CHAPTER XIX

THE GREAT DISCREPANCIES

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 said to abound in these poems. "The only begetter" of the critical school which lacerates Homer was Wolf; but Wolf's suspicions were not originally roused by inconsistencies which shocked him in the poems. The poems, he said, had _unus color_, "one harmonious colouring." But if that be true, and it is true, how was this harmony preserved in a poem which, as Wolf decided from _a priori_ considerations, cannot be the work of one man or one age? Now the work of many men in many ages inevitably _must_ be a chaos, not a harmony, and so Wolf's followers have devoted their lives to the hunt for discrepancies and inaccuracies fit to support their preconceived opinion.

Meanwhile Wolf started, not from discrepancies which could only exist in a mosaic of the lays of several distinct ages, but from _a priori_ reflections on the nature of the age and civilisation in which the epics began. Of that age and civilisation we have now some knowledge. Wolf had none. He reckoned that, granting the barbarism of the unknown age as he conceived it, and the abysm of time through which the poems passed before they reached the hands of competent grammarians,--the Alexandrians,--the texts of epics must necessarily have suffered terribly. If so, there necessarily must be many fatal discrepancies, --unless, indeed, the supposed Editorial Committee at Athens (600-530 B.C.) and the Alexandrian editors later harmonised the whole into the actual _unus color_. For the whole _did_ seem harmonious to Wolf, with merely a few roughnesses, and passages suspected even by the ancient grammarians. But Wolf's successors, hypnotised by his original _suggestion_ that, in the circumstances of the case, the poems _must_ be by many hands, have felt that, if so, they _must_ contain many fatal discrepancies, have hunted for, and have, of course, found them. Thus an unscientific and illogical method has long prevailed.

Indeed, a method less scientific and less logical cannot be imagined. Critics already prepossessed by the suggestion of Wolf in favour of multiplex authorship, sedulously hunt, we repeat, through the poems for discrepancies in support of their case. They do what men have never done to any other long poetic work of imagination, they seek, with microscopic minuteness of inquiry, for inconsistencies in a fictitious narrative, composed not for analytic readers, but for a circle of listeners. When they find--or much more frequently imagine that they have found--such discrepancies, they proclaim them as proofs of multiplex authorship. Never have they as eagerly and carefully sought for such errors in long imaginative tales that are certainly known to be the work of one hand. Scientific method imperatively demands this investigation; but the critics do not listen. They have studied a work of pure literature with the desire to prove their own foregone conclusion, that the authorship of the _Iliad_ is multiplex, and that it is the growth of several disparate ages.

When archaeological discoveries during the last forty years had thrown some light on the pre-Homeric age, then the material objects found were raked and sifted for proof of the foregone conclusion--the Epic is a mosaic of four or five centuries. We have examined the results of the archaeological inquisition into discrepancies in religion, custom, armour, tactics, and so forth. We try to prove that, in all such details, the epics are the work of a single moment of culture; and again, that no other work of the Greek genius, and no material relics of other moments of Greek culture, represent the religion, polity, armour, costume, morality, and taste of Homer. Not in these fields of ascertainable facts can the proof that the Epics are by many men in many ages be discovered.

Except in the general conclusion that the _Iliad_ is a mosaic, produced (most of them think) by a long series of Ionian additions to an Achaean "kernel," there is no harmony among critics. For example, English savants usually, like Mr. Leaf, make no objections to the unity of the _Odyssey_. They do not read it in the same spirit, or torment it in the same style, as they rack and lacerate the _Iliad_. With Wolf, they recognise its unity, though it arose in the same dark age, and passed through the same adventures as the _Iliad_. Yet in Germany the _Odyssey_ is even more and more variously lacerated than the _Iliad_.

Turning to the most recent English book on the subject, _Homer and the Iliad_, by Miss Stawell (1909), we find that while she rejects 6,000 out of 15,000 lines as non-original, she cannot believe in the critics' "original _Menis_" of only some 2500 lines. She, like the rest, believes (what Wolf did not believe) "that it is quite possible to disentangle the original core of the _Iliad_ from the present mass." But of her _Iliad_, her "core" is by far the greater part, not a poor sixth. I am tempted to quote a long passage from Miss Stawell, because it seems to contain sound sense, and to be guided by fine literary appreciation.

