to Helen the character given to her by the later tradition; for where does he represent to us the wicked in prosperity, without bringing down on them subsequently the vengeance of heaven? But on the Helen of the Odyssey he has left no note of sorrow, except the most moving and appropriate of all, namely this, that the gods gave her no child after Hermione, the daughter of her early youth[1032].

[1032] Od. iv. 13.

From her stately chamber she comes forth into the hall, after the feast. She is attended by three maidens, who bear respectively the first her seat, the second its covering, the third her work-basket and distaff. She remarks on the likeness of Telemachus to Ulysses, and humbly recollects to confess, that she herself has been the cause of the sufferings of the Greeks. The allusions then made to Ulysses cause her, with the rest, to weep tenderly; and when her husband with his friends resumes the banquet, she infuses into their wine the soothing drug, supposed to have been opium, which she had obtained from Egypt, to make them forgetful of their sorrows. Then she begins to tell tales in honour of Ulysses: and how, when in his beggar’s dress he escaped scatheless from Troy, and left many of the Trojans slaughtered behind him, she alone, amidst the wailings of the women, was full of joy, for her heart had been yearning towards her home.

There is indeed a trait that deserves notice in the speech of Menelaus, which has been lately mentioned. Helen came down to detect, if possible, the Greeks concealed within the Horse: therefore, to act in the interest of the Trojans. Now if, on the one hand, she looked back on her country and her first husband with many yearnings, yet it was not to be wondered at that as a woman, nowhere pretending to the character of a heroine, she should be so far pliable to the wishes or subject to the compulsion of the Trojans--especially when we remember her love and reverence for their head, and for Hector, who had but lately died in their defence--as to make this effort to defeat the stratagem of the besiegers. But Menelaus, in referring to the incident, carefully spares Helen’s feelings by another of those strokes of exceeding tact and refinement for which Homer’s writings are so remarkable, both generally, and as to the chivalrous character of this hero in particular. ‘Thither,’ he says, that is to the Horse, ‘thou camest; and no doubt,’ he adds, ‘it was the influence of some celestial being, favourable to Troy, that prompted thee;’ thus preventing by anticipation the sting that his words might carry:

ἦλθες ἔπειτα σὺ κεῖσε· κελευσέμεναι δέ σ’ ἔμελλεν δαίμων, ὃς Τρώεσσιν ἐβούλετο κῦδος ὀρέξαι[1033].

[1033] Od. iv. 274.

~_Her marriage to Deiphobus._~

Tradition has assigned Deiphobus to Helen, as a husband after the death of Paris. This tradition is supported, though not expressly, yet sufficiently, by the Odyssey; for, says Menelaus, when the Greeks had constructed the Horse, and when Helen was brought down to detect those who were within it, by imitating the voices of their wives respectively, it is added,

καί τοι Δηΐφοβος θεοείκελος ἕσπετ’ ἰούσῃ[1034].

[1034] Od. iv. 276.

And by the further passage in Od. vii. 517, which represents Ulysses as repairing straight from the Horse to the house of Deiphobus, in company with Menelaus.

Presuming therefore that this tale was well founded, it may be remarked, that the selection of Deiphobus, as the person who should take Helen to wife, was probably founded on his superior merit[1035]. It was under his image, that Minerva came upon the field to inveigle Hector into facing Achilles: and Hector then described him as the one whom he loved by far the best amidst his full brothers, the children of Priam and of Hecuba. This therefore thoroughly accords with the idea, that Helen was held in respect. Nor let it be thought strange, that she was not permitted to remain single. The idea of single life for women, outside their fathers’ home, seems to have been wholly unknown among the Greeks of Homer. When marriageable, they married; when their country was overcome, they became, as of course, the appendages of the couch of the captor. Penelope herself never dreamt of urging that, when once the return of Ulysses was out of the question, she could have any other option than to make choice among the Suitors whose wife she would become. Telemachus contemplates her immediate restoration to her father’s home when he, her son, should assume the full prerogatives of manhood.

[1035] Lycophron, 168; Schol. on Il. xxiv. 251. In the Troades of Euripides she is introduced, saying that Deiphobus took her by force, against the will of the Phrygians (Trojans), 954-5.

The whole Homeric evidence, then, appears to show that, from the moment of her removal, neither the usages of society, nor the ideas of religion or the moral code, could allow Helen to remain in the single state. But it may be said this seems to prove too much on her behalf; namely, that both the abduction and the subsequent life were against her will. It is, however, entirely in keeping with the testimony of the poems, to suppose that her whole offence lay in having permitted at the first, perhaps half unconsciously, the attentions of a flatterer, who became at once a paramour and a tyrant to his victim. In order to comprehend the heroic age, it is indispensable that we should recollect that the responsibilities of women were contracted in proportion to her strength; and that the heroism of endurance, in which she has since excelled, is a Christian product.

That element of weakness and lightness in a character otherwise beautiful, which the incident of the Horse betrays, was probably at once the source and the measure of her offending in reference to the cause of war. It was a mind of relaxed fibre, and vacillated under pressure. Less than this we cannot suppose, and there is no occasion to suppose more. The respect felt, within certain limits, for women in the heroic age, and so powerfully proved by the Odyssey, may perhaps be adverse to the supposition that Paris carried her away without some degree of previous encouragement. I confine myself to ‘perhaps,’ because it is nowhere indicated in the poems, and we can at most have only a presumption to this effect. On the other hand, it seems certain that what she expiated in life-long sadness was, at any rate, no more than the first step in the ways of folly, the thoughtless error of short-sighted vanity, which the state of manners did not permit her subsequently to redeem. Repent she might: but to return was beyond her power.

On the whole, it may be said with confidence that the Helen of the Homeric poems has been conceived, by an author himself of peculiar delicacy, with great truth of nature, and with no intention to deprive her of a share in the sympathies of his hearers; that he has made her a woman, not cast in the mould of martyrs, nor elevated in moral ideas to a capacity of comprehension and of endurance above her age, but yet endowed with much tenderness of feeling, with the highest grace and refinement, and with a deep and peculiar sense of shame for having done wrong. Probably her appreciation of virtue and of honour, though beneath that of the highest matronly characters, may have been in no way inferior to that of society at large in her own time, and superior to the standard of many following epochs; nay superior also to that which has prevailed, at least locally, even at some periods of the Christian era: as, for example, when Ariosto wrote the remarkable passage--

Perche si de’ punir donna o biasmare Che con uno, o più d’ uno, abbia commesso Quel, che l’ uom fa con quante n’ ha appetito E lodato ne va, non che impunito[1036]?

[1036] Orl. Fur. iv. 66.

~_General estimate of the Homeric Helen._~

The degradation of Helen by the later tradition will be treated of hereafter. Meantime it will be seen how much on this subject I have the misfortune to differ from Mure, who has been usually so great a benefactor to the students of Homer. With him ‘Helen is the female counterpart of Paris[1037].’ Paris and Helen are respectively ‘the man of fashion and the woman of pleasure of the heroic age.’ ‘Both are unprincipled votaries of sensual enjoyment; both self-willed and petulant, but not devoid of amiable and generous feeling.’ He finds indeed in her a ‘tenderness of heart and kindly disposition;’ and says that ‘traces of better principle seem also to lurk under the general levity of her habits.’ This petulance, this general levity, I do not find; but rather the notes of a fatal fall, continually and deeply felt under the general grace and beauty of her character. What Mure calls her ‘petulant argument with her patron goddess,’ we take to be the noble and indignant reaction of a soul under the yoke of conscious slavery, and still quick to the throb of virtue. Indeed I derive some comfort from the closing words of his criticism, in which, after expressing his pity and condemnation, he says that still ‘we are constrained to love and admire.’ In the whole circle of the classical literature, as far as it is known to us, there is, I repeat, nothing that approaches so nearly to what Christian theology would term a sense of sin, as the humble demeanour, and the self-denouncing, self-stabbing language of the Argeian Helen.

[1037] Book ii. ch. viii. sect. 20.

