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THE WORLD OF HOMER

by

ANDREW LANG

With Illustrations







Longmans, Green, and Co.
39 Paternoster Row, London
New York, Bombay, and Calcutta
1910



[Illustration: Moulded Pithos from Sparta. Illustrates 7th-6th Century
Armour, with Thigh-Piece From _British School at Athens_, vol. xii.
(_Macmillan Co. Ltd_.)]




PREFACE


In 1895 I published _Homer and the Epic_ (pp. 424), containing a
criticism of Wolf's theory, if theory it can be called, which is
the mother of modern Homeric criticism. I analysed, book by book,
the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, observing on the modern ideas of
interpolation and the modern objections to many scores of passages
which, as a rule, I defended from charges of "lateness" and
inconsistency.

I added chapters on the Lost Epics of Greece, on Archeology, and on the
early Epic poetry of other ages and peoples which offers analogies,
more or less imperfect, with Homer.

On the whole my conclusions were identical with those of Signor
Comparetti, in his preface to his learned book on the Finnish
_Kalewala_. He says:

"The anatomical and conjectural analysis which has been applied so
often and so long ... to the Homeric poems and other national epics,
proceeds from an universal abstract principle, which is correct, and
from a concrete application of that principle, which is imaginary and
groundless."

The true principle, recognised since the end of the eighteenth century,
separates the "personal" and learned Art Epics, like the _Æneid_ and
the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, from those which belong to the period of
spontaneous epic production, "when Folk-singers fashioned many epic
lays of small or moderate compass." (Perhaps Folk-singers is hardly the
right term. Such songs of exploits as the Borderers "made themselves,"
as Bishop Lesley said in 1578, were not "epic lays," but ballads like
"Jock o' the Side," and "Archie o' Cafield," and "Johnie Cock," despite
its name the most romantic of all.)

"These epic lays were called 'national' or 'popular,' not only by
virtue of their contents, sentiment, and audience, but mainly because
the poetry which takes this form is natural, collective, popular, and
hence 'national' in its origin and development." (By "collective"
I understand the author to mean, not that a whole country-side
automatically and collectively bellows out a new ballad, but that the
original author uses traditional formulae in verse wherever he can,
and that his ballad is altered in the course of recitation by others,
so that any version which has been obtained from recitation is, in
fact, one of many variants which have arisen in course of time and
recitation.)

"The baseless application of this principle is to regard the national
poems not as creations of a single poet, but as put together out of
shorter pre-existing lays (either by a single person at one time, or
by several in succession), until the final fashioning of the poem. And
this process is conceived of as a mere stringing together, without any
sort of fusion, so that a critical philologist, thanks to his special
sharpness and by aid of certain criteria, would be in a position to
recognise the joinings, and to recover the lays out of which the poem
has been made up.

"With this preconceived idea people have gone on anatomising the Epics;
from Lachmann to the present day they have not desisted, although so
far no positive satisfactory and harmonious results have been won. This
restless business of analysis, which has lasted so long, impatient of
its own fruitlessness, yet unconvinced of it, builds up and pulls down,
and builds again, while its shifting foundations, its insufficient and
falsely applied criteria, condemn it to remain fruitless, tedious, and
repulsive. The observer marks with amazement the degree of intellectual
shortsightedness produced by excessive and exclusive analysis. The
investigator becomes a sort of man-microscope, who can see atoms but
not bodies; motes, and these magnified, but not beams."

Comparetti proceeds: "No doubt before the epic there existed the
shorter lays; but what is the relation of the lays to the epic? Is the
epic a mere material synthesis of lays, or does it stand to them as
a thing higher in the scale of poetic organisms,--does it move on a
loftier plane, attaining higher, broader conceptions, and a new style
appropriate to these?" Notoriously the epic infinitely transcends in
scale, breadth of conception, and grandeur of style any brief popular
lays of which we have knowledge. It never was made by stringing _them_
together.

So much for the little lay theory. "But there remains the nucleus
theory" (the theory of "the kernel"), "for example of an original
Achilleis" (the _Menis_) expanded by self-denying poets into an
_Iliad_. Comparetti does not believe that a poet would fashion lays "to
be inserted in a greater work already constructed by others, nor that
he would have done this with so much regard for other men's work, and
with such strict limitation of his own, that the modern erudite can
recognise the joinings, and distinguish the original kernel and each of
the later additions."

Here Wolf anticipated Comparetti, he did not believe that the additions
could be detected.

But Comparetti does not reckon with his host. The astute critics tell
us that the later poets did _not_ compose "with so much respect for
other men's work"; far from that, the poet of _Iliad_ ix. calmly turned
the work of the poet of _Iliad_ xvi. into nonsense, we are told (see
_infra_, "The Great Discrepancies"). Again, the critics will say that a
later poet did not "fashion lays to be inserted in another man's work."
He merely fashioned lays. Much later other men, the Pisistratean, or
Solonian, or Hipparchian Committee of Recension, took his lays and
foisted them into the middle of another man's work, making every kind
of blunder and discrepancy in the process of making everything smooth
and neat.

Comparetti goes on: "The difficulty is increased when we have to do
with epics which seem in all their parts to be composed on a definite
plan, which exists in the final poem, not in the supposed kernel. The
organic unity, the harmony, the relation of all the portions, which
are arranged so as to lead up to the final catastrophe, are such as to
imply the agreement and homogeneity of the poetic creation in a common
idea, and, moreover, resting on that idea--a limitation of the creative
processes."

Comparetti, I fear, forgets that his "man-microscopes" see none of
these things; "they see the mote, not the beam." Finally, granting
the pre-existence of a mass of poetic material, "He who could extract
from this mass the epics which we possess, and not a kind of Greek
_Mahabharata_, would have produced, at all events, such a work of
genius that in fairness he must be called not merely the redactor, but
the author and poet."

How true is all that Comparetti says of "this restless business of
analysis, which has lasted so long, impatient of its own fruitlessness,
yet unconvinced of it! It builds up, and pulls down, and builds again,
while its insufficient and falsely applied criteria condemn it to
remain fruitless, tedious, and repulsive."

"Our little systems have their day." "They have their day, and cease
to be." The little system which explained the _Iliad_ as a mass, or
rather a concatenation of short lays, "has had its day." The system
of a primal "kernel" (Books i., xi., xvi., and so forth)--a kernel
more archaic in language than Books ix., x., xxiii., xxiv.--is also
perishing, "stricken through with doubt." The linguistic analysis
of Miss Stawell (_Homer and the Iliad_, 1909) and, in America, of
Professor Scott, has fatally damaged the linguistic tests of books for
earliness and lateness.

The most advanced German critics find that Book i. of the _Iliad_ is
no longer that genuine kernel which, with certain other passages,
represents the primal _Menis_, or "wrath of Achilles," as opposed to
the later accretions of three or four centuries. _Das ist ausgespielt!_
The "kernel" hypothesis is doomed. Its cornerstone--Book i. of the
_Iliad_, is, by the builders of new theories, rejected; it is now
one of the latest additions to the _Iliad_.[1] Only to one point is
criticism steadfast. The _Iliad must_ be a thing of rags and tatters;
and it is torn up by the process of misstating its statements and
finding "discrepancies" in the statements misstated.

Again, as even Comparetti's "man-microscopes" could not well help
seeing that the epics, though not good enough as compositions for them,
still _are_ compositions; have, in a way, organic unity, harmony,
adjusted relations of all the portions, some critics tried to account
for the facts as the result of the labours of the Pisistratean, or
Solonian, or Hipparchian Committee of Recension at Athens, in the sixth
century B.C. But so many critics of all shades of opinion have rejected
this hypothesis, even with scorn, as "a worthless fable," "an absurd
legend," part of Homeric mythology (Blass, Meyer, Mr. T. W. Alien, D.
B. Monro, Nutzhorn, Grote, and many others), that it can scarcely be
restored even by the learned ingenuity of Mr. Verrall.[2]

In defect of the late Recension, which is wholly destitute of historic
evidence, a poet, a _Dichter_, has to be sought somewhere, and at some
period of the supposed "evolution" of the _Iliad_. He may lawfully
be sought, it seems, at any period of the history of the poem, except
at the point where, in fact, the poet is always found, namely at the
beginning. The search for the poet will never find him anywhere else.
He cannot be made to fit into the eighth or seventh or sixth century;
it is useless to look for him at the Court of Croesus! A poem purely
Achaean had an Achaean author.

None of the many critical keys fits the lock. The linguistic key breaks
itself, it cannot break the wards.

Archaeology is used as a test of passages very early and very late;
and the archaeology is also wrong, demonstrably fallacious. The
archaeologists themselves, Mr. Arthur Evans and Mr. Ridgeway, will
have none of Reichel's key. Whatever archaeology may prove, it does
not prove what Reichel and his followers believed it to demonstrate.
If I succeed in convincing any separatist critics that the costume and
armour in the _Iliad_ are much less like the costume and armour of
Ionia in the seventh century B.C. than like those of Athens at the end
of the sixth and beginning of the fifth centuries, these critics will
probably be grateful. Here, they may perhaps say, is proof of our late
Athenian recension, by which the actual Athenian dress and armour of
540-480 were written into the ancient poems.

I would agree with them if the members of the Committee of Recension
had excised the huge Homeric shields, introduced cavalry in place of
chariotry, iron instead of bronze weapons; excised the bride-price
in marriage law, introduced the rite of purification of homicides by
pigs' blood, and generally, in a score of other ways, for example by
introducing hero-worship, had brought the _Iliad_ "up to date." But as
I cannot easily conceive that _only_ armour and costume were brought
up to date, I suppose that the whirligig of time and fashion had
reverted in Athens to hauberks of scales in place of the uniform use
of back-plate and breast-plate, and had also deserted the Ionian and
early Hellenic _cypassis,_ the Aegean loin-cloth or bathing-drawers for
the longer and loose Homeric chiton.

If each critic would publish his own polychrome _Iliad_, with
"primitive" passages printed in gold, "secondary" in red, "tertiary" in
blue, "very late" in green, with orange for "the Pisistratean editor,"
purple for the "diaskeuast," and mauve for "fragments of older epics"
stuck in the context, and so on, the differences that prevail among the
professors of the Higher Criticism would be amazingly apparent.

One writer of a book on Homer has accused me of neglecting "science" in
favour of mere literary appreciation, and of "trying to set back the
hands on the clock of criticism." Really I want to clean and regulate
that timepiece, which reminds one of

    "The crazy old church-clock
    And the bewildered chimes,"

in Wordsworth's poem.

Never were chimes more bewildered, verdicts more various, and
contradictions in terms more innocently combined than in the higher
criticism of Homer. It is necessary and right that men's opinions
should alter, in consequence of reflection, and of the increase of
our knowledge of prehistoric Greece, through the revelations of
excavators on the ancient sites of a rediscovered world. It is natural
that Homeric critics should sometimes contradict themselves and each
other. But they contradict each other so constantly and confidently
that, clearly, their conclusions are not to be called conclusions of
_science_.

That in one book a critic should reject, let us say, the hypothesis
of the "Pisistratean recension" of the epics, and, in his next book,
accept it, is nothing. Reflection has caused him to change his opinion.
But when, in one book, in one chapter, perhaps in one page, a critic,
without perceiving it, bases his argument on contradictions in
terms, then his house is founded on the sand, and needs no tempest to
overthrow its pinnacles and towers.

Through indulgence in fantastic theory-making, and through disregard of
logical consistency, Homeric criticism has become, as Blass vigorously
put the case in his latest work, "a swamp haunted by wandering fires,
will-o'-the-wisps."

In 1906, in _Homer and his Age_, I again studied the Homeric Question,
with particular reference to fresh archaeological discoveries, and
to the contradictory methods, as I reckon them, which critics have
employed in the effort to prove that the Homeric epics are mosaics,
composed in, and confusing the manners and usages of, four or five
prehistoric and proto-historic ages.

I do not now reprint either of my earlier books on Homer. Further
study appears to have made many points more clear than they were. It
is especially clear that "the Ionian father of the rest," as Tennyson
calls Homer, is _not_ Ionian; that the early Ionian settlers in Asia
respected Homer's matter, which is Achaean, and did not intermingle
with it any traits of their own very different beliefs, rites, tastes,
morals, usages, armour and costume.

By the term "Ionian" I here mean to speak of the works composed in the
Ionian settlements in Asia, probably in the eighth to seventh centuries
B.C., and of the non-Homeric beliefs, rites, usages, costume and armour
of the same people and period. Most of these beliefs, usages, and rites
also mark historic Hellas, and very probably existed in the early
populations of Greece before the dominance of Homer's Achaeans.

On the chronological period, as determined by archaeology, in which
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ were composed, I am fortunate in having the
support of Mr. Arthur Evans, the chief authority in this matter; while
Mr. T. W. Allen, our leading textual critic, is persuaded of the fact
of Homeric unity. Where language is concerned (as has been said),
the linguistic Appendices to Miss Stawell's _Homer and the Iliad_
(1909), with the minute and elaborate studies of Professor Scott of
the North-Western University, Illinois,[3] seem to me to overthrow
the separatist conclusions as to the presence of an earlier stage of
language and metre in some books; a later, or "Odyssean" stage in other
books of the _Iliad_. I have seen scarcely any public criticism in
reply to Miss Stawell and Professor Scott on these essential points, in
which I have not scholarship enough to pretend to be a judge.

Meanwhile my friend, Mr. Shewan, has in preparation a comprehensive
criticism of the separatist arguments, especially those drawn from
language and metre; a work which, I venture to think, it will not be
easy, and will not be fair, to ignore.

All my writings on the Homeric question are, necessarily,
controversial. The reaction against the suggestion of Wolf, against
a critical tradition of a century's standing, has begun in earnest.
But the friends of that tradition are eminently learned, and occupy
the highest places in scholarship and education. Scholars as eminent,
who differ from them, as a rule, are content to keep their own
opinions, and remain silent. If the views of the reaction, of the
believers in Homeric unity, in the epics as the wonderful legacy
of the brief prehistoric Achaean age, are to prevail, the opposing
ideas must be assailed, and if possible confuted. In all controversy
the constant danger is the tendency to misunderstand opponents. As a
rule, A. supposes B. to be holding this or that position. A. assails
and captures it, but B. was holding quite another position. A. has
misunderstood his case. Critics of works of mine, on other subjects,
have often missed my meaning, and I am therefore constrained to
suppose that I may have, in like manner, misconstrued some of the
opinions of others, which, as I understand them, I am obliged to
contest. I have done my best to understand, and will deeply regret any
failures of interpretation on my part.

Mr. Gilbert Murray, whose opinions I am obliged to oppose in the
course of "the struggle for existence," has, with very great kindness
and courtesy, read my proof sheets, and enabled me to give a less
inaccurate statement of his position. On one point where I had
misapprehended it, I have added an Appendix, "The Lost Epics and the
Homeric Epics."

I owe more than I can easily express to the kindness of my friend, Mr.
A. Shewan, of St. Andrews, who read and corrected my first proofs (any
surviving errors are due to my own want of care), and who has lent me
books and papers from his Homeric collection.

Mr. R. M. Dawkins, Head of the British School of Athens, has had the
goodness to read my chapters on Homeric, Ionian, and historic armour
and costume, and I have quoted the gist of his letters on points
where he differs from my conclusions. The topic of female costume is
peculiarly difficult and disputable.

                                                      A. LANG.
_September_ 9, 1910.



[1] Vinzler, _Homer_, p. 597 ff.

[2] See Appendix B, "The Supposed Athenian Recension."

[3] "Odyssean Words found in but One Book of the _Iliad_" _(Classical
Philology_, vol. v. p. 41 ff.). "The Relative Antiquity of the _Iliad_
and _Odyssey_ tested by Abstract Nouns" (_Classical Review_, vol.
xxiv., p. 8 ff.).




CONTENTS

        I. HOMER'S WORLD. THE FOUR AGES
       II. HOMERIC LANDS AND PEOPLES
      III. HOMERIC POLITY. THE OVER LORD
       IV. HOMER'S WORLD IN PEACE
        V. MEN AND WOMEN
       VI. THE HOMERIC WORLD IN WAR
      VII. HOMERIC TACTICS
     VIII. MEN'S DRESS IN HOMER. ARMOUR
       IX. WOMEN'S COSTUME
        X. BRONZE AND IRON. WEAPONS AND TOOLS
       XI. BURIAL AND THE FUTURE LIFE
      XII. RELIGION IN GREECE: PRE-HISTORIC,
           HOMERIC, AND HISTORICAL
     XIII. TEMPLES. ALTARS. RITUAL. PURIFICATION
      XIV. HOMER AND IONIA
       XV. ATTIC _VERSUS_ ACHAEAN TRADITIONS
      XVI. HOMER AND "THE SAGA"
     XVII. THE STORY OF PALAMEDES
    XVIII. HOMER AND THE CYCLIC POEMS
      XIX. THE GREAT DISCREPANCIES
       XX. CONCLUSIONS

        _APPENDIXES_

           THE CATALOGUE
           THE SUPPOSED EXPURGATION OF HOMER
           THE ALLEGED ATHENIAN RECENSION OF HOMER
           THE LOST EPICS AND THE HOMERIC EPICS (_WIEDERHOLUNGEN_)

           INDEX




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MOULDED PITHOS FROM SPARTA _Frontispiece_
SACRIFICE TO ATHENE
DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS
TIRYNTHIAN VASE: MAN IN HAUBERK
CRETAN SEAL-IMPRESSION, MINOAN ARMOUR
MENELAUS AND HECTOR FIGHTING OVER EUPHORBUS
WARRIORS ARMING
LADY POURING OUT WINE FOR WARRIOR
PRINCESS FROCK: TIRYNS
COSTUME OF WOMEN: TIRYNTHIAN VASE
METOPE OF ATHENE, OLYMPIA
THE FATES ON THE FRANÇOIS VASE
ARIADNE, THESEUS, AND MINOTAUR
HISTORIC GREEK COSTUME




THE WORLD OF HOMER

CHAPTER I

HOMER'S WORLD. THE FOUR AGES


"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 that enchanted land, so
clearly seen in the light of "the Sun of Greece"; in the light of
Homer. It is a realm of splendid wars, of gleaming gold and bronze,
of noble men and of the most beautiful of women, which shines through
a rift in the mists that hide the years before it and the years that
followed. Can what appears so brilliant, so living, so solid, have
been unreal, the baseless fabric of a vision; of a dream, too, that
Homer never dreamed, for there was no Homer? The Homeric picture of
life, the critics tell us, displays no actual scene of past human
existence, and is not even the creation of one man's fantasy. It
is but a bright medley and mosaic of coloured particles that came
together fortuitously, or were pieced together clumsily, like some
church window made up of fragments of stained mediaeval glass. "Homeric
civilisation," says a critic, "is like Homeric language; as the one was
never spoken, so the other was never lived by any one society."[1]

It is the object of this book to prove, on the other hand, that Homeric
civilisation, in all its details, was lived at a brief given period;
that it was real. This could never be demonstrated till of recent
years; till search with the spade on ancient sites that were ruinous or
were built over anew in the historic times of Greece, revealed to us
the ages that were before Homer, and that succeeded his day. By dint of
excavations in the soil we now know much of the great Aegean or Minoan
culture that was behind Homer; and know not a little of the Dark Ages
that followed the disruption of his Achaean society.

In studying Homer, and the predecessors and successors of the men
of his Achaean time, we find ourselves obliged to take into account
Four distinct Ages, and the culture of two or perhaps three distinct
peoples; the pre-Homeric population of the Aegean coasts and isles; the
Homeric Achaeans: and the historic Greeks, who appear to descend from,
and to hold of both the pre-Homeric and the Homeric strains of blood
and civilisation.

Turning then to what we shall style the Four Ages, we observe first,
that which is called the "Late Minoan," namely the bloom, in Crete and
on the mainland, of a civilisation even then very ancient, having its
focus, and chief manifestation, in the isle of the Hundred Cities. Here
the art is most graphic, a revelation of the life; the palaces are
most numerous and most magnificent; the towns are most tranquil, being
unwalled, as the palaces are unfortified; while the arrangements, as
for sanitation; and the costume of the women at some periods, are quite
modern in character. Separate bodices and skirts, heavily flounced,
were worn; through all varieties of fashion the dresses were sewn and
shaped. Men did not, as a rule, wear the Homeric smock or chiton, but
loin-cloths or bathing-drawers. Brooches or fibulae, like safety pins,
were not in use.

This culture had also in a less remarkable degree affected the mainland
of Greece. It was an Age of bronze, for weapons and implements,
with this peculiarity, that, while arrow tips were often of stone,
beautifully chipped flint, or of keen black glass-like obsidian, iron
was known, a few large finger-rings of iron occur in graves; the metal
being rare and strange. It was an Age of linear writing, on clay
tablets, or in ink with pen or reed. The dead, perhaps occasionally
embalmed, were buried in shaft tombs hewn deep in the rock; or in
"beehive"-shaped sepulchres with chambers, often sunk in the side of a
hill. With the dead were laid their arms of bronze, golden ornaments,
crystal and ivory, and silver, and cups and vases of peculiar fashion,
fabric, and decoration.

Concerning the language or languages of the people of this First
Age, nothing is known with certainty, as their writing has not been
deciphered. We know that they were and had long been in touch with
Egypt, and the highly civilised Egyptian society. Egyptian objects are
found in the ruins of Cretan palaces; Cretan pottery is abundant in the
soil of Egypt; and their envoys, in Egyptian wall-pictures, bear ingots
and golden cups of their fashioning, as presents or as tribute to
Egyptian kings. Their palaces, about 1450-1400 B.C. (?) were sacked and
consumed by fire, but their culture, and even their writing, continued
to exist with dwindling vitality. Of the religion we speak later.

Then comes the Second Age, the period represented in the Homeric poems.
Greek is their language, whether the people of the Cretan culture
on the mainland of Greece had previously spoken Greek, or a cognate
language, or not. Iron had ceased to be a rare metal used only for
rings; it was now employed for tools and implements, occasionally for
arrow-heads, and was an article of commerce; but bronze was the metal
for swords, spears, and body armour; and stone was no longer used for
arrow points; leather no longer, as previously, sufficed for shield
coverings, bronze plating was needed. The dead were not now buried
merely, they were cremated, as often in ancient central and northern
Europe, and as in these regions the bones were placed in urns of gold,
bronze, or pottery, wrapped in linen, and bestowed in a stone-built
chamber, beneath a mound or cairn of earth, on which was set a memorial
pillar.[2]

Treasures do not appear to have been buried with the dead, as a rule.
A new costume, a northern costume, had come in, not sewn and shaped,
as in the previous age, but fastened with pins and _fibulae_, "safety
pins," such as were in use in northern regions, in the basin of the
Danube, Bosnia, and North Italy. This is the costume and these are the
pins and brooches described by Homer.

The Third Age, subsequent to the Homeric, is a dark period; illustrated
by the vases and other objects found at ancient "Tiryns of the mighty
walls"; and by the contents of the cemetery outside of the Dipylon
gate at Athens; in Cretan sites and elsewhere. The nature of the
civilisation (called "the Dipylon") will be described later. It is
the fully developed age of iron for weapons and implements; riding
of horses is superseding the war-chariots, common to both preceding
periods; art is represented by both decadent Minoan work, and rude
vase-paintings of human existence. The dead, with humbler treasures,
are more frequently buried than burned; cairns are not raised over
them; the costume of women appears to have been, occasionally at least,
a survival from or revival of that of the First Age, the separate skirt
and bodice.

The Fourth Age is the archaic or "proto-historic" period of Greece. It
is represented by objects found in the soil of Sparta of the ninth to
seventh centuries; by objects of the eighth to seventh century used
by Ionian settlers in Asia, as at Ephesus; and by "proto-Athenian"
"post-Dipylon" vases and other archaic remains in art; while, later,
come the Black Figure vases of the early sixth century, to which
succeed the more accomplished painters of the Red Figure vases (late
sixth and early fifth centuries). In this period male costume was often
more of the first or Aegean, than of the second or Homeric Age.

Now, according to the majority of critics of Homer, the life, with
all its details, which he describes, is not that of a single age,
our second, but is a mosaic of all Four Ages. "The first rhapsodies
were born in the bronze age, in the day of the ponderous Mykenaean
shield--the last in the iron age, when men armed themselves with
breastplate and light round buckler. The whole view of life and death,
of divine and human polity had changed."[3]

If this be true, the Homeric world as depicted in the poems existed
only in fancy; it is a medley of four periods extending over some six
centuries or more, and the Homeric picture must be a mere chaos as
regards costume, manners, rites, armour, tactics, laws, geographical
knowledge, domestic life, and everything. Is it such a chaos? The
critics say that it is, and seek for proof in the poems. They find
anachronisms and inconsistencies as to armour (but not costume), as to
rites, as to marriage laws, as to houses, as to tactics, as to land
tenure; but the inconsistencies and anachronisms at most are petty,
and, we are to argue, at most represent such minute variations from the
norm as occur in all societies, savage or civilised.

For the Homeric period, except in the case of the _fibulae_ marking
the change of costume in the Second Age, we have little evidence
except in the Homeric poems themselves. No Homeric cairns with their
characteristic contents have been discovered by modern scientific
experts, a point to be discussed later. But for our Fourth Age we have
literary evidence, that of the remains and epitomes of the Cyclic
poems, composed in Ionia, about the eighth to seventh centuries, by
the poets of the Ionian settlers in Asia, who were dominated by Attic,
not Achaean traditions. These poems, we are to show (see "The Cyclic
Poems") differ immensely, in descriptions of rites and of religion,
and in the characters of heroes, in their pseudo-historic legends,
and in geographical knowledge, from the pictures given by Homer. The
Ionian armour, too, and round or oval blazoned bucklers worn on the
left arm, as displayed in archaic and early Black Figure vases, are
widely different from Homeric armour, and from the huge Homeric shield,
unblazoned, suspended by a belt or baldric.

The Fourth Age, in fact, is represented by its own epic poetry, and
by its own art; and its representations of armour, religion, rites,
personages, and traditions, are never intruded into our Homeric epics.
The two ages stand apart. The Homeric world is not that of the Fourth
Age. There is no mosaic, except in the epic poetry of the Fourth
Age, which imitated the Homeric poetry, but is full of conspicuous
anachronisms in essential points.

Though the details of life in the Second and Fourth periods,--the
Homeric or Achaean and the Ionian, stand conspicuously apart, modern
criticism, we have said, represents them as inextricably mingled in our
Homer, and naturally thus confused, for what is most ancient in our
Homer is said to have been worked over and recomposed by the poets of
Ionia; in Ionia, we are told, Homer had a second birth, and our Homer
is half-Ionian.

The critical case is well stated thus: "There is, on the whole, a
striking resemblance between the life of Homer's heroes in its material
aspects and the [Aegean] remains" [of our First Age] "which have been
discovered at Tiryns, Mykene, and elsewhere. The two cultures are not
identical, but, beyond doubt, the Homeric resembles in the main the
Mykenaean rather than that of the "Dipylon" (so far as we know it),
or the archaic Greek. _The ancient tradition is on the whole truly
kept in the Epos. Yet in many points we can see traces of apparent
anachronisms,_" whether the departure from the "Mykenaean" be "due to
a later development of that culture itself, _or to an unintentional
introduction of elements from the very different conditions of later
Greece_."[4] In the Epics carried to Asia, says our author, "much
of the old was faithfully preserved, though adapted to new hearers,
much being new added." "We meet with so many inconsistencies so
closely interwoven that the tangle may well seem beyond our powers to
unravel."[5]

When novelties were intentionally added the purpose was to please
listeners later by many centuries than those for whom the original
poets sang; to please the active commercial citizens of Ionia, who
had not the polity, nor the armour, nor the war-chariots, nor the
weapons, nor the costume, nor the beliefs, nor the burial rites, nor
the marriage customs, nor the houses, nor the tactics, nor the domestic
life, and had more than the geographical knowledge of the people who
listened to the original minstrel. Each of the novelties supposed to
have been introduced to gratify new hearers, each novelty in armour,
weapons, tactics, would only produce in the _Iliad_ an unintelligible
and chaotic blend, such as, the critics tell us, actually was
produced--a tangle which we cannot unravel. The fighting scenes, in
particular, thanks to the retention of old armour and tactics, and the
simultaneous introduction of novelties to please practical readers,
must have passed all understanding, and, as we are told, they make
nonsense. No practical hearers in that case could have endured the
confusion, a point to be demonstrated in detail.[6]

Let us remember, too, that the novelties said to have been introduced
were of the pettiest kind. The _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ retain a
non-Ionian polity: non-Ionian burial rites; non-Ionian marriage customs
(in which a change is detected in one case); non-Ionian houses;
non-Ionian shields, non-Ionian armour, non-Ionian military tactics;
while truly and specially Ionian rites and beliefs and geographical
knowledge are all absent. Why should poets who were innovating have
left the whole Homeric picture standing except in certain minute
details of corslets, greaves, bride-price, and upper storeys and
separate sleeping chambers in houses?

It is our opinion, therefore, that the details of life in the poems
are all old and all congruous; while we find the "much new" abundantly
present, _not_ in Homer, but in the fragments and summaries of the
contents of the "Cyclic" Ionian Epics, dating from the age (770-650
B.C.) when the novelties are supposed to have been most copiously
foisted into the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_--in which, as a matter of fact,
they never appear. Far from altering the old epics, I hope to show that
the Ionians laboured at constructing new epics, the "Cyclics"; partly
for the purpose of connecting their ancestors with ancient heroic
events in which, according to Homeric tradition, their ancestors played
no part; partly to tell the whole tale of Troy.

The task of these Ionian poets was later taken up by the Athenian
tragedians, and a non-Homeric, we may say almost an anti-Homeric
tradition was established, was accepted by Virgil and by the late Greek
compiler, Dictys of Crete; and finally reached and was elaborated by
the romancers of the Christian Middle Ages.

It is not easy to do justice to this theory except in a perpetual
running fight with the believers in the Ionian moulders of the Homeric
poems into their actual form with its contents. Now few things are
more unpleasant than a running fight of controversial argument, the
reader is lost in the jangle and clash of opinions and replies,
often concerned with details at once insignificant and obscure. Into
such minutiae I would not enter, if they were not the main stock of
separatist critics.

On the whole, then, it seems best to describe, first, as far as we
may, the age preceding that of Homer, and then the Homeric world, just
as the poet paints it, without alluding to differences of critical
opinion. These are discussed later, and separately.



[1] _Church Quarterly Review_, vol. xi. p. 414. It is easy to recognise
the anonymous writer.

[2] It does not follow, in my opinion, that the change in burial
customs necessarily implies the advent of a new and strange "race" on
the scene. Mr. Ridgeway writes that the discovery in the Roman Forum of
"graves exhibiting two different ways of disposing of the dead--the one
class inhumation, the other cremation, of itself" is "a proof of the
existence of two races with very different views respecting the soul."
("Who were the Romans?" _Proceedings of the British Academy_, vol.
iii. p. 7. (_Tiré à part_.) The word "race" has the vaguest meaning,
but the Tasmanians are usually supposed to have been a fairly unmixed
"race." Yet they buried, as do the Australian tribes, in a variety of
ways, cremation, inhumation, tree burial, and in other fashions, and
all sorts of beliefs about the soul co-existed. (See Ling Roth, _The
Tasmanians_, pp. 128-134.) Methods of burial do not afford proof of
varieties of "race."

[3] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii., 1902, p. x.

[4] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. xiv, xv.

[5] _Ibid._, vol. ii. p. x. Much of the "new," we must remark, was
added, on this theory, not "unintentionally," but consciously and
purposefully.

[6] See "Homeric Arms and Costume," and "Homeric Tactics," _infra_.




CHAPTER II

HOMERIC LANDS AND PEOPLES


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 earth among them, friendly,
amorous, or hostile. From this fact, more than from the degeneracy in
physical force which Homer often attributes to his contemporaries, we
see that the mist of time and the glamour of romance have closed over
the heroes.

But this might happen in the course of a pair of centuries. In the
French _Chansons de Geste_ of 1080-1300, Charlemagne (_circ_. 814), a
perfectly historical character to us,--has become almost as mythical
as Arthur to the poets. He conquers Saracens as Arthur conquers all
western Europe; he visits Constantinople; he is counselled by visible
angels, who to some degree play the part of the gods in Homer.

Perhaps two or three centuries may separate Homer from any actual
heroic princes of whom traditions have reached him. Modern research
holds that the Achaeans of Homer, by infiltration and by conquest, had
succeeded to more civilised owners of Greece.

But Homer has nothing to say about a conquest of Greece by the
Achaeans, Danaans, Argives, and the rest, from the north, except in
two cases. He speaks of combats with wild mountain-dwelling tribes in
Thessaly, in Nestor's youth. Nestor knew "the strongest of men who
warred with the strongest, the mountain-dwelling Pheres,"[1] shaggy
folk, says the _Catalogue_, whom Peirithous drove out of Pelion in
northern Thessaly, and forced back on the Aethices of Pindus in the
west.[2] It appears, from recent excavations, that the age of stone
lingered long in these regions, and the people were probably rude and
uncultivated, like the Centaurs.

The recent excavators of Zerelia, north-east of the Spercheios valley,
the home of Achilles, write that their discoveries in the soil "clearly
point to the fact that in prehistoric times the cultures of North
and South Greece were radically different. This probably indicates
an ethnological difference as well."[3] Before the period when "Late
Minoan III." pottery occurs in Thessaly, the people used stone tools
and weapons, and knew not the potter's wheel. It may not, therefore, be
too fanciful to regard Nestor's tales of fights with a wild mountain
race as shadowy memories of actual Achaean conquests in Thessaly, where
Aegean culture arrived very much later than in Southern Greece.

Secondly, Homer twice speaks of regions as "Pelasgian," in which
he represents the actual inhabitants as Hellenes and Achaeans, not
Pelasgic. These regions are the realm of Achilles in south-west
Thessaly; and Epirus.[4] But the actual Pelasgians whom Homer knows
are allies of Troy; they dwell on the North Aegean coasts (where
Herodotus found living Pelasgians), or reside, with Achaeans,
Dorians, True Cretans, and Cydonians, in Crete. These facts indicate
Homer's knowledge that, in some regions, Achaeans had dispossessed
"Pelasgians," whoever the Pelasgians may have been. Again, Homer makes
Achilles address the "Pelasgic Zeus" of Dodona in Epirus, in which he
locates Perhaebians and Eneienes.

It thus appears that he supposed the Achaeans to have driven out
Pelasgians from Epirus and Thessaly, at least, if not from southern
Greece. It may well seem to us strange that as the Achaean settlement
in Crete, or at least in parts of Crete, must have been comparatively
recent when Homer sang, he never mentions so great an event. But
reasons for and a parallel to his silence are not hard to find. If,
as many authorities hold, the great Cnossian palace had fallen, and
the Cretan civilisation had sunk into decadence before the Achaeans
_arrived in the island_,[5] they might meet with but slight resistance;
great feats of heroism might not claim record. Again, the Norman
Conquest gave rise to no Anglo-Norman epic. The invaders already
possessed their epic tradition, that of Charlemagne, borrowed from
"the Franks of France," while they presently, in the twelfth century,
took up and expanded the epic traditions of the Welsh and Bretons,
in the Arthurian cycles of romances. In the same way, for all that
we know, the Achaean epics may have a basis in the traditions of the
earlier and more civilised populations usually styled "Pelasgians."
The manners, however, of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are Achaean, as the
manners of the French romances of Arthur are not Celtic, but feudal and
chivalrous.[6] Homer, in any case, conceives of his own race as at home
in Greece and Crete, and he has nothing to say about Greek settlements
on the Asiatic coast. To him the inhabitants of Miletus are not the
Ionian colonists. "Carians uncouth of speech" dwelt by the banks of
the Meander, and the Asiatic allies of Priam are people "scattered, of
diverse tongues."[7] For purposes of convenience all parties to the
war understand each other's speech.[8]

In _Odyssey_, xix. 172-177, Homer gives an account of populous Crete,
with ninety cities, and a mingling of various tongues, "therein are
Achaeans, and True Cretans high of heart, and Cydonians, and Dorians
in their three divisions, and noble Pelasgians." Did they vary in
language, or in dialect and accent merely? We cannot know, we cannot be
sure that "True Cretans" were the pre-existing Aegeans. The Cydonians
dwelt beside the Jardanus; Jardanus is also a river-name in Elis. Mr.
Leaf thinks of the Semitic _yârad_, "to flow" (Jordan), but we have
other such river-names, Yarrow, and the Australian Yarra Yarra; the
word may be onomatopoeic, expressing the murmur of the water.

Homer, in any case, does not despise the Asiatic allies of Troy as
"barbarous," does not think them alien wholly, as the poets of the
_Chansons de Geste_ regard the Saracens,--worshippers of Mahound and
Apollon. The Asians have the same gods and rites as his own people;
Glaucus and Sarpedon are as good knights and live in precisely the same
sort of polity as Aias or Achilles. Homer does not think of the strife
as between Hellenes and Barbarians, that is a far later idea never
interpolated into the Epics. All men are children of the Olympians.

It would appear that Homer sang before the northern invasion, usually
called "Dorian," caused the Achaean and Ionian migrations from the
Greek mainland, and the Greek settlements on the Asiatic coast (950-900
B.C.?). He never alludes to these events, but it may be said that he
deliberately conceals them.

The account which Homer gives of the Achaean heroes and their realms
is to be found in the Catalogue of the Ships in Book ii., a passage
of three hundred lines. It is, perhaps, not very probable that this
long list was usually recited at popular gatherings, and there is much
dispute as to its date and purpose. We relegate to an appendix some
remarks on the debated questions. Whether the Catalogue, or most of
it, was part of the original _Iliad_ or not, most of it was certainly
composed at a time when the condition of prehistoric Greece was
well known, when a lively tradition of its divisions still existed;
moreover, it is the work of a poet, and Milton deemed it worthy of
imitation in _Paradise Lost_.

The Catalogue was omitted from many manuscripts of the _Iliad_,
probably because it was thought tedious reading. But to us there is
poetry in the very names of "rocky Aulis," and "Mycalessus of the wide
lawns," and "dove-haunted Thisbe," and "Lacedaemon lying low among
the rifted hills." The author wrote "with his eye on the object,"
and the doves of Thisbe have survived many empires and religions,
still floating round their old domains and uttering their changeless
note.[9] "Pleasant Titaresius" still mingles his clear waters with the
chalk-stained Peneius, and Celadon brawls as when Nestor heard its
music.

The Catalogue enumerates all the Achaeans; Boeotians, Phocians,
Minyans; light-armed Locrian slingers; the Abantes of Euboea, fond of
close combat; the Arcadians, whose dialect was nearest akin to Homer's
own language, but who take no part in the action; the Epeians of Elis,
once foes of Nestor's Pylians; the far-off Aetolians, no longer led
by golden-haired Meleager; the Cretans of Cnossos, under Idomeneus,
grandson of Minos; his neighbour Tlepolemos of Rhodes, of the blood of
Heracles, and probably a Dorian, though the Dorian name is not uttered;
and some of the Sporades. There are, too, the south Thessalian Achaeans
and Hellenes, the Myrmidons under Achilles; the men of Philoctetes,
who lies sore hurt by a serpent's bite in the Isle of Lemnos; the
descendants in Thessaly (not a Homeric name) of the Lapithae; the
Pethraebians from "wintry Dodona"; the men of Argos and Tiryns of the
mighty walls, under Diomede; the men of Lacedaemon under Menelaus; the
Athenians (much suspected of interpolating their own mention), Odysseus
of the western and Aias of the eastern isles (Ithaca and Salamis); and
the host of Agamemnon, lord of Corinth, Sicyon, and Mycenae, himself
the Over Lord of all.

Taking the Catalogue as it stands, the princes of whom Agamemnon of
Mycenae was Over Lord come from the Greek mainland, from southern
Thessaly and Aetolia to the southernmost point of the Morea, and the
islands as far south and east as Crete, Carpathos, and Rhodes.

Now, as Agamemnon is the Over Lord, and Idomeneus of Cnossos in Crete
is one of his thanes, so to speak, the poet clearly regards the Greek
mainland as the centre of an Achaean dominion, of which Crete is a
great dependency. He shows no idea that Crete had been the centre of
another power, and the focus of another civilisation, held by a people
who, since the age of stone weapons and implements, had developed its
culture without interruption, and had sent its arts to the mainland of
Greece. To Homer, Mycenae is the centre; the prince of Cnossos is a
great feudatory of Agamemnon.

The poet is much interested in Crete; not only does the _Iliad_ dwell
on the prowess of Idomeneus the prince of Cnossos, and of Meriones;
but in the feigned tales of Odysseus, when he returns to Ithaca, he
represents himself as a Cretan adventurer. Homer avoids the Athenian
tales about Cretan tyranny, about the Minotaur, and the prowess
of Theseus in aid of the freedom of Athens. These things are not
touched upon, as they certainly would have been had Athenians freely
interpolated the poems. Homer entirely ignores all Athenian and Ionian
traditions.[10]

This is not the place to ask whether Achaeans from the mainland were
the men who took and sacked the palace of Cnossos in Crete about 1400
B.C., or whether the spoilers were "Pelasgians," that is, people
living on the mainland in Cretan conditions of culture, driven from
the mainland by the Achaean irruption; or whether the palace was
wrecked during an internal revolution before the Achaeans came to the
island.[11] Homer undeniably regards Idomeneus as an Achaean and a
descendant of Minos; and Minos as a son of Zeus.[12] Rhadamanthus of
his blood, is "the golden-haired," like Menelaus, Meleager, and some
other heroes.[13] We are not here concerned with discrepant traditions,
and with the idea that Minos is an Aegean as Pharaoh is an Egyptian
name of kings in general. That may be so; Minos may have been a figure
in Cretan legend before the Achaeans came thither; if so, they adopted
him as their own. We are only stating Homer's view of the relations
between Crete and the Achaean power on the mainland.

Homer's Catalogue of the Asian allies of Troy is brief, and contains
only about sixty lines. There was a Trojan Catalogue in the _Cypria_,
a lost Ionian epic poem of the eighth century, and as the Ionian
colonists in Asia knew the country of their settlement well, it is
likely to have been copious. Beginning, in Homer's Trojan Catalogue,
with the Dardanians under Aeneas, who may be said to represent "the
Orleans branch" of the Trojan royal family, we next hear of the Trojans
under Pandarus, who, in fact, broke the solemn oaths of truce, and
sealed the doom of Ilium (_Iliad_, iv.), but who somehow as "Sir
Pandarus of Troy" acquired another kind of ill fame among our mediaeval
poets. He dwelt by the Aesepus. "At the extreme north of the Troad,
where the Hellespont opens out into the Sea of Marmora," lived Adrastus
and Amphius. Asius led forces from Sestus and Abydus, on both sides,
European and Asian, of the Hellespont: there were also Pelasgians,
apparently from the European side. There were, from Europe, Thracians
and Cicones; the chief Thracian contingent arrived later (see _Iliad_,
Book x.). The Cicones, with whom Odysseus has trouble when first he
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 Alizonians are remote
and unrecognisable. Then we have Asiatic Mysians and Phrygians, and
Maeonians from near Sardis, and under Mount Tmolos inland. The Carians
of Miletus (later an Ionian city) follow, the Meander is their river;
last come the Lycians under Sarpedon (whom legend connects with Crete),
and Glaucus; another Glaucus was son of Sisyphus of Ephyre (Corinth),
in Argos, and was father of Bellerophon. Bellerophon, again, was sent
to his death in Lycia, by Proetus, who had married a Lycian princess.
The Lycian Glaucus of the _Iliad_ is a grandson of Bellerophon
(_Iliad_, vi.).

According to this story, Greeks freely passed to Lycia and intermarried
with Lycians. Only the Carians are described as "barbaric" in language.
Homer knows not, we said, the distinction of Hellenes and Barbarians;
the Greeks did not know it till the struggle of their Asiatic colonies
against Lydia and Persia produced the sense of "racial" repulsion. In
Homer any Greek prince going to Asia is courteously treated, perhaps
settles there like Bellerophon, or makes hereditary guest-friendships,
like the ancestors of Glaucus and Diomede.

The distinction which Homer does know is that between god-fearing
men, with cities, laws, and rulers, on one hand, and men who are like
the Cyclops, lonely, and lawless (_Od._ ix. 112-115). The Cyclops is
not so godless as he boasts himself to be; he does pray to his father
Poseidon, but he is wholly lawless, and each man is king in his own
family. The cannibal Laestrygones, even, have a king and a city, though
their manners are disgusting. Homer cannot easily, we see, conceive
of men whose polity and cities are not like those with which he is
familiar. He may have heard vaguely of far northern tribes abiding by
their fiords in the land of amber, the land of the nightless summer
and of the sunless winter. Such tales would come with the amber from
the Baltic coasts, for which merchants bartered the bronze swords and
vessels of their own civilisation. He had certainly heard of "the proud
Hippemolgoi," drinkers of mares' milk, nomad Scythians north of the
Danube, living like Tartars on koumiss.[14] If he has heard of any
empire in the Asian _hinterland_, he may speak of it as one of the two
Ethiopian realms; but here all is mythical.

Egypt, too, appears in the tales of Odysseus when he represents himself
as a Cretan adventurer, a raider in the lands by the river Aegyptus.
Helen has been in Egypt, and received the drug _nepenthes_ from the
wife of the king, just as she has been in Egyptian Thebes, and carried
treasures thence (_Od_. iv. 130 ff.). Achilles[15] knows the wealth
of Egyptian Thebes, and its hundred gates, and countless charioteers.
Sicily is known to the _Odyssey_, a poem of Ithaca and the west, and
of "perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn"; it is not mentioned in the
_Iliad_, a poem of the east and the Asian shore. The Phoenicians are
familiar as traders (_Iliad_, xxiii. 743), and are much better known,
as is natural, to the sea-poem, the _Odyssey_. The appearance of the
Phoenicians in the _Odyssey_, when they sell jewels to the women and
kidnap the child Eumaeus, has been spoken of as work of the seventh
century B.C.; a scene of contemporary life in that late age. But Mr.
H. R. Hall, writing on early relations between Greece and Egypt, as
depicted in Egyptian wall-paintings of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty,
represents commerce between the Aegean peoples of Greece and Crete as
filtering through "Phoenician channels." The Phoenicians were active
navigators and were merchants then and afterwards, that is, from the
sixteenth century B.C. onwards. A fresco in an Egyptian tomb of the
early date shows the arrival of "beaknosed" Phoenicians "in voluminous
and multi-coloured robes," one of them carrying "a small Mycenaean
amphora," at the Theban quays.[16] This being so, it is not so easy
to bring down the Phoenicians of the _Odyssey_ to the seventh century
B.C. The Sidonians make the goods which the Phoenicians transport, but
the Phoenician slave of the father of Eumaeus declares that she comes
from the town of Sidon, and the Phoenician sailor knows her parents
(_Odyssey_, xv. 415-433). No very clear distinction seems to have been
drawn between Phoenicians and Sidonians.

These Semitic peoples were persistently credited, till lately, with all
the finer works of art and craft which Homer mentions. The discovery
of the art of Minoan Crete has made this unqualified attribution
impossible.[17] Certainly Homer conceives of the Semites as doing a
large trade, and as kidnapping children in the Greek seas; but their
own art was imitative, and it is unlikely that, in Homer's time, the
characters of their alphabet had ousted those of Aegean civilisation.
It is curious that the place in which Phoenicians exercised most
influence, Cyprus, was also the place where the Phoenician alphabet
was so long in supplanting the native syllabary, akin to the unread
documents of Minoan Crete.

We may thus conceive Homer's ancestors, by 1400 B.C., as men far from
savage or barbarian,[18] who then succeeded to an Aegean civilisation
much more luxurious and artistic than their own; and, centuries later,
when Homer sang, the glow of the Aegean culture still flushed the sky:
its art was known to the poet.


[1] _Iliad_, i. 266-268.

[2] _Iliad_, ii. 741-744.

[3] _Proceedings, British School of Athens_, xiv., 1907, 1908, p. 223.

[4] _Iliad_, ii. 681-684, xvi. 233-235.

[5] Mackenzie, "Cretan Palaces," in _Brit. School of Athens_, xii. pp.
216-258.

[6] The parallel has been brought to my notice in detail by Mr. J. W.
Mackail; it had already occurred to me in a general way.

[7] _Iliad_, ii. 867, ii. 804.

[8] In the line just cited, and in the Carians Βαρβαροθώνω of _Iliad_,
ii. 867, we cannot positively know whether Homer is thinking of
different languages, or of differences in accent and dialect.

[9] Leaf, on _Iliad_, ii. 502.

[10] Save in the interpolated name of Theseus, twice, and in doubtful
parts of _Odyssey_, xi.

[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; _Annuals, British School of Athens_,
xi. p. 14; _ibid._ xii. 216 _et seqq._, xiii. 423 _et seqq._). In Dr.
Mackenzie's ample arguments, cf. Hogarth, _Ionia and the East_, pp. 32,
33, the Pelasgians were the sackers of Cnossos. The evidence is mainly
archaeological, and might be argued over endlessly.

[12] _Iliad_, xiii. 450.

[13] These views are suggested by Professor Ridgeway in a paper read to
the British Academy; see _Athenaeum_, June 5, 1909.

[14] _Iliad_, xiii. 5, 6, and Leaf's note.

[15] _Ibid._ ix. 381. Mr. Leaf attributes the lines to "some person
with a dull chronological mind," who remembered that Thebes in Greece
had been left in ruins by the war of the Epigonoi. "He forgot, however,
that Egypt is elsewhere unknown to the _Iliad_." If a place is unknown
because no one has occasion to mention it, unknown is Thebes to the
_Iliad_. But to say that a poet familiar with Crete never heard of
Egypt; that Egypt was rediscovered between the dates of composition
of _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, is arbitrary. We might as well say that
Shakespeare, who never mentions tobacco, never heard of the weed, or
that no Biblical author ever saw a cat (out of the Apocrypha).

[16] B. S. A. viii. 174.

[17] See Hogarth, _Ionia and the East_, pp. 83-86.

[18] _Ibid._ pp. 112-115.




CHAPTER III

HOMERIC POLITY. THE OVER LORD


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 most ancient Irish stories
in prose mixed with verse; and even to some extent by the Arthurian
romances. Every prince has his castle and town or towns, his lands,
pasturage, tilth, and orchards; he is, in the Irish phrase, a _righ_.
He is surrounded by the γέροντες,--in Irish the _flaith_, the gentry
or squires, who held "rich lands remote from towns," and possessed
war-chariots.[1] The princes and gentry with war-chariots alone take
notable individual parts in the fighting, whether they fight mounted
or dismounted. It is the gentry who offer a rich demesne, vineland
and tilth, to Meleager, imploring him to take part in their war.[2]
It appears to me that the gentry themselves held land in severalty,
perhaps contrary to the old letter of the law, and in possession rather
than in property.

The question of Homeric land tenure, as of all early land tenure
before written records, is very obscure. There existed "common
fields" certainly; but were they common property, each freeman having
no more than his strip; separated, we know, from that of others by a
longitudinal "balk" or boundary? We hear of men wrangling across the
balk, "with measures in their hands, in _a common field_, striving
for their right within scanty space."[3] Such quarrels were common in
the Scotland of the eighteenth century, under the "run-rig" system
of common fields; but then the men were tenants. They may have been
free-holders in Homer's time, each with his assured "lot" (κλὴρος)[4]
The Irish tribal free man had a right to one of these lots, which were
redistributed by rotation, but many lots came gradually into the hands
of each of the _flaith_, squires, (γέροντες), who were rich in cattle,
and let out the cattle to poor lease-holders, for returns of rent in
kind. A mail in Homer might have no lot,[5] and yet employ hinds, and
be a cultivator. He must have been a tenant farmer.

In the _Iliad_, apart from the demesnes allotted to great men by the
γέροντες, we only hear of personal property, gold, iron, cattle, and
so on. In the _Odyssey_ (xiv. 211) we read of men in Crete who each
possessed several lots; and in so old a civilisation nothing is more
probable. One is inclined to suppose that the majority of freemen held
each his lot, while some had lost their lots; that many who had been
land-holders came to hold as tenants merely, under rent in kind paid
for stock to the γέροντες, who were rich in ploughing cattle; and that
some γέροντες, and all princes held demesnes and a large share of
the unfenced pasturage, worked by slaves and hinds. This is quite a
practicable condition of affairs; there were all grades of wealth, some
men were, as Odysseus feigned to be, wandering tramps. By the time of
Hesiod lots of land were purchaseable,[6] but we do not hear in Homer
that lots could be bought and sold.

It does not seem that these variations of conditions, in a society
where the rich and the very poor certainly coexisted, are proofs that
ideas and practices of various later ages have been brought into the
Epics by the insertion of lays of various dates. In savage and barbaric
societies on a very low level, even in Australia, we find the most
various social rules coexisting, and tribes with maternal and with
paternal reckoning of descent live side by side. In Melanesia the
conditions of native land-tenure vary greatly, some are "primitive"
others not so.[7] When we reflect on facts so certain, it seems strange
that the hints of varieties in the condition of land-tenure in Homer
are regarded as a proof that the poems are a patchwork of the usages of
four changing centuries.

We do not, of course, know anything about land-tenure in the early
Ionian settlements in Asia, where, if anywhere, novelties would be
interpolated. Probably, as was usual and natural in the foundation of
a colony, each freeman was assigned his lot. But as the cities became
full of seafaring traders and sailors, some men thus occupied would
part with the lots which they could not cultivate, and these would be
bought by capitalists. Now Homer never mentions the purchase of lots.
Athenian tradition held that their colonists were led by the Codrids,
descendants of kings not Athenians, descendants of the sons of Neleus
of Pylos, Nestor's family. This legend was probably invented for the
purpose of introducing Attica into the Achaean cycle of history, in
which Attica, as far as Achaean traditions inform us, had no part.
Indeed we cannot know whether or not princes like these of Homer long
ruled the Ionian cities. Colonists are usually impatient of monarchy.

Returning to the Homeric Over Lord, the princes do not hold land from
the Crown, so to speak. The Over Lord is _primus inter pares_ by right
divine, not by election. In late forms of the Trojan tale, Agamemnon
is only an _elected_ general; this idea may be derived from the Ionic
poem, the _Cypria_. In Homer, Agamemnon is commander-in-chief _by
birth_; but the princes, in formal council, or on the field, deliver
their advice, which may or may not be accepted. Agamemnon usually gives
way to it. The Over Lord's rights are not strictly defined, except by
traditionary custom. Like Charlemagne in the later _Chansons de Geste_,
like Fion MacCumhail in his cycle, even like Arthur, the Achaean
Over Lord is not the favourite of the poets and romancers. They much
prefer, in Homer's case, the princes; in the mediaeval romances they
prefer Diarmaid, Cuchullain, Oscar, Lancelot, and the rest, to the
Over Lord. Except in the case of Arthur, who himself tends to become a
_fainéant_, the Over Lords are always capricious, arbitrary, unjust,
always encroaching, and are apt to be rebuked or even reviled, by
their more energetic subordinates. Agamemnon is in a position between
that of the Charlemagne of the _Chanson de Roland_, and the dotard
of the later _chansons_. His divine right is always recognised; his
bursts of insolent temper are easily checked; his nervousness as a
commander-in-chief brings on him rebukes to which he instantly yields,
and is partly redeemed by his personal prowess and skill with the
spear. When the Over Lord's insolence and injustice are beyond bearing,
the injured prince may blamelessly "renounce his allegiance," return
home or remain without taking part in battle or council. Nobody blames
Achilles for his mutiny, least of all does Athene, till he, in turn,
exceeds his rights by refusing atonement and apology.[8] It seems that
Achilles would actually have lost consideration had he returned to
action without receiving gifts of atonement,[9] as Meleager did in his
day. This is the chief point of the long exhortation of Phoenix.[10]

When reconciliation did occur, it was regulated by minute etiquette
(as in _Iliad_, xix. 171-183); there is an oath, a banquet, the gifts
of atonement are publicly brought into the midst of the Assembly, ἐς
μεσσην ἀγορήν, and exhibited: none of these points may be omitted in
the customary mode of giving satisfaction, ἵνα μή τι δίκης ἐπιδευὲς
ἔχηισθα.

These transactions Odysseus forces on the reluctant Achilles, as one
who "knows better" than he.[11]

There is nothing superstitious in the manly and constitutional attitude
of the princes towards the king. He is not a god of vegetation, who
is slain or sacrificed yearly or at longer intervals; if ever such a
mortal king god of vegetation existed anywhere. In the _Odyssey_ (xix.
107-114) we hear that, under a godfearing king, who reigns over strong
men and a large population, and maintains just dealings, the crops,
whether of grain or fruit-trees, and the flocks are fertile, while the
sea yields fish abundantly, "through the king's good government." Here
is a trace of belief in the prosperity of a good king, the gods reward
him, and his people prosper. But there is no hint that the king, as the
embodiment of a god, controls the weather.

The Achaean attitude towards the Over Lord is stated by Nestor,--"Think
not, son of Peleus, to strive with a king, might against might,
seeing that no common honour pertaineth to a sceptred king to whom
Zeus apportioneth glory." "I have beside me," says Agamemnon, "others
that shall do me honour, and above all Zeus, lord of counsel." He
inherits his sceptre "that over many islands and all Argos he should
be lord." He rules by right divine, but there are recognised limits
to his authority. This is a well-known form of polity in early
civilisations, and, so far, Homer, from first to last, thoroughly
understands his world. He never lets his Over Lord fall into the
decadence of Charlemagne in the _Chansons de Geste_. It may be a later,
it was certainly a more hostile spirit, as regards the Over Lord, that
reached the Cyclic poets (_circ_. 760-660), who dwell on the tyranny
suffered by Palamedes and Philoctetes, Palamedes being the inventor
of alphabetic writing. Pindar and the Greek tragedians followed, and
exaggerated such traditions.[12]

Homer retains the true sense of the position of the Over Lord, no
tincture of the ideas of later ages appears in the Epics. Now, is it
not a point worth considering that the Epics, though the critics take
them to have been open to interpolation even in their oldest passages,
down to 540 B.C. or thereabouts, never contain the word τύραννος or any
of its compounds? The τύραννος, the "Tyrant," was originally the person
who unconstitutionally seized power in one of the republics, usually
oligarchic, that succeeded to the Homeric kingships. We place the early
"tyrants" in the eighth century and onwards. To the Athenian tragedians
a Homeric king was a "tyrant." Yet despite the assumed facility of
interpolation into the Epics, even at a much later date than the eighth
century, no late poet foisted into our Epics the word τύραννος, nor
the ideas which it denotes. This abstinence is irreconcilable with the
supposed freedom of late interpolating poets in uncritical ages. The
Epics are perfectly consistent in their view of the divine right,
but limited power, of the Over Lord. He may display illegal arrogance
(ὕβρις), but he is never a τύραννος. The word, and the ideas connected
with the word,--usurpation by an individual of despotic power over
members of a free commonwealth,--were familiar to Greeks on both sides
of the sea in the eighth century. Interpolators of that period could
hardly have kept the word τύραννος out of their additions of new
matter, but it appears to occur for the first time in the Hymn to Ares:
"tyranny" (τύραννίς) is familiar to Archilochus.[13]

Thus, in the important matter of polity, we see that the Homeric
picture of society is coherent, represents a well-known social
and political state of affairs, is drawn with minute knowledge
of the rights and duties of all concerned, and bears no trace of
interpolations made under the later conditions known to Ionian poets
in Asia. But some epics of these poets display a grudge against the
Over Lord and his House, which is un-Homeric, and is exaggerated by the
Athenian tragedians.


[1] _Iliad_, xxiii. 832. All this passage, the conclusion of the
funeral games, is regarded as a late addition. It may be, but the poet
preserves the distinction between the uses of iron for implements, and
of bronze for weapons, which pervades both Epics. When a warrior like
Achilles offers a mass of iron for a prize, "we rather expect from
him," says Helbig, "an allusion to the military uses of the metal"
(_Das Homerische Epos_, pp. 330, 331, 1887). But Homer does not regard
iron as a military metal.

[2] _Iliad_, ix. 574-580.

[3] _Iliad_, xii. 421-423.

[4] xv. 498.

[5] Odyssey, xi. 490.

[6] Opp. 341.

[7] Codrington, _The Melanesians_.

[8] _Iliad_, ix. "When Achilles is justly angered with Agamemnon at
first none can blame him (ix. 523); but if he persists after Agamemnon
has sued for forgiveness, then there will be nemesis; people will be
indignant. He will know he is doing wrong." So Mr. Murray writes (Rise
of the Greek Epic, p. 81).

[9] _Iliad_, ix. 605.

[10] ix. 434 _et seqq_.

[11] They weary the critics, who are not at the Homeric point of view.
"It is quite conceivable that the whole idea of the Reconciliation
is an afterthought ... it is not only consistent with the character
of Achilles, but materially adds to the movement of the story, if we
suppose that on hearing of the death of Patroklos he set out to avenge
it without more ado" (Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 317).

[12] See _infra_, "The Story of Palamedes."

[13] 25 Bergk.




CHAPTER IV

HOMER'S WORLD IN PEACE


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 never mentioned with sympathy.
It seems to follow that Homer's people are conceived as long settled
in tranquil homes; and, though Achilles says that "cattle are to be
had for the raiding of them" (_Iliad_, ix. 406), actual fighting to
recover captured cattle is thrown back into the youth of Nestor. Young
adventurers, however, expend their energy, like the Icelanders of the
sagas, in "going on viking," "risking their own lives, bringing bane
to alien men." The great war against Thebes is a memory of an earlier
generation; as are the combats with the wild and shaggy hill tribes,
and the war between Meleager and the Couretes. When war is in hand
it has no more spirited singer than Homer; he has a special word (if
correctly rendered) for "the joy of battle" (χάρμη), but it has often
been remarked that his men are not very resolute and stubborn fighters.
They are not like the Spartans or the Macleans, with their traditional
rule of never retreating.

War may be a duty, in the eyes of Homer, but it is not a pleasure;
and this is the more singular as, in early societies, the bard, who,
like Ian Lom,[1] does not fight himself, is fond of provoking men to
battle. Though Odysseus, in his feigned tales of himself as a Cretan
adventurer, speaks of piracy, and of raids on the coasts of Egypt,
and though casual homicides are lightly mentioned, the Homeric is a
peace-loving world. The wild justice of the blood-feud, after a fatal
blow struck in anger, exists, and, as a rule, the slayer goes into
exile, to some friendly prince, and thus avoids the feud of the dead
man's kin.

On the Shield of Achilles was depicted a scene at the _Althing_ (to
use the Icelandic expression): "The folk were gathered in the assembly
place; for there was a strife arisen, two men striving about the
blood-price of a man slain; the one claiming to pay full atonement,
expounding to the people, but the other denied him, and would take
naught." The people are taking sides, and shouting, the heralds
restrain them, the γέροντες (the _probi homines_ or _prud'hommes_) sit
listening, on stone seats in the sacred circle.[2] The public sense
had enabled the slayer to remain at home, if the kin of the dead would
accept the blood-wyte, and allow the feud to be pacified. As Aias says
to Achilles, "a man accepts recompense of his brother's murderer, or
for his dead son; and so the manslayer for a great price abides in his
own land...."[3] Probably it was usual to accept the blood-price if
a man had been slain openly, sword in hand; but when a premeditated
murder was committed, actual revenge was desired. There was nothing
reckoned mean or contemptible in the pacific arrangement: in heroic
Iceland it was hard indeed to induce men to accept it.

These are the manners of a settled people, who will bear much for
the sake of peace, and of a people free from superstitious dread of
the blood curse, and ignorant of the filthy rite of purification by
the blood of swine, which was a regular piece of ritual in historic
Hellas, and is familiar to Aeschylus,[4] the Ionian epic poets, and
to Apollonius Rhodius. Certainly the rite was unknown to Homer, who
mentions many homicides but says nothing of purification or of
pollution. This point is later studied in detail. The life of the
heroes in peace is the life of all early aristocracies who do not idle,
and do not intrigue in a Court. The women spin and embroider, like
Penelope and Helen, and keep their eyes on household affairs, and on
their poultry, mainly geese. Nausicaa sees to the washing of the linen.
The men hunt hares and boars, and attend "days of law" in the legal
courts, and take part in funeral games. As yet we hear of no periodical
games, such as the Olympian, Isthmian, and Pythian, though the legends
of historic Greece pretend that these were founded in pre-Homeric times.

The princes also looked well to their lands. Odysseus alone is
mentioned as a skilled ploughman, carpenter, and shipwright, as some of
the Icelandic heroes are swordsmiths, but we see little of any prince
but Odysseus in peaceful life. There are professional artisans, whose
services are highly valued, carpenters, potters, bronze-smiths, and
weavers.

The women meanwhile are amused by the visits of Phoenician pedlars, who
bring goods and gauds of every kind, and steal a child or carry away a
serving maid if they have the opportunity, as in the case of Eumaeus.
After supper the minstrel of the prince chants lays, like Demodocus
in Phaeacia. As Spenser observed in Ireland, and as the Brehon laws
declare, the minstrel was highly honoured and trusted; the minstrel of
Agamemnon is charged, during the war, with the care of Clytemnestra.
These poets did not accompany the host to the war, where Achilles
solaced himself by singing to the harp "the renowns of men."[5]

Such is the general picture of Homer's world in time of peace, as
far as the days and works of the princely class and the gentry are
concerned. They are richly equipped with cups of gold, and furniture
inlaid with ivory and silver, even in the house of Odysseus. This
was but the dwelling of a king of a rocky isle. Entering the hall of
Menelaus, Telemachus bids his companion, the son of Nestor, marvel at
the gleam of bronze, gold, electrum, silver, and ivory.[6] Apparently
the home of Nestor in Pylos was not so rich and lordly. The house of
Menelaus is a picture of a dwelling rich in such treasures as have
been found in the Royal graves of Mycenae and in the palace of Cnossos
in Crete. In the house of Odysseus we hear of no bathroom and bath,
in which the girls of the house bathed princely guests and gave them
change of raiment.[7] Weapons adorn the walls (in the house of Odysseus
only), unless this be a later addition to the picture.

In the Homeric hall, each guest had his own little table and his chair.
The prince and his wife sat in the centre, beside the fire, under the
chief pillars. Honoured guests sat by them; the beggar was placed on
the threshold, with his mess of meat. As in heroic Ireland, where the
rules were very minute, some portions of the flesh were more honourable
than others. In the lost _Thebais_, Oedipus curses his sons, Eteocles
and Polynices, because they send him, not the shoulder, but the haunch
(ἰσχίον)[8] This is a very archaic touch.

