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Title: Homer and His Age

Author: Andrew Lang

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HOMER AND HIS AGE

BY

ANDREW LANG


[Illustration: ALGONQUINS UNDER SHIELD _Frontispiece_]


To R. W. RAPER IN ALL GRATITUDE




PREFACE


In _Homer and the Epic_, ten or twelve years ago, I examined
the literary objections to Homeric unity. These objections are
chiefly based on alleged discrepancies in the narrative, of which
no one poet, it is supposed, could have been guilty. The critics
repose, I venture to think, mainly on a fallacy. We may style it
the fallacy of "the analytical reader." The poet is expected to
satisfy a minutely critical reader, a personage whom he could not
foresee, and whom he did not address. Nor are "contradictory
instances" examined--that is, as Blass has recently reminded his
countrymen, Homer is put to a test which Goethe could not endure.
No long fictitious narrative can satisfy "the analytical reader."

The fallacy is that of disregarding the Homeric poet's audience.
He did not sing for Aristotle or for Aristarchus, or for modern
minute and reflective inquirers, but for warriors and ladies. He
certainly satisfied them; but if he does not satisfy microscopic
professors, he is described as a syndicate of many minstrels,
living in many ages.

In the present volume little is said in defence of the poet's
consistency. Several chapters on that point have been excised. The
way of living which Homer describes is examined, and an effort is
made to prove that he depicts the life of a single brief age of
culture. The investigation is compelled to a tedious minuteness,
because the points of attack--the alleged discrepancies in
descriptions of the various details of existence--are so minute as
to be all but invisible.

The unity of the Epics is not so important a topic as the methods
of criticism. They ought to be sober, logical, and self-
consistent. When these qualities are absent, Homeric criticism may
be described, in the recent words of Blass, as "a swamp haunted by
wandering fires, will o' the wisps."

In our country many of the most eminent scholars are no believers
in separatist criticism. Justly admiring the industry and
erudition of the separatists, they are unmoved by their arguments,
to which they do not reply, being convinced in their own minds.
But the number and perseverance of the separatists make on "the
general reader" the impression that Homeric unity is chose
_juge_, that _scientia locuta est_, and has condemned
Homer. This is far from being the case: the question is still
open; "science" herself is subject to criticism; and new
materials, accruing yearly, forbid a tame acquiescence in hasty
theories.

May I say a word to the lovers of poetry who, in reading Homer,
feel no more doubt than in reading Milton that, on the whole, they
are studying a work of one age, by one author? Do not let them be
driven from their natural impression by the statement that Science
has decided against them. The certainties of the exact sciences
are one thing: the opinions of Homeric commentators are other and
very different things. Among all the branches of knowledge which
the Homeric critic should have at his command, only philology,
archaeology, and anthropology can be called "sciences"; and they
are not exact sciences: they are but skirmishing advances towards
the true solution of problems prehistoric and "proto-historic."

Our knowledge shifts from day to day; on every hand, in regard to
almost every topic discussed, we find conflict of opinions. There
is no certain scientific decision, but there is the possibility of
working in the scientific spirit, with breadth of comparison;
consistency of logic; economy of conjecture; abstinence from the
piling of hypothesis on hypothesis.

Nothing can be more hurtful to science than the dogmatic
assumption that the hypothesis most in fashion is scientific.

Twenty years ago, the philological theory of the Solar Myth was
preached as "scientific" in the books, primers, and lectures of
popular science. To-day its place knows it no more. The separatist
theories of the Homeric poems are not more secure than the Solar
Myth, "like a wave shall they pass and be passed."

When writing on "The Homeric House" (Chapter X.) I was
unacquainted with Mr. Percy Gardner's essay, "The Palaces of
Homer" (_Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol. iii. pp. 264-
282). Mr. Gardner says that Dasent's plan of the Scandinavian Hall
"offers in most respects not likeness, but a striking contrast to
the early Greek hall." Mr. Monro, who was not aware of the
parallel which I had drawn between the Homeric and Icelandic
houses, accepted it on evidence more recent than that of Sir
George Dasent. Cf. his _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 490-494.

Mr. R. W. Raper, of Trinity College, Oxford, has read the proof
sheets of this work with his habitual kindness, but is in no way
responsible for the arguments. Mr. Walter Leaf has also obliged me
by mentioning some points as to which I had not completely
understood his position, and I have tried as far as possible to
represent his ideas correctly. I have also received assistance
from the wide and minute Homeric lore of Mr. A. Shewan, of St.
Andrews, and have been allowed to consult other scholars on
various points.

The first portion of the chapter on "Bronze and Iron" appeared in
the Revue _Archologique_ for April 1905, and the editor,
Monsieur Salomon Reinach, obliged me with a note on the bad iron
swords of the Celts as described by Polybius.

The design of men in three shields of different shapes, from a
Dipylon vase, is reproduced, with permission, from the British
Museum _Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age_; and the
shielded chessmen from Catalogue of Scottish Society of
Antiquaries. Thanks for the two ships with men under shield are
offered to the Rev. Mr. Browne, S.J., author of _Handbook of
Homeric Studies_ (Longmans). For the Mycenaean gold corslet I
thank Mr. John Murray (Schliemann's Mycenae and Tiryns), and for
all the other Mycenaean illustrations Messrs. Macmillan and Mr.
Leaf, publishers and author of Mr. Leaf's edition of the
_Iliad_.




CONTENTS:


CHAPTER I: THE HOMERIC AGE

CHAPTER II: HYPOTHESES AS TO THE GROWTH OF THE EPICS

CHAPTER III: HYPOTHESES OF EPIC COMPOSITION

CHAPTER IV: LOOSE FEUDALISM: THE OVER-LORD IN "ILIAD," BOOKS I.
AND II.

CHAPTER V: AGAMEMNON IN THE LATER "ILIAD"

CHAPTER VI: ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE "ILIAD"--BURIAL AND CREMATION

CHAPTER VII: HOMERIC ARMOUR

CHAPTER VIII: THE BREASTPLATE

CHAPTER IX: BRONZE AND IRON

CHAPTER X: THE HOMERIC HOUSE

CHAPTER XI: NOTES OF CHANGE IN THE "ODYSSEY"

CHAPTER XII: LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES

CHAPTER XIII: THE "DOLONEIA"--"ILIAD," BOOK X.

CHAPTER XIV: THE INTERPOLATIONS OF NESTOR

CHAPTER XV: THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS

CHAPTER XVI: HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS

CHAPTER XVII: CONCLUSION




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:


ALGONQUINS UNDER SHIELD

THE VASE OF ARISTONOTHOS

DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS

RINGS: SWORDS AND SHIELDS

FRAGMENTS OF WARRIOR VASE

FRAGMENT OF SIEGE VASE

ALGONQUIN CORSLET

GOLD CORSLET




CHAPTER I


THE HOMERIC AGE

The aim of this book is to prove that the Homeric Epics, as
wholes, and apart from passages gravely suspected in antiquity,
present a perfectly harmonious picture of the entire life and
civilisation of one single age. The faint variations in the design
are not greater than such as mark every moment of culture, for in
all there is some movement; in all, cases are modified by
circumstances. If our contention be true, it will follow that the
poems themselves, as wholes, are the product of a single age, not
a mosaic of the work of several changeful centuries.

This must be the case--if the life drawn is harmonious, the
picture must be the work of a single epoch--for it is not in the
nature of early uncritical times that later poets should adhere,
or even try to adhere, to the minute details of law, custom,
opinion, dress, weapons, houses, and so on, as presented in
earlier lays or sagas on the same set of subjects. Even less are
poets in uncritical times inclined to "archaise," either by
attempting to draw fancy pictures of the manners of the past, or
by making researches in graves, or among old votive offerings in
temples, for the purpose of "preserving local colour." The idea of
such archaising is peculiar to modern times. To take an instance
much to the point, Virgil was a learned poet, famous for his
antiquarian erudition, and professedly imitating and borrowing
from Homer. Now, had Virgil worked as a man of to-day would work
on a poem of Trojan times, he would have represented his heroes as
using weapons of bronze. [Footnote: Looking back at my own poem,
_Helen of Troy_ (1883), I find that when the metal of a
weapon is mentioned the metal is bronze.] No such idea of
archaising occurred to the learned Virgil. It is "the iron" that
pierces the head of Remulus (_Aeneid_, IX. 633); it is "the
iron" that waxes warm in the breast of Antiphates (IX. 701).
Virgil's men, again, do not wear the great Homeric shield,
suspended by a baldric: AEneas holds up his buckler
(_clipeus_), borne "on his left arm" (X. 26 i). Homer,
familiar with no buckler worn on the left arm, has no such
description. When the hostile ranks are to be broken, in the
_Aeneid_ it is "with the iron" (X. 372), and so throughout.

The most erudite ancient poet, in a critical age of iron, does not
archaise in our modern fashion. He does not follow his model,
Homer, in his descriptions of shields, swords, and spears. But,
according to most Homeric critics, the later continuators of the
Greek Epics, about 800-540 B.C., are men living in an age of iron
weapons, and of round bucklers worn on the left arm. Yet, unlike
Virgil, they always give their heroes arms of bronze, and, unlike
Virgil (as we shall see), they do not introduce the buckler worn
on the left arm. They adhere conscientiously to the use of the
vast Mycenaean shield, in their time obsolete. Yet, by the theory,
in many other respects they innovate at will, introducing corslets
and greaves, said to be unknown to the beginners of the Greek
Epics, just as Virgil innovates in bucklers and iron weapons. All
this theory seems inconsistent, and no ancient poet, not even
Virgil, is an archaiser of the modern sort.

All attempts to prove that the Homeric poems are the work of
several centuries appear to rest on a double hypothesis: first,
that the later contributors to the _ILIAD_ kept a steady eye
on the traditions of the remote Achaean age of bronze; next, that
they innovated as much as they pleased.