~_The character of Paris._~

III. The character of Paris is as worthy, as any other in the poems, of the powerful hand and just judgment of Homer. It is neither on the one hand slightly, nor on the other too elaborately, drawn; the touches are just such and so many, as his poetic purpose seemed on the one hand to demand, and on the other to admit. Paris is not indeed the gentleman, but he is the fine gentleman, and the pattern voluptuary, of the heroic ages; and all his successors in these capacities may well be wished joy of their illustrious prototype. The redeeming, or at least relieving point in his character, is one which would condemn any personage of higher intellectual or moral pretensions; it is a total want of earnestness, the unbroken sway of levity and of indifference to all serious and manly considerations. He completely fulfils the idea of the _poco-curante_, except as to the display of his personal beauty, the enjoyment of luxury, and the resort to sensuality as the best refuge from pain and care. He is not a monster, for he is neither savage nor revengeful; but still further is he from being one of Homer’s heroes, for he has neither honour, courage, eloquence, thought, nor prudence. That he bears the reproaches of Hector without irritation, is due to that same moral apathy, and that narrowness of intelligence, which makes him insensible to those of his wife. No man can seriously resent what he does not really feel. He is wholly destitute even of the delicacy and refinement which soften many of the features of vice; and the sensuality he shows in the Third Book[1038] partakes largely of the brutal character which marks the lusts of Jupiter. No wise, no generous word, ever passes from his lips. On one subject only he is determined enough; it is, that he will not give up the woman whom he well knows to be without attachment to him[1039], and whom he keeps not as the object of his affections, but merely as the instrument of his pleasures. One solicitude only he cherishes; it is to decorate his person, to exhibit his beauty, to brighten with care the arms that he would fain parade, but has not the courage to employ against the warriors of Greece.

[1038] Il. iii. 437-48.

[1039] Ibid. 428.

There are other greater achievements in the Iliad, but none finer, or more deserving our commendation, than the manner in which Homer has handled the difficult character of Paris. It was quite necessary to raise him to a certain point of importance; had he been simply contemptible, his place in the early stages of the Trojan tale, and the prolongation of the War on his account, would have involved a too violent departure from the laws of poetical credibility. This importance Homer, whether from imagination or from history, has supplied; in part by his very high position. Even if I were wrong in the opinion that the Poet meant to represent him as the eldest son, or the eldest living son, of Priam, it would still at least be plain that he is more eminent and conspicuous than any other member of the royal house after Hector; while he is so much less worthy than Deiphobus, for example, that no one, I think, could doubt that his distinction is due to his being senior to that respectable prince and warrior, and to the rest of his brothers. Further, the Poet has raised him to the very highest elevation in two particulars; one the gift of archery, the other the endowment of corporeal grace and beauty. But neither of these involves one particle of courage, or of any other virtue; for the archer of Homer’s time was not like the British bowman, who stood with his comrades in the line, and discharged the function in war which has since fallen to musketry; he was a mere sharpshooter, always having the most deliberate opportunity of aim at the enemy, and always himself out of danger. No archer is ever hit in the Iliad; but Pandarus, so skilled in the bow, is slain, and Paris is disgraced, when they respectively venture to assume the spear. Again, the Poet has contrived that the accomplishments of Paris, though in themselves unsurpassed, shall attract towards him no share, great or small, of our regard. This prince really does more, than even Hector does, to stay the torrent of the Grecian war; for in the Eleventh Book, from behind a pillar, he wounds Diomed, who had fought with the Immortals, Eurypylus, who had also been one of the nine accepters of Hector’s challenge, and Machaon, one of the two surgeons. Thus Homer[1040] has been able to make him most useful in battle, most lovely to the eye, and yet alike detestable and detested.

[1040] Il. xi. 368-79, 581-4, 505-7.

This aim he attains, not by that tame method of description which he so much eschews, but by the turn he gives to narrative, and by the colour he imparts to it in one or a few words.

Paris, though effeminate and apathetic, is not gentle, either to his wife or his enemies; and, when he has wounded Diomed, he wishes the shot had been a fatal one. The reply of Diomed cuts deeper than any arrow when he addresses him as,

Bowman! ribald! well-frizzled girl-hunter[1041]!

[1041] Il. xi. 385.

Again, the Poet tells us, as if by accident, that when, after the battle with Menelaus, he could not be found, it was not because the Trojans were unwilling to give him up, for they hated him with the hatred, which they felt to dark Death[1042]. And again we learn, how he uses bribery to keep his ground in the Assembly; how he refuses to recognise even his own military inferiority, but lamely accounts for the success of Menelaus by saying that all men have their turn[1043]; and how he causes shame to his own countrymen and exultation to the Greeks, when they contrast the pretensions of his splendid appearance with his miserable performances in the field[1044].

[1042] Il. iii. 454.

[1043] Il. vi. 339.

[1044] Il. iii. 43, 51.

Homer, full as he is of the harmonies of nature, differs in this as in so many points from most among later writers, that he does not set at nought the due proportion between the moral and the intellectual man, nor combine high gifts of mind with a mean and bad heart. He never varies from this rule; and he has been careful to pay it a marked observance in the case of Paris. No set of speeches in the Iliad are marked by greater poverty of ideas. If he cleans his arms and builds his house, which are honourable employments, they are employments immediately connected with the ostentation to which he was so much given. More than this, the Poet informs us, through the medium of Helen, that he was but ill supplied with sense, and that he was too old to mend:

τούτῳ δ’ οὔτ’ ἂρ νῦν φρένες ἔμπεδοι, οὔτ ἄρ’ ὀπίσσω ἔσσονται[1045].

[1045] Il. vi. 372.

The immediate transition, in the Third Book, from the field of battle, where he was disgraced, to the bed of luxury, is admirably suited to impress upon the mind, by the strong contrast, the real character of Paris. Nor let it be thought, that Homer has gratuitously forced upon us the scene between him and his reluctant wife. It was just that he should mark as a bad man him who had sinned grossly, selfishly, and fatally, alike against Greece and his own family and country. This impression would not have been consistent and thorough in all its parts, if we had been even allowed to suppose that, as a refined, affectionate, and tender husband, he made such amends to Helen as the case permitted for the wrong done her in his hot and heady youth. Such a supposition might excusably have been entertained, and it would have been supported by the very feebleness of the character of Paris and by his part in the war, had Homer been silent upon the subject. He, therefore, though with cautious hand, lifts the veil so far as to show us that in our variously compounded nature animal desire can use up and absorb the strength which ought to nerve our higher faculties, and that, as none are more cruel than the timid, so none are more brutal than the effeminate.

One hold, and one only, Paris seems to retain on human affection in any sort or form. The paternal instinct of Priam makes him shudder and retire, when he is told that Paris is about to meet Menelaus in single combat. This trait would have been of extraordinary and universal beauty, had the object of the affection been even moderately worthy: it is a remarkable proof of the debasement of Paris, and of the strong sense which Homer gives us of that debasement, that the tender father seems in a measure tainted by the very warmth and strength of his love.

SECT. VII.

_The declension of the great Homeric Characters in the later Tradition[1046]._

[1046] See note p. 500. sup.

~_Physical conditions of the Greek Theatre._~

One legitimate mode of measuring the true greatness of Homer is, by observing what has become of the materials and instruments he worked with, upon their passing into other hands. Acting on this principle, let us now pass on to consider the murderous maltreatment, which the most remarkable of all the Homeric characters have had to endure in the later tradition; partly, as I have already observed, from general, and partly from special causes. On the more general influence of this kind I have already touched. Among the special causes, we should place the declension in the fundamental ideas of morals and of politics between the time of Homer and the historic age. With this we may reckon one which, though it may appear to be technical, must, in all likelihood, have been most important, namely, the physical necessities imposed by the fixed conditions of dramatic representation among the Greeks[1047]. Their theatres were constructed on a scale, which may be called colossal as compared with ours. Both polity and religion entered into the institution of the stage. The intense nationality of their life required a similar character in their plays, and likewise in the places where they were to be represented. Not therefore a particular company of auditors, but rather the whole public of the city, where the representation took place, was to be accommodated. In consequence, the dimensions of the buildings exceeded the usual powers of the human eye and ear; so that the figure was heightened by buskins, the countenance thrown into bolder and coarser outline by masks, and the voice endowed with a great increase of power by acoustic contrivances within the masks, as well as aided by the construction of the buildings. All this was the more strictly requisite, because the plays were acted in the open air.

[1047] Schlegel, Lect. iii. vol. i. p. 81; Donaldson, Greek Theatre, sect. ii.

