The World of Homer

As much of this treatise is occupied with criticism of the views of the most modern representatives of the Wolfian school, I ought, in fairness, to state my own general conclusi...

Every reader of the _Iliad_ perceives that the poet knows an immense mass of legend and tradition. Thus, like Shakespeare, and our great masters of fiction, Fielding, Scott, Tha...

Few subjects are more recalcitrant to lucidity of treatment than the so-called "Cyclic poems." On the various meanings of the word "Cyclic" as applied to poetry by the ancients,...

As the following remarks are inevitably full of minute and complex detail, it may be well to say briefly what I wish to prove. According to the view of many critics, German and...

the Achaean wall where it was lowest, near the ships of Aias and the dead Protesilaus. They are brigaded with Locrian light-armed archers, the Boeotians, Phthians, and Epeians o...

The standing argument against the old belief in the unity of authorship of the Epics, has for several generations been based on the discrepancies and inconsistencies which are s...

We must be very anxious to find "late" things in Homer, if we say that the passage about Dionysus in _Iliad_, vi., "dates from the very last part of the Epic period," namely, pe...

have scratched her hand, while caressing some Achaean woman, on her _περόνη_, the term "_safety_ pin," or _fibula,_ does not apply. We think rather of one of the long sharp stil...

Homeric religion is so advanced that we cannot expect to learn from it anything about the earliest origins, or to illustrate it from what we know of the most primitive forms of...

The Aegean civilisation, till its last age of decadence in art, knew nothing about the use of iron for weapons or tools: at least no such relics have been discovered. Homer, on...

Homer is not a scientific military historian, but a poet. Consequently, in his accounts of pitched battles, he naturally dwells on the prowess of famous individuals in the singl...

"Homer's world," "the world that Homer knew," these are familiar phrases; and criticism is apt to tell us that they are empty phrases. Nevertheless when we use them we think of...

There is one hero of the Cyclic Ionian poems, at least of the _Cypria_, whose story illustrates the depth and width of the gulf which severs Ionia from the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_...

As Homer conceives the period of his heroes, they live in a perfectly well known stage of society, illustrated in later northern Europe by the French _Chansons de Geste_; by the...

Homer conceives of his heroes as living in an age indefinitely remote: their epoch "has won its way to the mythical." They are often sons or grandsons of Gods: the Gods walk the...

The mixed multitude of Ionian settlers in Asia must have had mixed traditions, not the legends of Athens alone, but those of the towns of the Calaurian amphictyony, and of many...

Though Homer describes a military aristocracy he is remarkable for his love of peace and hatred of war. His war-god, Ares, is a bully and a coward; his home is Thrace; and he is...

The most perplexing questions in Homer's picture of life are connected with the disposal of the dead. It is just here, where archaeology as a rule gives the surest evidence from...

On the fringe of the horizon, in Homer's day as in our own, always hung the cloud of war. In war, men were as cruel as they have usually been. A successful siege of a city invol...

In all modern times Homer has been admired for his noble, tender, and chivalrous sense of what is due to women; for his pictures of the perfect mother, Thetis; the perfect wife,...

In religion, as in all things, the Homeric world at certain points stands apart from the worlds that preceded and followed it. The Aegeans probably did not give _divine_ honours...

As to the evolution of feminine costume, I speak with the greatest diffidence. Homer's women wore the loose brooched peplos, with brooch, pin, clasp, and over it the _pharos_. W...

yielded in Book ix., the prophecy of Zeus in Book viii. would have been falsified;[15] the doom of Zeus would have been frustrated; the bitter word of Achilles would have been b...

The Homeric idea of the family is symbolised in the wedding bed which Odysseus fashioned with his own hands, making it fast to the trunk of a living tree that it might never be...

leaves Troy, in the _Odyssey,_ are also European, as were probably, in origin, the people of Troy itself. European are the Paeonians, the Paphlagonians, again, are Asiatic; the...

very _clou_ of the _Iliad_, without which Achilles is not himself, and the _Achilleid_ would have been a purposeless tragedy. This opinion is not based on aesthetic and literary...

ships, but till Hector approaches his own ships he will not fight in person. So he had vowed in Book ix. There is stern consistency, not discrepancy; but Grote finds inconsisten...

body; but all these things are spoken of only in connection with the passion of Achilles. Customs almost forgotten revive or are reinvented in the mind of the hero, extravagance...

In _Od_. i. 278, ii. 196, Telemachus is bidden to take his mother to her father, "they will give the marriage feast and ἀρτυνέουσιν ἔεδνα, many such as should follow with a dear...

[11] These various views are held, or have been held, by Mr. Evans, Mr. Ridgeway, Dr. Mackenzie, and others (_Monthly Review_, 1901, pp. 121-131; _Times_, Oct. 31, 1905; _Annual...

"_till he have paid me back all the bitter despite_."[14] A payment in gold and lands and women Achilles disdains: he will not take it till he has a payment in revenge. This he...

While the ancients believed that the Homeric poems were composed in the Greek settlements on the Asian coast, and brought from Ionia to Hellas, modern critics often hold that th...