Poets of an uncritical age do not archaise. This rule is
overlooked by the critics who represent the Homeric poems as a
complex of the work of many singers in many ages. For example,
Professor Percy Gardner, in his very interesting _New chapters
in Greek History_ (1892), carries neglect of the rule so far as
to suppose that the late Homeric poets, being aware that the
ancient heroes could not ride, or write, or eat boiled meat,
consciously and purposefully represented them as doing none of
these things. This they did "on the same principle on which a
writer of pastoral idylls in our own day would avoid the mention
of the telegraph or telephone." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p.
142.] "A writer of our own day,"--there is the pervading fallacy!
It is only writers of the last century who practise this
archaeological refinement. The authors of _Beowulf_ and the
_Nibelungenlied_, of the Chansons de _Geste_ and of the
Arthurian romances, always describe their antique heroes and the
details of their life in conformity with the customs, costume, and
armour of their own much later ages.

But Mr. Leaf, to take another instance, remarks as to the lack of
the metal lead in the Epics, that it is mentioned in similes only,
as though the poet were aware the metal was unknown in the heroic
age. [Footnote: _Iliad_, Note on, xi. 237.] Here the poet is
assumed to be a careful but ill-informed archaeologist, who wishes
to give an accurate representation of the past. Lead, in fact, was
perfectly familiar to the Mycenaean prime. [Footnote: Tsountas and
Manatt, p. 73.] The critical usage of supposing that the ancients
were like the most recent moderns--in their archaeological
preoccupations--is a survival of the uncritical habit which
invariably beset old poets and artists. Ancient poets, of the
uncritical ages, never worked "on the same principle as a writer
in our day," as regards archaeological precision; at least we are
acquainted with no example of such accuracy.

Let us take another instance of the critical fallacy. The age of
the Achaean warriors, who dwelt in the glorious halls of Mycenae,
was followed, at an interval, by the age represented in the relics
found in the older tombs outside the Dipylon gate of Athens, an
age beginning, probably, about 900-850 B.C. The culture of this
"Dipylon age," a time of geometrical ornaments on vases, and of
human figures drawn in geometrical forms, lines, and triangles,
was quite unlike that of the Achaean age in many ways, for
example, in mode of burial and in the use of iron for weapons. Mr.
H. R. Hall, in his learned book, _The Oldest Civilisation of
Greece_ (1901), supposes the culture described in the Homeric
poems to be contemporary in Asia with that of this Dipylon period
in Greece. [Footnote: Op. cit., pp. 49, 222.] He says, "The
Homeric culture is evidently the culture of the poet's own days;
there is no attempt to archaise here...." They do not archaise as
to the details of life, but "the Homeric poets consciously and
consistently archaised, in regard to the political conditions of
continental Greece," in the Achaean times. They give "in all
probability a pretty accurate description" of the loose feudalism
of Mycenaean Greece. [Footnote: Op. cit., pp. 223, 225.]

We shall later show that this Homeric picture of a past political
and social condition of Greece is of vivid and delicate accuracy,
that it is drawn from the life, not constructed out of historical
materials. Mr. Hall explains the fact by "the conscious and
consistent" archaeological precision of the Asiatic poets of the
ninth century. Now to any one who knows early national poetry,
early uncritical art of any kind, this theory seems not easily
tenable. The difficulty of the theory is increased, if we suppose
that the Achaeans were the recent conquerors of the Mycenaeans.
Whether we regard the Achaeans as "Celts," with Mr. Ridgeway,
victors over an Aryan people, the Pelasgic Mycenaeans; or whether,
with Mr. Hall, we think that the Achaeans were the Aryan
conquerors of a non-Aryan people, the makers of the Mycenaean
civilisation; in the stress of a conquest, followed at no long
interval by an expulsion at the hands of Dorian invaders, there
would be little thought of archaising among Achaean poets.
[Footnote: Mr. Hall informs me that he no longer holds the opinion
that the poets archaised.]

A distinction has been made, it is true, between the poet and
other artists in this respect. Monsieur Perrot says, "The vase-
painter reproduces what he sees; while the epic poets endeavoured
to represent a distant past. If Homer gives swords of bronze to
his heroes of times gone by, it is because he knows that such were
the weapons of these heroes of long ago. In arming them with
bronze he makes use, in his way, of what we call "local
colour...." Thus the Homeric poet is a more conscientious
historian than Virgil!" [Footnote: La _Grte de l'Epope_,
Perrot et Chipiez, p. 230.]

Now we contend that old uncritical poets no more sought for
antique "local colour" than any other artists did. M. Perrot
himself says with truth, "the _CHANSON DE ROLAND_, and all
the _Gestes_ of the same cycle explain for us the Iliad and
the Odyssey." [Footnote: op. cit., p. 5.] But the poet of the
_CHANSON DE ROLAND_ accoutres his heroes of old time in the
costume and armour of his own age, and the later poets of the same
cycle introduce the innovations of their time; they do not hunt
for "local colour" in the _CHANSON DE ROLAND_. The very words
"local colour" are a modern phrase for an idea that never occurred
to the artists of ancient uncritical ages. The Homeric poets, like
the painters of the Dipylon period, describe the details of life
as they see them with their own eyes. Such poets and artists never
have the fear of "anachronisms" before them. This, indeed, is
plain to the critics themselves, for they, detect anachronisms as
to land tenure, burial, the construction of houses, marriage
customs, weapons, and armour in the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_. These supposed anachronisms we examine later: if
they really exist they show that the poets were indifferent to
local colour and archaeological precision, or were incapable of
attaining to archaeological accuracy. In fact, such artistic
revival of the past in its habit as it lived is a purely modern
ideal.

We are to show, then, that the Epics, being, as wholes, free from
such inevitable modifications in the picture of changing details
of life as uncritical authors always introduce, are the work of
the one age which they represent. This is the reverse of what has
long been, and still is, the current theory of Homeric criticism,
according to which the Homeric poems are, and bear manifest marks
of being, a mosaic of the poetry of several ages of change.

Till Wolf published his _Prolegomena_ to [blank space] (1795)
there was little opposition to the old belief that the
_ILIAD_ and Odyssey were, allowing for interpolations, the
work of one, or at most of two, poets. After the appearance of
Wolfs celebrated book, Homeric critics have maintained, generally
speaking, that the _ILIAD_ is either a collection of short
lays disposed in sequence in a late age, or that it contains an
ancient original "kernel" round which "expansions," made
throughout some centuries of changeful life, have accrued, and
have been at last arranged by a literary redactor or editor.

The latter theory is now dominant. It is maintained that the
_Iliad_ is a work of at least four centuries. Some of the
objections to this theory were obvious to Wolf himself--more
obvious to him than to his followers. He was aware, and some of
them are not, of the distinction between reading the _ILIAD_
as all poetic literature is naturally read, and by all authors is
meant to be read, for human pleasure, and studying it in the
spirit of "the analytical reader." As often as he read for
pleasure, he says, disregarding the purely fanciful "historical
conditions" which he invented for Homer; as often as he yielded
himself to that running stream of action and narration; as often
as he considered the _harmony_ of _colour_ and of
characters in the Epic, no man could be more angry with his own
destructive criticism than himself. Wolf ceased to be a Wolfian
whenever he placed himself at the point of view of the reader or
the listener, to whom alone every poet makes his appeal.

But he deemed it his duty to place himself at another point of
view, that of the scientific literary historian, the historian of
a period concerning whose history he could know nothing. "How
could the thing be possible?" he asked himself. "How could a long
poem like the _Iliad_ come into existence in the historical
circumstances?" [Footnote, exact place in paragraph unknown:
Preface to Homer, p, xxii., 1794.]. Wolf was unaware that he did
not know what the historical circumstances were. We know how
little we know, but we do know more than Wolf. He invented the
historical circumstances of the supposed poet. They were, he said,
like those of a man who should build a large ship in an inland
place, with no sea to launch it upon. The _Iliad_ was the
large ship; the sea was the public. Homer could have no
_readers_, Wolf said, in an age that, like the old hermit of
Prague, "never saw pen and ink," had no knowledge of letters; or,
if letters were dimly known, had never applied them to literature.
In such circumstances no man could have a motive for composing a
long poem. [Footnote: _Prolegomena to the Iliad_, p. xxvi.]

Yet if the original poet, "Homer," could make "the greater part
of the songs," as Wolf admitted, what physical impossibility stood
in the way of his making the whole? Meanwhile, the historical
circumstances, as conceived of by Wolf, were imaginary. He did not
take the circumstances of the poet as described in the Odyssey.
Here a king or prince has a minstrel, honoured as were the
minstrels described in the ancient Irish books of law. His duty is
to entertain the prince and his family and guests by singing epic
chants after supper, and there is no reason why his poetic
narratives should be brief, but rather he has an opportunity that
never occurred again till the literary age of Greece for producing
a long poem, continued from night to night. In the later age, in
the Asiatic colonies and in Greece, the rhapsodists, competing for
prizes at feasts, or reciting to a civic crowd, were limited in
time and gave but snatches of poetry. It is in this later civic
age that a poet without readers would have little motive for
building Wolfs great ship of song, and scant chance of launching
it to any profitable purpose. To this point we return; but when
once critics, following Wolf, had convinced themselves that a long
early poem was impossible, they soon found abundant evidence that
it had never existed.

They have discovered discrepancies of which, they say, no one sane
poet could have been guilty. They have also discovered that the
poems had not, as Wolf declared, "one 'harmony of colour" (_unus
color_). Each age, they say, during which the poems were
continued, lent its own colour. The poets, by their theory, now
preserved the genuine tradition of things old; cremation, cairn
and urn burial; the use of the chariot in war; the use of bronze
for weapons; a peculiar stage of customary law; a peculiar form of
semi-feudal society; a peculiar kind of house. But again, by a
change in the theory, the poets introduced later novelties; later
forms of defensive armour; later modes of burial; later religious
and speculative beliefs; a later style of house; an advanced stage
of law; modernisms in grammar and language.

The usual position of critics in this matter is stated by Helbig;
and we are to contend that the theory is contradicted by all
experience of ancient literatures, and is in itself the reverse of
consistent. "The _artists_ of antiquity," says Helbig, with
perfect truth, "had no idea of archaeological studies.... They
represented legendary scenes in conformity with the spirit of
their own age, and reproduced the arms and implements and costume
that they saw around them." [Footnote: _L'pope Homerique_,
p. 5; _Homerische Epos_, p. 4.]