"The reconstructions actually proposed seem open to serious criticisms. It appears to me that certain important considerations have been overlooked, and that in their light we should discover the original to be far more like the _Iliad_ as we have it now than has usually been supposed.

In the first place, much of the traditional poem has scarcely had a fair chance at the hands of modern critics. Scenes where the drift and bearing are not obvious at once have been cut away without further thought. But a great dramatic poem does not give up all its secrets at once. There are subtle harmonies that can only be realised clearly after long and sympathetic study: the work on Shakespeare might suffice to prove this. And Homer, like Shakespeare, can put in very important points very quietly. We may miss them, and that is our loss. The poet will not over-emphasise them for our sakes. Therefore it is not enough to ask ourselves whether such and such a passage could be cut out and the story still hang together; we must ask, further, whether the omission really leaves the figures as solid, the story as enthralling, the background as grand, as before. I feel sure that the full consequences of their own excisions have not always been noticed by the critics who have made them. They cannot entirely strip away the memory of the "later accretions"; there are even instances of their praising the recovered "original" for effects which could not have been obtained without the "later interpolations."

Secondly, a theory of "accretions" that is formed to account for glaring discrepancies brings, or should bring, with it a clear presumption against a certain type of excision. _To cut away not only individual scenes, but all allusions to such, however numerous, however far apart, however skilfully inwoven with their context, on the plea that they were added in order to harmonise old and new, is surely to prove too much. If the need for adjustment was felt to this extent, if the adjustment was done with this delicate care, how did it ever happen that the gross blots were allowed to enter or remain?_ That many scholars do overlook this difficulty will be shown in detail later--for instance, in the matter of Achilles' armour. The fact is that, on any theory, it must be admitted that the _Iliad_, as we have it, shows, again and again, the marks of carelessness at the joints. Whole scenes and passages which do not cohere with the rest have got into the poem somehow, and have been left there. This is perfectly intelligible on a theory of loose additions, afterwards piously preserved in one block without any attempt at elaborate harmonising between old and new; but a critical theory that assumes throughout the growth and the editing, _a constant union of gross carelessness and minute care, is liable to just the same objection as the old theory of a great but negligent poet. It will not stand the test of thinking out in detail_.

I have frequently insisted (in _Homer and the Epic,_ 1893) on the points in the italicised passages. In the present book, which merely tries to prove that the poems are the work of a single pre-ionic age, I cannot again examine the numerous allegations of glaring discrepancies in the _Iliad_, such as no one sane poet could commit. As has been often proved, notably by Colonel Mure, the greatest fictitious narratives, known to be by a single hand in each case, contain discrepancies at least as remarkable as any that can be proved to occur in Homer. I have also argued that many of Homer's supposed faults exist only in the imagination of the learned. I cannot then, again, examine all, or even many of the imaginary inconsistencies: three of the most glaring must suffice. But I take advantage of a critique by a distinguished scholar, Mr. Verrall, to meet certain preliminary objections which he states. In _The Quarterly Review_,[1] Mr. Verrall writes concerning me:

"But when we turn to other parts, equally essential, of his argument for single authorship, our feeling always is that, in reality, he begs the question. He maintains, if we do not mistake, that there is no difficulty in supposing the _Iliad_, as we have it, to be the work of one poet; that the alleged dislocations, wanderings, inconsistencies of the story, so far as they exist at all, are nothing more than, from common experience, we might naturally expect in a single author. When he comes to establish this in detail, his procedure is to take the allegations separately, and to ask, in each case, whether it is inconceivable that the discrepancy (if allowed) is due to oversight on the part of the single composer. On these lines we may make short work. Hardly any error whatever of this sort is inconceivable, and hardly any, by itself, can be improbable. It would be nothing at all that, once in a way, Homer should forget that his Greek camp had a wall. We could scarcely call it inconceivable that, having himself described the 'Sending of Patroclus' with one set of circumstances, he should make his Thetis relate it with a totally different set. If such flaws were few and miscellaneous, and if there were external testimony to the single authorship, we would pass them without a murmur. Mr. Lang always does argue on this head as if they were few, as if they had no apparent relation to one another, and, above all, as if single authorship were a _datum_. Any explanation will serve where none is necessary; and consequently Mr. Lang's explanations often seem to us hardly serious.