Now this general exaggeration of feature beyond the standard of nature had an irresistible tendency to affect the mode in which characters were modelled for representation; to cause them to be laid out morally as well as physically in strong outline, in masses large and comparatively coarse. The fine and careful finishing of Homer required that those, who were to recite him, should retain an entire and unfettered command over the measure in which the bodily organs were to be employed. The τύνη δ’ ὠμοΐιν of Achilles to Patroclus might bear to be spoken in a voice of thunder, and would absolutely require the bard to use considerable exertion of the lungs; but the scenes of Helen with Priam in the Third Book, of Hector with Andromache in the Sixth, of Priam with Achilles in the Twenty-fourth, would admit of no such treatment; and as these passages could not themselves be rendered, so neither could anything bearing a true analogy to Homer be given, unless the actor had enjoyed full liberty to contract as well as expand his own volume of sound, or unless he had enjoyed both easy access, on any terms he pleased, to the ears of his audience, and the full benefit of that most important assistance, which the eye renders to the ear by observing the play of countenance that accompanies delivery. King Lear, King John, or Othello, could not have been represented more truly and adequately in a Greek theatre, than the Achilles, or than the Helen, of Homer. Those who have ever happened to discuss with a deaf person a critical subject, requiring circumspect and tender handling, will know how much the necessity for constant tension of the voice restrains freedom in the expression of thought, and mars its perfectness. The Greek actors lay under a somewhat similar necessity, and to their necessities of course the diction of the tragedians was, whether consciously or unconsciously, adapted.

Let it, however, be borne in mind, that when we criticize the conceptions of the Homeric characters by the later Greek writers, it need not be with the supposition that we have eyes to discern in Homer what they did not see. Their reproductions must be taken to represent not so much the free dictates of the mind and judgment of the later poets, as the conditions of representation to which they were compelled to conform, and the popular sentiments and opinions which, in the character of popular writers, they could not but take for their standard. The invention of printing has given a liberty and independence to thought, at least in conjunction with poetry and the drama, such as it could not possess while the poet, in Athens for example, could sing in no other way but one, namely, to the nation collected in a mass. The poet of modern times may write for a minority of the public, nay, for a mere handful of admirers, which is destined, yet only in after-years, to grow like the mustard-seed of the parable. But the Athenian dramatist was compelled to be the poet of the majority at the moment, and to be carried on the stream of its sympathies, however adverse its direction might be to that in which, if at liberty to choose, he would himself have moved.

~_Obliteration of the finer distinctions._~

Accordingly, when we come to survey the literary history of those great characters which the Poet gave as a perpetual possession to the world, we find, naturally enough, that the flood of the more recent traditions has long ago come in upon the Homeric narrative, like the inundation brought by Neptune and Apollo over the wall and trench of the Greeks. Like every other deluge, in sweeping away the softer materials, which give the more refined lines to the picture, it leaves the comparatively hard and sharp ones harder and sharper than ever. Thus it is with the Homeric characters, transplanted into the later tradition. The broader distinctions of his personages one from another have been not only retained, but exaggerated: all the finer ones have disappeared. No one, deriving his ideas from Homer only, could confound Diomed with Ajax, or either with Agamemnon, or any of the three with Menelaus, or any of the four with Achilles; but when we come down to the age of the tragedians, what remains to mark them, except only for Agamemnon his office, and for Achilles his superiority in physical strength? In the Homeric poems, the strong and towering intellectual qualities even outweigh the great physical and animal forces of his chief hero: by the usual predominance in man of what is gross over what is fine, the principal and higher parts of his character are afterwards suppressed, and it becomes comparatively vulgarized. In the Ulysses of Homer, again, the intellectual element predominates in such a manner, that not even the most superficial reader can fail to perceive it. He and Helen stand out in the Iliad from among others with whom they might have been confounded; the first by virtue of his self-mastery and sagacity, the second, not only by her beauty and her fall, but by the singularly tender and ethereal shading of her character. The later tradition, laying rude hands upon the subtler distinctions thus established, has degraded these two great characters, the one into little better than a stage rogue, the other into little more than a stage voluptuary, who adds to the guilt of that character the further and coarse enormities of faithlessness, and even of bloodthirstiness.

Even so soon as in the time of the Cyclical writers the character of Helen had begun to be altered. In Homer she is the victim of Paris, carried off from her home and country, and only then yielding to his lust. In the Κύπρια ἔπη, as we have that poem reported by Proclus, she begins by receiving his gifts, that is to say, his bribes; she is an adulteress under her husband’s roof; and she joins in plundering him, in order to escape with her paramour.

It is in Euripides that we find the largest and most diversified reproduction of the old Homeric characters, and to him, therefore, among the three tragedians, we should give our chief attention. When we consider them as a whole, according to his representation of them, we find that their entire primitive and patriarchal colouring has gone. The manners are not those of any age in particular; least of all are they the manners of a very early age. And, as the entire company has lost its distinctive type, so have the members of it when taken singly. In the Troades, for example, Menelaus is simply the injured and exasperated husband; Helen is the faithless wife; and she is kept up to a certain standard of dramatic importance in the eye of the world only by another departure from the Homeric picture, for she is armed with an enormous power of argument and sophistry. By a similar appendage of ingenious disquisition, the essentially plain and matronly qualities of Hecuba have been overlaid and hidden. Achilles, in the Iphigenia, is a gallant and a generous warrior; but we have neither the grandeur of his tempestuous emotions as in Homer, nor, on the other hand, any of that peculiar refinement with which they are in so admirable a manner both blended and set in contrast. Agamemnon has lost, in Euripides, his vacillation and misgivings, and is the average and, so to speak, rounded king and warrior, instead of the mixed and particoloured, but in no sense common-place, character that Homer has made him. Though Andromache is a passionately fond mother, she has nothing whatever that identifies her as the original Andromache. Indeed, of the Homeric women, it may be said that in Euripides they have ceased to be womanly; they have in general nothing of that adjective character (if the phrase may be allowed), that ever leaning and clinging attitude, to which support from without is a moral necessity, and which so profoundly marks them all in Homer. Again, Iphigenia, Cassandra, Polyxena, who are either scarcely or not at all Homeric, have now become grand heroines, with unbounded stage-effect; but there is no stage-effect at all in Homer’s Helen, or in his Andromache. Andromache, for example, is not elaborately drawn. She is rather a product of Homer’s character and feeling, than of his art. She is simply what Tennyson in his ‘Isabel’ calls ‘the stately flower of perfect wifehood.’ In her simplicity, the true idea of her might easily have been preserved by the later literature, had the conception of woman as such remained morally the same. But the Andromache of Homer was doomed to deteriorate, on account of her purity, as his Achilles, his Ulysses, his Helen degenerated, because the flights of such high genius could not be sustained, and weaker wings drooped down to a lower level. As Hecuba was the aged matron of the Iliad, and Helen its mixed type of woman, so Andromache was the young mother and the wife. Her one only thought lay in her husband and her child; but in the Troades, wordy and diffuse, she discusses, in a most business-like manner, the question whether she shall or shall not transfer her affections to the new lord, whose property she has become. She ends, indeed, by deciding the question rightly; but it is one that the Homeric Andromache never could have entertained.

Three, however, among the Homeric characters, have been mangled by the later tradition much more cruelly than any others; they are those prime efforts of his mighty genius, Helen, Achilles, and Ulysses. The first, most probably, on account of the wonderful delicacy with which in Homer it is moulded: the others on account of their singular comprehensiveness and breadth of scope. Each of these three cases well deserves particular consideration.

~_Mutilation of the Helen of Homer._~

In the case of Helen, the extreme tenderness of the colouring, that Homer has employed, multiplied infinitely the chances against its preservation. Among all the women of antiquity, she is by nature the most feminine, the finest in grain, though, as in many other instances, a certain slightness of texture is essentially connected with this fineness. Her natural softness is very greatly deepened by the double effect of her affliction and her repentance. A quiet and settled sadness broods over her whole image, and comes out not only when she weeps by the body of Hector, or when her husband’s presence reminds her of her offence, but even under the genial smiles and soothing words of old Priam on the wall. Vehement and agonizing passion draws deep strong lines, which, even in copies, may be easily caught and easily preserved; it is quite different with the profound though low-toned suffering, of which the passive influence, the penetrating tint, circulates as it were in every vein, and issues into view at every pore.

~_Helen of Euripides, Isocrates, Virgil._~

Let us now consider how the character of Helen reappears in Euripides, in Isocrates, and in Virgil.

In the Agamemnon, Æschylus had designated her under the form of a pun, as ἑλέναυς ἑλεπτόλις; and these phrases, as they stand, cannot be said in any manner to force us beyond the limits of the Homeric tradition. But in the Hecuba she is cursed outright by the Chorus, and represented by Hecuba herself as having been the great agent, instead of the passive occasion and the suffering instrument, in the calamitous fall of Troy[1048]. In the Troades she is the shame of the country, the slayer of Priam, the willing fugitive from Sparta[1049]. Andromache denounces her in the fiercest manner, and gives her for her ancestors not Jupiter, but Death, Slaughter, Vengeance, Jealousy, and all the evils upon earth[1050]. Menelaus is furiously enraged, calls on his attendants to drag her in by her blood-guilty hair, will not give her the name of wife, will send her to Lacedæmon[1051], there herself to die as a satisfaction to those whose death she has guiltily brought about. When she asks whether she may be heard in defence of herself, he answers summarily, no:

[1048] Hecuba, 429, 924-31.