Now a poet is an _artist_, like another, and he, too--no
less than the vase painter or engraver of gems--in dealing with
legends of times past, represents (in an uncritical age) the arms,
utensils, costume, and the religious, geographical, legal, social,
and political ideas of his own period. We shall later prove that
this is true by examples from the early mediaeval epic poetry of
Europe.

It follows that if the _Iliad_ is absolutely consistent and
harmonious in its picture of life, and of all the accessories of
life, the _Iliad_ is the work of a single age, of a single
stage of culture, the poet describing his own environment. But
Helbig, on the other hand, citing Wilamowitz Moellendorff,
declares that the _Iliad_--the work of four centuries, he
says--maintains its unity of colour by virtue of an uninterrupted
poetical tradition. [Footnote: _Homerische Untersuchungen_,
p. 292; _Homerische Epos_, p. I.] If so, the poets must have
archaeologised, must have kept asking themselves, "Is this or that
detail true to the past?" which artists in uncritical ages never
do, as we have been told by Helbig. They must have carefully
pondered the surviving old Achaean lays, which "were born when the
heroes could not read, or boil flesh, or back a steed." By
carefully observing the earliest lays the late poets, in times of
changed manners, "could avoid anachronisms by the aid of
tradition, which gave them a very exact idea of the epic heroes."
Such is the opinion of Wilamowitz Moellendorff. He appears to
regard the tradition as keeping the later poets in the old way
automatically, not consciously, but this, we also learn from
Helbig, did not occur. The poets often wandered from the way.
[Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische Epos,_ pp. 2, 3.] Thus old
Mycenaean lays, if any existed, would describe the old Mycenaean
mode of burial. The Homeric poet describes something radically
different. We vainly ask for proof that in any early national
literature known to us poets have been true to the colour and
manners of the remote times in which their heroes moved, and of
which old minstrels sang. The thing is without example: of this
proofs shall be offered in abundance.

Meanwhile, the whole theory which regards the _Iliad_ as the
work of four or five centuries rests on the postulate that poets
throughout these centuries did what such poets never do, kept true
to the details of a life remote from their own, and also did not.

For Helbig does not, after all, cleave to his opinion. On the
other hand, he says that the later poets of the _Iliad_ did
not cling to tradition. "They allowed themselves to be influenced
by their own environment: _this influence betrays ITSELF IN THE
descriptions of DETAILS_.... The rhapsodists," (reciters,
supposed to have altered the poems at will), "did not fail to
interpolate relatively recent elements into the oldest parts of
the Epic." [Footnote: _Homerische Epos,_ p. 2.]

At this point comes in a complex inconsistency. The Tenth Book of
the _Iliad_, thinks Helbig--in common with almost all
critics--"is one of the most recent lays of the _Iliad_." But
in this recent lay (say of the eighth or seventh century) the poet
describes the Thracians as on a level of civilisation with the
Achaeans, and, indeed, as even more luxurious, wealthy, and
refined in the matter of good horses, glorious armour, and
splendid chariots. But, by the time of the Persian wars, says
Helbig, the Thracians were regarded by the Greeks as rude
barbarians, and their military equipment was totally un-Greek.
They did not wear helmets, but caps of fox-skin. They had no body
armour; their shields were small round bucklers; their weapons
were bows and daggers. These customs could not, at the time of the
Persian wars, be recent innovations in Thrace. [Footnote:
Herodotus, vii. 75.]

Had the poet of _ILIAD_, Book X., known the Thracians in
_this_ condition, says Helbig, as he was fond of details of
costume and arms, he would have certainly described their fox-skin
caps, bows, bucklers, and so forth. He would not here have
followed the Epic tradition, which represented the Thracians as
makers of great swords and as splendidly armed charioteers. His
audience had met the Thracians in peace and war, and would
contradict the poet's description of them as heavily armed
charioteers. It follows, therefore, that the latest poets, such as
the author of Book X., did not introduce recent details, those of
their own time, but we have just previously been told that to do
so was their custom in the description of details.

Now Studniczka [Footnote: _Homerische Epos, pp. 7-11, cf._
Note I; _Zeitschrift fur die Oestern Gymnasien_, 1886, p.
195.] explains the picture of the Thracians in _Iliad_, Book
X., on Helbig's _other_ principle, namely, that the very late
author of the Tenth Book merely conforms to the conventional
tradition of the Epic, adheres to the model set in ancient
Achaean, or rather ancient Ionian times, and scrupulously
preserved by the latest poets--that is, when the latest poets do
not bring in the new details of their own age. But Helbig will not
accept his own theory in this case, whence does it follow that the
author of the Tenth Book must, in his opinion, have lived in
Achaean times, and described the Thracians as they then were,
charioteers, heavily armed, not light-clad archers? If this is so,
we ask how Helbig can aver that the Tenth Book is one of the
latest parts of the _Iliad?_

In studying the critics who hold that the _Iliad_ is the
growth of four centuries--say from the eleventh to the seventh
century B.C.--no consistency is to be discovered; the earth is
never solid beneath our feet. We find now that the poets are true
to tradition in the details of ancient life--now that the poets
introduce whatever modern details they please. The late poets have
now a very exact knowledge of the past; now, the late poets know
nothing about the past, or, again, some of the poets are fond of
actual and very minute archaeological research! The theory shifts
its position as may suit the point to be made at the moment by the
critic. All is arbitrary, and it is certain that logic demands a
very different method of inquiry. If Helbig and other critics of
his way of thinking mean that in the _Iliad_ (1) there are
parts of genuine antiquity; other parts (2) by poets who, with
stern accuracy, copied the old modes; other parts (3) by poets who
tried to copy but failed; with passages (4) by poets who
deliberately innovated; and passages (5) by poets who drew
fanciful pictures of the past "from their inner consciousness,"
while, finally (6), some poets made minute antiquarian researches;
and if the argument be that the critics can detect these six
elements, then we are asked to repose unlimited confidence in
critical powers of discrimination. The critical standard becomes
arbitrary and subjective.

It is our effort, then, in the following pages to show that the
_unus_ color of Wolf does pervade the Epics, that recent
details are not often, if ever, interpolated, that the poems
harmoniously represent one age, and that a brief age, of culture;
that this effect cannot, in a thoroughly uncritical period, have
been deliberately aimed at and produced by archaeological
learning, or by sedulous copying of poetic tradition, or by the
scientific labours of an editor of the sixth century B.C. We shall
endeavour to prove, what we have already indicated, that the
hypotheses of expansion are not self-consistent, or in accordance
with what is known of the evolution of early national poetry. The
strongest part, perhaps, of our argument is to rest on our
interpretation of archaeological evidence, though we shall not
neglect the more disputable or less convincing contentions of
literary criticism.




CHAPTER II


HYPOTHESES AS TO THE GROWTH OF THE EPICS

A theorist who believes that the Homeric poems are the growth of
four changeful centuries, must present a definite working
hypothesis as to how they escaped from certain influences of the
late age in which much of them is said to have been composed. We
must first ask to what manner of audiences did the poets sing, in
the alleged four centuries of the evolution of the Epics. Mr.
Leaf, as a champion of the theory of ages of "expansion," answers
that "the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are essentially, and
above all, Court poems. They were composed to be sung in the
palaces of a ruling aristocracy ... the poems are aristocratic and
courtly, not popular." [Footnote: Companion to the _Iliad_,
pp. 2,8. 1892.] They are not _Volkspoesie_; they are not
ballads. "It is now generally recognised that this conception is
radically false."

These opinions, in which we heartily agree--there never was such a
thing as a "popular" Epic--were published fourteen years ago. Mr.
Leaf, however, would not express them with regard to "our"
_Iliad_ and Odyssey, because, in his view, a considerable
part of the _Iliad_, as it stands, was made, not by Court
bards in the Achaean courts of Europe, not for an audience of
noble warriors and dames, but by wandering minstrels in the later
Ionian colonies of Asia. They did not chant for a military
aristocracy, but for the enjoyment of town and country folk at
popular festivals. [Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p. xvi. 1900.] The
poems were _begun_, indeed, he thinks, for "a wealthy
aristocracy living on the product of their lands," in European
Greece; were begun by contemporary court minstrels, but were
continued, vastly expanded, and altered to taste by wandering
singers and reciting rhapsodists, who amused the holidays of a
commercial, expansive, and bustling Ionian democracy. [Footnote:
_Companion to the Iliad_, p. II.]

 We must suppose that, on this theory, the later poets pleased a
commercial democracy by keeping up the tone that had delighted an
old land-owning military aristocracy. It is not difficult,
however, to admit this as possible, for the poems continued to be
admired in all ages of Greece and under every form of society. The
real question is, would the modern poets be the men to keep up a
tone some four or five centuries old, and to be true, if they were
true, to the details of the heroic age? "It is not beyond the
bounds of possibility that some part of the most primitive
_Iliad_ may have been actually sung by the court minstrel in
the palace whose ruins can still be seen in Mycenae." [Footnote:
Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. xv.] But, by the expansionist
theory, even the oldest parts of our _Iliad_ are now full of
what we may call quite recent Ionian additions, full of late
retouches, and full, so to speak, of omissions of old parts.

Through four or five centuries, by the hypothesis, every singer
who could find an audience was treating as much as he knew of a
vast body of ancient lays exactly as he pleased, adding here,
lopping there, altering everywhere. Moreover, these were centuries
full of change. The ancient Achaean palaces were becoming the
ruins which we still behold. The old art had faded, and then
fallen under the disaster of the Dorian conquest. A new art, or a
recrudescence of earlier art, very crude and barbaric, had
succeeded, and was beginning to acquire form and vitality. The
very scene of life was altered: the new singers and listeners
dwelt on the Eastern side of the Aegean. Knights no longer, as in
Europe, fought from chariots: war was conducted by infantry, for
the most part, with mounted auxiliaries. With the disappearance of
the war chariot the huge Mycenaean shields had vanished or were
very rarely used. The early vase painters do not, to my knowledge,
represent heroes as fighting from war chariots. They had lost
touch with that method. Fighting men now carried relatively small
round bucklers, and iron was the metal chiefly employed for
swords, spears, and arrow points. Would the new poets, in
deference to tradition, abstain from mentioning cavalry, or small
bucklers, or iron swords and spears? or would they avoid puzzling
their hearers by speaking of obsolete and unfamiliar forms of
tactics and of military equipment? Would they therefore sing of
things familiar--of iron weapons, small round shields, hoplites,
and cavalry? We shall see that confused and self-contradictory
answers are given by criticism to all these questions by scholars
who hold that the Epics are not the product of one, but of many
ages.