"We will give one specimen. In Book ix. the Greek camp has a wall (vv. 69-87). At the beginning of Book x., Agamemnon at night, looking from his tent on the plain, sees the 'many watch-fires' of the Trojans, who, on this particular night, are camping out before the city on the same plain. The wall is gone, as it does go and come throughout the fighting scenes of the _Iliad_. Nor is this a momentary inadvertence; for through the whole of Book x., though its story is such that the wall, if there, must be visible to the narrator (so to say) constantly, though the camp boundary is passed several times, never is there trace of anything but a ditch. We say that, for a composition meant to be continuous as it now stands, this is a most uncommon and surprising phenomenon; nor is it intelligible to us that any one so far should disagree. Mr. Lang, in a special chapter on Book x., disposes of the matter thus:

"'Agamemnon hears the music of the joyous Trojan pipes and flutes, and sees the reflected glow of their camp fires, we must suppose, for he could not see the fires themselves through the new wall of his own camp, as critics very wisely remark' (_Homer and his Age,_ p. 260).

"'We must suppose.' But how can we suppose anything of the sort? '_Many_ fires' are not a glow. If the point were merely that the wall is ignored in this passage, let us say simply that the poet forgot it. But the point is, that the wall is ignored consistently throughout the Book, and that, all about the poem, similar traces of ignorance respecting this vitally important object are found from time to time. If that is a phenomenon commonly observed in narratives known to be from one hand, or otherwise designed for continuity, let some of these narratives be produced for comparison."

Mr. Verrall argues, we see, that I ask, in each case, "is this discrepancy too bad for a single author?" but neglect the cumulative weight of _all_ the discrepancies. That is not, consciously, my method; that fallacy I seek to avoid. I try to prove that most of the discrepancies which I examine are not really discrepancies at all--have _no_ weight,--and a mass of such imponderable objections has no cumulative ponderosity. I do argue that the actual inconsistencies are comparatively few, not more or worse than the similar inconsistencies in the _Aeneid_, or _Don Quixote_.

But Mr. Verrall thinks that my explanations, or defences, of the alleged discrepancies "often seem hardly serious." He gives one example of my deplorable flippancy from _Iliad_, Book x. Now I readily grant to Mr. Verrall that I had no right to explain Agamemnon's view, from bed, in his hut, of the Trojan camp-fires beyond the wall of the Greek camp as merely the glow in the sky caused by these fires.[2] As Mr. Leaf puts it, "the poet does not seem to have a very vivid picture of the situation." In bed, in a hut (x. 11-14), Agamemnon could only see the Trojan fires on the rising ground beyond the wall, _and_ the Greek ships, "in his mind's eye."

But Mr. Verrall proceeds to give a fine example of what I call "an imaginary discrepancy." "The wall is gone.... Nor is this a momentary inadvertence; for through the whole of Book x., though its story is such that the wall, if there, must be visible to the narrator (so to say) constantly, though the camp boundary is passed several times, never is there trace of anything but a ditch."

This is merely an inadvertent misstatement of fact. Not only the new fosse round the Greek camp, but the gates of the new wall are mentioned. No wall, no gates!

Let us examine the history of wall, gates, and ditch. "In Book ix. 69-87 the Greek camp has a wall." The nature of the wall is explained by Nestor in Book vii. 337-343. The wall-making is similarly described in 437-441. The wall has (1) towers, (2) gates (or one gate), "that through them (or it) may be a way for chariot-driving," and (3) there is "a deep foss hard by to be about it," with a palisade, to "hinder the horses and footmen" of the Trojans.[3]

Now, even if only the fosse were mentioned in Book x., that fosse is part of the fortification first made and mentioned in Books vii. viii. and ix. 87, 88, where the advanced guard takes position "between the fosse and the wall." Precisely there, Agamemnon, in Book x. 126, 127, expects to find the advanced guard. The poet, in Book x., has certainly not forgotten the fortification of Books vii. viii. ix., for he does not merely, as Mr. Verrall declares, mention the fosse, though why does he do so, if he forgets the wall which was made at the same time? By a negative hallucination Mr. Verrall has failed to see that he also mentions the gate. "We will find the advanced guard _before the gate_," says Agamemnon (x. 126).