Homer's world is aristocratic. The poet, none the less, has his eye
on the folk; on the honest poor woman who carefully weighs her wool;
on the aged female thrall who is busy all night over her task of
grain-grinding, and prays that the wooers who have broken her strength
may now eat their latest meal. He is keenly interested in the work of
artisans, such as the currier and shield maker who wrought the great
shield of Aias; in the fisherman with his nets, or line and bait; in
the diver for oysters; in the woodmen with their axes; in sowing and
ploughing, and the relative merits of oxen and mules as plough-beasts;
in the quarrel between two farmers over their boundary balk in the
common field; in the lot of the hind of a landless man, the hardest lot
of any; in gold-workers and spinners; shepherds, hunts-men, herdsmen;
in the potter who "sitting by his wheel maketh trial of it whether it
run"; in the virtues of a swineherd, a slave, who is noble by birth,
like Eumaeus; in all seafaring men down to the pursers and stewards;
in the laughing girls that gather in the vintage, while a boy makes
sweet music, and sings the song of Linus with delicate voice; in the
ploughman who has a drink of wine at the end of the furrow; in the
gardener with his orchard, the watering of a plot as it is done to this
day in the East; the fruit trees that Odysseus as a child was given
"for his very own"; in the smith's warm forge where masterless tramps
sleep at night; in the beggar men with their wallets, who crouch on the
outer part of the threshold; in the old cadger who goes on the errands
of the wooers; in the little girl that runs till she is weary by her
mother's side, and catches at her skirt, praying to be taken up in her
arms; in the children who build castles with the sea sand; in boys who,
"always fond of mischief," stone the wasps' nest, and make the angry
wasps a common nuisance; or cudgel the stubborn ass that is too strong
for them; in all poor wayfarers who wander under the protection of
Zeus; in all suppliants who, having slain a man, embrace the knees of
the prince to whom they flee. All mankind are as interesting to Homer
as the gallant youths at the bridal dance who wear "daggers of gold in
baldrics of silver"; such bronze daggers with gilded blade-centres as
were found in the tombs of Mycenae and elsewhere.

It is plain from Homeric descriptions of palaces, and of works of
art, that his age had not lost touch with or memory of the Aegean
culture. Whether some great Aegean or Mycenaean palaces with friezes
of cyanus (dark blue glass paste), and of metals, were still in a
habitable state, in Homer's days, or whether only the tradition
of their glory survived,--as memories of Roman buildings dwell in
the early Anglo-Saxon poem on the _Ruined City_ of the Romans in
England,--it is clear that plenty of Aegean artistic work in gold
and other metals, cups and sword hilts, was preserved, and known to
the poet. The Achaeans did not invade merely to destroy, like the
Anglo-Saxon invaders of Romanised Britain. Far more civilised and
refined than these rude hordes, they could appreciate and preserve as
well as burn and break,--in an hour of furious sack,--the treasures of
the more civilised race. But these treasures they could not imitate and
reproduce, apparently (they are often spoken of as the work of the god
Hephaestus), and the ancient Aegean art waned and passed under new and
crude influences.

Much as Homer delights in works of art, and vividly as he describes
them, and describes the toil of weavers, carpenters, shipwrights,
ploughmen, reapers, and vintagers, he never shows us a painter at
work on wall or vase, nor a mortal hand delineating, in any material,
men and women; except when Helen is weaving a great purple web, and
embroidering thereon, or interweaving there-with, "many battles of
horse-taming Trojans and mail-clad Achaeans."[9] This art implies some
knowledge of drawing and painting: from the Homeric age we have no
relics of this art; but such webs might, like the Bayeux tapestry, last
long, and might be imitated, and it may have been from such old Aegean
fabrics or copies of them that Homer took his idea.


[1] The bard of the Macdonalds in the year of Montrose.

[2] _Iliad_, xviii. 497-504.

[3] ix. 632-634.

[4] _Eumenides_, 273.

[5] _Iliad_, ix. 186, 189.

[6] _Odyssey_, iv. 70-75.

[7] _Ibid._ iii. 464-469. The word for bath, ἀσαμἰνθος, is thought,
like other words with the same termination, to be of the language of
the Aegean race, whoever they may have been: the termination is common
in place-names, and names of flowers.

[8] Kinkel, _Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta_, p. 11.

[9] _Iliad_, iii. 125-127.




CHAPTER V

MEN AND WOMEN


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, Andromache; the perfect
maiden, frank, stainless, and kind, Nausicaa; for the woman of immortal
charm, Helen; while, when he does touch on the less lovable humours
of women,--on the nagging shrew, the light o' love, the rather bitter
virgin,--he selects his examples from the divine society of the Gods.

It is an instance of the high and noble taste of the poet and his
audience, that he dwells most on the best and most charming of the
women in old traditions, and is manifestly reluctant to tell of any
evil deed, or any cruel sorrow of a lady. Yet legend was full of women
fierce and revengeful as Brynhild; such women as Medea, who slew her
own children; Ino, who hated her step-children; Althaea, who, to avenge
her brothers, burned the brand that was the life-token of her son,
Meleager of the golden hair. There was hateful Eriphyle, bribed by the
gift that drew her lord to his doom; there was hapless Epicaste, wedded
to her son, the slayer of his father; there were unhappy Chloris, and
unhappy Tyro, mother of Pelias and Neleus by Poseidon, and victim of a
feminine revenge. But this part of the tale is Ionian or Athenian, not
Homeric. In Homer a woman is not dishonoured, but more highly esteemed,
because she has been loved by a god. In Attic traditions she is
cruelly punished by her own kinsfolk.

The wicked and ill-fated ladies who remind us of heroines in ancient
German epos, are scarcely mentioned, or not at all in the _Iliad_
(where they could only appear in digressions), and the poet merely
touches on their fortunes when Odysseus meets them in Hades. From the
guilt and the misery of the "far-renowned brides of ancient song,"
Homer averts his eyes. Even to Clytemnestra, though her sin cannot be
hidden, he allows the _bon naturel_ which Mary Stuart justly claimed
for herself. We are reminded of the tenderness of Chaucer for the fault
of Cressida, "Ne me list this sely womman chyde."

Homer himself never blames Helen, he regards her with the affection
and pity of Hector and Priam: it is the Trojan women and Penelope, her
cousin, who speak frankly of Helen and the ruin which she wrought. In
the _Iliad_ she does not, "where'er she came, bring calamity"; she is
penitent, she longs for home, and her lord, and her one child, the
little maid Hermione. She scorns the cowardice of her lover, and, in
the third Book of the _Iliad_, the poet plainly declares that she is.
the unwilling victim of Aphrodite. In the _Odyssey,_ wherever she
appears, she brings beauty, grace, charm, and quiet, and her appointed
home is in the temperate meadows of the Elysian land.

Homer does not dwell on the passion of love; he could not do so in
an epic of war, and in an epic of a man seeking to win, on the sea,
"the return of his company." But each epic turns on and is _motive_ by
love; the _Iliad_ springs from the lawless love of Paris and Helen; the
_Odyssey_ from the wedded love of Odysseus and Penelope. The Wrath of
Achilles, too, arises on account of his lost love. In the instance of
Paris, love has turned to the most tragic end: the passion of Helen is
changed into bitter contempt and inconsolable regret.

The loves of youth and maiden, the whispered _oaristys_ "from rock and
oak," are seldom the theme of Greek poetry; in the Epics they would be
as out of place as in the _Chanson de Roland_. The loves of Troilus and
Cressida were, to Chaucer, the central interest of the Trojan leaguer;
no such place could they hold in Homer: he has an infinitely larger and
nobler topic. Yet he who listens may hear "The awakened loves around
him murmuring," in the lines that, through the din of battle, just
mention some old amour of gods with mortal maidens, of mortal men with
fairies of the woods and hills.

Considering the warlike nature of the _Iliad_, the parts played by
women, by Helen, Andromache, Hecuba, and the touches that bring forward
the wifely tenderness of Theano, are almost surprising; while the whole
poem is dominated by the maternal love of Thetis, that magical figure
of sorrow, foreboding, and affection, without which the character of
Achilles would be jejune, and bereft of occasions to display its _fond_
of tenderness and melancholy. Of course we are told that all these
women are "late," and formed no part of the original lay of the Wrath:
that is to be expected of critical sagacity.

The magnificent passages on Helen, Andromache, and Hecuba; the humorous
descriptions of Hera; Athene, her divine father's darling, and of
Aphrodite; the unnatural hatred of Althaea; the caprice of Anteia; the
pathos of the dirges of Briseis for Patroclus, of Helen for Hector; the
remorseless jealousy of the mother of Phoenix, when his father loves
a mistress among her maids, all supply "the female interest" in the
_Iliad_.

There is not so much "female interest" as in the _Volsunga Saga_, but
women occupy the same position, are regarded with the same deference;
they are free, on earth and in Olympus, they give their counsel and
even carry their point, as in the Icelandic sagas. In the _Odyssey_,
Arete and Nausicaa appear exactly in the fashion of Wealtheow,
Hrothgar's Queen, and her daughter in _Beowulf_,[1] they grace the
company and still the quarrels of men.

The whole view of women is what we may call "northern"; it is the
view of the sagas, of the English and the Teutonic epics; and is
remote from the spirit of the partly orientalised poets of Ionia.
But for the bequest of ancient heroic tradition the poets of Athens
could not have created their noble heroines. Attic life, Ionian life,
could not produce such women; and Aeschylus and Sophocles fall back
on memories of heroines who are not Ionian and are not Attic, in the
great majority of cases. Christian Europe at various times, in the age
of the chivalrous romances, and in comedy generally, fell far below
the old northern and Achaean view of the women's part. To chivalry,
adultery was a duty, to our European comedy it was a jest: marriage
was a _bourgeois_ business. But even to historic Greece the sanctity
of the marriage-tie was a serious matter: adulterous intrigues are not
the theme of Greek poets and comedians, as they have been ever since
our Middle Ages. Lancelot, and still more Tristram, would have been
stigmatised as Paris is by Hector; and Guinevere and Iseult would have
heard more reproaches from their own sex, than Penelope and the Trojan
women bestow on Helen. The Gods are a sinful and adulterous generation,
in the mythical view; but in the religious view they warn Aegisthus
against his sin and its consequence.[2]

Turning to the legal position of women, we do not know much about
the civil penalty or fine for adultery (μοιχάγρια), but Menelaus,
the soul of honour, is eager to avenge himself in the duel. The fine
for adultery may have been the equivalent of the bride-price paid by
the bridegroom. Hephaestus, in the song of Demodocus, demands the
return of the bride-price which he gave for the faithless Aphrodite,
the ἔεδνα.[3] The bride-price, often mentioned, is a well-known
institution, obsolete in historic Greece but familiar to the poet. In
very rare cases in Homer, a man may receive a bride without paying
a price for doing some great public service: in some circumstances
the father will even give a dowry with the bride.[4] In the most
notable passage where dowry (μείλία) is mentioned by the poet, he
plainly shows his knowledge that the giving of dowry is an exception
to the general rule; for he mentions the rule--the wooer pays the
bride-price ἔεδνα, but in his sore need of Achilles, Agamemnon offers
his daughter "without price" (ἀνάεδνον), and _plus_ such gifts as no
man ever endowed his daughter with.[5] This is no proof that the poet
of Book ix. lived in a later age than that of the bride-price. He
merely recognises what, in an age of bride-price, must have been the
fact, that in unusual circumstances, when the alliance of a man was of
crucial importance to the father, he would buy instead of selling his
daughter's marriage. People were never such pedants as not to infringe
a custom, not sacred but a secular bargain, when strong need came on
them.

In another instance the husband was King Priam, whose alliance was
worth buying by the aged father of the bride. "Circumstances alter
cases," as critics often forget, and such rare divergences from the
usual rule are not proofs of late interpolation. The Icelanders gave
dowries with their daughters, but when Njal was especially eager for a
bride for his foster son, he offered to reverse the process and give
ἔεδνα, bride-price.[6] In the case of the marriage of Penelope (a very
peculiar instance, as there was no proof that she was a widow, and as
it is not easy to see who "had her marriage"), we hear of bride-price
"such as is meet to go with a dear daughter." This return of the price,
or of part of it, was familiar to the Laws of Hammurabi and of the
Germans of Tacitus.[7] We may, with the separatist critics, suppose
that the passages about returning the bride-price of Penelope when
she goes to her second husband,[8] belong to a later period than the
body of the Epics; or, more probably, that a variety of customs may
coexist (that they may we have proved), and, in any case, Penelope's
people were anxious to get her off their hands in one way or another,
her situation being irksome and anomalous. Rare must be the examples
of interpolated details, when a case so anomalous as that of Penelope
is seized on as proof of the presence of later social practices. The
passages about Penelope are peculiar. In _Od_. ii. 53, Telemachus says
that the wooers have no mind to go to the father of Penelope, who
αὐτὸς ἐεδνώσαιτο θύγατρα. If we take this to mean "will endow her,"
the writer does not know the meaning of ἔεδνα; but I conceive him to
say, "will fix the bride-price," or make the terms.[9] Compare _Iliad_,
xiii. 384, ἐπεὶ οὔ τοι ἐεδνωταὶ κακοί εἰμεν, "we will not make hard
marriage terms," that is, will not demand a heavy bride-price.

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 daughter." Mr. Murray says that
the writer of these lines "mistook the meaning of estim because he had
forgotten the custom" (_R. G. E._ p. 152). But even Aeschylus knew that
ἔεδνα were gifts from the bridegroom (_Prometheus_, 559, quoted by Mr.
Murray); and if the author of the passages in _Odyssey_, i. ii., did
not know, he cannot have read the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. This is so
improbable, for even the author of the very "late" song of Ares and
Aphrodite (_Od_. viii. 318) knew all about the legal nature of ἔεδνα,
that we can hardly suppose the writer of the passages in _Od._ i. ii.
to have fancied that ἔεδνα meant "dowry."

One thing is certain, that the prehistoric usage of bride-price almost
uniformly prevails in the poems, with a trace of such variations in
custom as actually occur, when circumstances or affection demand it, in
every stage of human society. The bridal customs are not pedantically
stereotyped in Homer, but variations in accordance with circumstances
do not prove lateness or earliness, any more than such female names
as Alphesiboea, Phereboea, Polyboea, and others, indicating that a
daughter, on her marriage, will bring many kine into her family,
"express the excuse which the parents made to themselves for venturing
to rear the useless female child."[10]

Not even in Australian black society are girls more apt than male
babies to be killed as _bouches inutiles_, they are far too valuable
to their brothers or maternal uncles, being exchanged for other men's
sisters or nieces as brides. The cattle-owning barbaric societies of
Africa are not addicted to female infanticide, much less could Homeric
society be with its wealth and its tenderness of heart. In Greek
non-Homeric legend how often do we hear of a baby-girl being exposed?
It is the boys who suffer, in the hope of defeating some prophecy.
Homeric society is infinitely remote from that in which girls were too
expensive and useless to keep.[11]

Homer is the last author in whom we can hopefully look for survivals of
savagery, or of cruel and filthy superstitions. In the Epics there is
not a harlot, common as they are in the ancient Hebrew books. It is not
to be supposed that the ancient profession was unknown, but all such
things are ignored in deference to a taste more pure than that of early
Ionian society and of historic Greece from first to last. The tone of
taste and morals is, in short, Achaean, like the poet himself;[12]
Shakespeare, in _Troilus and Cressida_, makes Patroclus mimic Nestor; he

                         "coughs and spits,
    And with a palsy fumbling in his gorget,
    Shakes in and out the rivet,"

in "a night-alarm." Shakespeare has read of the night-alarm in _Iliad_,
Book x., but not there did he find, nowhere in Homer could he find "the
faint defects of age" made matter of merriment. In Homer nobody coughs!

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 moved.[13] and adorning it with
inlay of gold, silver and ivory. According to many critics, of whom
Wolf is the earliest, the final books of the _Odyssey_ are later than
the rest, and the idea of a separate chamber for husband and wife
is late. Other critics, when they find mentions of such a separate
chamber (δάλαμος) in other parts of the Epic, explain them as late
interpolations. They appear once again to forget that in no civilised
society is there absolute uniformity of detail in all the arrangements
of domestic life. An interesting example may be found in Scott's
description of the hall and house of Cedric the Saxon,--the hall
floored with "earth mixed with lime, trodden into a hard substance,
such as is often employed in flooring our modern barns," the rafters
"encrusted with a black varnish of soot" (the _melathron_), the walls
"hung with implements of war," "the low irregular building," are like
the house of Odysseus. There were "buildings after building."[14]
Contrasted with these arrangements were the castles of the Normans,
"tall, turreted, and castellated buildings."

"In the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ the houses are normally one-room halls.
The master and mistress live in the _megaron_ in the daytime and sleep
there at night ... grown-up sons and daughters have separate 'halls' or
_thalamoi_ built for them close by."[15]

On this showing, Odysseus had chosen to adopt a different arrangement,
it does not quite follow that the account of his house is late;
it would be hard to prove that _thalamos_ (chamber) and _megaron_
(hall) are identical, we hear of no outside _thalamos_, like that of
Telemachus, occupied by a girl, and the whole topic demands very minute
criticism. But the question of Aegean and Achaean architecture is at
present the subject of controversy among architectural specialists.

The happiness of wedded life has never been more nobly praised than
by Homer in the famous speech of Odysseus to Alcinous. Adultery is
laughed at only among the gods. Moreover, we never hear of lightness
of behaviour in girls, except when a God is the wooer, and that is
reckoned an honour, the woman is sought for in marriage by mortals.
In Ionian tradition, as has been said, on the other hand, the girls
beloved by gods are severely punished, like Tyro.

Fidelity is not expected from men when absent at a long siege, or lost
in unknown lands, like Odysseus, who does not scruple to tell Penelope
about Circe and Calypso. At home the fidelity of husbands depends on
the characters of the pair. Laertes is fond of a fair handmaid, but
dreads the wrath of his wife, as the father of Phoenix, in a similar
case, found that _he_ had good reason to do. The bastards of whom we
hear are probably sons of the captives of the spear, brought home as
Agamemnon unadvisedly brought Cassandra. Theano, wife of Antenor,
"nurtured his bastard, like her own children, to do her husband
pleasure."[16] Teucer also, a bastard, was brought up by his father
in his own house.[17] There was one law for the men, another for the
women, and Dr. Johnson approved of this moral system in England.

The domestic relations are very pleasingly portrayed in the _Iliad_.
Homer, to be sure, knows that family life is not always monotonously
peaceful and affectionate. In the long speech of Phoenix (Book ix.)
we see a son, Meleager, who has a feud with his maternal uncles and
is under his mother's curse. This family feud, in which the wife and
mother takes sides with her own kin against her husband or sons, is a
common motive in the oldest Teutonic Epics, and even in the historic
traditions of the Camerons.

But it is among the Olympians that Homer finds his blustering, teasing
yet placable husband and father, Zeus; his shrewish wife, Hera; his
rather spiteful daughter, Athene; and his lady of pleasure, Aphrodite,
whose intrigues are a jest. The affection of Zeus for his daughter,
none the less, is happily displayed, while among men the fraternal
affection of Agamemnon for Menelaus is his most agreeable trait.
Parents and children, except in the woeful adventure of Phoenix, are
always on the best of terms, as in the households of Odysseus, Nestor,
and Alcinous; and the petulance of Priam towards his sons, after the
death of Hector, is excused by his age and intolerable sufferings.
"With his staff he chased forth the men, and they went before the old
man in his haste."[18]

In short, though wives were bought with the bride-price, it seems
probable that the affectionate Homeric fathers allowed more latitude of
choice to their daughters than has, in many periods, been permitted by
ourselves in England, and no literature in the world displays a happier
domestic life, a life more gentle, true, and loving than the old Epics
of the mail-clad Achaeans.[19]


[1] _Beowulf_, 611-628, 1162-1174, 1215-1231.

[2] _Odyssey_, i. 36-43.

[3] _Odyssey_, viii. 317-320.

[4] _Iliad_, xxii. 51, ix. 146-158.

[5] _Iliad_, ix. 146 _et seqq_.

[6] _Story of Burnt Njal_, vol. ii p. 81.

[7] Germania, R. G. E. p. 151, note 1, citing Ham. 160, 163, 164.

[8] _Odyssey_, i. 278, ii. 195-197.

[9] See Pierron, "qu'il s'entendra avec le prétendant." Merry and
Riddell translate, "will accept gifts of wooing for his daughter."
Leaf: "get the bride-price for his daughter."

[10] _R. G. E._ p. 151.

[11] No society is less affluent than that of the Australian tribes.
But this does not provoke preferential female infanticide. See Spencer
and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 51, 52, 264;
_Northern Tribes_, p. 608; Howitt, _Native Tribes of South East
Australia_, pp. 749, 750.

[12] See Appendix, "The supposed Expurgation of Homer."

[13] Odyssey, xxiii. 183-204.

[14] _Odyssey_, xvii. 266.

[15] _R. G. E._ p. 153.

[16] _Iliad_, v. 69-71.

[17] viii. 281-284.

[18] xxiv. 247.

[19] Mr. Murray refers me, for female infanticide among Greeks, to a
letter in _Pap. Oxyz_., 744: "Keep a male. Cast out a female child."
These may have been the manners of late Egyptianised Greeks, but I am
not dealing with them. See p. 40 _supra_ under note 2.




CHAPTER VI

THE HOMERIC WORLD IN WAR


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 involved the slaying of its defenders, and
the carrying away of the women, "to make another's bed, and draw water
from another's well." Hector, when the broken oaths of the duel[1] make
it certain that Troy must perish, looks for no better fortune to befall
Andromache; may the earth be mounded above him before that day!

Though a truce is granted for the cremation and burial, with one common
cairn, of the men who fall in a great battle,[2] it is not Achilles
alone who would fain refuse burial, and rest in the House of Hades,
to an enemy. Hector intends to give the body of Patroclus to the dogs
of Troy, and to fix his head on the palisade above the wall.[3] The
fury of Achilles, when he learns from Iris the intentions of Hector,
has thus more excuse than is usually supposed. Homer himself found
such deeds in the tradition; and though he regards them with horror,
he cannot expurgate them. The insults lavished by Achilles on the
dead Hector are ἀεικέα ἔργα, deeds of shame.[4] But the deeds of
Hector would have been as shameful. The treatment of Hector was not
sensational enough for the refined taste of the Athenian tragedians.
Sophocles and Euripides make Achilles drag the wounded but living
Hector.[5]

The tragedians here followed a tradition that was not Homer's; it
may have come, Mr. Murray suggests, from the lost Cyclic poem _Iliou
Persis_, the _Sack of Ilios_. The Cyclic poets of 750-650 B.C. are in
all ways more superstitious and barbarous than Homer; theirs is the
taste of a later age than his, and, as we shall see, they are usually
followed by the Athenian tragedians. They preferred the "sensational"
and the "harrowing," and did not shrink, in the _Andromache_, as in
the Ionian _Sack of Ilios_, from the brutal murder of Hector's child,
Astyanax. Homer's men are never child-murderers. City sackings were
as cruel as those of Cromwell in Ireland, of Monk in Dundee; our own
dealings with Badajoz and Ciudad Rodrigo are more recent examples,
and these were towns of our allies. But Homer's men do not, like the
Assyrians, torture prisoners of war; such captives were starved,
tortured, and literally caged, to extract ransom, during our Hundred
Years' War with France; as Cromwell's prisoners, after Dunbar, were
starved in Durham Cathedral. In Homer, ransom is sometimes accepted,
in the earlier days of the siege. Achilles, especially, took ransoms
and was merciful. Contrast the ferocity of Agamemnon, who refuses
quarter, and slays a man to whom Menelaus was giving quarter.[6]
Agamemnon actually cuts off the hands and head of one foe, and throws
the head into the throng! He desires that not even the male child
in the womb may escape! (_Iliad_, vi. 56-60). There are chivalrous
passages, as when Hector and Aias exchange gifts after an indecisive
passage of arms, and when Diomede and Glaucus recognise their ancestral
friendship; but there are plenty of cases in which victors exult with
cruel humour over their fallen foes, in the spirit of Arthur in
Layamon's _Brut_. (1200 A.D.).

The dead, except in the case of Eetion on whom Achilles had ruth, were
always stripped of arms and armour, if the victors were not impeded.
The hut of Idomeneus held many such Trojan spoils. There are hints
of a custom of tearing the tunics, or chitons,[7] but they are vague
and unimportant. No doubt the act, when performed, was intended as an
insult, but it is only alluded to twice or thrice: in one case the
tunic is "of bronze," answering to the current term _χαλκοχίτωνες_,
"bronze-clad."[8] The case is obscure.

_A la guerre comme à la guerre_. The morals of war in Homer are not
unlike those of war everywhere in the matter of "atrocities." The siege
operations were very inefficient. The Achaeans were not able to invest
Troy, and they never dreamed of an escalade. Without a scaling-ladder
Patroclus "thrice clomb on the corner of the lofty wall," and was only
thrust back by Apollo.[9] But scaling-ladders are never mentioned; a
night attack is never contemplated. The famous Wooden Horse is the
only hint of an approach under a wooden cover on wheels (the mediaeval
"Sow"); and if it was anything of that sort, Homer did not understand
its nature. The efficient fighting in the open was done by chariotry
(the owners usually dismounted and fought in line or column); as in
most ancient oriental countries, Scotland in Roman times, and Ireland
in the Late Celtic period, perhaps as late as 300 a.d., also in early
Britain. By the date of the Black Figure vases (sixth century B.C.)
and in seventh century art, the painters often introduce mounted men:
the "late poets" abstained from doing so, it appears, except the late
unspeakable _Stümper_ of the Doloneia, according to Reichel.

The tactics, as far as we can make a coherent picture of them, were
peculiar, but not unexampled.

At the beginning of a pitched battle the knights (owners of chariots)
dismounted, and formed a thick and serried line of infantry: behind
them came the nameless host, concerning whose armour we have no
information. The light-armed archers and slingers showered their
missiles, and the combat might last for hours. At "the break of the
battle," when one side had broken the enemy's line, the victors pursued
either on foot, or, more generally, in their chariots which had been
stationed behind them in the close combat; while the vanquished leaped
into their chariots and fled, save the brave who retired face to the
foe. After the break in the battle, the individual exploits of the
mounted knights, the chariotry, fill the picture, till the beaten
forces reach the wall of the Greek camp, or of Troy, when a rally
occurs, followed by another battle in ordered ranks.[10]

As to the armour and weapons, Homer represents every man-at-arms as
wearing a helmet, usually of bronze; and a huge shield, very long, like
the three sorts of shield represented in Aegean art on the Mycenaean
dagger blade showing lion hunters. Some shields in this art are in
form like the figure 8, they belly out, and protect a man from neck to
ankles. Others are merely doors, flat and oblong, of the same size;
others are equally large, cylindrical, and partly protect the sides.
All are hung from the shoulder by baldrics, not held in the hand,
like the parrying bucklers of the eighth century and later. Homer thus
describes such huge shields as these of Aegean art, with baldrics; but
his language not infrequently conveys the impression that some shields
are circular; indeed, it is only by wrenching the sense of the Greek
that any other meaning can be obtained. The details are considered
later; meanwhile Homer's shields are neither those of the Dipylon
period nor of archaic Greek art, and in their size and their baldrics
correspond to those of Aegean representations. The substance of the
shields is layers of ox's hide, covered with a plating of bronze.
Warriors also wear corslet, metal girdle, and metal-plated kirtle: the
corslet was thin, and could be pierced by arrows. The greaves to cover
the shins were probably of bronze, laced up with wire, as in a pair
from Enkomi in Cyprus, of the Age of Bronze, now in the British Museum.
No thigh pieces are mentioned, though they are commonly shown in the
art of the seventh to sixth centuries.[11]

For offensive weapons the men-at-arms use two spears with heavy heads
of bronze, these are usually thrown; and a sword of bronze, commonly
a heavy cut and thrust blade (never the long Elizabethan rapier of an
earlier Minoan time), with a handle of ivory, inlaid or studded with
gold or silver, in some cases. The sheath is similarly decorated. Only
once do we hear of a battle-axe of bronze; and the dirk, sometimes of
iron, is never said to be used in battle. These weapons have analogues
in certain swords and daggers found in Aegean graves.

Archery is not so highly considered as when "the man Heracles" and
the great Eurytus were bowmen. Odysseus, the heir of the mighty bow
of Eurytus, left it at home, and fought as a heavy-armed footman.
Pandarus, on the other hand, left his horses and chariots at home, and
came to Troy trusting in his bow.[12] Teucer, Pandarus, Paris, and
occasionally Meriones, are the bowmen, among the princes, and Paris
and Pandarus are taunted for their weak and cowardly missiles; honour
was to be won with sword and spear. The Scots archers, in the same
way, were always anxious to come to hand-strokes with their sperths,
or battle-axes; the Highlanders threw down their muskets, after one
discharge, and went in with the claymore; the French never reconciled
themselves to the long bow; the Spartans despised it. This was the
Homeric sentiment: the bow was scarcely the weapon for a hero. The
arrow-heads were of bronze.[13] In Mycenaean graves at Kakovotos (Old
Pylos) in Elis, the stone arrow points are of very fine neolithic
work.[14] When archery declined yet lower, in historic times, the
round or oval parrying buckler, carried on the left arm, came in, as a
protection against spears and sword-strokes. This parrying buckler does
not appear in Homer: efforts made to discover it are unsuccessful.

Thus Homer describes a given stage in the art of war: his pictures are
not patchworks of "Mycenaean" fighting (about which we know nothing),
and of civic Greek fighting in the age of civic heavy-armed foot.


[1] Iliad, iii. iv.

[2] vii. 332-420.

[3] xviii. 175-177.

[4] Ferdiad, in the Old Irish _Tain Bo Cualgne_, also drags a dead man
by his chariot wheels.

[5] _R.G.E._ p. 118. _Ajax_, 1031. Euripides, _Andromache_, 399.

[6] _Iliad_, vi. 37-65, xi. 122-147.

[7] _Iliad_, xi. 100, ii. 416.

[8] _Ibid._ xiii. 439, 440. That the bronze tunic is a softening of
the sense by a late interpolator is not very likely, for Homer, we
have seen, represents a warrior as cutting off a dead man's hands and
head; and if he does not shirk this, if no later hand corrects him, why
should he strain at tearing a chiton? Miss Stawell ingeniously remarks
that the chiton-tearing is a proof of the prevalent use of corslet? If
men fought without corslets, the chiton "must always have been getting
torn in the mêlée, whatever the warrior's fate. But the sign would have
been unmistakable if the tunic was usually covered by the corslet and
could not be torn until that was taken off...." (_Homer and the Iliad_,
p. 211). But, I fear, Homeric warriors did not come to such close
quarters as at Rugby football.

[9] _Iliad_, xvi. 702, 703.

[10] See "Homeric Tactics."

[11] For details and discussion, see "Homeric Armour and Costume."

[12] Iliad, v. 193-205.

[13] On stone and bronze arrow-heads, see Tsountas and Manatt, p. 209.

[14] Kurt Müller, _Alt Pyhs_, p. 292. _Attische Mitteilungen_, 1909.
Cf. plate xv.




CHAPTER VII

HOMERIC TACTICS


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 single combat; the struggle of one hero
against a group of assailants; the pursuit and the flight; more than he
dwells on the long encounter of marshalled lines before "the break in
the battle."

Let us consider the battle in _Iliad_, xi. The princes begin by giving
their chariots to the charioteers, "to hold them in by the fosse, well
and orderly," and "themselves as heavy men-at-arms were hastening
about."[1] They are then marshalled in order, with the chariots behind
them. Meanwhile Hector arrays the Trojans, being now with the front
and now with the rear ranks.[2] The fight begins; "equal heads had the
battle." The two forces meet like two bands of reapers shearing the
corn of a field from either limit, and meeting in the centre.[3] This
steady fight of lines of dismounted men-at-arms endures from dawn to
midday, till, at noon, comes "the break in the battle," "the Danaans
by their valour brake the battalions."[4] Agamemnon, on foot, rushes
into the ruined ranks of Troy, and slays many Trojans in their chariots
(which they would naturally mount for the sake of speedier flight);
there is a pursuit of the broken foe, "footmen kept slaying footmen
as they were driven in flight, and horsemen slaying horsemen with
the sword"; till the flying Trojans rally at the Scaean gate, while
Agamemnon still slays the hindmost fugitives. A flesh-wound irks him,
and he "retires hurt." Hector, by command of Zeus, has waited for this
moment, and now leads a chariot-charge among the scattered Achaeans.
Henceforth there is a series of individual encounters; Odysseus is
alone and is surrounded; he fights hard; he calls for aid, and is
rescued by Menelaus and Aias. Several Achaean princes are wounded,
among others Diomede, Agamemnon, and Odysseus retire to their quarters
for rest and surgical aid.

This is not scientific fighting: no general is apart, receiving news
of the fight, sending supports where they are needed, husbanding the
reserves, and so forth. The leaders actually _lead_, and their men are
discouraged and give ground when the chiefs are put out of action,
precisely as in the Highland armies of clans under Dundee or Montrose
or Prince Charles, where so much depended on the success of the first
onslaught. Homer's men have more faculty for recovering from a severe
stroke. The Achaeans, after a long struggle of heavy dismounted
men-at-arms, drive the Trojans to the city wall. The Trojans rally,
and drive the Achaeans to their own fortifications, where there is a
confused mellay at the fosse and under the wall.[5]

Polydamas very properly now advises the chivalry of Troy to dismount
and fight on foot (_πρυλέες_) in dense columns, while their chariots
are held stationary by their squires. Hector approves, and the
dismounted Trojans form five columns of attack on a fortified
position.[6] The Achaeans, scattered and disheartened, are mainly led
and helped by the two Aiantes, but Poseidon rallies five or six young
heroes of Boeotia, Aetolia, Crete, and Pylos.[7] They are confessedly
both wearied and demoralised by the success of Hector in breaking down
the gate.[8] They are actually weeping!

But now, encouraged by the god, they form a "schiltrom," a close
clump of spears advanced and levelled, underlying and overlying each
other.[9] (The spears of defenders and assailants, at the battle of
Langside (1568), were so closely interlocked, that discharged pistols
and daggers thrown by the combatants lay on them!) Shield touches
shield, the plumes of the helmets meet.[10]

As was natural, Hector's column was arrested by the "dark impenetrable
wood" of Achaean spears,[11] and now the poet makes Poseidon, who
has lost a grandson (xiii. 207) in the fight, stir up Idomeneus, who
is at a distance from Hector's point of attack, and we have the day
of valour, and the success of the Cretan prince, on the left of the
Achaean fortified position. The Boeotians there, with the Athenians and
"Ionian tunic-trailers," are hard pressed, but the Aiantes make a stout
resistance, and the arrows of the Locrians are showered on Hector's
column.[12] Polydamas advises Hector to retreat, but he hurries off and
brings up reinforcements in good order. He then tries again and again
to break through the schiltrom of the Achaean dismounted men-at-arms,
and the two forces clash with cries of onset.[13]

Here we have a renewal of the steady conflict of men duly marshalled.
Hector, however, is put out of action, sore smitten by a boulder from
the hand of Aias; the Trojans give ground, are pursued, and fall back,
till when Hector revives, Aias and the princes who joined him at the
command of Poseidon, form a firm line of resistance.[14]

Again there is a dogged contest of marshalled forces, till Apollo
causes a panic among the Achaeans, and their line is broken. "Then man
fell upon man _when the close fight was scattered_,"[15] and we have
a new set of individual valiances, among the bravest; but the Achaean
host is flying in disorderly rout, "hither and thither in terror,"
through the ditch and within the wall.

It is in his chariot, to which he had been carried when stunned by
the boulder, that Hector now calls for a chariot charge on the fosse
and wall, which Apollo makes possible by levelling the wall into the
dyke.[16] After mixed fighting, the spear of Aias is lopped in twain by
the sword of Hector, and fire is thrown into the ship of Protesilaus.
This is the moment that Achilles has prayed and longed for since the
first book of the poem. Addressing Agamemnon, he then swore a great
oath by the sceptre that "longing for Achilles shall come upon the
Achaeans one and all, when multitudes fall dying before manslaying
Hector."[17] In the same book he bids Thetis pray to Zeus to "hem the
Achaeans among the sterns of their ships, given over to slaughter."[18]
When the Embassy sought Achilles in Book ix., with the offers of
Agamemnon, this dire need had not fallen on the Achaeans, and Achilles
rejected their prayers. But he promised to fight if Hector, as he
burned the ships, came to those of the Myrmidons.[19]

Hector never came so far; for[20] though Achilles kept the letter
of his vow in Book ix., and did not arm, he sent Patroclus forth in
Achilles' armour, at the head of the Myrmidons, and their charge on
rear and flank drove the Trojans far from the ships and the wall.

This is a brief summary of the main movements in the engagement, up to
the moment when Achilles let slip the Myrmidons. We see that, setting
aside the interferences of gods, and the pardonable exaggeration of
the prowess of favourite heroes, we have a set of as natural pictures
of the flux and reflux of battle-tides as if we were reading about
Waterloo. The character of the engagements is conditioned by the use of
dismounted men-at-arms as heavy infantry, whether employed in lines of
resistance, in squares or schiltroms of levelled spears, or in columns
of attack. The fighting men in view are the gentry, stiffening "the
host," the _λαός_ of whose equipment we know little, while the archery
of light-armed bowmen, such as the Locrians, is not without its effect.
But the bows are short, and the arrow is drawn only to the breast,
not, as by Egyptian and Assyrian archers, on the monuments, and by the
archers of mediaeval England, to the ear. Chariots are not employed,
in Homer, as on the Egyptian monuments, in charging squadrons, closely
and neatly arranged, but in the flight and the pursuit, and to bear the
prince rapidly to distant points of the field.[21]

The most obvious and closest analogy to Homeric warfare is that of
the period (1300-1430 A.D.) when the Flemings and Scots had shown the
powerlessness of charges of heavy cavalry against the schiltroms of
spearmen, if these had not been broken up by "artillery preparation,"
by the long bow. Henceforth the English knights, squires, and "lances,"
or men-at-arms dismounted, their horses being held in reserve, and
received the attacks of the heavy French cavalry on foot, with spear,
sword, and axe. In case of defeat (which did not occur) or of pursuit,
the horses were in readiness. Heavy armed infantry, like the hoplites
of historic Greece, were developed later than Homer, and the heavy
cavalry then became a separate arm. The changes occurred in the dim age
between the date of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ and the dawn of historic
Greece. Chariots ceased to be employed in war by the Greek cities of
Asia. The chief arm was the heavy drilled infantry, the hoplites. We
catch our first glimpses of them on the Warrior Vase of the upper and
later stratum at Mycenae, and on an old sculptured Mycenaean stele,
later "plastered over and painted in fresco." In the former is a line
of swordless spearmen on the march; on the latter, a row of swordless
spearmen in the act of brandishing the spear. Their bucklers are worn
on the left arm: they appear to wear hauberks, not corslets of plate,
but one cannot be certain.[22] In these figures we see the germ of the
infantry of historic Hellas. The war chariot becoming obsolete, civic
cavalry were employed; the horsemen of Colophon were celebrated for
dealing a fatal conclusive charge.

Nothing could be much less like Homeric than historical Ionian warfare,
except in so far as Homer's dismounted men-at-arms resemble the heavy
historic infantry, who never mount.

We have now given a brief sketch of Homer's idea of a general
engagement in force. The clash of marshalled lines of heavy dismounted
men-at-arms ends in the breaking of the phalanxes, and in the single
combats, or combats of small knots of heroes, in which the poet and his
audience take special delight.

We now criticise the modern criticisms of Homeric pictures of battles.

Herr Mülder, in 1906, and Mr. Murray, in 1908, discover that Homeric
formations and fighting are a confusion of the methods of historic
Greece--with drilled hoplites and cavalry,--and the "Mycenaean" system
of "a battle of _promachoi_ or champions."[23]

According to the English critic, in the Iliad "the men are, so to
speak, advertised as fighting in one way, and then they proceed
to fight in another."[24] As we have seen, they are "advertised as
fighting in one way," that is, in ordered phalanxes of dismounted
men-at-arms, and they _do_ fight in that way, from dawn till noon; and
then when "the phalanxes are broken," when "the battle is scattered,"
they "fight in another way"; there is flight, pursuit, and examples
of individual valour; there is a rally, and the lines of men on foot
re-form. What else could there possibly be? The charge of the Union
brigade, at Waterloo, begins by "fighting in one way," a resistless
charge of squadrons, and ends by "fighting in another way," in knots,
with individual examples of flight, or of single prowess, when
Piré's Red Lancers swoop down on the scattered and broken ranks.
At Bannockburn you have the slow advance of the clogged English
columns on a narrow front, you have the slow advance in mass of the
Scottish spearmen, till "the phalanxes are broken" of England, and
then comes the isolated struggle of Edward II., and the charge of
d'Argentine,--alone.

It was always thus that men fought, before the invention of modern
projectiles. It was thus they fought at Inkerman, nay, for a moment at
Waggon Hill, as one who was in the thick of it informs me. Ian Hamilton
and de Villiers, Albrecht and Digby Jones were among the _promachoi_.

There is no confusion of a "Mycenaean" and a historic mode of battle in
Homer; and we have absolutely no evidence as to how a "Mycenaean" or
Aegean general engagement was conducted: no Aegean work of art in which
it is represented.[25]

There is no confusion of military styles in Homer; the trouble is
caused when Herr Mülder chooses to say that there is confusion;
that a fight of masses is _promised_ (apparently by an Ionian
interpolator), and that single combats are _given_ (apparently by the
older minstrel).[26] Both sorts of fighting are given in their proper
places: the engagement of masses before, the individual valiances after
"the battle is scattered," while in the clash of the massed forces,
the conduct of prominent assailants and defenders is noted. Mülder's
remarks arise from his eagerness to prove that not only the armature is
a muddle of anachronisms, which is not the case, but that the fighting,
too, is anachronistic and self-contradictory.

The aged Nestor remembers and approves of a mode of fighting which,
at Troy, has become obsolete, owing to the new system of dismounting
the men-at-arms and arraying them in line or in column of attack. He
says to his Pylians (_Iliad_, iv. 303 _seqq_.), "Neither let any man,
trusting to his horsemanship and valour, be eager to fight the Trojans
alone before the rest, nor yet let him draw back.... But whensoever a
warrior from his own chariot can come at the chariot of the foe, let
him thrust forth with his spear, even so is the far better way," the
_old_ way. "The style of fighting is not Epic," says Mr. Leaf. It is
meant not to be "Epic"; it is old-fashioned, like Nestor.

We know "the old way" from pictures on Egyptian monuments, showing
the charge of squadrons using the bow, and routing an irregular
advance of Hittite chariotry, using the spear. But, under Troy, the
combatants usually fight dismounted; always, in the opening of a
general action. But though Nestor recommends the old chariotry tactics,
Herr Mülder says that he is recommending the historic, "the modern
method," and attributing it to the old military school of his youth (οἱ
πρότεροι).[27] The general purpose is to prove that "edifying passages
from the old Ionic hortatory writers seem to have been introduced into
Homer."[28]

The tactics and military formations of Homer are as intelligible as
those of Chandos and Henry v. They can only be misunderstood by critics
under the suggestion of the idea that the _Iliad_ is riddled with
Ionian tamperings. The Ionians never touched the matter of the _Iliad_.


[1] _Iliad_, xi. 49, _ αὐτοὶ δὲ πρυλέες σὐν τέύχεσιθωρηχθέντες_. Cf. v.
744, _πρυλέες_ "may mean either _footmen_ or _champions_." Leaf.

[2] _Iliad_, xi. 59-66.

[3] xi. 67-69.

[4] θαλάγγαι, xi. 90.

[5] _Iliad_, xii. 3, _μάχοντο ὀμιλαδόν_. Cf. xii. 35, 36.

[6] xii. 66-107.

[7] _Iliad, xiii_. 81-124.

[8] xiii. 80-90.

[9] πτύσσοντο, xiii. 134.

[10] xiii. 128-133.

[11] xiii. 144-148.

[12] xiii. 789-906.

[13] xiii. 833-837.

[14] xv. 299-301.

[15] _Iliad_, xv. 328.

[16] xv. 343-366.

[17] i. 241-244.

[18] i. 409-412.

[19] ix. 653-656.

[20] xvi. 1-155.

[21] Rapid retreat, xi. 359-360. Rapid pursuit, viii. 87-90, 340-349.
Leaf on viii. 348. Cf. Caesar, _Bellum Gallicum_, iv. 33. Chariot in
attendance to remove wounded hero, xi. 273, 399. Quick mounting and
dismounting, xvi. 426, 427.

[22] Ridgeway, _E. A. G._, vol. i. pp. 313-315.

[23] _R. G. E._ pp. 141-143. _Homer und die altjonische Elegie_, pp.
32-41.

[24] _R. G. E._ p. 143.

[25] Mr. Murray writes: "It is in this way" (in phalanxes) "that
people are said to be going to fight before each great battle begins.
But strangely enough it is not at all in this way that they really
fight when the battle is fairly joined, in the heart of the poem. In
the heart of the poem, when the real fight comes, it is as a rule
purely Mycenaean." We do not know how Mycenaeans fought in a general
engagement. But people, in Homer, do fight as they "are said to be
going to tight," when a schiltrom of spears is formed and is assailed,
as in _Iliad_, xiii. 125-205. There the Trojan charge is checked by the
hedge of spears. The general assault, the combined resistance, and the
conduct of the most prominent men in defence and attack, is described,
just as, at Waterloo and Culloden, historians describe the general
conflict, and also the individual prowess of Shaw, Gillie Macbean, and
others.

[26] Mülder, _op. cit_. p. 32.

[27] Mülder, op. cit. p. 36.

[28] _R. G. E._ 133, note 1. Thus the hortatory eloquence of Poseidon
(xiii. 108 fi.) is an echo of Callinus's stimulating appeal to the
young to bestir themselves, when the country is at war. Callinus.
fr. 1. Thus Poseidon cannot say "young men, don't be slack," without
quoting an Ionian elegiac poet! (Mülder, pp. 12, 13). It is waste of
time to discuss criticism of this sort, especially as, even if there
were any borrowing, the Ionian elegy-maker must be reminiscent of the
_Iliad_, as Tyrtaeus is in a familiar passage.




CHAPTER VIII

MEN'S DRESS IN HOMER. ARMOUR.


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 English, the "early lays" of
the _Iliad_ were composed when men wore smocks or chitons, like the
Greeks of the historic ages. In war, on this theory, they wore no
armour save the huge body--covering shields of Aegean art, but _not_
the loin-cloth or the bathing-drawers which were the sole costume of
the Aegean fighting man. The Homeric warrior of the "early lays" was
thus accoutred; like the Aegean warrior, he had no body armour save
the shield, but, by way of dress, he had the smock or chiton, not the
loin-cloth.

On this theory the corslet did not come into vogue till the eighth to
seventh century. Then it arrived with the _zoster_, or mailed belt, and
the _mitrê_, or mailed kirtle. When these had been accepted, the huge
early shield, slung by a baldric, was discarded for the round or oval
parrying buckler, blazoned with a device, and carried on the left arm.
The smock or chiton continued to be worn. Ionian poets interpolated
their corslet, mitre, zoster, and greaves into passages of old lays
that originally knew no such armour. The result was confused nonsense.

Against all this I am to contend that greaves, bronze corslets of
plate, bronze girdles, and mailed kirtles were known in Aegean times
long before the arrival of the Achaeans in Crete: proof is given from
a work of Aegean art. Secondly, hauberks of metal scales were worn
in very early post-Homeric times; and Homer minutely describes such
hauberks, which clasped in front and back. Thirdly, the Ionian armour
of the eighth, seventh, and early sixth centuries was not Homeric. Men
wore, not hauberks of mail, clasping at front and back, but corslets
with breast-plate and back-plate fastened at the sides; with these
they wore neither mailed belt nor mailed kirtle. They wore not only
greaves, but protective thigh-pieces (_parameridia_) unknown to Homer.
But, about 530 B.C., these corslets of plate began to go out, and yield
place to hauberks of mail, clasping at front and back; and with these
were worn mailed belts and mailed kirtles, but no thigh-pieces. In
Homer this is the usual equipment, though corslets of plate appear also
to be known.

As to dress, the Ionian warrior of the eighth to early sixth century
did not wear in active life the Homeric smock or chiton. He either
reverted to the Aegean loin-cloth or drawers, or he wore a very tight
curt jerkin, coming down no lower than the buttocks. It was when the
mailed hauberk, mailed belt, and mailed flaps under the belt came in,
that the smock or chiton also reappeared, and the tight curt jerkin or
the loin-cloth went out.

Thus the Ionian minstrels did not bring into old lays armour which
they did not wear, and the chiton which they did not wear they did
not excise. Nor did any one, at any time, foist in the round Ionian
parrying shield on the left arm: the Homeric body-covering shield hung
by a baldric retained its place. Women, too, I am to argue, reverted
on occasion to the Aegean tight bodice, small waist and skirt, or wore
a chiton tight, comparatively short, and not, like the Homeric peplos,
long, loose, and trailing. But these intermediate periods, between the
Homeric and historic, left not a trace in the pictures presented by the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.

Why was the new Ionian armour introduced, as we are told it was, while
the un-Homeric features in dress were not introduced into the poems?

Coming to men's dress in Homer, we do not know exactly how long the
ordinary Homeric chiton was. If the word τερμιόεις means "reaching to
the feet," it would apply well to a shield of the huge Mycenaean make,
and to a chiton, and it is used of both.[1] But some take it to mean
"fringed," which cannot apply to the Mycenaean shield, or to chitons as
represented anywhere except perhaps in the Warrior Vase (sub-Mycenæan)
of Mycenae. No brooches are mentioned as fastening chitons, and it
rather appears that these resembled the very short-sleeved, rather
loose, and not girdled sewn smock of the lowest figure in the Mycenaean
"siege vase." Eumaeus the swine-herd belts his chiton with a girdle
when he goes out to his work.[2] Probably, therefore, it reached the
feet, and had to be "kirtled up." Now the curt jerkin of seventh to
sixth century art needs no tucking up, it merely covers the buttocks.
The material was linen, if the name chiton be derived from a Semitic
word for linen.

When we read that the tunic of Odysseus was "shining like the skin of
a dried onion, so soft it was, and bright as the sun," it is not quite
clear whether it was as _tight_, or as bright, as the onion skin; and
perhaps its brilliance suggests that it was of silk, rather than of
linen, unstarched.

A person who comes fresh from Homer to the study of Greek archaic art,
of the latest eighth, the seventh, and the sixth centuries, cannot but
be struck by the fact, rather neglected by writers on costume, that the
men are _not_ wearing the Homeric chiton, which needs to be kirtled up
in active life. On the other hand, "on the earliest vases the men
are often nude, with the exception of a loin-cloth or pair of tight
fitting bathing-drawers."[3] This is the usual pre-Achaean dress of
men in Minoan art. In archaic Greek art, men often wear either a very
tight jerkin, covering the trunk, or, "on the earliest vases," the men
have reverted from the Homeric chiton to the Aegean loin-cloth and
bathing-drawers. Either this is the case, or the men, in fact, never
wore the chiton in the "earliest" lays; the chiton, like the armour, as
we are told, must have been introduced by the "tunic-trailing Ionians."
Yet these Ionians, or any Greeks of the eighth to seventh centuries,
in their art are represented as wearing loin-cloths, bathing-drawers,
or curt tight jerkins needing not to be girdled up, except in cases of
reverend seignors, in a house of repose, and at festivals. (See fig. 1.)

[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Sacrifice to Athene--B.F. Archaic Vase-Painting]

One or other or all of the tight curt men's garments--loin-cloth,
bathing-drawers, or jerkin, reaching from the shoulders to just below
the buttocks--was called in Ionia the _cypassis_, a term as much
unknown to Homer as the article itself.

The _κυπυσσις_ is mentioned by Alcaeus (611 B.C.) and prayed for by
Hipponax, an Ephesian poet contemporary with Croesus: in art we find
it represented from the eighth to the sixth century.[4] Such a dress,
with a very broad belt, is a male costume common for archers and men
at work, in the Assyrian art of the eighth to seventh centuries and in
Aztec art![5]

It is a good dress for fighting men; its fashion changes, and finally
it divides down the front, below the belt, with embroidered borders, in
Assyrian and archaic Greek art. In some cases it does not suffice for
decency. This is not the Homeric chiton, especially if that reached to
the feet, and needed to be girdled when a man went about active work.
At peaceful festivals, Ionians wore the "trailing chiton," in active
life the un-Homeric tight curt garment.

We may understand, I think, that between the age when the Homeric poems
were composed, and the eighth century B.C., men's costume had greatly
altered. The Homeric chiton did not cease to exist, but it was worn by
men merely on festive occasions, and by old men; while the dress in
active life reverted towards the Aegean costume, the bathing-drawers,
or even loin-cloth; or more usually became the short tight jersey,
covering the trunk and the upper part of the thigh. This is a natural
reversion. The Achaean invaders from the colder north had practically
worn smock and plaid, chiton and chlaina. In the warmer south they
found the tight and curt _cypassis_ more suitable. In the sixth to
fifth century the chiton gradually reasserts itself, as we see in the
late black figure, and still more manifestly in the red figure vases.
The chiton is a more graceful, decent, and civilised dress than the
short tight _cypassis_.

Either this was the course of evolution, or "late" poets inserted the
chiton as worn both in peace and war into every part of the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_; though, in fact, they saw only old men, or men on formal
occasions, wearing the chiton. Or they applied the word "chiton," in
poetry, to the tight curt garments which were not in the least like the
chiton of Homer.

The alternative explanation is that Homer's men actually wore the
fairly long smock which needed to be girdled up for active work; and
that the word and the thing itself survived in the poems through an age
when men in general wore the tight curt jerkin, or even the loin-cloth
or bathing-drawers.

The _chlaina_ of the Homeric men was a mantle, usually of wool,
fastened with a golden fibula, like that of Odysseus. On the cover
of the pin was represented to the life a hound catching a fawn.[6]
This _chlaina_ was red in colour and was double-folded. The great
overgarment, the _pharos_, was usually of linen; and both these
articles were unshaped and unsewn, mere pieces of material, also used
for blankets in bed.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Dagger with Lion-Hunters--Mycenaean Shield]

However we account for it, there was a long period in which Greek
prehistoric and proto-historic dress was not the free-flowing costume
which Homer describes, and which the appearance of safety pins, or
fibulae, after 1400 B.C. attests. They are but rarely found in graves
till the Dipylon age of Iron.

Now no critic has had the heart to say that the costume described by
Homer, the loose chiton, was "written into" early epic lays (which
originally knew it not), at the moment when it came into fashion in the
sixth to fifth centuries. But criticism has taken a similar course in
regard to Homeric armour. This armour, like Homeric male costume, is
in essence, we shall show, that of the sixth to fifth centuries B.C.
with the exception of the shield,--a huge body-covering shield in Homer
(a shield probably of various shapes, circular, oblong, cylindrical or
like a figure of 8),[7] suspended by a baldric (see fig. 2),--while in
the seventh to fifth centuries we find a round or oval blazoned buckler
worn on the left arm. While critics, following Reich el, attribute the
Homeric body armour to Ionian interpolations of the seventh century,
they have also followed him in not observing that Homeric body armour
is not that of the seventh, but rather of the sixth to fifth centuries,
as we shall prove.

We find, in art of the sixth to fifth centuries, or at least in the end
of the sixth and the opening of the fifth centuries, such hauberks as
Homer describes; they have variegated patterns of bronze scales; they
are clasped down the front, and below are the bronze belt (_zoster_)
and πτέρυγες, or mailed flaps.

On the other hand, the Ionic corslet of the seventh and earlier
sixth century is made of plain plates of bronze, fastened at the
sides--back-plate and breastplate--with a short projecting metallic
rim to protect the hip-joints. There is no mailed kirtle, no decorated
belt. The whole equipment, with the addition of mailed flaps to the
plain corslet, is well rendered on a scaraboid gem.[8] In fact, this
kind of plain corslet, with back-plate and breast-plate, fastened
at the sides, is the regular Ionian or seventh to sixth century
body armour, while the hauberk, of metal scales, or small plates,
probably fixed on leather, begins to come in towards the end of the
sixth century. Early in the fifth century, Polygnotus decorated the
Lesche or lounge at Delphi with pictures of the Trojan affairs, mainly
illustrating the _Little Iliad_, an Ionian cyclic poem attributed to
Lesches. Among the pictures, says Pausanias, was represented an altar,
and on it was a "bronze corslet, such as was worn of old, for now we
seldom see them. It consisted of two pieces called _guala_, one to
cover breast and belly, the other for the back, fastened by clasps."
Unconsciously anticipating Reichel, Pausanias says that this piece
of armour would be protection enough, "without a shield," as if a
shield could simultaneously protect both back and front. "And so Homer
represents Phorcys the Phrygian without a shield,"[9] "because he wore
this kind of corslet."[10] Homer says that the spear of Aias burst
the _gualon_ of Phorcys, and the bronze let out the entrails.[11] The
shield of Phorcys, if he wore one, must have been slung over his back
or side at the moment. But in these two passages Homer seems to have in
his mind a corslet of but two _guala_, back-plate and breast-plate
fastened at the sides, like the eighth to sixth century corslet. If
so, he knew both the corslet of two plates, fastened at the sides, and
also the hauberk of scales or small plates of metal fastened in the
centre of front and back. This is not impossible, for, as we shall
prove, the corslet of metal plate was worn even in pre-Homeric Crete;
while the hauberk is represented, if I am right, in art of the Dipylon,
or pre-Dipylon period. Art in the late sixth century proves that both
the corslet of back-plate and breast-plate, and the hauberk of small
plates, fastening at back and in front, were worn.

[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Tirynthian Vase: Man in Hauberk _By permission
of John Murray, Esq_. Schliemann's _Tiryns_, plate xvii. b]

We have some red figure vases with the plain plate corslet, and some
black figure vases with the decorated corslet or rather hauberk of
scales, and mailed flaps; but the set of fashion is away from the plain
plate corslet fastened at the sides, to the decorative hauberk of
scale-mail, fastening in front,--Homer's type of corslet (at least in
some cases), and the corslet of two very early Tirynthian vases.

As far as we can trust such crude art[12] (fig. 3), the Tirynthian
body-covering was a jack or _jaseran_ of rings or scales, probably
fastened on leather, not the back-plate and breast-plate of the eighth
to early sixth centuries. Why, before the Persian war, Greek warriors
adopted the hauberk of scale-armour in place of the back-plate and
breast-plate, is unknown; probably it was borrowed from the late
Assyrian hauberk of scales, of which many examples occur in Layard's
_Monuments_. Judging from the later black figure vases, the process
was gradual; some warriors wear the old back-plate, breast-plate,
and jutting rim of metal; some the scaled hauberk, shoulder pieces,
and plated πτέρυγες, or flaps, with or without the bronze girdle or
_zoster_ of Homer. A number of the scales, iron or bronze, of the
hauberks have been found in the palace of the Egyptian king Apries, of
the first part of the sixth century.

In archaic art, and in early sixth century black figure vases, the
warrior wears the tight, un-Homeric, _cypassis_ under his corslet. In
later black figure vases, he wears the fluttering tails of his flowing
Homeric chiton under his mailed kirtle. Thus the dress of men, in
Homer, and the armour, in cases to be proved, are like those of the
later sixth and early fifth centuries, rather than of the eighth to
early sixth centuries.

Yet modern criticism, while it finds no fault with the sixth to fifth
century costume of Homer's men, excises their sixth century hauberks,
clasping down the middle, their _zoster_, or mailed girdle, their
mitre, which served the purpose of the sixth to fifth century mailed
flaps or mailed kirtle, and their greaves, as Ionian interpolations of
the seventh century. We shall show that the back-plate and breast-plate
of the seventh century are not the hauberk, clasping down the middle,
of some passages in Homer; and that the jutting bronze rim of the
seventh century is not the _mitrê_ of Homer. Thus, if there were late
interpolations of armour into Homer, they cannot have been made, as
Reichel thought, in the seventh century, but very late, say 540-470
B.C., when armour shifted from bronze back-plate, breast-plate, and
rim, to scaled hauberk, shoulder pieces, _zoster_, and metal plated
flaps, equivalent in protective purpose to the _mitrê_.

The modern theory that Homeric armour is of the seventh century,
which it demonstrably is not, starts from the late Dr. Reichel's
essay on Homeric armour.[13] Reichel built on very slender and sandy
foundations. He supposed that in the oldest parts of the Epics men
fought _in battle_ as six or seven men, in Aegean art, fight in _chance
encounters_ (that is, almost naked, or with shields which conceal the
body, also taken for granted as naked). He did not know the proof of
the existence of Aegean body armour, which we shall cite, and he really
evolved things "out of his inner consciousness."

Reichel, we must add, could not argue securely from the absence of
actual corslets in grave-furniture of the Aegean age. Though hauberks
occur constantly in the art, they are not found in the _graves_ of
the sixth to fifth centuries, in Greece; and even plate corslets are
extremely rare. In Reichel's second edition, which he, unfortunately,
left incomplete at his regretted death, "he contemplated an important
change of ground.... He regards the thin gold plates found on
the breasts of the skeletons at Mykene as possibly the funereal
representatives of metal sewn on to the chiton, and thus forming a
prae-Ionic corslet."[14]

Had he lived, he would have seen an undeniable "prae-Ionic corslet,"
no hauberk but a cuirass of plate, on the Minoan seal impressions of
Haghia Triada.

But the evidence for the non-existence of prae-Ionic corslets based on
their absence from tombs, even if it were absolute, which it is not,
would have been of little avail. How many Ionic plate corslets are in
actual existence, to our knowledge? Only fragments of one, as far as I
am aware, and that one is not "Ionic," it was found at Olympia, and is
"archaic." The fragments are of bronze plate, with decorations in the
archaic style, figures of men and women in archaic costume.[15] Thus
the non-existence of objects represented often in the art of remote
ages cannot be demonstrated by our failure to discover specimens of
them.

Reichel proceeds from the imaginary postulate that a man who has
a body-covering shield dispenses with body armour. As a matter of
historical fact he often does not.[16] Next, the Aegean shield, being
heavy, made chariots necessary. (But chariots have been used in war by
races with small shields, and the great shield is worn by Aias and
Odysseus who had no chariots.) Next, says Reichel, parrying bucklers
coming in as early as the archaic art (say 700-620 B.C.), big shields
went out, and for protection the corslet, metal girdle, and _mitrê_, a
mailed kirtle, were adopted about 700 B.C. As it was now ridiculous,
says Reichel, to think of a man fighting only in his shirt, late poets
introduced body armour into old portions of the _Iliad_, made when body
armour was unknown.

Of course, by parity of reasoning, the new poets ought also to have
got rid of chariots, bronze weapons, cairn-burial, the bride-price,
Homeric chitons, and so forth, all of them obsolete or little used
things in the age (700-600 B.C.) of corslets, greaves, and body armour.
Their warriors should also have worn the contemporary tight fleshings,
with the _cypassis_, and _parameridia, cuisses_, tight thigh pieces
(the "taslets" of 1640 A.D.). That did not happen; Homer knows no
thigh pieces or _parameridia_, so common in Greek armour of the sixth
century; but, says Mr. Murray, "all the heroes were summarily provided
with breast-plates, _θώρηκες_."[17] Mr. Leaf, on the other hand,
denies this; "the corslet is given to some only, and that in the most
capricious fashion."[18]

Mr. Leaf's contention (Mr. Murray's is an _obiter dictum_) rests on the
postulate that, when the corslet is not explicitly named in connection
with a hero, he has no corslet; he has only a shield. If so, why are
his "pieces of armour" (_τέυχεα_), whether he is putting them on or
off, whether he is being stripped of them or is stripping others,
always called τέυχεα in the plural? Aias is not explicitly said to have
a corslet, but the space of time occupied by his arming he asks the
Achaeans to devote to prayer to Zeus. "So said they, while Aias arrayed
him in flashing bronze. And when he had now clothed upon his flesh all
his armour...."[19] The time required, and the phrase "all his armour"
which "clothes his flesh," cannot possibly apply to slinging on or off
a shield, and donning or doffing a helmet, the work of five seconds.
The sword was always worn, in peace and in war.

This is so certain that we waste no more space over the matter. All
the gentry wear τέυχεα, "pieces of armour," which they all take off
and lay on the ground while they watch a duel, and which they always,
when they can, strip from a fallen foe. Thus, before the duel between
Paris and Menelaus, the men-at-arms dismount, take off their armour,
and lay it on the ground.[20] They themselves "are leaning on their
great shields," which are not their armour.[21] This use of τέυχεα is
universal in Homer, and so, for men-at-arms, is the possession of body
armour.[22]

The difficulties which critics find in the details and mechanism of the
armour cannot be impossibilities, for the "later poets" were familiar
with corslets, and would not write nonsense about them. The opposing
theory is that Ionian minstrels introduced the corslet of their own
age, seventh century, (corslets not uniformly to be found in Homer), to
satisfy the practical warriors who wore it. Yet, in doing so, the poets
made incoherent nonsense. As Miss Stawell writes, "a warlike audience,
versed in the use of the corslet, insisted on its introduction in the
poems,--and yet never objected to the absurdities it introduced,--such
a theory cannot bear thinking out."[23] When we came to discuss Homeric
tactics, we found precisely the same objection to the German theories;
they represent the poets as pleasing military experts by writing
nonsense.

The body armour is thus an integral part of the poem. The word
_θωρήσσεσθαι_, to put on the _thorex_ or breast covering, is constantly
employed in the general sense of arming, both in _Iliad_ and _Odyssey,_
though in the latter no corslet is specifically named. It would have
been as easy to coin a verb for arming from _ἀσπίς_, the shield, in an
age when shields were the only armour. That _θώρηξ_ should ever have
been a term for the shield seems to me incredible.

The corslet has many epithets, expressing the elaborateness of its
decoration, such as _ποικίλος, παναίολος, πολυδαίδαλος_; and no such
words apply to the plain metal plates of corslets in archaic Greek
art of the eighth to early sixth centuries, as shown in art. At most
they were etched with designs of men and women, as in the example from
Olympia, or have two volutes. The corslet was made of _γύαλα_ whatever
they may have precisely been, for sometimes the epithets applied to the
Homeric corslet do not suit plate but mailed armour.

[Illustration: Fig. 4.--CRETAN SEAL-IMPRESSION, MINOAN ARMOUR From the
_Annual of the British School at Athens, No. XII_. (_Macmillan_ & _Co.
Ltd_.)]

Reichel argued from the absence of corslet, belt, greaves, and mailed
kirtle in the few pieces of Aegean art known to him, that no such
armour was used by Aegeans, and, again, that no such armour was
known to the Achaeans. He was unacquainted with the scores of seal
impressions which have been found at Haghia Triada in Crete.[24] The
seals, it has been said, show a man in what Dr. Halbherr recognises as
a heavy decorated _plate_ corslet, with an obviously metallic belt, and
below it a mailed kilt or apron, the Homeric _mitrê_. Dr. Mackenzie,
too, recognises the armour.[25], It is unmistakable, and the corslet is
so very wide, considering the wasp-like Mycenaean waist, that a spear
could penetrate the side of it without wounding the wearer, a great
puzzle of the critics when the fact occurs in Homer. (See fig. 4 A).