[1049] Troades, 132, 377.

[1050] Ver. 770.

[1051] Ver. 855-78.

οὐκ ἐς λόγους ἐλήλυθ’, ἀλλά σε κτενῶν[1052].

[1052] Ver. 900.

She then delivers a sophistical speech[1053], and pleads, that she could not be guilty in yielding to a passion which even Jupiter could not resist, while she retaliates abuse on Menelaus for leaving her exposed to temptation. _Quantum mutata!_ As respects Deiphobus, however, she declares that she only yielded to force, and that she was often detected, after the death of Paris, in endeavours to escape over the wall to the Greeks.

[1053] Ver. 909-60.

We have moreover an example, in the Helen painted by Euripides, of the rude manner in which characters not understood, and taken to be inconsistent by an age which had failed to understand them, were torn in pieces, and how the several fragments started anew, each for itself, on the stream of tradition. In Homer we have the touching contrast between the chastity of Helen’s mind, and the unlawful condition in which she lived. The latter, taken separately, was presumed to imply an unchaste soul; the former a lawful condition. Instead therefore of the one narrative, we have two; a shade or counterfeit of Helen plays the part of the adulteress with Paris, while the true and living Helen remains concealed in Egypt, keeping pure her husband’s bed, so that, though her name has become infamous, her body may remain untainted. This latter tradition is chiefly valuable, because it marks the mode of transition from the Homeric to the spurious representations, and the consciousness of the early poets, that they were not preserving the image drawn by Homer. No scheme, however, constructed of such flimsy materials, could live; and, naturally enough, the character of Helen the wife was forgotten, that of Helen the voluptuary was preserved.

From the vituperation and disgrace of Helen in most of the plays of Euripides, we pass to the elaborate panegyric handed down to us in the Ἐγκώμιον of Isocrates. The falsehood eulogistic is not less unsatisfying than the falsehood damnatory. For now, with the lapse of time, we find a further depression of the moral standard. We have here, in its most absolute form, the deification of beauty[1054]; ὃ σεμνότατον, καὶ τιμιώτατον, καὶ θειότατον τῶν ὄντων ἔστιν[1055]. But it is totally disjoined from purity. He does not warrant and support his eulogy upon Helen, by recurring to the true Homeric representation of her; but he boldly declares the high value of sensual enjoyment[1056], commends the ambition of Paris to acquire an unrivalled possession and thereby a close affinity with the gods, and sees in the war only a proof of the immense and just estimation in which both parties held so great a treasure[1057], without the smallest scruple as to the means by which it was to be acquired or held. From this picture we may pass on to the Helen of Virgil, which represents the destructive process in its last stage of exaggeration, and leaves nothing more for the spirit of havoc to devise.

[1054] I do not remember to have seen the principles of Isocrates rigorously applied in modern literature, excepting in the Adrienne de la Cardonnaye of M. Eugène Sue’s _Le Juif Errant_.

[1055] Hel. Enc. 61.

[1056] Ibid. 47.

[1057] Ibid. 54.

In Æn. i. 650, Helen is declared to have _sought_ Troy and unlawful nuptials, instead of having been carried off from home against her will. In Æn. vi. 513, she is represented as having made use of the religious orgies on the fatal night, to invite the Greeks into Troy; and, after first carefully removing all weapons for defence, she is said to have opened the apartment of her sleeping husband Deiphobus to Menelaus, in the hope that, by becoming accessory to a treacherous murder, she might disarm the resentment of one whom she had so deeply wronged. But even this passage has probably done less towards occupying the modern mind with the falsified idea of Helen, than one of most extraordinary scenic grandeur in the second Æneid; where Æneas relates how he saw her, the common curse of her own country and of Troy, crouching beside the altar of Vesta, amidst the lurid flames of the final conflagration, in order to escape the wrath of Menelaus.

Illa sibi infestos eversa ob Pergama Teucros Et pœnas Danaûm et deserti conjugis iras Præmetuens, Trojæ et patriæ communis Erynnis, Abdiderat sese, atque aris invisa sedebat.

ÆN. ii. 571-4.

And then, in language, the glowing magnificence of which serves to hide the very paltry character of the sentiment, Æneas proceeds to announce that he was about to slay the woman who, according to himself, had lived for ten years as a friend among his friends; when, at the right moment, his mother Venus appeared, and reminded him that on the whole he might do rather better to think about saving, if possible, his own father, wife, and boy.

Thus, in the Helen of Virgil, we have splendid personal beauty combined with an accumulation of the most profoundly odious moral features. She is lost in sensuality, a traitress alike to Greece and to Troy, willing to make miserable victims of others in the hope of purchasing her own immunity: all her deep remorse and sorrow, all her tenderness and modesty, are blotted out from her character, and the void places in the picture are filled by the detestation, with which both Greeks and Trojans regarded, as indeed they might well regard, such a monster. But let us pass on.

~_Achilles and Ulysses._~

Among the many proofs of the vast scope of Homer’s mind, one of the most remarkable is to be found in the twin characters of his prime heroes or protagonists. It seems as if he had taken a survey of human nature in its utmost breadth and depth, and, finding that he had not the means to establish a perfect equilibrium between its highest powers when all in full development, had determined to represent them, with reference to the two great functions of intellect and passion, in two immortal figures. In each of the two, each of these elements has been represented with an extraordinary power, yet so, that the sovereignty should rest in Achilles as to the one, and in Ulysses as to the other. But the depth of emotion in Ulysses is greater than in any other male character of the poems, except Achilles; only it is withdrawn from view because so much under the mastery of his wisdom. And in like manner on the other hand, a far greater power, directed to the purpose of self-command and self-repression, is shown us in Achilles than in any other character except Ulysses; but this also is under partial eclipse, because the injustice, ingratitude, scorn, and meanness which Agamemnon concentrates in the robbery of a beloved object from him, appeal so irresistibly to the passionate side of his nature as to bring it out in overpowering proportions.

These being the leading ideas of the two characters, Homer has equipped each of them with the apparatus of a full-furnished man; and in apportioning to each his share of other qualities and accomplishments, he has made such a distribution as on the whole would give the best balance and the most satisfactory general result. Thus it is plain that the character of Achilles, covering as it did volcanic passions, was in danger of degenerating into phrensy. Homer has, therefore, assigned to him a peculiar refinement. His leisure is beguiled with song, consecrated to the achievements of ancient heroes; he has the finest tact, and is by far the greatest gentleman, of all the warriors of the poems; even personal ornaments to set off his transcendent beauty[1058] are not beneath his notice, a trait which would have been misplaced in Ulysses, ludicrous in Ajax, and which is in Paris contemptible, but which has its advantage in Achilles, because it is a simple accessory subordinate to greater matters, and because, so far as it goes, it is a weight placed in the scale opposite to that which threatens to preponderate, and to mar by the strong vein of violence the general harmony of the character.

[1058] Il. ii. 875.

In the same way, as Ulysses is distinguished by a never-failing presence of mind, forethought, and mastery over emotion, so the danger for him lies on the side of an undue predominance of the calculating element, which threatens to reduce him from the heroic standard to the low level of a vulgar utilitarianism. Here, as before, Homer has been ready with his remedies. He exhibits to us this great prince and statesman as bearing also a character of patriarchal simplicity, and makes him, the profoundest and most astute man of the world, represent the very childhood of the human race in his readiness to ply the sickle or to drive the plough[1059]. Above all--and this is the prime safeguard of his character--he makes Ulysses a model for Greece of steady unvarying brightness in the domestic affections. The emotion of Hector in the Sixth Iliad, and of Priam in the Twenty-fourth, are not capable of comparison with those of Ulysses, because theirs constitute the central points of the characters, and likewise are the products of great junctures of danger and affliction respectively, while his exhibit and indeed compose a settled and standing bent of his soul. He alone, of all the chieftains who were beneath the walls of Troy, is full of the near recollection of his son, his Telemachus[1060]; his desire and ambition never pass indeed beyond barren Ithaca, and his daily thought through long years of wandering and detention is to return there[1061], to see the very smoke curling upward from its chimneys, so that the charms of a goddess are a pain to him, because they keep him from Penelope[1062].

[1059] Od. xviii. 366-75.

[1060] Il. ii. 260.

[1061] Od. i. 58.

[1062] Od. v. 215-20.