Now no mortal can assert that when a poet mentions the gate, he mentions nothing but the fosse! Both fosse and gates are _new_: the gates are a necessary part of the wall; and only a critic on the search for a discrepancy could overlook the fact that the poet of Book x. knows all about the fortification of Books vii. viii. ix. The poet has no occasion to say "the gates _in the wall_"; the gates could be nowhere else. Had there been a wall with no gates, which is absurd, the poet would have had to make the princes scale the wall; and, had he known nothing about the new fortification, he could not have mentioned the new gates and the new fosse.

I repeat, in ix. 65, 88, Nestor bids the advanced post take position; and they do so, "betwixt fosse and wall"; and there, "before the gate" (x. 126, 127), Agamemnon expects to find them. The "discrepancy" is due to Mr. Verrall's imagination.

Before accusing Homer of extraordinary discrepancies, we ought to read him with ordinary care.

Knowing the new fosse, and the new gate, both of them unheard of before Book vii., the poet is beyond doubt acquainted with the whole of the new fortification. "The analytic reader," for whom Homer did not sing, catches him at another place. How did Dolon expect to creep among the host, when there was a wall? How was he to enter? We can only reply that if he found the advanced post drowsy, he must enter in the darkness, by climbing up "where the wall was built lowest." The host was suspected to be meditating flight, and, in their confusion, _keeping no guard_, so Hector fancied (x. 310-312).

Mr. Verrall says that in Book x. "the wall is gone, as it does go and come throughout the fighting scenes of the _Iliad_." I have carefully re-read Books xi.-xv., in which the wall is of importance, and find no moment in which the wall is absent when, if present, it ought to be mentioned. It is true that Mr. Leaf infers that it was absent in a portion of the poem earlier than our present _Iliad_, but that is merely a conjecture of his own. He also says (Introduction to Book xiii.) that the _Aristeia of Idomeneus_ (xiii. 29-518) "altogether ignores the wall." The whole passage is occupied with fighting _within_ the wall, which the Trojans have entered _en masse_. The reader or listener knows that, and the poet has no sort of reason for mentioning the wall. But he remembers that the Trojan chariots, except that of Asius, stopped and were arrayed at the ditch, so (xiii. 535, 536), the wounded Deiphobus, like the stricken Hector later, is carried out of the fight "to the swift horses that waited for him behind the battle, with the charioteer and chariot," and is conveyed to Troy. The wall is never forgotten, though the description of simultaneous confused fighting at several points is not a model of lucid military history. So much for "the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible" wall. The alleged discrepancy in Book x., insisted on by Mr. Verrall, is an imaginary discrepancy; a thousand such would, collectively, be imponderable.

We now turn to what Mr. Leaf calls "a crying contradiction, a contradiction perhaps the most patent in the _Iliad_, which can in no way be palliated." Mr. Leaf's point is that "the words (and acts) of Diomedes in vi. 123-143" are "in crying contradiction" with "the words of Athene in v. 124-132, and the subsequent victories of Diomedes over the gods."[4] In fact, Diomedes, in _Iliad_, vi. 123-129, doubts whether Glaucus, whom he has not encountered before, be a man or a god, and says that he will not, if the stranger be a god, fight against him. He then adds (130-143) the story of the punishment of Lycurgus by Zeus, when Lycurgus had beaten the Maenads, and driven Dionysus to seek refuge with Thetis. The whole passage is easily detachable, and may, Mr. Leaf says, be the work of "some pious revivalist; the Bacchic worship was unknown to the Achaean heroes." We cannot be certain that they did not know the _Thracian_ myth which Diomedes tells: this they might know, though they did not worship Dionysus, who, like Demeter, is scarcely alluded to in the _Iliad_[5]

But the point is, are the words of Diomedes to Glaucus in crying contradiction with the words of Athene in v. 124-132, and with Diomedes' "subsequent victories over the gods?" First, he had but one such victory; encouraged by Athene, he wounded--the harmless Aphrodite! We quote the words of Athene to Diomedes: "Moreover, I have taken from thine eyes the mist that erst was on them, that thou mayest well discern both god and man. Therefore, if any god come hither to make trial of thee, fight not thou face to face with any of the immortal gods; save only if Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, enter into the battle, her smite thou with the keen bronze."