The armour is out of drawing, the man's head is given in profile, his
armour is given full face. The same error is made by the painter of
Menelaus fighting Hector on an archaic dish from Camirus. Euphorbus is
lying on his back, but his corslet is given in full face, while his
head is in profile (fig. 5). This is common in archaic Greek art. The
arms of the man on the seal are not shown, just as the arms of women
on some Laconian figurines are omitted.[26] There also occurs on the
vase of Haghia Triada, a jovial figure in a very loose thick piece
of armour, as some hold,[27] or "a Minoan cope," as others maintain.
Beneath it is a short jutting ribbed kirtle, as in the seal. I am
unable to decide between cope and cuirass in this instance,[28] but the
bosses appear to be of hard material.

An easy mode of comparing various costumes and pieces of armour as
illustrated in archaic and early Greek art, is to glance at Engelmann
and Anderson's _Pictorial Atlas of Iliad and Odyssey_, 1895. It is
prior to the Cretan discoveries, but is useful to students remote from
collections of Greek works of art.

We shall first take the evidence of the black figure vases of the sixth
century, and then that of the red figure vases which came in near the
end of that age. In one (Atlas, fig. 43) the armour is of a sort more
common by far in red figure vases. The corslet of a warrior has broad
shoulder pieces, and is decorated with three stars, like "the decorated
starry corslet" of Achilles.[29] These stars appear on an Assyrian
corslet in Layard's _Monuments_. There is a belt and a mailed kirtle
or mailed flaps; below appears the tight _cypassis_, not the flowing
chiton.

Next, in a Corinthian black figure vase (Atlas, fig. 45) the charioteer
wears the plain corslet of two plates with projecting rim (no _zoster_
and _mitrê_); the dress is a tight jerkin. The women wear large mantles
over what appear to be long tight-fitting chitons. In "Carving Meat"
the cook and his servant wear the tight _cypassis_ (fig. 51). In three
combats (figs. 63, 64, 65) the warriors wear the _cypassis_, or are
naked (65), but (64) one has the plate corslet with projecting rim.
In the well-known archaic pyxis from Camirus (see fig. 5), Menelaus,
Hector, and Euphorbus wear, over the cypassis, plain corslets, with a
hatched projecting rim.

In "Death of Antilochus" (Part II. fig. 15) the plain plate corslet is
worn over the flowing chiton, there is no mailed kirtle and belt. In
the "Death of Achilles" (fig. 14) we have the plain corslet over the
cypassis. In "Departure of Amphiaraus" the hero wears the plain plate
corslet, and no mailed kirtle (fig. 73).

[Illustration: Fig. 5--Menelaus and Hector fighting over Euphorbus
--Vase-painting from Camirus, Rhodes, in British Museum.]

So much for these black figure vases. The older they are, the more they
favour the plain plate corslet fastened at the sides, and the cypassis;
and the less they favour the decorated hauberk, mailed kirtle, and free
flowing chiton. But the two styles overlap.

In the later red figure vases, the plain corslet sometimes occurs, but
the vast majority show the flowing chiton, under the richly variegated
hauberk of mail, clasping in front, and having broad shoulder plates
coming over from behind and fastened in front; with the plated flaps,
and below them the flowing chiton, as a general rule. It is this later
style, or something very like it, that Homer usually describes.

If the armour was written into the poem late, if in the earliest
lays the men wore no armour but the shield, the change to hauberk,
zoster, and plated flaps was made by late poets about the end of the
sixth century or the beginning of the fifth, but the old huge shield
with baldric was left unchanged. Meanwhile, as the tight cypassis
scarcely reaching below the buttocks is the usual warrior's costume
of the seventh to early or mid-sixth century, the loose chiton, like
the variegated hauberk,--the chiton being "a loosely fitting garment,
reaching apparently as low as the knees, but gathered up into the belt
for active exertion,"[30]--must also have been interpolated into the
poems about the middle of the sixth century, when the cypassis was
beginning to go out of favour.

It is strange that these facts--the seventh century armour and costume
are un-Homeric (though we cannot prove that Homer knew _only_ the
hauberk clasped in front), the sixth to fifth century armour and
costume answer closely to Homeric descriptions--have not been observed
either by Reichel or his English following. Nor do they notice that the
thigh pieces of seventh to sixth century art never occur in Homer, as,
on the Reichelian theory, they ought to do; practical warriors would
expect to hear of them from the late minstrels. We now prove Homer's
knowledge of the hauberk, clasped at front and back.

There is a passage in the _Iliad_ (iv. 132-140) which vexes critics;
we give it in Mr. Leaf's translation. To ruin the Trojans, Athene
makes Pandarus break the oath of truce, and shoot at Menelaus. She
then guides the arrow so that it may merely draw blood. "Her own hand
guided it where the golden buckles of the belt were clasped and the
doubled breast-plate met them. So the bitter arrow lighted (ἔπεσε) upon
the firm belt; through the inwrought (δαιδαλέοιο) belt it sped, and
through the curiously wrought breast-plate it pressed on, and through
the taslet"[31] (μίτρη, plated kirtle) "he wore to shield his flesh,
a barrier against darts; and this best shielded him, yet it passed on
even through this," and drew blood.

The arrow-head was of iron, not bronze, as was usual, and of a
primitive pattern, inserted into the wood of the shaft, and "whipped"
with sinew (νεῦρον, Iliad, iv. 151). When the arrow is extracted (line
216) the corslet is not mentioned, as I suppose because the arrow
passed through the place where the corslet clasped in front. When the
corslet was unclasped, the arrow had only to be pulled out of the belt
and kirtle.

[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Warriors arming--Red Figure Vase, Vienna Museum]

Now the whole passage is explained by a red figure vase in the Vienna
Museum (Atlas, figs. 71 a, b, c) (fig. 6). Here we see first, a warrior
in helmet and flowing chiton, putting on his greaves. Next him is a
warrior clasping his variegated hauberk of scales, or small plates,
_in front_, above his mailed kirtle, or flaps; below which floats the
lower part of his chiton; the shoulder-plates of his corslet are still
unclasped, and stand up behind his shoulders. For this arrangement see
also Walters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol. ii. p. 176, fig. 137.
In _Iliad_, xx. 413-417, Achilles sends his spear through the clasping
plate of belt, buckle, and hauberk at the back.

In the third picture (fig. 7), a warrior, fully armed, has his hand
in the richly adorned belt (_zoster_) which he is fixing over the
juncture of corslet and mailed kirtle. If an arrow lights on the
central clasp of this belt (1) it will pass through the meeting-place
in front of his corslet, (2) and then will encounter, especially if it
be a dropping arrow, (3) his mailed flaps or kirtle, exactly as in the
case of Menelaus.[32] Nothing of this kind could occur with the plain
plate corslets of the seventh to sixth centuries, which laced at the
sides, and had no mailed kirtle or flaps, and no belt or _zoster_. Thus
Homer's armour, in this passage, is precisely that of, say, 520-470
B.C. Meanwhile the arrow-head, whipped with sinew into the wooden
shaft, is of a primitive pattern; and the accompanying reference to the
art of Maeonian and Carian women, in staining ivory red, "a treasure
for a king," shows no notion of the Ionians in Maeonia and Caria, or of
the republics of 510-470 B.C.[33]

If, then, in the late sixth or early fifth century, a poet introduced
the latest type of armour, he also preserved the primitive arrow,
and the political and geographical conditions prior to the Ionian
settlements in Asia. This combined innovation and conservatism are
incredible.[34]

The general conclusion seems to be that there was, in men's dress and
armour, a break of several centuries during which un-Homeric costume
and armour existed, and that--about the time just preceding the Persian
wars and later--Greece reverted to the Homeric types or men's dress
and body armour, while the Homeric shield was _never_ revived. It was
invented as an umbrella against arrows in far off days, when the bow,
rather than the spear, was the chief weapon of attack, when arrow-heads
were of stone; and it went out when glory was only to be won at close
quarters.

Why the plain plate corslet tended to go out, about the time of the
Persian war, while the flimsy but highly decorated mail hauberk came
in, a mere _jascran_, it is not easy to conjecture; but probably the
hauberk was adapted from Assyrian and Egyptian armour of the period.
The _jaseran_ went out again, and the plate corslets of our Museums
came in again, in the fifth to fourth centuries.

[Illustration: Fig. 7.--Lady Pouring out Wine for Warrior--R. F.
Vase-Painting by Duris, in Vienna]

It is manifestly open to critics to argue that Homeric armour never
existed, in Greece, before the sixth to fifth centuries, and that it
was then interpolated into the Epics. But if they say this, must they
not apply the same argument to Homeric costume, loose and free flowing?
Was that attire also interpolated into the poems at the date when it
first appears in art? Or are we to say that the artists who represent
it were "archaising," were making a guess at what the costume of the
heroic age might have been?

This cannot be, for the dress is the historic Greek costume which they
then wore. As Panathenaic vases maintained archaic costume long out of
date, I have not appealed to their evidence as to costume and armour,
but have relied on other vases,--on a vase from Sparta with warriors
rendered in relief,[35] on a gem cited, on a remarkable bronze in the
British Museum of a mounted man, and so forth.[36]

I cannot say that Homer always has hauberks, not corslets of back-plate
and breast-plate in his mind. The two passages in which the front
_gualon_ is pierced over the belly, look as if Homer knew both corslet
and hauberk. On the other hand, the epithets of the corslet commonly
used, _ποικίλος, παναίολος, πολυδαίδαλος_, suit the hauberk, not the
plain back-plate and breast-plate, as may be seen by looking at both
kinds of armour as illustrated on countless vases, while the _zoster_
and _mitrê_ are common in Homer, and were never worn, as far as art
shows, with the Ionian back-plate and breast-plate, though they both
appear with the plate cuirass on the seal impressions of Haghia Triada.


NOTE

_Body-covering shield with corslet_.--Reichel's argument is that a man
with a body-covering needs no corslet. I have shown (_Homer and His
Age_, pp. 132-136) that warriors of the eleventh century A.D. and later
employed the great shield reaching from neck to ankles, and also wore
breast-plates. Again, Champlain (_Les Voyages de M. de Champlain_,
Paris, 1620; Dix's _Champlain_, p. 113, New York, 1903; Laverdière's
_Champlain_, vol. iv., 1870, opposite p. 85) shows Algonquins with
shields cylindrical and covering the body from neck to feet, while
both Champlain and modern authors, especially Mr. Hill-Tout, describe
North American corslets of various materials, hide, wood, wicker-work,
and copper, "the last armour was everywhere used," in addition to the
great shields. For the eleventh to twelfth century of our era, see _La
Chancun de Willame_, 716-726.

Reichel's argument against the combination of huge shield with corslet
is thus historically valueless, though "the ancient Celts used no
defensive armour but the long shield, and fought from chariots."[37]

If we only look at the Celts, Reichel seems justified, but we look
also at the North Americans and at mediaeval Europe. Down to 1424,
the fighting man in full body armour used large shields in attacking
fortified positions _se couvrant de sa targecte pour doubte des
pierres._ (D'Aulon, in _Procès de Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. iii. p. 216).


[1] _Iliad_, xvi. 803 (the shield); _Odyssey_, xix. 242 (the chiton).

[2] _Odyssey_, xiv. 72.

[3] Walters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol. ii. p. 200.

[4] See Studniczka, _Geschichte der altgriechischen Tracht_, p. 21, and
notes.

[5] See Layard, _Monuments_, in many plates.

[6] Odyssey, cxix, 225 _et seqq_.

[7] See three sorts on the dagger from a tomb in the Mycenaean
acropolis.

[8] _Catalogue of British Museum Gems_, 1888, No. 294.

[9] _Iliad_, xvii. 312-315.

[10] Pausanias, x. 26.

[11] So, too, _Iliad_, xiii. 507, 508.

[12] Schliemann, _Tiryns_, plate xvii. b.

[13] _Homerische Waffen_, 2nd edition, Vienna, 1901.

[14] Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p. 629.

[15] I have seen another archaic bronze plate corslet, with engraved
designs, but do not know where it now is.

[16] See Note to this chapter, "Shield and Body Armour."

[17] _R. G. E._ p. 143.

[18] _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 576.

[19] _Ibid._ vii. 206-209. Mr. Leaf's translation, 1906, p. 134.

[20] Iliad, iii. 114, 115.

[21] iii. 134, 135.

[22] Against this opinion may be cited Odyssey, xxii. 108-114, where
the only protective armour used by the men of Odysseus is helmets and
shields, yet the formulae of "doing on bronze over the flesh," and
"donning the fair pieces of armour" are employed. To myself it may
seem that these are epic formulae which arose in a period of corslets
but are used where no corslets were being worn, in the fight with the
Wooers. Mr. Murray, however, takes the absence of specific mention
of corslets in the Odyssey generally as a proof of his theory that
"the _Odyssey_ has been altogether less worked over, expurgated,
and modernised than what books still persist in calling without
qualification 'the older poem'" (_R. G. E._ pp. 145, 146). Here he
has to discover why the Odyssey, according to critics, has (in his
view) been "worked over and modernised" as regards the house and the
bride-price, while in a few fighting passages the warriors are left in
the supposed state of Aegean nakedness, save for the shield, which,
unlike Mycenaean shields, has a bronze plating, as in the _Iliad_. Mr.
Murray (_R. G. E._ p. 137, note 1) grants that armour of bronze "may
have been, in some elements, a revival of something long forgotten...."
but was still unaware that the seals of Haghia Triada represent a man
in a cuirass of plate, a thick belt of plate, and a mailed kirtle.

[23] _Homer and the Iliad_, p. 212.

[24] _Monumenti Antichi_, vol. xiii., 1903, pp. 42, 114.

[25] _B. S. A_., vol. xii. p. opposite plate A.

[26] _Ibid._., vol. xiv., plate vii. A.

[27] Savignoni, _Mon. Ant._, 1903, p. 114.

[28] When disposing, in sixteen lines (_R. G. E_. 154, note I), of my
_Homer and his Age_, Mr. Murray oddly represents me as maintaining
that the body armour of Paris and Hector was "soft and very baggy like
a Minoan cope." As at that time I had never consciously heard of this
famous "Minoan cope," I never dreamed of such a thing as "soft and
very baggy" armour in the _Iliad_, though I know the Protestant silk
armour during "the Popish Plot." In fact, judging from the designs in
_Monumenti Antichi_, the Minoan cope was of hard material.

Messrs. Hogarth and Bosanquet also report on "a very remarkable
'Mycenaean' bronze breast-plate" from Crete, which "shows four female
draped figures, the two central are holding a wreath over a bird,
below which is a sacred tree. The two outer figures are dancing. It is
probably a ritual scene, and may help to elucidate the nature of early
Aegean cults, in which female worshippers and sacred trees and birds
are common." _J. H. S_., vol. xix., 1899, p. 322.

[29] _Iliad_, xvi. 134.

[30] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 580, citing Studniczka, p. 59.

[31] The "taslets" of Dugald Dalgetty (1645) were thigh pieces
(cuisses), as in seventh to sixth century Greek art.

[32] I had written this before the publication of Miss Stawell's _Homer
and the Iliad_. In pp. 204-206, she has taken the word out of my mouth.

[33] _Iliad_, iv. 141-144.

[34] On the affair of Menelaus, see Leaf, vol. i. p. 581, and note
I, where Mr. Leaf thinks the clasping of the corslet in front "an
unreasonable arrangement." Mr. Murray (_R. G. E_. pp. 144, 145)
also takes it that there was "a solid metal breast-plate." The term
_γύαλον_ (_Iliad_, v. 99), where an arrow hits "hard by Diomede's
right shoulder the plate of his corslet," may refer to the broad plate
over the shoulder-strap; some of the corslets of two metal plates have
shoulder-straps in art. We really cannot expect to understand every
detail with certainty, while we have no actual examples of the corslets
and shields of many early centuries before our eyes. Mr. Ridgeway
believes the body armour of the Achaeans to have been hauberks of
bronze scales or small plates, not back-and breast-plates as in seventh
and early sixth century art. He illustrates by many bronze studs found
at Koracev and Ilijak in Bosnia, of the Glasinatz epoch (_Early Age of
Greece_, vol. i. pp. 435, 436). Such a hauberk would well correspond
to that worn by "the bronze-shirted Achaeans." The hauberk would be "a
shirt of leather," with "small pieces of bronze, either in the form
of studs, or scales, or rings, or by the addition of plates of larger
size" (_Ibid_. p. 310). The hauberk made of metal studs on leather
seems to be illustrated in Schliemann's copy of a man on a very old
vase from Tiryns, of a style apparently earlier than the art of the
Dipylon (Schliemann, _Tiryns_, plate xvii.).

[35] Frontispiece.

[36] _B. S. A_., vol. xii., plate A.

[37] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 573, note I, citing M. d'Arbois
de Jubainville, _La Civilisation des Celtes et celle de l'Epopée
Homerique_, p. 349, Paris, 1899.




CHAPTER IX

WOMEN'S COSTUME


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_. Women of the later dark age and
the Dipylon period apparently dressed otherwise. In the archaic period
the brooched peplos, girdled at the waist, was worn; but I think that
there was also a revival or survival of Aegean sewn and shaped bodices,
jackets, and skirts. Lastly, historic Greece reverted to the Homeric
peplos and _chlaina_.

The discussion is, inevitably, concerned with minutiae in details
about which our actual information is far from being minute. We must
therefore state here explicitly the conclusions to which we are led:
namely, that neither the male nor female dress nor the armour described
in the Epics was introduced, at any period, by the Ionians employed
in any one of the four or five "recensions" which are postulated by
certain critics, as in the "first _Iliad_" of Robert, and his "second,
third, and fourth _Iliads_"[1] On the other hand, we contend that
both the costume and the armour in Homer are of a single period,
earlier than the Dipylon and barbaric Tirynthian age of art, while
historic Greece from the middle of the sixth century began to revert to
something like the Homeric type.

We must remember that hitherto no representations of Homer's people
in the free art of the Aegeans have been discovered, and thence no
light can be derived. When the crude art of Tiryns and, later (?) of
the "Geometric" school of ornament comes into view (1000-800 B.C.?),
the designs of men and women are childish. In painted vases which may
represent the palsied decadence of the Aegean age, the human figures
are simply absurd, still they are recognisably human; though in vases
of what may be called the "dotted" style of outline, they have heads
like birds, as on dotted bronzes of northern Italy in the Early Age
of Iron. In the "Dipylon" style, again, as soon as human beings are
represented, the heads of the men are like potatoes set on sticks; the
torso is an inverted isosceles triangle, with the pointed waist for
apex; and the naked legs are enormously thick in thighs and calves. The
women's bodies also are often equilateral triangles; the parts below
the waist are clothed in tight skirts, as a general rule; the breasts,
when the bust is represented, are either bare, or clad in a very tight
bodice, or are hidden by a hood which falls below the shoulders like
a cape. In one Tirynthian fragment we see a stout lady in a "princess
frock" tight, "of the Menzies tartan,"[2] and all of one piece; another
design shows a waist no thicker than a broomstick[3] (figs. 8, 9).
These costumes of women, in Tirynthian and Dipylon art, are un-Homeric
and post-Homeric. I doubt if we find such female costumes as Homer
apparently describes recognisably represented in Greek art till the
sixth and fifth centuries.

[Illustration: Fig. 8--Princess Frock: Tiryns--_By permission of John
Murray_, Schliemann's _Tiryns_, plate xxv. c]

This seems to be stated with unnecessary force, because, it may well be
said, the meaning of the sentence turns on the words "_recognisably_
represented." How are we to "recognise," in art, costumes of which
Homer gives us only brief verbal descriptions? Are we not deceived by
the free and vivid style of Homer? All his human beings and gods come
in such living forms before us, that we see the flowing, glistening
garments of Nausicaa and Athene swaying with their motions. We can see
nothing like this represented in Greek art till the late sixth century
and onwards; because, it may be said, till that date Greek art is hard,
prim, constrained, conventional,--in fact, archaic. It is therefore,
we may be told, a kind of logical illusion which prevents us from
recognising the costumes of Homer's women in Greek plastic art, till
that art itself is beginning to attain Homeric freedom.

These considerations must be kept in mind. But another error is apt to
be suggested when we read that the historic Hellenic costume, or that
part of it styled "the Doric peplos," "is implied by the allusions
of Homer," the view of the ingenious Studniczka.[4] The remark is
illustrated by fig. 10, in which we see a lady in "a Doric peplos,"
though how Achaean women of Homer's time could wear the dress of the
Dorians whom Homer ignores is not apparent. This graceful and breezy
costume is, in fact, like what we suppose Homer to have had in his
mind, and to have seen. But it is not in the least like the dress shown
in the art which is immediately subsequent to his age, the art of
Tiryns and of the Dipylon; and, as far as I can ascertain, it is not
the costume displayed in the archaic art up to the middle of the sixth
century. Archaic Greek female costume, however, has this much in common
with Homeric and later Greek costume, that it essentially differs,
often, from Aegean or Mycenaean dress.

In describing the contrast of styles between the pre-Homeric Aegean
dress and the Homeric costume for women, Mr. Leaf says that the
Mykenaean (Aegean) women wore "a close fitting bodice, sharply marked
off from the full skirt..."; and though there were many changes of
fashion in the Aegean world, this account holds good for its later
periods. "The dress of Greek women in historic times is of a totally
different kind. It is marked by simplicity and flowing vertical
lines.... The peplos is, in fact, no more than a square woollen blanket
... taken up round the middle by a girdle and retained in its place
on the shoulders by pins." The Aegean female dress, sewn and fitted,
did not need pins or brooches, _περόναι, ἐνεταί, πόρται_.[5] On the
other hand, "no pins or fibulae have been found among the remains of
the Mykenaean prime," while they are common in the latter "lower city"
below the acropolis of Mycenae.

Mr. Leaf therefore conceives that "during the prime of Mykene fashion
was dominated by a non-Hellenic influence," perhaps Oriental. Bodices
and separate flounced skirts were in, "but for some reason which we
cannot expect to guess, fashion returned, at the end of the Mykenaean
age, to the older and simpler dress" (the Homeric), "which held its
ground till classical times."[6] The usual explanation is that the
fibulae and the pinned peplos were brought in from the north by Achaean
invaders; in the north the fibulae had long been common;[7] and that
the style of costume persisted continuously into historic times, being
the familiar classical Greek dress.

[Illustration: Fig. 9--Costume of Women--Tirynthian Vase By permission
of John Murray, Esq. Schliemann's _Tiryns_, plate. xvii. a]

Now undoubtedly the fibula, and therefore the unsewn and unshaped
female attire, did come in at the close of the Aegean or Mycenaean
period in Greece; but, as far as I can interpret the art of very old
Tirynthian and some Dipylon vases, there was an early post-Homeric
period wherein women adopted the short hood-capes, the tight waists,
the heavy skirts, and the princess frock.[8] This attire more
resembles the Aegean than the Homeric and Hellenic. The "hood-cape"
of Tirynthian art may conceivably be the κρήδεμνον, καλύπτρα or
κάλυμμα of Homer; but if so, it reveals below it a waist of more than
Aegean tightness, not the belted peplos. Such are the characteristics
of Dipylon art, and of Tirynthian art which may have arisen before
900 B.C. It is hardly possible that if, in that age, women wore the
loose Homeric peplos, the artists should have represented them with
impossibly narrow waists, with the bosom fully displayed, and with
heavy skirts. The women of this dark age, as far as art can enlighten
us, had broken away from, or at all events are not wearing, the Homeric
peplos.

This is, at least, my private interpretation of the Dipylon and the
Tirynthian representation. But it is offered with diffidence, and is
not shared by Mr. R. M. Dawkins, the Director of the British School
of Athens. He "does not believe that the Dipylon women's dress is
necessarily a tight one," and attributes the wasp waists to the limited
skill of the early artist, thinking that if he had to draw a woman in
a loose flowing dress he would still give her a tiny waist, because a
small waist is one of the conspicuous points in the female figure. In
the effort to give as much information as possible he would draw the
small waist even if it were concealed by a loose dress. The primitive
artist draws not from models, but from mental images.

There is much truth in this; for example, the ladies in a palaeolithic
rock-painting[9] have very slim waists, clearly exaggerated, above
skirts with a crescentine scoop at the bottom. But the primitive artist
certainly draws under the domination of a convention which differs
in different places. The woman whose figure is repeated in the clay
disk from Phaestus[10] has no more waist than the stout person in
a princess frock from Tiryns. The Dipylon artists may be continuing
the Aegean convention of the wasp waist; though the designer of the
princess frock is as candid as the Phaestos artist. Thus the reader
must interpret the Dipylon waist as he pleases.

We next reach the "archaic" art of, say, the seventh to sixth
centuries. The chief article of female dress, as described by Homer,
was the peplos, "a square or rectangular piece of material which,"
like the men's outer mantle, "could be used for various purposes." It
was fastened by pins or brooches (_περόναι, ἐνεταί_), and the _περόνη_
was sometimes a fibula or safety pin, the cover adorned by art, as in
the case of the _περόνη_ of Odysseus (_Od_. xix.). But when (_Iliad_,
v. 425) Athene mockingly tells Zeus that the wounded Aphrodite must
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 stiletto-like pins found in
Egyptian deposits of from about 1450 to 1200 B.C. and also at Enkomi
in Cyprus, and at Sparta in the Orthia sanctuary from 900 to 500
B.C.[11] Fibulae of the same date also occur. These great pins had
ribbed handles, and below the handle was a perforation or a metallic
loop.[12] Now very long pins, also with ribbed handles, but without the
aperture in the middle, fasten the peplos of one of the Fates on the
Francis vase, which Mr. Evans dates in "the seventh century," but Mr.
Walters--from the characters in the inscriptions on the vase--dates
about 570-550 B.C.[13] The Spartan evidence for the pin and fibulae
covers the later range of dates.

[Illustration: Fig. 10.--Metope of Athene, Olympia _Photo: English
Photographic Co., Athens._]

Much turns on the date of the François vase, for many critics, with
Studniczka, consider that the costume of the female figures is like
that which Homer's women wear, and is a "Doric peplos." Thus Miss
Abrahams, in her Greek Dress (1908, pp. 29, 30) studies the arraying
of Hera.[14] Of her dress Homer says, χρυσείῃς δ' ἐνετῇσι κατὰ στῆθος
περονᾶτο: "And she fastened it _over her breast_ with clasps of gold."
"We gather from this passage," says Miss Abrahams, "that the garment
was fastened _on the shoulders_ by brooches or pins inserted κατὰ
στῆθος, which Studniczka rightly interprets as '_down towards the
breast_,' a method of fastening which is represented on the François
vase and elsewhere." "The material," Miss Abrahams goes on, "is drawn
from the back, and wraps over that which covers the front, _the pins
are then inserted downwards_, and hold the two thicknesses of material
together...."

But (see fig. 11) the pins are inserted _upwards_; we observe the
long ribbed head of the pin, of known form like that of the 1450-1200
B.C. pins of Egypt and Enkomi, stuck into the fabric above the right
breast. It penetrates the fabric, and passes upwards into a large
oval shoulder piece, perhaps the tail of the piece of cloth which
covers the decorated collar over the shoulder-joint. The Homeric
phrase "pins inserted _down towards_ the _breast_" does not indicate
this mode of fastening, which is _upwards from_ the breast. "A method
practically impossible--the pin would fall out," says Mr. Dawkins.
"If so, blame the artist." Neither the "overfold" (ἀπόπτυγμα) nor the
curious oval piece on the shoulder-joint (perhaps a portion of the
fabric) is mentioned by Homer. Again, when we read,[15] "the dress is
held into the figure by a girdle worn round the waist, over which any
superfluous length of material could be drawn, forming a κόλπος or
pouch," we must remember that in the dress on the François vase _there
is no superfluous material_. The dress ends just above the heels,
there is no "tunic-trailing"; as in Homer. A woman who drew her dress
up to form a κόλπος or pouch, would show much more of her legs than
was fashionable in the archaic period, and would destroy the collant
fit over the breast. The costume fits tightly to the bust; and in art
of 600-550 B.C. this is the rule. We see no women "with deep κόλπος
or pouch," whereas the nurse of Eumaeus could conceal three cups in
her pouch. Here, again, Mr. Dawkins thinks that the limitations of
the artist cause the absence of the _kolpos_. "He made any dress
look tight, because he could only draw his idea of the body and then
indicate dress on the body. The artist has two mental images, one of
the natural body and the other of the dress, and he could only carry
out his work by combining the two."

But I must reply that, in the François vase, we are far from the
"primitive" artist. The artist knows very well what he is about. He
draws short skirts and over the bust the dress is _collant_, because
that is the fashion. The painter no longer draws impossible waists,
they are in good proportion for girls. Moreover, artists of the same
period when they design a woman in a mantle do so in the modern way.
The bust is indicated; the mantle does not cover it, but covers the
waist, and no attempt is made to show what the artist knows is there:
he does not design what is not in sight. Even an Australian black
fellow drew what he saw, not what he knew was there, in sketches
of white ladies.[16] We must not explain the François vase by the
limitations of "primitive art."

[Illustration: Fig. 11.--The Fates on the François Vase--From Miss
Abraham's _Greek Dress_ (_J. Murray_)]

My impression is that in the eighth to seventh centuries women still
did, at least occasionally, wear a costume consisting, as in Aegean
times, of separate bodices and skirts. Thus in an archaic Corinthian
gold jewel we see an Ariadne naked from the belt upwards, beneath is
a skirt falling to the instep. Skirts were therefore separate, and
imply a separate bodice, if the upper body is to be covered[17] (fig.
12).

[Illustration: Fig. 12.--Ariadne, Theseus, and Minotaur From a
Corinthian Gold Ornament From _Arch. Ztg._., 1884]

The pouch is Homeric, but in art of 600-550 B.C. no woman, as far as I
have observed, has any "superfluous length of material," or, at least,
almost none draws it up through the girdle to form such a pouch as
we see on Miss Abrahams's fig. 10 (Metope from the temple of Zeus at
Olympia). The wearer could hide the family plate in her pouch, not so
the women of the Francois vase. Such a costume cannot be called, as a
rule, τανυπέπλος, or ἑλκεσίπεπλος, "trailing robed," like Homer's women.

Thus the Greek dress of the seventh to sixth century, when many artists
drew what they saw under no "primitive" limitations, is not Homeric.
Homeric female dress is loose and flowing, and trailing. Archaic Greek
female dress is tight, not flowing, not trailing. Historic Hellenic
female dress is loose, flowing, and trailing; it returns to the Homeric
type. In holding these opinions we are not, then, deluded by the
freedom of Homer's art; he insists on the _kolpos_, or loose fold which
makes a pouch, and on the trailing loose peplos; nor, at least in my
opinion, are we deluded by the stiffness of archaic art, which really
represents the brevity and tightness of the prevailing fashion.

Thus we cannot cite the François vase "in illustration of the Homeric
peplos."[18] The François dress is not trailing, nor is it pouched,
nor is it Homeric. A thick, round, embroidered collar with no apparent
breach in its continuity is either pinned or sewn over the François
peplos, and the overlap is tight enough to indicate the bust very
gracefully. Moreover, the costume of Athene[19] is not that of the
François vase (fig. 13). _Both_, I think, cannot be "the closed Doric
dress." Athene has a garment much more flowing than that of the
François dress; and, unlike that costume, it has a pouch, though her
dress falls rather lower than that of the François ladies; and she
has no thick collar, and no long pins thrust up from the breast.[20]
Athene's dress would be long and trailing, if it were not drawn up
through the girdle. By the date of the Olympian figure of Athene, Greek
female dress had moved back from the fashion of the François costume
towards that which Homer knew and described.

We now reach the strange story which Herodotus tells to account for the
alleged enforced change of Athenian women's costume from the peplos
fastened with long stiletto-like pins, as in the François vase (an
Athenian work of art), to the Ionic dress, which had no long pins.
The women, he says, slew, with their long pins, a messenger who bore
the tale of the massacre of their husbands; and the men therefore
compelled them to wear the Ionian linen chiton, which does not require
the _περόνη_, the stiletto pin.[21] The event was of the first half
of the sixth century; 568 B.C. is the date conjectured, which tallies
fairly with Mr. Walters's dating of the François vase made while long
pins were still fashionable. But if the wearing of Ionic costume were,
as Miss Abrahams supposes, one of the luxuries which Solon (594 B.C.)
tried to check, then we must date the François vase in the seventh
century. Yet the costume of the vase, with its expensive embroideries,
is much more "luxurious" than the linen Ionian chiton or smock. In any
case it is certain, from the dangerous long pins of, say, 1200 B.C. at
Enkomi and in Greek deposits in Egypt, that women wore these stiletto
pins five centuries before they did so at Athens, in, say, 620-560 B.C.
So Homer had his mind, when Aphrodite scratched her hand with an
Achaean woman's pin, on Achaean female dress, not on that of Athenians
of the seventh or sixth century.

[Illustration: Fig. 13.--Historic Greek Costume From Leaf's _Homer's
Iliad_ vol. ii. (_Macmillan & Co. Ltd_.)]

In short, Homeric female dress was not introduced into the Epics by any
"recension," by any interpolators of any post-Achaean date, as Pinza
argues that it was.[22] He supposes the Ionian female costume to be a
long linen smock with short sleeves.

Pinza argues that the costume of women in Homer "is wholly different
from that of Spartan ladies of archaic and classical times; and, on the
other hand, exhibits many analogies with the more antique linen chiton
with short sleeves, certainly of Asiatico-Semitic origin, as is proved
by the etymology of the name" (chiton).[23] He supposes the Ionian
costume of women, described as a long linen smock with short sleeves,
to be derived, through Phoenicia, from the Syria of, say, 690 B.C.,
citing Hebrew female captives in Layard's _Monuments of Nineveh_ (i.
plates 61, 83, and others). In plate 61 we see a tall female captive,
wearing a long garment, with a broad fringe over her head, and below it
another long garment with short tight sewn sleeves, and a broad border
which falls over the legs, leaving them bare from the calf. There are
no pins or fibulae visible; the upper garment hides the girdle, if
girdle there be. In plate 65 two figures of goddesses are carried, on
chairs, in a procession. They wear long sewn smocks, with sewn sleeves
ending above the elbows, and with very broad belts. The dresses end
above the ankle bones. They are far from being loose or trailing; no
pins or fibulae appear. The same costume, without any girdle, is worn
by two women in a kitchen: they seem to have bodices and skirts (plate
30). The sleeves have no small round brooches like the Ionian chiton,
which, like the Assyrian dresses, reached the feet (ποδήρης).

Miss Abrahams remarks that it is a mistake to suppose the Doric chiton
to have been always fastened by pins or brooches, the Ionic always
sewn on the shoulders (like those quoted from Assyrian monuments).
In many Greek works of art, a chiton, clearly Ionic, is not sewn on
the shoulders, but fastened down the upper arm by a series of small
brooches.[24] The Assyrian dresses often answer to the Ionic chiton
as thus described, but are _without any brooches_; and they are much
shorter than the Ionic chiton, which, as thus described, is always
longer than the height of the wearer; "the superfluous length is
drawn up through the girdle to form a _kolpos_, which varies in depth
according to the length of the chiton."[25] Not so in archaic Greek
art! In any case, the Ionic dress as described is much longer than that
of the Assyrian designs, has a kolpos, where they have none, and may
either be sewn, like them, over the shoulder, or, unlike them, may be
fastened over the upper arm with small brooches. Thus the Ionic, _as
described_, is not the same as the Syrian, when the Ionic has brooches;
nor is it, in my opinion the female costume of the Greek vases of the
seventh and early sixth centuries.

In Layard's plate 67 A, from the Assyrian monuments, we see two of the
captive women from Lachish kneeling and giving suck to their children.
Their smocks are tight, girdled, and reach the heels. The dress of
the upper woman has short sleeves on both arms, and the line where
it crosses below the neck is perfectly well marked. How the infant,
in these circumstances, reaches the natural source of nourishment is
a deep mystery. In the figure of the lower woman certain faint lines
appear to indicate that the dress has been opened at the centre of the
neck and drawn aside over one breast. In neither case is there any
trace of fibula, pin, button, or hook and eye, or loose hanging flap.

Pinza, however,[26] finds here an exact parallel to Hera's peplos in
_Iliad_, xiv. 175, "fastened over her breast with clasps of gold,"
that is, "fastened on the shoulders by brooches or pins inserted down
towards the breast"; and this, again, is said to be illustrated (as
above) by the François vase. In answer, it may suffice to look at the
two pictures, Layard 67 A and the Fates on the François vase. A simple
button and button-hole, as Pinza remarks, in the dress below the centre
of the neck, would, if withdrawn, do all that these Hebrew babies need.
A man may illustrate this for himself by opening his shirt at the
collar stud. The lower Hebrew woman might even be naked above the belt,
like the kneeling woman just beneath her, were it not for the line of
her dress across her neck. She has no sleeves. There is no sign of any
openings at the shoulders or _precisaménte come l' ἑανός della Epopea_.

These Assyrian designs do not, it seems to me, encourage the opinion
that Hebrew female costume of the date of Hezekiah, say, 690 B.C.,
was thrust into Homer about that period, at an Ionian "recension,"
and remained there unaltered by later "recensions."[27] The brooched
costume of Homeric women is not the sewn costume of the Assyrian art.
Other Hebrew ladies from Lachish wear the long piece of cloth over
their heads, falling to the top of the ankle, and under that a tight
smock of the same length. There is no girdle, the arms are bare, no
fibulae are shown.[28] As the Syrian female costume never shows brooch,
pin, or fibula, it certainly cannot be the origin of the Homeric or the
Doric peplos, or of the brooched historical costume of Hellas.

Meanwhile a mere untutored man who looks at the Fates on the François
vase thinks, I find, that the embroidered overlap is simply a short
jacket worn over the peplos, This appears to be an error. But I had,
as an amateur, come to the conclusion that the dress of the women
in archaic Greek art often consists of sewn bodice and skirt, or of
a tight jacket with a separate skirt, not of the peplos. Mr. Myres
had already expressed similar opinions as to the late survival (or
revival?) of that Aegean costume.[29]

Moreover, Mr. Walters, judging from vase-paintings, says, "The Ionic
costume is introduced about 500 B.C., but its vogue does not seem to
have lasted long at Athens."[30]

Perdrizet thought that the archaic costume more resembled the Mycenaean
(or Aegean) than the Doric style; while Mr. Wace (in the catalogue of
the museum at Sparta), Mr. Leaf, Mr. Dawkins, and others hold that the
archaic dress is merely a long chiton tied at the waist. This question
of the late survival, or revival, of non-Homeric Aegean female costume
is thus delicate and obscure, though I have little or no doubt that it
did in many cases survive or was revived.

The woman in the archaic sepulchral monument from Etruria (British
Museum) wears a short jacket, and a very brief skirt; and a woman in
a leaden figurine of Sparta wears only a girdle and a kirtle. She is
running, and has thrown off her jacket or bodice. An archaic Victory, a
terra cotta in the British Museum, wears only a very short skirt.[31]
The Ariadne of an archaic Corinthian jewel, in a belted skirt, with no
bodice, has already been cited.

Thus the evidence of art, in the dark period of, say, 900-700 B.C.,
inclines me to believe that women sometimes wore shaped and sewn
bodices and skirts, or jackets and skirts; sometimes a strait brooched
and girdled peplos, not flowing, not trailing, not Homeric; that there
was none of the Homeric uniformity of attire. Varieties of fashion are
not discordant with feminine nature.


[1] _Studien zur Ilias_, von Carl Robert, Berlin, 1901.

[2] The Menzies tartan is of white and pink checks, which the artist
renders lovingly.

[3] Schliemann, _Tiryns_, plate xvii. Studniczka, _Altgr. Tracht_.

[4] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 596.

[5] _Iliad_, v. 425, xiv. 180, xviii. 401.

[6] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. pp. 595-598.

[7] Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. pp. 553-577.

[8] _Tiryns_, plate xvii.

[9] In northern Aragon.

[10] _Scripta Minoa_, vol. i. p. 282.

[11] _B. S. A_., vol. xiii. pp. no, 113.

[12] _Journal of the Anthrop. Institute_, vol. xxx., 1900, p. 203, fig.
2. Evans on "Mycenaean Cyprus."

[13] Walters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol. ii. p. 270.

[14] _Iliad_, xiv. 175 _et seqq_.

[15] _Greek Dress_, p. 30.

[16] Mrs. Langloh Parker, _Australian Legendary Tales_.

[17] See fig. 2 in Roscher's _Lexikon_, ii. 2. 3007.

[18] _Greek Dress_, p. 44.

[19] _Ibid_., fig. 10.

[20] Here, it must be said, Mr. Dawkins dissents, not seeing any
difference in the two costumes. I think that is because he supposes the
François artist not to be able to draw what he sees; for the dresses
seem, in fact, to me different.

[21] Herodotus, v. 87.

[22] Pinza, _Hermes_, 1909, p. 526.

[23] _Ibid._ pp. 527, 528.

[24] _Greek Dress_, p. 60.

[25] _Greek Costume_, p. 60.

[26] Pinza, _Hermes_, p. 538.

[27] _Ibid_. p. 526.

[28] Layard, _Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 152.

[29] _Proceedings British School of Athens_, vol. ix. p. 386, citing
the difference of colour, and we may add of decorative design, on
the part of the costume above, and the part below the girdle. This
difference could not always occur in a dress all of one piece. For
example, see the female figures incised on the fragments of a corslet
of bronze plates at Olympia (_Bronzen_, plate lix.). But this question
is _sub judice_; it is argued that the difference of pattern and colour
in upper and lower parts of the dress is a decorative caprice of the
artist, and corresponds to nothing that he saw in women's costume. It
is impossible to deny that Ariadne in the archaic Corinthian piece of
gold-work has come to see the Minotaur killed, wearing her skirt, and
leaving her bodice in her bedroom (Roscher's _Lexikon_, ii. 2. 3007,
fig. 2).

[30] _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol. ii. p. 200.

[31] Cf. _B.S.A._, vol. xii. p. 323, fig. K.




CHAPTER X

BRONZE AND IRON. WEAPONS AND TOOLS


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 the other hand, is thoroughly
familiar with iron as a commodity. A recurrent formula describes
wealthy men as rich in gold, bronze, women, and iron.[1]

Iron, bronze, slaves, and hides were bartered for wine, at the siege of
Troy, when a large trading fleet came in from Lemnos, sent by Euneos,
son of Jason and Hypsipyle, a princess of that island.[2] Lemnos seems
to have been rich in wine, which provoked the heroes to utter _gabes_
(as in the _Chansons de Geste_) about their future triumphs in the
war.[3]

Thus iron is abundant, but its uses are strangely restricted. All
careful readers must perceive that Homer lives in an age of "overlap."
Remains of such ages are common on European sites almost everywhere;
the explorer finds in the overlap iron and bronze things together, iron
comes gradually in: bronze, for weapons and tools, gradually disappears.

Thus at the great prehistoric cemetery of Hallstatt in the Austrian
Alps, we find weapons of bronze fitted with iron edges, then swords
with iron blades and hilts of bronze, then swords of iron, hilt and
blade.[4]

In Crete was found a _tholos_ tomb (a domed stone edifice) with a
bronze spear-head, a set of iron tools including a double pick and an
axe, and a sword of iron. This tomb was of the period when "geometric"
ornament on vases had nearly supplanted the Aegean forms of decoration:
in fact it was in the period to which we may assign Homer.[5] Other
tholos tombs near the same site contained vessels Aegean in _shape_,
with geometric _ornament_, and an iron dagger, and bronze fibulae and
bracelets, objects for which iron was not used. In a tomb at Muliana
in Crete,[6] were found bronze weapons with human remains that had
been buried beside iron weapons with cremated bones.[7] The vases were
partly of Aegean, partly of Dipylon geometric style.

Now Homer describes this period of gradual overlap of iron and bronze.
But he adds the strange peculiarity that the weapons, but for a single
arrow-head[8] and an iron mace, mentioned as the peculiar fancy of
a warrior when Nestor was young,[9] are always of bronze, while the
tools and the masses of metal out of which they are forged are usually
of iron. This fact has often been the subject of comment.[10] Of the
critics mentioned in the note below, Helbig and Cauer think that the
steady mention by Homer of bronze for weapons is a mere tradition of
the epic, maintained by poets in the Iron Age. It would be interesting
to find any such tradition in any other literature of the early Iron
Age. But we do not find it. Moreover, the lays of the Bronze Age, when
they mentioned tools, must have said that they were of bronze, as Homer
occasionally does; but we are not told why later poets maintained
the bronze tradition for weapons, but spoke of tools as iron. As in
the case of the arrow-head it is called "the iron," so in the case of
tools, and of knives (not used in battle); the wheelwright is said to
fell a tree "with the iron," though Odysseus trims the wood of his bed
"with the bronze." Achilles, it is feared, will cut his own throat
"with the iron" (knife); the cattle struggle when slain "with the
iron"--the butcher's knife; and Odysseus shoots "through the iron,"
through the holes in the axes. But no man, in battle, strikes with or
dies under "the iron." This distinction could not have been uniformly
maintained throughout several centuries by poets living in an age of
iron weapons.

Naber and Bérard, unlike Cauer and Helbig, give the obvious explanation
that when iron came in, but its manufacture and the sharpening of
it were ill understood, men would make heavy axes and other rural
implements of iron, but would not trust their lives to iron weapons
which were brittle or which "doubled up." This is the view which
occurred to myself before I had read the works of Naber and Bérard; but
I then knew no proof that a stage of iron tools and bronze weapons had
ever existed.

As Monsieur Bérard puts the case, "I might almost say that iron is the
popular metal ... the shepherd and ploughman can extract and work it
without going to the town."[11] It is probable that the princes who had
lands remote from towns kept each his own smithy for rough work, like
Highland chiefs in 1680-1745, who had the rough iron work done on the
estate, but always imported their sword _blades_ from the Continent.
The hilts were made at home, basket hilts.[12]

Knives, never said to be used in war, agricultural and pastoral
implements, and axes, though occasionally of bronze, are usually of
iron in the Epics.[13] No graves opened in Greek soil have as yet
yielded iron tools accompanied by bronze weapons alone. Mr. Arthur
Evans, however, who accepts the view that Homer describes an actual
period of bronze for weapons, iron for tools, writes, "This corresponds
with a distinct phase of archaeological evidence. Thus in the
Cypro-Minoan tomb at Enkomi the weapons were of bronze, but small iron
knives also occurred (Murray, _Excavations in Cyprus_, p. 25)."[14] The
Homeric state of affairs is illustrated by Mr. MacAllister's diggings
in a certain stratum of the ancient city of Gezer in Palestine. _All
weapons_ are of bronze, _all implements_ are of iron. Gezer was in
touch with Aegean art; a bronze sword-blade of the Cnossian "horned"
type (the hilt turning up like two horns) was found there.[15] Gaza
also had "her Minoan traditions and the cult of the Cretan Zeus."
Jewellery of late Aegean taste has been found at Gezer; and the
Philistines are suspected of being settlers from Crete, whether Aegean
or Achaean.

In the present state of knowledge we can say safely that Homer, with
his bronze weapons and iron tools, has not invented a state of culture
that never existed. The relative uses of excellent bronze for spears
and swords, and of dubious iron for implements, were perfectly natural.
Homer probably saw this stage in actual life; nobody could invent
it; but no Homeric cairn with buried weapons and tools has ever been
discovered, and if any had been found, they would long ago have been
plundered.

There are two lines, or rather one line is twice repeated in the
_Odyssey_, which give the _démenti_ to the uniform descriptions in both
Epics. Odysseus bids Telemachus hide the weapons in the hall, and, if
asked why he does it, reply that the Wooers in their cups may quarrel,
and use the arms, and "shame the feast, and this wooing, for iron of
himself draws a man to him."[16] This is a proverbial expression of
the age when iron is, at least, the dominant if not the only metal for
weapons. If, then, this line be as old as the rest of the _Odyssey_, in
which weapons are always of bronze, its maker has let out that all the
other makers have been saying what they do not mean; and in an age of
iron, or overlap of bronze-and iron, have consistently maintained that
all weapons are of bronze, while tools are of iron, as a rule.

Helbig and others[17] think the line a very late intrusion; it may
be removed without altering the sense of the passage. Mr. Monro, on
_Odyssey_, xix. 1-50, discusses the question fully. "Ancient and modern
critics," he says, "are generally agreed that the first mention of
'iron' as synonymous with 'weapon'" (_Od_. xvi. 294), and the rest of
the passage, "is an interpolation founded on xix. 1-50, and intended to
lead up to it." But Kirchoff (_Odyssey_, p. 560) reverses the process,
the second appearance of the passage is the earlier. Mr. Monro argues
that _both_ passages "are additions to the original context."

It is essential to the whole story that the Wooers, who, of course,
wear swords, as was universally done in time of peace, should, when
attacked by arrows, need shields and spears to throw. The interpolator,
if interpolator there were, thought that, in ordinary circumstances,
shields and spears would be hanging on the walls of the hall, as in
the Ionian house of Alcaeus (Fragm. 15, Bergk.).

We do not know from other descriptions of Homeric halls that this was
the custom in Homer's age; it is nowhere mentioned.

The war-gear in the palace of Cnossus was certainly stored apart in
special chambers. Suppose, then, that a late poet, accustomed to see
war-gear arranged on walls, had the opportunity to introduce the
practice into the _Odyssey_, he would inevitably cause confusion; and
the passage does cause great confusion, as Mr. Monro proves in his long
note.

(1) The moment foreseen and prepared for by Odysseus never arrives, and
that is quite contrary to "the Epic manner."

(2) It is a weaker argument, that the speech about arms tempting men
to use them disregards the fact that the Wooers wear swords; what they
need under the rain of arrows is shields and throwing spears. For these
they send the Goatherd to the store-chamber, where, in fact, they were
probably kept in a Homeric house, not, as in the case of Alcaeus, on
the walls.

(3) The use of "iron" for "weapon" is, as Mr. Monro says, an
anachronism.

(4) The vocabulary "has a post-Homeric stamp." Of this I am no judge;
but I point out later what Mr. Monro omits to notice, that in the first
passage, xvi. 296, the δοιὰ βοάγρια χερσιν ἑλέσθαι is archaeologically
utterly un-Homeric (cf. p. 103); while the command to bring two βοάγρια
and spears, as Mr. Monro says, is not repeated nor carried out in the
second passage; again contrary to the manner of the Epic.

(5) In _Odyssey_, xxii. 23-25, when Odysseus has shot Antinous, the
Wooers look at the wall to find spears vainly; but why? They do not
expect a fight, they think (xxii. 31, 32) that Odysseus, aiming at some
other mark, has shot Antinous by _accident_. In xxii. 5-7 he has said,
enigmatically, that he will try, with Apollo's aid, to hit a mark that
no man has struck before. The words about their looking to the walls
for weapons "are an interpolation, and prove nothing about the removal
of the arms."

(6) Mr. Monro renders the speech of Melanthius (xxii. 139-141) in
this manner: "Go to, I will bring you gear to arm you from the
store-chamber, for the arms are in their place (ἔνδον), I think, and
Odysseus and his sons have not put them elsewhere." Melanthius merely
means that the armour has not been moved by Odysseus and Telemachus
from its natural place, the store-chamber; he will there find what is
needed.

(7) The passage in Book xxiv. 164-166, where the ghost of Amphimedon
tells the story of the removal of the arms to Agamemnon in Hades, is
late, like all Book xxiv. It is possibly later than the passage about
removing the arms from the hall.

Averse as I am to theories of interpolation, the whole passage in which
"iron" is made a synonym for "weapon" is rich in the non-Epic manner as
well as matter, and causes very un-Homeric confusions. Critics of all
shades of opinion recognise this, and I do not object to the line about
iron merely because it is as fatal to my theory as it is friendly to
that of Mr. Ridgeway.[18]

In this case the line contradicts the whole of both Epics, which in
itself provokes suspicion; just as a single passage in which cavalry
were introduced, or burials by humation were introduced, or armorial
bearings on small bucklers appeared, would rightly be deemed a late
interpolation.

This line apart, the two Epics seem uniform work of a peculiar stage,
the Gezer stage, of the overlap of bronze and iron.

Hesiod knew all about the Bronze Age, and knew that his was the age of
iron, whereas the ancients tooled with bronze, "and there was no black
iron." Put Hesiod at 700 B.C., and we wonder why "late poets" about
that date gave iron tools but bronze weapons to the Achaeans.[19]

The line in the _Odyssey_ is found, one must add, in most suspicious
circumstances, and in the worst of company. It first appears in
_Odyssey_, xvi. 294, when Odysseus, at the house of Eumaeus, is
prophesying to Telemachus about the misbehaviour of the Wooers. He bids
his son, at his nod, to conceal the arms and the weapons in the hall,
and if asked why he has done so, reply that they afford occasion for
brawls, as "iron draws a man to him." The passage goes on, "but for us
alone leave two swords, two spears, and two shields to grasp with our
hands" Here the word for shields is βοάγρια, which occurs in no other
line of Iliad or Odyssey except Iliad, xii. 22; while the following
line (23), mentioning "demigods," "takes us at once away from the
Homeric world, and opens an entirely new order of conceptions."[20]
"The most careless critics," says Mr. Leaf, cannot pass this passage
in the _Iliad_, nor can the most conservative critic defend it. As the
dubious passage of the _Odyssey_ concerning iron contains the same
non-Homeric word for shields as the indubitably false passage of the
_Iliad_, and as the poet of the _Odyssey_ expects the shields to be
held in the hand (_an die Arme zu nehmen_, Faesi) while Homer's shields
are always suspended by baldrics, it is clear that the Odyssean passage
with the mention of iron as synonymous with weapon is rather more than
_suspect_.

The line recurs[21] in changed circumstances when Telemachus and
Odysseus together remove the weapons, but do not leave two swords, two
spears, and two shields (βοάγρια) for themselves. Everything falls out
otherwise than Odysseus had practically prophesied in Book xvi., when
we come to the slaying of the Wooers in Book xxii.

This would mean nothing in a modern novel; but, as Mr. Monro says, in
Homer it is singular; it would be more in his manner to let events
exactly fulfil the boding of Odysseus. I have proved that the whole
passage not only contradicts the uniform tenor of the two Epics as to
bronze weapons, but causes hopeless confusion, has the most suspicious
associations, and contravenes the Homeric practice of suspending
shields by baldrics. Even if we excised the line concerning iron, which
can be omitted without injuring the sense, the whole passage in both of
its appearances is decidedly suspicious.[22]


[1] _Iliad_, vi. 48, ix. 365, 366, x. 379, xi. 133; _Odyssey_, xiv.
324, xxi. 10.

[2] _Iliad_, vii. 472 _seqq_.

[3] _Ibid_. viii. 232.

[4] Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. pp. 413-416.

[5] _J. H. S._, 1907, p. 320.

[6] Cf. "Burial and the Future Life."

[7] Evans, _Prehistoric Tombs of Cnossos_, p. 134.

[8] _Iliad_, iv. 123.

[9] vii. 141 _seqq_.

[10] Helbig, _Homerische Epos_, 1887, pp. 330, 331. Bérard, _Les
Phéniciens et l'Odyssée_, 1902, vol. i. 435. Cauer, _Grundfragen des
Homer-kritik_, pp. 183-189. Naber, Quaestiones Homericae, 1897, p. 60.

[11] _Iliad_, xxiii. 826-835.

[12] Napier, _Life of Dundee_, vol. iii. p. 724. Notices in the Stuart
MSS., Windsor Castle.

[13] _Iliad_, xviii. 34, xxiii. 30 (butchers' tools); _Odyssey_, ix.
391 ("great axes" and adzes); _Iliad_, xxiii. 850 (axes). The axes
through which Odysseus shot the arrow (nine times in the _Odyssey_).
Battle-axe; this is of bronze (_Iliad_, xiii. 611, ἀξίνη), axes as
tools are πελέκεις. "Iron" as a synonym for wheelwrights' tools
(_Iliad_, iv. 485). Iron butchers' axes (_Iliad_, xvii. 520; _Odyssey_,
iii. 442-449).

[14] _Scripta Minoa_, vol. i. p. 61, note 1.

[15] _Evans, Prehistoric Tombs of Cnossos_, p. 107.

[16] _Odyssey_, xvi. 294, xix. 13.

[17] _Homerische Epos_, p. 331.

[18] _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. pp. 295, 296. Mr. Ridgeway does not
notice the many objections to the whole passage.

[19] Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 150, 151.

[20] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 524.

[21] _Odyssey_, xix. 13.

[22] Mr. Murray, _R. G. E_. p. 154, note 1, writes that when I regard
the proverb that "iron of itself draws a man on" as an interpolation,
"this seems like giving up most of the case." But it is no part of my
case that not a single interpolation exists in either the _Iliad_ or
_Odyssey_. There is scarcely a critic, whatever his views, who does
not suspect the passages which we have been discussing. If Mr. Murray
does not see evidence of un-Homeric confusion in the passages, his view
is peculiar; and if I am biassed, when I see those signs, by my ideas
about iron, he may be also unconsciously biassed by his opposite ideas.
If a critic desires to prove that iron was in common use for weapons
during the evolution of the _Odyssey_, will he aver that--were no iron
in question--he would see nothing suspicious in the passages?




CHAPTER XI

BURIAL AND THE FUTURE LIFE


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 the examination of graves, that
archaeology so far seems to fail us. Yet Homer speaks with no uncertain
voice. From the fifty-second line of the first book of the _Iliad_ to
the funeral of Hector in the twenty-fourth book, Homer always tells of
cremation, "and ever the pyres of the dead burned in multitude." There
may be slight variations in practice, as regards burning his armour
with the dead warrior; and the funeral of Patroclus, in which the love
and the rage of Achilles expended themselves, has features not usually
recorded by Homer,--the circumstances being peculiar,--but there is
always cremation, always the urn-burial of the bones, always the cairn
piled above them with its pillar on the summit; yet no such Homeric
cairn has yet been discovered.

Yet Homer certainly describes no invented rites: cremation, urn-burial,
the linen wrapping of the urn (gold, bronze, or of pottery), and the
cairn are familiar from remains of the Bronze and early Iron Age in
northern and central Europe: the custom in our islands appears to have
survived the dawn of Christianity, and is perfectly well remembered by
the Christian author of the Anglo-Saxon epic, _Beowulf_. Contrasting
pagan times with his own, he writes: "Woe is his who is destined,
through savage hate, _to thrust his soul into the fire's embrace, to
hope for no comfort, in no wise to change_."

"Weal is his who may after his death-day stand before the Lord, and
claim a refuge in the Father's arms."[1]

This burial by fire, this want of hope, this changeless, helpless
future, are what Achilles endured and deplored.[2] "Rather would I
on earth be the hind of a landless man than king over all the dead."
Thus the dying Beowulf asks to be buried: "Bid ye the warriors raise
a far-seen cairn for me after the funeral fire on a head-land by the
sea ... so that seafarers who drive their tall ships over the spray of
ocean shall thereafter call it _Beowulf's barrow_."[3]

So, too, spoke the ghost of Elpenor on the limit of Oceanus to
Odysseus: "Burn me with my armour, all that is mine, and pile for me a
cairn by the shore of the grey sea, memorial of a luckless man, that
men unborn may inquire of me."[4] The customs and ideas are identical,
but no such cairns have we found in Homeric lands, whereas they are
common in our islands.

Meanwhile the burial customs of the Aegean folk in Crete and in Greece
were not those known to Homer. They used "shaft-graves," deeply sunk
in earth, luckily for us, since in these were found the unsunned
treasures of Mycenae. They also used "chamber-tombs," and "pit-graves,"
and stone-built _tholos_ chambers, beehive shaped, not cairns of earth
covering a small chamber of stone. They did not, in the Bronze Age,
burn the dead, but buried him, often in a large _larnax_ or coffer
of pottery; and they deposited rich grave-goods, which Homer never
mentions. In a chamber-tomb at Muliana in Crete were found unburned
bones with weapons of bronze, and an Aegean "false-necked vase";
while hard by in the same chamber were "cremated bones, in a cinerary
geometric urn," and an iron sword and dagger.[5]

"Here," says Mr. Evans, "we have the interesting spectacle of the
succession of corpse-burial by cremation, and of iron weapons by
bronze, apparently without any break in the indigenous stock." The
Aegean Bronze Age of burial passes into the Iron Age of cremation.
About the change of custom without change of stock or race we cannot
be quite certain, but cremation makes its appearance in association
with iron weapons, which Homer's men do not use, while they do practise
cremation and cairn-burial, which has left no known traces in the
Bronze Age of Greece.

It is suggested by Mr. Murray, as by Helbig, that cremation was
adopted, during the dark age of the Migrations, by men who wished to
burn their dead "into their ultimate dust," that the dust might not
be violated by hostile hands. The custom, Mr. Murray suggests, was
a revival of what the Northerners had used "in the forest country
from which they came." Possibly if wood were very scarce in Crete
and Greece, the Northerners there might adopt the local method of
burial, and revert to their own custom at Troy, where Ida furnished
forests. But Homer supposes cremation and caim-burial to be universal
in Greece; and his whole theory of the future life rests on cremation.
The rite admits the dead to the House of Hades, ineffectual shadows,
unfed, unfeared, unworshipped; and from the House of Hades they never
return. By the eighth century, and so on continuously, ghosts _can_
appear to men, and are fed, feared, and worshipped, as they had been
in Aegean times. The belief of Homer is the belief of Israel, Hades
is the Sheol of Samuel. The manners of ancient Israel are of interest
as regards cremation. The Philistines treated the corpse of Saul as
Hector meant to treat that of Patroclus, whose head he would have set
on a spike above the wall of Troy. "They fastened Saul's body to the
wall of Beth-shan." His sons' corpses were used in the same way, but
were rescued by valiant Israelites, who burned the bones and buried
them under a tree. This appears to have been done for the purpose of
concealing the bones from further outrage. No cairn is mentioned.[6]
But cremation, in the case of kings at least, appears to have persisted
in Israel and Judah. Asa, king of Judah, when he died, was "laid in
the bed which was filled with sweet odours and divers kinds of spices;
and they made a very great burning for him." His tomb he had caused to
be digged for him; there his bones were laid.[7] Of Jehoram we read
that "his people made no burning for him, like the burning of his
forefathers."[8] Jeremiah prophesies for Zedekiah: "Thou shalt die in
peace: and with the burnings of thy forefathers, the former kings which
were before thee, so shall they burn odours for thee."[9] In Israel an
unusual lack of interest in the future life accompanied cremation of
kings, if cremated they were; but the commentators prefer to believe
that they were not, and that only odorous substances and "furniture"
were burned. Why burn furniture?[10] But Homer's faith is unique in
Greece, Aegean or historic it represents a single age of culture--which
has left no material proof of its existence.

Homer's burial rites cannot have arisen out of a practice adopted
during the Migrations, for no people that wished to conceal the
resting-place of their dead would raise above it a conspicuous cairn
and pillar, for the very purpose of keeping the dead in perpetual
memory. Such cairns would merely have invited desecration during the
Migrations.[11]

I can only conclude that Homer describes what is certainly an actual
and widely-diffused non-Aegean mode of burial, with the equally
non-Aegean and non-historic belief about the future life. Why the
practice has left no material traces, as of cairns, is an insoluble
question at present.[12] The historical Hellenes, however, knew many
tombs, probably barrows or cairns, which they assigned to men and
women of the Heroic Age. Pausanias often mentions such tombs, which he
saw, but he does not usually describe them. In a few cases he speaks
of barrows or cairns of earth, as at Epidaurus the grave of Phocus,
slain by Peleus. It was a "mound of earth, and on it a rough stone."
At Olympia was the tomb of Oenomaus, "a piled up mound, with stones"
(vi. 21. 3). At Pergamus beyond Caicus, the grave of Auge, "a mound of
earth with a stone wall round it" (viii. 4-9). The grave of Aepytus
(mentioned in _Iliad_, ii. 604), "a pile of earth, not very high,
surrounded by a coping of stone" (viii. 16. 3). The tomb of Homer's
Areithous of the iron mace was near Mantinea in Arcadia; it is "a tomb
with a stone base" (viii. 11). The attribution of the graves to known
heroes may often have been fanciful; in many cases two or more have
claimed one hero's grave. While the belief in heroes existed, barrows
would not be robbed. Pausanias speaks, however, twice of cinerary
urns containing heroic ashes of Ariadne at Argos (ii. 23. 8), and of
Eurytus, son of Melaneus; but here a dream warned Pausanias to be
silent about the urn of bronze (iv. 33).

Thus there were cairns enough, believed to be of heroic and pre-Homeric
date.

It has been suggested that the elaborate enclosure of circles of stone,
with a coping, round the shaft-graves of the acropolis of Mycenae, was
originally meant to contain a barrow of earth. But several grave-stones
were found in the earth; and it is unlikely that a barrow would be
heaped over the grave-pillars, or that so many would be set up on the
top of a barrow. The cairn seems to be Homeric, not "Mycenaean."

Historic Greece had no one orthodox belief as to the condition of
departed souls. Homer has, on the other hand, an orthodoxy; the
ghost of the man who does not receive due burning and burial is an
outcast, perhaps a mischievous outcast from the company in the halls
of Hades and in the meads of asphodel, while _they_ are but shadows of
themselves, unfed, unless some bold adventurer goes to them and sheds
the blood of the black ram. _That_ was another thing than pouring
libations into the tomb.

Considering the fact that phantasms of the dead are probably as common
in one age as in another, Homer is singularly free from superstition
about them. Even Lucretius did not deny that such apparitions appear;
he tried to explain their appearance as traces left, somehow, on
something, we know not what or how, a theory lately revived. Homer
denies ghosts; and his view, we may say, can never, in his own time,
have been _popular_: it is the view of a class, not of a people.

But, as Mr. Leaf justly observes, there are vestiges in Homer of
other rites than his own. The word ταρχύειν, to preserve, whether by
embalment, or merely by drying or kippering, is used, in a general
sense, for doing all the rites of the dead.[13] The word may survive
from an age when mummification, not cremation, was the rule; honey
may have been employed; and the pots of honey and of oil placed by
Achilles against the bier of Patroclus may represent a faint vestige
of survival.[14] The usage lasted at Athens, the pointed lekythoi were
ranged round the bier. Why Achilles slew two dogs and four horses,
and threw them on the pyre, he did not know himself; he thought that
he slaughtered twelve Trojan prisoners merely in anger.[15] He had no
conscious purpose to send horses, dogs, and thralls into Hades for the
use of his friend; he did not burn the arms of his friend. In _Iliad_,
xxiv. 595, he promises to Patroclus a share of the ransom of Hector's
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, extravagances of grief and anger.

There is a variation in the last book of the _Odyssey_; the souls of
the unburied Wooers arrive among the dead in Hades, though their bodies
are unburned. The passage is usually reckoned late, and these spirits
are under the special guidance of Hermes.