Such was the care with which, in each of these great and wonderful characters, Homer provided against an exclusive predominance of their leading trait. But in vain. Achilles too, more slowly however than his rival, passed, with later authors, into the wild beast; Ulysses descended at a leap into the mere shopman of politics and war; and it is singular to see how, when once the basis of the character had been vulgarized, and the key to its movements lost, it came to be drawn in attitudes the most opposed to even the broadest and most undeniable of the Homeric traits.

~_Mutilation of the Ulysses of Homer._~

There is nothing in the political character of Ulysses more remarkable, than his power of setting himself in sole action against a multitude; whether we take him in the government of his refractory crew during his wanderings; or in the body of the Horse, when a sound would have ruined the enterprize of the Greeks, so that he had to lay his strong hand over the jaws of the babbler Anticlus[1063]; or in the stern preliminaries to his final revenge upon the Suitors; or in his war with his rebellious subjects; or, above all, in the desperate crisis of the Second Iliad, when by his fearless courage, decision, and activity he saves the Greek army from total and shameful failure. And yet, much as the Mahometans[1064] were railed at by the poets of Italy, indeed of England, in the character of image-worshippers, so Ulysses is held up to scorn in Euripides as a mere waiter upon popular favour. Thus in the Hecuba he is

[1063] Od. iv. 285-8.

[1064] In proof of the establishment of this curious usage in our literature, (which attracted the notice of Selden,) see Mawmet, Maumetry in Richardson’s Dictionary, with the illustrative passages.

ὁ ποικιλόφρων, κόπις, ἡδύλογος, δημοχαρίστης.

Now, when the most glaring and characteristic facts of the narrative of Homer can be thus boldly traversed, there is scarcely room for astonishment at any other kind of misrepresentation. As when Hecuba laments, in the Troades[1065], that her lot is to be the captive of the base, faithless, malignant, all-stinging maker of mischief. Such is the standing type of Ulysses in the after-tradition. Whenever anything bad, cruel, and above all mean, is to be done, he is the ever-ready, and indeed thoroughly Satanic, instrument.

[1065] Tro. 285-9, 1216.

The Second Epistle of the First Book of Horace is full of interest with reference to this subject, because in it he gives us the result of his recent re-perusal of the Homeric poems at Præneste. And, accordingly, we find here a great improvement upon the Ulysses of the Greek drama. He seems to have struck Horace at this time more forcibly, or more favourably, than any other Homeric character; for, after describing in strong terms what was amiss both within and without the walls of Troy, he makes this transition[1066];

[1066] Hor. Ep. I. ii. 18.

Rursus, quid virtus et quid sapientia possit, Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssen.

He considers this hero as the conqueror of Troy, and notices his self-restraint and indomitable courage in adversity. Such was the advantage of an impression fresh from the Homeric text, instead of those drawn from the muddy source of the current traditions. It does not diminish but enhances the compliment, when the acute but Epicurean writer goes on to intimate, in more than half-earnest, that these virtues of Ulysses were too high for imitation, and that he himself was content rather to emulate the suitors of Penelope, and the easy life of the youths about Alcinous[1067].

[1067] Hor. Epist. I. ii. 1-31.

But if some small instalment of justice was thus done by Horace to the Homeric Ulysses, Virgil withdrew the boon, and was careful to reproduce, without mitigation or relief, the worst features of the worst form of the character. With him it is Ulysses who is chosen to play the slayer of Palamedes and the betrayer of Sinon[1068], and to lead the party which, conducted by Helen, was to massacre Deiphobus in his chamber[1069]. On account of his fierce cruelty, even the ‘ground is cursed for his sake;’ poor Ithaca is loaded with imprecations by Æneas as he passes near it. Once he is called _infelix_, the greatest compliment that he anywhere receives; but his name in few cases escapes the affix of some abusive epithet, drawn alike from inhumanity or from cunning, it seems to matter little from which[1070].

[1068] Æn. ii. 90. et seqq.

[1069] Æn. vi. 628.

[1070] Æn. iii. 272. sup. p. 522.

~_Of the Achilles of Homer._~

The character of Achilles was more fortunate, in the handling it experienced from the Greek drama, than that of Ulysses. In the Iphigenia of Euripides, the hero of the Iliad appears as a faithful lover, and as a gallant and chivalrous warrior. At the same time, it has lost altogether the breadth of touch and largeness of scope, with which it is drawn in Homer. We miss entirely that unfathomable power of intellect, of passion, and also of bodily force, all combined in one figure, which carry the Achilles of Homer beyond every other human example in the quality of sheer grandeur, and make it touch the limits of the superhuman. There is nothing said or done by the Achilles of Euripides, nothing reported of him or assigned to him, no impression borne into a reader’s mind concerning him, which would not have been perfectly suitable to other warriors; for example, to the Diomed of Homer. He falls back into a class, and becomes a simple member of it, instead of being a creation paramount and alone; alone, like Olympus amidst the mountains of Greece; alone for ever in his sublimity, amidst the famous memories of other heroes, no less truly than he was alone in his solitary encampment during the continuance of the Wrath.

With Pindar Achilles appears in a different dress. He is here conceived without mind, as a youth marvellous in strength, hardihood, and swiftness of foot, growing up into a mighty warrior[1071]. The Achilles of Pindar is but as a pebble broken away from the mountain-mass of Homer.

[1071] Pind. Nem. iii. 43-64.

Catullus, in his beautiful poem on the Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, had a rare opportunity of setting forth the glories of Achilles. And he is in fact made the main subject of the nuptial song, properly so called; yet nothing of him is really celebrated by the poet[1072], except his valour and his swiftness; all the rest is simple amplification and embellishment. It seems by this time to have been wholly forgotten, that the Homeric Achilles had a soul.

[1072] Epithal. Pel. and Thet. 339-372.

The discernment of Horace did not here enable him, as it had enabled him before, to escape from the popular delusions,

Scriptor honoratum si forte reponis Achillem, Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer, Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis[1073].

[1073] Hor. A. P. 120. It will be remembered that the ruthless Bentley struck out even the _honoratum_ of the text, and, with an audacity surpassing his great ingenuity, put in _Homereum_.

The character is exhibited here in a light at once feeble and misleading, for its cardinal point is made to be the supremacy of force over right. Now in Homer it is a sense that right has been deeply violated, which serves for the very groundwork out of which his exasperation rises. He does not view the question as one of _meum_ and _tuum_ only, or even mainly. His eye is first upon the gross wrong done, and only then upon himself as the subject of it. He resists Agamemnon’s claim[1074] for a compensation at the very first, when it is urged, not against him, but against the Greeks at large[1075]; and he bursts out into indignant vituperation of the greedy king before Agamemnon has threatened to take Briseis, and when he has only insisted that, if the Greeks do not compensate him, he will then help himself to the prize _either_ of Achilles or of Ajax or of Ulysses. In truth he is the assertor of the supremacy of law over will, much more than of force over law; and there is the greatest difference between pushing a sound and true principle even to gross excess, and proceeding from the outset upon a false one. The former, not the latter, is the case of the Achilles of the Iliad.

[1074] Il. i. 122.

[1075] Ib. 149.

~_The Achilles of Statius._~

The poet Statius observed, with sagacity enough, that the Achilles of Homer was but a _torso_; that the Iliad had only allowed him to be exhibited in one light, as it were, and at a single juncture of his career. So he resolved to profit by the ungotten mine, and to found a poem on the whole Achilles, child and man, in his rising, at his zenith, and in his setting blaze;

Nos ire per omnem (Sic amor est) heroa velis ... ... sed totâ juvenem deducere Trojâ[1076].

[1076] Stat. Achill. i.

We are therefore perhaps entitled to expect from him a fuller and more comprehensive grasp of the character than was usual, even although the narrative is broken off. The five books which remain of this work do not bring him so far as to the plains of Troy; but we leave him on the voyage from Scyros to Troas. They are chiefly occupied, therefore, with his residence there in the disguise of a maiden, and with the incidents of his sojourn.

Now the story of Achilles at Scyros, and of his connexion with Deidamia, harmonizes with one side of his character as it is drawn in Homer. It is evident that his personal beauty was not less graceful than manful; and he alone of the Greek chieftains is related to have worn ornaments of gold. Therefore that in the days of his boyhood he should wear the dress of maidens, and pass for one of them, is at any rate in accordance with a particular point of the Homeric tradition, though little adequate to its lofty tone as a whole. But this particular point is just what Statius contrives wholly to let drop. He shows us Achilles like the sham Anne Page, in the Merry Wives of Windsor[1077], ‘as a great lubberly boy,’ neither careful nor able to give any grace to the movement of his limbs. For, in the dance, he would break the heart of any rightminded master of the ceremonies:

[1077] Act v. sc. 5.