There were other changes between the ages of the original minstrel
and of the late successors who are said to have busied themselves
in adding to, mutilating, and altering his old poem. Kings and
courts had passed away; old Ionian myths and religious usages,
unknown to the Homeric poets, had come out into the light;
commerce and pleasure and early philosophies were the chief
concerns of life. Yet the poems continued to be aristocratic in
manners; and, in religion and ritual, to be pure from
recrudescences of savage poetry and superstition, though the
Ionians "did not drop the more primitive phases of belief which
had clung to them; these rose to the surface with the rest of the
marvellous Ionic genius, and many an ancient survival was
enshrined in the literature or mythology of Athens which had long
passed out of all remembrance at Mycenas." [Footnote: _Companion
to the Iliad_, p. 7.]

Amazing to say, none of these "more primitive phases of belief,"
none of the recrudescent savage magic, was intruded by the late
Ionian poets into the Iliad which they continued, by the theory.
Such phases of belief were, indeed, by their time popular, and
frequently appeared in the Cyclic poems on the Trojan war;
continuations of the _ILIAD_, which were composed by Ionian
authors at the same time as much of the _ILIAD_ itself (by
the theory) was composed. The authors of these Cyclic poems--
authors contemporary with the makers of much of the _ILIAD_--
_were_ eminently "un-Homeric" in many respects. [Footnote:
_Cf_. Monro, _The Cyclic Poets; Odyssey_, vol. ii, pp.
342-384.] They had ideas very different from those of the authors
of the _Iliad_ and _ODYSSEY_, as these ideas have
reached us.

Helbig states this curious fact, that the Homeric poems are free
from many recent or recrudescent ideas common in other Epics
composed during the later centuries of the supposed four hundred
years of Epic growth. [Footnote: _Homerische Epos_, p. 3.]
Thus a signet ring was mentioned in the _Ilias Puma_, and
there are no rings in _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_. But Helbig
does not perceive the insuperable difficulty which here encounters
his hypothesis. He remarks: "In certain poems which were grouping
themselves around the _Iliad and _Odyssey, we meet data
absolutely opposed to the conventional style of the Epic." He
gives three or four examples of perfectly un-Homeric ideas
occurring in Epics of the eighth to seventh centuries, B.C., and a
large supply of such cases can be adduced. But Helbig does not ask
how it happened that, if poets of these centuries had lost touch
with the Epic tradition, and had wandered into a new region of
thought, as they had, examples of their notions do not occur in
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. By his theory these poems
were being added to and altered, even in their oldest portions, at
the very period when strange fresh, or old and newly revived
fancies were flourishing. If so, how were the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_, unlike the Cyclic poems, kept uncontaminated, as
they confessedly were, by the new romantic ideas?

Here is the real difficulty. Cyclic poets of the eighth and
seventh centuries had certainly lost touch with the Epic
tradition; their poems make that an admitted fact. Yet poets of
the eighth to seventh centuries were, by the theory, busily adding
to and altering the ancient lays of the _Iliad_. How did
_they_ abstain from the new or revived ideas, and from the
new _genre_ of romance? Are we to believe that one set of
late Ionian poets--they who added to and altered the Iliad--were
true to tradition, while another contemporary set of Ionian poets,
the Cyclics--authors of new Epics on Homeric themes--are known to
have quite lost touch with the Homeric taste, religion, and
ritual? The reply will perhaps be a Cyclic poet said, "Here I am
going to compose quite a new poem about the old heroes. I shall
make them do and think and believe as I please, without reference
to the evidence of the old poems." But, it will have to be added,
the rhapsodists of 800-540 B.C., and the general editor of the
latter date, thought, _we_ are continuing an old set of
lays, and we must be very careful in adhering to manners, customs,
and beliefs as described by our predecessors. For instance, the
old heroes had only bronze, no iron,--and then the rhapsodists
forgot, and made iron a common commodity in the _Iliad_.
Again, the rhapsodists knew that the ancient heroes had no
corslets--the old lays, we learn, never spoke of corslets--but
they made them wear corslets of much splendour. [Footnote: The
reader must remember that the view of the late poets as careful
adherents of tradition in usages and ideas only obtains
_sometimes_; at others the critics declare that
archaeological precision is _not_ preserved, and that the
Ionic continuators introduced, for example, the military gear of
their own period into a poem which represents much older weapons
and equipments.] This theory does not help us. In an uncritical
age poets could not discern that their genre of romance and
religion was alien from that of Homer.

To return to the puzzle about the careful and precise continuators
of the _Iliad_, as contrasted with their heedless
contemporaries, the authors of the Cyclic poems. How "non-Homeric"
the authors of these Cyclic poems were, before and after 660 B.C.,
we illustrate from examples of their left hand backslidings and
right hand fallings off. They introduced (1) The Apotheosis of the
Dioscuri, who in Homer (_Iliad_, III. 243) are merely dead
men (_Cypria_). (2) Story of Iphigenia _Cypria_. (3)
Story of Palamedes, who is killed when angling by Odysseus and
Diomede (Cypria).

Homer's heroes never fish, except in stress of dire necessity, in
the Odyssey, and Homer's own Diomede and Odysseus would never
stoop to assassinate a companion when engaged in the contemplative
man's recreation. We here see the heroes in late degraded form as
on the Attic stage. (4) The Cyclics introduce Helen as daughter of
Nemesis, and describe the flight of Nemesis from Zeus in various
animal forms, a Mrchen of a sort not popular with Homer; an
Ionic Mrchen, Mr. Leaf would say. There is nothing like this in
the Iliad and Odyssey. (5) They call the son of Achilles, not
Neoptolemus, as Homer does, but Pyrrhus. (6) They represent the
Achaean army as obtaining supplies through three magically gifted
maidens, who produce corn, wine, and oil at will, as in fairy
tales. Another Ionic non-Achaean Mrchen! They bring in ghosts of
heroes dead and buried. Such ghosts, in Homer's opinion, were
impossible if the dead had been cremated. All these non-Homeric
absurdities, save the last, are from the Cypria, dated by Sir
Richard Jebb about 776 B.C., long before the Odyssey was put into
shape, namely, after 660 B. C. in his opinion. Yet the alleged
late compiler of the Odyssey, in the seventh century, never
wanders thus from the Homeric standard in taste. What a skilled
archaeologist he must have been! The author of the Cypria knew the
Iliad, [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 354.] but his
knowledge could not keep him true to tradition. (7) In the
AEthiopis (about 776 B.C.) men are made immortal after death, and
are worshipped as heroes, an idea foreign to Iliad and Odyssey.
(8) There is a savage ritual of purification from blood shed by a
homicide (compare Eumenides, line 273). This is unheard of in
Iliad and Odyssey, though familiar to Aeschylus. (9) Achilles,
after death, is carried to the isle of Leuke. (10) The fate of
Ilium, in the Cyclic Little _Iliad_, hangs on the Palladium,
of which nothing is known in _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_. The
_Little Iliad_ is dated about 700 B.C. (11) The _Nostoi_
mentions Molossians, not named by Homer (which is a trifle); it
also mentions the Asiatic city of Colophon, an Ionian colony,
which is not a trivial self-betrayal on the part of the poet. He
is dated about 750 B.C.

Thus, more than a century before the _Odyssey_ received its
final form, after 660 B.C., from the hands of one man (according
to the theory), the other Ionian poets who attempted Epic were
betraying themselves as non-Homeric on every hand. [Footnote:
Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 347-383.]

Our examples are but a few derived from the brief notices of the
Cyclic poets' works, as mentioned in ancient literature; these
poets probably, in fact, betrayed themselves constantly. But their
contemporaries, the makers of late additions to the
_Odyssey_, and the later mosaic worker who put it together,
never betrayed themselves to anything like the fatal extent of
anachronism exhibited by the Cyclic poets. How, if the true
ancient tone, taste, manners, and religion were lost, as the
Cyclic poets show that they were, did the contemporary Ionian
poets or rhapsodists know and preserve the old manner?

The best face we can put on the matter is to say that all the
Cyclic poets were recklessly independent of tradition, while all
men who botched at the _Iliad_ were very learned, and very
careful to maintain harmony in their pictures of life and manners,
except when they introduced changes in burial, bride-price,
houses, iron, greaves, and corslets, all of them things, by the
theory, modern, and when they sang in modern grammar.

Yet despite this conscientiousness of theirs, most of the many
authors of our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ were, by the
theory, strolling irresponsible rhapsodists, like the later
_jongleurs_ of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in
mediaeval France. How could these strollers keep their modern
Ionian ideas, or their primitive, recrudescent phases of belief,
out of their lays, as far as they _did_ keep them out, while
the contemporary authors of the _Cypria_, _The Sack of Ilios_,
and other Cyclic poets were full of new ideas, legends, and
beliefs, or primitive notions revived, and, save when revived,
quite obviously late and quite un-Homeric in any case?

The difficulty is the greater if the Cyclic poems were long poems,
with one author to each Epic. Such authors were obviously men of
ambition; they produced serious works _de longue haleine_. It
is from them that we should naturally expect conservative and
studious adhesion to the traditional models. From casual strollers
like the rhapsodists and chanters at festivals, we look for
nothing of the sort. _They_ might be expected to introduce
great feats done by sergeants and privates, so to speak--men of
the nameless [Greek: laos], the host, the foot men--who in
Homer are occasionally said to perish of disease or to fall under
the rain of arrows, but are never distinguished by name. The
strollers, it might be thought, would also be the very men to
introduce fairy tales, freaks of primitive Ionian myth,
discreditable anecdotes of the princely heroes, and references to
the Ionian colonies.