Even in these shadowy matters, Homer presents a view' unusually
consistent; and the view was not held either in Aegean times, or in
"Dipylon" days, or in the eighth century by the Cyclic poets, or in
historic Greece. In this, as in all things, the world of Homer stands
apart. There is possibly one note of change in Homeric burial. The
phrase κτέρεα κτερεΐξαι, as in _Iliad_, xxiv. 38, means the burning of
some of a man's possessions on his funeral pyre. It occurs but once
in the _Iliad_, in the case of the funeral of Hector; but frequently
in the _Odyssey_, about the funeral rites of Odysseus, if he proves to
have died abroad. The only possessions of Patroclus which are burned
are dogs and horses; not his arms, as in the cases of Eetion and
Elpenor. In these cases, perhaps, a slight variation in burial rites
may be detected. It looks as though, in the cases where the arms of
the dead are burned with them, they were expected to be of use to them
in the future life, as to Melissa, wife of Periander, who was cold in
Hades, because her wardrobe had not been burned.


[1] _Beowulf_, 184-188, Mr. Clark Hall's translation.

[2] _Odyssey_, xi. 489-491.

[3] _Beowulf_, 2803-2808.

[4] _Odyssey_, xi. 74-76.

[5] Burrows, _Discoveries in Crete_, p. 101. Evans, _Prehistoric Tombs
of Knossos_, p. 134.

[6] 1 Sam. xxxi. 10-13.

[7] 2 Chron. xvi. 14.

[8] 2 Chron. xxi. 19.

[9] Jer. xxxiv. 5.

[10] Hastings' _Dict. of Bible_, art. "Cremation."

[11] _R. G. E_. pp. 72, 73. Mr. Murray supposes cremation, with
_secret_ burial. If so, the cairn was a later addition made in settled
times, after the Migrations.

[12] Mr. Burrows remarks: "Neither Professor Ridgeway nor Mr. Lang
is able to make the slightest use of the combinations suggested by
the East Cretan graves," in which, for example, bronze weapons and
inhumated bones are found side by side with burned bones, in urns, and
iron weapons (_Discoveries in Crete_, p. 215). The facts are certainly
of no use to any theory of mine: they are quite un-Homeric facts. I
can only state the question thus: Homer uniformly describes a very
well known mode of burial. Did he invent it? Did he receive it from
tradition; and if so, from a tradition of what place and period? Is it
possible that a poet of the age of overlapping of bronze and iron, of
inhumation and cremation, in Greece, persists in reproducing, in great
detail, a method of burial removed from his own experience by all the
time that had passed since the Achaeans left their northern forests? If
they retained the mode in Greece, where are the cairns?

[13] Iliad, vii. 85. The word is also found, Iliad, xvi. 456 = 674.

[14] xxiii. 170, 171.

[15] xxiii. 23.




CHAPTER XII

RELIGION IN GREECE: PRE-HISTORIC, HOMERIC, AND HISTORICAL


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 to the dead. Over Royal tombs
in the acropolis of Mycenae was "a small round altar with a well-like
opening in the middle, which had doubtless been used for sacrificing
to the dead."[1] This is ghost-feeding, not ghost-divinising. We have
also a Cretan picture of a ghost standing outside his tomb, while an
ox is sacrificed to him, the blood falling into the vessel. But such
traces of hero-worship are rare in Aegean art, and Cretan _art_ shows
no representations of sacrifice of animals to gods. There was, indeed,
an ancient tradition that Minos abolished blood-sacrifices.[2] Certain
sites, however, show bones of animals sacrificed in Minoan times.

On the other hand, worship of high gods is frequently represented on
Aegean engraved rings and in pictures. While there is no representation
of blood-sacrifice to gods, fruit of a sacred tree is often plucked, by
attendants, for goddesses, standing or seated.[3]

In the acropolis of Mycenae (in 1886) was found an apparent
representation of a god, on a table of lime-stone. "In the centre
stands, on a blue ground, a man or an idol, covered with a large shield
in the shape of two circles joined together." This is the usual Aegean
figure-of-eight shield, which is found by itself in little objects of
glass and other materials, called "palladia." "On either side of the
idol stands a woman, apparently in an attitude of prayer. Between the
idol and the woman on the right is an altar-like object, resembling the
bases under the feet of the lions at the Lions' gate."[4]

On a scene of cult, on a large gold ring found at Mycenae, is, in
mid-air "a small apparently descending image of a god," armed and
shielded.[5] He also appears on a ring of Cnossos, and is, in Mr.
Evans's opinion, a sky- or sun-god. If so, the Greeks would identify
him with their own Zeus, a sky-god in his earliest aspect as indicated
by his name (also a god of _everything_, in cult).

This male deity is much less prominent in Mycenaean art than a great
goddess. In the Mycenaean ring already cited she sits under a tree,
probably sacred: a little female figure in a flounce skirt gathers
fruit. The goddess, like Demeter in Theocritus (Idyll vii.), holds
poppy heads in her hand; women bring her flowers. Above her is a
ceremonial double axe, symbol of power, and overhead are sun and
crescent moon.

Mr. Evans thinks that the ceremonial double axe, or rather pair of
double axes, "may be an image of the conjunction of the divine pair, a
solar and lunar deity."[6] The art indicates tree- and pillar-worship
as prevalent, whether the deities were supposed to embody themselves
in trees and pillars or not. A slab of offering, inscribed in Aegean
characters, with three small basins for libations, was found in the
Dictaean cave, and was appropriate to the offerings of honey, wine,
and water to the infant Zeus of the Cretan birth-myth of Zeus, or to
the Homeric three libations to the dead in Hades. There was also a
sacrificial stratum, with bones of oxen, deer, and goats. It must be
borne in mind that though the myth of the birth of Zeus in the Cretan
cave is most famous, Pausanias says that it was hard to count the Greek
cities which claimed to be the places of his nativity.[7] He gives four
or five instances in Messenia and Arcadia.

A goddess between two lions,[8] or on a mountain top guarded by lions,
an armed god standing by (in a gold ring), reminds us of Cybele, or of
Rhea, mother of the Gods of Homer. A goddess holding in each hand a
water fowl or other animal is common in Aegean art; and a god in the
same attitude, is a gold figure of the Aegina treasure (_circ_. 850
B.C.), in the British Museum. In the contemporary and later finds in
the temple of Artemis Orthia, at Sparta, such female figures are very
common, and in the earliest Ionian temple at Ephesus. They persist into
the sixth century B.C., and are representations of Artemis as a goddess
of the wild things, Homer's Artemis Agrotera.[9]

Thus, undeniably, archaic and heroic Greece carried on Aegean
representations of deities; even the Cretan goddess holding serpents
has, in Greek art, an Artemis with snakes to represent her. But, so
much earlier and nearer to Aegean times, in Homer, the goddess, as
Artemis, shows her later and more truly Hellenic aspects, and is the
chaste sister of Apollo. Indeed, the Homeric Olympians are already
the beautiful beings which the best art of the Hellenic prime, in the
fifth century, delighted to represent; while in art much earlier than
Pheidias, but much later than Homer, the gods still appear in their
old Aegean forms. This is the paradox of Homer. The poet lived while
the Hellenes were but a small nation, occupying a narrow region in
Thessaly; but his poems forestall the beauty which blossomed again,
when art and religion were truly Hellenic. And in Homer the beauty
bears none of the barbaric strains that deface the rites of Athens in
her glory. "Homer's portrait of Artemis," says Mr. Farnell, "gives us
not the first but the last point in the development of her character,
and the conception of her in later Greek literature is not more
advanced or more spiritual than his." But "Arcadian and Athenian rites
and legends" (we may compare Boeotian and Spartan art of 800-700 B.C.)
"provide us with testimony much earlier than Homer's."[10]

How are we to explain the facts? Homer is the poet of Achaeans,
regarded as a stronger but less civilised race, invaders of a more
civilised people. Yet this Achaean people, or their poet, is already
on the highest Hellenic level in his conception of the Olympians,
while the practical ritual and legends of Athens in her glorious prime
retain many traces of barbarous and even savage conceptions at which
Homer seldom glances, though even in his mythology there are hints of a
truly barbarous cosmogony, the revolution by which Zeus overthrew more
ancient divinities. Homer knew Hesiod's myth of Cronos,[11] which is
precisely that of the Maoris. How then did his taste, and that of his
audience, arrive at his beautiful portraits of the Olympians?

This is the great problem. The gods of Aegean art are strange if
impressive beings, mixed up with tree- and pillar-worship. Their
altars, in art, are not adapted for sacrifices for animals, but
libations, fruits, and flowers are offered. The gods and goddesses of
archaic Greek art are barbaric and unimpressive, and trees and stones,
as sacred, endured through all Greek history. The Olympians of Homer
are, on the other hand, the Olympians of Pheidias.

Turning from Aegean religion before Homer, which shows infinitely
more of the worship of high gods than of ghosts, we find, in early
historic Greece, that the great Olympians are highly honoured, but that
ghost-worship, ignored by Homer, is prevalent. From the seventh century
onwards the possession of tombs of heroes, and of miracle-working
relics of heroes, their bones, is essential to the well-being of
cities. Finally, living men are freely divinised. Thus chthonic as
distinct from Olympian worship, while it is ignored by Homer (whose
theory of the state of the dead renders it impossible) gets practically
the upper hand in historic Greece, though in the Aegean religion it is
inconspicuous, and in Homer it is absent.

Thus Homer stands apart in religion from the world that preceded and
the world that followed him.

The solitary passage in which the _Iliad_ recognises sacrifice to a
dead man, a hero, is in the description of the case of Erechtheus _in
Athens_. In the temple of Athene "the Athenians worship him with bulls
and rams as the years return in their courses."[12]

Owing, perhaps, to Homer's consistent avoidance of everything Ionian,
he never speaks of the Mysteries of Eleusis, in Attica, celebrated
in the Ionian Hymn to Demeter, or of the Attic Thesmophoria or the
Brauronia, or, indeed, of any mysteries. These are now understood to
have begun in savage and barbarous magical rites for the benefit of the
objects of the food supply; or in initiatory ceremonies: both practices
are still common among all the lower races; and agricultural magic
still survives in European folklore, and we have the initiations of
Freemasonry.

The rites of Eleusis, Athens, and of Artemis Orthia among the Dorians
of Sparta are of immense antiquity in their origins. The magic may
have been practised in Attica, in Homer's time, and, as folklore, may
have existed in the rural classes among the Achaean states. If so,
Homer has no interest in the matter, none in initiations. But both
magic and initiations were sanctioned by the State in Attica and Dorian
Sparta, in historic Hellas.

The two deities who chiefly presided over mysteries were Demeter and
Dionysus. Demeter "has no real personality in Homer," says Mr. Leaf,
"except in _Odyssey,_ v. 125," where we merely hear that she lay with
Iasion in a thrice ploughed fallow field, and that Zeus slew Iasion
with a thunderbolt. Dionysus, again, to quote Mr. Leaf, is only
mentioned in _Iliad_, xiv. 325, in the "Leporello Catalogue" of the
amours of Zeus, and in doubtful passages of the _Odyssey_ (xi. 325).
He is the son of Semele, and a golden cup is a gift of his. Finally,
and most to the purpose, in _Iliad_, vi. 130-140, Diomede tells the
story of Lycurgus, a Thracian king, who beat the nymphs, the nurses of
Dionysus, with an ox-goad, and frightened Dionysus into the deeps of
the sea. Zeus blinded Lycurgus, and he did not last long. This tale is
regarded as a late and pious interpolation, because the whole scene is
looked on as in crying contradiction with the events of _Iliad_, Book
v. For proof that there is no inconsistency at all, see "The Great
Discrepancies."

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, perhaps, from the seventh century
B.C. It may be true that "the great religious movement" connected with
Dionysus "spread over Greece apparently in the seventh century."[13]
But it is more probable that the "movement" was especially taken up
by literature, Orphic poetry, at that period, for I am unaware that
we have any historical evidence, as in Herodotus, for the religious
furies and homicidal ferocities of the women in the seventh century.
These, all the stories of the sanguinary frenzy of the sex, their
endeavours to "interview" kings, and tear them to tatters, are thrown
back into legendary times. Nobody can tell how ancient the legends are,
but it seems to be generally admitted that Dionysus and his rites are
of "Indo-European" but not of Greek origin. His mother was Semele, and
Kretschmer would connect Semele "with a Phrygian root, _zemel_," which
occurs on Phrygian tombstones in curses directed against any one who
should violate the tombs. The word Kretschmer interprets as meaning
"earth." So Semele would be the earth goddess.[14]

Be it so, Phrygian _Zemel_, the earth, is Greek Semele, the
earth-mother of the son of the sky, Zeus. But "Dionysus in Greek
mythology is closely connected with Thrace," and Lycurgus, the enemy
of Dionysus in _Iliad_, vi., is a Thracian king. Now "the result of
recent philological inquiries is to show a close connection between the
Thracian and Phrygian tongues, which are found to be both Aryan."[15]
Again, Attica, if ever her legends deviate into truth, was closely
connected with Thrace; and Homer himself treats the Thracian Chersonese
as an ally of Troy,[16] and Rhesus brings in his levies.[17]

There is no reason in the world why so great a sennachie as Homer, who
knew as many tales from all quarters as Widsith in the Anglo-Saxon
poem, should not know a Thracian tale about Lycurgus and Dionysus and
his mother, Earth.[18] Nothing prevented Homer from knowing a myth of
a people whom he knew--the Thracians--very long before the seventh
century.

Homer has not a good word for the cowardly Dionysus. Still, Zeus
patronises him; he is a god, though he never appears among Homer's
Olympians. To his mysteries, as to those of Eleusis (is it not
in Attica?) Homer does not allude. He mentions no mysteries, no
initiations, no hocus-pocus; these things were for Attica, and for
historic Greece.

The ethical _religion_ of Homer apart from his mythology is excellent,
a good faith to live and die in. His gods, when religiously regarded,
sanction all that is best in Achaean morals, and disapprove of all that
is evil in human conduct, as a general rule. But Homeric _mythology_
is manifestly another thing: in the stories told of the gods, they
practise most of the sins which they punish in mankind. Mythology would
cease to be _mythology_ if it became consistent, but religion can never
fail to be consistent while it expresses the highest and purest ethical
ideas associated with a sense of their approval by a being or beings
more than mortal. This note is again and again struck by Homer; and it
can never fail to awaken a responsive thrill in all who feel, or have
ever felt, the ethico-religious emotion.

Let me here give but one example. It is impossible for men to
understand the mystery of an omnipotent and loving Being in a world of
pain and ruin. Homer is as conscious of the insoluble problem as we
are--and Zeus is conscious of it. In the great assembly of all gods,
from Apollo and Athene to the nymphs of rivers, well-heads, and grassy
water-meadows, at the moment when the final strife is set between
Hector and Achilles, Zeus says, "Even in their perishing have I regard
unto them."[19] The Father pities but he cannot save--there is some
insuperable obstacle between his omnipotence and the end which he
desires.

Such is the _religious_ thought of Homer, while in his _mythical_
thought Zeus is a humorous hot-tempered father of a family, who
delights to tease, and finds as much diversion as Mr. Bennett did in
the absurdities of his wife and children.

The Achaean mind, like the mind of any savage who recognises an All
Father, has brooded over the sacred beings of religion in every mood,
the most serious and the most frivolous; every conceivable reflection
of every age, early or later, has entered into a conglomerate of
yearning desire for the gods, of fear of the gods' wrath, of absurd
legends concerning the gods, of broadly humorous glances at them as
members of a great whimsical family; and there are guesses at the
enjoyments of divine people, so powerful, so irresponsible, and so far
from spiritual; for the gods are not spirits, but beings compact of a
subtler matter than our perishable flesh and blood and bone.

Thus the gods, in moments of human seriousness, are the guardians of
Homer's highest ethical ideals; while for purposes of romance and
diverting narrative they are examples of all the vices which he most
detests and despises, and of a score of human foibles which he never
illustrates in the persons of his heroic men and women. His mortal
ladies never cuff and scold, like the village women whom he once
glances at, shrieking forth their quarrel in the centre of the village
street. But it is in public that Hera and Athene scold or cuff. The
nearest approach to this treatment of sacred beings may perhaps be
found in the broad waggeries of our late English mystery plays, like
those of Cain and of the Shepherds of Bethlehem. An even better example
is the ancient carol, _The Bitter Withy_, with the cruel cunning
and crime attributed to Jesus Christ, and the story of His whipping
by "Mary mild." Achaean humour is never so free as in its treatment
of things which are also handled, in another mood, with the highest
religious regard. Nobody, perhaps, has seriously credited Homer with
"a purpose," the purpose of enforcing the serious things of ethics
touched with religion, and, at the same time, of laughing popular
mythology away. The notion seems far too modern and too subtle; yet if
Homer had entertained that inconceivable purpose, he could hardly have
written otherwise than he did write,--to the extreme perplexity of
Greek and later "educationists."[20]

It is not necessary to discuss the chronique scandaleuse of Olympus;
the stories of the amours of Zeus, the intrigues of Aphrodite, the
jealousy of Hera, the domestic misfortunes of Hephaestus. Nor is this
the place to show how this mythological element inevitably crystalised
round a great figure like that of Zeus the father of men. But it seems
well to point out that while, in playful moods, the Achaean genius wove
a cycle of gross fabliaux around the Olympians, in serious moments
men regarded them not sceptically but with perfect seriousness and
devoutness. Though men or women conscious of a fault will say that
Atê infatuated them, or that Aphrodite thrust them into temptation,
nevertheless the gods work for righteousness. Men in the Epics have
the strongest sense of dependence on them. They are the givers of good
and evil. "Though thou be very strong, yet that, I ween, is a gift to
thee of God," says Agamemnon to Achilles. The oath of truce, in Iliad,
iii., which, when broken, seals the fate of Troy, is sanctioned by
Zeus, the Sun, Rivers, Earth, and they that "in the underworld punish
men dead, whosoever sweareth falsely."[21] In a later oath[22] "they"
are the Erinnyes, who also punish sins within the family. We hear of
no such posthumous punishments in Hades, when Odysseus goes thither
in _Odyssey_, Book xi. The men whom he sees being punished, Tityus,
Tantalus, and Sisyphus, have all offended the gods _in person_;[23]
and manifestly to call gods as witnesses to an oath, and then to be
forsworn, is to insult the gods, whether this be the explanation of the
threatened posthumous punishment or not.[24] The promise of Zeus is an
example to men, it can never be broken (_Iliad_, i. 526-527). "Father
Zeus will be no helper of liars," and Achilles "hates a lie like the
gates of Hades."

Penitence for wrongs done is recognised, "prayers of penitence are
daughters of great Zeus, halting and wrinkled and of eyes askance, that
have their task to go in the steps of Sin" (Atê). When the injured man
will not listen to the penitence of him who did the wrong, the prayers
of the penitent return to Zeus, and beseech him that the hard man "may
fall, and pay the price."[25] It was because Achilles refused to accept
the penitence of Agamemnon that _he_ "paid the price," the death of
Patroclus.

In the _Odyssey_ the ethical aspect of the gods is perhaps more
conspicuous, because their passions are no longer stirred by the great
war. In the opening lines they discountenance adultery (Aegisthus
and Clytaemnestra). They are equally offended by the use of poisoned
arrow-heads.[26] "All men yearn after the gods.". It is they who give
happiness in married life.[27] It is Zeus who protects suppliants.[28]
The just man is god-fearing.[29] The gods love righteousness and
compassion.[30] Throughout the whole poem, notably in the case of the
pious Eumaeus, a deep sense of dependence on the gods, and resignation
to their will, is depicted. Yet Zeus permits Poseidon to wreak his
grudge on Odysseus, and even on the Phaeacians who brought him home;
while in the song of Demodocus, a divine adultery is matter of mirth to
all Olympus.

Thus the religion of Homer is, ethically, a very good religion. Homeric
religion is already national, that is, all Achaeans believe in the same
Olympian consistory, with Zeus as the Over Lord. None the less many of
the cities have each their favourite divine being, a special patron,
just as cities had in the Middle Ages. All believed in the Deity, but
Orleans had a special patron in St. Aignan; and "the guarded mount" in
St. Michael. Athene was no less the patroness of Troy than of Athens.
The Gods are all national, though they have their preferences. We may
go further and say that, to Homer's mind, the Gods are universal.

To Homer, Zeus is anything but a "tribal" god: he is not even merely
a national god; all peoples known to Homer acknowledge his supremacy.
This was the tolerant view of historic Hellas: all nations had the
same gods named by different names in different languages. There were
not many Zeuses, but one Zeus, though various local names were given
to the god, Dodonaean Zeus, Idaean Zeus, Pelasgian Zeus, or, again,
Delian Apollo, Pythian Apollo, Smirithian Apollo, and so forth. The
god is in no way restricted to a given place, Dodona, Ida, Delos,
Delphi; these titles are his because he possesses a temple or Oracle
in each district. Men may call to the gods or to a god wherever they
find themselves, abroad or at home, on the sea or "in fairy lands
forlorn," and everywhere they may sacrifice. To the devout mind,
despite the local associations of the gods in mythology, the divine is
omnipresent; can hear and help everywhere.[31] As for the local titles
of gods, we know the same mediaeval usage in respect to the Saints. The
Scot who, when at home, had a devotion to St. Catherine of Bothwell,
in France sought the aid of St. Catherine of Fierbois.[32] The gods,
or at least Zeus and Apollo, are omniscient, yet they need, in myth,
to be told about events remote or future, or need to make special
observations from selected places, such as the crest of Ida. These are
the inevitable and universal contradictions which beset all early and
much late theological speculation.

When Ionia became speculative as to all things physical or divine,
the mythological aspects of the gods in Homer were, what to the
philosophers they remained, a stumbling-block. But philosophy could not
cure Greece, or do away with her heritage of barbarism and savagery.
Yet, in some incomprehensible way, the Achaeans, as represented by
Homer, had an infinitely cleaner religion and ritual than the mother
cities of the philosophers.

In the religion of historic Greece, from the Ionian age to the
establishment of Christianity, the most active, and, so to say,
practical element is, we repeat, that of hero-worship, worship of dead
men. The great temples of the gods of Greece in general, especially
of the oracular Apollo, and of Athene in Athens, Artemis in Ephesus,
Artemis Orthia at Sparta, and so on, were maintained in splendour and
enriched with treasures of gold-work, silver, and bronze. The god or
goddess and the shrines were centres of pilgrimages, and pilgrimages
were good for trade. By them were the cities nourished, as the maker of
silver shrines at Ephesus declared. Miracles were wrought, the blind
saw, the lame walked. The local deity was of as great economic service
to a city of Greece as the bones of the Apostle were to St. Andrews,
and the relics of St. Thomas to Canterbury.

But for practical purposes of securing supernormal aid in war or
famine, the dead heroes were to each town or village what St. Aignan
was to Orleans, a very present help in trouble. For near a thousand
years St. Aignan routed the foes of the good city, and his image
was adored and carried in processions in 1429. Thus "to Lycurgus,
after he was dead, the Spartans erected a temple, and paid him great
worship."[33] "So that, as might be supposed ... they straightway
shot up and became prosperous." The Spartans, therefore, determined
to annex Arcadia, but were defeated by the forces of Tegea. Later,
in the sixth century, during the time of Croesus, the Spartans asked
the Delphic Oracle to direct their choice of a patron god. They were
bidden to bring home the bones of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, which were
in hostile Tegea. In Tegea, Lichas found the coffin which contained
the bones, seven cubits long (half a cubit longer than Goliath), of
Orestes, and carried them to Sparta. Thenceforth the Spartans were
victorious. The bones were not in a cairn, for a blacksmith of Tegea
first found the coffin when he was digging a well.[34] He would not dig
for water in a tumulus or cairn.

We need not multiply examples of hero-worship and relic-snatching, and
of such tricks of ghost-scaring as Cleisthenes played when, unable
to cast the hero Adrastus bodily out of Sicyon, he drove him away by
introducing the worship of the deadly foe of Adrastus, Melanippus.[35]
Colonists carried the worship of Achilles into the coasts and isles
of the Euxine, and even to Tarentum; while, according to Clemens
Alexandrinus, the Spartans worshipped Zeus Agamemnon.[36] All this
saint-worship and care for relics is, of course, absolutely un-Homeric.

The _Odyssey_[37] gives the perhaps Phoenician case of Ino, daughter
of Cadmus, once a mortal, now a sea-goddess. But to Homer a dead man,
be he Achilles or Aias, is merely a dead man. The cairn covers his
bones; he has no chapel, no sacrifice; no men covet the possession of
his relics; he can neither help nor harm; his spirit is in Hades, with
the powerless peoples of the Dead. Trojans would leap and boast on the
cairn of Menelaus if he fell at Troy _(Iliad_, iv. 174-182). Historic
Greeks would have made offerings at the tomb. No such rites were in the
belief of the society for which Homer sang. Had they been worshippers
of the dead, the epic poet could not play the heresiarch, and tell
them that their faith and hope were void and vain. No poet, no set of
poets, who lived by pleasing could afford to horrify their hearers by
such impiety. No poets could ignore the existence of normal rites that
were familiar in practice to all. The most advanced modern novelist
cannot ignore the Christian rites of marriage and burial, however much
he may despise and detest them. It is, then, an historical fact that
the society for which Homer sang did not adore and do sacrifice to dead
men, did not make gods of them and do them sacrifice, did not scramble
for their relics, as was the practice of proto-historic and historic
Greece down to the time of Pausanias at least.


[1] Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. iii. p. 105.

[2] Helbig in Roscher, _s.v_. Minos, ii. 2. 3000. On this matter there
is much controversy.

[3] See several examples in Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Worship."
_J. H. S_., vol. xxi.

[4] _Ibid._ p. 108.

[5] Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. iii. p. 121.

[6] Evans, _ut sup_. p. 108.

[7] _Pausanias_, iv. 33.

[8] Evans, p. 164, fig. 44.

[9] See "The Asiatic or Winged Artemis." by M. S. Thompson. _J. H. S._,
vol. xxix. pt. ii. pp. 286-308.

[10] Cults of the Greek States, vol. ii. p. 427.

[11] Iliad, xiv. p. 203.

[12] _Iliad_, ii. 550, 551.

[13] Leaf, _Iliad_, vi. 130.

[14] Frazer, Pausanias, vol. iii.

[15] _Ibid. ut supra_.

[16] Catalogue, Book ii. 844-850.

[17] _Iliad_, x. 434-441.

[18] Strabo, x. 3. 470; fragment 25. Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena_, p.
375.

[19] _Iliad_, xx. 21.

[20] The distinction here made between "religion" and "mythology" is
made merely for the sake of convenience. We may readily be told that
the belief in a good God is as mythical as the tales about bad gods.
But the belief in a just, wise, and loving heavenly Father, the source
and sanction of ethics, represents one mood, and leads to one set of
results in conduct; while the belief in wicked and buffooning gods
represents another aspect of human thought, and leads to very different
results, mainly to the bewilderment of late historic Greek thinkers.

[21] _Iliad_, iii. 279, 280.

[22] xix. 259, 260.

[23] _Iliad_, ix. 502-512.

[24] For a variety of theories, see Leaf, Notes to _Iliad_, iii. 278,
xix. 262. Quite possibly the formula of the oath is a survival from a
stage of belief more archaic than the ordinary Homeric conception of
Hades.

[25] _Odyssey_, i. 263.

[26] iii. 48.

[27] vi. 180-185.

[28] vii. 165.

[29] xiii. 202.

[30] _Odyssey_, xiv. 82-84.

[31] _Iliad_, xvi. 516. Prayer of Glaucus to Apollo.

[32] Cf. _Miracles de Madame de Sainte Catherine de Fierbois_, a chapel
register of miracles in the Hundred Years' War.

[33] Hdt. i. 66.

[34] i. 67.

[35] v. 67.

[36] See _R. G. E_. p. 128, note 3; and, for other instances, pp.
180-190.

[37] v. 333-335.




CHAPTER XIII

TEMPLES. ALTARS. RITUAL. PURIFICATION


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 belief (it would be absurd to look
in Homer for any trace of totemism or exogamy). Yet Homeric religion
is so far _naïf_ and fresh, in that it is not the work of a priestly
caste; its services have not been elaborated by the mummeries of
interested medicine-men. As for sacrifice itself, it were superfluous
to quote passages in which sacrifice pleases the gods, and is counted
to men for righteousness. But it appears that the Olympians valued
sacrifice rather as a proof that men were mindful of them, and wished
to stand well in their eyes, than for any good they got from the smoke
and savour. They had their own nectar and ambrosia.

There were priests and there were prophets, but the State was decidedly
"Erastian." The Commander-in-chief superintended sacrifices in the
general interest, where the welfare of the host was concerned, and
individuals sought the favour of the gods by sacrifices offered at
their own expense. These were most elaborate after a theophany, or
visit from a visible and friendly god, as when Athene sat at meat
with Nestor in his house at Pylos. The rite is minutely described:
the household of Nestor and the crew of Telemachus are summoned, the
cow is driven up from the meadow; the goldsmith brings his tools:
seats are set out, wood is collected, water for hand-washing is
brought; Nestor provides gold to gild the horns of the victim, and
make it seem splendid in the eyes of the goddess. The son of Nestor,
Thrasymedes, holds the axe; Perseus has the vessel into which its
blood fell,--whether to avoid making a mess, or because the ground
must not be ceremonially polluted by the gore. But of ceremonial
pollution of any kind, Homer is ignorant. He says nothing suggestive of
a sacramental theory of the blood as apt "to pollute the earth or even
cry for vengeance."[1]

Nestor, then, does the rite of hand-washing and scattering barley
grain: Thrasymedes hamstrings the cow, which falls; and the women raise
a cry, not a wail of sympathy as among the Todas in India. (It may be
a cry of joyful vengeance. Odysseus forbids Eurycleia to raise this
cry (_ὀλυλύξαι_) over the blood of the dead wooers.[2]) "The _ὀλυλυγή_
was a joyful cry, uttered by women, especially at the moment of the
consummation of a sacrifice."[3] Pisistratus then slaughters the
victim; "the black blood flowed from it, and the life left the bones."
The limbs are carved, fat is laid on them; the flesh is roasted, cut
up, and put on spits; then follows the feast.[4] The same rites are
practised on solemn occasions in time of war and in a hostile country,
when a whole hecatomb is sent with Chryseis to Chryses, priest of
Apollo.[5] We do not hear in this case of the gilding of the horns of
the victims,--there were too many of them,--but Diomede promises a
sacrifice of a heifer with gilded horns to Athene, before setting forth
to slay the sleeping Thracians in the Trojan camp.[6] Sacrifice may be
offered in a temple, or at an altar in the open air. Twelve kine are
sacrificed in the Trojan temple of Athene,[7] but a temple could not
accommodate a hecatomb.

An army in the field has no temples, and does sacrifice in the open
air; indeed, even where temples exist there are abundant altars in the
open air; for example, where Hector did sacrifice, "amid the crests of
many-folded Ida," and at other times on the city height.[8]

Temples are not often mentioned in the Epics, where the host usually
worships under the sky, and has no temples of its own; or Odysseus is
wandering "in fairy lands forlorn." An army on the march or in the
trenches would build no temples, nor would Odysseus find them among
cannibals. But that fairy isle, Phaeacia, had its temples of the gods
built by the first settler, Nausithous.[9] Altars at the siege of Troy
are set up in the field, as at Orleans during the two solemn masses
on the day of the raising of the siege (May 8, 1429). The Gods have
their groves, whether a temple was in each of them or not. Originally
it is probable that caves, as at Delos, or the Dictaean cave of Crete,
or gorges, as at Delphi, were the sacred places; but Homer knows the
stone threshold of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and the wealth of
offerings within,[10] where Agamemnon consulted the Oracle.[11] The
priest, Chryses, had "roofed a shrine" for Apollo.[12] Apollo, in Troy,
had a temple, with a great _adyton_; and Athene's temple had a sacred
seated image of the goddess.[13] Athene also in Athens[14] went to the
temple of Erechtheus. Given the circumstances of the heroes in both
Epics, an army in the field, a wanderer in unknown lands, the rare
mention of temples is no proof that, when they appear, they mark "late"
passages, while the altars in the open air mark "early" passages:
moreover, hecatombs could not be slain in temples, nor could a large
army be accommodated in the house of a god. When the Achaeans were
sacrificing several hecatombs at once to Zeus, in Aulis, they naturally
could not do so in a temple, but under a fair plane tree, by a clear
running stream.[15]

In the symbolical sacrifices that sanctioned the taking of oaths, the
rite was extremely simple. Agamemnon cuts the hair from the lambs'
heads, utters the appeal to Zeus and all powers to bear witness, then
cuts the throats of the victims, and libation of wine is made. Priam
carries the dead lambs away in his chariot; but when a boar is the
victim, in the oath of Agamemnon to Achilles, it is thrown into the
sea.[16] We see no sacrifice within the temple of a city except that in
association with which Theano, a married priestess of a maiden goddess,
lays a robe on the knees of Athene, while the attendant ladies raise
the _ὀλoλυγή_.[17]

In peace, as in war, Homer's people are free from the lower
superstitions, if we except the belief in augury and the omens from
the flight of birds. Hector's famous phrase, "one omen is best, to
fight for our own country," would have shocked most of the Generals of
Republican Rome. A phantasm of the dead, as we saw, may appear only in
a dream or a "border-land case," to a man in bed, if the dead man has
not been cremated. The boding visions of the second-sighted man in the
_Odyssey_, the shroud of mist about the bodies of the doomed Wooers,
may indicate a superstitious belief--to those who do not believe in
second sight! The fairies of Homer, nymphs of mountain and well, wood
and sea, are creatures of poetry, rather than of superstition; they are
fair and frail, but their kisses, unlike those of their kindred from
Argyll to the Pacific, are not fatal.

Homer knows nothing of taboos. That the Achaeans "let their hair grow
long" is true enough, but does not suggest that they were under a vow
not to cut it till they took Troy.[18] The representations of men
in many works of Aegean art, such as the gold cups of Vaphio, show
them wearing clustering love-locks that fall beneath the shoulder. We
might as well accuse the Spartans and the Cavaliers as the Achaeans of
wearing love-locks because of a vow. That the Achaeans were tabooed
from love during the siege is a fact entirely unknown to their poet.
"To every man a damsel or two" is his version, and the heroes couch
with their fair captives; while Agamemnon takes a solemn oath that he
has never done so with Briseis, and Thetis advises Achilles to rejoice
in love. A goddess would not advise the breach of a religious vow of
continence.[19]

To the folklorist it is almost annoying to find, in so ancient a poet,
so little of the seamy side of folklore. But the later poets of Greece
apply it very abundantly: it was rampant in their temple-rites and
temple-legends. Homer speaks of no witches, of no incantations save the
song for the staunching of the blood of Odysseus, when his thigh had
been gored by the boar. The belief in such staunching is still common
in Cumberland and in Ireland, as it was when Jeanne d'Arc refused to
let the charm be sung over her arrow wound at Orleans.

Magic done for the good of the crops, as in the Eleusinian and other
mysteries, does not appear in the Epics. A good king has good luck,
under him all things prosper; but the idea of sacrificing an unlucky
king, or any other human being, would have surprised the poet. In all
such matters he is on another plane than the authors of the Ionian
epics, whose tales of constant human sacrifices are perhaps adapted
from _Märchen_ (where cannibalism is the horror) rather than inspired
by veridical traditions. The great rite which Homer ignores, and which
the pre-Achaean population probably, and certainly all post-Homeric
Greece from the eighth century to the arrival of Christianity held in
most regard, was the purification of manslayers by the blood of beasts.
Achilles in the Cyclic poems is purified by Odysseus after the slaying
of Thersites; Apollo is purified after the slaying of the dragon of
Delphi.

But "the whole idea of pollution as a consequence of wrong-doing is
foreign to Homer," says Mr. Monro.[20] When the house of Odysseus is
cleansed of the blood of the slain Wooers, and when, on restoring
Chryseis, Agamemnon "bade the folk purify themselves, so they purified
themselves, and cast the defilements into the sea, and did sacrifice to
Apollo,"[21] the pollution is mere physical filth of house and camp.
There is no idea of magical riddance from either sin or danger at the
hands of a pursuing ghost. Eustathius, bishop of Thessalonica, remarks,
in his Homeric commentary, "on the cardinal difference between the
religion of Homer and that of later (and earlier) Greece...."[22] It
would have been safer to discriminate between Homeric religion on one
hand, and Ionian, Attic, and historic Greek religion on the other.

The idea at the root of the purification of a man-slayer by a bath
of blood is not, I think, that his sin is being removed by the
"sympathetic magic" of new blood, but that the swine's blood poured
over him throws the avenging ghost of his victim off his scent,
confusing the trail; or that the angry ghost accepts the pig's blood
washed from the slayer as atonement. Plato says that the myth held that
the ghost of the victim communicates its own uneasy emotions to the
slayer, telepathically.[23] Scores of savage and one or two Hellenic
practices aim at actually disarming or mutilating the avenging ghost,
by binding or dismembering the corpse which he tenanted. Homer believes
that, a man once burned and buried, his ghost is confined, powerless,
to Hades. Hence his Achaeans neither worship the dead nor practise
purification to avoid avenging ghosts. These rites are Ionic, Attic,
and, in historic Greece, are Hellenic, also Asiatic. They make an
insuperable barrier between Homeric and Ionian religion.

It is certain that among the Ionians of the seventh century B.C. a
mystic purification from blood-guilt was the usual practice. Herodotus
tells us that it was, in the sixth century, the practice of the
Phrygians, Lydians, and, in his own day, of the Hellenes. "The manner
of cleansing among the Lydians is the same, almost, as that which the
Hellenes use."[24] 3 Aeschylus informs us that the blood of swine was
employed in purification.[25] The purifier, in historic Greece, "washed
off the blood from the suppliant who is being purified, and, having
stirred up the washing, poured it into a trench to the west of the
tomb."[26]

Possibly the Ionians had adopted, in Asia, the Oriental idea of
pollution and the Oriental mode of cleansing. Homer not only ignores,
but knows not these things. Nor, I think, do we find purification in
early Celtic and Teutonic and Scandinavian "saga."

We have more light on the method of purification from works of art.
On an Apulian vase, Apollo holds a little pig above the head of the
polluted matricide, Orestes, with one hand, in the other he grasps
a long bough of laurel, which in Roman lustrations had a purifying
effect. Melampus, on a Greek cameo, purifies the daughter of Proetus in
the same fashion.[27]

NOTE

There is a singular case in which later tradition introduced
purification where Homer says nothing about it. In _Odyssey_, xxi.
1-41, the poet explains how Odysseus came to possess the Bow of
Eurytus. When he was but a lad he was sent to recover certain sheep
stolen by men of Messenia. He met Iphitus, son of Eurytus, of Oechalia,
looking for his lost mares and mules, and Iphitus presented him with
the Bow. Thence Iphitus went to the house of Heracles in Tiryns, and
there was murdered by his host.

Now we know at first hand, from Nestor himself _(Iliad_, xi. 685-692),
that Heracles, before Nestor's first feat of arms, had attacked his
family in Pylos, and that out of Nestor's twelve brothers he alone had
escaped. "For the mighty Heracles had come and oppressed us, in former
years, and all our best men were slain. For twelve sons were we of
noble Neleus, whereof I alone was left, and all the others perished,"
but Neleus survived.

This feud of Heracles was a famous theme; the legend included the fairy
story of Periclymenus, brother of Nestor. Poseidon had given him the
gift of taking all sorts of shapes, but when he settled on the chariot
of Heracles in the shape of a bee, Athene pointed out the bee to
Heracles, who shot it. In _Iliad_, v. 393, we learn that Heracles once
wounded Hades and Hera. The later Pylians conceived Nestor's wounding
of Hades to have occurred at their town, when the hero attacked the
household of Neleus. Nestor, in the passage quoted, says nothing about
the help of Hades on this occasion, but Dione (v. 397) says that
Heracles wounded Hades ἐν πύλῳ ἐν νεκύεσσι, "in Pylos among the dead."
Aristarchus took this to mean _in the gate, in the country of the
dead._ The incident would be part of the journey of Heracles to hell,
to bring back "the dog" Cerberus. On this showing Homer is not saying
that Hades fought vainly against Heracles in his raid on Nestor's town.
But Homer never elsewhere uses pylos for "a gate."

The affair is confusing, but later legend associated Heracles's feud
against Neleus with the rites of purification. Nestor does not tell us,
but the Venetian scholiast on his speech does tell us that Neleus had
refused to purify Heracles for the murder of Iphitus, his guest, under
trust.[28]

Was the Homeric poet of Nestor's speech (xi. 693) ignorant of this
"cause of wrath," and is it a later invention after the custom of
purification came in; or did Homer "expurgate" a rite which he found in
pre-Achaean tradition?

The certain fact is that the society for which the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ was composed did not practise the sanguinary rite, and
took no interest in it. In Mr. Ridgeway's theory, Heracles is not
Achaean, he is Pelasgic. If, then, the poet, whether Achaean or,
in Mr. Ridgeway's view, a Pelasgian minstrel of an Achaean lord,
adopted Heracles from Pelasgian legend, and if that legend spoke of
purification, the poet ignored it, as a thing not in the manners of his
Achaean audience.


[1] Mr. Murray takes this view, _R. G. E_. p. 64; but there is no trace
of such ideas in Homer.

[2] _Odyssey_, xxii. 407-416.

[3] Monro, Note to _Odyssey_, xxii. 408.

[4] _Odyssey_, iii. 420-472.

[5] _Iliad_, i. 447-468.

[6] _Iliad_, x. 291-294. Mr. Murray compares Nestor's "timid,
religious, almost tender sacrifice of the ox" with "the habitual
sacrifices of the Iliad," which "seem like the massacres of a
slaughter-house, followed by the gorging of pirates." In his opinion
Nestor's cow was a kind of member of the family, "the common blood
running in the veins of all," while the alien cattle at Troy are not
the most distant relations of the invaders (_R. G. E._ pp. 59-65).
Homer knows nothing of these ideas, as we see; all depends on the
degree of solemnity and on the occasion of the sacrifice. If it be
solemn, the same rites are used in Troyland during war as in Pylos
during peace.

[7] _Iliad_, vi. 308-310.

[8] xxii. 170-172.

[9] _Odyssey_, vi. 10.

[10] _Iliad_, ix. 404.

[11] _Odyssey_, viii. 79-81.

[12] _Iliad_, i. 39.

[13] _Iliad_, v. 445-448, vi. 297-310.

[14] Od. vii. 81.

[15] _Ibid_. ii. 305, 306. Mr. Murray supposes that the author of
Iliad, i. 39, is later than the author of Iliad, i. 446 ff. The
"earlier" poet of i. 446 makes Chryses sacrifice many oxen in the
open air. The "later" author of i. 39 makes Chryses talk of roofing a
temple. "The writer of that line did not observe that in his original
there had been no temple, only an altar. To him an altar implied a
temple, so he took the temple for granted" (_R. G. E._ p. 150). By such
devices is the Iliad torn into tatters, later and earlier. Surely a
god may have a temple, though the slaughter of hundreds of oxen is not
carried on within its walls!

[16] _Iliad_, iii. 292-310, xix. 250-268.

[17] _Ibid_. vi. 297-301. Mr. Leaf remarks that "it is needless to seek
for Athenian inspiration" in this passage.

[18] _R. G. E._ p. 123, for another view.

[19] See _R. G. E._ pp. 123, 124, for the religious vow of celibacy.

[20] _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 362.

[21] _Iliad_, i. 311-316.

[22] Miss Harrison, _Proleg. Greek Rel_. p. 29.

[23] _Laws_, ix. 865.

[24] Hdt. i. 35.

[25] _Eumenides_, 273.

[26] _Proleg. Greek Religion_, 59, 60, quoting Athenaeus, ix. 78, 409
E, who cites two writers on Athenian rites, Kleidemus and Doritheus.
Miss Harrison supposes that the ghost drinks the blood of the slain
animal, washed off the body of the slayer, in place of the slayer's
blood.

[27] Frazer, _Pausanius_, vol. iii pp. 278, 593.




CHAPTER XIV

HOMER AND IONIA


_Who were the Ionians_?

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 the earliest lays were made in Greece,
but that our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ contain a large percentage of much
later Ionian work. In these circumstances it is natural to ask, _Who
were the Ionians_? a point on which Homer throws no light. The Ionian
name is not mentioned in the Catalogue any more than the Aeolian and
Dorian names, and "the tunic-trailing Iaones" only appear in _Iliad_,
xiii. 685, where they are very hard pressed in defending the part of
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 of Elis, and "the picked men of
the Athenians," whose leaders are Menestheus, king of Athens, as in the
Catalogue, and three others. Thus the Ionians appear to be equivalent
to the Athenians. The epithet "chiton-trailers" occurs but this once
in Homer, and, of course, is inappropriate to the warlike occasion:
the Ionians of the seventh century certainly wore the short tight
_cypassis_, not the chiton, when actively engaged. In the Ionian hymn
to Apollo the Ionians are "chiton-trailers," but the occasion is a
public festival.

The whole passage, according to Mr. Leaf, is "very probably an Attic
interpolation, with the object of giving respectable antiquity to the
hegemony of Athens over the Ionian tribes"; but, as the Ionians of
Asia were proud of their connection with Athens, and far from proud,
says Herodotus, of the name Ionian, _they_ are as likely as the
Athenians to have added the lines. In short, the Ionian name, like the
Dorian and the Aeolian names, never occurs in the _Iliad_; while the
Athenian king, Menestheus, never draws sword or throws spear in the
poem. It will be observed that, when he does mention Athenian leaders,
Menestheus the king, Bias, Stichios, and Pheidas, Homer does not, as is
his custom, assign to any one of them a divine ancestor, nor even name
the father of any one of them, except Petoos, father of Menestheus. He
tells no anecdote about any of them. In the Catalogue (ii. 546-551) the
Athenians alone appear as worshippers of dead men, though in Mycenaean
pre-Homeric Greece this rite was certainly part of religion, as also
in historic Greece, and in Attica it has an uninterrupted record. It
is not inconceivable, though by no means certain, that the Athenians
interpolated their own mention in the Catalogue, with the very few
allusions to their king, Menestheus; but except for these, the epics
almost ignore Attica, ignore the Ionians, and, to learn anything of
their early history, we must turn to other sources.

By the time of Pausanias (post-Christian) and much earlier, for
Euripides wrote a play against the myth, and it was current in the time
of Herodotus, the Athenians and Ionians had arranged for themselves a
fabulous genealogy. Their purpose was to connect themselves with the
supposed most genuine prehistoric Hellenes, namely, those of Achilles's
realm in Hellas, part of the kingdom of Peleus, in south-west Thessaly.

In precisely the same way the Scottish makers of fabulous genealogy
connected the Stewart kings,--really Fitz Alans, with the Dalriadic
Royal House of the Scoti from Ireland (descendants of the Scythian
princess, Scota), who invaded Argyll about 500 A.D. The name of these
Scoti of Ireland had finally been given to the whole country north of
Tweed and Esk, and so its kings must be _Eteoscoti_, genuine Scots.

The Athenian and Ionian genealogists worked on the same principles.
Their heroes are as apocryphal as Princess Scota of Scythia, and their
genealogies vary with the motives of each genealogist. They believed
that they were "Pelasgians," that they did not originally bear the name
which was by their time prepotent, "Hellenes," and was applied to all
Greeks; but, in the fable given by Pausanias they hitched themselves
thus on to the Hellenes and Achaioi whom Achilles led from Thessaly.
To the seacoast on the south of the Corinthian gulf, the _Aigialos_ or
"sea-board" (held by Agamemnon in the Catalogue) came Xuthus, son of
Hellen, out of Thessaly; being expelled, after Hellen's death, by his
brothers. He had first fled to Athens, which in all these fabrications
represents herself as not originally Hellenic or Achaean, but as
the constant asylum of all distressed Achaean princes; Theban, like
Oedipous, or Eleian, like the descendants of Nestor, and Orestes,
having here Homeric warrant (_Odyssey,_ iii. 306). We have a parallel
in the continuous efforts of Highland genealogists, at one period, to
claim descent from Normans who came north out of England and married
the heiresses of the Celtic chiefs; as the Campbells (Crooked-Mouths)
claimed descent from a Norman "De Campo Bello," or Beauchamp.

On these lines, then, the Hellene from Thessaly, Xuthus, married at
Athens the heiress of the king, the daughter of Erechtheus; and had
two sons, Achaeus and Ion. Thus the Achaeans of south-west Thessaly
have a little of Athenian blood, for Achaeus went back to Thessaly and
reigned there; and the Ionians of Athens are mixed up with the sons of
Hellen in a more roundabout way. Ion, son of Xuthus, son of Hellen, was
domiciled in the _Aigialos_, the south coast of the Corinthian gulf,
because his father, Xuthus, had been driven thither from Athens, and
reigned there. Ion succeeded to the throne of the _Aigialos_, but was
buried in Attica, having died there while in command of an Athenian
army. His seacoast subjects on the southern seaboard of the Corinthian
gulf, originally "Pelasgians," but now called after him "Ionians,"
were thus in relations with Attica, and they migrated thither in a
body, when they were driven from home by the Achaeans whom the Dorian
invaders had expelled from their seats in the southern and western
Peloponnese. The Ionians, so far, appear as a pre-Achaean people of
the northern coast of Peloponnesus, Hellenic only through their Royal
House, that of Ion; and later settled in Attica, among a people also
pre-Hellenic in origin.

Attica later offered an asylum to the Neleidae, descendants of Nestor,
who, like the Fitz Alan Stewarts in Scotland, obtained the throne of
the country in which they settled. When a son of Codrus, the last of
these Neleid kings of Athens, led a colony from Attica to the Asian
coast, the most part of the Attic emigrants were Ionians settled in
Attica, not Athenians, though some Athenians accompanied them; and the
Royal contingent, starting from Athens, settled at Miletus.[1]

Thus, in this legend, the people of Attica, in the main, are not
Hellenic, not Achaean in origin, but are connected with the Thessalian
Hellenes and Achaioi by Royal marriages; while, though not in origin
Ionians, they are intermingled, both in Attica and in the Asian
settlements, with that seacoast people, themselves only Achaean through
the grandson of Hellen, Ion, their king.

Historic Greek inquirers understood the matter in that way, and we must
first examine their "Pelasgian" theories.

With theories ancient or modern, fantastic or scientific, or both
scientific and fantastic, about "Pelasgians" and other "races" in
the prehistoric south of Europe; with deductions from place-names
in Greece, the isles, and the Asian coasts; with speculations about
"Aryans" and "non-Aryans," long-headed and short-headed, dark-haired
and light-haired peoples, I have nothing to do. We have not statistics
of pigmentation in prehistoric or in historic Greece, or craniological
statistics. We cannot translate certain fourth century inscriptions
from Crete, written in Greek characters, bat in a language which,
though not improbably "Indo-European," must have been to Greeks as
unintelligible as to ourselves. We cannot even read the characters of
Minoan writing. The much manipulated legends of movements of peoples
which reach us in Greek books vary enormously, as Pausanias says, from
each other, and are no more historical than the Irish legends of the
migrations of the Scots from Scythia to Scotland by way of Athens,
Egypt, and Spain. My sole object is to make intelligible the version
of their own origin which the Athenians and Ionians offered, and to
show that they did, in some moods, draw a distinction between their own
ancestors and Homer's Hellenes and Achaeans. There _was_ a distinction,
in tradition, religion, rites, and customs, but there may have been no
great difference in blood and language.

One thing, then, is certain, the Athenians and Ionians admitted that
they were Hellenic in race and speech merely through slight contact
with Achaeans. Attica was never "Achaeanised" in religion, burial
rites, and other ritual. Attica was never conquered by Achaeans, she
stood apart. Now this claim to be a region apart, conquered neither
by Achaeans nor Dorians, is certainly supported by the fact that the
traditions and legends of Attica stand widely remote in all respects
from the ancient Achaean legends in Homer, and in Theban and Minyan and
Aetolian "saga," or bardic traditions.[2] The traditions of the Ionians
in Asia, again, are connected with those of Attica rather than with the
Achaean saga, although the Ionians of Asia were not, and were known not
to be, by any means of solely Attic descent. This is confessed.

Returning to the Ionians of Asia, and their account of themselves given
in the time of Herodotus, we find that it agrees with the fabulous
genealogies already studied. The Ionians claimed to have in-habited
twelve cities of what, in the time of Herodotus, was called "Achaia,"
the _Aigialos_ in the northern Peloponnese;--that they were driven
thence to Attica by Achaeans, fugitives from the Dorians in other parts
of Peloponnese, is asserted by Herodotus. Ionians were also, of old,
_in Boeotia_, neighbours of the "Cadmeians," and some of the Cadmeians
were admitted, on conditions, to Athenian citizenship.[3]

It thus appears that the people later called, in Asia, "Ionians," had
been dwellers on the coasts of Boeotia and Attica, as well as on the
northern Peloponnese. That they were then and there known as "Ionians"
it would be difficult to prove. Homer has nothing to say of the Ionians
as a peculiar people in the Peloponnesus or Boeotia. Of their twelve
Peloponnesian cities, the Catalogue gives Orneai, Pellênê, Aigeira, and
Helikê to Agamemnon.[4]

If Homer really knew any people called Ionians at all, they were
Athenian. Meanwhile the people of the Ionian name in Asia were,
according to Herodotus, "a mixed multitude," including members of the
communities known to Homer as Abantes of Euboea, with forty ships,
Phocians, even Arcadians, Cretans, and many others. All these could
only be lumped together as "Ionians" after their settlement in Asia,
and their alliance with the Ionian colonists from Attica.

If the so-called Ionian emigrants were thus mixed, and if some of
them possessed Achaean lays or legends, and at first practised only
the rites mentioned by Homer, such as cremation and cairn-burial, it
would appear that the pre-Hellenic element among these settlers in
Asia overpowered the other elements, or that the Cyclic poets of Ionia
were mainly of pre-Hellenic origin. Their poems, at all events, are
in harmony with Attic ideas and usages, not with Homer's statements:
and, as we shall show, the Ionian poets cannot have tampered much with
our Homer, for the two Epics never admit the Ionian manners which
are copiously illustrated by the Ionian poets of the Trojan war, the
Cyclics.

According to Thucydides as well as Herodotus, the so-called Ionian
migration was a movement of mixed peoples. The leading men of various
Achaean regions had found an asylum in Attica during the troubles
caused by the Dorian incursions, and "so greatly increased the number
of inhabitants that Attica became incapable of containing them, and was
at last obliged to send colonies to Ionia."[5]

We are thus on almost historic ground when we believe that the settlers
in Ionia, though their tendency was to claim Athenian connections, were
"a mixed multitude" from many States, mainly of the seacoasts; and it
is natural to suppose that they intermarried with Carians at Miletus,
as Herodotus says that they also did with Lycians, and other Asiatic
civilised peoples. Though alien religions might be accepted by the
settlers, these beliefs would be Hellenised, as usual; and the Olympian
Poseidon, the Homeric sea-god, patronised the Ionian league of cities.

We really have no historical evidence for the earliest conditions of
Ionian life in Asia. Mr. Murray supposes the early settlers to have
lost all "tribal obligations," all "old laws," and even "household
and family life." "It looks as if the ancestors of the Ionians had in
the extreme stress of their migrations lost hold upon their Achaean
traditions." But the Ionians had no _Achaean_ traditions to lose! They
built walls to their new cities, and inside the wall a man "could take
breath. He could become for a time a man again, instead of a frightened
beast." A terrible picture is drawn of the sufferings and ferocious
cruelties of the invaders, who, however, remain orthodox in religion
after all, and confident in "the manifest help of Zeus and Apollo."[6]
This is not the condition of frightened beasts. In fact, they were not
in that terror-stricken condition when they were able to build walls.

No doubt there was a great deal of rough work; though, as shall be
shown, judging from the art of the Dipylon, the Attic colonists were
highly civilised men, with large ships, and everything handsome about
them, who could make well-organised short voyages, with abundance of
stores. Nor, when they landed, were they, like the early Puritans of
New England, in a country of naked savages. Lycians and Carians, in
Homer, are as much civilised as the Achaeans: a Carian woman was not a
bloodthirsty squaw.

It is not to late legends, but to archaeology, that we must look for
information: "on archaeology fell, and falls, the burden of proof in
this inquiry."[7]

First, as to the culture of the mainland which the colonists left;
we do know through excavations at Sparta something about _Dorian_
civilisation there as early as the ninth century B.C., and it is
probable that the Ionians in Europe were rather in advance of than
behind the contemporary Dorians in the arts of life. The precinct of
Artemis Orthia at Sparta has been excavated, and yields "remains of a
temple in crude brick with wooden frame-work ... this structure the
discoverers" (members of the British School of Athens) "refer to the
ninth century B.C." A similar temple "has appeared also in Hellenic
Asia, at Neandria in the Aeolic Troad."

Near the Orthian temple was "a great Altar of Sacrifice, whose
orientation was the same."[8]

Homer's men, we saw, usually sacrifice hecatombs outside of the temple,
though twelve kine are sacrificed _in_ the temple of the Trojan Athena.

The votive objects found in this Spartan precinct of the ninth century
were pottery in the Geometric, post-Aegean style, with ivory plaques,
at least as large as an ordinary playing card, covering the safety pin
of the _fibula_. The earliest designs incised on these plaques of ivory
"repeat in more than one case Aegean motives" (such as the goddess
holding a bird in each hand); the style is touched with Mesopotamian
influences, but more deeply by the art of the Bronze Age in the area
of the Danube. The "double coil" or "pair of spectacles" shape of
fibula-cover, familiar in the Danubian region, also occurs.[9]

Such being the art in the new home of the Dorian invaders, we expect
to find art rather better than worse among the Ionians at Attica at
the same period--the ninth century B.C., which is doubtless much later
than the central period of the Ionian migration to Asia. The tombs of
Spata in Attica, and the treasure from Aegina in the British Museum,
are taken as relics of the late "Sub-Aegean" art of, say, the tenth
to ninth centuries. The ivories of Sparta "suggest some art of West
Asia": the Aegina objects in gold are partly "Aegean" survivals, partly
show unmistakable Egyptian influence passed through an Oriental medium.
The well-known gold cup of Aegina, with its rosette and four spirals,
has a parallel from one of the rich royal tombs of the Mycenaean
acropolis: there are also, as at Mycenae, many thin round plaques of
gold, probably sewn originally on robes. The rings bear no signets: one
is in the form of a buckler, like a reduced Mycenaean figure-of-eight
shield, inlaid with blue glass paste. The figure of a man or god
holding a water-fowl in each hand, and wearing a loin-cloth, is of a
modified Egyptian character. The date of the objects is placed between
the tenth and ninth centuries.[10]

Probably the Ionian emigrants from the mainland near Aegina left behind
them some, and probably they took with them other craftsmen capable of
executing such work in gold as we have described. But they also left
in Attica the potters who, about the ninth to eighth centuries, B.C.,
covered the great vases, which did duty for headstones in the cemetery
of the Dipylon, with geometric ornament and barbaric representations of
life. It was no barbarian life that they knew, crudely as they designed
it. The people of Athens, as the vases prove, had four-horse chariots;
had large ships manned by many oarsmen, and furnished with a submerged
sharp ram. The warriors in the chariots wore shields slung by baldrics:
in form they were circular, in other cases they exaggerated, in much
smaller dimensions, the features of the Aegean figure-of-eight shield,
or were smaller forms of the Aegean oblong shield. Here and there a
spearman holds in front of him an oval shield _by the handle_. The
swords are straight short swords, worn at right angles to the waist,
not heavy Homeric swords, slung by a baldric from the shoulder. In
some cases, however, heavy leaf-shaped blades are used, both for cut
and thrust.

The people had great spectacular funerals. The body of the dead lay
on a bier in the house, while men, women, and children, mere skeleton
figures, plucked out their hair with both hands. Then the body was
borne in a chariot to the grave (it was seldom cremated), and a
procession of charioteers followed.

The swords and spears were of iron, none had richly adorned hilts of
ivory and gold.

The gold work of the period, chiefly stamped on thin bands, was not
quite so crude as that of the potter with his triangle reversed for a
body, the monstrous thighs and calves of his men, their bird-shaped
inhuman faces,--all of them remote from the Aegean art, and apparently
of northern origin. The artists in gold work were in advance of the
vase-painters, whose horses usually have a thing like a fish for head,
set on a neck like a serpent.

The Attic region, towards the end of the Ionian migration, thus
presents the decay of Aegean and the bloom of geometric decoration, and
of barbaric, probably northern design. None the less the life depicted
so barbarously was no barbaric life. Bad as is the art, you see that
the life is Hellenic.

At the same time the Dipylon life is wholly un-Homeric. The manner of
burial, the huge vases in place of the cairn and pillar, the metal of
the weapons, iron, their want of adornment, the size, shape, and mode
of carrying the sword, the tearing out of their own hair by mourners,
the size of the shields, and even the dress of the women who, in my
opinion, wear skirts, not chitons, are all of a nature unknown to the
Epics. Poets of the Dipylon age could never have preserved the uniform
Homeric descriptions of details totally unlike what they saw in actual
existence.

About the relics of the earliest Ionian settlements in Asia,
archaeology now knows something. The excavations of Mr. Hogarth on the
earliest site of the Ionian temple of Artemis at Ephesus (700 B.C.?),
revealed thousands of votive offerings in gold, ivory, bone, paste,
crystal, and other materials. These had been "carefully laid between
the slabs for some hieratic purpose," probably under the central statue
of the goddess. Mr. Hogarth dates the deposit at about 700 B.C., "some
two centuries after the traditional landing of the colonists."

That date tells us little about the condition of the settlers at the
time of landing (we can only guess as to whether they had almost ceased
to be human at that moment), but many objects may be heirlooms of
earlier date; "in any case the elaborate execution and design of the
Ionian documents, notably the trinkets and jewels in electrum, imply a
long previous evolution of skilled craft"; and there are indications
"that this Primitive treasure was, in the main, made at Ephesus
itself." This is proved by the presence of goldsmiths' refuse in the
temple. The treasure has many analogies with that of Enkomi (Cyprus)
in the British Museum, which is of the period of the re-occupation of
the palace of Cnossos in Crete (dated about 1400), and is therefore of
the close of the age of bronze. The Ephesian treasure has also many
points of close analogy with the later Aegean remains at Mycenae and
Sparta in Attica. There are the gold jewels meant to be sewn on to the
robes; there are the clear crystals so common in the ancient graves of
the Mycenaean acropolis; the familiar double axe of Crete is still a
decorative motive; we find, as on the Lion Gate of Mycenae, two animals
opposed in heraldic fashion, and fibulae decorated with Baltic amber,
also the "spectacles" fibula-cover in ivory, common as far north as
Bosnia.

The general result of the archaeological evidence for early Ionia is
to show, in early Ionian work, the Aegean element stronger, and the
Danubian or central European element less strong, than in contemporary
Attica of the Dipylon period. In Attica of 1000-800 B.C. there was
the mixture of new northern and of old Aegean blood and civilisation;
but, says Mr. Hogarth, "the Aegean element was, I conceive, relatively
very much more numerous and potent in the Ionian land,"--in
Asia,--"although, to a very large extent, not indigenous there." The
Ionians, as far as archaeology shows, were more Aegean than the people
whom they left behind in Attica.

Thus the evidence, so far, is in favour of the mass of Ionian emigrants
having been of the older people,--whether we call it "Pelasgian of the
coast lands," or by any other name,--and of the older prae-Dipylon
school of art. "The first departure," says Mr. Hogarth, "may have been
due to the Achaean influx into Greece," though the later Dorian influx
may have presented a more powerful motive; for, by the Greek story, the
Achaeans driven from Argos and Laconia thrust the Ionians out of the
Peloponnesus. The archaeological evidence does not go back far enough
to enable us to estimate exactly the state of the Ionians when they
first landed in Asia. We only know that, some two centuries later,
their art was much more in the Aegean than in the Dipylon manner, and
had been so for long. They must have rapidly recovered from their
perfect oblivion of their ancient laws, rites, beliefs, and traditions.

Mr. Hogarth concludes: "Note that the date thus assigned" (for the
Greek migration, a prolonged movement) "fits with the indications
in Homer. The Epics, it has often been remarked, show not only no
knowledge of a Hellenic Asia, but also none of a Dorian conquest of
Peloponnesus. They were probably anterior in original composition to
the establishment of both these states of things," of Greeks in Asia,
Dorians in Peloponnesus.[11]

Now archaeology dates the Ephesian finds, which, in the main, are
still "Aegean" in character, during the very age when, according to
general opinion, the Ionian Cyclic Epics were composed. The early
Cyclic poems are usually dated about 770-730 B.C., when the Ephesian
treasure was being made.[12] Ionian art at Ephesus, and at that date,
was much more Aegean than the contemporary art in Attica. There is thus
a fair presumption that the Aegean element, Hellenised, was a strong
element in the Ionian population; and we are to demonstrate that the
Ionian Epics, though dealing with Achaean themes, abound in non-Achaean
traits of life and religion; in the traits which Mr. Murray assigns to
"the conquered races,"[13] apparently meaning the pre-Achaean Aegean
inhabitants of Greece. These traits are undeniably non-Homeric, and the
question must be faced, if the Ionian poets of the eighth and seventh
centuries are profuse in such matter, in the Cyclics; and if they
also added a great mass to the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ at the same
period, why did they keep their favourite themes out of the _Iliad_
and _Odyssey_? This question we study in "The Ionian Cyclic Poems";
but first we must prove that, whether the people of Attica and the
Ionians were apart in "race" from the Hellenes and Achaioi or not,
they certainly stood originally apart from and out of the cycle of
Achaean traditions. The Ionians and Attic tragedians were reduced to
inventing new legends and new points of contact between themselves and
the Achaeans.

NOTE

_Language or Languages of Prehistoric Greece_.--I have abjured all
attempts to discern the truth about races and languages in prehistoric
Greece. The two main theories appear to be that of the Greek
speculators from the seventh century onwards, and that of Mr. Ridgeway.

According to the Greeks, who varied among themselves, the original
population of prehistoric Greece was, at least mainly, "Pelasgian."
Among the Pelasgians came a more cultivated people, the "Hellenes,"
in contact with whom the "Pelasgians" developed into "Hellenes" in
language and culture. Granting an influx of Achaeans or Hellenes among
the pre-existing population which enjoyed the Aegean civilisation,
there is no doubt that this population, if spoken of by Greeks as
"Pelasgian," was much more advanced in material culture than the
Achaeans. This is proved absolutely by excavations in Crete, Greece,
and the isles.