The subsequent events are _(Iliad_, v. 330-340), Diomede scratched the hand of Aphrodite with his spear-point. Much encouraged, he tries to spear Aeneas, over whom Apollo has spread his arms. Apollo threatens and terrifies him (434-442). Diomedes has now had enough of braving the gods. He gives way; and bids his men give way when he sees Ares with Hector (601-606). But Hera and Athene have the command of Zeus to stop the fighting of Ares (765, 766), and Athene bids Diomedes attack the god. He refuses, "You bade me fight no god but Aphrodite" (819-824). Athene thrusts away Diomedes' charioteer, drives his chariot against Ares, grasps and turns the spear of that god, and _herself_ drives the spear of Diomedes into the belly of the god, and withdraws the spear (825-859).

This is no victory of Diomedes', and he knows it. It is, says Homer, Athene who has stopped Ares in his manslayings (see 909). Athene and Hera now leave the field; Ares has fled, no god is any longer present. It is after the retiral of all the gods, notably of her who had given him, "for this occasion only," the gift of knowing god from man, that Diomedes doubts whether Glaucus, whom he has not encountered before, be divine or human. Having been terrified by Apollo, and remembering Athene's command to fight no god but Aphrodite, Diomedes is naturally cautious, in view of a splendid unknown antagonist, and asks, "Who of mortals, sir, art thou, for never have I seen thee before? thou alone darest to meet my deadly spear. If thou art an immortal, then I will not fight with the gods of heaven."[6]

The gift of Athene, the discerning of gods from men, has lapsed when it ceased to serve her turn, now that her task is ended. She has fulfilled the command of Zeus, has stopped Ares, and has retired to Olympus; while no god is left in the field to be discerned. To this is reduced, when we look at the facts, "a contradiction perhaps the most patent in the _Iliad_, and one which can in no way be palliated." The audience of Homer would understand, naturally, but "the analytic reader," in hot search of discrepancies, credits Diomedes with "victories over gods" which he did not gain, and overlooks his caution, and his obedience to the command of Athene. What must the other contradictions be when this is "perhaps the most patent"?

A yet more scandalous discrepancy in the _Iliad_ remains to be noticed. "It is a contradiction," says Mr. Leaf with manly indignation, "at the very root of the story, as flagrant as if Shakespeare had forgotten in the Fifth Act of _Macbeth_ that Duncan had been murdered in the second."[7] If Shakespeare had made that error, and, like Fielding, had told his manager that the public would never notice it; like Fielding, when he heard the hisses and catcalls, he would probably have murmured, "Damn them, they _have_ found it out!" But though Homer's error was as flagrant as the suggested resuscitation of the gracious Duncan, for three thousand years nobody "found it out." It was discovered by Mr. Grote, an excellent banker, but no great poetical critic; and by a German who, in search of discrepancies, had been "nosing the body" of Homer "with passionate attention."

Now an error cannot be blazingly flagrant, nor vociferously crying, if it escapes a hundred generations of hearers, readers, Pisistratean "recensors," and Alexandrian and modern Editors. Moreover, if the Greek recensors laboured to harmonise old and new by skilfully interwoven cross-references (and the critics tell us that they did), "how," as Miss Stawell asks, "did it ever happen that the gross blots were allowed to enter or remain?" That _this_ blunder was allowed to remain, unnoted and unrebuked, till about 1840 A.D., proves beyond contradiction that, at least, it is not "flagrant"; does not resemble the appearance of Duncan in Act V. of _Macbeth_, when "after life's fitful fever he sleeps well," in Act III. Mr. Leaf only shows us how far a passion for discovering discrepancies, if not early checked, may hurry the learned.