But it is not so; the serious, laborious authors of the long
Cyclic poems do such un-Homeric things as these; the gay,
irresponsible strolling singers of a lay here and a lay there--
lays now incorporated in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_--
scrupulously avoid such faults. They never even introduce a signet
ring. These are difficulties in the theory of the _Iliad_ as
a patchwork by many hands, in many ages, which nobody explains;
which, indeed, nobody seems to find difficult. Yet the difficulty
is insuperable. Even if we take refuge with Wilamowitz in the idea
that the Cyclic and Homeric poems were at first mere protoplasm of
lays of many ages, and that they were all compiled, say in the
sixth century, into so many narratives, we come no nearer to
explaining why the tone, taste, and ideas of two such narratives--
Illiad and Odyssey--are confessedly distinct from the tone, taste,
and ideas of all the others. The Cyclic poems are certainly the
production of a late and changed age? [Footnote: For what manner
of audience, if not for readers, the Cyclic poems were composed is
a mysterious question.] The _Iliad_ is not in any degree--
save perhaps in a few interpolated passages--touched by the
influences of that late age. It is not a complex of the work of
four incompatible centuries, as far as this point is concerned--
the point of legend, religion, ritual, and conception of heroic
character.




CHAPTER III


HYPOTHESES OF EPIC COMPOSITION

Whosoever holds that the Homeric poems were evolved out of the
lays of many men, in many places, during many periods of culture,
must present a consistent and logical hypothesis as to how they
attained their present plots and forms. These could not come by
accident, even if the plots are not good--as all the world held
that they were, till after Wolf's day--but very bad, as some
critics now assert. Still plot and form, beyond the power of
chance to produce, the poems do possess. Nobody goes so far as to
deny that; and critics make hypotheses explanatory of the fact
that a single ancient "kernel" of some 2500 lines, a "kernel"
altered at will by any one who pleased during four centuries,
became a constructive whole. If the hypotheses fail to account for
the fact, we have the more reason to believe that the poems are
the work of one age, and, mainly, of one man.

In criticising Homeric criticism as it is to-day, we cannot do
better than begin by examining the theories of Mr. Leaf which are
offered by him merely as "a working hypothesis." His most erudite
work is based on a wide knowledge of German Homeric speculation,
of the exact science of Grammar, of archaeological discoveries,
and of manuscripts. [Footnote: The Iliad. Macmillan & Co. 1900,
1902.] His volumes are, I doubt not, as they certainly deserve to
be, on the shelves of every Homeric student, old or young, and
doubtless their contents reach the higher forms in schools, though
there is reason to suppose that, about the unity of Homer,
schoolboys remain conservative.

In this book of more than 1200 pages Mr. Leaf's space is mainly
devoted to textual criticism, philology, and pure scholarship, but
his Introductions, Notes, and Appendices also set forth his mature
ideas about the Homeric problem in general. He has altered some of
his opinions since the publication of his _Companion to the
Iliad_(1892), but the main lines of his old system are, except
on one crucial point, unchanged. His theory we shall try to state
and criticise; in general outline it is the current theory of
separatist critics, and it may fairly be treated as a good example
of such theories.

The system is to the following effect: Greek tradition, in the
classical period, regarded the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ as
the work of one man, Homer, a native of one or other of the Ionian
colonies of Asia Minor. But the poems show few obvious signs of
origin in Asia. They deal with dwellers, before the Dorian
invasion (which the poet never alludes to), on the continent of
Europe and in Crete. [Footnote: If the poet sang after the tempest
of war that came down with the Dorians from the north, he would
probably have sought a topic in the Achaean exploits and sorrows
of that period. The Dorians, not the Trojans, would have been the
foes. The epics of France of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
dwell, not on the real victories of the remote Charlemagne so much
as on the disasters of Aliscans and Roncesvaux--defeats at Saracen
hands, Saracens being the enemies of the twelfth-century poets. No
Saracens, in fact, fought at Roncesvaux.] The lays are concerned
with "good old times"; presumably between 1500 and 1100 B.C. Their
pictures of the details of life harmonise more with what we know
of the society of that period from the evidence of buildings and
recent excavations, than with what we know of the life and the
much more rude and barbaric art of the so-called "Dipylon" period
of "geometrical" ornament considerably later. In the Dipylon age
though the use of iron, even for swords (made on the lines of the
old bronze sword), was familiar, art was on a most barbaric level,
not much above the Bed Indian type, as far, at least, as painted
vases bear witness. The human figure is designed as in Tommy
Traddles's skeletons; there is, however, some crude but promising
idea of composition.

The picture of life in the Homeric poems, then, is more like that
of, say, 1500-1100 B.C. than of, say, 1000-850 B.C. in Mr. Leaf's
opinion. Certainly Homer describes a wealthy aristocracy, subject
to an Over-Lord, who rules, by right divine, from "golden
Mycenae." We hear of no such potentate in Ionia. Homer's accounts
of contemporary art seem to be inspired by the rich art generally
dated about 1500-1200. Yet there are "many traces of apparent
anachronism," of divergence from the more antique picture of life.
In these divergences are we to recognise the picture of a later
development of the ancient existence of 1500-1200 B.C.? Or have
elements of the life of a much later age of Greece (say, 800-550
B.C.) been consciously or unconsciously introduced by the late
poets? Here Mr. Leaf recognises a point on which we have insisted,
and must keep insisting, for it is of the first importance. "It is
_a priori_ the most probable" supposition that, "in an
uncritical age," poets do _not_ "reproduce the circumstances
of the old time," but "only clothe the old tale in the garb of
their own days." Poets in an uncritical age always, in our
experience, "clothe old tales with the garb of their own time,"
but Mr. Leaf thinks that, in the case of the Homeric poems, this
idea "is not wholly borne out by the facts."

In fact, Mr. Leaf's hypothesis, like Helbig's, exhibits a come-
and-go between the theory that his late poets clung close to
tradition and so kept true to ancient details of life, and the
theory that they did quite the reverse in many cases. Of this
frequent examples will occur. He writes, "The Homeric period is
certainly later than the shaft tombs" (discovered at Mycenae by
Dr. Schliemann), "but it does not necessarily follow that it is
post-Mycenaean. It is quite possible that certain notable
differences between the poems and the monuments" (of Mycenae) "in
burial, for instance, and in women's dress may be due to changes
which arose within the Mycenaean age itself, in that later part of
it of which our knowledge is defective--almost as defective as it
is of the subsequent 'Dipylon' period. On the whole, the
resemblance to the typical Mycenaean culture is more striking than
the difference." [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. pp. xiii.-xv.
1900.]

So far Mr. Leaf states precisely the opinion for which we argue.
The Homeric poems describe an age later than that of the famous
tombs--so rich in relics--of the Mycenaean acropolis, and earlier
than the tombs of the Dipylon of Athens. The poems thus spring out
of an age of which, except from the poems themselves, we know
little or nothing, because, as is shown later, no cairn burials
answering to the frequent Homeric descriptions have ever been
discovered--so relics corroborating Homeric descriptions are to
seek. But the age attaches itself in many ways to the age of the
Mycenaean tombs, while, in our opinion, it stands quite apart from
the post-Dorian culture.

Where we differ from Mr. Leaf is in believing that the poems, as
wholes, were composed in that late Mycenaean period of which, from
material remains, we know very little; that "much new" was not
added, as he thinks, in "the Ionian development" which lasted
perhaps "from the ninth century B.C. to the seventh." We cannot
agree with Mr. Leaf, when he, like Helbig, thinks that much of the
detail of the ancient life in the poems had early become so
"stereotyped" that no continuator, however late, dared
"intentionally to sap" the type, "though he slipped from time to
time into involuntary anachronism." Some poets are also asserted
to indulge in _voluntary_ anachronism when, as Mr. Leaf
supposes, they equip the ancient warriors with corslets and
greaves and other body armour of bronze such as, in his opinion,
the old heroes never knew, such as never were mentioned in the
oldest parts or "kernel" of the poems. Thus the traditional
details of Mycenaean life sometimes are regarded as "stereotyped"
in poetic tradition; sometimes as subject to modern alterations of
a sweeping and revolutionary kind.

As to deliberate adherence to tradition by the poets, we have
proved that the Cyclic epic poets of 800-660 B.C. wandered widely
from the ancient models. If, then, every minstrel or rhapsodist
who, anywhere, added at will to the old "kernel" of the
_Achilles_ was, so far as he was able, as conscientiously
precise in his stereotyped archaeological details as Mr. Leaf
sometimes supposes, the fact is contrary to general custom in such
cases. When later poets in an uncritical age take up and rehandle
the poetic themes of their predecessors, they always give to the
stories "a new costume," as M. Gaston Paris remarks in reference
to thirteenth century dealings with French epics of the eleventh
century. But, in the critics' opinion, the late rehandlers of old
Achaean lays preserved the archaic modes of life, war, costume,
weapons, and so forth, with conscientious care, except in certain
matters to be considered later, when they deliberately did the
very reverse. Sometimes the late poets devoutly follow tradition.
Sometimes they deliberately innovate. Sometimes they pedantically
"archaise," bringing in genuine, but by their time forgotten,
Mycenaean things, and criticism can detect their doings in each
case.

Though the late continuators of the _Iliad_ were able,
despite certain inadvertencies, to keep up for some four centuries
in Asia the harmonious picture of ancient Achaean life and society
in Europe, critics can distinguish four separate strata, the work
of many different ages, in the _Iliad_. Of the first stratum
composed in Europe, say about 1300-1150 B.C. (I give a conjectural
date under all reserves), the topic was _THE Wrath of
ACHILLES_. Of this poem, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, (a) the First
Book and fifty lines of the Second Book remain intact or, perhaps,
are a blend of two versions. (b) The _Valour of Agamemnon_
and _Defeat of THE Achaeans_. Of this there are portions in
Book XI., but they were meddled with, altered, and generally
doctored, "down to the latest period," namely, the age of
Pisistratus in Athens, the middle of the sixth century B.C. (c)
The fight in which, after their defeat, the Achaeans try to save
the ships from the torch of Hector, and the _Valour of
Patroclus_ (but some critics do not accept this), with his
death (XV., XVI. in parts). (d) Some eighty lines on the _ARMING
OF ACHILLES_ (XIX.). (e) Perhaps an incident or two in Books
XX., XXI. (f) The _Slaying OF_by Achilles, in Books XXI.,
XXII. (but some of the learned will not admit this, and we shall,
unhappily, have to prove that, if Mr. Leaf's principles be
correct, we really know nothing about the _SLAYING OF HECTOR_
in its original form).