Nec servare vices, nec jungere brachia, curat: Tunc molles gressus, tunc aspernatur amictus Plus solito, rumpitque choros, et plurima turbat.

Nor does this writer appear at all to have apprehended the main ideas of the Homeric character. In the Iliad, the education which Achilles receives is the ordinary education of men of his rank, and his transcendent powers in after-life are due to a just, yet no more than a just, development of his extraordinary original gifts. But in Statius he is represented as having owed everything to the peculiar training of Chiron; whose semiferine life he shared, so that his diet in childhood consisted of the raw entrails of lions, and the marrow of half-dead she-wolves! His mind, indeed, was not overlooked amidst these brutalities, for he exhausts a long catalogue of acquirements; but Statius, as might be expected, completely drops out of his political education what is its one grand element in Homer, namely, the art of government over man by speech. Instead of this, Chiron the Centaur merely teaches him those abstract rules of right, by which he had himself been wont to govern Centaurs[1078].

[1078] Achilleis, v. 163.

To the same age with the _Achilleis_ of Statius belongs the _Troades_ of Seneca. However this play may be criticized, as a study, like the others of the same author, for the closet only, and however it may betray the choice of Euripides for a model, it seems to be by some degrees better, in the conception and use of some famous Homeric characters, than any production since the time of Æschylus. The delineation of Andromache, if it has not ceased to be theatrical, is full at least of intense affection, all still centring in Hector. Ulysses, though reviled by that matron in her passionate grief, at least does the humane action of allowing her a little time to weep before the sentence of Calchas is executed upon Astyanax, and shows something too of the intellect of his antitype[1079]. Helen is exhibited not as vicious, but as wanting in firmness of character. She is driven by solicitation into the offence of alluring Polyxena to her immolation, under the name of a bridal with Neoptolemus; commences the performance of this false part with self-reproach, and then, challenged by Andromache, quits it and avows the truth[1080].

[1079] Seneca, Troades, 765. Ibid. 609 _et seqq._

[1080] Act iv.

But here we find a new form of departure from the ancient and genuine tradition. The principal motive, assigned by Seneca to the Greeks for putting Astyanax to death, is a terrified recollection of his father Hector, and a dread lest, upon attaining to manhood, he should avenge his own country against Greece. Again, Andromache, as it were, intimidates Ulysses, by invoking the shade of her husband:

Rumpe fatorum moras; Molire terras, Hector, ut Ulyssen domes! Vel umbra satis es[1081].

[1081] Ibid. 685.

A strange inversion of the relations drawn by Homer.

During all the time, however, in which we moved among the Greeks and among the earlier Romans, the corrupting process acted only upon each of the Homeric creations by itself, and there was no cause at work, which went to alter and pervert wholesale their collective relations to one another.

~_New relative position of Trojans and Greeks._~

But from the period when the Æneid appeared, or at least so soon as it became the normal poem of the Roman literature, a new cause was in operation which, without mitigating in any degree the previous depraving agencies, introduced a new set of them, and began to disturb the positions of the two grand sets of characters, Greek and Trojan, relatively to one another.

Virgil had sought to give to the Cæsars the advantage of a hold upon royal antiquity by fabulous descent. He had before him the choice between Greece and Troy, which alike and alone enjoyed a world-wide honour. He could not hesitate which to select. The Greek histories were too near and too well known. Besides, the Greek dynasties generally had dwindled before they disappeared. The splendour of the Pelopids in particular had been quenched in calamity and crime, and no other of the Homeric lines had attained to greatness in political influence or historic fame. But the family of Priam had fallen gloriously in fighting for hearth and altar: it had disappeared from history in its full renown, ‘_Magna_ mei sub terras ibat imago.’ Virgil chose too the house which was most ancient, and which traced link by link, as that of Agamemnon did not, a known and a named lineage up to Jupiter.

From this cause, both in the Æneid itself and afterwards, the Trojan characters were set upon stilts, and the Greeks were left to take their chance. Besides the loss of equilibrium, and the allowed predominance of coarser elements, which we have to lament in the Greek handling of them, we now see them pass, with the Romans, even into insignificance. The Diomed of Arpi is a person wholly unmarked; and he, like all the rest of his countrymen, is treated by Virgil simply as an instrument for obtaining enhanced effect, in the interest that he endeavours to concentrate on his Trojan characters; whereas the key to all Homer’s dispositions in the Iliad is to be found in the recollection, that he dealt with everything Trojan in the manner which was recommended and required by his Greek nationality. From this time forward, we find the palm both of valour and of wisdom clean carried over from the Greek to the Trojan side: the heroes of Homer remain, like unhewn boulders on the plain, crude, gross, and reciprocally almost indistinguishable masses of cunning or ferocity.

Virgil gave the tone in this respect, not only to the literature of ancient Rome, but to that of Christian Italy. For this reason, we may presume, among others, Orlando, the prime hero of the Italian romance, is, as I have before observed, modelled upon Hector. He is in many respects a very grand conception. Pulci, in describing his death, rises even to the sublime when he says there is

‘Un Dio, ed una Fede, ed uno Orlando.’

Which we may render in prose ‘One God, one way to God, one true type of manhood.’ Still it is remarkable that in Bojardo, as well as in Ariosto, the purer traces of the Homeric arrangement thus far at least remain, that Orlando, although he is the type of the Christian chivalry, yet, as he resembles Hector in piety and virtue, so likewise retains his likeness in this respect, that he is not the most formidable or valiant warrior of the poems. In Ariosto particularly, he is made inferior to Mandricardo, to Rodomonte, and most of all, but this for personal and prudential reasons, to Ruggiero. These three perhaps may be considered as being respectively the Ajax, the Diomed, and the Achilles of the _Orlando Furioso_.

And now the fancy for derivation from a Trojan stock, of which Virgil had set the fashion, was fully developed. Ariosto, at great length and in the most formal manner, establishes this lineage for his patrons, the family of Este. Others followed him. The humour passed even beyond the limits of Italy, into these then remote isles. A Trojan origin was ascribed to the English nation, and the authority of Homer, as to characters and history, was openly renounced by Dryden.

‘My faithful scene from true records shall tell How Trojan valour did the Greek excel: Your great forefathers shall their fame regain, And Homer’s angry ghost repine in vain[1082].’

[1082] Prologue to Dryden’s Troilus and Cressida; and again in the Epilogue spoken by Thersites:

‘You British fools, of the old Trojan stock.’

In Oxford, at the revival of classical letters, the name of _Trojans_ was assumed by those who were adverse to the new Greek studies, and who, having nothing but a name to rely on, doubtless chose the best they could.

~_The Imitations by Tasso._~

Throughout the ‘Jerusalem’ of Tasso, we find imitations which are invested with greater interest than the remote copies commonly in circulation, because, from the large infusion of many leading arrangements, copied from Homer, into the plot of the poem, we may conclude with reason that they were in all likelihood drawn immediately from the original. Some of these personages, too, are in so far closely imitated from Homer, that Tasso has spent little or nothing of his own upon them, but has simply equipped them with as much of the Homeric idea as he thought available.

The most successful among them is Godfrey, modelled, but also perhaps improved, upon Agamemnon, who is by no means in my view one of the greater characters of the Iliad, though he has been incautiously called by Mitford ‘ambitious, active, brave, generous, and humane[1083].’ Agamemnon has indeed that primary and fundamental qualification for his office, the political spirit, so to term it, and the sense of responsibility, which are so well developed in Godfrey; but it is doubtful whether he is entitled to be called either thoroughly brave, or at all generous or humane. Agamemnon’s character is admirably adapted to its place and purpose in the Iliad; in any more general view, Godfrey’s both stands higher in the moral sphere, and perhaps forms by itself a better poetic whole.

[1083] Hist. Greece, ch. i. sect. iv.

While the action of Achilles in the Iliad is apparently assigned to Rinaldo, there is room to doubt whether Tasso meant the person or character of his hero to carry corresponding marks of resemblance. In what may be called a by-place of his poem, he has made a passing attempt to reproduce both Achilles and Ulysses under the names of Argante and Alete, who appear as envoys from the Sultan of Egypt to the Frankish camp. For the benefit of the former, Tasso has translated the two lines that describe Achilles in Horace, and has added a spice of the Virgilian Mezentius:

Impaziente, inesorabil, fero, Nell’ arme infaticabil ed invitto, D’ ogni Dio sprezzatore, e chi ripone Nella spada sua legge e sua ragione[1084].

[1084] Gerus. ii. 59.

Accordingly, Argante proves to be the prime warrior on the Pagan side, and his character, described in these lines, is consistently carried through.