On this point, then, that the Achaeans and Hellenes were more civilised
than the pre-existing "Pelasgians," the Greek thinkers were certainly
in the wrong. But what about language? Was Herodotus right in holding
that the "Pelasgians" spoke a "barbarous" language, and learned
Greek from the Hellenes? He admits that he could not speak with any
certainty about the language of the Pelasgians. But he infers from the
speech of actually contemporary Pelasgians, for example, at Creston in
Thrace, and at Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, "and, in short,
of any other of the cities which have dropped the name, but are in
fact Pelasgian," that "the Pelasgians spoke a barbarous language"
(Herodotus, i. 56-58).

If so, unconquered Attica and unconquered mountainous Arcadia must
have spoken, in early times, "a barbarous language," and exchanged it
for the Hellenic, though with the Hellenes they were, according to
themselves, but slightly in contact. When we consider the pertinacity
of parts of Wales, Ireland, and the western Highlands in clinging to
Cymric and Gaelic, this theory of Herodotus seems highly improbable.

Mr. Ridgeway, on the other hand, holding that the Achaeans were "a
Celtic tribe" who passed from Epirus into Thessaly, concludes that
_their_ language was what the Hellenes of history would have called
"barbarous"; that they adopted the speech, Greek, of the Pelasgians
among whom they settled, and that the Homeric poems descend from
the lays of Pelasgian minstrels, who sang in Greek of the exploits
of Achaeans who were Celtic, but became merged in a Greek-speaking
Pelasgic population (_Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. p. 648). If so,
the minstrels had entirely absorbed the non-Pelasgian customs and
ideas, absence of ghosts, and hero-worship, of pollution, and ritual
purification, and human sacrifice, and the professed Olympian religion
of their Achaean lords.

To the objection that, if Homer's poetic Pelasgian predecessors had the
good Greek, no Pelasgians known to Herodotus spoke it, Mr. Ridgeway
can reply that "the Greeks considered Phrygians and Thracians to be
barbarous, though both spoke languages akin to Greek; so that, although
Herodotus thought the languages of Scylace and Placia" (and of _all_
cities which were, in fact, Pelasgian) "barbarous, this does not prove
that it was not closely cognate to Greek" (_Early Age of Greece_, vol.
i. p. 146).

Yes, but why had the language of the Pelasgian minstrels of the Achaean
lords, which was excellent Greek, become in the time of Herodotus
the language which, to him, was barbarous? I understand Mr. Ridgeway
to answer this question by saying that "there is no difficulty in
supposing that certain Pelasgians long settled in Etruria, whither they
had come from Thessaly, may have again emigrated" (out of Etruria)
"from some external or internal cause, and settled in various spots
around the Aegean, some of them going to Athens, and later to Lemnos."
See Herodotus, ii. 50, 51, for Pelasgians who, when the Athenians "were
just beginning to count as Hellenes," settled for a while in Attica.
For this fact Herodotus cites Hecataeus. These new-come Pelasgians were
unruly, and were banished to Lemnos (Hdt. vi. 137). They later came
back to raid Brauron in Attica (Hdt. vi. 138). Let these much-wandering
Pelasgians return to Thrace, or, at least, let the Pelasgians whom
Herodotus knew in Thrace (and all Pelasgians wherever he knew them)
have strolled from Thessaly to Etruria in Italy, and back again to the
Aegean, and north to Thrace, and it is certain that their original
language, Greek (like _jour_ as derived from _dies_), must have been
_diablement changé en route_, and quite unrecognisable as Greek by
Herodotus (see Ridgeway, vol. i. pp. 144-146, and p. 244; also "Who
were the Romans?" _Proceedings of the British Academy_, vol. iii.).

On the whole Pelasgian question, the most valuable analysis of the
evidence, such as it is, appears to me to be that of Mr. Myres in the
_Journal of the Hellenic Society_, vol. xxvii.

My only conclusion is that, whoever the Achaeans may have been, and
whatever their language, and whoever the pre-existing population may
have been, and whatever their language, the Achaeans imported a new,
lofty, and _brief-lived_ set of ideas, customs, a new tone and taste.
At the same time, Mr. Ridgeway's arguments in favour of his theory
that the pre-Achaean population of Greece spoke Greek, have my assent
for what it is worth, though I do not think that the evidence for the
hypothesis of Dionysius of Halicarnassus that Thessalian Pelasgians
went to Etruria, and that their descendants came back to the Aegean,
has valid historical evidence.


[1] _Pausanias_, vii. i. 11.

[2] "Athenians and Achaean traditions."

[3] Hdt. v. 57, 58, 61. The Cadmeians, till very recently, were
regarded as Phoenicians, Semites. Now the name "Phoenicians" ("red
men") is understood to mean men of the old Aegean race, and no traces
of Semitic import have been discovered in the soil of Boeotia. Thebes
itself was "Minoan," not Semitic. Evans, _Scripta Minoa,_ vol. i.

[4] Iliad, ii. 571, and Leaf's note, ii. 560. Hdt. i. 145.

[5] Thucydides, i. 2.

[6] _R, G. E_. 50-57.

[7] Hogarth. _Ionia and the East_, p. 12.

[8] Hogarth, p. 34.

[9] _Ibid._ pp. 34-36.

[10] Chipiez et Perrot, _La Grèce de l'Epopée_, pp. 235-246.

[11] Hogarth, p. 104.

[12] Mr. Murray, however, writes: "We know that the great mass of the
saga-poetry began to be left on one side and neglected from the eighth
century on; and we find, to judge from our fragments" (of the Cyclic
poems), "that it remained in its semi-savage state" (_Anthropology
in Greek Epic_, 1908, p. 68). This knowledge is far from common. The
Cyclic poems are in the highly developed Homeric hexameter; they
are not, I venture to say, "semi-savage"; and, where they differ in
beliefs, rites, and customs from Homer, they represent the usages of
historic Hellas. They are generally believed to have been composed at
the date when Mr. Murray says that they "began to be neglected." Far
from being neglected, they certainly afforded much of the materials of
the Athenian tragedians, and of the vase painters who choose many more
subjects from the Cyclics than from our Homer.

[13] _R. G. E._ p. 134.




CHAPTER XV

ATTIC _versus_ ACHAEAN TRADITIONS


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 other regions, Cretan,
Boeotian, Euboean, and so on. The dominant legends, however, in poetry,
as known to us, were those of Athens, which are comparatively jejune,
being often constructed, perhaps out of the competing variants of the
Attic demes, to prove the legitimacy of one or another dynastic claim
to the kingship of Athens. We are so familiar with the traditions
as manipulated by the great tragedians, that we scarcely notice how
absolutely Athens lies outside of the heroic myths of the rest of
Greece.

Grote has justly observed that "neither the archaeology" (ancient
traditions) "of Attica, nor that of its component fractions, was much
dwelt upon by the ancient epic poets of Greece." He might have stated
the case much more strongly, for he says, "Theseus is noticed both in
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ as having carried off from Crete, Ariadne,
the daughter of Minos ... and the sons of Theseus take part in the
Trojan war." But Demophon and Acamas, as sons of Theseus, appear, _not
in the Iliad_, but only _in the Ionian Cyclic poems_; and if Theseus
carries off Ariadne in the _Odyssey_,[1] not in the _Iliad_, the
passage is of the most dubious, and the myth is obscure.

"Homer is," says Mr. Leaf, "of course, ignorant of the Theseus myth
in all its branches."[2] "There is no trace," says Mr. Monro, "in
Homer of acquaintance with the group of legends to which the story of
Aethra" (mother of Theseus) "belongs."[3] No acknowledged fact can
more perfectly demonstrate the difference between Attic and Homeric or
Achaean tradition than the circumstance that Homer, while he ignores
Theseus, takes a view of Minos and of the Cretan empire directly
opposed to Attic legend. This was perfectly plain to educated Athenians
of Plato's age.

Thus in the Platonic or pseudo-Platonic dialogue, _Minos_, Socrates
points out that to no other hero does Homer give the same praise as to
Minos, as not only a _son_, but a pupil of _Zeus_ (_Od_. xix. 178-180).
Says Socrates, "Minos every ninth year conversed with Zeus, and went to
be instructed by his wisdom,"--"this is marvellous praise." It is thus
that Socrates understands the Homeric world. Μίνως ἐννέωρος βασίλευε
Διὸς μεγάλου ὀαριστής: "Minos was king, who every nine years conversed
with Zeus." "Every nine years Minos went to the cave of Zeus to be
instructed," adds Socrates; but of the cave of Zeus, Homer says nothing.

The companion of Socrates then asks how Minos got such a bad name
as "an uneducated ruffian"? "Because he made war on us of Athens,"
answered Socrates; "and we are strong in poets, especially in that
delight of the populace, tragic poetry, which is very ancient with us;
and on the stage we avenged ourselves on Minos."

In truth, while Homer presented Minos as a son and pupil of Zeus, as
no god himself, but a mortal man, whose sceptred spirit administered
justice to the souls in Hades, it was impossible for educated Athenians
not to recognise that their own wild tales (how wild few knew), were
partisan fabrications.

Not only Homer, but Hesiod took the favourable view of Minos, as
against the hostile Attic legends; "and these two are more worthy of
belief than all the tragic poets together," says Socrates (_Minos_, 318
d).

The Athenians heaped not only Minos, but his wife and his brother
Rhadamanthus, under a pile of ordure. Helbig, who emphatically insists
on the gulf between Attic and Homeric accounts of Minos, may be
consulted for the abominable anti-Minoan stories.[4]

In Homer, Cretan Idomeneus (_Iliad_, xiii. 450) gives his genealogy as--

                             Zeus
                               |
                             Minos
                               |
                           Deucalion (Not he of the Deluge)
                               |
                           Idomeneus.

In the _Odyssey_, xi. 321-325, Minos is named as father of Ariadne,
whose tale is alluded to in a puzzling way: the other heroines of
the passage are Attic, Phaedra (wife of Theseus) and Procris. In xi.
568571, Minos, "splendid son of Zeus," is seen administering justice
to the dead. In a false tale of Odysseus he calls himself a Cretan
of the stock of Minos. In xix. 178, Minos is father of Deucalion,
and in some way is "the nine years old," or is "at periods of nine
years," the companion (_ὀαριστής_) of Zeus. There is in Homer nothing
about the Attic fables of bulls, the Minotaur, or Minoan cruelty.
Homeric tradition accepts and glories in the just king Minos: Athenian
tradition, in which Attica suffers grievous things at the hands of
Crete, heaps hatred and contumely on him, fixing on him the world-wide
_Märchen_ of the evil being whose fair daughter befriends the
adventurous hero; and adding the _Märchen_ of the black-sailed ship
which should have borne white sails of good tidings to Aegeus.

It is not merely the Attic myths of Theseus of Crete, and of the
character of Minos, that differ from the Homeric. Attic legends are
quite un-Homeric in character.[5] Two Attic characteristics may be
noted. "The story of the sacrifice of a maiden" (or of several maidens
at once) "appears and reappears in Attic tradition.... We have it
in Iphigeneia...."[6] But we have it not in Homer. Again, among the
royal family of Athens, in Attic tradition, it was chronic to be
metamorphosed into birds. The stories were meant, originally, to
account for the colours and habits of birds; such tales are numberless
in the legends of Australian and other savages, who have a whole
mythology of primal fowls, which is restated in the _parabasis_ of
_The Birds_ of Aristophanes. Homer tells but one such bird myth. In
_Odyssey_, xix. 518, Penelope speaks of the daughter of Pandareus,
the brown bright nightingale, lamenting "Itylus, whom she slew with
the sword unwittingly; Itylus, son of Zethus the prince." "The story
has, _as would be expected in a Homeric myth, nothing whatever to do
with Athens_."[7] The Attic story, much more horrible, is that of
Philomela, Procne, and Tereus: it is as bad as _Titus Andronicus_. The
Ionians transferred the scene to Miletus, Colophon, and Ephesus.[8]
Homer wholly abstains from Attic myths, except for the mention of their
heroines in a dubious passage of the eleventh book of the _Odyssey_.

Thus the Ionians, though they have adopted Homeric traditions, have
counter-Homeric traditions, just as they have and retain the customs
and rites of "the conquered race." These are demonstrable facts. On
the other side, the Homeric poet ignores Ionian legends, and Ionians
and Athenians have been unable to interweave Ionian tradition into the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. There is no doubt about this matter; Homer has
no Ionian, the Ionians had no Homeric traditions. This abstinence from
Attic legends is not peculiar to Homer. The greatest Achaean tradition,
after the Tale of Troy, was the Tale of Thebes. The Attic tragedians
have so Atticised it, especially in the _Oedipous Coloncus_ and the
_Suppliants_ of Euripides, that we think of the hapless Theban king as
a patron saint of Athens; and of Theseus as his host and as the heroic
friend of Thebes.

But the ancient epos of Thebes knew no more of Athens than did the
ancient epos of Troy. The Athenians could not and did not pretend,
like the Argives, Arcadians, and other Peloponnesians, to have taken
part in the first great collective Achaean attack on Thebes, an
attack led by Adrastus, Tydeus, father of Diomede, Polynices, and the
rest.[9] Neither did they pretend, though Ionians dwelt near the Theban
Cadmeians in Boeotia, to have aided Thebes in her peril. Athens did
allege that the useful Theseus led her army to rescue the unburied body
of Polynices, or the bodies of him and Eteocles; it was her favourite
boast.[10]

But this tale, as Grote says, "seems to have had its origin in the
patriotic pride of the Athenians," in their ceaseless efforts to attach
themselves to the great traditions that steadily ignore them. Adrastus,
chief of the army which failed at Thebes, came, said the Athenians,
as a suppliant to the useful Theseus at Eleusis. Then Theseus, with
an Athenian force, vanquished the Thebans, and gave due burial to
the dead. Euripides and Isocrates boast of this Flower of Chivalry,
Theseus;[11] and Pausanias saw the tombs of Eteocles and Polynices--at
Eleusis in Attica.[12] The Thebans denied the fable.

In the return match of the Epigonoi against Thebes, the Athenians did
not pretend to have played a part. In the lists of heroes who take a
share in the Argonautic expedition, and in the hunt of the Calydonian
boar, the name of Theseus appears; but he did no more than Menestheus
achieved at Troy. The Ionians in Asia made a desperate effort to
connect themselves with the Trojan war by borrowing the descendants of
Nestor, the Nelidae, who fled from the Dorians to Athens, obtained the
throne, and led the Ionian migration into Asia.[13] The very fact that
they had to borrow these refugees, in order to connect themselves with
Achaean "saga," proves the Athenian lack of genuine mythical connection
with the united efforts of the rest of Greece against Troy.

The burial of Oedipous at Colonus, the topic of the noble tragedy of
Sophocles, is, poetry apart, mere body-snatching. The _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_,[14] and even Hesiod,[15] know nothing of a sepulchral
connection of Oedipous with Athens. Oedipous's funeral feast was held
at Thebes. These sepulchral connections of Athens with the tale of
Thebes are necessarily un-Homeric, for they are based on the very
fanaticism of hero-worship, and fall into line with the craze of
historic Greece for securing the relics of heroes, who will defend a
city if duly propitiated.

Remote Aetolia is far more closely connected with the Tales of Thebes
and of Troy than is Athens. For some reason, then, Athens, and with her
the Ionians, is "not of the centre," is out of the central legends,
and her efforts to attach herself to them are late, and are wholly
un-Homeric. Naturally the really old Epic poets knew nothing of these
Ionian pretensions, which are the work of Ionian Burkes tampering with
the Homeric "Peerage." Athens wished to "have it both ways," to appear
as a city that had always been held by the same race,[16] that stood
apart, and had been the asylum of exiles from the rest of Greece; and
also as a city that took a great part in the legendary history of the
rest of Greece, whose traditions did not recognise her share.

Thus it seems probable that Attica was the seat of a people standing
somewhat apart, and possessing an older stratum of inhabitants than the
makers of Achaean saga. But Athens and the Ionians were not content
with this respectable antiquity. The Ionians of Asia, first, in the
Cyclic poems (750-600 B.C.) tried to prove that they and neighbouring
and friendly peoples had their share in the Trojan war; and, next, the
tragedians of Athens carried on this pseudo-tradition in regard to
Thebes as well as to Troy. Their versions led the world captive for
2000 years. The oldest indications of the Ionian attempts to connect
heroes of Athens and of her neighbours and friends with the Trojan
affair are to be read in the fragments and summaries of the Cyclic
poems.

Next, we find this cause taken up by the Athenian tragedians; and,
lastly, we find in later sources the fables which the tragedians
handled with poetic freedom; while, in the pseudo-Dictys of Crete, we
have legends derived from the Cyclic poets, from other sources, and
from the author's own fancy. The Roman poets, like Virgil, also reflect
the Ionian and Athenian traditions, and their hostility to Agamemnon,
Menelaus, Odysseus, and Diomede, with their partiality for Aias,
claimed as a neighbour of Athens, and for the ill-used Philoctetes, and
the martyr sage, Palamedes of Nauplia. Homer mentions neither him nor
his city.[17]


[1] xi. 321-325.

[2] Leaf, Note to _Iliad_, iii. 144.

[3] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 370.

[4] Roscher's _Lexikon_, under "Minos."

[5] See Miss Harrison's _Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens_,
London, 1890.

[6] _Ibid_., p. 56, note. For human sacrifice see "The Cyclic Poems,"
later.

[7] _Ibid_. p. lxxxvi.

[8] _Ibid_. p. lxxxvii.

[9] Pausanias, from the _Thebais_, ii. 20. 4, ix. 9. 1.

[10] Hdt. ix. 27.

[11] _Suppliants_, Isoc., _Oral. Panegyr_. p. 196. Auger.

[12] Pausanias, i. 28. 7.

[13] Hdt. v. 65.

[14] _Iliad_, xxiii. 679; _Odyssey_, xi. 271-280.

[15] Scholiast. _Iliad_, xxiii. 679.

[16] Thucydides, i. 2.

[17] See "The Story of Palamedes."




CHAPTER XVI

HOMER AND "THE SAGA"


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, Thackeray, and Dickens, he rarely
introduces a minor character without marking the individuality in some
memorable way. Often he does this by some line or two on the ancestry
of the personage, and we are for a moment brought into touch with "old
unhappy far-off things," or meet some notable trait of character. Thus
Theano, daughter of Kisseus of Thrace, priestess of Athene in Troy, and
wife of Antenor, is only introduced to utter the prayer of the women to
the relentless goddess (_Iliad_, vi. 302-310). Yet we know her when we
meet her, for (_Iliad_, v. 69-71) we have already heard of her goodness
of heart. She reared Meges, a bastard of Antenor, "kindly, like her own
children, to please her lord." Here we have probably no more than a
touch of Homer's genial and discriminating art; it is not probable that
the poet took this trait from any traditional "saga."

On the other hand, when in a digression he makes Nestor speak of
old heroes, Epeians and Lapithae; or when Glaucus tells the tale of
Bellerophon and the wife of Proetus; or Phoenix touches on the tragedy
of fair-haired Meleager of Aetolia; or Agamemnon speaks of the birth
of Heracles, or, in several other references to Theban wars, to the
Amazons, and so forth, Homer is clearly drawing from the great
legendary store of Achaeans or Pelasgians (to use that term for the
earlier people).

All this matter is called "the saga" by the critics. As Homer comes at
the crowning period of epic poetry, as his instrument, the hexameter,
is delicately tempered by long processes, it seems probable that his
mind was full of ancient lays on legendary themes as well, probably,
as of _Märchen_ and traditions told orally in prose. These things are
to him what ballads and oral traditions were to Scott. Though he only
once, in a suspected passage, touches on the Choice of Paris (_Iliad_,
xxiv, 25-30), he must have known some tale which accounted for the
enmity of Hera to Ilios, and the hatred of Athene to the Asian city
of which she was patroness. Zeus himself (_Iliad_, iv. 31-33) seems
puzzled by the fury of Hera against Troy. _Quo numine laeso_? The cause
of wrath is, in fact, _spretae injuria formae_, the spite of neglected
beauty. No other reason (setting aside the favour of Ganymede, to whom
Homer only refers in the most casual way) has ever been given.

As to the Trojan affairs, Homer knows many things on which he only
touches briefly. It is clear that he knew a great saga about Trojan
legendary history; for example, about the wall built by the Trojans
and Pallas Athene to shelter Heracles when he fought a monster that
ravaged the land (_Iliad_, xx. 146). He also knows that Apollo was made
thrall to Laomedon, and built the city wall of Troy, but was defrauded
of his reward (xxi. 441-455). That Apollo and Poseidon therefore sent
the monster to which Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, was exposed, Homer
does not say; he commonly ignores the _märchenhaft_, the fairy-tale
points in a legend, but he knows that Heracles was also defrauded, and
avenged himself by sacking Ilios (v. 638641). Manifestly there was a
rich growth of _Märchen_ and legends clustered round Troy, and known to
the Achaeans; Homer merely alludes to it, and to events posterior to
the death of Hector.

He knows how Achilles fell in the Scaean gate, slain by Paris and
Apollo; he knows the Sack of Troy, the wooden horse; the Returns,
prosperous, troubled, or fatal, of the heroes; he knows Memnon's part
in the war, and the end of Aias; he knows that Philoctetes is to be
needed, and that Eurypylus fought and fell, and so forth. Concerning
some of these things he may have heard lays; others he may have learned
merely through oral tradition in prose.

Now it is at this point, namely, Homer's peculiar treatment of the
legendary material which reached him, whether in verse or in prose
_Märchen_, that his art stands especially apart from the art of poets
who followed him, whether the authors of the "Cyclic" Ionian Epics,
or the Athenian tragedians, or the dim genealogisers in verse of the
eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Homer deliberately _selects_ from
the "saga," or folk-tale, or bardic tradition, what is noble, heroic,
possible, and human. He also, in the _Iliad_, deliberately rejects
what is _märchenhaft_; the situations which belong to the datelessly
old popular _Märchen_, or "fairy tale." Later poets put these things
prominently forward; Homer ignores them. This is to be proved later in
detail: meanwhile here is another mark of the aloofness of Homer, of
his high aristocratic genius.

It seems certain that the Trojan legend, with the legends of the Theban
wars and tragedies, of the voyage of Argo, and of the hunt of the
Calydonian boar, existed in some consecutive form, and was supposed to
be record of historical facts before our Homeric poems were composed.
Actual history it was not, any more than the _Chansons de Geste_, the
poem of _Beowulf_, the two Irish cycles of Cuchullin and of Fian, or
the _Volsunga Saga_, or the romances of Arthur, are records of actual
history.

In some of these cycles of western Europe we know that historical
personages are involved,--about Charlemagne, of course, there is no
doubt; and there really were wars of the Cymri of Strathclyde against
the English invaders; and the romances appear to contain fanciful
accounts of actual battles of Arthur fought in Cumberland, Lothian,
Ettrick Forest, and the Lennox. But when King Loth of Lothian, whose
house plays so great a part in the romances, appears, we see that he
is only an "eponymous hero," his name being derived by legend from the
name of his realm, Lothian. About any real characters whose fame may
echo in the ancient Irish bardic traditions nothing can be known.

Homer's heroes are in the same case. There may have been a very early
Achaean attempt against the northern Asiatic shore of the Aegean.
There may have been wars of several States against Thebes. The voyage
of the Argo, on the other hand, is nothing but a tissue of diverse
_Märchen_, adroitly fitted into each other, as most formulae can glide
into any other _Märchen_ formula and be prolonged almost infinitely.
The Argo saga, as currently told, begins apparently with the tale
of the man who weds a fairy bride or a swan nymph, and later loses
her, like the Eskimo Bird Bride, the Sanskrit Urvasi and Pururavas.
In the saga the man is Athamas, king of the Minyae of Orchomenos,
or of Halos in Thessalian Phthiotis, or of Phthia. The bride is
Nephele the Cloud-maiden. The pair have two children, Phrixus and
Helle. The king takes another wife, and has another child by her. We
now have the stepmother formula. Ino ill-treats Phrixus and Helle.
Nephele returns to the house disguised as an old nurse (_East Lynne_
formula). She deceives Ino into slaying her own children in place of
her step-children (_Hop o' my thumb_ formula; but this is not the most
current version). Ino roasts the seed corn; there is no harvest, she
sends messengers to the Delphic oracle to bring back the false answer
that Phrixus must be sacrificed. When Athamas is about to sacrifice
him, or both him and Helle, Nephele produces as substitute the golden
(or white, or purple) ram, a gift of Hermes. On his back Phrixus, or
both Helle and Phrixus, escape.

This is merely the formula of the two children flying from cannibal
parents by the aid of a friendly animal, often a sheep; in Samoyed a
beaver which can speak.[1] In many variants of _Cinderella_ the helpful
sheep is the dead mother in that form. In _Asterinos and Pulja_, a tale
from Epirus,[2] a dog is the helpful animal; but the boy is turned into
a sheep, is slain by the girl's jealous mother-in-law, and from his
bones grows a wonderful apple-tree. The girl is thrown into the deep
water, but revives. In the Greek saga, Helle falls into the Hellespont
off the ram's back: her name is eponymous, derived from the Hellespont.
In some variants she does not escape on the ram. The later fortunes of
Athamas and Ino are variously told.

But the Argo saga is continued by making the heroes of all Hellas join
in "the classical Quest of the Grail," the search for the fleece of
the Golden Ram. Where it was, Homer, we shall see, clearly did not
know: the place was still in fairyland, unlocalised. Jason, as in a
very common _Märchen_ formula, collects companions with marvellous
gifts, Keen Eye (Lynceus), the Strong Man (Heracles), the prophet
(Orpheus), the winged men, sons of the North Wind, and so on. There
is nothing historic here; even thus, in Celtic saga, the miraculously
gifted heroes hunted the Twrch Trywyth, the boar. Even thus the
miraculously gifted Finnish heroes seek for the mystic Sampo in the
Kalewala. The Achaean heroes find the fleece in the hands of King
Aietes, who represents the giant of fairy tale, and has a fair daughter
(Medea) that aids the young adventurer, and enables him to plough the
perilous field with the untamable bulls, like Ilmarinen in the Finnish
_Kalewala_ (Rune 19), like the hero of Kilwch and Olwen in the Welsh
_Mabinogion_. She flees, as usual, with her lover from her father. Here
this formula ends; the return voyage and the later adventures of the
pair were fantastically told as geographical knowledge increased, after
the home of Medea had been located at Aia in Colchis, at the east of
the Euxine. Other formulae of _Märchen_ were introduced, the venomed
robe that burned up Glauce, the magic cauldron of youth that, in the
wrong hands, is deadly. Medea is taken here and there, to Corinth, to
Athens, mixed with the Theseus set of _Märchen_, made the eponymous
heroine of the Medes.

The Hunt of the Calydonian Boar, again, is of the same character as
the mythic boar hunt that ended in upper Ettrick; as the boar hunt of
Diarmaid, in Irish; and the hunt of the Welsh Mabinogion, where Keen
Eye and the rest reappear, in the Twrch Trywyth.

The growth of "Saga," or bardic tradition, is the same in all
countries. First we have the _Märchen,_ told in prose, as they still
exist among European peasants and in many "non-Aryan" peoples, from
the Samoyeds of the frozen north to the Red Indians, the Huarochiri
of Southern America, the Samoans, the Bechuanas, the Kanekas of New
Caledonia, the Santhals, and so forth. In the _Märchen_ the characters
are usually anonymous, a boy, a girl, a witch, a king, and the rest;
real characters, as Charlemagne, may appear. The events are not
localised. The situations are efforts of the primal romantic fancy;
like the fragments of coloured glass in the kaleidoscope, they fall
into any number of patterns.

As civilisation advances and a class of professional sennachies
appears, they give names to the characters; the anonymous young
adventurer becomes Jason or Theseus; the cunning man who plays
tricks on Death becomes Sisyphus; the monster, giant or beast, who
sets impossible tasks to the adventurer, becomes Minos or Aietes; his
wife or fair daughter, who baffles him and helps the hero, becomes
Ariadne or Medea. In place of the helpful old woman of fairy tale
comes Hera, whom Jason carries across the ford; or it is Athene, who
gives Bellerophon the golden bit that tames the magical horse; here he
is Pegasus. The rescuer of the girl exposed to a ravening monster is
now _named_ Perseus or Heracles. The brother and sister who flee from
cannibal parents, with the aid of a friendly animal, are named Phrixus
and Helle. In place of throwing behind them combs or stones which
baffle the pursuer by changing into forests or mountains, Medea and
Jason leave the mangled limbs of Medea's brother Absyrtus.

The lad who effects wonders by knowing the language of beasts, is
in Greece named Melampus; the giant, whose life-token is a lock
of his hair, becomes Nisus of Megara; his daughter, who loves the
adventurer, and cuts the giant's lock, purple or golden, so that he
is defeated, becomes Scylla; and Minos, who answers to the giant of
fairy tale in the Theseus Attic legend, in the Megarian fable is
himself the adventurer aided by the giant's daughter.[3] He does not
marry the treacherous daughter, but puts her to death; as Achilles,
in the Lesbian story, does not marry Pisidice, who for love of him
has betrayed her city, but has her slain. The man who, to fulfil
a prophecy, unwittingly weds his mother (a favourite character in
_Märchen_, as Comparetti has shown), becomes Oedipous: he is also the
answerer of riddles, a character of _Märchen_ found everywhere.[4]

Out of these originally anonymous and unlocalised personages and
romantic situations of _Märchen_, the Greek States made the heroes
and events of their legendary history. That history, as of Theseus,
Heracles, Perseus, Jason, Sisyphus, even Odysseus, Pelops, Oenomaus,
Athamas, Laomedon, is but a series of _Märchen_ localised; while, in
place of fairy godmothers, or anonymous benefactors, the old man or old
woman of _Märchen_, the Olympian gods are introduced, with their fairy
gifts, the cap of darkness, the winged shoon, the sword of sharpness
(Perseus), the power of taking all animal disguises. Homer knows the
attack of Heracles on the father and brothers of Nestor. Hesiod knew
the cause of the feud, Neleus refused to purify Heracles who had slain
his host under the hospitable roof. Hesiod knows that Poseidon had
given to Periclymenus, brother of Nestor, the power to appear in any
animal shape, eagle, ant, snake, or bee; and that while Periclymenus
lived, Heracles failed in the fight, and could not take Pylos. But when
Periclymenus, as a bee, settled on the chariot of Heracles, Athene shot
that bee with an arrow (see fragment of the _Eoiai_ 14 (33), with the
scholia).[5] Other examples of the wildest absurdities of _Märchen_,
retained and rejoiced in by the Ionic epic poets, are given later
("Homer and the Ionian Cyclic Poets"). But Homer, in the _Iliad_, takes
his heroes forth from the prison of _Märchen_: whether the fairy tales
had not yet become attached to Bellerophon, Achilles, and Meleager
in his time, or whether his genius ignored such fanciful elements of
tradition, Homer does not speak of the invulnerability of Achilles,
save on his heel; or tell the wooing by his father, Peleus, of Thetis
as she takes a variety of bestial forms. Either these situations had
not yet become attached to the story of Achilles, or Homer chooses to
ignore them. Such things do not come into the natural objective world
of the _Iliad_. In the digression of Bellerophon he recurs to the
human natural side of _Märchen_, the story of the woman who, vainly
attacking a man's virtue, accuses him falsely; the message or letter of
death,[6] his three strange adventures to achieve, that of the Chimaera
and others, and his winning of the king's daughter. This _Märchen_,
localised, is in a digression; but Homer usually keeps his _Märchen_
for the _Odyssey,_ and the incidents occur beyond the bounds of the
world he knows.

Now, even when Homer touches on the tale of Meleager, he says nothing
of that fairy property the "soul-box" or "life-token," the brand
snatched from the burning; or of the visit of the Spaewives, the Fates,
and their prophecy. He actually does not seem to know that incident.
Althaea, mother of Meleager, in Homer (_Iliad_, ix. 565-572), prays to
the Erinnyes and they hear her. She has not her son's "soul-box" or
"life-token" in her hands to burn it, and slay him. In Pausanias (x.
31. 3), Meleager is killed by Apollo, who is fighting for the Curetes
against the Aetolians. Meleager died, like Achilles, by Apollo's hand,
though Paris was an accomplice of the God in the case of Achilles.
Pausanias follows the Hesiodic _Eoiai_, which Kuhnert supposes to have
known the same story as Homer.[7]

As Kuhnert justly observes, the poetry of Homer is _knightly_. "An
der Hofen wurden die homerische Gedichte versungen ... the hero must
find his death at a divine hand in glorious warfare." The Athenian
tragedians are our oldest source for the Moirae and the fatal
life-token: a property very common in _Märchen_; but when the incident
first attached itself to Meleager we cannot know. This avoidance of the
folk-element, the _Märchen_, in the _Iliad_ is one of the things that
distinguishes Homer from the Ionian Cyclic poets, the Hesiodic school,
and the Athenian tragedians.

Homer, again, in another way, stands apart from the genealogising poets
of the eighth to seventh century (such as the school of "Hesiod," and
"Eumelus" of Corinth) by his method of handling tradition or saga.
These genealogising poets aimed at constructing history, and preluded
to the "logographers" in prose of the sixth century. Both they and
the logographers have the same simple method, that of the would-be
historic early mediaeval writers on Scotland and Ireland. Their plan
is to invent for each town or people an eponymous hero, whose name is
simply the name of the city or people (as, in Scotland, Fib for Fife,
Loth for Lothian, Scota for the Scoti). The hero, or heroine, founds
the city, or is first ancestor of the people. Next follow the legends
about heroic characters, as Perseus, Athamas, Pelops, Theseus, Aietes,
Phrixus, which are mere _Märchen_ of world-wide diffusion, localised,
with named persons for the characters.

The region of legend expands with the expansion of geographical
knowledge. Cities hasten, like Athens and Corinth, to attach themselves
to sagas, as that of Argo, in which they had no original part. Hesiod
extends the old saga, and carries descendants of the old characters,
as of Odysseus, to Italy, to Latium and Etruria. "Eumelus" drags
Corinth into the cycle of the Argonautic expedition: Athens, we have
said, brings Medea to Athens, and into her Theseus fable. Later the
logographers, in prose, continue the process and alter the genealogies
to suit their historical theories.

From all these processes Homer stands apart. He has not any historical
theory to prove. He seldom mentions an eponymous founder of a city,
or ancestor of a people. Nausithous founds Phaeacia, his city is not
called Nausithoa. Homer names Mykene (_Odyssey_, ii. 120), but does not
say that she founded Mycenae, as "Eumelus" says that Ephyre founded
the town of Ephyre (Corinth). You would not gather from Homer that the
Achaeans were descendants of Achaeus, or the Danaans of Danaus.

All these things are obvious and undeniable. Homer is a poet: the
genealogising writers in verse are aiming at constructing history
(_some_ history may be present), and at explaining the origins of
peoples and cities.

But, according to some of the modern learned, our Homer contains
borrowings from the Eumelian verses on Corinth. Thus Mr. Murray says
that the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ "not only refer to other legends as
already existing and treated by other poets; that every one admits; but
they often in their digressions tell stories in a form which clearly
suggests recapitulation or allusion. They imply the existence elsewhere
of a completer poetical treatment of the same subject," as in the tale
of Bellerophon, told to Diomede by Glaucus in _Iliad_, vi. "Is it not
plain that the poet of _Iliad_, vi., is in the first place referring to
an existing legend, and, secondly, one may almost say, quoting from an
existing poem?"[8]

Certainly Homer is referring to an existing legend, and not improbably
to a lay which in his time existed. But Mr. Murray goes on to suggest
that the existing poem referred to is the _Corinthiaca_ of "Eumelus,"
whom he takes to be a mythical name for the author of Corinthian
traditional poetry; von Christ thinks Eumelus of the seventh century.

Mr. Murray's argument seems to be, Homer knew a legend, probably
knew a poem, about Bellerophon, son of Glaucus, son of Sisyphus, who
dwelt in Ephyre (Corinth). "Eumelus" wrote a poem about Corinthian
affairs. Therefore the poet who introduced the tale told by Glaucus
into _Iliad_, vi., took it (textually, it seems to be suggested)
from "Eumelus."[9] In the same way the author of _Iliad_, v. 395-400,
and Panyassis, the uncle of Herodotus, presumably adapt from the same
source. Mr. Leaf, on the other hand, supposes the poet-uncle to give an
"echo" from the passage in the fifth book of the _Iliad._ There may be
an echo, in Homer on Heracles, from an older poem on Heracles, but that
poem is likely to be long anterior to the end of the sixth century.[10]

In any case the "Eumelus" known to us in Greek literary tradition was
a _tendenz_ poet, a poet with a purpose, with a pseudo-historical
theory to prove; he used the method of the genealogisers, who turned
into heroes and heroines men and women who were constructed out of
place-names; and he, in certain places, did not borrow from Homer, nor
Homer from him, for he and Homer flatly contradict each other. If all
this be not post-Homeric, what is?

Pausanias, in discussing Eumelus's peculiar version of the relations of
Medea to Corinth, quotes a "History of Corinth," in prose, by Eumelus,
"if he is really the author of it."[11] "Eumelus is also said to have
been a poet," and Pausanias avers that the only poem recognised as
genuine of Eumelus is a processional ode to Delian Apollo.[12] There
_was_ a prose version of his other work, and Clemens Alexandrinus
regarded Eumelus as a logographer like Acusilaus, who "turned the poems
of Hesiod into prose."[13]

But, genuine or not, an "Eumelian" _poem_ on a forged part of
Corinthian legendary history did at some time exist, for the scholiast
on Pindar (_Ol._ xiii.) cited eight lines of it; and these lines are
manifestly complementary to the part of the prose history by "Eumelus"
which Pausanias quotes. Taking the Eumelian verse and prose together,
we find that "Eumelus" in his _Corinthiaca_ appears in Greek literary
tradition as a chronicler in verse, a genealogist, a maker of patriotic
pseudo-history, and a narrator of a late version of the Argo story.

Now, as "Eumelus" began (as the Ram in the fairy story is requested
to do) "at the beginning," at the founding of Ephyre, or Corinth; and
as he told the Argonautic tale in full, including the aprocryphal
adventures of Medea in what he chose to call her rightful kingdom in
Corinth; and as the tale is a very long one, we may infer that this,
and not the entire mass of Corinthian legend, was the topic of his
book. If so, Bellerophon, though a Corinthian, was "out of the story";
for, by the Eumelian genealogies, he was four generations later than
Medea's tenure of the Corinthian throne. She was succeeded by Sisyphus,
whose exploits would fill a book; Sisyphus by Glaucus, and Glaucus
by Bellerophon. But the aim of "Eumelus" was to glorify Corinth by
attributing to her a share in the tale of Argo; its heroine, Medea,
must therefore be of the Corinthian Royal House; and, after proving
this, and telling the Argo saga, "Eumelus" must give her adventures,
after Argo's return to Greece, in Corinth; and these were many and
tragical.

Wishing, then, to attach Corinth to the Argonautic story, the
genealogiser manages matters thus. Helios, the Sun, he says, had two
sons _by Antiope_ (daughter of the river god Asopus); the sons were
Aloeus and Aietes. Homer does not borrow those facts from "Eumelus";
Homer tells a different story, but the historical effort of "Eumelus"
constrains him to make his local nymph, Antiope, mother of Aietes. That
is the basis of his forgery. Meanwhile Homer tells a contradictory
story about this Antiope (_Od_. xi. 260). Her lover was not Helios,
but Zeus. Her sons were not Aietes and Aloeus, but Amphion and Zethus.
Homer is not borrowing from _this_ genealogiser! The heroine Ephyre
founded Ephyre. (She was daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and wife of
Epimetheus, or daughter of Epimetheus, an un-Homeric kind of person.)
The river Asopus, father of Antiope (who was mother, says "Eumelus,"
by the Sun of Aloeus and Aietes), gave his name as "Asopia" to what
was later Sicyon. The Sun gave to _his_ son, Aloeus, "the land held by
Asopus, to his son Aietes he gave Ephyre" (Corinth). Aietes goes to
Colchis (a place necessarily unnamed by Homer, for it is at the extreme
east of the Euxine); but previously had arranged that Bounos is to be
regent of Ephyre till Aietes, _or a descendant of his,_ returns and
claims it.[14] Medea is to be that descendant.

So far we have Eumelian _verse_. How the story went on we learn from
the _prose_ version cited by Pausanias. Bounos died as king of Ephyre,
and was succeeded by the nephew of Aietes (a son of his brother
Aloeus), named Epopeus.[15] Epopeus was harsh to _his_ son Marathon,
and Marathon fled to Attica and founded the famous deme of Marathon. He
had two sons, Sicyon, to whom, on the death of his own father, Epopeus,
he gave Sicyon; while Ephyre he gave to his son Corinthus; hence
Ephyre came to be called Corinth. When Corinthus died childless, the
Corinthians sent to Colchis for Medea, in accordance with the entail
made by Aietes (as "Eumelus" has told us in verse), when he left
Ephyre for Colchis.[16] Nothing can be less Homeric.

The "Eumelus" of whom we have reports wrote pseudo-history in verse,
for he has to make Medea survive Aietes, Bounos, Epopeus, Marathon,
and Corinthus, and then, in the prime of beauty, succeed to the realm
of Corinthus as Queen of Corinth. Leaving Corinth for Athens under a
cloud, Medea gives Corinth to Sisyphus.[17]

"Eumelus," as Seeliger observes,[18] knows the Argo story in the common
late expanded form, Colchis and all; but chooses to make Aietes,
contrary to all other authorities, a king of Corinth. Attica, too,
must needs attach herself to the story of Argo, by making Medea seduce
King Aegeus, the father of Theseus, and try to poison Theseus himself:
she also made Aegeus send him on the desperate adventure of fighting
the Bull of Marathon.[19] This Bull of Marathon _donne à penser_. In
one legend Aegeus, father of Theseus, sent Androgeos, son of Minos, to
fight the bull, which killed him. It was therefore but tit-for-tat when
Minos sent Athenian tributary boys and girls to fight _his_ bull, the
bullheaded Minotaur.[20]

"Eumelus," as far as our evidence goes, stands for the school who,
for every town, supposed an eponymous person as founder, for Ephyre
(Corinth) he gives the nymphe Ephyre. Now Homer does not work on these
lines. When "Eumelus" had got his pseudo-history and false genealogies
to his taste, he must have told at full length the tale of Argo, for we
have five lines of his describing the terror caused in Aietes and the
Colchians by the throwing of the weight by Jason among the armed brood
born of the plain, which Jason ploughed with fire-breathing bulls.

These things, then, are what Greek literary tradition reports about
a pseudo-historical genealogist, and teller of the tale of Argo with
a purpose. That he ever mentioned Bellerophon we have no proof:
Pausanias does not cite Eumelus for Bellerophon. Homer, as usual, omits
the _Märchen_ of the winged horse Pegasus, whereby, in later poems,
Bellerophon accomplishes his feats. Pindar is copious about Pegasus:
that noble animal. The peculiarly gifted horse, hard to bridle, is
common property of "fairy tales." Usually some friendly person tells
the adventurous lad to use a peculiar bridle without which the steed is
untamable. The boy can always sell the horse, but keep the bridle; the
purchaser returns the nag, and the hero keeps the money. In Pindar's
Fourth Pythian Ode, Athene is the benevolent person of the _Märchen_.
Bellerophon, wanting to break in Pegasus, sleeps in her temple; she
presents him with the magical golden bit and head-stall. Dropping
Pegasus, magical bridle and all, Homer only says that the gods "gave
Bellerophon friendly convoy to Lycia."[21] Mr. Murray asks, "What
blameless guiding of the gods led Bellerophon to Lycia?" Clearly he
flew thither through upper air on Pegasus, like Commodore Trunnion
leaping a sunken way on the road to the hymeneal altar, "to the
unspeakable terror and amazement" of a waggoner below, says Smollett.
But Homer is not Smollett, and does not send Bellerophon flying through
air on a horse. Pindar saw no objections to the incident.[22]

Here we must try to explain a point on which Mr. Murray remarks, "There
has been an extraordinary reluctance among scholars to ... admit the
possibility of 'Homer,' as the phrase is, borrowing from the supposed
later author 'Eumelus,' or even from 'Hesiod.'" The reluctance is
natural and justifiable; because when we say "Eumelus" or "Hesiod," we
mean just what we have received from antiquity under the names of these
men. Their work, as it reaches us, is un-Homeric, is later, we say,
than the _Iliad_. But if "Eumelus" be a mythical name for a supposed
author of a body of Corinthian heroic poetry: if the Eumelian matter
which we have received was not that, then we know nothing about that,
and cannot say whether our Homer borrowed from some other Eumelian
_epê_ or not. Mr. Murray, as to Homer's debt to "Eumelus," writes: "If
anything were needed to make it clearer still, it would be that the
Verses of Eumelus are quoted as the earliest authority for the story
of the Argo and Medea, and the composer of our _Odyssey_ speaks of
the Argo as a subject of which 'all minds are full'"[23] The reader
naturally gathers that our Homer took his information about Argo from
"Eumelus." We can only say, "not from the Eumelus known to us in Greek
literary tradition." Thus Hesiod[24] tells of the birth of Circe and
Aietes her brother (the father of Medea) in precisely the same terms as
Homer does, and as Eumelus does not.[25] Both poets say that Helios, by
_Perses_ (Homer), or _Perseis_ (Hesiod), a daughter of Oceanus, was the
father of Circe and Aietes. Homer does not mention Medea, but Hesiod
says that she was the daughter of Aietes. Now Eumelus, in what we have
of him, says nothing of Circe, but makes Aietes the son of Helios and
Antiope, _not_ of Perses as in Homer. Manifestly, then, Homer did not
take his version from _this_ Eumelus; while, when Homer and Hesiod
precisely agree, if either borrowed from the other, it were quite
arbitrary to say that Homer borrowed from Hesiod, who knows Latium and
Etruria.

Homer certainly did not borrow here from our Eumelus, for he differs
from Eumelus; nor is Eumelus quoted, as far as I am aware, "as the
earliest authority for" the story of Argo. The scholiast on Pindar,
as I, for one, understand him, quotes Eumelus for something quite
different, namely, for his peculiar account (adopted by Pindar when
praising a Corinthian athlete) of Medea as rightful Queen of Corinth;
a point on which no Greeks agreed with the patriotic chronicler, the
Corinthian Eumelus, as Pausanias observes.

Homer knows about the ship Argo, and her escape from the clash of the
Rocks Wandering, through the favour of Hera.[26] The dangers of these
rocks are described by Circe to Odysseus, for he must pass by that
perilous path of the sea; and Circe ought to know, for she is sister of
King Aietes, from whose land Argo was sailing when she met the rocks.
But where did Aietes dwell? On that point Homer says nothing and knew
nothing.

It is manifest that Homer neither knows where Aiaie, the isle of
Circe, is, nor where the home of King Aietes is. To him Aiaie is "an
unsubstantial fairy place." In the _Odyssey_ (xii. 3, 4), Circe's
isle is "near the home and dancing-places of the Dawn, and the land
of sunrising." You cannot go farther east in a black ship. But in
Hesiod,[27] Circe's Aia must be in the west, for her sons by Odysseus
(unheard of by Homer) rule over Latins and Tyrsenians. Later poets
placed the Aia of Circe's brother, Aietes, in the east, in Colchis, at
the eastern limit of the Euxine; and Circe's Aia they located in the
west, at the promontory of Circeei in Italy. Homer himself shows no
knowledge of Italy, on one side, or of the extremity of the Euxine on
the other.[28] Even Mimnermus places the city of Aietes vaguely "at the
limit of Oceanus."[29] By way of finding reason where there is none,
Apollonius Rhodius explains that Circe originally lived in the Aia of
the east, as in the _Odyssey_, but was transported by Helios to the Aia
in the west.[30] Homer being so vague, we do not say he is borrowing
from our Eumelus, who locates Aietes in Colchis, under Caucasus, which
Homer, if pre-Ionian, never knew. Had Homer, or any of the supposed
late contributors to the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, lived in the eighth to
seventh centuries, and studied our Eumelus, or even our Hesiod, the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ would have had much more extensive geographical
knowledge than they possess. No one will say that our Homer borrows
from a genealogiser like our Eumelus, when Eumelus does not even agree
with Homer about the mother of Aietes.

The _Iliad_ does know that Jason, in the isle of Lemnos, had a son by
Hypsipyle;[31] and the adventures of the Argonauts in Lemnos are part
of the story of Argo. But Lemnos is well within Homer's geographical
knowledge, while the homes of Aietes and Circe are far beyond its
limits.

The confusion of early mythical geography is inextricable. In the
_Odyssey_ the ship Argo met the Rocks Wandering on her way home from
Aietes. Odysseus meets the rocks on his way home from Circe. She dwells
in the farthest east; so then, it seems, did Aietes. In Pindar,[32]
Argo encounters the rocks on her outward and eastward way, before she
enters the Euxine. Homer knows that Jason loved Hypsipyle in Lemnos,
whether on his way to or his return from Aietes. Pindar says on his
return westward to Greece, after he has visited Oceanus, the Red Sea,
and Africa. The common story, as in Apollonius Rhodius, makes Jason
love Hypsipyle in Lemnos as he sails eastwards and outward bound to
Colchis. If he wooed her thus, on his way home, _with Medea,_ as
Pindar tells, one can only say that he was a brave man.

Let us next, before going deeper into the "Saga," examine the case
of Thersites, the impudent demagogue of _Iliad_, ii., never again
mentioned by Homer. Mr. Murray is rather surprised "to find that
Thersites is really an independent saga-figure with a life of his own,
and very distinguished relations. He was a son of Agrios, the savage
Aetolian king, and first cousin once removed of the great Diomedes.
His mother was Dia, a palpable goddess." He was killed by Achilles for
jeering at his grief over the slain Amazon, Penthesilea. Achilles was
purified by Odysseus, but Diomede took up his feud.[33]

In Pherecydes (fr. 82), Thersites is an Aetolian, thrown over a rock by
Meleager for his cowardice in the boar hunt, but not killed.[34]

All this about Thersites is really "saga" stuff,--invented about the
date of the _Aethiopis_. But Thersites was no hero of "saga" in the
time of Homer. Had he been the son of a goddess (otherwise unknown)
and of "a savage Aetolian king" (Homer's Aetolians are as civilised as
his other peoples), the poet would have said so. He is most careful,
we saw, to tell us who his heroes are (except the Athenians), even
when they only appear for the purpose of being slain. But he says not
a word about the genealogy and antecedents of Thersites, who is only
a man of the λαός or host, food for bronze. "The savage king of the
Aetolians," Agrios, has been picked out by some one suffering from
la manie cyclique, who was anxious to tell "what became of them all,"
from _Iliad_, xiv. 114-125: "no doubt an interpolation," says Mr. Leaf,
"like many others, of the genealogical school connected with the name
of Hesiod."

Here, at all events, whether the genealogy be late and Hesiodic or not,
Diomede gives to Agamemnon his genealogy, in Aetolia.


              Portheus
           _______|__________________
          |               |          |
       Agrios           Melas      Oeneus
                                     |
                                   Tydeus
                                     |
                                  Diomede


The _manie cyclique_ inserted

 Agrios
   |
Thersites, for it was desired to tell what became of Thersites;
and--not to lose sight of a person so notable as Thersites--the poet
made Achilles kill him, a much older man than Achilles, for his
mockery. Then Diomede (who does not remonstrate when Odysseus calls him
the basest, socially, of the host, and beats him) takes up his feud
when he is slain.[35]

Homer has plainly no idea that Thersites is of royal and divine
lineage, all that is a later invention of "the cyclic mania," and
is as old, at least, as the age of the Ionian cyclic poet of the
_Aethiopis_.[36] The very scholiasts said that Homer marked the base
birth of Thersites by saying nothing about his parentage and home.

In Homer, as in the earliest _Chansons de Geste_, there is the knightly
poetic legend; and in the Cyclics, at least in the case of Thersites,
there are the later expansions and continuations made under the
influence of _la manie cyclique_. The _dénouement_ of the _Telegonia_,
the last of the Cyclics, is purely absurd. Telegonus marries his aged
stepmother, Penelope, and Telemachus marries his father's mistress,
Circe!

To explore the relations of Homer and of "saga" to _Märchen_, or
popular tales, attached to real or fabulous heroes and heroines of the
past, would require a volume.[37] Almost all Greek pseudo-historical
tradition consists of a string of _Märchen_, known all over the world:
any student of folk-lore who reads the Achaean legends in Grote can
identify the masterless _Märchen_ which have been attached to the
heroic figures. In exactly the same way, _Märchen_ are attached to
Charlemagne in the _Chansons de Geste_; to Arthur in the romances;
and we might as well look to them for political and personal history
as to Homer. Naimes, Ganelon, Olivier, the expedition of Charlemagne
to Constantinople, his wars with the Saracens, and other persons and
events in the _Chansons de Geste_, yield no material to the historian;
nor do Lancelot, Galahad, Palamedes, and Tristram, and Arthur's foreign
conquests in the romances. What history there is rests obscure.

On the other hand, an attempt has recently been made to extract some
grains of "tribal" history, before and after the Achaean migration to
Asia, from the names of the heroes in the _Iliad_, and from the places
where, in post-Homeric Greece, they received worship. This effort is
made by Dr. Erich Bethe, in his _Homer und die Heldensage_, and Mr.
Murray follows Bethe in _The Rise of the Greek Epic_. We may take a
notable example of the method in the case of Hector. "Hector seems to
belong to Boeotia." It may be worth while to examine the reasoning
on which this most unexpected opinion is based. The idea was first
propounded by Ferdinand Dümmler in a short _Anhang_ to Studniczka's
_Cyrene._ "Hector was worshipped as a hero in Boeotian Thebes," says
Mr. Murray, quoting Dümmler, and Dümmler's source is apparently
Pausanias.[38] If the Boeotians in the time of Pausanias regarded
Hector as of Boeotian birth, the fact would be curious. But they did
nothing of the kind. "The Thebans show the tomb of Hector near the
Well of Oedipous. They say that Hector's remains were brought here
from Ilium in accordance with the following oracle: "Ye Thebans, if
you wish your country to be wealthy, bring to your city from Asia the
bones of Hector the son of Priam, and respect the hero at the bidding
of Zeus."[39]

This was a real or an _imaginary_ case of the body-snatching of which
Herodotus speaks frequently. The relics of St. Hector would be valuable
to Thebes. The Thebans, in fact, may have wished to propitiate a hero
who had slain, according to Homer, many Boeotians in battle, and who
might still be hostile, and even fight against them in battle, as
dead heroes were apt to do. Pausanias (ix. 4. 3, ix. 39. 3) mentions
also the graves of certain Boeotian heroes, one of them wounded, the
other slain by Hector, as still honoured in Boeotia. Hector slew, or
wounded, or fought Homeric heroes from Phocis and from Boeotia; and
Epeigeus, a suppliant of Peleus (_Iliad_, xvi. 570 _et seqq_.), and
an Aetolian hero, an Athenian, a Mycenaean, an Elian, and so on.
What follows? These names of heroes slain by Hector, Thessalians,
Aetolians, Phocians, and Boeotians, are thought to suggest that, as
Mr. Murray translates Dr. Bethe, "Hector, or rather the tribe which
honoured Hector as their hero, migrated by this road,"--by the road on
which these Aetolians, Thessalians, Phocians, and Boeotians--or the
tribes which honoured them as heroes--used to live. "More accurately,
the tribe gradually, in how many centuries none can tell, moved in
a south-easterly direction, driven by a pressure which was no doubt
exerted by the Aeolic tribe represented in the Epos by Achilles."
"These are no pictures of phantasy that I let loose to play about
here," says Dr. Bethe (p. 16).

What else but phantasies can we possibly call them? That Hector's tomb
was shown in Thebes, does by no means prove that he, or a tribe which
was the Hector tribe, once lived in Boeotia. Heroes, like saints,
had tombs and chapels in many regions where they were not born, and
which they never visited. The grave of St. James was shown--in Spain!
Ariadne's ashes had been shown in Argos. Hector, in the _Iliad_, killed
the men in his way. In addition to the victims chosen out by Dr. Bethe,
he slew Stichios, an Athenian; Amphimachus, an Elian, and Periphetes of
Mycenae.[40]

This does no more prove that Hector was a Boeotian than that he was an
Athenian. He slew Schedios, a Phocian, yet he was no more a Phocian
than an Athenian, he merely killed the men whom he met. If we are
to argue, that he or the tribe which honoured him was driven out of
Aetolia and Thessaly down to Boeotia, Phocis, and Attica, we must,
by parity of reasoning, argue that the Hector tribe (in Gaelic, the
MacEachans), were driven into Peloponnesus, to Mycenae and Elis, for
Hector slew Periphetes of Mycenae, and Amphimachus, of Elis.[41] The
Mycenaean, Elian, and Athenian are not mentioned by Dr. Bethe. Nor can
Hector be converted into a Boeotian by the circumstance that he fought
a kind of courteous duel with Aias, while Aias was really the Locrian
Aias, we are told, and so a neighbour of the Boeotian Hector.[42]
Hector's relations with Aias[43] are far from neighbourly and friendly.

This instance of Hector is one of many in which the names of heroes are
taken to represent "tribes" which had a cult of these heroes, though
Homer knows nothing about this cult as practised in heroic Greece,
except in Athens. We learn nothing from Homer about "tribes" or clans
with a sacred eponymous hero, or with any "hero" in the sense of the
word as used in the Greece of history. We cannot assume that the
_Iliad_ introduces, in the combats of heroes, memories of tribal wars
in Greece in the pre-Homeric age, and transfers them, in the shape of
single combats, to the plain of Troy!

Heroic relationships were claimed long after Homer by peoples like
the Dorians and Romans and English and many others, merely to connect
themselves with the great legend of Troy; and the Greek cults of
heroes, a religion unknown to Homer, were carried into regions with
which Homer's men had no connection. We might as well look for Cymric
tribal wars in the feuds and names of the knights in the Arthurian
romances, or for Irish tribal feuds in the names of Ferdiad and
Cuchullain, as for prehistoric migrations in the names of Hector,
Leltus, Stichios of Attica, Periphetes of Mycenae, and Amphimachus of
Elis.

"Hector," we are told, "was a great 'slayer of men,' and his victims
in the _Iliad_ make a sort of road from Thebes upward to the bounds of
Achilles' region."[44] They also "make a sort of road" to Mycenae and
Elis by way of Athens: that is the history of the tribe, preserved
in the names of his victims,--names which, it appears, "are short"
for defeated tribes. As for the evidence of a Helen tribe at Sparta,
because Helen had a shrine and worship there, we have no evidence that
the Achaeans had any heroic shrines or hero-worship,--the evidence
is that they had none,--but the assumption is that Homer represents
"another stream of history," and, apparently, that his people turned
tribal names and tribal gods of an unknown past, into heroic men and
women. The opposite theory is that the hero-worshipping people of
historic Greece devoted themselves to such patron saints as they knew
through Homer, as the Arabs have saints whom they know about through
the Hebrew Scriptures.

I am not aware that in the bardic history, or "saga" of any people,
tribes are spoken of under the names of their tribal heroes in such a
way as to cause confusion. None is caused by Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim,
and so on in the Old Testament, but in other Biblical cases there may
be trouble. Local _tribes_, as far as I am aware, are nowhere named
by patronymics; certainly they are not in Australia, India, America,
and Africa, except, among the Zulus, by the name of a man plus Ama,
AmaFinn, and so forth. Thus the theory that Hector is the name of a
prehistoric Boeotian local tribe seems to me fantastic. We might as
well look for remnants of tribal history in Kay, Gawaine, Naimes, and
Ganelon.

Surely it is an error in historical method to reason as if pre-Homeric
Greeks were as addicted to divinising men, building their shrines, and
sacrificing to them, as the post-Homeric Greeks were in the seventh
and all later centuries. We might as well argue that the apostolic
Christians practised mediaeval saint-worship, and adored and built
innumerable chapels to dead Saints, because this was the custom of
mediaeval Christianity.

To sum up, we have proved that our Homer, in his treatment of old
tradition, is a noble poet, that he stands aloof from all the others of
Greece in his refusal (save in the _Odyssey_, a romance) to introduce
the wild elements of _Märchen_, the childish miracles; while he is
equally remote from the methods of the pseudo-historians like Eumelus
as known to us, and all the Hesiodic genealogisers and inventors of
eponymous heroes; and from the _manie cyclique_ of the Ionian Cyclic
poets. Really no fact can be more certain; and this fact, even if it
were not corroborated by all the others, would prove our Homer to be
"alone, aloof, sublime."


[1] Castren, _Ethnol. Vorlesungen_, pp. 164-169.

[2] Von Hahn, _Griechische Märchen_, 1.

[3] Pausanias, i. 19, ii. 34.

[4] Child, _English and Scottish Ballads_, vol. i., "Riddles wisely
Answered."

[5] Yen. A., _Iliad_, ii. 336. Rzach, _Hesiod_, p. 326.

[6] For many cases in _Märchen_, see Mr. Crookes' _Folk-Lore_, vol.
xix. p. 156.

[7] Roscher's _Lexikon_, vol ii. p. 2594.

[8] _R. G. E._ pp. 161, 162.

[9] Textually, for, in _Iliad_, vi. 200, 'Ἀλλ' ὄτε δὴ καὶ κεῑνος
ἀπήχθετο πᾱσι θεοῑσιν (referring to Bellerophon), Mr. Murray renders,
"But when he also was hated of all the gods," and asks, "Why the
phrase, 'when he also'?" Homer is, "one may almost say, quoting from
an existing poem." Now I understand Glaucus in this "he also" to refer
to the remark of Diomede (vi. 140) on Lycurgus's being "hated of all
the gods." He repeats the very words of Diomede. "Here is another man
who, like Lycurgus in _your_ story, was _hated of all the gods_."
Consulting Mr. Leaf's note (vi. 200), I find that this is also the
opinion of Ameis: Mr. Leaf thinks it "too far-fetched." The distance
is sixty lines (vi. 140-200). In his translation of the passage in
Leaf, Lang, and Myers, Mr. Leaf translates, with Monro, "even he," even
Bellerophon, whom the gods had loved. Surely no textual quotations by
Homer from the so-called "Eumelus" need be imagined.

[10] _R. G. E._ pp. 164, 165.

[11] Pausanias, I. I.

[12] _Ibid._ iv. 4. 1.

[13] Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. iii. p. 2, citing Clemens, _Strom_. i.
398, ed. Potter.

[14] Eumelus in Kinkel, p. 188.

[15] Pausanias, ii. 3. 10.

[16] Pausanias, ii. i. i.

[17] _Ibid_. ii. 3. 10, 11.

[18] "Medea," Reseller's _Lexikon_, ii. 2. 2492.

[19] Seeliger, Roscher's _Lexikon_, ii. 2. 2496.

[20] Roscher, _Lexikon_, vol. i. 342.

[21] _Iliad_, vi. 171.

[22] "Pegasus is omitted by Homer as a monster," Mr. Murray justly
observes (_R. G. E_. p. 162, note I). No other poet omitted "monsters";
not Pindar for one, or Hesiod.

[23] _R. G. E_. p. 163.

[24] _Theogony_, 956-962.

[25] _Odyssey_, x. 137.

[26] _Odyssey_, xii. 57-62.

[27] _Theogony_, 1011-1015.

[28] Roscher, _Lexikon_, vol. i. pp. 108, 109.

[29] Mimnermus, Fragment 11. Bergk.

[30] _Argonautica_, iii. 309 ff.

[31] _Iliad_, vii. 468, 469, xxi. 41, xxiii. 747.

[32] _Pythian Odes_, iv.

[33] _R. G. E._ pp. 185, 186. All this comes from the _Aethiopis_,
or _Sack of Ilios_, followed by Chairemon in his tragedy, _Achilles
Thersitoctonos_, with scholia on the Philoctetes (445), Quintus
Smyrnaeus (of the fourth century a.d.). Dictys Cretensis, the prose
compiler of the second century a.d., does not mention Thersites.

[34] do not enter into the theory of his relations (1) to the
_pharmakos_, driven out of Athens as a human scape-goat, and whipped,
perhaps sacrificed; or (2) with Theritas, a name of Ares in Laconia,
according to Pausanias. Homer in his Achaean way never alludes to the
cruel and lewd, or magical affair of the _pharmakos_.

[35] _Iliad_, ii. 246-248. "I deem that no baser-born man (χερειότερον)
came with Agamemnon." χερειότερον "virtually = χερείονα, see Iliad, i.
80" (Leaf), where a king is contrasted with ἀνδρὶ χέρηῑ, "a meaner man"
(Leaf, in Leaf, Lang, Myers, _The Iliad_, p. 3).

[36] The Cyclic story also demonstrates its un-Homeric origin by
dragging in "the hocus-pocus of purification" (_R. G. E._ p. 134). But
Usener, seeing, in Sir Walter Scott's words, "further into a millstone
than the nature of the millstone permits," makes Thersites = Theritas =
Enyalios (Hesychius), and suggests that two sacrifices by Spartan lads
to Enyalius and Achilles, after a fight with fisticuffs, and ducking of
the vanquished, may be "the ritual form of the old battle of Achilles
and Thersites" =(?) "the common annual rites of the slaying of Winter
by Summer, or of one vegetation god by another" (_R. G. E_. pp. 186,
187). There was not much of a "battle" between Thersites and Achilles!
The millstone, really, has a hole through it. To Homer, Thersites is a
nobody. His rank, relationships, and fate are due to the later "Cyclic
mania," and to "poetic justice."

[37] Will nobody write it?

[38] _R. G. E._ p. 196.

[39] Pausanias, ix. 18

[40] _Iliad_, xiii. 185, xv. 329, 638.

[41] xv. 636-644.

[42] Bethe, p. 15.

[43] _Iliad_, xiii. 801-832 and _passim_.

[44] _R. G. E_. p. 197.




CHAPTER XVII

THE STORY OF PALAMEDES


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_. The _Cypria_, like the Attic
traditions used by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and the Sophists,
such as Gorgias, displays a strange hatred of Homer's favourite hero,
the taker of the city, Odysseus. He, in most of the plays where he
appears, is a peculiarly mean character: in the _Iliad_ he is as noble
and resolute as he is sagacious: in the _Odyssey_ he is _ruse_, because
his desperate situation, alone in a throng of foes, requires cunning.
Only Agamemnon once, in one of his tempers, accused Odysseus of "evil
wiles" _(Iliad_, iv. 339). Professor Mahaffy has offered an explanation
of "the degradation of Odysseus" (and of other Homeric heroes) "in
Greek literature" very different from that which I shall venture to
suggest.[1] Mr. Mahaffy thinks that "the Attic standard of morality,
the standard of Aeschylus and Euripides ... was higher and not lower
than that of the Ionic court poets, and that the degradation of the
Homeric heroes was partly owing to a moral advance, and not a moral
decay, in the Greek nation." But what has Homer to do with the morality
of Ionic court poets, about whom we have no information, unless the
Cyclic poets were court poets? In Mr. Mahaffy's opinion, the Sicilian
Epicharmus began the attacks on "Odysseus the Knave." "At all epochs
and among all Greeks, lying and dishonesty were prominent vices."
Certainly they were in historic times. Traitors were too well known
to historic Greece, but Homer seems never to have heard of treachery.
Odysseus has his ruses in the _Odyssey_, and therefore, Mr. Mahaffy
thinks, the Greeks, knowing their own weak point, falseness, attacked
it through Odysseus. Epicharmus began the assault, Pindar followed
Epicharmus, and, in the Nemean Odes, vii. viii., belittled Odysseus
(all in the interests of honesty), while Sophocles in the _Philoctetes_
carries on the crusade.