Of these six elements only did the original poem consist, Mr. Leaf
thinks; a rigid critic will reject as original even the _Valour
of Patroclus_ and the _DEATH OF HECTOR_, but Mr. Leaf
refuses to go so far as that. The original poem, as detected by
him, is really "the work of a single poet, perhaps the greatest in
all the world's history." If the original poet did no more than is
here allotted to him, especially if he left out the purpose of
Zeus and the person of Thetis in Book I., we do not quite
understand his unapproachable greatness. He must certainly have
drawn a rather commonplace Achilles, as we shall see, and we
confess to preferring the _Iliad_ as it stands.

The brief narrative cut out of the mass by Mr. Leaf, then, was the
genuine old original poem or "kernel." What we commonly call the
_ILIAD_, on the other hand, is, by his theory, a thing of
shreds and patches, combined in a manner to be later described.
The blend, we learn, has none of the masterly unity of the old
original poem. Meanwhile, as criticism of literary composition is
a purely literary question, critics who differ from Mr. Leaf have
a right to hold that the _Iliad_ as it stands contains, and
always did contain, a plot of masterly perfection. We need not
attend here so closely to Mr. Leaf's theory in the matter of the
First Expansions, (2) and the Second Expansions, (3) but the
latest Expansions (4) give the account of _The EMBASSY_ to
_Achilles_ with his refusal of _Agamemnon's
APOLOGY_(Book IX.), the [blank space] (Book XXIV.), the
_RECONCILIATION OF ACHILLES AND Agamemnon, AND the FUNERAL
Games_ of _Patroclus_ (XXIII.). In all these parts of the
poem there are, we learn, countless alterations, additions, and
expansions, with, last of all, many transitional passages, "the
work of the editor inspired by the statesman," that is, of an
hypothetical editor who really by the theory made our
_ILIAD_, being employed to that end by Pistratus about 540
B.C. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. pp. x., xiv. 1900.].

Mr. Leaf and critics who take his general view are enabled to
detect the patches and tatters of many ages by various tests, for
example, by discovering discrepancies in the narrative, such as in
their opinion no one sane poet could make. Other proofs of
multiplex authorship are discovered by the critic's private sense
of what the poem ought to be, by his instinctive knowledge of
style, by detection of the poet's supposed errors in geography, by
modernisms and false archaisms in words and grammar, and by the
presence of many objects, especially weapons and armour, which the
critic believes to have been unknown to the original minstrel.

Thus criticism can pick out the things old, fairly old, late, and
quite recent, from the mass, evolved through many centuries, which
is called the _Iliad_.

If the existing _ILIAD_ is a mass of "expansions," added at
all sorts of dates, in any number of places, during very different
stages of culture, to a single short old poem of the Mycenaean
age, science needs an hypothesis which will account for the
_ILIAD_ "as it stands." Everybody sees the need of the
hypothesis, How was the medley of new songs by many generations of
irresponsible hands codified into a plot which used to be reckoned
fine? How were the manners, customs, and characters, _unus
color_, preserved in a fairly coherent and uniform aspect? How
was the whole Greek world, throughout which all manner of
discrepant versions and incongruous lays must, by the theory, have
been current, induced to accept the version which has been
bequeathed to us? Why, and for what audience or what readers, did
somebody, in a late age of brief lyrics and of philosophic poems,
take the trouble to harmonise the body of discrepant wandering
lays, and codify them in the _Iliad_?

An hypothesis which will answer all these questions is the first
thing needful, and hypotheses are produced.

Believers like Mr. Leaf in the development of the _Iliad_
through the changing revolutionary centuries, between say 1200 and
600 B.C., consciously stand in need of a working hypothesis which
will account, above all, for two facts: first, the relatively
correct preservation of the harmony of the picture of life, of
ideas political and religious, of the characters of the heroes, of
the customary law (such as the bride-price in marriage), and of
the details as to weapons, implements, dress, art, houses, and so
forth, when these are not (according to the theory) deliberately
altered by late poets.

Next, the hypothesis must explain, in Mr. Leafs own words, how a
single version of the _Iliad_ came to be accepted, "where
many rival versions must, from the necessity of the case, have
once existed side by side." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
xviii. 1900.]

Three hypotheses have, in fact, been imagined: the first suggests
the preservation of the original poems in very early written
texts; not, of course, in "Homer's autograph." This view Mr. Leaf,
we shall see, discards. The second presents the notion of one old
sacred college for the maintenance of poetic uniformity. Mr. Leaf
rejects this theory, while supposing that there were schools for
professional reciters.

Last, there is the old hypothesis of Wolf: "Pisistratus" (about
540 B.C.) "was the first who had the Homeric poems committed to
writing, and brought into that order in which we now possess
them."

This hypothesis, now more than a century old, would, if it rested
on good evidence, explain how a single version of the various lays
came to be accepted and received as authorised. The Greek world,
by the theory, had only in various places various sets of
incoherent chants _orally_ current on the Wrath of The public
was everywhere a public of listeners, who heard the lays sung on
rare occasions at feasts and fairs, or whenever a strolling
rhapsodist took up his pitch, for a day or two, at a street
corner. There was, by the theory, no reading public for the
Homeric poetry. But, by the time of Pisistratus, a reading public
was coming into existence. The tyrant had the poems collected,
edited, arranged into a continuous narrative, primarily for the
purpose of regulating the recitals at the Panathenaic festival.
When once they were written, copies were made, and the rest of
Hellas adopted these for their public purposes.

On a small scale we have a case analogous. The old songs of
Scotland existed, with the airs, partly in human memory, partly in
scattered broadsheets. The airs were good, but the words were
often silly, more often they were Fescennine--"more dirt than
wit." Burns rewrote the words, which were published in handsome
volumes, with the old airs, or with these airs altered, and his
became the authorised versions, while the ancient anonymous chants
were almost entirely forgotten.

The parallel is fairly close, but there are points of difference.
Burns was a great lyric poet, whereas we hear of no great epic
poet in the age of Pisistratus. The old words which Burns's songs
superseded were wretched doggerel; not such were the ancient Greek
heroic lays. The old Scottish songs had no sacred historic
character; they did not contain the history of the various towns
and districts of Scotland. The heroic lays of Greece were
believed, on the other hand, to be a kind of Domesday book of
ancient principalities, and cities, and worshipped heroes. Thus it
was much easier for a great poet like Burns to supersede with his
songs a mass of unconsidered "sculdudery" old lays, in which no
man or set of men had any interest, than for a mere editor, in the
age of Pisistratus, to supersede a set of lays cherished, in one
shape or another, by every State in Greece. This holds good, even
if, prior to Pisistratus, there existed in Greece no written texts
of Homer, and no reading public, a point which we shall show
reasons for declining to concede.

The theory of the edition of Pisistratus, if it rested on valid
evidence, would explain "how a single version of the poems came to
be accepted," namely, because the poem was now _written_ for
the first time, and oral versions fell out of memory. But it would
not, of course, explain how, before Pisistratus, during four or
five centuries of change, the new poets and reciters, throughout
the Greek world, each adding such fresh verses as he pleased, and
often introducing such modern details of life as he pleased, kept
up the harmony of the Homeric picture of life, and character, and
law, as far as it confessedly exists.

To take a single instance: the poems never allude to the personal
armorial bearings of the heroes. They are unknown to or unnamed by
Homer, but are very familiar on the shields in seventh century and
sixth century vases, and AEschylus introduces them with great
poetic effect in [blank space]. How did late continuators,
familiar with the serpents, lions, bulls' heads, crabs, doves, and
so forth, on the contemporary shields, keep such picturesque and
attractive details out of their new rhapsodies? In mediaeval
France, we shall show, the epics (eleventh to thirteenth
centuries) deal with Charlemagne and his peers of the eighth
century A.D. But they provide these heroes with the armorial
bearings which came in during the eleventh to twelfth century A.D.
The late Homeric rhapsodists avoided such tempting anachronisms.

Wolf's theory, then, explains "how a single version came to be
accepted." It was the first _WRITTEN_ version; the others
died out, like the old Scots orally repeated songs, when Burns
published new words to the airs. But Wolf's theory does not
explain the harmony of the picture of life, the absence of post-
Homeric ideas and ways of living, in the first written version,
which, practically, is our own version.

In 1892 (_COMPANION TO THE Iliad_) Mr. Leaf adopted a
different theory, the hypothesis of a Homeric "school" "which
busied itself with the tradition of the Homeric poetry," for there
must have been some central authority to preserve the text intact
when it could not be preserved in writing. Were there no such body
to maintain a fixed standard, the poems must have ended by varying
indefinitely, according to the caprice of their various reciters.
This is perfectly obvious.

Such a school could keep an eye on anachronisms and excise them;
in fact, the Maori priests, in an infinitely more barbarous state
of society, had such schools for the preservation of their ancient
hymns in purity. The older priests "insisted on a critical and
verbatim rehearsal of all the ancient lore." Proceedings were
sanctioned by human sacrifices and many mystic rites. We are not
told that new poems were produced and criticised; it does not
appear that this was the case. Pupils attended from three to five
years, and then qualified as priests or _tohunga_ [Footnote:
White, _THE Ancient HISTORY OF THE Maori, VOL._ i. pp. 8-
13.]. Suppose that the Asiatic Greeks, like the Maoris and Zuis,
had Poetic Colleges of a sacred kind, admitting new poets, and
keeping them up to the antique standard in all respects. If this
were so, the relative rarity of "anachronisms" and of modernisms
in language in the Homeric poems is explained. But Mr. Leaf has
now entirely and with a light heart abandoned his theory of a
school, which is unsupported by evidence, he says.'