It is perhaps not to be regretted, that Tasso has left on record no other mark that Achilles was in his mind; for it is only the most debased edition of Achilles to whom Argante bears the slightest resemblance. The same is the case with Alete. Of humble origin, he rises to high honours by his powers of invention and of speech, and by the pliability of his character. Prompt in fiction, adroit in laying snares, a master of the disguised calumnies ‘_che sono accuse, e pajon lodi_[1085],’ he evidently recalls the caricatures, which for two thousand years had circulated under the name of the Homeric Ulysses. Thus Tasso’s acquaintance with the text, whatever it may have been, did not avail to open his eyes, darkened by corrupt tradition, or to bring him nearer to the truth as regarded those sovereign creations of the genius of Homer. So sure it is, both in this and in other matters, that when long-established falsehoods have had habitual and undisturbed possession of the public mind, they form an atmosphere which we inhale long before consciousness begins. Hence the spurious colours with which we have thus been surreptitiously imbued, long survive the power, or even the act, of recurrence to the original standards. For that recurrence rarely takes place with such a concentration of the mind as is necessary in order to the double process, first, of disentangling itself from the snares of a false conception, and secondly, of building up for itself, and this too from the very ground, a true one.

[1085] Gerus. ii. 58.

~_Shakespeare and Chaucer._~

In the Troilus and Cressida, of which Shakespeare had at least a share, we see, perhaps, one of the lowest and latest pictures of mere mediæval Homerism. The sun of the ancient criticism had set; that of the modern had not risen. It must be admitted that, in this play, although it shows the clear handiwork of Shakespeare in some splendid passages, and much of beautiful and of characteristic diction, we scarcely find one single living trait of the father of all bards preserved. Our incomparable dramatist, by no fault of his own, came in at the very end of that depraved lineage of copyists, for which progressive degeneracy is the necessary law. As is said[1086], he followed Lydgate; Lydgate drew from a Guido of Messina, who in the thirteenth century founded himself on Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius.

[1086] Stevens on Troilus and Cressida.

Before his time Chaucer, we may presume, had drawn from the same sources. Yet his poem of ‘Troilus and Cressida’ bears a token of the familiarity of the English mind with free institutions under the Plantagenets. The fidelity with which traditions are preserved, and also the facility with which they are revived, no doubt often depends more upon moral sympathies, than upon any cause operating simply through the intellect of man. Though dealing with un-Homeric persons, or events, or both, and copying again from copies probably very corrupt, yet Chaucer, as an Englishman accustomed to English ideas of government, brings out with much more freshness and freedom the notion of public deliberation in Troy, (nay, even the very word parliament is not wanting,) than do the poets of the literary age of Greece.

For which delibered was by Parliment For Antenor to yielden out Cresside, And it pronounced by the President Though that Hector may full oft praid; And finally, what wight that it withsaid It was for nought, it must ben, and should, For substaunce of the parliment it would[1087].

[1087] Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida, book iv.

But let us return to the so-called Shakespeare.

Thersites is converted into the modern fool. Diomed struts upon his toes, while in Homer his modesty among the Greeks is the peculiar ornament of his valour. Ajax, whom Homer has made lumpish and goodnatured, is full of haughty follies, the coxcomb of warriors; while the mere bulk which, combined with bravery and bluntness, formed his peculiar note, is made the distinctive characteristic of Achilles. It is still more grievous to find the relation of this hero to Patroclus degraded by foul insinuations, entirely foreign to the Iliad, to its author, and even to its age. Agamemnon is a mere stage king; and it can be no wonder that Nestor’s character, which requires a fine appreciation from its gently rounded construction, should have become thoroughly commonplace and vapid. The same lot befalls Ulysses, who is made to play quite a secondary part. Paris, without any mending of his moral qualities, is allowed to present a much more respectable figure: the Helen of Homer reproaches his cowardice; but here he says, ‘I would fain have armed to-day, but my Nell would not have it so[1088].’ She appears as the mere adulteress; and those, who remember how she is treated in Homer, will be able to measure the declension that time and unskilled hands had wrought, when they read the speech of Diomed describing her as follows:

[1088] Act iii. sc. 1.

She’s bitter to her country: hear me, Paris! For every false drop in her bawdy veins A Grecian’s life hath sunk: for every scruple Of her contaminated carrion weight A Trojan hath been slain: since she could speak She hath not given so many good words breath As, for her, Greeks and Trojans suffered death[1089].

[1089] Act iv. sc. 1.

The palm of pure heroism is now become so entirely Hector’s property, that Achilles only slays him by means of the swords of his Myrmidons, not by his own proper might; and that, too, does not happen until, wearied and disarmed, he applies to Achilles to forego his vantage[1090]: so that Ajax says with very great propriety indeed,

[1090] Troilus and Cressida, v. 9.

Great Hector was as good a man as he[1091].

[1091] Ibid. v. 10.

Shirley’s ‘Contention of Ajax and Ulysses,’ independently of other merits, deserves notice for a partial return towards just conception of the Homeric characters. Yet even here the claim of Ajax to the arms of Achilles is founded principally on the impeachment of Ulysses as a coward; and the reply of that chieftain rests much too exclusively on setting up his political merits and achievements, as if he were strong in no other title.

The description of Ajax may deserve to be quoted:

And now I look on Ajax Telamon, I may compare him to some spacious building; His body holds vast rooms of entertainment, And lower parts maintain the offices; Only the garret, his exalted head, Useless for wise receipt, is fill’d with lumber.

Dryden followed Shakespeare in the portion of this field which he had selected; and cast afresh the subject of Troilus and Cressida. He departed alike from Shakespeare and from Chaucer by making Cressida prove innocent, a supposition, says Scott, no more endurable in the preceding age, than one ‘which should have exhibited Helen chaste, or Hector a coward.’ All the incongruities of Shakespeare’s play are here reproduced, including the mixture of the modern element of love with the Greek and Trojan chivalry; Ajax and Achilles are depressed to one and the same low level.

Ajax and Achilles! two mudwalls of fool, That differ only in degrees of thickness[1092],

[1092] Dryden’s Troil. and Cress., act ii. sc. 3.

says Thersites; and Ulysses answers in a similar strain. Troilus fairly slays Diomed in single combat, and is then himself slain by Achilles in the crowd. Hector is dispatched, behind the scenes, under the swords of a multitude of men[1093].

[1093] Act v. sc. 2.

~_Racine’s Andromaque and Iphigénie._~

A short time before this play of Dryden’s, Racine had taken the characters of the Trojan war in hand. His ‘Andromaque’ and ‘Iphigénie,’ however, afford us no new lights, and might very well have been conceived by a person who had never read a line of Homer, though in various passages there are imitations which must have filtered from the Homeric text. He was content in general to copy the traditions as given by Euripides; and it may provoke a smile to read an apology of one of his editors, Boisjermain, for the manner in which Ulysses is handled in the ‘Iphigénie.’ Appearing, near the outset of the piece, as a personage of very high importance, he notwithstanding plays in the plot a part wholly insignificant, instead of assuming, as he does in Euripides, the important function of urging the slaughter of Iphigenia for the honour and benefit of Greece. Speaking of the critics who blame this arrangement, the editor says, they have failed to observe that Racine has adopted the jealousy and intrigues of Hermione as the prime movers against Iphigenia, and that these produce the same result as might otherwise (forsooth) have been brought about by the reasonings of Ulysses. The work of literary profanation could hardly be carried further: it was not to be thus capriciously bandied about from pillar to post, that Homer constructed his deathless masterpieces. In the ‘Andromaque,’ much as it is praised, we miss, still more egregiously than in the ‘Iphigénie,’ all the simplicity and grandeur of the Greek heroic age, and find ourselves environed by the infinite littleness of merely passionate personal intrigues, which have self only for their pole and centre. Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than to see these archaic Grecian characters dressed in the very last Parisian fashions, with speech and action accordingly. The total want of breadth and depth of character, and of earnestness and resolution, as opposed to mere violence, is such that at parts of the ‘Andromaque’ we are almost compelled to ask, whether we are reading a tragedy or a burlesque? As, for instance, when, with the Sixth Iliad yet lingering upon our mental vision, we hear Andromache say to her confidante,

Tu vois le pouvoir de mes yeux[1094];

[1094] Acte iii. sc. 5.

and when Hermione threatens her _pis-aller_ lover, Orestes, with respect to Pyrrhus,

S’il ne meurt aujourd’hui--je puis l’aimer demain[1095].

[1095] Acte iv. sc. iii.