It did not occur to Mr. Mahaffy that the crusade began, long before
Epicharmus and Pindar, in the Ionian _Cypria_. In the Nemean Odes, vii.
viii., Pindar naturally belittled Odysseus, to whom were awarded the
arms of Achilles, which the hero, Aias, desired to win. Athens always
claimed Aias as a friend and ally, wherefore, and in pursuance, as we
shall see, of the feud of Palamedes, Attic poets favoured Aias and
maligned his successful rival. They also backed Philoctetes against
these "tyrants," the Atridae; they had no grudge against Achilles,
though they could not represent his chivalry. Mr. Mahaffy does not
mention Palamedes at all, does not see that the Athenians take up
the Ionian grudge, and is "somewhat impatient of all the fashionable
enthusiasm about Homer's grace, and refinement, and delicacy of
feeling."

It is to Ionia, and not, primarily, to the advanced morality of
republican Athens, morality certainly not Homeric, that we must trace
the degradation of Odysseus in the literature of later Greece and of
Rome. Ionia followed the example of the base-born Thersites (_Iliad,_
ii. 220). The true cause of this degradation is that Ionia possessed,
in Palamedes, a hero infinitely wiser, braver, and more learned and
inventive than Odysseus, and that the death of this very perfect
knight, of whom Homer never says a word, is attributed to the jealousy
and cruelty of the Ithacan, and of his chosen companion-in-arms,
Diomede. All this appeared in the _Cypria,_ and, later, Attic wits
perhaps improved on the story, and implicated the Atridae and the whole
Achaean host, as well as Odysseus, in the guilt of maligning, falsely
accusing, condemning, and stoning Palamedes. It was to punish this
collective guilt, we shall see, that Zeus, in the _Cypria_, detached
Achilles from the Achaean cause.

Manifestly all this tale, known to us first in the _Cypria_, is
un-Achaean and un-Homeric, and the question arises, did Homer know
the story? If he did, and if he believed it, he deliberately chose
to ignore it, and to represent Odysseus and Diomede in the most
favourable light. But did Homer know about Palamedes; when Homer sang
had Palamedes his place in the Trojan "saga"? I think not, for reasons
to be given. To understand the subject, we must examine what remains
of the tale of Palamedes as found in the fragments and epitome of the
_Cypria_, and then consider the later expansions and additions.

The _Cypria_ takes Menelaus to Crete before Helen's abduction; and in
the legend as arranged in a late age in the prose of Dictys Cretensis
(made in the first or second century A.D.), Agamemnon also is in Crete,
with Palamedes, son of Clymene and Nauplius of Nauplia, on business
connected with the inheritance of Atreus. How far Dictys follows the
_Cypria_, how far he works here on other legends, and how far he
invents, it is not easy to be certain. The _Cypria_ certainly yielded
the fact that, when Helen eloped, Menelaus was not at home, but in
Crete. Probably the _Cypria_ explained why he went thither.[2] The
real hero of Dictys and, I suggest, of the _Cypria_ is Palamedes, a
character unknown to or ignored by Homer, but of high importance in
post-Homeric Ionian and Athenian poetry. In all of these Palamedes is
the best man in council and in the field, and is the victim of Odysseus
(a very base scoundrel) and of the Atridae. It is clear that Palamedes
occupied a prominent place in the _Cypria_, for a "part or rhapsody" in
it "appears to have borne the special title of _Palamedeia_."[3]

This rhapsody must have contained much information which is not
preserved in the summary of the _Cypria_. About Palamedes we learn no
more from the brief epitome and scanty fragments of the _Cypria_ than
that (1) he detected and unmasked the feigned madness of Odysseus, when
he tried to shirk the summons to the Trojan war; (2) that Palamedes was
treacherously drowned, when angling, by the Homeric companions-in-arms,
Odysseus and Diomede. (3) According to the _Cypria_, the Achaean host,
once landed in Asia, was perishing for lack of supplies, but Palamedes
brought to the camp the three fairy daughters of the Delian priest
of Apollo, who magically produced corn, wine, and oil.[4] This silly
_Märchen_ about the fairy gifts of the three girls could never have
been introduced into an Epic by Homer, but it is quite in the manner of
the Cyclics.

According to the account of Trojan matters in prose, by the Greek
rhetorician, the pseudo-Dictys Cretensis, who rationalises everything,
Palamedes was successful as head of the Commissariat, and obtained
supplies when Odysseus failed. This is merely Dictys' way of narrating
the _Märchen_ of the girls with fairy gifts, and it was in jealousy
of Palamedes' success that Odysseus, aided by Diomede, slew the hero,
according to Dictys, treacherously, in the manner of the _Märchen_ of
Jean de l'Ours. According to Dictys, Odysseus and Diomede persuaded
the guileless Palamedes that there was a hoard of gold at the bottom of
a pit, induced him to descend thither, and then threw down stones and
slew him. This is not, as we shall see, the Attic tradition, though in
that, also, there is a fatal hoard of gold, and Palamedes is slain by
stoning.

The Athenian tragedians either improved on the story in the _Cypria_,
or found another legend, according to which Palamedes was treacherously
accused of treachery, was tried, condemned, and stoned by the Achaean
host: Odysseus being the contriver of the conspiracy. Thus Socrates, in
the _Apologia_, is made by Plato to say that in the next world he hopes
to meet Palamedes, and the Telamonian Aias, and others who died by an
unjust judgment.[5]

Each of the three great Attic tragedians wrote a play on Palamedes; and
Virgil makes Sinon speak of his unjust betrayal and death.[6] Aias, in
Quintus Smyrnaeus, brands Odysseus with his guilt in the matter: "Thou
didst destroy the divine Palamedes, far thy superior in strength and in
counsel."[7] The current Athenian story was that Odysseus contrived to
have an arrow, with a letter attached to it, shot towards Palamedes;
that Odysseus got possession of the letter, forged by himself but
purporting to be addressed by Priam, to Palamedes. Priam thanked him
for his services as a spy, and promised a gift of gold. This gold was
then hidden by Odysseus in the hut of Palamedes, and then discovered by
him who hid it.[8] Agamemnon was implicated in the job.

In the _Palamedes_ of Euripides the hero is not unavenged. His brother
Oiax writes the shameful story of the Achaean treachery and cruelty,
which ruined and destroyed Palamedes, on a number of _pinakes,_ or
tablets, like that which contained the fatal letter of Proetus in the
_Iliad_. These tablets Oiax threw into the sea; some of them drifted to
Nauplia, and the friends of Palamedes, by altering the guiding beacons
on the Greek coast, caused the shipwreck and death of many Achaeans on
their homeward way.[9]

Manifestly the whole scope of this Ionian and Attic favourite, the
story of Palamedes, is non-Achaean, and was not likely to be known to
Homer.

In Dictys, Palamedes is the true hero, and on every occasion takes
the lead; while Odysseus, the scoundrel, is an inveterate forger of
letters. By forged letters he induced Clytaemnestra to send Iphigeneia
to marry Achilles at Aulis, his real purpose being to have her
sacrificed to Artemis. In the _Cypria_, Iphigeneia is sent, on a false
and foolish pretence of marriage, to Aulis; whether or not, in the
_Cypria_, Odysseus managed the plot by forged letters, as in Dictys, we
do not know.

Through Dictys and through Virgil the Palamedes legend reached the
poets and romancers of the Middle Ages: there is even a Palamedes, a
paynim knight, at Arthur's court. Thus in Roman times, and much more in
the long mediaeval period of Homer's eclipse, Odysseus, Diomede, and
the Atridae were under a cloud, Ionian in origin, and Athenian. The
Ionians being "Pelasgians of the seacoast" (at least in the opinion of
Herodotean Greece), and Palamedes being a man of Nauplia, on the sea,
while the town was leagued with Athens, in the amphictyony of Calauria,
he was naturally a favourite of Ionian and Athenian poets. In him they
had a hero, the wisest and best, who perished from Achaean envy of his
greatness.

Now, did Homer know anything of Nauplia and of Palamedes? Was this
legend current in his time? If so, he ignored it, as Achaean poetry
ignores all things Ionian. It was necessary for the Ionian poets to
kill Palamedes just before the opening of the _Iliad_, for into that
epic they could neither foist him nor anything that was theirs. In
Shakespeare's _Troilus and Cressida_, Palamedes is fighting hard in
what answers to the Iliadic battle of Book xi.

I am inclined under correction to suppose that Palamedes was originally
no warrior under Ilios, but a Culture Hero of the "Pelasgians of the
seacoasts," the Culture Hero of a fairly advanced civilisation. He was
credited with the discovery of written characters,[10] or, at least,
of a syllabary; or he taught the Greeks to use Phoenician characters
in the Ionian alphabet. He also discovered arithmetic, Weights and
Measures; Astronomy; the reckoning of Time; military discipline,--with
post-Homeric centurions;--sentinels, fire-signals; a number of games,
such as draughts, and so forth. Homer knows nothing of such Culture
Heroes in the Achaean camp, where they are manifestly out of place.

It has been suggested that Palamedes is Palamaon, an ancient understudy
of Hephaestus; παλάμημα being _τέχνη_, art, or handicraft, and
_πάλαμις_ the Salaminian equivalent of τεχνίτης. Palamedes is properly
"the Inventor." I suggest that, in the mixed multitude of Ionia, poets
were found who simply inserted the old Culture Hero among the Achaean
heroes, and asserted his supremacy in counsel and in war; while, as
has been said, it was impossible to bring him into the _Iliad,_ so
he was made the martyr of the jealousy of Homer's bravest and wisest
Achaeans at the moment just before the _Iliad_ begins. In the opinion
of Socrates, Aias, no less than Palamedes, was the victim of an unjust
verdict, a belief which he never found in Homer. But Aias was claimed
as an ally and neighbour of Athens; Palamedes was of a seacoast city
allied with Athens; both heroes, therefore, were useful links between
the Ionians and Attica and the Trojan affair, in which, as in the
legendary affairs of Thebes and Calydon, the Ionians had no part,
except what they invented for themselves.

They imposed their version on Rome and on the Middle Ages, but we
repeat, they could not get a reference to Palamedes into the _Iliad_.
Among all its alleged borrowings from the Cyclics, the _Iliad_ never
borrowed a hint of Palamedes.[11]

After thus examining what is known about Palamedes, we ask, is it more
probable that the _Cypria_ is older than the _Iliad_, and based on a
totally different Achaean tradition about events and heroes; or is
the _Cypria_ later than the _Iliad_, and even intended as a kind of
antidote to that epic? One thing is clear, the _Cypria_ is Ionian, not
Achaean, if human sacrifice is Ionian rather than Achaean. Students who
think the _Cypria_ the older poem might perhaps argue thus: Many of
the mixed peoples who made up the Ionians had ancestors at the Trojan
war. Among these were Minyans, Boeotians, and Cretans. Their legends
may have had an _Achaean_ version of events which was not Homer's
version, but was hostile to Odysseus, Diomede, and the Atridae. This
version, Ionised, is given in the _Cypria._ Probably this version was
continued (though we have no such continuation) from the resolve of
Zeus to punish the host for the death of Palamedes: and the subsequent
account, in this version of the war, would take no notice of the Wrath
of Achilles about Briseis. Or, if that were assumed as the cause of the
Wrath, Zeus embroiled Achilles and Agamemnon without any prayer from
Thetis. Probably in this version, as in Dictys, Achilles was in love
with Polyxena, and was treacherously slain while wooing her. This is
the statement of the scholiast on Lycophron, and of Dictys, though it
is contrary to the Cyclic _Aethiopis,_ which follows the _Iliad_; Paris
and Apollo slew Achilles, as Hector prophesied, in the Scaean gate.
On this theory Polyxena was sacrificed to the dead Achilles precisely
because they loved each other.

Thus the theory might go on, explaining that _this_ Achaean version
(wholly unknown to us), with Palamedes and all, was crushed by the
supreme popularity of a later poem, the _Iliad_, but lived in an
underground way till it revived, very late, in Lycophron, Dictys, and
the rest. The details of ghosts, human sacrifices, hero-worship, and
purification by blood (all un-Homeric), will be genuinely old Achaean,
merely suppressed by some persons of taste who, later, "edited" the
_Iliad_. In this case these details of religion were common to the
Achaeans and the earlier populations, _not_ peculiar to "the conquered
races." They are Achaean, but were expurgated by the makers of _our_
Homer, why, and when, and how, I do not conjecture.

I have here invented as coherent a hypothesis as I can imagine to
account for Palamedes consistently with the theory that the _Cypria_ is
older than the _Iliad_. But the fact that Palamedes, "the inventor," is
clearly, in origin, a Culture Hero, like Prometheus and Daedalus, does
to me seem fatal to the hypothesis which I have sketched. If he had
been, originally, just another such warrior as Achilles or Idomeneus,
popular fancy would never have converted him into a being who won men
from savagery and invented arts and sciences.


[1] _Hermathena_, vol. i. p. 265 _et seqq_.

[2] Kinkel, p. 17.

[3] Mure, _History of Greek Literature_, vol. ii. p. 281, citing
Düntzer, p. 15. Welcker, _Ep. Cycl._, pt. i. p. 459.

[4] Schol. ad _Lycophr_, 570 _sqq_.; cf. Sophocles's _Palamedes_, Fr.
438. N2. _Cypria_, Kinkel, pp. 20, 30.

[5] Plato, _Apologia_, 41 B. Compare Scholion to Euripides, _Orestes,_
432.

[6] _Aeneid_, ii. 81.

[7] _Post-Homerica_, v. 198.

[8] Servius on _Aeneid_, ii. 81. Hyginus fr. _Fab_. 105.

[9] Scholiast, _Aristoph. Thesmophor_. 768.

[10] Stesichorus, Fr. 4 B. Schol. Eurip., _Orestes_, 432. Euripides,
_Palamedes_, Fr. 578, N.

[11] For the learning about Palamedes, see Roscher's _Lexikon_, _s.v.
Palamedes_.




CHAPTER XVIII

HOMER AND THE CYCLIC POEMS


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, very much has been written.[1]
Into that question we need not enter, as we here call "Cyclic" all
these old epics on the Trojan theme (outside of the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_) of which we have only fragments, in quotations by later
Greek writers, and in fragmentary epitomes. Though these remains,
including the prose of the Greek authors who cite and comment on them,
occupy but forty-five pages of a book in small octavo,[2] the fragments
suffice to prove that the lost epics are far apart as the poles from
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ in taste, tone, narrative art, descriptions
of religious rites, customs, usages, and treatment of the heroic
characters. This was plain to Greek commentators, and is even more
obvious to modern criticism.

The questions, therefore, arise, were these Cyclic epics older in
_matter_ (as representing a more archaic tradition) than our Homer;
are they older, or more recent, in _composition_, or are they and our
Homer coeval? Mr. Monro expresses decisively the general opinion on
these points. The Cyclic poems are by "the poets who carried on the
traditions of Homeric art in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C."[3]
He collects from them many incidents, beliefs, usages, and proofs of
geographical knowledge "of a post-Homeric type."[4] Of these, from one
poem, the _Cypria_, he selects five sets of examples. These represent
(i) human sacrifice; (2) geographical knowledge much beyond that
exhibited in _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_; (3) interest in magic, which is
un-Homeric; (4) the introduction of a non-Homeric hero, Palamedes, of
the first rank, of essential importance, and the "Cause of Wrath" of
Zeus against the Achaeans; (5) hero-worship; (6) I add, introduction
of a goddess unknown to Homer, but "a concrete figure of ancient
Attic religion;"[5] (7) introduction of the puerile fairy element in
_Märchen_ or folk-tales. Of this trait, and of magical incidents, there
are several examples. (8) loves of gods and goddesses, who take the
forms of various animals. From other Cyclic poems he selects other
instances of these non-Homeric types, and also un-Homeric apparitions
of men who have been duly burned and buried; and cases of the
purification of homicides by blood of pigs, wholly unknown to Homer.

All these traits of the Cyclic poems, with others, such as the
invention of pseudo-historic genealogies, as of Thersites, are
non-Homeric. Some, such as the genealogy of Thersites, due to the
_manie cyclique_, with the extended geographical outlook, are
_post_-Homeric. But the others, the religious and magical notions--
hero-worship, the ghost belief, blood-purification,--though later in
record than our Homer (we assume), are even earlier in development, and
are beliefs and rites of the pre-Homeric population. (See "Who were the
Ionians?" and Appendix, On "Expurgation.")

Now much confusion is caused by the term "old." The poems earlier _in
composition_ may represent Achaean ideas then new to Greece; the poems
later in composition may, and do, contain ideas old in Greece, but
alien to Homer's Achaeans. Meanwhile, Mr. Monro, as we saw, regards
the actual Cyclic poems as works of poets of the eighth to seventh
centuries B.C., who carried "on the traditions of Homeric art" in
Ionia. This means that they take up Achaean themes and traditions and
heroic characters, and use them in new poems "composed with direct
reference to the _Iliad_."[6] They lead up to the _Iliad_ by a long
chronicle of previous events in the _Cypria_, and continue the Homeric
narrative in their other epics. But they interlard the narrative with
their own rites, beliefs, their own Attic goddess (Nemesis of Rhamnus),
and their own non-Achaean heroes, such as the Attic sons of Theseus,
and the great Nauplian, Palamedes. They also add silly elements of
_Märchen_, and pseudo-historic genealogies. They carve and cook the
great Achaean joint, and serve up with Attic and Ionian sauce and
trimmings.

This is natural, for the Attic people, of the pre-Achaean population,
had not, as far as I know, any epic tradition of their own. They knew
that they were not engaged in any one of the alleged great collective
efforts and expeditions with which the Achaeans credited themselves.
Some legends were dynastic adaptations of _Märchen_, with kings and
princesses changed into birds; or accounts of their relations with
Thrace, or explanations of the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries.
They had, too, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, an adventure of
an individual hero of _Märchen_; but that ran contrary to all Achaean
and Cretan traditions, as we have seen. The Cyclic poets were mere
imitators of the Achaean epic: _epic_ tradition of their own, the
people of Attica and their Ionian colonists (confessedly mixed with a
mongrel multitude) had none.

Mr. Leaf takes the same view. He speaks of the Cyclic epics as "the
imitative poems which dealt with the old Tale of Troy, and essayed to
complete Homer."[7]

But a contradictory opinion seems to be held by von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, and, as I understand, by Mr. Murray. The
celebrated German scholar argued thus: Before criticism arose in
Greece, almost all ancient Epic poetry, and the Hymns, were attributed
to "Homer." As early as Herodotus, however, we find that historian
regarding the _Cypria_ (a chronicle of the whole events before the
opening of the _Iliad_) as not by the author of the _Iliad_.

As time went on, and criticism advanced, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_
alone were assigned to Homer, while the Cyclic poems were attributed
to various authors, such as Arctinus, Stasinus, and Lesches. The
attributions are late, various, perhaps never "evidential"; but
criticism came to recognise our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ as alone Homeric.
The other epics, the Cyclics, were thought to be of a later age, and by
inferior hands.

This view was evolved by Greek critics from Herodotus to Aristotle and
Aristarchus.

On the other hand, according to Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Homer and
the Cyclic poems were all qualitatively equivalent, and more or less
contemporaneous. A statement of this hypothesis, which deliberately
rejects the views of Greek criticism, shall be quoted from von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.[8]

"The epos" (the whole mass of early epic poetry) "is by Homer," so says
tradition. "The criticism of the subsequent centuries broke off from
the mass of epos one portion after another: one after another must go,
because it is inconsistent with the conception which has been framed of
Homer. At last the _Iliad_ alone abides. The only step that remained to
be taken was to reject (_athetiren_) the _Iliad_ also: this step the
ancients refused to take, for fear of falling into the abyss. But the
step has been taken long ago. The _Iliad_, as it stands, is not the
work of one man, or of one century: it is not _one_ work at all. The
_Iliad_ is nothing but a _κυκλικὸν ποίημα_. But we are in no abyss, no
bottomless pit. On the other hand, we regain firm ground, which ancient
criticism had in childish rashness abandoned. The _Iliad_ is just as
much and as little Homeric as the _Cypria_. There is no qualitative
difference between _ὁμηρικόν_ and _κυκλικόν_."

Now that careless child, Aristotle, was of a different opinion. He
saw that the _Iliad_ varies absolutely in nature from some of the
Cyclics, and the fact is conspicuous. The _Iliad_ also varies, as the
scholiasts observed, from the Cyclics historically; varies in manners,
rites, religion, taste, and geographical knowledge. All these facts are
absolutely demonstrable. So great a critic as Aristotle, and, we may
add, so unprejudiced a critic, for he lived long before Wolf, could
not but remark the essential differences between the _Iliad_, on the
one hand, and some of the Ionian Cyclic poems on the other, as far as
_quality_ is concerned. Into the differences which archaeology and
anthropology detect, Aristotle did not enter, for he was writing on
the Art of Poetry. Unity in a poem, he said, is not obtained merely by
the selection of a single hero (the _Cypria_ is so far like _Vanity
Fair_ that it is a chronicle "without a hero," unless the hero be Paris
or Palamedes). _Unity of action_ is, says Aristotle, essential to an
Epic, and Homer observes this unity, grouping all the events round one
_motif_, the Wrath of Achilles, or the Return of Odysseus. The _Cypria_
has no such unity; it simply ends where the _Iliad_ begins.

Unity, concentration, "with beginning, middle, and end," is as
necessary, Aristotle holds, to epic as to dramatic poetry. The Trojan
war, to be sure, has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but the whole
could not be treated in an Epic under poetic conditions of space. One
_motif_ is therefore selected by Homer, with diversifying episodes.
The author of the _Cypria_ did not adopt the true method of epic: in
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are subjects but for one or two tragedies;
whereas the _Cypria_, extending over many years and dealing with many
regions, yields subjects for many, and the _Little Iliad_ for eight or
more plays, which are enumerated.[9]

We would not now state the case precisely in the terms of Aristotle:
and the Attic tragedians possibly chose so many topics from the
Cyclics, so few from the _Iliad_, partly because the Athenians, as
chiefs of the Ionian name, preferred Ionian versions of the legends;
while, as Republicans, they used the Ionian term for Agamemnon and
Menelaus as "tyrants"; and kept up the singular Ionian feud against
Odysseus, preferring to him Aias, a neighbour of Athens; Philoctetes,
oppressed by the "tyrants"; and Palamedes, the victim of the tyrants
and of their minion Odysseus.

Such were the tastes of the Athenians; but we see that Aristotle
observes the essential difference in poetic _quality_ between the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, which are Epics, while some of the Cyclic poems
are mere metrical chronicles.

The difference between epic and versified chronicle is, I think,
that which divides Barbour's _The Brus_ and the _Wallace_ of Blind
Harry (poetical chronicles like the _Heracleis_, the late poem on the
history of Heracles), from epics like the _Chanson de Roland_ with
its one motive, "The Wrath of Ganelon," its origins and consequences.
Our _Iliad_, in Aristotle's opinion, then, is an epic; the _Cypria_,
the _Heracleis_, and so on, are _not_ epics, but rather are versified
chronicles. In Mr. Murray's opinion, too, the _Iliad_ is an epic, the
_Cypria_ is "an old chronicle poem." But this only proves, to his mind,
that the _Iliad_ is the further developed.[10] "They grew together
side by side" or centuries; but the _Iliad_, as we have it, is, he
thinks, of later and more accomplished art. Mr. Murray writes: "In its
actual working up, however, our _Iliad_ has reached a further stage of
development than the ordinary run of poetic chronicles, if I may use
the term."[11]

Now, as far as analogy serves our turn, the "poetic chronicle" is in a
_later_ stage of development than the epic. Thus Barbour's _The Brus_,
or the Argonautic poem of the very late Apollonius, is in a much later
stage of development than the old Germanic epics, or _Beowulf_, which
selects two main events from the career of the hero. Again, versified
chronicles in France are much later in development than the epic, the
_Chanson de Roland_, "The Wrath of Ganelon."

However, as analogies are never satisfactory, let us be content to note
that the _Iliad_ confessedly differs in character from the _Cypria_, as
the epic differs from the verse-chronicle. On this point von Wilamowitz
Moellendorff appears to agree, as does Mr. Murray, who studies the
subject in the spirit of the learned German. To repeat his statement,
he writes, "These various books or masses of tradition in verse form
were growing up side by side for centuries."[12]

Now, "masses of tradition" certainly grew up through many centuries,
before and after Homer's time; but the _Iliad_ is not merely "a mass
of tradition." It is a splendid work of art, fashioned, in our view,
by a great poet, out of masses of tradition, while what we know of
the _Cypria_ is a compilation, partly from hints in the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_, with popular tales or _Märchen_ thrown in; and is animated
by a distinct _tendenz_, a partisan desire to debase the favourite
heroes of Homer, and to exalt a hero, Palamedes, who, to myself, seems
intended to represent the Ionian share in the Trojan war, neglected as
it is by Homer. To justify these criticisms as most probable on the
evidence, it is necessary to offer an analysis of the _Cypria_, as far
as its contents are known to us from fragments and epitomes.

The _Cypria_ opened thus: Zeus takes counsel on the problem of
over-population. He "resolves to relieve of her burden Earth that
nourishes all, by raising the great strife of the Ilian war, that death
may lighten the weight: the heroes were slain in Troyland, _but the
Will of Zeus was accomplished._"[13]

The following account of the early part of the _Cypria_ is given by
the Scholiast in the famous "Venice A" manuscript of the _Iliad_. He
enters here into more details than Proclus in his epitome of the work.
"They say that Earth, burdened by the abundance of men, all impious as
they were, prayed to Zeus to be relieved. Zeus then caused the Theban
war, whereby he destroyed many. Later again he called Momus (Mockery)
into council, 'the counsel of Zeus,' Homer styles it, though he might
have destroyed the human race altogether by deluges and thunderbolts.
But Momus prevented this, and suggested to Zeus the marriage of Thetis
with a mortal, and the begetting of a beautiful daughter from these two
causes arose war involving both Hellenes and barbarians, from which
time Earth was lightened of her burden, so many men were slain. The
narrative is by Stasinus, the author of the _Cypria_..."[14]

In this version Themis is not mentioned as the adviser of Zeus; perhaps
she suggested the Theban, and Momus the Trojan war.

In the epitome of Proclus, Eris (Strife) comes among the Gods at the
bridal feast of Peleus and Thetis. Of this feast one detail remains
in a fragment of the _Cypria,_ which the Scholiast gives in prose.
Cheiron the Centaur cut an ash-tree for a spear, as a wedding present
to Peleus. Athene polished it, and Hephaestus forged the point. This
spear, which Achilles alone could wield, is mentioned as the gift of
Cheiron to Achilles in the _Iliad_ (xvi. 143, 144, and xix. 389-90).
If, then, we find in the _Cypria_ decisive proof that there it is later
than the _Iliad_, we may suppose the author to borrow here from our
Homer, and to add the previous division of labour in the spear-making.
As a bronze-smith Hephaestus only makes the metal point of the weapon.
At the bridal feast, Eris rouses a dispute between Aphrodite, Athene,
and Hera as to superiority in beauty.

To return to the Epitome of Proclus. The three contending goddesses
are led by Hermes to Mount Ida, and Paris pronounces Aphrodite to be
the most beautiful; he has been won by her promise of Helen as his
wife. This is suggested by _Iliad_, xxiv. 29, 30, where the passage,
according to some, suggests that all three goddesses _wooed_ Paris, and
that he preferred Aphrodite. But this is wholly out of keeping with the
Greek conception of Hera and Athene; and the lines in _Iliad_, xxiv.,
must refer to the cause of the ferocity with which these two slighted
goddesses persecute Troy, though Athene was its patron. No other cause
has been adduced.

The counsel of Zeus could not have caused the Trojan war merely by
making the goddesses quarrel. It was necessary to beget "the beautiful
daughter," whom Aphrodite was to offer as a bride to Paris. According
to the Cypria, this fairest of women, Helen, wife of Menelaus, was
not the daughter of Zeus and Leda, but of Zeus and Nemesis; in Homer,
Nemesis is little more than the emotion of virtuous indignation, she
is not, as in the Cypria, a chaste and pretty nymph, "fair-tressed
Nemesis." Her does Zeus pursue and, says the inept author of the
Cypria, "the feelings of Nemesis were torn by shame and nemesis"
(indignation). Mr. Murray devotes eight pages to the ethical meaning
of Αὶδώς (shame) and of Νέμεσις (righteous indignation).[15] Surely
we must recognise a great difference in manner between Homer, to whom
nemesis means "righteous indignation," and the author of the _Cypria_,
to whom Nemesis is a fair-tressed nymph? Homer, it is true, knows
_themis_ as customary law, and _Themis_, a goddess. But _she_ is not
a fair-tressed being who flees from her lover in a series of animal
disguises.

Later Greeks, puzzled by the contending versions of our Homer and
of the _Cypria_, declared that Nemesis was, indeed, the mother of
Helen, but that Leda, wife of Tyndareus, was her foster-mother and
brought her up.[16] Meanwhile Nemesis, in the _Cypria_, is not a mere
personification of the sentiment of nemesis, or righteous indignation,
but is, as we know, "a concrete figure of ancient Attic tradition," "a
primitive goddess of Rhamnus," in Attica, associated with, or a local
form of, "the wild Artemis" of pre-Achaean religion, "with deep roots
in local worship." Nemesis had a famous statue at Rhamnus, attributed
by Pausanias to Pheidias; a fragment of the face, in the British
Museum, proves that it was at least of the school of Pheidias. She
held in her hand a spray of the apple-tree, an attribute of Aphrodite,
and the stag of Artemis was an ornament of her crown. She was also "a
queen over death and the dead," a chthonic characteristic.[17] The
Nemesis of Rhamnus was thus like the very primitive Artemis of Brauron
in Attica. At Smyrna, where the population was very mixed, Pausanias
mentions two Nemeses.[18]

We see that all this of Nemesis, in the _Cypria_, is at once apart as
the poles from the Nemesis of Homer, virtuous indignation personified,
and is also an Ionian celebration of an Attic goddess of the
pre-Achaean faith.

In the _Cypria_, Aphrodite, mother of Aeneas (in Homer), sends him with
Paris. Landing in Lacedaemon, Paris is welcomed by the brothers of
Helen, and in Sparta by Menelaus, who then sails to Crete. (Different
reasons for this voyage are given by later writers.) Paris then seduces
Helen, _who is brought to him by Aphrodite_ (as in _Iliad_, iii.);
_they take away property of Menelaus_ (as in _Iliad_, vii.). (The
_italics_ mark probable hints from the _Iliad_.)

The pair are wedded in Troy, where the story leaves them, and very
needlessly goes back to Lacedaemon. Here are Helen's brothers, Castor
and Polydeuces, who fall into a feud about cattle with Idas and
Lynceus, the keen-eyed. Lynceus is merely the Keen-Eye, who can see
through everything, a common personage in _Märchen._ The brothers of
Helen hide themselves in a hollow tree, but Lynceus climbs to the
crest of Mount Taygetus and "looks over all the isle of Pelops," that
is, Peloponnesus. Homer never speaks of the country as a geographical
unity, nor uses the word "Peloponnesus"; this is manifestly a
post-Homeric term.[19] Idas slays Castor; Polydeuces slays both
Lynceus and Idas, and Zeus assigns to Castor and Polydeuces immortality
on alternate days. This is wholly unknown to the _Iliad_, both heroes
are dead and buried in _Iliad_, iii. 243, 244. Their alternate
immortality with their divine honours, mentioned in _Odyssey_, xi.
298-304, may be an interpolation (a kind of footnote in verse); it
is, at all events, non-Iliadic. Homer knows the deaths of the two
brothers, at home in Lacedaemon: we cannot tell whether he knew about
the Keen-Eye of _Märchen_, Lynceus.

In the _Cypria_, Menelaus is now informed, in Crete, about the flight
of Helen: he returns to the isle of Pelops and consults Agamemnon about
collecting an army. Nestor, called to council, abounds in anecdotic
digressions (whether the author borrows this trait from the _Iliad_
or the _Iliad_ from him, it is not hard to guess!). Among Nestor's
themes--for he simply poured out stories--are Epopeus and his seduction
of the daughter of Lycus; Oedipous; the madness of Heracles; and the
tale of Theseus (whom Homer steadily avoids), and Ariadne. Theseus, as
an Athenian, is dear to the Ionian poet: Homer ignores him.

The Atridae go through Greece collecting the heroes. Odysseus feigns
madness with a view to shirking the war; he ploughs the sand, and
Palamedes detects his sanity by placing the child Telemachus in the
way of the plough. Here we have a hero, Palamedes, unknown to Homer,
and an equally unknown Odysseus who is a coward, but is baffled by
the superior wisdom of Palamedes. It is obvious that the poet of the
_Cypria_ is here introducing an un-Homeric character to serve his
private ends: his methods are unveiled in Chapter XVII., "The Story of
Palamedes."

The _Cypria_ now relates _the First gathering of the Greek forces
at Aulis_, with the story from the _Iliad_ of the serpent and the
sparrows, and the prophecy of Calchas. The ships, says the _Iliad_,
"had been gathering but a day or two at Aulis," and the host was at
a sacrifice, when a wonderful serpent came forth from the altar and
killed eight nestlings of a sparrow, with their mother. Zeus then
turned the serpent into a stone. Calchas prophesied, "we shall fight
nine years _there_ (_αῢθι_, at Troy), but take the city in the tenth
year."[20]

Such was Homer's opinion, the Greeks were warring in Troyland against
Ilios for nine years and more. But the author of the _Cypria_ desired
to fill up the nine years before the _Iliad_ opens in some way, and
this is how he did it. (Italics mark possible hints from Homer.)
_Learning from the Odyssey_ (xi. 519-521) _that Eurypylus, a Mysian
chief, son of Telephus, came to the aid of Troy after the death of
Achilles_, he makes the Achaeans land in Teuthrania, and supposing the
town to be Troy, they attack it. But Telephus comes to the rescue, and
is wounded by Achilles. A storm falls on the fleet, and the ships are
scattered. _Achilles arrives in Scyros and weds Deidameia_. The storm
that sends Achilles to marry and beget a son in Scyros was an easy
explanation of _Achilles' own statement_,[21] that he had a son at
Scyros.[22]

In the _Cypria_, Achilles later returns from Scyros to Argos,
apparently "Pelasgic Argos," that is, Phthia, to his home. The wounded
Telephus, as advised by prophecy, follows Achilles thither, and
Achilles' spear, or rust from the spear, in Dictys, heals the wound it
had inflicted: by "sympathetic magic," unknown to Homer. Achilles did
the healing, because it was prophesied that Telephus would pilot the
fleet to Troy; whereas, in Homer, Calchas directs the voyage.

The author of the _Cypria_, who is filling up his nine imaginary years
of the wanderings of the Greeks, now adopts the very stupid device of
mustering the scattered fleet at Aulis _for the second time_. This
enables him to please an Ionian audience by introducing their favourite
incident, the sacrifice of a princess: Attic traditions harp eternally
on this un-Homeric horror. Agamemnon shoots a stag, and boasts
himself a better shot than Artemis. The angry goddess sends a tempest
unceasing, the ships cannot sail, and Calchas (who dared not do such a
thing, _Iliad_, i. 78, 79) says that a daughter of Agamemnon must be
sacrificed, Iphigeneia. This name was, at least in later days, a name
of the homicidal Artemis of Tauris, on the north shore of the Euxine.
But Tauris, as Mr. Monro justly observes, was not known to Homer. In
the _Cypria_, Artemis substitutes a fawn for Iphigeneia, and carries
the maid "to the Tauroi," making her immortal. "This form of the
story," the form in the _Cypria_, "is necessarily later than the Greek
settlements on the northern coasts of the Euxine."[23] The connection
between Iphigeneia and a Tauric Artemis is thus late, un-Homeric, and
Ionian. Homer (_Iliad_, ix. 145) knows no Iphigeneia, but the daughters
of Agamemnon are Chrysothemis, Laodice, and Iphianassa. Even so early
a poet as Stesichorus could not account for Iphigeneia as a daughter
of Agamemnon. He therefore, says Pausanias, made her a foster-child
of Clytaemnestra, a child of Helen by Theseus (who, in Attic myth,
captured her), and Helen hands her baby over to the wife of Agamemnon.
Euphorion of Chalcis, Alexander of Pleuron, and the people of Argos
generally, maintained this theory, and at Argos they showed a temple
of Ilithyia, founded by Helen after her safe delivery![24] Tzetzes,
the father of nonsense, makes Iphigeneia the daughter of Agamemnon and
Chryseis; she is sacrificed, or threatened with sacrifice, during the
return from Troy.

However, the Ionian author of the _Cypria_ cannot deny himself an
allusion to human sacrifice. Iphigeneia was brought to Aulis, he says,
under the pretence that she was to wed Achilles. (See Euripides,
_Iphigeneia in Aulis_. He may be following the _Cypria_.) She was
tempted by letters forged by Odysseus, says Dictys Cretensis, who may
be following the _Cypria_.

The Greeks, the storm abating, sail to Tenedos, where _Philoctetes is
bitten by a snake and carried away to howl in Lemnos_. This might be
taken from _Iliad_, ii. 718-725. _At Troy on landing, the Greeks lose
Protesilaus,_ slain by Hector. Here again the _Iliad_ may supply the
fact, not naming Hector. The author of the _Cypria_ has now, we see,
filled up his empty nine years by various expedients and delays. He
next tells of the embassy to ask for the return of Helen and the stolen
property; the embassy he could get from _Iliad_, iii. 204-207: _a
subsequent fight at the wall of Troy_ from _Iliad_, vi. 435-439, where
it is described briefly by Andromache.

At what precise period the Greek commissariat took the form of
three girls with fairy gifts, who produced corn, wine, and oil, is
uncertain; but the incident was in the _Cypria_, on the authority of
Pherecydes.[25]

The _Cypria_ says that Aphrodite contrived an interview between Helen
and Achilles, Thetis was chaperon, and that Achilles restrained the
Greeks, who wished to go home. _That Achilles sacked Lyrnessus and
Pedasus, and sent Lykaon captive to Lemnos_, was to be read in the
_Iliad_ (xx. 92, xxi. 55 ff.), where also the story of Briseis and
Chryseis, given in the _Cypria_, was to be found. But not in the
_Iliad_ was Palamedes, with his murder by Odysseus and Diomede, whence,
in the _Cypria_, came the will of Zeus to sunder Achilles from the
Achaean host.[26]

We now perceive how much of his material the Ionian author of
the _Cypria_ could obtain from out Homer. We note the marks of
non-Achaeanism and lateness, and of Ionian geographical knowledge, in
the reference to Tauris; in the Attic Nemesis; in the per-sonifications
of moral qualities; in the intended human sacrifice; in the _Märchen_;
in the telling of the tale of Theseus and Ariadne; in the hero-worship;
and in the introduction of the Nauplian anti--Odyssean Palamedes.
The lateness of the poem declares itself also in the naming of the
Peloponnesus. The use of very childish _Märchen_ is un-Homeric: Homer
uses _Märchen_ to better purpose. (See "Homer and the Saga.")

       *       *       *       *       *

Perhaps few who have had the patience to read through this tedious
analysis of the vast and wandering metrical pseudo-chronicle, the
_Cypria_, with its marks of bad taste, Ionicism, and lateness, will
maintain that, in character, it is on a level with our Homer, or is in
age contemporary with his society.

Weary as is the task, we must in conscience expose the similar lateness
and Ionic character of the other Cyclic poems on the Trojan affairs.

The authorship of the _Aethiopis_ was attributed to Arctinus of
Miletus. Tradition called him "Homer's pupil."[27] As condensed in the
summary of Proclus, the _Aethiopis_ was a mere _doppelgänger_ of the
_Iliad_. Taking up the tale after Hector's death, and under the shadow
of Hector's prophecy of the doom of Achilles, "in the day when Paris
and Phoebus Apollo slay thee in the Scaean gate,"[28] the _Aethiopis_
fills out the story.

The Amazon, Penthesilea, comes to aid Troy, and is slain by Achilles,
who is stirred by pity for the beauty of his victim. For this Thersites
taunts him, and he slays the wretch: so he needs purification, _in
accordance with Ionian ideas_.

The _Aethiopis_ went on to mark the usual distinction between the
Homeric and Ionian epic. Diomede took up the blood-feud for Thersites,
and, in Homeric law, Achilles must have paid the blood-wyte, or gone
into exile, or "tholed the feud." Even the Scholiast[29] knew that this
was the Homeric (as it was the Icelandic) law. But the Ionian makes
Achilles sail to Lesbos, to sacrifice to Apollo, Artemis, and Leto, and
be purified (in pig's blood probably) by Odysseus.

Thus the Ionian makes us certain that he was of an un-Homeric state
of society. He dates himself in similar fashion, when he makes Memnon
(who, as in the _Odyssey_, slays Antilochus) receive after death
the gift of immortality; and when he makes Thetis carry the body of
Achilles (burned in the _Odyssey_) to be the worshipped hero of the
isle of Leuke in the Euxine. There, when Ionian colonists reached the
Euxine, Achilles became a ruling religious hero, recognised by Alcaeus
(Fr. 49). "The Locrians in Italy," according to Pausanias, had a cult
of Aias, whose armed ghost wounded Leonymus of Croton in battle. (In
post-Homeric Greece the ghosts of heroes appeared in mortal wars, as
St. James fought for Cortes against the Aztecs. Homer could conceive
no such folly.) The Delphic oracle dispatched Leonymus to Leuke, where
he found Achilles happily married to Helen, who sent by Leonymus a
message to the poet Stesichorus, that had libelled her. Patroclus and
Antilochus were with Achilles in Leukê, etc. etc.[30]

If the _Aethiopis_ is earlier than these Ionian colonies, if Leuke in
fable meant "the isle of light," then the colonists identified the
Euxine isle with the isle of light, and so worshipped the dead Achilles
of Leuke. The Ionian trading cities, of which Miletus was chief, had
begun to adopt the new religious ideas that grew up, after the Homeric
age, in honour of the national heroes.[31] It is more probable that
the Ionians had never dropped the rites and religions of the conquered
races, and merely added Achilles to Erechtheus. They had no spite
against Achilles, who had never, like Agamemnon and Diomede, been their
master.

For the rest, the story of the _Aethiopis_ is conducted on the lines of
the _Iliad_, as far as the events included in the poems, ending with
the death of Achilles in the Scaean gate, permit imitation; and all
concludes with a lament or _regret_, a funeral, and funeral games, as
in the _Iliad_.

The _Little Iliad_ contains several main incidents, of which seven
were, or may have been, expansions of hints in the _Odyssey_ and
_Iliad_. The additions are the theft of the Palladium, a kind of fetich
ignored by Homer; the magical power of the arrows of Philoctetes over
the fate of Troy; the introduction of Sinon, as followed by Virgil in
the _Aeneid_; and a long story about Aethra, mother of Theseus and
slave of Helen in Troy, and about her grandsons, sons of Theseus, whose
presence in the Achaean host is unknown to Homer. In _Iliad_, iii. 144,
Helen has, in an interpolated line, an attendant, "Aethra, daughter of
Pittheus." This was enough for the Ionian poets; for, as Aethra was
the name of the mother of Theseus, "naturally the later poets took
advantage of it in order to find a place for the Attic heroes in the
main body of epic narrative."[32]

Mr. Leaf makes _Iliad_, iii. 144, "a clear case of an interpolation of
a later myth," a myth introduced here to please the Athenians. Aethra
and the rape of Helen by Theseus, to avenge which the brothers of Helen
carried the mother of Theseus away, were depicted and described on
the chest of Cypselus,[33] and painted by Polygnotus, following the
_Little Iliad_ of Lesches, on the _Leschê_ at Delphi. But here Aethra
was with the Homeric maids of Helen (Panthalis and Electra), but was
being recognised by her un-Homeric grandson, son of Theseus, Demophon.
According to the _Little Iliad_, Aethra escaped to the Greek camp: by
permission of Helen, Agamemnon restores Aethra to her grandsons.[34]

Ionia could only drag fair Helen into the Athenian legend of Theseus
by averring that he carried her off when she was a child, and that she
was brought back to the house of Tyndareus her sire by her brothers,
Castor and Polydeuces. They also seized Aethra, the mother of Theseus,
who accompanied Paris and Helen to Troy, and was still in Helen's
service after the ten years of the leaguer. Now as Theseus in his prime
was contemporary with the youth of Nestor, and as Nestor was, say,
seventy in the tenth year of the war, the mother of Theseus must have
been more than a centenarian when she was the _suivante_ of Helen, in
_Iliad_, Book iii. But Ionians stuck at nothing in the effort to bring
themselves into touch with the great Achaean enterprise; that is, stuck
at nothing except at interpolating their fables into the _Iliad_. They
could perhaps insert, as in _Iliad_, iii. 144, a mention or two of
Theseus, and some lines on Attic heroines in _Odyssey_, xi.

There can be no more conclusive proof that Ionians did not possess the
power of adding what they pleased to the Achaean epics.

The _Ilion Persis_, or _Sack of Troy_, was a poem attributed, like
the _Aethiopis_, to Arctinus of Miletus. Herein occurs the affair of
the Wooden Horse, familiar to readers of the _Odyssey_ in the lay of
Demodocus at the board of Alcinous.[35] Demodocus tells enough to serve
Arctinus with a theme which only needs expansion. The story was given
much as Virgil and Quintus Smyrnaeus render it; we have the portent
of Laocoon and the serpents, which causes Aeneas and his men (not as
in Virgil) to retire to Mount Ida. In the song of Demodocus, Odysseus
gets most of the credit of success; the hero in _Odyssey_, xi. 504-537,
gives the glory to Neoptolemus--and himself. In Arctinus, Odysseus
murders the child of Hector, Astyanax (an un-Homeric cruelty); Odysseus
is always degraded by the Ionians and usually by the Attic tragedians.
Aias Oileus's son enrages Athene by dragging down her image while
struggling with Cassandra; hence the sorrows of the Achaeans on their
way home. The sons of Theseus carry to Athens their aged grandmother,
Aethra. Could anything be more characteristic of the Athenians than
the fact that the heroes looking out from the Horse, in a bronze group
on the Acropolis, were Attic, the two apocryphal sons of Theseus, the
Athenian Menestheus, and Teucer, "who expresses the Athenian claim to
Salamis"?[36]

By a truly Ionian touch, Polyxena, daughter of Priam, is sacrificed at
the tomb of Achilles. It seems probable that the _Iliou Persis_ really
took up the story with the suicide of Aias (from this part of the poem
a fragment is quoted in the scholia to _Iliad_, xi. 515),[37] and that
the poem contained the whole prowess of Neoptolemus at Troy, and the
affair of the bringing back of Philoctetes from Lemnos. The prominence
of Aeneas expands the hint in _Iliad_, xx. 307, 308, the prophecy of
Poseidon that he and his children will long rule over the Trojans.
Throughout the _Iliad_, Aeneas is protected by Aphrodite, and is looked
on jealously by Priam, as a Stewart might look on a Hamilton; for,
failing issue of Priam, Aeneas succeeds to the Trojan crown. The whole
poem, wherever Aeneas appears, is affected by the tradition that he did
continue the Trojan line.

The sacrifice of Polyxena at the tomb of Achilles appears to be
peculiar to Arctinus. It would be interesting to know whether or not
any Ionian poem was the source of the story of Polyxena as given by
Dictys Cretensis. In Dictys, Patroclus moves Achilles to be reconciled
to Agamemnon: the army goes into winter quarters, and Trojans and
Achaeans meet on friendly terms in the grove of Thymbraean Apollo;
Achilles sees Polyxena at a sacrifice, and falls in love with her.
Hector offers her as the price of his treason to the Achaeans, which
annoys Achilles. At Polyxena's request he later restores the body of
Hector to Priam. At a subsequent meeting in Apollo's temple, Paris
stabs Achilles to death. After the capture of Troy, Odysseus advises
the sacrifice of Polyxena to the ghost of Achilles, but Euripides and
later writers make the ghost or voice of Achilles demand her death. In
other respects, as to the fate of the Trojan ladies, Dictys follows
Arctinus.

All this tale deeply affected the mediaeval tale of Troy. Meanwhile,
we do not know _why_ in Arctinus, Polyxena was chosen as the _γέρας_,
or honourable gift, of the dead Achilles. The idea may only have been
that, while surviving leaders received each a damsel, the spirit of the
great chief should not be deprived of its reward. No idea can be less
Achaean, less Homeric, but it is congenial to the Ionian spirit.

The fact of the sacrifice would easily suggest, to still later writers,
that in his life days Achilles loved Polyxena, and was loved by her;
for Philostratus and Tzetzes aver that heart-broken by the murder of
Achilles, she slew herself above his tomb.

Thus we see how, in the Ionian epics, and onwards through Stesichorus,
the tragedians, the Roman poets, Dictys, and the mediaeval makers, the
poetic consciousness played freely round the Homeric data, colouring
them with the rainbow hues of changing beliefs and changing tastes.
There is at least as wide a gulf between the tastes and ideas of Homer,
on one side, and of the Ionians on the other, as between Arctinus, on
one hand, and Benoit de Troyes and Boccaccio, on the other.

That the Ionian ideas, tastes, rites, and legends, as of Theseus
and Palamedes, never were intruded into the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_,
considering that for so long Homer was "taught, recited, imitated in
Ionia,"[38] is an undeniable and amazing fact. How were Ionian hands
restrained from touching the substance of the Achaean epics? This is,
in the strict sense, a paradox, but the facts are undeniable: the
epics were never Ionised. Homer was falsely claimed by Athens as an
Ionian poet. Is there some basis of truth in the idea that the Aeolian
Homeridae of Chios guarded their own?[39]

I have now given my view of the Cyclic poems as late, post-Homeric, and
Ionian in (i) geographical knowledge; (2) in hero-worship; (3) in rites
of human sacrifice and purification; (4) in the mania for inventing
genealogies, as of Thersites, basest born of the host; (5) in partisan
attacks on great Achaeans; (6) in silly _Märchen_; (7) in efforts to
introduce representatives of Athens, the grandsons of Theseus, into the
war; (8) the Attic goddess, Nemesis.

Of these eight proofs of lateness and Ionicism, Mr. Murray takes no
notice: on the whole, he thinks our Homer later than some state of the
lost Epics. He supposes parts of the _Iliad_ to be borrowed from these
Epics. "We happen to know that there was an old chronicle poem which
both contained a catalogue of the ships and also narrated at length the
assembling of the fleet at Aulis--the so-called _Cypria_ or Cyprian
verses."[40] This piece of information may be correct, I know not; but
no authority is cited for the statement that the _Cypria_ contained a
catalogue of the ships, and no such authority is known to me.[41] Von
Wilamowitz--Moellendorff _conjectures_ that the _Cypria_ contained a
catalogue of the Achaeans, but that is not evidence.

In support of his theory that our _Iliad_ is "in a further state of
development" than some poetic chronicles, Mr. Murray writes that
passages in the _Iliad_ "seem to be derived from the _Cypria_, the
_Little Iliad_, and the _Sack of Ilion_, the so-called _Acthiopis_....
These, then, are all pieces of supposed history taken over from one
traditional poem into another."[42]

This appears to mean that the poems named were complete before the
_Iliad_ was complete, though all of them "were growing side by side
for centuries." Indeed, Mr. Murray might seem to change his ground in
a later statement of his opinions. In _The Rise of the Greek Epic_ we
hear of borrowings by the _Iliad_ from several Cyclic poems made in
Asia, and from the "Eumelian" verses in Europe. (For "Eumelus," see
"Homer and the Saga.") Of borrowings by the Cyclics and "Eumelus" from
the _Iliad_ we do not hear. On the other hand, in _Anthropology and
the Classics_ (lectures by various students), Mr. Murray writes, "the
extant remains of the non-Homeric poems frequently show in their form,
and sometimes even in their content, definite signs of presupposing
the _Iliad_, just as the _Iliad_ here and there shows signs of
presupposing them...."[43] But, _R. G. E_. p. 160, meets the charge of
changed views.

If the _Cypria_ be earlier than the _Iliad_, yet presupposes the
_Iliad_ (about Palamedes it does not), I presume it may also borrow
from the _Iliad_; whereas, previously, the _Iliad_ was mainly credited
with the borrowings from the Cyclics. Perhaps we are intended to
understand that "had we seen these poems before they were made," we
would find that they all borrowed from each other. My mind is not
metaphysical enough to conceive what the poems were "before they were
made." To me it seems that they must, before they were made, have been
mere masses of materials, traditions, legends, lays of unknown extent,
and _Märchen_ that had no original connection with definite places
and persons. There was no _Cypria_, no _Iliad_, no _Little Iliad_, no
_Aethiopis_ before these poems were made. We should not, I think, speak
of any unmade poem in the making as borrowing matter from another poem
which, by our theory, is also still unmade.

We can only speak of the poets as selecting, each for himself, from
the same mass of materials. If we conceive one poem to have been made
before another, then the author or authors of that other may borrow
from the earlier work. Thus, when the _Cypria_ or other Cyclic poems
coincide in topic with the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, that may be (1)
because the authors work out hints given in these finished poems; or
(2) the authors may have had recourse to the same "masses of tradition"
as were open to the author of the _Iliad_. But the Cyclic poets do not
often appear to know Achaean traditions, of the Trojan affair outside
of our Homer. We have shown that Palamedes was not originally an
Achaean of the Achaeans, but a culture hero. The legend of Telephus,
with its sympathetic magic, is wholly un-Achaean; so is Iphigeneia; so
are the sons of Theseus; so is the Attic Nemesis.

As we shall show in an Appendix, Mr. Murray accounts for the
non-Achaean elements so conspicuous in the Cyclic poems, by the theory
that they once also appeared in the lays whence our _Iliad_ arose,
but were expurgated by the clear Hellenic spirit of Greece in the
sixth century, because these lays alone were recited at Panionian and
Panathenaean festivals. Our own conclusion is that the Muses befriended
Homer when they permitted the fragments of the Cyclic poems to escape
the tooth of time. For these fragments suffice to prove that the Ionian
poets could take up an Achaean theme, but in a score of ways, in their
epics, betrayed themselves as non-Achaean.

Their poems are not sections cut out of an Achaean mass of lays, and
our Homer is not a similar section, is not Cyclic. It has now been
proved, I think, that in no point or trait of life, religion, legends,
armour, tactics, rites, taste, poetic method, or anything else, is
Homer affected by Ionian influences. The _Iliad_, and mainly the
_Odyssey_, are entirely distinct in all their contents from Ionian
work. They are much older, and are the fruit of the brief-lived flower
of Achaean culture.[44]


[1] In English the best critical treatises are _Homer and the Cyclic
Poems_, by the late Mr. Binning Monro in his _Odyssey_, Books
xiii.-xxiv. pp. 340-384, with his "On the Fragment of Proclus's
Abstract of the Epic Cycle," _Journal of Hellenic Society_, vol. iv.
pp. 305-334. The discussion of the whole topic by Mr. T. W. Allen in
_The Classical Quarterly_ (1908) leaves no hint of ancient evidence
unexplored, however remote and obscure its lurking place. Mr. Allen
specially criticises the ingenious inferences of von Wilamowitz
Moellendorff in his _Homerische Untersuchungen_, inferences which
appear to be accepted by Mr. Murray in his _Rise of the Greek Epic_,
and his lecture, "Anthropology in the Greek Epic Tradition outside of
Homer," in _Anthropology and the Classics_, 1908.

[2] Kinkel, _Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta_, 1898.

[3] _J. H. S._, vol. iv p. 305.

[4] _Odyssey_, vol. ii pp. 352-354.

[5] Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, vol. ii pp. 488-493. Mr.
Monro seems to have been unaware of these facts. _Odyssey_, vol. ii p.
354.

[6] Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 350.

[7] _Companion to the Iliad_, p. 46.

[8] _Homerische Untersuchungen_, pp. 374, 375. On
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff's opinion that the Cyclics were lost before
the time of Pausanias, see Mr. Allen, _Classical Quarterly_, January,
April, 1908. The _Iliad, as it stands_, appears to be regarded as later
and more artistic than the rest.

[9] Aristotle, _Poetics_, ch. xxiv.

[10] _R. G. E._ p. 165.

[11] _Ibid._ p. 165.

[12] _Ibid._ p. 163.

[13] The seven Greek verses to this effect are preserved by the Venice
Scholiast on _Iliad_, i. 5, 6. The words Διὸς δ'ἐτελείετο βουλή are
also in _Iliad_, i. 5, whether the author of the _Cypria_ borrowed
them, or whether they were an old epic formula.

[14] Schol. Ven., _Iliad_, i, 5, 6.

[15] _R. G. E._ pp. 80-88.

[16] Pausanias, i. 33.

[17] _Bekk. Anecdot_. p. 282. 32. Pausanias, i. 33. 2.

[18] Pausanias, vii. 5. 3. See Farnell, _Cults of Greek States_, vol.
ii. pp. 487-495. 594. 595.

[19] Kinkel, _Ep. Graec. Frag_. p. 25 9.

[20] _Iliad_, ii. 326-329.

[21] xix. 326, 327.

[22] The common tale that Achilles was sent to Scyros to avoid the
war, in girl's dress; that he there begat Neoptolemus, and was then
unmasked by Odysseus, was in contradiction with _Iliad_, xi. 766-785,
where Nestor tells how he summoned Achilles at the house of Peleus, his
father.

[23] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 352.

[24] Pausanias, ii. 22.

[25] Kinkel, p. 29.

[26] See "The Story of Palamedes."

[27] Welcker, _Das Ep. Kyk._, vol. i. pp. 211, 212.

[28] _Iliad_, xx ii. 358-360.

[29] _Iliad_, xi. 690.

[30] Pausanias, iii. 19.

[31] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 361.

[32] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 370.

[33] Pausanias, v. 19.

[34] Pausanias, x. 25.

[35] _Odyssey_, viii. 492-520.

[36] Pausanias, 1. 23. 10.

[37] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 372, 373.

[38] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 476.

[39] Cf. Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 398-402. He is sceptical, as
is Mr. Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. xviii, xix. But see Mr. Allen in
_Classical Quarterly_, i. 135 ff.

[40] _R. G. E_. p. 164.

[41] Mr. Leaf writes _(Iliad_, vol. i. p. 86): "The conclusion is that
the Catalogue" (of _Iliad_, ii.) "originally formed an introduction
to the whole Cycle, and was composed for that part of it which,
as worked up into a separate poem, was called the _Kypria_, and
related the beginning of the Tale of Troy, and the mustering of the
ships at Aulis." I do not quite know what Mr. Leaf means; but the
evidence is that the _Cypria_ contained "a _Catalogue of the allies
of the Trojans_" (Kinkel, p. 20). Nothing is said of its containing
a Catalogue of the Achaeans. Mr. Monro _(Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 351)
justly remarks that the _Trojan_ Catalogue in the _Cypria_ was intended
to supplement the short Catalogue of the allies of Troy given in the
_Iliad_: "Such an enlarged roll would be the natural fruit of increased
acquaintance" (on the part of Greek settlers in Asia) "with the
non-Hellenic races of Asia Minor."

[42] _R. G. E_. p. 165.

[43] _ Anthropology and the Classics_, 1908, p. 67.

[44] See Appendix, "Homeric Epics, Lost Epics, and 'Traditional Books.'"




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
Book ix., "shall not persuade me" (by gifts richer than he offers),
"_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 has insisted on in Book i.,
this Zeus has promised in Book viii., and this inexorableness is the
sin and stumbling-block of Achilles. Customary law and public opinion
acknowledged his right to apology and atonement, but condemned his
insistence, after these had been duly offered, on a bloody revenge.
All the world recognised the facts before Grote went hunting for
discrepancies, and bagged the greatest of all,--which is no discrepancy!

The whole story, including Book ix., is absolutely consistent. Grote
argued that Agamemnon, by his offers, had done all that was necessary.
He _had_, according to customary law; but Achilles had set his heart,
in Book i. as in Book ix., on much more, on "a contented revenge." In
Book ix. he had not enjoyed his revenge, and he said as much. Had he
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 broken; he would have deserved no
heart-breaking disaster. Grote sees nothing of all this, nor do his
followers.

When Agamemnon sent his embassy with apologies and offers of atonement
to Achilles, in Book ix., the Achaeans had not been punished as
Achilles, from the first, expressed his desire to see them smitten.
Diomedes had shore in the day of his valour, his _aristeia_; Hector had
the worse in his passage-of-arms with Aias; Hera and Athene had abetted
the Trojans; and though they camped in the plain, they had not smitten
the foe "by the prows of the ships"; nor were they even likely to do
so, for the Achaeans had built the wall and dug the trench around the
ships. Therefore the demand of Achilles was not yet granted; and though
Agamemnon abjectly implored forgiveness and offered the customary
atonement, _that_ was not what Achilles wanted. He spurns the gifts,
and repeats the whole long story of his wrongs.[16] Agamemnon, he says,
_has a ceaseless grudge against him_: the king's submission is merely
hypocritical, and Achilles declines to be deceived. "Let him not tempt
me, who know him too well; he will not persuade me"[17] "His gifts
are hateful to me"; not for ten times these gifts will Achilles be
reconciled, till he has glutted his revenge.

The long speech of Phoenix[18] partly mollifies him, and, in place of
persisting in his intention to sail homewards at once, he tells Aias
that he will not fight till Hector comes, slaying the Argives, even to
the ships of the Myrmidons.[19] This is an advance even on his demand
in Book i. In short, Achilles abides by his determination as announced
to his mother in the first Book of the _Iliad_, and goes further. He is
consistent.

To this resolve, and to his plighted word (for he "hated a liar as
the gates of Hades"), Achilles is as constant as the _fond_ of his
character--an unexampled tenderness--permitted him to be. This
tenderness of the fierce hero who, in grief, cries to his mother
like a child; who, in the height of his passion, compares his own
labours for the Achaeans to those of "the hen-bird that brings to her
unfledged chickens whatsoever morsel she may find, and it goes hard
with herself";[20] who likens the suppliant Patroclus to "the little
girl that, running beside her mother, and catching at her skirts, cries
to be taken up in her arms"; and who gives quarter to fallen foes,
distinguishes Achilles. The contrast between this emotion and his
pride and later ferocity makes his character; and his chivalry shines
out most clearly in his reception of Priam, which is declared to be
un-Homeric! The triumph of his fierce pride over his tenderness, when
he refuses the gifts in Book ix., is the ἁμάρτημα, the sin or blot on a
noble character, which is the keynote, or pivot, of Greek tragedy (as
in the _Oedipous Tyrannos_), and of the _Iliad_.

Remove Book ix., and Achilles is no longer himself, there is no motived
tragedy, and the supposed primal kernel, the fancied _Achilleid_
(wherein atonement is not offered or refused), is a poem without a
motive. The heart of Achilles is to be broken by the loss of Patroclus,
though, according to the ideas of the age, he has committed no wrong;
he has renounced his allegiance when he had a right to renounce it till
he had received atonement for an intolerable injustice.

Grote did not think himself back into the legal and ethical atmosphere
of Homeric life; he and his followers have failed to understand the
moral centre of the tragedy, the ἁμάρτημα, the sin of Achilles. In
place of doing that they have found the great discrepancy, exactly
where they should have found the central situation and turning point of
the epic. It has, in Aristotelian phrase, "a beginning, a middle, and
an end." Book ix. is the middle. The critics excise it!

Grote works out his discovery thus, and in answering him we answer
his contemporary followers. Achilles, in Book xi., sees the rout of
the Achaeans, and sees Nestor conveying a wounded comrade to the
rear. Achilles says to Patroclus (xi. 608), "_Now_ methinks that the
Achaeans will stand about my knees, praying to me, _for need no longer
endurable is coming upon them"_ That is, he will soon get the terms
which he has from the first demanded, revenge, and, _following perfect
revenge_, the humiliation of the Achaeans. Grote says that Heyne "not
unnaturally asks, 'had Achilles repented of his previous harshness
to the embassy,' in Book ix., 'or was he arrogant enough to expect a
second embassy'? I answer, 'Neither one nor the other: the words imply
that he had received _no embassy at all_.'" Therefore Book ix. is a
later interpolation.

It follows that the great poet of Book ix., who so consistently
maintains the attitude taken by Achilles in Book i. 408-410, where the
hero demands the slaughter of the Achaeans among their ships,[21] now
unscrupulously throws over and destroys the work of his still greater
predecessor. Here is indeed a matchless discrepancy in human nature!

As I understand the words of Achilles (xi. 608, 610), he is joyously
anticipating the moment when "need no longer endurable" will come on
the host. In Book ix. their necessity, as we have demonstrated, had not
reached the point which, in Books i. and ix., he had demanded. Hector
has not yet reached the ships, not yet do the Achaeans know fully
"what manner of king they have" in his enemy, Agamemnon. Doubtless
they will again beseech Achilles: they have done that already, but
they have not yet suffered as he will have them suffer. There is here
extreme consistency, not impossible inconsistency. Achilles retains the
position which he took up in Book i.

Grote pursues his theory to Book xvi., where Patroclus comes with news
that the Trojans are slaying _around the ships_, and that Agamemnon,
Diomedes, Odysseus, and Eurypylus are wounded and out of action. As
Achilles (Book ix.) has vowed not to fight till Hector attacks his own
ships, Patroclus asks to be permitted to lead the Myrmidons into fight.
Achilles replies by rehearsing all his wrongs, and then says, "But let
bygones be bygones ... verily I said that my wrath would not slacken
one whit till the battle and the cry came to my own ships; but do
_thou_ put on my armour and lead the Myrmidons."[22]

He thus recalls his vow in Book ix., or rather, while keeping to the
letter of it, he makes a concession in the spirit: he is sated: what
he asked for in Book i. he has received in Book xvi. So the poet of
Book xvi. had Book ix. before him. The Achaeans are dying around the
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 inconsistency by agreeing with the
Scholiast and Heyne in interpreting "_ἔφην γε_" (in its primary sense,
"I said") "as equivalent to 'I thought' (διενοήθην), not as referring
to any express antecedent declaration."[23] Mr. Leaf agrees, and
thinks that the declaration of Achilles in Book ix. 650 "may well have
been suggested by this very phrase." This very phrase may therefore,
confessedly, mean that Achilles _did_ make an express declaration;
and we have every right so to understand it. If we do, the supposed
discrepancy vanishes. If we do not, we must suppose the poet of Book
ix. to have been at once most scrupulously attentive to the words of
his predecessor,--the author of Book i., of Book viii., and of the
opening of Book xvi.--and at the same time absolutely regardless of
that minstrel in the most important point. We only shift the insane
error from one great poet to another.