Again, if Homer's blunder were as glaring as the forgetfulness by the author of _Macbeth_ that Duncan had been murdered, it is unlikely that, by "Bergk, Hentze, Monro, and Lang," to quote Mr. Leaf, Homer would be pronounced innocent.[8]

We have "weakened some of the chief arguments stated by Grote," that is admitted, "yet their general force is unshaken." How this can possibly be, if Grote's chief arguments are sensibly weakened, does not appear; for the general force must be shaken when some of the chief arguments which make up that force are impaired.

Grote's chief argument is that the poet who composed Books xi.-xvi. "could not have had present to his mind the main event of the ninth Book,--the out-pouring of profound humiliation by the Greeks, and from Agamemnon specially, before Achilles, coupled with formal offers to restore Briseis, and pay the amplest compensation for past wrong. The words of Achilles (not less than those of Patroclus and Nestor), in the eleventh and the following Books, plainly imply that the humiliation of the Greeks before him, for which he thirsts, is as yet future and contingent."[9]

Here Grote and his followers appear to forget that, from the very first, in Book i., the heart of Achilles was set on _revenge_, and on one definitely stated form of revenge, and _not_ on atonement. On this point Grote had not Book i. present in _his_ mind: he says that Achilles asks no more from Thetis, nor Thetis anything more from Zeus, than that "the Greeks may be brought to know the wrong they have done, and be humbled in the dust in expiation of it." This is an egregiously absurd misstatement! It seems that the great historian forgot to verify his reference, with the usual result, a misstatement of fact as the basis of a charge of discrepancy. What Achilles bids Thetis ask from Zeus is, "_hem the Achaeans among their ships' sterns about the bay_, that they may make trial of their king...."[10] Achilles does desire the humiliation of Agamemnon, but that humiliation must arise from a massacre of the Greeks _among their ships' sterns_; and from their prospect of annihilation.

Already, to Agamemnon, during the quarrel in Book i., Achilles had said that his day will come "when multitudes fall dying before manslaying Hector."[11] In the state of affairs in Book ix. no great multitudes have fallen before Hector. Zeus again, in Book viii., promises to fulfil the desire of Achilles to the letter. "Headlong Hector shall not refrain from battle till that Peleus' son shall have arisen beside the ships, on that day _when these shall fight amid the sterns in most grievous stress around Patroclus fallen. Such is the doom of heaven_."[12] Achilles cannot be reconciled and take arms till the doom is fulfilled.

Not only does Homer keep the prayer of Achilles in Book i. constantly in view till it is accomplished in Book xv., but after its accomplishment he returns to and insists on the fulfilment by Zeus of this rash prayer. The whole burden of the _Iliad_ rests on this prayer of Book i., and in its disastrous consequences not only to the host, but to Achilles. In Book xvi. 97-100, a part of the _genuine kernel_, Homer makes the last words that Achilles ever spoke to Patroclus express a fury of revenge which Nemesis could not pardon.

"Would, O Father Zeus, and Athene, and Apollo, would that not one of all the Trojans might escape death, nor one of the Argives, but that we twain might avoid destruction, that alone we might undo the sacred coronal of Troy."

This is the very extreme of pride and passion, an extreme which Greek thought regarded as entailing its own inevitable punishment. Achilles, when the news of the death of Patroclus reaches him, recognises this. Thetis says, "My child, why weepest thou?... One thing at least hath been accomplished of Zeus according to the prayer thou madest ... that the sons of the Achaeans should all be pent in at the ships, through lack of thee, and should suffer hateful things."

Achilles answers, "My mother, that prayer hath the Olympian accomplished for me. But what delight have I therein, since Patroclus is dead?"[13] Observe that the critics, and even Miss Stawell, think Achilles too sweet to refuse atonement in Book ix. There is not much sweetness of soul in his furious desire for the complete destruction of the Greeks in his very last words to his friend in Book xvi.

Thus, from first to last, Achilles asks nothing less than what Zeus, in Book viii., just prior to the impeached Book ix., declares that he shall receive,--the massacre of the Achaeans among the sterns of their ships. Grote has misstated the facts of the case. He represents that the Embassy of Book ix. offered Achilles all his heart's desire. This they did not and could not do, they had not been slain among the ships; they had not been put in deadly stress; and Achilles would be inconsistent if he accepted atonement before he got revenge, before instant ruin was upon the Achaeans. "Agamemnon," says Achilles in