"The great problem," he writes, "for those who maintain the
gradual growth of the poems by a process of crystallisation has
been to understand how a single version came to be accepted, where
many rival versions must, from the necessity of the case, have
once existed side by side. The assumption of a school or guild of
singers has been made," and Mr. Leaf, in 1892, made the assumption
himself: "as some such hypothesis we are bound to make in order to
explain the possibility of any theory" (1892). [Footnote:
_COMPANION TO THE Iliad, pp. 20, 21._]

But now (1900) he says, after mentioning "the assumption of a
school or guild of singers," that "the rare mention of [Greek:
Homeridai] in Chios gives no support to this hypothesis, which
lacks any other confirmation." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i.
xviii. p. xix.] He therefore now adopts the Wolfian hypothesis
that "an official copy of Homer was made in Athens at the time of
Solon or Pisistratus," from the rhapsodies existing in the memory
of reciters. [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. xix.] But Mr.
Leaf had previously said [Footnote: _COMPANION TO THE Iliad_,
p. 190.] that "the legend which connects his" (Pisistratus's)
"name with the Homeric poems is itself probably only conjectural,
and of late date." Now the evidence for Pisistratus which, in
1892, he thought "conjectural and of late date," seems to him a
sufficient basis for an hypothesis of a Pisistratean editor of the
Iliad, while the evidence for an Homeric school which appeared to
him good enough for an hypothesis in 1892 is rejected as
worthless, though, in each case, the evidence itself remains just
what it used to be.

This is not very satisfactory, and the Pisistratean hypothesis is
much less useful to a theorist than the former hypothesis of an
Homeric school, for the Pisistratean hypothesis cannot explain the
harmony of the characters and the details in the _Iliad_, nor
the absence of such glaring anachronisms as the Cyclic poets made,
nor the general "pre-Odyssean" character of the language and
grammar. By the Pisistratean hypothesis there was not, what Mr.
Leaf in 1892 justly deemed essential, a school "to maintain a
fixed standard," throughout the changes of four centuries, and
against the caprice of many generations of fresh reciters and
irresponsible poets. The hypothesis of a school _was_ really
that which, of the two, best explained the facts, and there is no
more valid evidence for the first making and writing out of our
_Iliad_ under Pisistratus than for the existence of a Homeric
school.

The evidence for the _Iliad_ edited for Pisistratus is
examined in a Note at the close of this chapter. Meanwhile Mr.
Leaf now revives Wolf's old theory to account for the fact that
somehow "a single version" (of the Homeric poems) "came to be
accepted." His present theory, if admitted, does account for the
acceptation of a single version of the poems, the first standard
_written_ version, but fails to explain how "the caprice of
the different reciters" (as he says) did not wander into every
variety of anachronism in detail and in diction, thus producing a
chaos which no editor of about 540 A.D. could force into its
present uniformity.

Such an editor is now postulated by Mr. Leaf. If his editor's
edition, as being _written_, was accepted by Greece, then we
"understand how a single version came to be accepted." But we do
not understand how the editor could possibly introduce a harmony
which could only have characterised his materials, as Mr. Leaf has
justly remarked, if there was an Homeric school "to maintain a
fixed standard." But now such harmony in the picture of life as
exists in the poems is left without any explanation. We have now,
by the theory, a crowd of rhapsodists, many generations of
uncontrolled wandering men, who, for several centuries,

"Rave, recite, and madden through the land,"

with no written texts, and with no "fixed body to maintain a
standard." Such men would certainly not adhere strictly to a
stereotyped early tradition: _that_ we cannot expect from
them.

Again, no editor of about 540 B.C. could possibly bring harmony of
manners, customs, and diction into such of their recitals as he
took down in writing.

Let us think out the supposed editor's situation. During three
centuries nine generations of strollers have worked their will on
one ancient short poem, _The Wrath_ of _Achilles_. This
is, in itself, an unexampled fact. Poets turn to new topics; they
do not, as a rule, for centuries embroider one single situation
out of the myriads which heroic legend affords. Strolling reciters
are the least careful of men, each would recite in the language
and grammar of his day, and introduce the newly evolved words and
idioms, the new and fashionable manners, costume, and weapons of
his time. When war chariots became obsolete, he would bring in
cavalry; when there was no Over-Lord, he would not trouble himself
to maintain correctly the character and situation of Agamemnon. He
would speak of coined money, in cases of buying and selling; his
European geography would often be wrong; he would not ignore the
Ionian cities of Asia; most weapons would be of iron, not bronze,
in his lays. Ionian religious ideas could not possibly be
excluded, nor changes in customary law, civil and criminal. Yet,
we think, none of these things occurs in Homer.

The editor of the theory had to correct all these anachronisms and
discrepancies. What a task in an uncritical age! The editor's
materials would be the lays known to such strollers as happened to
be gathered, in Athens, perhaps at the Panathenaic festival. The
_rpertoire_ of each stroller would vary indefinitely from
those of all the others. One man knew this chant, as modified or
made by himself; other men knew others, equally unsatisfactory.

The editor must first have written down from recitation all the
passages that he could collect. Then he was obliged to construct a
narrative sequence containing a plot, which he fashioned by a
process of selection and rejection; and then he had to combine
passages, alter them, add as much as he thought fit, remove
anachronisms, remove discrepancies, accidentally bring in fresh
discrepancies (as always happens), weave transitional passages,
look with an antiquarian eye after the too manifest modernisms in
language and manners, and so produce the [blank space]. That, in
the sixth century B.C., any man undertook such a task, and
succeeded so well as to impose on Aristotle and all the later
Greek critics, appears to be a theory that could only occur to a
modern man of letters, who is thinking of the literary conditions
of his own time. The editor was doing, and doing infinitely
better, what Lnnrot, in the nineteenth century, tried in vain to
achieve for the Finnish _Kalewala_. [Footnote: See
Comparetti, _The Kalewala_.]

Centuries later than Pisistratus, in a critical age, Apollonius
Rhodius set about writing an epic of the Homeric times. We know
how entirely he failed, on all hands, to restore the manner of
Homer. The editor of 540 B.C. was a more scientific man. Can any
one who sets before himself the nature of the editor's task
believe in him and it? To the master-less floating jellyfish of
old poems and new, Mr. Leaf supposes that "but small and
unimportant additions were made after the end of the eighth
century or thereabouts," especially as "the creative and
imaginative forces of the Ionian race turned to other forms of
expression," to lyrics and to philosophic poems. But the able
Pisistratean editor, after all, we find, introduced quantities of
new matter into the poems--in the middle of the sixth century;
that kind of industry, then, did not cease towards the end of the
eighth century, as we have been told. On the other hand, as we
shall learn, the editor contributed to the _Iliad_, among
other things, Nestor's descriptions of his youthful adventures,
for the purpose of flattering Nestor's descendant, the tyrant
Pisistratus of Athens.

One hypothesis, the theory of an Homeric school--which would
answer our question, "How was the harmony of the picture of life
in remote ages preserved in poems composed in several succeeding
ages, and in totally altered conditions of life?"--Mr. Leaf, as we
know, rejects. We might suggest, again, that there were written
texts handed down from an early period, and preserved in new
copies from generation to generation. Mr. Leaf states his doubt
that there were any such texts. "The poems were all this time
handed down orally only by tradition among the singers
(_sic_), who used to wander over Greece reciting them at
popular festivals. Writing was indeed known through the whole
period of epic development" (some four centuries at least), "but
it is in the highest degree unlikely that it was ever employed to
form a standard text of the Epic or _ANY_ part of it. There
can hardly have been any standard text; at best there was a
continuous tradition of those parts of the poems which were
especially popular, and the knowledge of which was a valuable
asset to the professional reciter."

Now we would not contend for the existence of any [blank space]
text much before 600 B.C., and I understand Mr. Leaf not to deny,
now, that there may have been texts of the _ODYSSEY_ and
_Iliad_ before, say, 600-540 B.C. If cities and reciters had
any ancient texts, then texts existed, though not "standard"
texts: and by this means the harmony of thought, character, and
detail in the poems might be preserved. We do not think that it is
"in the highest degree unlikely" that there were no texts. Is this
one of the many points on which every savant must rely on his own
sense of what is "likely"? To this essential point, the almost
certain existence of written texts, we return in our conclusion.

What we have to account for is not only the relative lack of
anachronisms in poems supposed to have been made through a period
of at least four hundred years, but also the harmony of the
_CHARACTERS_ in subtle details. Some of the characters will
be dealt with later; meanwhile it is plain that Mr. Leaf, when he
rejects both the idea of written texts prior to 600-540 B.C., and
also the idea of a school charged with the duty of "maintaining a
fixed standard," leaves a terrible task to his supposed editor of
orally transmitted poems which, he says--if unpreserved by text or
school--"must have ended by varying infinitely according to the
caprice of their various reciters." [Footnote: _Companion to the
Iliad, p. 21._]

On that head there can be no doubt; in the supposed circumstances
no harmony, no _unus_ color, could have survived in the poems
till the days of the sixth century editor.

Here, then, is another difficulty in the path of the theory that
the _Iliad_ is the work of four centuries. If it was, we are
not enabled to understand how it came to be what it is. No editor
could possibly tinker it into the whole which we possess; none
could steer clear of many absurd anachronisms. These are found by
critics, but it is our hope to prove that they do not exist.

 NOTE

THE LEGEND OF THE MAKING OF THE "ILIAD" UNDER PISISTRATOS

It has been shown in the text that in 1892 Mr. Leaf thought the
story about the making of the _Iliad_ under Pisistratus, a
legend without authority, while he regarded the traditions
concerning an Homeric school as sufficient basis for an
hypothesis, "which we are bound to make in order to explain the
possibility of any theory." In 1900 he entirely reversed his
position, the school was abandoned, and the story of Pisistratus
was accepted. One objection to accepting any of the various
legends about the composing and writing out, for the first time,
of the _Iliad_, in the sixth century, the age of Pisistratus,
was the silence of Aristarchus on the subject. He discussed the
authenticity of lines in the _Iliad_ which, according to the
legend, were interpolated for a political purpose by Solon or
Pisistratus, but, as far as his comments have reached us in the
scholia, he never said a word about the tradition of Athenian
interpolation. Now Aristarchus must, at least, have known the
tradition of the political use of a disputed line, for Aristotle
writes (_Rhetoric_, i. 15) that the Athenians, early in the
sixth century, quoted _Iliad_, II. 558, to prove their right
to Salamis. Aristarchus also discussed _Iliad_, II. 553, 555,
to which the Spartans appealed on the question of supreme command
against Persia (Herodotus, vii. 159). Again Aristarchus said
nothing, or nothing that has reached us, about Athenian
interpolation. Once more, Odyssey, II. 631, was said by Hereas, a
Megarian writer, to have been interpolated by Pisistratus
(Plutarch.) But "the scholia that represent the teaching of
Aristarchus" never make any reference to the alleged dealings of
Pisistratus with the _Iliad_. The silence of Aristarchus,
however, affords no safe ground of argument to believers or
disbelievers in the original edition written out by order of
Pisistratus.