Meanwhile Grote says that the poet of Book xi. _et seqq_. "could not
have had present to his mind the main event of the ninth Book, the
embassy, and its offers of atonement."[24]

Next, in xvi. lines 72, 73, Achilles says that the Achaeans would
not be in such straits "if Agamemnon had been but kindly disposed to
me." But, in Book ix., says Grote, Agamemnon was more than kindly,
he offered to pay any price for reconciliation. So Achilles himself
admitted in Book ix. Agamemnon would pay any price, but Achilles
regarded this as mere hypocrisy: he would not believe that Agamemnon
was "favourably disposed" in his heart. "He shall not deceive me, shall
not persuade me." The poet has anticipated Grote's objection, but Grote
does not understand.

Achilles is not really in heart reconciled to Agamemnon, even after he
consents to take the gifts; is not reconciled till after the funeral
games for Patroclus. At _this_ moment (xvi. 77) Achilles speaks of
Agamemnon as "hateful."

In xvi. 83-86, to copy Grote's paraphrase, Achilles says to Patroclus,
"Obey my words, so that you may procure for me honour and glory _from
the body of the Greeks_, and that they may send back to me the damsel,
giving me ample presents besides...."

Grote has oddly misunderstood the whole story. He says, "The ninth Book
_has actually_ tendered to Achilles everything he demands and even
more." Now Achilles had demanded only the massacre of the Greeks at the
ships, and then recognition of what kind of king they have. In what
passage does Achilles demand anything else? In none till, in Book xvi.
84, 85, he bids Patroclus fight, when he himself will receive Briseis
and fair gifts: his revenge he has already enjoyed, but Phoenix had
warned him that he would be dishonoured if he fought without receiving
atonement.

Grote, in the spirit of his school, rejects later allusions to the
offered atonement of Book ix. as interpolations thrust in for the
sake of restoring harmony. Yet the cunning interpolators allowed the
Great Discrepancy to stand! If we may reject whatever lines destroy
our theory, criticism is an idle game of contradictory conjectures,
each inquirer discerning interpolations in all passages that ruin his
favourite hypothesis. After all Grote concludes, "The poem consists of
a part original and other parts superadded; yet it is certainly not
impossible that the author of the former may himself have composed the
latter." If so, "the poet ... has not thought fit to recast the parts
and events in such manner as to impart to the whole a pervading thread
of _consensus_ and organisation such as we see in the _Odyssey_."[25]
Thus the poet did not mind a ghastly discrepancy.

I trust that all who have not invincible prepossessions will see that
Book ix. is not only consistent with Books xi. and xvi., but is 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 criticism alone, but on the actual
ideas about allegiance, the wrongs done by the Over Lord, the rights of
the injured vassal, and the rules concerning atonement which pervade
the _Iliad_. As in all such early societies, a man was dishonoured if
he forgave a wrong without receiving atonement; and was blamed if, like
Achilles, he refused atonement when it was offered with due ceremonial.
Even if students, under the suggestion of Grote, fail to accept my view
that Book ix. is no discrepancy, but contains the central moment, and,
as Phoenix's words in that Book prove, the _motif_ of the tragedy of
Achilles--"he who refuses the prayers of the penitent may fall and
pay the price" (ix. 512), I trust that, at least, I have proved that
the discrepancy is not "flagrant" and "crying," and an infallible proof
of late interpolation.

It is not necessary for me to repeat my unanswered criticisms, in
_Homer and the Epic_, of many alleged discrepancies. If I have
succeeded in showing that the three most flagrant inconsistencies are
not inconsistent, it is easy to imagine how innocent are most of the
other inculpated passages.

One may be noted. In _Iliad_, xviii. 446-452, Thetis, who has gone to
ask Hephaestus to make armour for her son, explains the causes of his
mutiny. "And the princes (_γέροντες_) of the Argives entreated him, and
told over many noble gifts. Then albeit he refused to ward destruction
from them, he put his armour on Patroclus and sent him to the war." The
gifts were offered "while Achilles in grief wasted his heart, while the
men of Troy were driving the Achaeans on their ships, nor suffered them
to come forth."

The gifts were offered, in fact, when the Greeks had found it necessary
to fortify their camp, purposing to act on the defensive; and Achilles
did not send out Patroclus in consequence of the offer of gifts.
Absorbed in her own grief for her son, whom she will never welcome
home ("excited," as Miss Stawell says), Thetis has avoided the point
of the question of Hephaestus, "Why hast thou come hither?" and poured
forth her own lament (430-441). "Homer," says the Scholiast, "renders
the nature of woman, she does not answer the question put to her, but
dilates on her own sorrow." Then she hurriedly and confusedly describes
the past events, hastening to her request that the god will make arms
for her Achilles. As Mr. Leaf writes, "Though the reference (450, 451)
does not give the whole course of events, it is near enough--there is
only omission, not misstatement." To myself the speech of Thetis seems
exactly what a distraught mother in a hurry would be apt to make.

But Mr. Verrall takes it as proof positive that "a new hand" is at
work, the new hand who invented "The Making of the Armour." _He_--the
new hand--is in even a greater hurry, and is much more distraught than
poor Thetis, it seems to me; but then Mr. Verrall observes he did
not mean his story of the armour "for a continuation of the other's,
otherwise he would have told the previous incident as he found it."
Finally, some one, some time, for some reason--person, time, and reason
being all equally unknown--"takes the "Sending of Patroclus" from one
version and the "Making of the Armour" from another, and combines
without reconciling them."[26]

Here Mr. Verrall differs from Mr. Leaf, while we take it that
Homer makes a grief-distraught mother in a hurry speak like a
grief-distraught and hurried mother.

But Homer, where there is a doubt, never gets the benefit of the doubt.


[1] July 1908, pp. 75, 76.

[2] _Homer and his Age_, p. 250.

[3] Mr. Leaf's version, Lang, Leaf, and Myers.

[4] _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 256.

[5] See chapter on "Homeric Religion."

[6] _Iliad_, vi. 123-129.

[7] _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 153.

[8] _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 370.

[9] Grote, _History of Greece_, vol. ii., 1869, pp. 179-183.

[10] _Iliad_, i. 409, 410.

[11] i. 240 ff.

[12] _Iliad_, viii. 473-475.

[13] xviii. 73-80.

[14] _Iliad_, ix. 380-387.

[15] The words of Zeus in Book viii. will be explained as a late
insertion, to harmonise old and new. If so, why did the harmoniser
leave the flagrant discrepancy uncorrected?

[16] _Iliad_, ix. 315-343.

[17] ix. 434 ff.

[18] ix. 345, 375. 376.

[19] ix. 6502.

[20] _Iliad_, ix. 323.

[21] Cf. Book ix. 650-655.

[22] Book xvi. 60-65.

[23] Grote, vol. ii. p. 179, note I on p. 180.

[24] Grote, vol. ii. pp. 179, 180.

[25] Grote, vol. ii. p. 202.

[26] _Quarterly Review_, July 1908, pp. 64-66.




CHAPTER XX

CONCLUSIONS


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 conclusions. I am led to suppose that
the _Iliad_ is a work of one brief period, because, as has been shown,
it bears all the notes of one age; and is absolutely free from the
most marked traits of religion, rites, society, and superstition that
characterise the preceding Aegean, and the later "Dipylon," Ionian,
Archaic, and historic periods in Greek life and art.

Again, I believe that the _Iliad_ is, in the main, the work of a
single poet. To that conclusion I am led partly by the unity of the
thought, temper, character, and _ethos_ of both epics; partly by the
perfect consistency in the drawing, throughout, of multitudes of
characters, all conceived with as much delicacy as firmness. It is to
me inconceivable that a number of poets should have developed, with
such perfect consistency and with such fine _nuances_, the character,
for example, of Achilles, who has been called "a splendid savage!"

If our critics studied him as Shakespearian students examine Hamlet or
Macbeth, it is improbable that they could think the wrath of Achilles
"a second-rate subject." It does not appear to me that his wrath about
"a personal slight"--the loss of Briseis, is a fit of the sulks; that
Achilles, as was said of Byron in one of his portraits, looks like "a
great sulky schoolboy whom somebody has deprived of a plum-cake."

Consider what Achilles is; the son of a goddess: himself, in extreme
youth, the recognised hero and _nonpareil_ of the whole Achaean array.
His one over-mastering passion is desire of renown:

    "One crowded hour of glorious life
    Is worth an age without a name."

He might live long, happy, and honoured at home with the father whom
he so tenderly loves and pities, but he sets forth to Ilios, knowing
surely that there he must inevitably perish in the flower of his youth.
He chooses to pay with his life for immortal renown. In Hades he says
that he would liefer be on earth the hind of a landless man, than king
over the Dead, so fast is the hold of this earth upon his heart. But he
could not love his life so much

    "Loved he not honour more."

Now, in the opening of the _Iliad_ he is to lose life and the sunlight,
and also to lose honour. This is no mere personal slight; loss of the
honour which he is buying with his life is no unworthy cause of anger
in such a hero. He complains, again and again, that Agamemnon has, _on
every occasion_, dishonoured him. The seizure of Briseis, his special
"mead of honour," is only the last straw, the culminating insult. "In
like honour," he says, "are held both the coward and the brave." He
has toiled most hardly of all. "Even as a bird bringeth her unfledged
chickens each morsel as she winneth it, and with herself it goeth
hard, even so was I wont to watch out many a sleepless night, and
pass through many days of battle, warring with folk for their women's
sake." There is here, in Book ix., that tenderness of reference to the
devotion of the maternal instinct which characterises Achilles in his
relations with his own mother, a goddess of many sorrows, for the sake
of him who has chosen his doom. To her, in the first Book, as on the
death of Patroclus, he cries, in the spirit of the little child of whom
he speaks so touchingly in Book xvi.: "a fond little maid that runs by
her mother's side, and bids her mother take her up, snatching at her
skirts, and tearfully looks at her." Homer puts such words in the mouth
of none but the slayer of men, Achilles.

"Mother," he cries by the grey sea, in Book i., "seeing thou didst of
a truth bear me to so brief a span of life, _honour at least ought the
Olympian to have granted me._"

Is it not plain that "the personal slight" to Achilles--being what he
is, saying, like the great Montrose in a note scribbled on his pocket
Bible, "_Honour is my life,_" is it not plain that the insult is deadly
both to life and honour?

In this sense Homer understands the wrath of Achilles. He had _fond_
of tenderness,--he ransomed his captives, while Agamemnon slew the
prisoners to whom Menelaus was giving quarter. Again, as we shall see
("The Supposed Expurgation of Homer"), it was far from unusual, in
Homeric warfare, for the slayer to mutilate the slain, cutting off his
head, putting it on a stake, or even carrying it home as a trophy.
But Achilles did not even, as usual, despoil Eetion of his armour,
"for his soul had shame of that; but he buried him in his inlaid
armour, and raised a barrow over him." In contrast with his natural
clemency, the wrath of Achilles for Patroclus's sake is all the more
monstrous; he far transcends the customary ferocities of dishonour to
the dead. Achilles says (xxi. pp. 100-105): "Until Patroclus met his
day of destiny, dearer was it to my heart to spare the Trojans; and
many I took alive and sold over sea." But when once his honour, his
life-price, is taken from him, his wrath will be sated by nothing--not
by prayers or gifts of atonement, but by the slaughter of his comrades
among their ships--_then_, indeed, they will know his worth. It is this
moral tragedy, _corruptio optimi_, that inspires Homer in the _Iliad_.

Achilles is, of all the men in Homer, the most passionately
affectionate. His love of Patroclus, like that of Jonathan for David,
"passeth the love of women"; an affection for his elder, the playmate
of his childhood, so pure and so strong that poets of historic Greece
could not understand it. But when he is smitten to the heart by the
loss of Patroclus his wrath again breaks, as in the ninth Book of the
_Iliad_, through all measure; and he does cruel and evil deeds, his
revenge is hateful to Gods and men. This is the moral tragedy of the
_Iliad_; and that which wrecks the heart and soul of Hamlet, or that
which brings to shame the honour and courage of Macbeth, does not go
deeper.

Having fashioned such a character as Achilles, no poet equal to the
task could leave him in the course of cruelty and shame which is his
in the opening of the last Book of the _Iliad_. No hand but that which
created the Achilles of the first Book could so restore him to himself
that the Achaeans might again "see the great Achilles whom they knew."
Only that one genius could conceive and achieve the immortal scene
wherein Priam kisses "the hands of Achilles, terrible, manslaying, that
slew so many of his sons."

"Fear thou the gods, Achilles, and have compassion on me, even me,
bethinking thee of thy father. Lo, I am more piteous yet than he, and
have braved what none other man on earth hath braved before, to stretch
forth my hand toward the face of the slayer of my sons." There follows
the lament of Achilles, for the father whom he, in search of honour,
"may not tend as he groweth old, since very far from my own country I
am dwelling in Troyland, to vex thee and thy children."

Even here, Achilles feels that he dares hardly trust himself, so
strong is the wild beast of passion within him. So consistent, so
delicate, so strong a delineation of character, I cannot conceive to be
the work of more hands than one, it is the work of the hand of Homer.
Throughout the whole poem every person is drawn with equal firmness,
delicacy, and consistency. The study of Agamemnon is the most complex
(see _Homer and his Age,_ pp. 50-81). The foil to Agamemnon, the good
Menelaus, the kindest and most chivalrously honourable of men, always
conscious of his debt to the Achaeans, always eager to dare beyond his
strength, is a worthy pendant. Odysseus throughout the poem is the
poet's most admired hero; the wisest and most steadfast, here as in
the _Odyssey_. It is so with the rest, with all of them; and this with
the unity of _ethos_, of temper, of thought on human destinies, is the
great argument for the unity and single authorship of the _Iliad_ in
the main. To others, probably, as to Wolf, this consistency is apparent
when they read the _Iliad_, as alone it was meant to be read or heard,
"for human pleasure," without constantly dwelling on "oppositions of
science falsely so called," and hunting for discrepancies which often
are not discrepant.

It is not an article of my faith that there is no non-original matter
in the _Iliad_. In another book, _Homer and the Epic_, I mentioned the
passages which, to me, seem probably alien, for one reason or another.
About the authorship of the Catalogue I do not know enough to be able
to form an opinion. In the dream of Agamemnon and what follows, in Book
ii., I might guess that two or three lines have been omitted, though
on the whole the waverings of Agamemnon are thoroughly consistent with
his character, and are meant to throw into light the steadfastness of
Odysseus. I think that Phoenix is not properly introduced in Book ix.,
but there he is a necessary character; his warning to Achilles, not to
fight before receiving atonement, has an influence throughout, backed
as it is later by the counsels of Odysseus. The battles between Troy
and the Ships, in Books xii.-xv., might be more lucid; but so might
Napier's account of the battle of Salamanca, and Lord Roberts's of the
Siege of Delhi. I understand Homer better than I do either of these
military historians; but I have taken more pains to understand him. I
would rather believe the _Aristeia_ of Idomeneus to be by another hand;
it is perfunctory; and the proceedings of Poseidon are perplexing,
like the doings of Ares and Athene in the first fifty lines of Book v.
The Gods always, by the infinite inconsistencies of mythology, cause
confusion, but the text itself has an air of dislocation. The arming of
Agamemnon in the opening of Book xi., seems to me non-authentic, as far
as our knowledge of Homeric armature goes. The whole passage about the
destruction of the Achaean wall by the Gods, in the after time, reads
to me like a pedantic later explanation of the absence of traces of the
works.

The meeting of Aeneas and Achilles in Book xx. would seem more
suspicious than, to me, it does, if Aeneas were not, throughout, a
special sort of person, the son of a goddess, and not a good Trojan,
because of Priam's suspicion of "the Orleans branch." I am inclined
to think that the poet knows, all through, a "saga" of Aeneas as
preserving the seed of the Royal House of Troy. In Book v., and
elsewhere, he is always under divine protection, that of Apollo or of
Aphrodite, "only Zeus shielded thee, and other gods," says Achilles.
"It is appointed for him to escape that the race of Dardanus perish
not," says Poseidon in Book xx.; and were the passage solitary, I
should think it all an interpolation. But the poet always, probably for
traditional reasons, takes very good care of Aeneas. The last bouts in
the Funeral Games seem unlike Homer.

In the _Odyssey_, the passages about the concealing of the arms (xvi.,
xix.) are dislocated, to say the least; and all the close of the
poem, especially the second Nekyia, has always lain under suspicion in
critical times. Sainte-Beuve would not abandon, but admired it; I only
feel that, if all this be later, it has taken the place of lost earlier
material, for the poem could not conceivably close till the blood feud
of Odysseus and the kin of the Wooers was appeased. An Achaean like
a Scandinavian audience understood the rules, and insisted that the
settlement of the blood-feud must be explained.

These are the main points at which, as far as I can judge, something
has gone wrong. There are others: the interchange of shields between
Nestor and Thrasymedes in the opening of Book xiv. had probably some
lines of explanation given to it, though, as Mr. She wan was the
first to perceive, the exchange was the necessary consequence of the
manoeuvres in Book x. Here Thrasymedes lent his shield to Diomede for
his night _reconnaissance_, Thrasymedes would then send for and use
Nestor's shield, while Nestor would obtain the shield of Thrasymedes
next morning from Diomede.[1]

Nothing can be more simple and natural; but the thing was so obvious as
to escape attention till Mr. She wan read Homer in a Homeric spirit. No
doubt there are other passages with which I am dissatisfied, but the
curious may refer for them to my earlier book, _Homer and the Epic_.

It is not so strange that there are dislocations ill patched up, as
that far more of extraneous matter, especially of Ionian matter, has
not found an entry into the Epics. How the text has been so well
guarded I cannot explain; Mr. Murray's theory of expurgation of certain
beliefs, ways and manners, is examined in Appendix B.

As to how the Epic was evolved, I am unable to say anything precise for
want of evidence. Analogy from other early national epic poetry fails
us here, because nowhere is there any early national poetry of the same
scope and the same consistency. Again, in such epics as the _Chanson
de Roland_, and even in _Beowulf_, mythical as it is, there are actual
traces of historic events. We know that, because we have chronicles
and official annals corroborating parts of the _Chanson de Roland_, or
proving the historic existence of a few characters in the _Volsunga
Saga_, and _Beowulf_; but in the case of the Homeric poems we have no
evidence of the actual existence of any personage.

As for the _chansons de geste_, we know, or at least the most eminent
French scholars believe, that these, or the earliest of them, are the
final poetic results of actual reminiscences, recorded in lays or
ballads, popular or military, of the reign of Charlemagne. But Homer
is far in advance of the age of ballads on actual events in the remote
past.

M. Gaston Paris says: "The _Chanson de Roland_ is not a work composed
_d'un seul jet à un moment donné_, it contains elements of very
different dates and different sources"--there is a basis of popular or
military ballads; there are additions invented by professional poets
to increase the interest. "The author of the Chanson is Legion."[2] I
entirely agree, and Legion is the author of _Paradise Lost_, and the
author of _King Lear_, or _Hamlet_, or _Macbeth_. Legion is the name of
the myth-makers from an age of savagery onwards; of the Greek and Roman
and Celtic poets and historians, of the Christian theologians, and
Anglo-Saxon minstrels and low Latin versifiers, and heavy Dutch poets,
and gay Italian poets, who have contributed the ideas and material to
_Paradise Lost_. But the Epic is Milton's though Homer and Virgil are
among the authors: without their lives it had not been what it is. The
_form_ is Milton's, and the form of the _Iliad_ is Homer's.

These things are manifest. All poetry, down to a lyric like "Bonnie
Dundee," has, in one sense, a multiplicity of authors. The poet
selects, combines, and gives form to a mass of pre-existing materials.

In _Lear_, Shakespeare works on a _Märchen_ still current in rural
England. That _Märchen_ he takes in the pseudo-historic form given to
it by the chroniclers. Shakespeare combines with it--for Gloucester
and Edmund--a French story which he finds in Sidney's _Arcadia_. He
has before him an earlier drama on King Lear; he selects, arranges,
composes, he adds what is his own, the poetry, and the fatal
conclusion; and even so the author of our _Iliad_ treated _his_
materials. Of all poetry, and especially of all epic poetry, the
author's name is Legion. Legion supplies the materials, and examples of
different methods of dealing with them, and the stock of ballad or epic
formulae. The final poet makes his selections, his combinations, and
fuses all into a new form.

It may be said that I mean by "Legion" something which M. Gaston Paris
did not mean. But what _did_ he mean? Did he mean that a different
_laisses_, or strings of verses on one assonance in the _Chanson de
Roland_, were by different poets, and were tacked together by one man,
who, perhaps, made omissions and additions? If this was what M. Gaston
Paris meant, I do not agree with him, nor with any one who may hold the
same opinion about the evolution of our _Iliad_. I know perfectly well
what I mean, when I say that Legion provided Homer's materials, and
showed various methods of treating them.

What these materials were we cannot exactly know. There must have been
much heroic poetry in hexameter verse; in Homer the form has reached
perfection. The style retains some peculiarities of popular poetry, of
ballads, as in stereotyped formulae descriptive of habitual actions
of every kind. Like our ballads, the poet never avoids a formula, if
he can find one current; if he invents a new one, he clings to it.
This recurrence of formulae is no less marked in _Iliad_ viii. than in
Child's four hundred _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, or in _La
Chancun de Willame_, one of the oldest _chansons de geste_.

Homer's chief heroes need no introduction to his audience, as Roland
and Oliver, Ganelon and Naismes needed none. All his characters were
familiar figures in an ancient legend of an expedition against the
Northern shore of Asia. About that we have no historic knowledge,
and it is rare indeed that chronicles record any "facts" given in
early _chansons de geste_. The rear-guard action at Roncevaux is an
exception; it is a historical fact.

Homer surveyed the whole, selected some situations, invented others,
combined and fused all in the furnace of his genius, just as did Milton
and Shakespeare. But how Legion made the _Iliad_, with no Homer, no
one great genius, but in some incomprehensible manner of combination,
I have never understood. I have never seen any description of the
processes which was clear, coherent, intelligible, and corroborated
by an example historically known. Theories of "redactors," "editors,"
literary committees, are all in the air; we cannot say, with Mrs.
Quickly, "You, or any man, knows where to have them." No theory
shows us "where to have" the _Dichter_, where, or when, or in what
circumstances he did whatever he is supposed to have done.


[1] _Homer and his Age_, pp. 276-278.

[2] _Légendes du Moyen Age_, pp. 46-47.




APPENDIX A

THE CATALOGUE


The date, purpose, and historical value of the Catalogue are matters
vigorously disputed, and critics not only vary among themselves,
but change their own minds, as is natural, when new facts accrue.
Topographical study of the Greek mainland, and new discoveries of
prehistoric sites that had been overlooked, necessarily throw new light
on Homer's conception of prehistoric Greece. Thus M. Bérard appears to
have found again what learned late Greek geographers had lost, the site
of Nestor's city of Pylos.

Nestor, in _Iliad_, xi. 664-762,[1] telling a long story about his
early prowess, gives many topographical details. But he "is clearly
ignorant of the geography of the western Peloponnesus," says a critic.
Here the theory is that Nestor's story is by a late editor of the
Iliad, who had read the Catalogue, picked out some places named at
random, and thrown them in anywhere.[2] But M. Bérard studies the
topography on the spot, and finds sites which, he thinks, coincide
perfectly with the topography of Nestor, and also, with that of the
journey of Telemachus, in the _Odyssey_, to Pylos, the home of Nestor,
and on to Menelaus in Sparta. It is strong corroboration that M.
Bérard's location of Pherae, where Telemachus passes the night on his
way to Sparta, and of Pylos itself, makes the topography of Homer
intelligible.[3]

But we must remember that people who deem the _Iliad_ a thing of rags
and patches, stitched on, in this case, by some ignoramus of about 540
B.C., are eager to find discrepancies everywhere; while the learned and
minute French geographer was equally anxious to find proofs of Homer's
accuracy. At all events, if he is right, Nestor does not talk ignorant
nonsense.

Geographical and archaeological research produce modifications of
opinion, but the critical weathercock veers, less necessarily, with
every wind of theory that blows from Germany. Thus Mr. Leaf, in the
first edition of his _Iliad_ (vol. i. p. 73), found nothing to prove
that the Catalogue "is of late origin." "It was considered a classical
work--The Doomsday Book of Greece, at a very early date.... There
seems to be no valid reason for doubting that it, like the bulk of the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, was composed in Achaean times, and carried with
the emigrants to the coast of Asia Minor."

Nothing new has been discovered since Mr. Leaf wrote in this orthodox
fashion, nothing new has arisen except the studies of M. Bérard, which,
if we accept his view, confirm the accuracy of the Catalogue. But, in
1900, Mr. Leaf abandoned his earlier position.

"The whole perspective of the Catalogue," he says, "is entirely
different from that of the _Iliad_." Heroes, as Niese remarks, appear
in the _Iliad_ who do nothing in that poem; but play their parts
"in other portions of the Epic Cycle." The conclusion is that "the
Catalogue originally formed an introduction to the whole cycle, and was
composed for that portion of it which, as worked up into a separate
poem, was called the _Cypria_, and relates the beginning of the tale of
Troy, and the mustering of the fleet at Aulis."[4] This contains much
debatable matter. What the cycle was before it was "worked up into"
separate poems, or whether such a nebulous cycle existed at all, we
know not. I must refer the reader to Mr. Allen's essay on the whole
subject, which is too condensed to be summarised in briefer space.[5]
"The Catalogue was taken by Homer from its time and place in saga to
his second Book and to the Troad." I do not quite understand how a long
passage in hexameters could be taken from "saga." Mr. Allen's critical
remarks on prehistoric Greek topography and territorial divisions,
are most valuable; and so is his account of the Dorian and other
pretensions which wrought confusion in topographical designations. He
has proved, I think, that the Catalogue is a very archaic document,
which no later persons were interested in inventing, or would have been
able to invent. Beyond that I am unable to go, and we must await the
results of excavation on prehistoric sites in Greece. Our information
as to the _Cypria_ credits it with no Catalogue of the Achaean ships
and men; but it is easy to reply that our accounts are wrong, that the
authors spoke of a _Cypria_ made up after the Catalogue was placed in
the _Iliad_.


[1] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. 465, 466.

[2] Leaf, Note to _Iliad_, xi. 756; _Iliad_, ii. 615, 617.

[3] Bérard, _Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée_, pp. 108-113.

[4] Leaf, vol. i. p. 86.

[5] _Classical Quarterly_, April 1909.




APPENDIX B


The argument of my book is that the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ represent
the usages and ideas of a prehistoric society. They are not the ideas
and usages of proto-historic and historic Hellas, but of the Achaean
invaders, or, at least, of the high-born men and women to whom Homer
sang. On the other hand, Mr. Murray, if I succeed in understanding his
position, holds that the ideas and usages of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_
are a kind of mosaic, the result of a long process of "expurgation
of Homer." If this view be correct, my whole argument, of course, is
builded on the sand. Homer does not represent the ethical and religious
beliefs and usages of a moment in the past.

It is therefore necessary to state, with textual citations as full as
possible, Mr. Murray's presentation of his case, given, first, in his
_Rise of the Greek Epic_, and, later, in one of the Oxford Lectures
by several authors, published in _Anthropology and the Classics_. Mr.
Murray has very kindly assisted me by explaining points in which I
was unable to follow his reasoning. But these explanations prove that
we start from assumptions so opposed in their nature that community
in conclusions is impossible. Perhaps even mutual intelligence cannot
be perfect. Thus my reading of the Epics leads me to the conviction
that they were composed in an age which knew nothing of coined money;
an age when cattle were the standard of values:--this or that object
was worth so many cows. But in Mr. Murray's opinion this standard was
preserved in the epics, after it was obsolete in practice, for reasons
of stylistic convention. While I suppose our two epics to have been
epics at a period very remote, when Achaean society was in its bloom;
he holds that there were no epics till the Achaeans and the conquered
peoples were intermingled. Earlier, there were only lays, and the
silence of our epics as to coined money, for example, is a convention
derived from the lays of a time when cows were the measure of value.
Each of us, it seems to me, has to assume a kind of miracle. I have to
think, and do think, that our epics were composed by a poet to amuse
the leisure of an Achaean Court, and also that they were miraculously
preserved, whether by writing or in memory, through several changeful
centuries. I believe that this occurred because the poems are great
harmonious structures, such as only a poet could produce; and because
the many changes in society, costume, law, belief, and usage which the
successive ages evolved, do not appear in the poems.

Mr. Murray, I think, has also to postulate another kind of miracle.
Evolution, in some way which I do not understand, produced our epics
out of a mass of floating poetical material. It appears that men are
born to hold one view or the other, to believe in one or the other
prodigy.

However, in the view which is not mine, stylistic conventions in the
later poetry were based on a following of what was no convention in
the older poetry, say as to the use of coined money or of cavalry. Now
I know no other early national poetry, and no literary epics of the
critical ages of Greek and Roman literature, where such convention is
employed. Virgil was learned; Virgil knew Homer intimately; yet his
Greeks and Trojans use iron weapons, not weapons of bronze; and the
Roman buckler, not the Homeric shield.

To take another case, as soon as armorial bearings came into
mediaeval Europe, the singers of the _chansons de geste_ introduced
them,--regardless of their absence in the earlier lays, which knew no
such blazons. No convention of silence arose.

There is only one mention of writing in Homer. The Greek tragedians
knew well that writing was, as far as Homer shows, very rare in the
heroic age. But some of the heroes and heroines write whenever they
have occasion. There is no archaistic convention. As I have shown
in _Homer and his Age_, ancient poets and artists had, no more than
Shakespeare, our modern habit of attending to "local colour" as
historically known to us by research.

Perhaps it may be urged in reply, that early mediaeval epic poets were
much less conservative than early Greeks. They altered, for example,
the assonant _laisses_ of the early _chansons_, and did them into
rhyme, while Greece for epic purposes never deserted the hexameter. But
I can give a fair parallel to the Greek non-observance of a convention
in the Irish epic cycles.

The poets of the ancient Irish cycle of Fian ought, by the theory of
convention, to have made their heroes use war-chariots like the heroes
of the elder saga of Cuchullin. But they follow no such convention;
their heroes ride or fight on foot, because such was the nature of war
in their own later time.

The same reasoning applies throughout. I cannot believe that the makers
of our epics, working in the early historic age, omitted mention of
cavalry, coined money, periodical games, or anything else known to
them, because they found no such matter in more ancient lays concerning
and composed in a previous age. We have seen that the old "non-Homeric"
epics were, as their fragments prove, full of non-Homeric usages. No
"stylistic convention" forbade mention of these usages.

Thus no such stylistic convention--maintained in our _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_, neglected in the _Cypria, Aethiopis,_ and the rest--can be
accepted. In fact, another and a special cause for many of Homer's
silences has to be suggested, as we shall see. Once more it is my
assumption that our epics were made in the main as we have them, for a
peculiar audience, a courtly and knightly audience, known to themselves
and their poet as "Achaeans." That they were of unmixed race I do not
suppose; these Northern invaders, their chiefs at least, would marry
the daughters of the princes of the land. But I assume that our epics
were made for them, _while they retained their Northern ideas_; on
many points very like the ideas, usages, and beliefs of the heathen
Scandinavian settlers in Iceland. It is maintained by Mr. Murray that
the ideas of "the conquered races" were very different, and that, as
the two peoples mingled, the ideas of the conquered races re-emerged.
This is manifestly true. But my view is that Achaean society, courtly
society at least, had not adopted the beliefs and usages of the
conquered races at the time when our epics, which ignore them, were
composed. But these usages and ideas are usual in the fragments of the
Cyclic epics on Trojan affairs. No stylistic convention interfered
and kept them out. Mr. Murray has to discover a special cause for the
presence in the "Cyclic" of much that is absent from our two epics.

The ideas of Mr. Murray, in some passages of his work, appear to be
precisely the opposite of my own. In other passages we seem to be on
the very point of agreement.

When we are told, in passages to be quoted, that there was in the
formation of the _Iliad_, and to a less extent in that of the
_Odyssey_, a strong element of reform and expurgation, we ask
ourselves--who, in what age, and from what motives, were the reformers
and purgers of _what_ pre-existing poetic and legendary materials? Were
those materials the property of the "Achaean or Northern" conquerors,
or of the pre-existing "conquered races" (to use Mr. Murray's terms);
or were the materials a medley derived from both sources? Were the
purgers Achaean poets working on materials, at least in part the
property of the conquered races? Or was the purgation mainly done by
Ionians, that is, by the mixed Greek peoples settled in Asia; peoples
certainly retaining many of the ideas of the conquered races which our
Homer ignores? Or did "the Achaean or Northern spirit" purge away some
things distasteful to that spirit, while the Ionians purged away other
things? What the elements more or less purged away are supposed to be,
we shall see later. In the passage to which I have referred[1] we find
the following statements:--

"The epic tradition of Greece, vast and tangled in its wealth of varied
beauty and ugliness, was left by the Homeric poets a much cleaner and
colder thing than they found it. In the result, two influences were
mainly at work. First, a general humanising of the imagination, the
progress of a spirit which, as it loved beauty, hated cruelty and
uncleanness. Secondly, a race prejudice. The relation of the Northern
and the aboriginal elements in the Homeric poems are involved, when
you come to details, in inextricable confusion, but in general the
'Homeric' tone of mind represents more of the Achaean or Northern
spirit; the spirit of those scattered strong men who in their various
settlements were leading and shaping the Aegean world. The special
myths, beliefs, and rites that were characteristic of the conquered
races are pruned away or ignored; the hero-worship, the oracles, the
magic and witchcraft, the hocus-pocus of purification, all that savours
of 'the monstrous regiment of women, the uncanny prowess of dead men,
and the baleful confusion between man and God.'

Here I should absolutely agree with Mr. Murray, if I were convinced
that "the Northern or Achaean spirit" of Achaean poets was dealing
mainly with "the epic tradition" of præ-Achaean Greece. If they were,
they would certainly "ignore or prune away" manners and beliefs which
were not their own. But I have shown, I think, that between Achaean
and Athenian early "Saga" a great gulf was fixed in Homeric times.
The Homeric poet dealt with Achaean legend, which could not contain
ghost-worship, "hocus-pocus of purification," and so on. Let me here
remark that no known later Greek taste objected to the _märchenhaft_,
the preposterous element in "Saga." Pindar and the dramatists do not
reject it, I have shown, but Homer does in the _Iliad_. Had Homer
revelled in it, later Greek taste saw nothing out of keeping here; had
no temptation to expurgate Pegasus, or the soul-box of Meleager, or the
magical invulnerability of Achilles, or his medicinal spear, or that
magical property, the Luck of Troy, the palladium, and so forth. The
genius of Homer, not later expurgation, accounts for his reticence.

Next, I seem to discern that "the progress of a spirit which hated
cruelty and uncleanness" refers to a period when "Achaeans" and
"Pelasgians," long intermingled, were becoming what is called
"Hellenic," the people of early historic Greece in the sixth century.
What this Hellenic spirit might, if it could, purge away is just the
ferocity which is _not_ purged away; the ferocity which mutilates, and,
when the deed is not executed, has threatened to mutilate foes slain in
open fight; and which denies, or wishes to deny, honourable burial to
the dead. On the dead "unseemly things" are wrought, with little or no
rebuke from the poet, except in the case of the extreme ferocities of
Achilles against Hector and the twelve Trojan captives. Thus Agamemnon
"smote Hippolochus to earth, and cut off his arms and neck with the
sword, then tossed him like a ball of stone to roll through the
throng"; or rather "like the trunk of a tree."[2] In the same way the
minor Aias cuts off the head of Imbrios, and throws it like a football
"into the scrum."[3] Hector is keen to cut off the head of Patroclus,
and stick it on a stake, like the head of the great Montrose.[4]
Peneleus decapitates Ilioneus, and waves the head at the Trojans.[5]

Manifestly these ferocities were _de bonne guerre_ in the society to
which Homer sang. I conceive that they were hateful to the taste of the
historic Hellenic spirit. Could it have expurgated these ferocities it
would have done so. But it could not. Other examples might be given.
Thus Euphorbus,[6] who dealt the first wound to Patroclus, threatens
to cut off and carry home the head of Menelaus. Euphorbus was avenging
his brother, slain by Menelaus. Peneleus was avenging Antimachus, his
friend. The ferocities are sometimes prompted by personal vengeance.
Euphorbus would have kept his word, but the spear of Menelaus pierced
his throat. We cannot find expurgation in failure to accomplish a
purpose. Hector meant to fix the head of Patroclus on a stake, so Iris
tells Achilles,[7] and to give his body to the dogs to devour. Such was
warfare as known to Homer; and the intellect of later Greece, which
probably abhorred such deeds, expurgated nothing.

Mr. Murray writes[8] that "no other corpse" (except Hector's) "is
maltreated in the Iliad." Such treatment was quite deliberately planned
by men of both armies, and was also executed in hot blood. I have given
examples enough of such maltreatment.

To cruelty we return, and to refusal of burial. It seems to have been
quite usual. The notable exception in clemency is Achilles; before his
passion came on him he ransomed his captives, and "his soul had shame
to despoil the dead Eëtion"; but he burned him in his inlaid armour,
and raised a barrow over him.[9]

In the Iliad ferocity runs high, in these particulars; the historic
hatred of such doings is growing but slowly. "The spirit that
hated cruelty" has left the facts where it found them; there is no
expurgation of them. As to the Hellenic historic spirit and its
hatred of "uncleanness"--_autres temps, autres moeurs_! Homer has no
allusions to the survival of savage vices detested by "the Northern
spirit." But, granting that the waxing spirit of Hellenism expurgated
atrocities committed on the dead (though they stand staring upon us
in the _Iliad_), "the Northern or Achaean spirit" is credited by Mr.
Murray with "pruning away or ignoring" the characteristic rites,
beliefs, and usages of the conquered races.

The earlier the period, the more drastic would be the purification.
Achaeans, not yet leavened with "Pelasgian" blood and beliefs, could
not celebrate what they confessedly did not practise. In their work no
later expurgation could cleanse away that which their work could not
contain.

Hero-worship; propitiation of the dead; purification of homicides by
blood; initiatory ceremonies, mysteries, witchcraft, and so forth,
these are practices with which we are familiar in savagery, in
barbarism, and, by way of survival, in the rites and customs of the
most highly civilised races. They exist in various degrees in different
races and societies. In Northern society, as we know it in the sagas,
most of these superstitions are comparatively rare. Ghosts were
believed in by Gunnar and Grettir; very able-bodied ghosts they were,
a kind of vampires. But they were not propitiated, they were met with
the steel axe and short sword, or with muscular force in the wrestling
match. Their bodies were mutilated and then burned, as in the case of
the vampire Glam in the Grettir saga.

There are few, if any, traces of hero-worship in early Teutonic and
Scandinavian literature. Of purification from homicide in baths or by
aspersions of swine's blood I can remember no Northern example.

The original purpose of this nasty practice is, apparently, to throw
the pursuing ghost of the slain man off the trail of the slayer; but
the heroes of the Icelandic sagas recked not a fig for the feud of the
ghost. "Soul and body, on the whole, are odds against a disembodied
soul," in their opinion, hence the absence of the Greek rite of
purification by blood.

The Northerners had, doubtless, their various rustic rites and revels,
originally intended to promote the fertility of nature. But if they
once had initiatory ceremonies and mysteries like savages, these appear
to have been forgotten by the time of the heroes of the Icelandic
sagas. Witchcraft was an article of belief, but was held in great
disesteem. There are legends of sacrifices of kings, but these are
somewhat shadowy and remote.

As a consequence, if the Teutonic and Scandinavian people had
possessed a great epic poet, working in accordance with the ideas of
his people as they existed at the time of the occupation of Iceland,
his poem would, I conceive, be as silent as the Homeric epics about
hero-worship, ghost-feeding, purification of homicides by blood,
sacrifices of girls, initiatory ceremonies, and mysteries like those of
Demeter and Dionysus. Of second-sight we would hear, as we do in the
_Odyssey._ The magic would be worked by mortals, not by a fair goddess,
Circe. Ravening monsters like Grendel and his mother, in _Beowulf_,
with their refraction in the Grettir saga, and vampires like Glam,
would afford sport to the heroes; whereas in the _Iliad_ we have only
the Chimaera to represent such monsters, and the Chimaera is alluded to
but slightly.

Thus, as regards the whole chapter of the superstitions "characteristic
of the conquered races" in Greece[10] (and characteristic of the
historical Hellenes and of Athens in her lustre), the supposed
Scandinavian epic would be as pure as the _Iliad_. The absence of
mention of hero-worship, ghost-propitiation, divinised mortals,
purification by blood, sacrifices of girls, initiations and mysteries,
would be quite natural and unaffected.

The poet could not speak of beliefs and rites which were not in the
manners of his people. In the same way, and for the same reason, Homer
scarcely hints at anything in this chapter of superstitions and usages.
Like the Scandinavians of the heroic age, his people had not these
things in their manners.

As the oldest Achaean poetry must necessarily have been pure from
the usages and beliefs of the conquered races, as the Achaean or
Northern spirit ignored what, according to Mr. Murray, it actually
persecuted,[11] we need not attribute this ignoring of such beliefs
and practices to expurgation in a later age. The Ionians, as soon as
we meet them in the dawn of actual history and in the "Cyclic" poems,
are believers in ghosts, worshippers of heroes, and they practise
purification by blood. People do not expurgate from older poetry the
things consecrated by their own law and religion and celebrated in
their own poems: things which could not be present, too, in the old
poems of the uncontaminated Achaeans. Yet Mr. Murray appears, if I
understand him, to incline to a theory that hero-worship, for example,
was distasteful to the Ionian cult of the Delian Apollo, and perhaps
for that reason was, in early historic times, expurgated from the
_Iliad_. But certainly, given Homeric ideas about the dead, who could
not help or hinder, hero-worship did not and could not exist in Homeric
society and poetry. Moreover, if the Achaean spirit did "prune away
or ignore" such ghostly matters, the Delian expurgators could find
nothing here to expurgate. As to blood-purification, Apollo himself
was purified, and, in art, holds the purifying pig above the homicide.
So purification was "Apolline," and what was Apolline was safe from
Apolline expurgation.

I now collect passages on the expurgators from Mr. Murray's writings.


EXPURGATION

"The middle and later generations of the Homeric poets ... were mainly
responsible for the work of expurgation."

"Homer has cut out" certain stories of human sacrifice, cannibalism,
and "mutilations of the Hesiodic gods" "for their revoltingness" (p.
122).

"Homer, if we may use that name to denote the authors of the prevailing
tone of the _Iliad_" (p. 131).

So far the "expurgations" appear to have been done mainly by the
Homeric poets themselves "in the middle and later generations." Yet, as
to superstitions, the first uncontaminated Achaean poets must have been
the purest of all.

It is admitted that the poets did not in the same way "expurgate" the
"Cyclic" epics.

"If the educational use of the _Iliad_ began in Ionia as early as the
eighth century, which is likely enough, we can hardly help supposing
that it had some share in these processes of purification with which we
have been dealing" (p. 133).

Here it appears that, probably by the eighth century, the _Iliad_
was a distinct poem, recognised as such, and subject to processes of
purification from which the _Cypria_, for example, and other "Cyclic"
poems escaped.

"The Epos" has "its prevailing Achaean tone," owing to "the prestige
of the Achaean chiefs, the convenience of the Achaean institutions of
the Saga and the Bard," and "the partial return to the migratory life"
(p. 245). If, then, it is really the austerity, and freedom from low
superstitions, of the conquering Achaean race that our epics represent,
the "Cyclic" poems, if equally old, should be equally austere, and
equally free from superstition. But they, notoriously, were full of the
superstitions of the conquered races. Why did the middle generations
of Homeric poems leave _them_ alone? Because already selected for
recitation?

If the Achaean or Northern spirit, "the clean and lordly Northern
spirit," made our epics so pure, what was left for the spirit of
historic Greece (by no means Northern, or specially clean or lordly) to
do in the way of purification?

It is plain enough that the clean and lordly Northern people became
mixed with the pre-existing populations in Greece, like the Normans and
the Cromwellian English settlers with the Irish. "As the population
became more mixed, which was the case everywhere on the mainland, the
result was that the old pre-Hellenic stratum of beliefs and emotion,
re-emerged" (p. 246), for example, in worship of the dead, which is
un-Homeric and un-Achaean.

Are we to suppose, then, that while the Achaeans were sinking to the
pre-Hellenic level in such matters, all the superstitions of the
conquered races found their way into the Homeric poems, and had to be
purged out again, in Delos, or at Athens, where these superstitions
were in full force? If so, the descendants of the pre-Hellenic
populations inserted the superstitions into the _Iliad_ where they had
not been previously, and then cut them out again.

It is not easy to understand how stories "far too primitive and
monstrous for Homer" "had been expurgated from Homer centuries back"
(p. 247), centuries before Aeschylus, who introduced Io, once the
mistress of Zeus, later a cow, in his _Prometheus_. If Homer or the
Homeric poets were clean and lordly Achaeans, they never would have
dealt at all in a story "far too primitive and monstrous for Homer," or
for any one but Major Weir. It does not appear to me that this theory
of expurgation, all important as it is, can be easily understood. If
later Greece expurgated the Homeric ferocities to the dead, why are
they left standing? If the Achaean spirit got rid of the superstitions,
why need we invoke later influences, Delian, Ionian, Athenian?

Then the old questions re-arise, why were the "Cyclic" poems of the
heroic times left unexpurgated; why is the Attic drama tinged with what
is too monstrous for Homer, if Homer was purged a generation, or two
or three, earlier than the generation of Aeschylus? To account for the
expurgations, we are to consider the establishment by law of Homeric
recitations at Athens (see "The Alleged Athenian Recension of Homer").
Concerning the date of this event, and everything else connected with
it, all is vague. Mr. Murray writes: "The recitation was established
about the end of the sixth century ... so much seems historically
clear." (I wish anything were historically clear in this business!)
"It matters little that, in attributing the institution of this
recitation to a definite founder, our authorities waver between three
almost contemporaneous names, Solon, Pisistratus, Hipparchus. Whichever
it was, the main fact remains the same. General considerations tell
somewhat against Solon, and in favour of the tyrants." Now, as our
authorities, all late, differ totally as to the name (and so, as to the
date) of the man who instituted the recitations of Homer, it is plain
that they had no good authority. "The Solonian laws and constitution
were promulgated in 594 B.C.," says Grote; that was at least eighty
years before a date "about the end of the sixth century." The men are
far from being contemporaneous. Hipparchus was murdered in 514, in the
thirteenth year of the tyranny of Hipparchus, and Hippias, if anybody,
not Hipparchus, should have made a law regulating Homeric recitations.

All is vague; but if Thucydides correctly says that Hipparchus was
slain in consequence of a quarrel arising out of an odious non-Homeric
vice; and if, as Thucydides says, Aristogeiton died "not easily," if
he was tortured to death, as later authors tell, then the society of
Athens was little likely to expurgate either uncleanness or cruelty, if
they found such matter in Homer.

Political and personal history being so vague and dim in the sixth
century, literary history cannot be in better case; practically we know
nothing beyond the fact that a law regulated the recitation of Homer at
the Panathenaic festival.

How these recitations and hypothetical earlier Ionian recitations
contributed to the expurgation of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, must be
stated in Mr. Murray's own words. I may first observe that, in his
opinion, "the body of the poem" (the _Iliad_), "even in the latest
parts, is clearly Ionian; the ultimate nucleus something else,
something older and more Northern."[12] How, if this be true, the
Ionians are only once named in the poems, while the Athenians are but
perfunctorily mentioned, is what always puzzles me!

A long extract in which Mr. Murray gives his views must now be quoted:

"In the remains of the earliest Greek poetry we are met by a
striking contrast. As Mr. Lang has told us, 'Homer presents to the
anthropologist the spectacle of a society which will have nothing to
do with anthropology.' By Homer, of course, Mr. Lang means the _Iliad_
and the _Odyssey_; and we may add to those poems a stream of heroic
tradition which runs more or less clearly through most of our later
literature, and whose spirit is what we call classic, Homeric, or
Olympian.

"But there is also in the earliest epic tradition another stratum,
of which this Olympian character does not hold. A stratum full of
the remains, and at times even betraying the actuality, of those
'beastly devices of the heathen' which are dear to the heart of
us anthropologists--if a mere Greek scholar may venture to class
himself among even amateur anthropologists; ceremonies of magic
and purification, beast-worship, stone-xvorship, ghosts, and
anthropomorphic (theriomorphic?) gods, traces of the peculiar powers
of women both as 'good medicine' and as titular heads of the family,
and especially a most pervading and almost ubiquitous memory of Human
Sacrifice.

"This stratum is represented by Hesiod and the Rejected Epics,--I mean
those products of the primitive saga-poetry which were not selected for
recitation at the Panathenaea (or the unknown Ionian archetype of the
Panathenaea), and which consequently fell into neglect,--by the Orphic
literature, by a large element in tragedy, most richly, perhaps, by
the antiquarian traditions preserved in Pausanias, and in the hostile
comments of certain Christian writers, such as Clement and Eusebius.

"Now the first thing for the historian to observe about this
non-Homeric stratum is this: that non-Homeric is by no means the same
thing as post-Homeric. We used to be taught that it was. We used to be
taught that Homer was, practically speaking, primitive: that we started
from a pure epic atmosphere and then passed into an age of romantic
degradation. The extant remains of the non-Homeric poems frequently
show in their form, and sometimes even in their content, definite
signs of presupposing the _Iliad_, just as the _Iliad_ here and there
shows signs of presupposing them; and it is not until recently that
we have been able to understand properly the nature and the method of
composition of an ancient Traditional Book. I will not go into that
point in detail here. Even supposing that the _Cypria,_ as a poem,
could definitely be called 'later' than the _Iliad_, it is enough to
say that a later literary whole may often contain an older kernel or
a more primitive mass of material, and in the case of the non-Homeric
saga-poems it is fairly clear that they do so.

"Two arguments will suffice: First, the argument from analogy. Few
anthropologists, with the knowledge now at our command, will regard the
high, austere, knightly atmosphere of the _Iliad_ as primitive when
compared with that of Hesiod. In the second place, a great proportion
of our anthropological material is already to be found in prehistoric
Crete. The an-iconic worship, the stones, the beasts, the pillars, and
the ouranian birds; the great mother goddess of Anatolia, the human
sacrifices, and the royal and divine bull. I speak under correction
from those who know the Cretan finds better than I; but to me it seems
that there are many bridges visible from Crete to Hesiod or Eumelus or
even Pausanias; but the gulf between Crete and Homer seems, in certain
places, to have no bridge.

"Thus the later literary whole contains the more primitive modes of
thought, the earlier religion.

"Now this fact in itself, though it may be stated in different ways, is
not much disputed among scholars. But the explanations of the fact are
various. That which seems to me much the most probable is the theory
of Expurgation. As Mr. Lang seems not quite to have understood what I
tried to say about this in my _Rise of the Greek Epic_, I will restate
it in this way: We know that the great mass of saga-poetry began to
be left on one side and neglected from about the eighth century on;
and we find, to judge from our fragments, that it remained in its
semi-savage state. Two poems, on the contrary, were selected at some
early time for public recitation at the solemn four-yearly meeting of
"all Ionians,"[13] and afterwards of "all Athenians." The poems were
demonstrably still in a fluid condition; and the intellect of Greece
was focussed upon them. This process lasted on through the period
of that great movement which raised the shores of the Aegean from a
land of semi-savages to the Hellas of Thales, of Aeschylus, and of
Euripides. And we find, naturally, that amid all the colour of an ideal
past, in which these two epics, like all other epics, have steeped
their story, there has been a gradual but drastic rejection of all the
uglier and uncleaner elements. That is a very broad statement; it omits
both the evidence and the additional causes and qualifications. But it
serves to explain why I treat the non-Homeric sagas as representing
more faithfully the primitive pre-Hellenic habits of thought, the mere
slough out of which Hellas rose."

       *       *       *       *       *

I agree that the "non-Homeric sagas" represent more faithfully the
primitive pre-Hellenic habits of thought. Homer was not concerned
with pre-Hellenic habits of thought; he represents the Hellenes who
"possessed Hellas, the land of fair women, and followed Achilles."

I also entirely agree that "the later literary whole" (by which I at
least mean Hesiod, the "Cyclic" fragment, and much of Greek tragedy,
not to speak of antiquarian learning) "contains the more primitive
modes of thought, the earlier religion." But the theory that these
things were once in, but were purged out of, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey,_
still baffles me. If they were usages peculiar to the conquered races,
how could they appear in the poetry of the uncontaminated Northern or
Achaean conquerors?

How, again, can we say that "the great mass of saga poetry began to
be left on one side and neglected from about the eighth century"?
Notoriously the "Cyclic" poems, or the legends which were given in
those poems, were greatly preferred as subjects of art by the Athenian
vase-painters of the sixth century, and by Polygnotus when he decorated
the Lesche at Delphi. The stories, I have shown, reached the Middle
Ages through Rome and through Graeco-Roman literature, and eclipsed our
Homer. To them we owe the unhappy _Troilus and Cressida_ of Shakespeare.

We have no evidence known to me that proves the selection, "at some
early time for public recitation," of "two poems," at the solemn
four-yearly meeting of "All Ionians" and afterwards of "all Athenians."
Mr. Verrall supposes the "Cyclic" poems, as well as our Homer, to have
been recited at the Panathenaea. I know no evidence that they were, and
none proving that they were not. I am unaware of any reason for which
our _Iliad_ should have been specially selected for education in the
Ionia of the eighth century, and for public recitation. The reason is
the further to seek if the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, when thus selected,
"were demonstrably still in a fluid condition"; indeed, while they were
still in a fluid condition, I do not know how they could have been
deemed so much more choiceworthy than other poems still (I presume)
fluidic.

If "the intellect of Greece was focussed upon" _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_
while they were still fluidic, but already selected, then the
expurgation was due, not to Achaean poets who ignored and pruned
away the usages and beliefs of the conquered races, but to _les
intellectuels_ of Greece, who (whatever their private opinions might
be) saw hero-worship in daily practice; and if they killed any
one, were purified by pigs' blood. Hesiod stood high in universal
knowledge, was a consecrated authority; if he could be purged, why
was he not purged? Because he was not recited? Yet he was part of
education, and needed a Bowdler much more than Homer.

The practices and beliefs expurgated from Homer were not "done in a
corner" in historic Greece.

So "primitive," so barbaric was the intellect of historic Greece even
in the sixth century and in the age of Pericles, and later, in regard
to heroic tombs, for example, that the heroic ghosts were supposed to
inhabit their sepulchres in the shape of rather harmless snakes, like
the _Idhlozi_ of the Zulus. "In Snake form the hero dwelt in his tomb,"
says Miss Harrison.[14]

Miss Harrison publishes reproductions of works of Greek art from
the sixth century (when all ugly things of this kind, we are told,
were drastically rejected from the _Odyssey_ and _Iliad_) to the
fourth century. We see the dead, a male and a female ghost, receiving
offerings. The artist is determined to make his meaning clear. Behind
the chairs of the holy heroes is a huge snake with a man's beard. He is
a _human_ snake, the incarnation of the dead man's ghost. This is the
belief of the Baronga of Delagoa and of the Zulus.[15]

In a vase, a _lecythus_, of the fifth century, the worshippers surround
a tumulus with a phallus-shaped pillar on top. A huge snake occupies
the tumulus; he is the ghost's incarnation.[16]

Not in glens of mountainous Arcadia, or in recesses of rural chapels
alone, were these things done. The theatre showed sacred tombs; each
place of periodical games had its presiding hero; relics were in high
request, living men, conquerors or athletes, came to be divinised; at
the Eleusinia the initiates saw rites of savage origin; oracles of the
dead were publicly consulted; the purification rites went on as law
demanded--all publicly, all unrebuked.

Does any one suppose that priapic images like those of the Admiralty
Islands were features in Homer's conception of a street in Mycenae or
Ilios? These images were sacred in the Athens of Pericles, the Hermae
were not like Homer's Hermes. Is it likely that, if the managers of
Delian or Athenian recitations found such things as these in Homer,
they would cut them out as too naughty to be mentioned, or for some
other reason not to be mentioned, at a public festival of men and women
familiar with all these things, and seeing in them nothing but good?

It seems unlikely. Moreover, if the Northern or Achaean spirit had
ignored or pruned away these things, they could give no trouble to the
managers of Delian or Athenian recitations.

When we come to consider examples of expurgation, we may prefer to pass
by the odious vices reprobated by the code of Australian savages, but
highly popular in historic Greece. They do not occur in our Homer, and
I know but one allusion to them in the Icelandic sagas, and that is in
a mere impossible taunt about a Bogle. But no one can say that Homer
never heard of such things; we might as well say that, because nobody
coughs in Homer, no Achaean ever condescended to cough. The profession
of Rahab cannot have been unknown, though Homer never mentions it. In
short, a high ideal tone is preserved, Homer is not Monsieur Zola; an
epic is not a "naturalistic" novel.

When the Greeks did entertain a moral objection to anything, to
adelphic marriage, for example: if Homer mentioned such an union, among
the Phaeacians, I can easily believe that a palliative explanation
might be later inserted. Thus, in _Odyssey_, vii. 54, Alcinous and
Arete are "of the self-same parents." Later, a genealogy makes them
uncle and niece. This, for what I know, may be a later palliative
interpolation. But it is all one to Homer. He follows a well-known
_Märchen,_ a tale of No Man's Land, as in his mention of the adelphic
marriages of the sons and daughters of Aeolus. Adelphic unions are
capital offences in savage customary law; one has no reason to suppose
that the Homeric Achaeans were more lax than savages, or no less
depraved by Egyptian influences than the Ptolemy and Berenice of
Theocritus.[17]

I am following Mr. Murray's examples of expurgation. The spirit of the
battles in the _Iliad_ "is chivalrous," he says. "No enemy is ever
tortured" (as Sinon is in Quintus Smyrnaeus). Yet mediæval professors
of chivalry never mutilated, I think, foes (not being rebels) slain in
fair field. Homer's men did, I have shown; and nobody expurgated the
melancholy facts. As to cruelty to living foes, Euripides and Sophocles
make Achilles drag the living Hector behind his chariot, while Homer
makes it plain that Hector is stone dead.[18]

One can only say that Homer shows better taste than the tragedians.
If this good taste is due to late expurgators, if, in a Homeric lay,
Achilles did drag the living Hector, one can only wish that Sophocles
and Euripides had been on the moral level of the expurgators. Whoever
_they_ were, their taste was vastly superior to that of the tragedians.
I would attribute the better taste to Homer. The odious tale may be
of Ionian invention: the Ionian poet makes Odysseus a child murderer.
In the _Tain Bo Cualgne_, Ferdiad drags a very odious dead man at his
chariot wheels, not a living man. Homer was probably, indeed certainly,
on a higher level of taste than the ancient Irish epic-makers: on
this point they are at one with him. The great tragedians preferred
a more horrible story--not, of course, because they approved of such
proceedings. In King Lear, Shakespeare has horrors undreamed of in his
sources, in _Märchen_ and chronicles. He followed a French story in
Sidney's _Arcadia_, and pleased "the groundlings." To "groundlings"
Homer did not sing: Sophocles and Euripides wrote for the cultured Pit
of Athens. For that reason, or because they found their story in some
unknown source, and liked the horrible, they made Achilles torture a
living enemy.

There is a passage in the _Iliad_ (xiii. 573) in which a man, speared
from behind through the bowels, "where a wound is most baneful to
wretched mortals, writhes about the spear ... for a moment, not for
long"; his life follows the spear withdrawn. This is not a pleasant
picture; but war, in fact, is not pleasant. Mr. Murray conceives the
line which he renders "he struggled quite a little while, not at all
long," to be a later palliative or expurgative addition; like the
same formula in Odyssey, xxii. 473, where it is applied to the dying
struggles of the hanged women-servants of Odysseus. This may be so,
or may not; the fact that the line _is_ a formula, like those of our
ballads, makes me incline to think it ancient. The point is not of
much importance, and cannot be decided. The horrible death inflicted on
the treacherous thrall, Melanthius, in the _Odyssey_, is a proof that
Homer's men could be very cruel to a treacherous thrall; but so could
the Norsemen be, as in the scarcely quotable parallel case of Wolf the
Unwashed. In the sagas generally we hear of few such cases, though many
must have occurred, abroad, in Viking raids. In the _Iliad_ there is
no treacherous thrall; if such an one there were, he would have been
treated like Melanthius.

I understand Mr. Murray to argue that the _Iliad_ has been expurgated,
but not quite successfully, of traces of poisoned arrows; while
the _Odyssey_ (l. 257-264) has the story of Odysseus seeking for
arrow-poison at Ephyre, where poison was, we elsewhere learn, a
marketable commodity. Ilus would not give it, for he feared the
gods; another man gave it, as he dearly loved Odysseus. The story is
not a true story, but a fable told by Athene. All it proves is that
arrow-poison was known, but was hateful to the gods. As to Mr. Murray's
arguments that such words as _ἄφυκτος_, not "to be escaped," applied to
arrows in the _Iliad_, and "bitter" (πικρός) and "groanful" and "not
long to be supported" as proofs of the practice of poisoning arrows,
I can only say that I do not think the inference necessary. _Πικρός_
means "sharp," according to Liddell and Scott; unpoisoned arrows cause
groans enough; the heroes "do not long support" flesh-wounds from
_spears_, but "retire hurt." That Agamemnon expects Menelaus to die
(iv. 134) when arrow--smitten in the belly, is very natural. Menelaus
would have died had the arrow bitten deep, but it merely grazed him
through several interstices of his armour. Pandarus shot with a fresh
arrow, "unused before," "whose poison has not been rubbed off." I reply
that in meditating an important shot, any archer would use a fresh
arrow if he could, because the feathers would have been in better trim
and the shaft unstrained, the point unblunted, exactly as a man would
use a new spear in a tournament.

In the _Iliad_, men have strong bows, with iron or bronze points.
People with these advantages do not use arrow-poison, the resort of
races with blow-pipes, or with weak bows and arrow-points of bone,
corrupt human bones by preference.

As to human sacrifice, a frequent topic in the Cyclic poems and the
Greek dramatists, I have treated the subject elsewhere. I do not think
that it was expurgated from the _Iliad_ by men who let it stand in the
Cyclic poems and the drama, but that it was not in Achaean manners. In
the legends told of human sacrifice by Pausanias, the peoples concerned
are usually Ionian or Athenian. The timid Calchas of _Iliad_, i. 74-83,
who dare not name the cause of Apollo's wrath unless Achilles will
guarantee his safety, could never have bidden Agamemnon to sacrifice
his daughter Iphigeneia, who is not one of the Over Lord's three
daughters, in the Iliad.

Mr. Murray suspects that stories of sacrifices of maidens "would have
been rejected from the _Iliad_, not only because human sacrifice was
a barbarity, but also because the stories involved too intense an
interest in women."[19] As I am intensely interested in Helen, Hecuba
and Andromache, in the Iliad, the argument seems to me strange. As to
Mr. Murray's theory that the Cretan king was done to death at stated
intervals,[20] the topic cannot be treated satisfactorily here. I do
not believe that anything of the sort described occurred anywhere,
and I am surprised at the remark, "We have no tradition of Minos's
death."[21]

The Minyan story of the intended sacrifice of Phryxus and Helle is
a world-wide _Märchen_, with sacrifice substituted for endophagous
cannibalism.

Finally, I do not suppose that the ferocities of Achilles towards
Hector, and at the funeral of Patroclus, are an expurgated version of
a lay in which they were narrated with pride and pleasure.[22] It was
customary, in Homeric warfare, to maltreat the dead; but Achilles went
too far, and persevered too long. He is, as Mr. Murray says, "a man mad
with grief, a man starving and sleepless," a man who knows that Hector
intended to mutilate his friend and give his body to the dogs. But
these excuses do not palliate the perseverance of Achilles in outrage,
or his slaying of the twelve Trojan captives. Sacrificed they were not.
There was no ritual for such a slaughter, 'and, as a matter of fact, it
is crowded into a shamefaced line and a half.' You would expect this
sacrifice to have at the very least twenty."[23]

You might expect that, if you believed that the Achaeans had a ritual
for human sacrifice! If they had, which I deem inconceivable, we
may readily believe that the spirit of historic Hellas would have
expurgated eighteen and a half of the twenty lines.

Much of this theory of expurgation of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ seems
to me to rest on the assumption of εὐφημία. This means abstention from
ill-omened words in poems recited at a great public festival. It is
impossible for me to understand why words referring, for example, to
the habitual and legal purification of homicides, or to the established
cult of heroes, should be deemed "ill-omened" at the recitations, in no
way religious, at a public holiday, and yet be deemed "well-omened" in
the performances of Athenian tragedy.

If the superstitions of the conquered races were not those of the
conquerors, they could not be in the epics of the conquerors. If they
were not there, _les intellectuels_ of Athens could not expurgate them.


[1] _R. G. E._ p. 134.

[2] _Iliad_, xi. 145-147.

[3] xiii. 202-204.

[4] xviii. 176-177.

[5] xiv. 496-505.

[6] xvii. 39.

[7] xviii. 175-177, xvii. 126.

[8] _R. G. E._ p. 131.

[9] _Iliad_, vi. 416-419.

[10] _R. G. E._ p. 134.

[11] _R. G. E._ pp. 245-246.

[12] _R. G. E._ p. 173.

[13] This archetype, Mr. Murray has just said, is "unknown."

[14] _Prolegg. to Study of Greek Religion_, 1903, p. 329.

[15] _Ibid_. pp. 327, 328.

[16] _Ibid_. p. 329.

[17] _R. G. E._ pp. 116, 117.

[18] Ajax, 1031. Andromache, 399.

[19] _R. G. E._ p. 123.

[20] _Ibid_. p. 127.

[21] See Roscher's _Lexikon_, s.v. Minos.

[22] _R. G. E._ pp. 130, 131.

[23] _R. G. E._ p. 131.