It is here, too, that we see carried perhaps to the very highest point of exaggeration the misstatement of the relative martial merits and performances of Hector and his adversaries. The Greeks Hermione, herself a Spartan, describes as

Des peuples qui dix ans ont fui devant Hector; Qui cent fois, effrayés de l’absence de l’Achille, Dans leur vaisseaux brûlants ont cherché leur asyle; Et qu’on verroit encore, sans l’appui de son fils, Redemander Hélène aux Troyens impunis[1096].

[1096] Acte iii. sc. 3.

It was well that the handling of Homer should cease altogether for a time, when the characters and scenes belonging to his subject had become so thoroughly anti-Homeric, that they only falsified what they ought to have assisted to perpetuate. An interval has followed, during which they have been allowed to repose. It would be hazardous to conjecture, after the failures of so many ages, how far they can hereafter be satisfactorily reproduced. It has been reserved for Goethe, with his vigorous grasp of classical antiquity, to tread regions bordering upon that of the Iliad and Odyssey with the consciousness of a master’s power. In his ‘Iphigenie,’ for example, he has given to his scenes, events, and characters the tone and colouring, with which alone they ought to be invested. And, if the study and investigation of Homer shall henceforward be carried on with a zeal at all proportioned to the advantages of the present age, they cannot fail to accumulate materials, which it may be permitted us to hope that future genius will mould into such forms as, if only they are faithful to the spirit of their original, must alike abound in beauty, truth, and grandeur, and alike avail for the delight and the instruction of mankind.

* * * * *

~_Conclusion._~

We have now walked, in the train and in the light of the great Poet of antiquity, through a long, yet, so far at least as he is a party, not a barren circuit. We have begun with his earliest legends, faintly glimmering upon us from the distance of an hundred generations. We have seen the creations of his mind live and move, breathe and almost burn before us, under the power and magic of his art. We have found him to have shaped a great and noble mould of humanity, separate indeed from our experience, but allied through a thousand channels with our sympathies. We have seen the greatness of our race at one and the same time adorned with the simplicity of its childhood, and built up in the strength of its maturity. We have seen it unfold itself in the relations of society and sex, in peace and in war, in things human and things divine; and have examined it under the varied lights of comparison and contrast. We have seen how the memory of that great age, and of its yet greater Poet, has been cherished: how the trust which he bequeathed to mankind has been acknowledged, and yet how imperfectly it has been discharged. We have striven to trace the fate of some among his greatest creations; and having accompanied them down the stream of years even to our own day, it is full time to part. Nemesis must not find me[1097],

[1097] Il. i. 27.

ἢ νῦν δηθύνοντ’, ἢ ὕστερον αὖθις ἰόντα.

To pass from the study of Homer to the ordinary business of the world is to step out of a palace of enchantments into the cold grey light of a polar day. But the spells, in which this sorcerer deals, have no affinity with that drug from Egypt[1098], which drowns the spirit in effeminate indifference: rather they are like the φάρμακον ἐσθλὸν, the remedial specific[1099], which, freshening the understanding by contact with the truth and strength of nature, should both improve its vigilance against deceit and danger, and increase its vigour and resolution for the discharge of duty.

[1098] Od. iv. 220-6.

[1099] Od. x. 287.

Transcriber's Note

Page headers in the printed book have been converted to headings, and are marked with ~swung dashes~.

The map at the back of the book has been moved to accompany its description in the text.

The following apparent errors have been corrected:

p. 7 "ἀρχιτεκτονική[14]; and that ethical"--footnote marker added

p. 9 "βασίλεια" changed to "βασιλεία"

p. 20 "Βασιλεία" changed to "Βασίλεια"

p. 26 "αὐτός.[43]"--footnote marker added

p. 28 "no where" changed to "nowhere"

p. 31 "βασίλεια" changed to "βασιλεία"

p. 44 "πυγμαχίη ἀλεγείνη" changed to "πυγμαχίη ἀλεγεινὴ"

p. 52 "Iaolcus" changed to "Iolcus"

p. 61 "ἀεικές[126]·" changed to "ἀεικές[126],"

p. 62 "ἄγρος" changed to "ἀγρὸς"

p. 64 "κλεός" changed to "κλέος"

p. 70 "δημιόεργοι" changed to "δημιοεργοὶ"

p. 96 "βούλη" changed to "βουλὴ"

p. 96 "βούλη" changed to "βουλή"

p. 96 (note) "408-8" changed to "408-9"

p. 97 "ἀγόρη" changed to "ἀγορὴ"

p. 98 "ἦκε" changed to "ἧκε"

p. 100 "ἀγόρῃ" changed to "ἀγορῇ"

p. 103 (note) "24, 391" changed to "24. 391"

p. 104 "ἀγόρη" changed to "ἀγορὴ" (two instances)

p. 110 "μαλὰ" changed to "μάλα"

p. 117 "ἀγόρην" changed to "ἀγορὴν"

p. 119 "Coward that that" changed to "Coward that"

p. 121 "slighest" changed to "slightest"

p. 123 "render you”" changed to "render you’"

p. 131 "ἤνδανε" changed to "ἥνδανε"

p. 140 (note) "497" changed to "497."

p. 151 "Ἤως" changed to "Ἠὼς"

p. 153 (sidenote) "in Troas" changed to "in Troas."

p. 153 "Ἤφαιστος" changed to "Ἥφαιστος"

p. 162 (note) "Ibid" changed to "Ibid."

p. 172 "ἀγόρη" changed to "ἀγορὴ"

p. 172 "μαλὰ" changed to "μάλα"

p. 179 "the the same" changed to "the same"

p. 180 "δημιόεργος" changed to "δημιοεργὸς"

p. 211 "ἐκυρὴ" changed to "ἑκυρὴ"

p. 216 "αἶδος ἀγητόν" changed to "εἶδος ἀγητόν"

p. 226 "colleagues[483]." changed to "colleagues[483]:"

p. 236 "βούλη" changed to "βουλὴ"

p. 237 "ἀγόρῃ" changed to "ἀγορῇ"

p. 237 "ἀγόρας" changed to "ἀγορὰς"

p. 237 "βουλεύτης" changed to "βουλευτὴς"

p. 239 "twenty one" changed to "twenty-one"

p. 239 "βούλη" changed to "βουλὴ"

p. 239 "ἀγόρη" changed to "ἀγορὴ"

p. 246 "Ἀϊδὼς" changed to "Αἰδὼς"

p. 251 "rout" changed to "route"

p. 254 "arbitary" changed to "arbitrary"

p. 279 "ἀνέμοι" changed to "ἄνεμοι"

p. 287 "Ἤως" changed to "Ἠὼς"

p. 294 the footnote marker after "current of Yenikalè" had no matching footnote in the printed book; the footnote attached to the preceding quotation from Od. xi. 13 appears to correspond to this marker.

p. 320 "(7981)" changed to "(79-81)"

p. 330 "or Corfu" changed to "of Corfu"

p. 353 "(95-673)" changed to "(495-673)"

p. 355 "415" changed to "415."

p. 357 "εὖρεν" changed to "εὗρεν" (two instances)

p. 358 "141." changed to "141,"

p. 359 (sidenote) "xii, 239" changed to "xii. 239"

p. 363 "θωρρήσσεσθαι" changed to θωρήσσεσθαι

p. 375 "the speech" changed to "speech"

p. 384 (note) "persongaes" changed to "personages"

p. 393 "gallant just" changed to "gallant, just"

p. 410 "βῆ ῥ" changed to "βῆ ῥ’"

p. 413 "short," changed to "short."

p. 418 "Though" changed to "‘Though"

p. 430 "Τετρακὶς" changed to "Τετράκις"

p. 437 "ἑκατόμβοῖον" changed to "ἑκατόμβοιον"

p. 459 "and violet" changed to "and blue"

p. 465 "Od x." changed to "Od. x."

p. 483 "οὔρανος" changed to "οὐρανὸς"

p. 514 "thown" changed to "thrown"

p. 546 "exchantress" changed to "enchantress"

p. 578 "passage," changed to "passage"

p. 613 "Boisjermain,’" changed to "Boisjermain,"

Inconsistent spelling, hyphenation, italics and punctuation have otherwise been kept as printed.

The following are used inconsistently in the book:

ablebodied and able-bodied

abovenamed and above-named

anything and any thing

battlefield and battle-field

bonâ and bona

breastplate and breast-plate

commonplace and common-place

control and controul

cornfield and corn-field

farfetched and far-fetched

foulmouthed and foul-mouthed

fountainhead and fountain-head

later and latter

Outer Geography and Outer geography

pseudo-Ulysses and Pseudo-Ulysses

reenter and re-enter

reestablished and re-established

S.E. and S. E. (etc.)

semifabulous and semi-fabulous

tomorrow and to-morrow

watchfires and watch-fires