THE ALLEGED ATHENIAN RECENSION OF HOMER


Wolf could not but confess that the _Iliad_, as we possess it, is an
unity, better or worse; is a literary structure. How, then, did it come
to be what it is, if it were the work of several authors in several
ages? Wolf replies, "History speaks! The voice of all antiquity, and,
on the whole, the consent of all report bears witness that Pisistratus
was the first who had the Homeric poems committed to writing, and
brought into that order in which we now possess them."[1]

This amazing statement shows that there are classical scholars who
mean, when they speak of "History," something that no historical
student means when he uses the same term. About any dealings by
Pisistratus with Homer, history is mute as the grave. Not only is there
no record--that is, no contemporary public inscription--testifying
that Pisistratus or any other person "first had the Homeric poems
arranged and committed to writing," there is not even a hint of a
reference to any tradition of this event, in the great Historians of
the following century, Herodotus and Thucydides, none in Aristotle,
none in Ephorus (in the fourth century B.C.), none in the remains of
Aristarchus and other famous Alexandrian grammarians. History is silent
even as to a rumour. We know that Dieuchidas, a Megarian historian of
the fourth century, said something about its being Solon rather than
Pisistratus who did something in connection with Homer. We know this
from a mutilated passage in an author of the third century, Diogenes
Laertius. That is all.[2] Tradition from the time of Pisistratus
himself to that of Cicero speaks no articulate and intelligible word as
to what, according to Wolf, the voice of all antiquity declares. When
we come after five centuries of historic silence to Cicero, we do not
find him agreeing with Wolf that Pisistratus first had the poems of
Homer committed to writing, but saying that "he is said" (by whom?) "to
have been the first to have arranged, in their present order, the books
of Homer, previously in disarray?"[3]

Cicero speaks only of what "is said." The unvouched for report
mentioned by Cicero half a milennium after the date of Pisistratus is
not history, of course; is not evidence. Long before Cicero, in the
fourth century, Ephorus and Heraclides Ponticus told other stories
about the coming of Homer to Sparta, stories equally unhistorical. The
author of the pseudo-Platonic dialogue, _Hipparchus_, represented the
second son of Pisistratus as the first to bring Homer to Attica, and to
regulate Homeric recitations. None of these writers stands for History,
none of them agrees with another; they had no historical knowledge of
whatever facts there may have been.

We are in presence (1) of variants of a tradition doubtless founded
on fact, namely, that at an unknown date an Act was passed in Athens
regulating the recitations of Homeric poetry at the Panathenaic
festival; by some accounts an Act limiting the recitations to "Homeric"
poetry alone; and (2) of a legend that Pisistratus, or his second
son, collected and arranged in a certain order the Homeric poems. The
earliest and only good evidence, says Mr. Monro, with regard to the
recitation of Homer at Athens, is that of two orators two centuries
later than Pisistratus, Lycurgus and Isocrates. The former said in
a speech "Our fathers thought Homer such a good poet that they made
a law for him alone among poets that his poems should be recited by
rhapsodists at every quinquennial holding of the Panathenaea."[4] No
date is given, but Lycurgus must apparently be thinking of a date prior
to Tyrtaeus, as we shall see later. When Lycurgus says that the poems
of Homer alone were to be recited at the festival, he is of so late
a date that he probably means the Iliad and Odyssey. If the Act were
made in Solon's time, "Homer" may conceivably include all heroic epic
poetry. We know nothing about it.

Isocrates[5] says that the ancestors of the Athenians "desired to make
Homer's art honoured, both in contests of music (i.e. of the reciters)
and in the education of the young" (Monro, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 15).
Still later, in a passage with an important lacuna, Diogenes Laertius
says that Solon passed a law regulating the recitations,[6] the very
law which is attributed to Hipparchus by the author of the Dialogue
of that name.[7] In Sicyon also, in the sixth century, there were
recitations of Homer by competing rhapsodists; they were put down by
the tyrant Cleisthenes.[8]

Mr. Monro says that for the existence of an Athenian law about
Homeric recitations, whatever the date of that law may have been, we
have historical testimony. Indeed, if there were no such law, even
rhetoricans of the fourth century could scarcely tell the Athenians
that such a law existed. But as to its date and scope, and the name
of the statesman who passed it, if any exact information had existed,
perhaps there might have been some agreement among the persons who
speak of it. If nothing like a History of Literature existed before
the fourth century, we can expect no information. If it did exist,
it was of no value to Ephorus, Heracleides, and the author of the
_Hipparchus_. They are all at odds.

Mr. Monro says, as every man trained in historical criticism must say,
"modern scholars have tried to harmonise these notices, and to assign
to (the Spartan) Lycurgus (named by Ephorus), Solon (named by Diogenes
Laertius)," Pisistratus, and Hipparchus their several shares in the
service done to Homer. "This would be legitimate if there were reason
to regard any of the notices as historical. But, in fact, they are
merely mythical anecdotes, supplemented by the guesses of scholars."[9]
Whatever Homeric critics may think, they will find no trained historian
to dissent from Mr. Munro on those points.

_Historia silet_! History is mute. We only know that from an uncertain
period there were quinquennial recitations of "Homer," and Homer alone,
at Athens, and that "Homer" was used in education. Beyond that all is
"guesses of scholars." These guesses vary according to the taste and
fancy of the learned.

In this conclusion every one who is accustomed to historical
criticism will agree with Mr. Monro. Nothing can be made out of late
and contradictory statements; nothing beyond the fact that "Homer"
(whatever may be meant by "Homer") was quinquennially recited, under
regulations, at Athens, and entered into public education.

Mr. A. W. Verrall, however, says: "In general, the very last thing that
we get from disputants on either side is an exact construction and
estimation of what, truly or falsely, is recorded about the history of
Homer." Mr. Verrall writes thus in a _Quarterly_ review of Mr. Murray's
_Rise of the Greek Epic_, and of my _Homer and his Age_.

The questions as to what is "recorded" about "the history of Homer," I
had treated in my _Homer and the Epic_ (pp. 35, 38, 67-70), examining
the evidence, such as it is, and the opinions of Wolf, Ritschl, and
others; and siding with Mr. Monro (I may add, with Blass, Meyer,
Nutzhorn, Mr. T. W. Allen, and many others). In _Homer and his Age_
(pp. 46-50), I again went over the old ground, in reference to Mr.
Leaf's changes of opinion.

Mr. Verrall writes:[10] "The texts, as we have said, are not treated
fairly." Now really the texts are treated as the historian treats all
texts that come into his province. The dates of the alleged events
are set beside the dates of the texts concerning them; the texts are
remote, contradictory, and unevidential; the best historians, and the
historian who most carefully examined the popular traditions concerning
Pisistratus and his sons, namely, Thucydides, say nothing about the
alleged events.

Mr. Verrall also writes: "The record, such as it is, is hardly ever
correctly represented. The most punctilious of scholars (Grote, for
example) are in this matter not to be trusted."[11]

These are severe reproaches! Mr. Monro is not mentioned: are any of
his remarks unfair and untrust-worthy?

Mr. Verrall says: "We cannot but think that the ancient record about
the origin of Homer suffers unfairly from certain prepossessions
which all would disclaim, but which are more easily disclaimed than
abandoned."

For me, I frankly confess my own prepossessions, but consciousness of
his bias is the safeguard of the historian; it compels him to make
certain that he adds nothing to and takes nothing from what Mr. Verrall
calls "the ancient record," and _I_ call "the various ancient legends."
Mr. Verrall insists that "internal evidence about the history of a
book, if not controlled by record, is liable to infinitely elastic
interpretation." Certainly, but there is no possibility of "control by
record" in the case of the history of the Homeric poems.

No historian can agree with Mr. Verrall that "as a matter of record
and apart from inference or hypothesis, this Homer of ours ... appears
as an artificial product of scholarship, the result of a critical
process."[12] It is he who insists on the technical term "record"; it
is not pedantic, therefore, to reply that "record" there is none. By
"record" Mr. Verrall seems to mean, as regards the "artificial product
of scholarship," a statement of opinion made five centuries after the
alleged events.

The first testimony, or "record," cited by Mr. Verrall has nothing
to say about our Homer as "an artificial product of scholarship." It
deals merely with the legalised recitation of Homeric poetry, and of
that poetry alone, at the Panathenaea. The text is that which Mr.
Monro calls "the earliest evidence," "that of the orators Lycurgus and
Isocrates," in the fourth century.

That is good evidence. Lycurgus could not speak to the Athenians of
a law which, to their knowledge, did not exist. Lycurgus, in fact,
had been cajoling his Athenian audience with a set of fables about
their ancestors, whose patriotism and valour in _pre-Homeric times_ he
applauds. Did not Erechtheus in a war with Thrace sacrifice his own
daughter in obedience to an oracle, and then defeat the invaders! For
this noble action Lycurgus cites a play by Euripides, _The Erechtheus_!

Lycurgus next says that Athens made a law that the poems of Homer
alone should be recited at the Panathenaea; and that, encouraged by
the patriotism ascribed by the poet to Hector, the Athenians, in the
Persian affair, were ready to die, not for their city only, but for all
Hellas. Such men were the Athenians, in public and private life: then
comes the story of the Spartans borrowing Tyrtaeus from Athens, and
their approval of a Tyrtaean poem adapted in part from _Iliad_, xxii.
71 ff.

That is all. Mr. Verrall writes: "By Lycurgus this whole educational
movement, and the adoption of Homer as the basis of it, is attributed
to the Athenians as a people...." What Mr. Verrall says about "a
revolution in the method of education not less momentous than any
movement in history,"[13] has, I think, but scanty warrant in the
actual words of Lycurgus. It is Mr. Verrall, not Lycurgus, who
compares the effect of Homer on Athens with the effect ("notorious,"
as he too truly says) of the Bible upon Scotland. All this about an
educational movement, however true it may be, is, I fear, "inference
and hypothesis" of Mr. Verrall's own. Lycurgus speaks of learning
courageous patriotism from Homer, all the rest we have to assume; at
least I cannot find it in Lycurgus.

Mr. Verrall has next to meet the charge of contradictions among the
late writers who attribute to Solon, Pisistratus, and _Hipparchus_
the law about recitations at the Panathenaea. But these texts, except
the pseudo-Platonic _Hipparchus_, say nothing about Homer as "an
artificial product of scholarship." Mr. Verrall declares that Lycurgus
and the _Hipparchus_ say nothing about the "arrangement" of the poems,
"they speak merely of adoption and compilation."[14] But Lycurgus
says nothing about compilation, the Hipparchus says nothing about
compilation.

The _Hipparchus_ says, what Lycurgus does not say, "that _Hipparchus_,
son of Pisistratus, first brought the poems of Homer to Attica, and
that he obliged the rhapsodists at the Panathenaic festival to recite
consecutively, so that the people might hear entire poems, and not
merely passages chosen at the will of the reciter."[15]

Not a word about "compilation." The Hipparchus falls into all the
errors regarding the history of the Pisistradae that are pointed out by
Thucydides.[16] Mr. Verrall is not lucky, he chooses a very erroneous
anonymous author, and makes him speak of "compilation," which I do not
see that he mentions, and calls his "no late or dubious authority."[17]

Next, the _Hipparchus_ attributes to a man who might have been Solon's
great-grandson the law which Diogenes Laertius attributes to Solon.
Mr. Verrall palliates the contradictions in a curious way. "These
ascriptions have presumably the same measure of truth as the connecting
of the Reformation now with one and now writh another of the princes or
statesmen of the sixteenth century."[18]

I do not know what historian connects the Reformation with one
statesman or prince and with one only. But the texts of Mr. Verrall
attribute not a religious and political movement dating, in England,
from about 1370 to--?, but a single legislative Act, to several
statesmen of about four generations. They are not speaking of a
prolonged "educational movement," but of one legislative Act,--about
which they really know no particulars.

The correct analogy to this Act is the authorisation of a translation
of the Bible in England. No historian attributes that feat to any
prince but gentle King Jamie: none says that it was due to Henry
VIII., Edward VI., or Elizabeth. The historian cannot assume that
when Diogenes Laertius attributes the law on recitations to Solon,
and the _Hipparchus_ attributes it to the son of Pisistratus, both
authorities mean only that a whole educational movement occurred in
the sixth century. The existence of primary education in the Athens
of the seventh and sixth centuries is proved by the multitude of
_inscribed_ vases with paintings of Homeric, Cyclic, and Attic legends;
but Diogenes and the _Hipparchus_ are speaking variously about a single
legislative enactment.

Mr. Verrall next supposes that the "Homer" then recited and taught
at Athens was probably the whole "Cycle" of Cyclic poems.[19] This
question he must settle with Mr. Murray, who, we have seen, says that
the poetry selected for recitation at the Panathenaea was none but the
still fluid lays of which, as I understand, our two epics are the final
result; while the Cyclic poems were rejected.



[1] _Prolegomena_, 2nd edition, 1859, p. 85.

[2] See _Homer and his Age_, pp. 44-50.

[3] _De Oratore_, iii. 34.

[4] _Leocr_. p. 209.

[5] _Panegyr_. c. 42.

[6] Diog. Laert. _Solon_, i. 57.

[7] See Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 393. 397.

[8] _Herodotus_, v. 67.

[9] _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 27

[10] _Quarterly Review_, July 1908, p. 76.

[11] _Ibid._ p. 53.

[12] _Quarterly Review_, July 1908, p. 54.

[13] _Quarterly Review_, July 1908, p. 55.

[14] _Ibid_. p. 60.

[15] _Hipparch_, p. 228 B.

[16] Thucydides, vi. 57-59; Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 393.

[17] _Quarterly Review_, p. 58.

[18] _Ibid_. p. 58.

[19] _Quarterly Review_, p. 60.




APPENDIX D

THE LOST EPICS AND THE HOMERIC EPICS (_WIEDERHOLUNGEN_)


In Chapter XVIII., on Homer and the "Cyclic" Poems, I fear that I
have not succeeded in understanding Mr. Murray's view of the subject.
The fault of misapprehension is not perhaps entirely without excuse.
Generally speaking, I give the erroneous impression that Mr. Murray
thinks the _Iliad later_ than what are usually called the "Cyclic"
poems on the themes connected with Troy. He certainly says that
passages in the Iliad "seem to be derived from the Cypria, the Little
Iliad, and the Sack of Ilion, the so-called Aethiopis...."[1]

He also says: "In its actual working up, however, our _Iliad_ has
reached a further stage of development than the ordinary run of poetic
chronicles, if I may use the term." Moreover, "we happen to know that
there was an old chronicle poem which both contained a catalogue of the
ships[2] and also narrated at length the assembling of the fleet at
Aulis--the so-called _Cypria_ or Cyprian verses. Our Catalogue has in
all probability been taken from there."[3] Here we are told that our
Iliad derives some passages and the Catalogue from an old chronicle
poem, the Cypria, and from several other named epics, "the Little
Iliad, and the Sack of Ilion, the so-called Aethiopis," while, "in
actual working up, our Iliad has reached a further stage of development
than the ordinary run of poetic chronicles...." It was natural that, on
hearing how the Iliad borrowed from an old chronicle poem, the Cypria,
I should think that the _Cypria_ was regarded as an old chronicle poem
_complete in itself_ before it was borrowed from by the _Iliad_. The
chronicle poem of events so mythical and remote could not resemble a
monastic chronicle in receiving additions from contemporary history.
This remark also applies to the other poems with names, _Sack of
Ilion,_ and so on, and with contents which must be definitely known,
if it be known that the _Iliad_ borrowed from them, or seems to have
borrowed from them. One could not but be convinced, then, that these
old _books_ which lent, were supposed to be earlier finished than the
book, the _Iliad,_ which borrowed from them. But Mr. Murray also said,
and here the prospect wavers: "The truth is that these various books or
masses of tradition were growing up side by side for centuries. All the
great books were growing up together, and passages could be repeated
from any one to any other."[4]

Now a _book_ is one thing--a book with a name, such as _Cypria_, is
not equivalent to "a mass of tradition," which is another thing. To
take an example, we have _The Wallace_ of Blind Harry (_circ_. 1460),
a book about as long as the _Odyssey_. Harry's materials were "a mass
of tradition," including, it is believed, popular ballads, concerning
events then remote by a century and a half. We cannot call the mass of
tradition "a _book_ which was growing up"; nor can we call the mass
of tradition about the Graeco-Trojan affairs before the tenth year of
the siege, _a book_. There is no _book_ till the _Cypria_ is made, and
the _Cypria_ cannot be borrowed from before it is made. A poet who
relies on the _mass of tradition_ is not borrowing from a _book,_ any
more than Harry was borrowing from a book (his use of an alleged book
by Wallace's chaplain, John Blair, is another question). Manifestly
incidents from a mass of tradition about Thebes, about the Greek and
Trojan affairs before the war, and so on, may be introduced into an
epic about the actual siege of Troy. That is all very natural and
probable. But if a poem, with a definite name and a definite scope, the
_Iliad_, borrow passages from another poem with a definite scope and
name, the _Cypria_ or others, then the poem that lends is the earlier,
and the poem that borrows is the later. It was the use by Mr. Murray
of these definite names of poems, _Cypria, Little Iliad, Aethiopis_,
and so on, with his assertion that another book, the _Iliad_, borrows
passages from them, which led me to suppose that the lending poems
were, in his opinion, _complete_ (in one form or another) when the
_Iliad_ borrowed from them. Here I misinterpreted him.

Had Mr. Murray written: "Other passages," in the _Iliad_, "seem to be
derived from the masses of tradition about matters previous to and
later than the opening and end of the _Iliad_--masses of tradition
which in time became the topics of the _Cypria_, the _Little Iliad_,
the _Aethiopis_," then I should have understood and agreed with him.
The true view of the case, Mr. Murray's own view, seems to be this:
there might be actual Greek books (probably not definitely _named_ till
a later age), and these books might, like the _Chanson de Roland_,
be _remaniés_; might be modernised, and might receive additions;
and another book, that which we call the _Iliad_, might exist, and,
like the _Chanson de Roland_ (in the _Roncevaux_ poem) might receive
additions, the facts, in some cases, being taken from the other books,
which were undergoing similar vicissitudes.

This is not my own view of what occurred, but it is a thinkable state
of things, and I regret that I did not understand Mr. Murray's position.

At the same time, if one found in a _chanson_ of the thirteenth century
matter borrowed from the conclusion of _Roncevaux_ (the _remaniement_
of the _Chanson de Roland_), one could not say that it was borrowed
from _Roland_, a substantive earlier poem, in a metre not that of
_Roncevaux_.

There is a sense in which all early Greek epics might be said to borrow
passages from each other. The statement would, however, I think, be
misleading. The fact would be more correctly expressed by saying
that the epics probably (like our own traditional ballads certainly)
employ a common set of formulae to express habitual and often repeated
actions and events--dawn, night-fall, feasts, preparations of food,
arming, arraying a host, greeting a guest, falling in battle, and other
constantly recurring circumstances.

    "They hadna sailed a league, a league,
       A league but barely three."

    "They hadna walked in the bonny greenwood,
       Na an hour but barely are."

The formula for the death of lovers--

    "The one was buried in Mary kirk,
    The other in Mary quire," etc.,

is of constant recurrence.

The murderer always

    "takes out a little penknife
    That hung low by his gare,"

or--

    "Lifts up a gilt dagger
    Hung low down by his knee."

The mother or lady, awaiting her son or lover, always

    "Looks over tower and town,"

or--

    "Looks over Castle Doune."

After a death it is always

    "Bells were rung and mass was sung."

    "'A grave, a grave,' Lord Bernard cryd,
       'To put these lovers in.'"

    "'A bed, a bed,' Clark Saunders cried,
       'A bed for you and me.'"

Motherwell, who wrote without Homer in his mind, seems to state the
case of the ballads very clearly. "There is not an action, not an
occurrence of any sort, but what has its appropriate phraseology; and
to enumerate all these would, in effect, be to give the principal
portion of all our ancient ballads. For in all cases where there is an
identity of interest, of circumstance, of action, each ballad varies
not from the established mode of clothing these in language.... They
were the general outlines of every class of human incidents...."

Motherwell adds that "something of the same sort, though in a less
marked degree, may be discovered in the construction of the longer
metrical romances."[5] When we look at Book viii. of the _Iliad_, we
see that, in Mr. Leaf's words, "it has undoubtedly great spirit and
movement," though "nearly one-third" of the lines "are found again in
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_--sometimes with a slight difference."

For reasons connected with the study of ballad poetry I have made
some imitations of the traditional ballads, and find that, though the
stories I tell are new, yet they abound in ballad formulae: indeed,
a ballad, if it is to resemble the traditional sort, cannot be made
on other principles. Ancient Greek epic poetry, intended, like the
ballads, to be recited, not to be read, preserved the old popular and
traditional convention. Critics quarrel as to the parts of the epic
in which the lines are "original" and the parts in which they are
"borrowed." Of many of them we may say that they are neither borrowed
nor original, but are parcels of the common epic stock.

I lately met with a curious example of the critical method of treating
Homer applied in certain criticisms of Scottish ballads. One ballad,
"Auld Maitland," was distributed, by the critic, between Hogg and
Scott. In certain stanzas he found _Wiederholungen_ of lines in the
English ballad of "Chevy Chase," and of others in Herd's version of
"Otterburne" (1776). The verses in "Auld Maitland" which presented
_these Wiederholungen_ were speculatively assigned to the Ettrick
Shepherd; because, in a confessed interpolation by him of two lines,
where only half a stanza was received from the recitation of "Auld
Maitland," the words "Remember Percy" occur. In "Chevy Chase" we have
"But trust me, Percy." Hogg was following "Chevy Chase." But in "Auld
Maitland" we read, "King Edward rode, King Edward ran"; while in
"Jamie Telfer" we have "The Scotts they rode, the Scotts they ran."
Now _that_ line occurs in Scott's, and did not occur in Hogg's version
of "Jamie Telfer." Moreover, Scott himself, the critic believes, wrote
the part of "Jamie Telfer" where the Scotts ride and run. "If Hogg is
responsible for the insertion of this line" ("King Edward rode, King
Edward ran"), "he must have borrowed it from "Edom of Gordon," where we
have "Sum they rode, and sum they ran."

_He must have borrowed it_! How like is all this to the higher
criticism of Homeric _Wiederholungen_! In fact, ballad poetry and
Homeric poetry have stocks of formulae open to every maker. Not to use
them would be not to play the game.

Thus the criticism went on, and Scott's hand was detected exactly
as Hogg's had been, by the occurrence, in "Auld Maitland," of
ballad-formulae which also appear in ballads edited by Scott.

Enfin, "Auld Maitland" was declared to be, in the critic's opinion, in
origin a composition of Hogg's, which he tried to palm off on Scott as
traditional. Scott detected Hogg, entered into the plot, wrote stanzas
and lines into the ballad, and palmed it off on the public.[6]

The critic happened not to know (or did not mention) the history of
how the ballad was first heard by Laidlaw in the mouth of a servant
girl; and how Laidlaw got a version in manuscript from Hogg, who heard
a recitation by his uncle, Will o' Phawhope. The critic had never seen
the extant original MS. sent by Hogg to Laidlaw, and given by Laidlaw
to Scott. He had never, of course, collated that manuscript with the
copy published by Scott. When we make the collation, we find that Scott
neither rejected nor added a single stanza; that he made a necessary
and successful emendation in one line; and that the few small verbal
differences between Hogg's MS. and Scott's printed ballad may be
accounted for by the fact that the copy printed from was that received
from a recitation by Hogg's mother.

Thus the higher criticism, working on lines recognised as orthodox
in Homeric circles, was absolutely erroneous from beginning to end.
The critic was acute, ingenious, even brilliant, but he had scanty
knowledge of the facts in the case. He had not consulted certain
printed books germane to the matter; he had not consulted the
ballad-manuscripts at Abbotsford, and the manuscript letters.

In Homeric criticism, alas! we have not the letters and manuscripts of
the poet. But it is clear from the case of "Auld Maitland" that, in the
absence of facts, our motto, in conjecture, should be--_Gang warily!_


[1] _R. G. E._ p. 165.

[2] As has been said, I am aware of no evidence for this statement.

[3] _R. G. E._ p. 164.

[4] _R. G. E._ p. 163.

[5] See Motherwell's essay on "The Origin and History of Scottish
Ballad Literature," in his _Ancient and Modern Minstrelsy_.

[6] _Further Essays on the Border Ballads_. By Lieut.-Colonel the Hon.
Fitzwilliam Elliot. 1910.



INDEX


    (Figures in italics signify notes, r.--referred to)

    Abantes of Euboea, 14, 143.
    Abrahams, Miss E., cited on early Greek female costume, 87, 89, 90,
      92.
    Achaean culture, quality of, 3-4, 7;
      architecture, 42;
      Homeric Epics the fruit of, 221;
      Northern character of, 262 _et sqq_.
    Achaeans, the, 2;
      probable conquests of, in Greece and Crete, 10-2, 13-4, 16;
      character of their invasion, 33;
      domestic life of, 37, 41-4;
      siege operations of, 47;
      in battle, 52-4;
      not under a vow during siege of Troy, 132.
    Achaeus, 139.
    Achilles, mutiny of, 24-5;
      shield of, 29;
      Wrath of, 35, 195, 202, 246-7;
      love of, for his mother, 36, 239, 247-8;
      relations of, with Agamemnon, 38, 54, 122, 123, 131, 195,
      234, 235, 237-43, 247;
      relations of, with Hector, 45-6, 277, 279;
      and Patroclus, 45, 54, 105, 111, 123, 236, 239-42, 244, 248-9;
      merciful qualities of, 46, 47, 265;
      vengeance of, on Achaeans, 54, 235-43;
      quoted on death, 106;
      cult of, 126;
      tradition of, and Thersites, 133, 180-1;
      Homeric tradition and characterisation of, 167, 168, 169, 246-50;
      tradition of, in _Cypria_, 190, 209, 211;
      spear of, 205, 209;
      tradition of, in _Aethiopis_, 212-4;
      in _Iliou Persis_, 217;
      armour of, 225, 244-5;
      meeting of, and Aeneas, 251; r., 18, 28, 30, 98, 132, 163, 193.
    Acusilaus, 173.
    Adrastus, 17, 126, 158.
    Aegean culture, 2;
      arrival of, in Thessaly, 11;
      recollection of, in Homeric days, 20, 33;
      architecture, 42;
      armour and weapons, 48-9, 60-1;
      iron not used for weapons in, 96;
      vases, 97; jewellery, 99;
      burial customs, 106-7;
      traces of hero-worship in, (?) 113;
      religion, 116, 117;
      gold cups of Vaphio, 132.
    Aegeus, legends of, 175.
    Aegina, relics found in, 145-6.
    Aegisthus, warned by the gods, 37, 123.
    Aeneas, represents the "Orleans branch" at Troy, 17, 251;
      prominence of, in _Iliou Persis_, 216;
      protected by Apollo, 232.
    Aepytus, grave of, 109.
    Aeschylus, mentions purification by swine's blood, 29, 134-45;
      traditions used by, 188, 270; r., 37, 39.
    Aethra, un-Homeric traditions of, 155, 214-6.
    Agamemnon, the Over Lord, 15;
      character of, 24, 248, 250;
      relations of, with Achilles, 24-5, 38, 54, 95, 122, 123, 131,
      234, 235, 237-43, 247;
      brings home Cassandra, 43;
      ferocity of, 46, 51-2, 265;
      proclaims purification, 133;
      Ionian hostility to, 160;
      un-Homeric traditions of, 142, 190, 192, 195, 202, 208, 210, 279;
      his camp wall, 227-30;
      arming of, 251; r., 102, 127, 230.
    Agrios, late story of, 180-1.
    Aias, quoted on blood-price, 29;
      shield and armour of, 31, 70-1;
      relations of, with Hector, 46, 53, 54. 185, 238;
      Ionian partiality for, 160, 189, 202;
      reference to, in Quintus Smyrnaeus, 192;
      cult of, 213;
      suicide of, 163, 216.
    Aietes, legends of, 165, 167, 174-5, 177;
      land of, variously located, 178-9.
    Alcinous, 42, 43.
    Allen, T. W., _197_, _201_, 258-9, 284.
    Althaea, 34, 36, 169.
    Amphimachus, 184, 185.
    Andromache, 34, 36, 45.
    Antenor, 43, 161.
    Antinous, shooting of, 101-2.
    Antiope, 174.
    Aphrodite, intrigues of, 43, 122;
      her scratched hand, 86, 90-1, 232-3;
      relations of, with Paris and Helen, 205-7; r., 211.
    Apollo, at siege of Troy, 47, 54;
      omniscient, 125;
      temple of, at Delphi, 130;
      purification of, 133, 268;
      defrauded, 102.
    Apollonius Rhodius, 20, 179.
    Archery, 49 50, 53, 55.
    Arctinus, 200, 212, 215.
    Areithous, tomb of, 109.
    Ares, Hymn to, 27;
      character of, 28;
      and Aphrodite, 40;
      speared by Athene, 232, 233;
      doings of, perplexing, 251.
    Argo, voyage of the, 164-5, 178-9.
    Ariadne, 88; dress of, in art, _94_, 95;
      and the Theseus legend, 154, 150, 212.
    Aristarchus, 281.
    Aristeia of Idomeneus, 251.
    Aristotle, cited on the poetic quality of the _Iliad_, 201-2; r.,
      281.
    Armour and Weapons, the Homeric, 48-9, 60-1, 65-80.
    Art. _See_ Aegean.
    Artemis, representations of, 115;
      Homeric conception of, 115-6;
      Orthia, rites of, 117;
      of Brauron, resemblance of, to Nemesis of Rhamnus, 207;
      connection between, and sacrifice of Iphigeneia, 210.
    Arthurian Romances referred to, 10, 12, 21, 24, 164, 182.
    Asa, cremation of, 108.
    Asius, 17, 231.
    Astyanax, murder of, 46, 216.
    Athamas, legends of, 164-5.
    Athene, guides the arrow of Pandarus, 76;
      costume of, in art, 83, 89-90;
      visits Nestor, 128-9;
      temples of, 130-1;
      patroness of Troy, 124;
      jealous, 162, 205-6;
      offended with the Achaeans, 216;
      gift of, to Diomedes, 232-3;
      abets the Trojans, 238;
      doings of, perplexing, 251;
      r., 36, 43, 121, 136.
    Athenian Recension, the alleged, 270-1, 273, 274-6, 280, 282, 284,
      287-8.
    Athenians, genealogy of, according to Pausanias, 137-40;
      difference between, and Achaeans, 141;
      preferred Ionian traditions, 202. See Attica.
    Athens, would-be refuge of Achaean princes, 139, 160.
    Atridae, the, 189, 190, 191, 193, 195, 208.
    Attica, had no part in Achaean history, 23, 141-2;
      potters of, 146; gold workers, 147;
      legends and traditions of, 154-6, 157, 158-60, 202.
    Auge, grave of, 109.
    "Auld Maitland," criticism on, criticised, 293-4.

    Bannockburn, battle of, cited, 57.
    Bellerophon, 17, 18, 161, 167, 168-9, 171, 173, 176.
    _Beowulf_, cited, 37, 105-6, 163, 203, 253, 267.
    Bérard, M., on the use of iron in early days, 98;
      on the topography of the Catalogue, 257-8.
    Bethe, Dr. Erich, his attempt to trace "tribal history," 183-5.
    Bird Myths, 157.
    _Bitter Withy, The_, Ballad of, 121.
    Blind Harry, his _Wallace_, cited, 203, 290.
    Blood-price, the, 29.
    Bounos, 174, 175.
    Brauronia, the, 117.
    Bride-price, custom of, 38-40.
    Briseis, Wrath of Achilles over, 195. 235, 242, 246-7; r., 36,
    Britain, method of war in early, 48.
    Bronze Age, the 3-4, 5, 107; the overlap, 96-104.
    _Brus_, the, 203.
    Brynhild, 34.
    Burial, methods of, in Minoan Age, 3;
      in Homeric Age, 4, 108-12;
      in Dipylon Age, 5;
      cremation recorded throughout the _Iliad_, 105-6;
      Aegean methods, 106-7;
      Jewish, 107-8;
      in Attic art, 147.

    Calchas, prophecy of, 208-9;
      timidity, of, 210, 279.
    Calydonian Boar, Hunt of, 163, 166.
    Carians, the, 12, _13_, 17;
      civilisation and intermarriages of, 143-4.
    Cassandra, 43.
    Castor, un-Homeric legends of, 207-8, 215.
    Catalogue of the Ships, 14-5, 16, 218-9, 257-9, 289.
    Cauer, Herr, cited on uses of bronze and iron, 97, 98.
    Cerberus, 136.
    _Chansons de Geste_, cited, 10, 13, 21, 24, 26, 163, 182, 253,
      255, 261;
      _Chanson de Roland_, 36, 203, 253, 254, 291; _Chancun de Willame,
        La_, 80, 255.
    Chariots, uses of, in Homeric war, 51, 52, 54-6, 58, 59, 69-70, 80.
    Charlemagne, romances of, 10, 12, 24, 26, 164, 166, 182.
    Chaucer, 35, 36.
    Cheiron the Centaur, 205.
    Chimaera, the, 169, 267.
    Chitons, tearing of, 47;
      controversy over period and style of 60-5;
      worn by women, 90, 91.
      _See also under_ Costume.
    Chlaina. _See_ Costume.
    Chryseis, 129, 210, 211.
    Chryses, 129, 130.
    Cicero, cited on the connection between Pisistratus and the
      Homeric poems, 282.
    Circe, story of her birth, 177;
      home of, variously located, 178-9; r., 42, 182.
    Cleisthenes, 126.
    Clemens Alexandrinus, 173.
    Clytaemnestra, 30;
      frailty of, 35, 123;
      reputed foster-mother of Iphigeneia, 210.
    Cnossos, palace of, 12, 16, 31, 101, 148.
    Codrids, the, 23.
    Colophon, horsemen of, 56.
    Corinth, legendary conncction of, with Argo, 173-6.
    Corinthus, 174, 175.
    Costume, "Late Minoan," 2;
      Homeric, 4;
      Third and Fourth Ages, 5;
      men's, 60-5, 68, 75;
      women's, 61, 74, 81-95.
    Cremation. _See under_ Burial.
    Crete, Minoan art in, 2, 20;
      Achaean settlement in, 12;
      the "true Cretans," 13;
      a dependency of Greek mainland, 15, 16;
      prehistoric, 272-3.
    Cyclic Poems, the, different in character and style from Homeric
      poems, 6-9,
      46, 111, 133, 143, 150, 163, 168, 169-70, 187, 218-21, 263, 268;
      attitude of, towards Over Lord, 26-7;
      (_Little Iliad_, 66, 202, 214-5, 219);
      reference in, to sons of Theseus, 154;
      pretensions of, 160;
      story of Thersites in, 181-2
      (_Cypria_, the, analysis of, 188-93, 198-212;
      date uncertain 195-6, 269, 272;
      the Catalogue, 258-9);
      what the poems are, 197;
      date of material and treatment, ?, 198, 199;
      writers of, mere imitators, 200;
      the Aethiopis, 212-4, 219;
      the Iliou Persis, 215-7, 219;
      relation of, and Homeric Poems according to Mr. Murray, 218-21,
        289-91;
      not expurgated, 269, 270;
      legends of, preferred as subjects of art, 274;
      were they recited at Athens?, 288.
    Cyclops, the, 18.
    Cymri, wars of, 164.
    Cypassis. See Costume.
    Cypria. See Cyclic Poems.
    Cyprus, Phoenicians in, 20.


    Danaans, the, 51.
    Dawkins, R. M., cited on Greek early female costume, 85, 87, 88,
      _90_, 94.
    Deidameia, 209.
    Deiphobus carried out of the fight, 231.
    Demeter, Hymn to, 117;
      mention of, in _Odyssey_, 118;
      mysteries of, 267.
    Demodocus, songs of, 30, 38, 124;
      his tale of the Wooden Horse, 215-6.
    Demophon, 154, 215.
    Dictys Cretensis, anti-Homeric traditions accepted by, 9, 190-3,
      195, 196, 209, 211, 217.
    Dieuchidas, cited on connection of Solon and Homer, 281.
    Diogenes Laertius cited on Solon and the Athenian recitations, 282,
      283, 287.
    Diomede, promises a sacrifice to Athene, 129;
      Ionian hostility to, 160;
      takes up the feud of Thersites, 180-1, 213;
      genealogy of, 181;
      conflicting traditions of, 190, 191, 193, 195, 231-3;
      the exchange of shields, 252; r., 15, 18, 46, 52, 158, 238.
    Dione, cited on the wounding of Hades, 136.
    Dionysus, traditions and rites of, 118-9;
      Homer's contempt for, 120; r., 231, 232, 267.
    Dipylon culture, characteristics of, 4-5, 147;
      female costume, 81-5;
      view of, as to future life, 111.
    Dolon, 230.
    Dümmler, Ferdinand cited on Hector's connection with Boeotia, 183.

    Eëtion, buried in his armour, 47, 112, 248, 265.
    Egypt, relations between, and Crete, 3;
      known to Homer, 18-9.
    Eleusis, Mysteries of, 117, 120, 133, 275.
    Elpenor, burial of, 106, 112.
    Ephorus, 281, 282, 283.
    Ephyre, Eumelian tradition of, 171, 174-5.
    Epicaste, 34.
    Epicharmus attacks the character of Odysseus, 188-9.
    Epopeus, 174, 175.
    Erechtheus, worship of, 117, 214;
      marriage of his daughter, 139;
      tradition of, according to Euripides, 285-6.
    Eriphyle, 34.
    Eris, 205.
    Eteocles, 31, 158, 159.
    Eumaeus, kidnapped by Phoenicians, 19, 30;
      belts his chiton, 62;
      piety of, 124; r., 32, 103.
    Eumelus, methods and reputed works of, 170-9, 187, 219, 273.
    Euphorbus, his corslet, 73, 74-5;
      would have mutilated Menelaus, 265.
    Euripides, cited on the fate of Hector, 46;
      his version of the Tale of Thebes, 158;
      of Theseus, 158-9;
      of Odysseus, 188;
      of Palamedes, 192-3;
      of Ephigeneia, 211;
      of Polyxena, 217;
      his _Erechtheus_, 286; r., 138.
    Eurycleia, 129.
    Eurypylus, 163, 209, 241.
    Eurytus, his bow, 49; urn, 110.
    Eustathius, Bishop of Thessalonica, quoted on the quality of
      Homeric religion, 133-4.
    Evans, Arthur, cited on the François Vase, 8;
      on Homeric mention of bronze and iron, 99;
      on burial customs, 107;
      and on the Mycenaean sun-god, 114.

    Fairies, Homeric, 132.
    Farnell, G. S., cited on Homer's Artemis, 116.
    Fibulae, 2, 4, 6, 64, 65, 84, 86-7, 91-3, 145, 148.
    Fitz-Alan Stewarts, fabulous genealogy of, 139, 140.
    Four Ages:
      First (Aegean or Minoan), 2-3, 7.
      Second (Homeric), 3-4, 6-7.
      Third (Dipylon), 4-5, 7.
      Fourth (Proto-Historic), 5, 6.

    Games, periodical, not known in Homerian times, 30.
    Geography, confusion of early mythical, 179.
    Gezer, excavations at, 99.
    Ghost-worship ignored by Homer, 110, 117.
    Glam, burning of, 266, 267.
    Glaucus, his encounter with Diomede, 231-3;
      tells the tale of Bellerophon, 161, 171; r., 13, 17, 18, 46.
    Golden Ram, search for the fleece of, 165.
    Gold work in Attica, 147.
    Gorgias, 188.
    Greece, influence of Minoan culture in, 3;
      probable conquests in, by Achaeans, 10, 11, 12;
      relation of, to Crete, 15-6;
      relations between, and Egypt, 19;
      language or languages of prehistoric, 151-3;
      legendary history of, 168;
      prominent vices of, 189.
    Grettir, 266, 267.
    Grote, George, cited on Attica and the ancient epic poets of
      Greece, 154;
      cited on Athenian version of the Tale of Thebes, 158;
      uses Achacan legends, 182;
      his discovery of apparent discrepancies in conncction with
      Achilles, 234, 237-8, 239-43;
      on the Solonian laws, 270;
      Mr. Verrall on, 284.
    Gunnar, 266.

    Hades, wounding of, 136.
    Haghia Triada, seal impressions of, 63, 73, 79.
    Hall, H. R., cited on Phoenician commerce, 19.
    Hallstatt, cemetery of, 96.
    Hammurabi, Laws of, 39.
    Harrison, Miss Jane E., cited, 275.
    Hector, relations of, with Helen, 35, 36;
      relations of, with Achilles, 45-6, 111, 120, 235, 241, 264-5, 277;
      and Patroclus, 45, 108, 265;
      relations of, with Aias, 46, 185, 238;
      his prowess in battle, 51-4;
      reputed connection of, with Boeotia, 183-6;
      offers Polyxena to Achilles, 217; r., 43, 112, 212.
    Helbig, Herr, cited on different uses of bronze and iron, 97,
      98, 100;
      cited on Homeric cremation, 107;
      cited on anti-Minoan stories, 156.
    Helen, has been in Egypt, 18;
      occupations of, 30, 33;
      immortal charm of, 34-5;
      blamed by the Trojan women, 35, 37;
      and Paris, 35, 206-7;
      un-Homeric traditions of, 190, 214-5;
      parentage of, according to Cypria, 206;
      reputed to be mother of Iphigeneia, 210; r., 36.
    Helios, 174, 177, 179.
    Helle, legends of, 163-4.
    Hellen, sons of, 139 140.
    Hephaestus, demands the return of the bride-price, 37-8;
      domestic misfortunes of, 122;
      and spear and armour of Achilles, 205, 244.
    Hera, Homeric description of, 36, 43, 121;
      her peplos, 93;
      jealousy of, 122, 162, 205-6;
      favours the Argo, 178;
      in battle, 232.
    Heracles, a bowman, 49;
      feud of, with Neleus, 135-6, 168;
      Homeric tradition of, 162;
      presumed older poem on, 172; r., 161.
    Hermione (daughter of Helen), 35.
    Herodotus, cited on changes in Athenian female costume, 90;
      on purification by blood, 134;
      cited on the origin of the Ionians, 138, 142, 143;
      cited on Pelasgian speech, 151-2;
      on body-snatching, 183;
      on relations of _Cypria_ and _Iliad_, 200;
      r., 119, 281.
    Hero-worship, in historic Greece, 125-6;
      un-Homeric, 127;
      few traces of, in early Northern literature, 266, 267.
    Hesiod, on uses of bronze and iron, 103;
      his myth of Cronos, 116; his view of Minos, 156;
      legends known to, 168-9;
      school of, 170;
      in agreement with Homer on birth of Circe and Aietes, 177;
      geography of, 178,179;
      non-Homeric stratum of his poetry, 272, 273, 274-5;
      r., 22, 159.
    Heyne, C. G., cited, 240, 241.
    Hill-Tout, Mr., cited on use of corslets and shields, 80.
    Hipparchus, alleged founder of Homeric recitations
      at Athens, 270-1, 283, 286-7.
    Hippemolgoi, the, 18.
    Hippias, 271.
    Hippolochus mutilated, 265.
    Hipponax, 63.
    Hogarth, David George, excavations of, 148;
      cited on Ionian civilisation, 149.
    Hogg, James, part of "Auld Maitland" speculatively assigned to, 293-4.
    Homer, reality of Homeric civilisation, 1-2, 3-4, 5-9;
      epoch of his heroes indefinite, 10;
      omits mention of Achacan conquests in Crete, 10-11, 12;
      his account of Crete in _Odyssey_, 13;
      and attitude towards Asians, 13, 17-8;
      his view of the dependency of Crete, 15-6;
      ignores Ionian traditions, 10, 158, 187, 218, 221;
      ancestry, 20;
      his system of land tenure, 21-4, 26-7;
      a lover of peace, 28-9;
      purification by swine's blood unknown to, 29-30, 129, 133, 135,
        198;
      interested in the "folk," 31-2;
      in touch with Aegean culture, 33;
      his chivalrous treatment of women, 34-7;
      on family life and morality, 41-4;
      customs of, war and weapons, 45-50;
      his tactics, 51-5;
      criticism of his battles, 56-9;
      on men's dress and armour, 60-79;
      female costume, 81-95;
      his age one of "overlap," 96, 104;
      cremation and cairn-burial, 105-12;
      religion and ethics of, 107, 110, 111, 115-7, 120-7, 128;
      makes scanty mention of temples, 130-1;
      not superstitious, 132-3;
      his conception of the Ionians, 137, 142-3;
      ignorant of the Theseus myth, 155;
      his view of Minos, 155-6;
      individuality of his minor characters, 161;
      his knowledge of "Sagas" and _Märchen_, 161-3;
      and treatment of material, 163-71;
      did not borrow from Eumelus, 172, 174, 177-9;
      his story of Bellerophon, 176;
      in accord with Hesiod on parentage of Circe, 177;
      geographical knowledge of, not extensive, 179;
      his casual mention of Thersites, 180-2;
      cult of heroes unknown to, 185, 194;
      his tradition of Odysseus, 188-9, 190;
      Palamedes apparently unknown to, 190, 193, 198;
      disagreement of critics over authenticity of his works, 200-8;
      his characterisation of Achilles, 246-50;
      of Agamemnon, 250;
      perfection of form in his poetry, 254-5;
      only one mention of writing in, 261;
      rejects all _märchenhaft_, 264;
      ferocity in, not expurgated, 264-5;
      did not sing for "groundlings," 277;
      reputed connection of Pisistratus with his poems, 281, 286;
      effect of, on the Athenians 286.
    Hoplites, 55, 56.
    Horse, the Wooden, 47, 163, 215-6.
    Hypsipyle is loved by Jason, 96, 179.

    Idas, 207, 208.
    Idomeneus of Cnossos, 14;
      prowess of, 15, 53;
      his Achaean descent, 16;
      his trophies, 47;
      his genealogy, 156.
    _Iliad_, manner of, Achaean, 12, 221;
      the _Catalogue_, 13-7;
      tenure of property in, 22;
      treatment of women in, 35, 36;
      domestic relations, 43;
      account of battle in, 51-4;
      untouched by Ionian hands, 59, 150;
      false passage in, 103;
      cremation customary in, 105;
      other funeral rites, 112;
      Dionysus, 118-9;
      Ionians once mentioned in, 138;
      geographical knowledge not extensive in, 179, 198;
      character of Odysseus, 188;
      no mention of Palamedes, 194, 195;
      later or earlier than the _Cypria_?, 195-6, 200;
      asserted not to be the work of one man, 201;
      Aristotle's criticism of, 201-2;
      tradition of Castor and Polydeuces in, 208;
      material possibly obtained from, for the _Cypria_, 211-2;
      multiplex authorship of, a foregone conclusion with sundry
        critics, 223-4;
      Miss Stawell on, 244-6, 244;
      Verrall on, 226-8, 245;
      Leaf, 230, 231, 233, 241, 244;
      Grote, 234-43;
      ferocity prevalent in, 265;
      Mr. Murray considers the body of, to be Ionian, 271-3;
      author's general conclusions on, 246-50;
      possibly alien passages in, 250-1;
      who were the purgers?, 263.
    _Iliad_, the _Little_. See Cyclic Poems.
    Imbrios, mutilated, 265.
    Infanticide, female, 40, 44.
    Ino, ill-treats her step-children, 34, 164; r., 127.
    Ion, descent of, 139; buried in Attica, 140.
    Ionian, civilisation, different from Homeric, 6-9, 144, 148-9;
      --colonists apparently unknown to Homer, 12;
      --land tenure in early settlements, 23;
      --poets, their treatment of women, 37;
      --historical warfare, 56;
      --poets, anachronisms of, 60-3, 70;
      --art, 148-9, 150.
    Ionians, who were they?, 137-8;
      their fabulous genealogy, 138-9, 140;
      difference between, and Achaeans, 141;
      Homeric conception of, 142-3;
      intermarriages and religious observances of, 143-4;
      in Attica, 147;
      mixed traditions of, 154, 157;
      have no Homeric traditions, 158;
      attempts of, to attach themselves to the great traditions,
        158-9, 160, 195;
      degradation of Odysseus traceable to, 189-90, 193;
      could not purge what they themselves practised, 268.
    Iphigeneia, various legends of, 157, 193, 210-11, 221, 279.
    Iphitus, murder of, 135, 136.
    Ireland, early civilisation in, 21-2;
      heroic, ceremonial observances in, 31;
      method of war in, in late Celtic times, 48.
    Iron, early and later uses of, 3, 4, 5, 21, 96-104, 107.
    Isocrates, boasts of Theseus, 158-9;
      cited on the public recitation of Homer, 282-3, 285.
    Itylus, 157.

    Jardanus (river), 13.
    Jason, loves Hypsipyle, 96, 179;
      legends of, 165-7, 175-6.
    Jehoram, King, not cremated, 108.

    Kalewala, the Finnish, 165, 166.
    Kirchhoff, Herr, cited on Homeric mention of iron, 100.
    Kuhnert, Herr Ernst, on quality of Homer's poetry, 169.

    Laertes, 43.
    Laestrygones, 18.
    Laid law, William, 294.
    Land Tenure, Homeric, 21-3;
      in Ionian colonies, 23.
    Langside, battle of, 53.
    Laocoon,215.
    Laomedon, 162.
    Layard. Sir A. H., cited on Greek armour and costume, 67, 74, 91,
     92, 93.
    Leaf, Walter, cited on Homeric fighting, 58;
      on Homeric armour, 70, 76;
      on costume of Mycenaean women, 83-4;
      on archaic female costume, 94;
      on false passage in the _Iliad_, 103;
      on Demeter and Diogenes, 118;
      on the "chiton trailers," 138;
      on Theseus myth, 155, 214;
      on Panyassis, 172;
      on Thersites, 181;
      on character of the Cyclic Poems, 200;
      on the Catalogue, _219_, 258;
      on the unity of the _Odyssey_, 224;
      on the camp wall, 230;
      on certain alleged contradictions, 231, 233, 241;
      on Thetis, 244;
      on Book VIII. of the _Iliad_, 292-3.
    Lemnos, adventures of the Argonauts in, 179.
    Leonymus, 213.
    Lesches, 200.
    Locrians, archery of the, 53, 55, 137.
    Lom, Ian, 28.
    Lucretius, his theory of ghosts, 110.
    Lycians, the, intermarriages of Greeks with, 17, 144.
    Lycurgus, legends of, 118-9, 231;
    worshipped by the Spartans, 126;
    connection of, with the Homeric Recitations, 282, 283, 285, 286.
    Lynceus, 207, 208.

    Mabinogion, the Welsh, 166.
    MacAllister, R.A.S., result of his excavations at Gezer, 99.
    Mackenzie, Dr., on Homeric armour, 73.
    Mahaffy, J. P., on the Attic standard of morality, 188-9.
    Marathon, 174; Bull of, 175.
    Marriage, adelphic, 276.
    Medea, r., 34, 180;
      un-Homeric legends of, 165-7, 173-75
      not mentioned by Homer, 177;
      Eumelian account of, 178.
    Meges, reared by Theano, 161.
    Melanippus, worship of, 126.
    Melanthius, 102; fate of, 278.
    Meleager, the "golden-haired," r., 14, 16, 25, 34;
      gifts offered to, for his services, 21;
      war between, and the Couretes, 28;
      family feud of, 43;
      Homeric tradition of his fate, 161, 169;
      Thersites insulted by, 180.
    Melissa, 112.
    Memnon, 163; Ionian tradition of, 213.
    Menelaus, his home, 31;
    chivalrous character of, 37, 46, 248, 250;
      affection of Agamemnon for, 43;
      aids Odysseus, 52;
      arrow-smitten, 76, 77, 278;
      Ionian hostility to, 160;
      un-Homeric traditions of, 190, 207, 208;
      r., 15, 16, 71, 127, 265.
    Menestheus, 137, 138.
    Milton, John, 14, 253, 255.
    Mimnermus, cited on Aia, 178.
    Minos, Idomeneus descended from, 14, 16;
      blood-sacrifices said to have been abolished by, 113;
      Homeric view of, 155-6;
      un-Homeric legends of, 167;
      his bull, 175;
      fate of, obscure, 279; r., 154
    Minotaur, the, 15, 156, 175.
    Momus, advice of, 204-5.
    Monro, D. Binning, cited on Homeric use of iron, 100-2, 104;
      on pollution and purification, 133;
      on non-reference to Aethra, 155;
      on the Cyclic Poems, _197_, 198-9;
      on Homer's ignorance of Taurus, 210;
      on the Athenian Recitations, 282-4, 285.
    Mülder, Herr, his criticism of Homeric battles, 56, 58-59.
    Mure, Col., 226.
    Murray, G. G. A., cited on bride-price, 39;
      female infanticide, _44_;
      on Hector, 46;
      on Homeric battles, 56-57, _57-8_;
      on Homeric armour, 70, _71_, _73_;
      on Homeric mention of iron, 104;
      on cremation, 107, _109_;
      on sacrificial rites, 129, _130_;
      suggests a difference in date between portions of the _Iliad_,
        _131_;
      on the Cyclic Poems, 150, 200;
      on the Ionian Colonists, 144;
      thinks Homer borrowed from "Eumelus," 171, _172_;
      on reluctance of scholars to admit the possibility of Homer
      having borrowed, 176-77;
      on Thersites, 180;
      on Hector's connection with Boeotia, 183, 184;
      on the quality of the _Iliad_, 203;
      on the presumed date of the Homeric Epics, 218, 219-21;
      his theory of expurgation, 252, 260-8, 288;
      particular passages from, quoted and discussed, 268-80, 289-91.
    Mycenaean, shields, 5;
      --culture, 7;
      --tombs, 32;
      --palaces, 33;
      --daggers, 48;
      --arrow points, 50;
      --Warrior Vase, 56, 62;
      --battles, 56, 57;
      --female costume, 83-4;
      --gods and goddesses, 113, 114.
    Myres, J. L., cited on Greek female costume, 94;
      on Pelasgian question, 153.

    Naber, Herr, cited, 98.
    Nausicaa Homeric presentment of, 34, 37, 83.
    Nausithous, a builder of temples, 130;
      founder of Phaeacia, 170.
    Neleidae, the, 140, 159.
    Nelius, Attic legend of, 23;
      feud of, with Heracles, 135-6, 168; r., 34.
    Nemesis of Rhamnus, a non-Achaean goddess, 199, 212, 221;
      conflicting traditions of, 206-7.
    Neoptolemus, prowess of, at Troy, 216.
    Nephele, legends of, 163-4.
    Nestor, his tales of ancient fights, 10-1, 28, 58, 59, 161;
      cited on the Achaean attitude towards the Over Lord, 25-6;
      his house, 31;
      visited by Athene, 128-9;
      feud of, with Heracles, 135-6, 168;
      garrulity of, 208;
      mentions the camp wall, 229, 230;
      and the interchange of shields, 252;
      site of his city of Pylos, 257-8;
      r., 43, 97. 215.
    Njal, offers a bride-price, 38.

    Odysseus, Egypt known to, 18, 28;
      skilled in arts of peace, 30;
      his house and family life, 30-1, 41-2, 43;
      and the bow of Eurytus, 49, 135;
      in battle, 52;
      his tunic, 62;
      fibula, 64-5;
      shield of, 70;
      his use of bronze and iron, 98;
      story of the removal of the weapons and the wooers, 100-4;
      in Hades, 123;
      song for the staunching of his blood, 133;
      and purification of Achilles, 133, 180;
      Ionian hostility to, 160, 202, 216;
      relations of, with Circe, 178;
      Homeric tradition of, contrasted with others, 183-93, 195, 208,
      211, 217, 250-51;
      feud of, with kin of the wooers, 252;
      seeks for arrow-poison, 278;
      r., 15, 17, 22, 25, 32, 35, 112, 129, 130, 181.
    _Odyssey_, manner of, Achaean, 12,	221;
      account of Crete in, 13, 22;
      mention of Egypt and Phoenicians in, 18-9;
      the Over Lord, 25;
      treatment of women in, 35, 36-7;
      family life in, 41-2;
      mention of iron weapons in, 100-1, 102-3;
      funeral rites, 112;
      Demeter mentioned in, 118;
      ethical aspect of the gods in, 123-5, 127;
      Ionian traits not present in, 150;
      Minos in, 156;
      geographical knowledge not extensive in, 179, 198;
      element of _Märchen_ in, 187;
      character of Odysseus, 188-9;
      legend of Castor and Polydeuces, 208;
      more critically dissected in Germany than in England, 224;
      doubtful passages in, 251-2;
      who were the purgers?, 263;
      mention of poisoned arrows in, 278.
    Oedipus, curses his sons, 31;
      burial of, 159; r., 139.
    Oenomaus, tomb of, 109.
    Oiax, avenges Palamedes, 192-3.
    Orestes, bones of, carried to Sparta, 126;
      purification of, 135;
      takes refuge in Athens, 139.
    "Overlap," ages of, 96, 97, 102.
    Over Lord, the Homeric, 23-7.

    Palamedes, inventor of alphabetic writing, 26, 194;
      not mentioned by Homer, 160, 193, 198, 199, 208;
      Ionian tradition of, 189-2;
      Athenian, 192-3;
      probably a Culture Hero, 194-6, 220;
      Ionian legends of, never intruded into _Iliad_, 211, 212, 218;
      r., 202.
    Pandarus, ill fame of, 17;
      an archer, 49, 50, 278;
      shoots at Menelaus, 76;
      daughter of, 157.
    Panyassis, presumable source of his legends, 172.
    Paris, and Helen, 35, 37, 207;
      taunted for his use of the bow, 50;
      Choice of, 162, 205;
      wounds Achilles, 162, 217; r., 71.
    Paris, M. Gaston, cited on the _Chanson de Roland_, 253, 254.
    Patroclus, relations of, with Achilles, 45, 54, 105, 111, 123,
      236-42, 244, 248-9;
      relations of, with Hector, 45, 108, 265;
      scales the walls of Troy, 47;
      burial of, 111, 112;
      r., 36, 213. 227, 245.
    Pausanias, cited on the bronze corslet, 66;
      cited on graves and urns, 109-10;
      on the places of nativity of Zeus, 115;
      and the fabled genealogy of the Athenians, 138-9;
      cited on death of Meleager, 169;
      on a Eumelian "History of Corinth," 172, 173, 174;
      does not cite Eumelus for Bellerophon, 176;
      disagrees with his account of Medea, 178;
      antiquarian traditions preserved in, 272, 273;
      and legends of human sacrifice, 279;
      r., 127, 159, 183, 206, 207, 210, 213.
    Pegasus, legends of, 176.
    Pelasgians, r., 11, 12, 16, 141, 151-3.
    Peleus, 25, 205.
    Peneleus, ferocity of, 265.
    Penelope, domestic life of, 30;
      attitude of, towards Helen, 35, 37;
      her bride-price, 38-9;
      in _Telegonia_, 182.
    Penthesilea, slain by Achilles, 180, 212.
    Peplos, description of, 84. _See also_ Costume, women's.
    Perdrizet, cited on Greek female costume, 94.
    Periclymenus, fairy story of, 136, 168.
    Periphetes of Mycenae, 184, 185.
    Phaedra, 156.
    Pheidias, 115, 117, 206.
    Pherecydes, cited, 180, 211.
    Philoctetes, bitten by a serpent, 15, 211;
      favoured by Attic poets, 189, 202;
      arrows of, 214;
      ringing back of, 216;
      r., 26, 160, 163.
    Philostratus, cited on Polyxena, 217.
    Phoenicians, 19, 20, 30.
    Phoenix, warning of, to Achilles, 25, 238, 243-4;
      not properly introduced in Book IX., 250-1;
      r., 36, 43, 161.
    Phorcys, his corslet, 66.
    Phrixus, legends of, 164-5, 279.
    _Pictorial Atlas of Iliad and Odyssey, Engelmann and Anderson's_,
      illustrations in, cited, 74-5, 77.
    Pindar, follows Ionian traditions, 26;
      on Pegasus, 176;
      adopts Eumelian account of Medea, 178;
      belittles Odysseus, 189;
      does not reject _märchenhaft_, 264.
    Pins, long, use of, in female costume, 84, 86-7, 90, 91.
    Pinza cited on Homeric female costume, 91, 93.
    Pisistratus (Nestor's son) sacrifices to Athene, 129;
      (Athenian) alleged founder of Homeric recitations at Athens, 270;
      reputed connection of, with Homeric poems, 281-3, 284, 286.
    Plato, cited on purification by blood, 134;
      cited on the Homeric view of Minos, 155;
      his reference to Palamedes, and Aias, 192, 194.
    Polydamus, advice of, to Trojans in battle, 52-3.
    Polydeuces, un-Homeric legends of, 207-8, 215.
    Polygnotus, his decoration of the Lesche, 66, 274.
    Polynices, 31; burial of, 158-9. ?
    Polyxena, traditions of, 195-6, 216-7.
    Poseidon, r., 18, 34, 162;
      rallies the Achaeans, 52, 53, 59;
      wreaks his grudge on Odysseus, 124;
      and Periclymenus, 136, 168;
      patron of Ionian league of cities, 144;
      doings of, perplexing, 251.
    Priam, attitude of, towards Helen, 35;
      pays no bride-price, 38;
      excusable petulance of, 43;
      attitude of, towards Aeneas, 216, 251;
      Achilles' reception of, 239, 249; r., 131, 192.
    Proclus, Epitome of, cited, 204, 205, 214.
    Protesilaus, 54, 137, 211.
    Purification by swine's blood unknown to Homer but familiar
      to Ionians, 29, 30, 133-4, 135-6, 198, 212-3;
      no Northern example of, 266, 267.

    Quintus Smyrnaeus, 215, 276.

    Reichel Dr., his criticism of Homeric armour
      cited, 65, 68-70, 72-3, 76, 80.
    Rhadamanthus, 16, 156.
    Ridgeway, William, his theory of Homer, 102, 136;
      his theory of prehistoric language in Greece, 151, 152-3.
    _Roncevaux_, the, 291.
    _Ruined City_ (Anglo-Saxon poem), 33.

    Sacrifice, human, 210-1, 216-8, 272, 279.
    Sacrificial rites, Homeric treatment of, 128-30, 131.
    "Saga," growth of, 166-7.
    Saint Aignan, patron of Orleans, 126.
    Sainte-Beuve, cited on the Odyssey, 252.
    Sarpedon, 13, 17.
    Saul, King, treatment of his corpse, 108.
    "Schiltrom," formed by Achaeans in battle, 53;
      cavalry powerless against, 55.
    Scholiast, the, cited, 204-5, 213, 241, 244.
    Scotland, method of war in, in Roman times, 48;
      Highland clans in action, 52;
      fabulous genealogy of kings, 138-9.
    Scott, Sir Walter, works of, r., 41-2, 162, 293-4.
    Semele, mother of Dionysus, 118-9.
    Shakespeare, _Troilus and Cressida_, 41, 194, 274;
      _Macbeth_, 233, 234;
      his method of construction compared with Homer's, 254, 255;
      _King Lear_, 277.
    Shewan, Mr., cited on Nestor and Thrasymedes, 252.
    Sicyon, 174.
    Sidney, Sir Philip, his Arcadia cited, 254, 277.
    Sinon, 214, 276.
    Sisyphus, 17, 123.
    Solon, 90; connection of, with the Athenian Recension of
      Homer, 270, 281, 283, 286, 287.
    Sophocles, r., 37;
      on Hector, 46;
      his _Oedipous_, 159;
      belittles Odysseus, 188, 189.
    Spata, relics found in tombs of, 145-6.
    Stasinus, 200, 205.
    Stawell, Miss F. Melian, her "_Homer and the Iliad_" cited,
      72, 77, 224-6, 234, 236, 244.
    Stesichorus, 210, 213, 217.
    Stichios, 138, 184.
    Studniczka F. K., cited, 83, 87, 183.

    Tantalus, punishment of, 123.
    _Telegonia_, the _dénouement of_, 182.
    Telemachus, quoted on the marriage of Penelope, 39;
      bidden to hide the weapons, 100, 102, 103;
      un-Homeric traditions of, 182, 208;
      journey of, to Pylos, 257; r., 31, 42, 128.
    Telephus, un-Homeric legend of, 209, 220.
    Teucer, 43, 49.
    Theano, wifely tenderness of, 36, 43, 161;
      sacrifices to Athene, 131, 161.
    Thebans, the, show the tomb of Hector, 183.
    Thebes, wealth of, 18-9;
      Tale of, Athenian version, 158-9.
    Themis, 205, 206.
    Theocritus, 276.
    Thersites, un-Homeric traditions of, 133, 180-2, 189, 198, 212-3.
    Theseus, prowess of, not dwelt upon by Homer, 15, _16_;
      un-Homeric legends of, 154-5, 157-9, 199-200, 210, 214-5, 216, 221;
      Ionian legends of, never introduced into _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, 218.
    Thesmophoria, 117.
    Thessaly, civilisation in, dissimilar from Southern Greece, 10-11.
    Thetis, maternal love of, 34, 36;
      prayer of, 54, 195, 235, 236;
      advice of, to Achilles, 132;
      un-Homeric legends of, 168, 205, 211, 213;
      and the armour of Achilles, 244-5;
      love of Achilles for, 247-8.
    Thrasymedes, 129, 252.
    Thucydides, cited on the Ionian Migration, 143;
      on the deaths of Hipparchus and Aristogeiton, 271;
      on the history of Pisistratus, 281, 284, 287.
    Tirynthian art, female costume, in, 81-6.
    Tityus, punishment of, 123.
    Tlepolemos of Rhodes, 14.
    Tribal History, attempt to extract, from names of heroes
      in _Iliad_, 182-3, 185, 180.
    Troy, siege of, 45-9, 51-4, 58-9, 132, 162-3.
    Tyro, punishment of, 34, 42.
    Tyrtaeus, 286.
    Tzetzes, on the parentage of Iphigeneia, 210;
      on Polyxena, 217.

    Vases:
      Black Figure, 5, 6, 48, 67, 74, 75.
      François, the, 86-90, 93.
      Panathenaic, 79.
      Red Figure, 5, 67, 74, 75, 77.
      Tirynthian, 67.
      Warrior, the, 56.
    Verrall, A. W., on Mr. Lang's defence of Homeric unity, 226-8;
      a reply to, 229-31;
      on the "multiple authorship," 245;
      on the Athenian Recitations, 274;
      on the customary manner of criticising Homer, 284-8.
    Virgil, r., 9, 160, 192, 193, 214, 215-6, 261.
    _Volsunga Saga_, 36, 253.

    Wace, Mr., cited on Greek female costume, 94.
    Walters, H. B., cited on the François Vase, 86, 90;
      on Ionic female costume, 94.
    Waterloo, battle of, cited, 55, 57.
    Weapons. See Armour.
    Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, cited on the relation of Homer
      to the mass of ancient epic poetry, 200-1, 203;
      on the _Cypria_, 219.
    Wolf, C. W. F. A., his criticism of the Homeric Poems,
      41, 222, 223, 224, 246, 250, 281, 284.
    Wooers, the, 100, 101, 103, 104, 111, 129, 132, 133, 252.
    Writing, in Minoan Age, 3.

    Xuthus marries the daughter of Erechtheus, 139-40.

    Zedekiah, King, cremation of, 108.
    Zerelia, result of excavations at, 11.
    Zeus, and Minos, 16, 155, 156;
      Homeric conception of, 43, 116, 118, 120-1, 122, 124, 162, 174;
      prayer of Thetis to, 54, 235;
      birth-myth of, 115;
      promises of, fulfilled, 123, 235-6, 237;
      un-Homeric conceptions of, 190, 195, 204, 206, 209, 211.
    Zulus, belief of, in incarnations of the dead, 275.




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Transcriber's note:

The original book contained several unpaired double quotation marks.
It was not clear where the missing quotation marks belonged, so no
attempt was made to add them.