It can never be proved that the scholiasts did not omit what
Aristarchus said, though we do not know why they should have done
so; and it can never be proved that Aristarchus was ignorant of
the traditions about Pisistratus, or that he thought them unworthy
of notice. All is matter of conjecture on these points. Mr. Leaf's
conversion to belief in the story that our _Iliad_ was
practically edited and first committed to writing under
Pisistratus appears to be due to the probability that Aristarchus
must have known the tradition. But if he did, there is no proof
that he accepted it as historically authentic. There is not, in
fact, any proof even that Aristarchus must have known the
tradition. He had probably read Dieuchidas of Megara, for
"Wilamowitz has shown that Dieuchidas wrote in the fourth
century." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. xix.] But,
unluckily, we do not know that Dieuchidas stated that the
_Iliad_ was made and first committed to writing in the sixth
century B.C. No mortal knows what Dieuchidas said: and, again,
what Dieuchidas said is not evidence. He wrote as a partisan in a
historical dispute.

The story about Pisistratus and his editor, the practical maker of
the _Iliad_, is interwoven with a legend about an early
appeal, in the beginning of the sixth century B.C., to Homer as an
historical authority. The Athenians and Megarians, contending for
the possession of the island of Salamis, the home of the hero
Aias, are said to have laid their differences before the Spartans
(_cir._ 600-580 B.C.). Each party quoted Homer as evidence.
Aristotle, who, as we saw, mentions the tale (Rhetoric, i. 15),
merely says that the Athenians cited _Iliad_, II. 558: "Aias
led and stationed his men where the phalanxes of the Athenians
were posted." Aristarchus condemned this line, not (as far as
evidence goes) because there was a tradition that the Athenians
had interpolated it to prove their point, but because he thought
it inconsistent with _Iliad_, III. 230; IV. 251, which, if I
may differ from so great a critic, it is not; these two passages
deal, not with the position of the camps, but of the men in the
field on a certain occasion. But if Aristarchus had thought the
tradition of Athenian interpolation of II. 558 worthy of notice,
he might have mentioned it in support of his opinion. Perhaps he
did. No reference to his notice has reached us. However this may
be, Mr. Leaf mainly bases his faith in the Pisistratean editor
(apparently, we shall see, an Asiatic Greek, residing in Athens),
on a fragmentary passage of Diogenes Laertius (third century
A.D.), concerned with the tale of Homer's being cited about 600-
580 B.C. as an authority for the early ownership of Salamis. In
this text Diogenes quotes Dieuchidas as saying something about
Pisistratus in relation to the Homeric poems, but what Dieuchidas
really said is unknown, for a part has dropped out of the text.

The text of Diogenes Laertius runs thus (Solon, i. 57): "He
(Solon) decreed that the Homeric poems should be recited by
rhapsodists [Greek text: ex hypobolaes]" (words of disputed
sense), so that where the first reciter left off thence should
begin his successor. It was rather Solon, then, than Pisistratus
who brought Homer to light ([Greek text: ephotisen]), as Diogenes
says in the Fifth Book of his _Megarica_. And _the
lines_ were _especially these_: "They who held Athens,"
&c. (_Iliad_, II. 546-558), the passage on which the
Athenians rested in their dispute with the Megarians.

And _what_ "lines were especially these"? Mr. Leaf fills up
the gap in the sense, after "Pisistratus" thus, "for it was he"
(Solon) "who interpolated lines in the _Catalogue_, and not
Pisistratus." He says: "The natural sense of the passage as it
stands" (in Diogenes Laertius) "is this: It was not Peisistratos,
as is generally supposed, but Solon _who collected the scattered
Homer_ of _his_ day, for he it was who interpolated the
lines in the _Catalogue of the Ships_".... But Diogenes
neither says for himself nor quotes from Dieuchidas anything about
"collecting the scattered Homer of his day." That Pisistratus did
so is Mr. Leafs theory, but there is not a hint about anybody
collecting anything in the Greek. Ritschl, indeed, conjecturally
supplying the gap in the text of Diogenes, invented the words,
"Who _collected_ the Homeric poems, and inserted some things
to please the Athenians." But Mr. Leaf rejects that conjecture as
"clearly wrong." Then why does he adopt, as "the natural sense of
the passage," "it was not Peisistratos but Solon who
_collected_ the scattered Homer of his day?" [Footnote:
_Iliad_, vol. i. p. xviii.] The testimony of Dieuchidas, as
far as we can see in the state of the text, "refers," as Mr. Monro
says, "to the _interpolation_ that has just been mentioned,
and need not extend further back." "Interpolation is a process
that postulates a text in which the additional verses can be
inserted," whereas, if I understand Mr. Leaf, the very first text,
in his opinion, was that compiled by the editor for Pisistratus.
[Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 400 410, especially pp.
408-409.] Mr. Leaf himself dismisses the story of the Athenian
appeal to Homer for proof of their claim as "a fiction." If, so,
it does not appear that ancient commentaries on a fiction are of
any value as proof that Pisistratus produced the earliest edition
of the _Iliad_. [Footnote: Mr. Leaf adds that, except in one
disputed line (_Iliad_, II. 558) Aias "is not, in the
_Iliad_, encamped next the Athenians." His proofs of this odd
oversight of the fraudulent interpolator, who should have altered
the line, are _Iliad_, IV. 327 ff, and XII. 681 ff. In the
former passage we find Odysseus stationed next to the Athenians.
But Odysseus would have neighbours on either hand. In the second
passage we find the Athenians stationed next to the Boeotians and
Ionians, but the Athenians, too, had neighbours on either side.
The arrangement was, on the Achaean extreme left, Protesilaus's
command (he was dead), and that of Aias; then the Boeotians and
Ionians, with "the picked men of the Athenians"; and then
Odysseus, on the Boeotolono-Athenian right; or so the Athenians
would read the passage. The texts must have seemed favourable to
the fraudulent Athenian interpolator denounced by the Megarians,
or he would have altered them. Mr. Leaf, however, argues that line
558 of Book II. "cannot be original, as is patent from the fact
that Aias in the rest of the _Iliad_ is not encamped next the
Athenians" (see IV. 327; XIII. 681). The Megarians do not seem to
have seen it, or they would have cited these passages. But why
argue at all about the Megarian story if it be a fiction? Mr. Leaf
takes the brief bald mention of Aias in _Iliad_, II. 558 as
"a mocking cry from Athens over the conquest of the island of the
Aiakidai." But as, in this same _Catalogue_, Aias is styled
"by far the best of warriors" after Achilles (II. 768), while
there is no more honourable mention made of Diomede than that he
had "a loud war cry" (II. 568), or of Menelaus but that he was
also sonorous, and while Nestor, the ancestor of Pisistratus,
receives not even that amount of praise (line 601), "the mocking
cry from Athens" appears a vain imagination.]

The lines disputed by the Megarians occur in the _Catalogue_,
and, as to the date and original purpose of the _Catalogue_,
the most various opinions prevail. In Mr. Leaf's earlier edition
of the _Iliad_ (vol. i. p. 37), he says that "nothing
convincing has been urged to show" that the _Catalogue_ is
"of late origin." We know, from the story of Solon and the
Megarians, that the _Catalogue_ "was considered a classical
work--the Domesday Book of Greece, at a very early date"--say 600-
580 B.C. "It agrees with the poems in being pre-Dorian" (except in
lines 653-670).

"There seems therefore 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...."

In his new edition (vol. ii. p. 86), Mr. Leaf concludes that the
_Catalogue_ "originally formed an introduction to the whole
Cycle," the compiling of "the whole Cycle" being of uncertain
date, but very late indeed, on any theory. The author "studiously
preserves an ante-Dorian standpoint. It is admitted that there can
be little doubt that some of the material, at least, is old."

These opinions are very different from those expressed by Mr. Leaf
in 1886. He cannot now give "even an approximate date for the
composition of the _Catalogue_" which, we conceive, must be
the latest thing in Homer, if it was composed "for that portion of
the whole Cycle which, as worked up in a separate poem, was called
the _Kypria_" for the _Kypria_ is obviously a very late
performance, done as a prelude to the _Iliad_.

I am unable to imagine how this mutilated passage of Diogenes,
even if rightly restored, proves that Dieuchidas, a writer of the
fourth century B.C., alleged that Pisistratus made a collection of
scattered Homeric poems--in fact, made "a standard text."

The Pisistratean hypothesis "was not so long ago unfashionable,
but in the last few years a clear reaction has set in," says Mr.
Leaf. [Footnote: _Iliad_, i. p. XIX.]

The reaction has not affected that celebrated scholar, Dr. Blass,
who, with Teutonic frankness, calls the Pisistratean edition "an
absurd legend." [Footnote: Blass, Die _Interpolationen_ in
der _Odyssee_, pp. I, 2. Halle, 1904.] Meyer says that the
Alexandrians rejected the Pisistratean story "as a worthless
fable," differing here from Mr. Leaf and Wilamowitz; and he spurns
the legend, saying that it is incredible that the whole Greek
world would allow the tyrants of Athens to palm off a Homer on
them. [Footnote: Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, ii. 390,
391. 1893.]

Mr. T. W. Allen, an eminent textual scholar, treats the
Pisistratean editor with no higher respect. In an Egyptian papyrus
containing a fragment of Julius Africanus, a Christian
chronologer, Mr. Allen finds him talking confidently of the
Pisistratidae. They "stitched together the rest of the epic," but
excised some magical formulae which Julius Africanus preserves.
Mr. Allen remarks: "The statements about Pisistratus belong to a
well-established category, that of Homeric mythology.... The
anecdotes about Pisistratus and the poet himself are on a par with
Dares, who 'wrote the _Iliad_ before Homer.'" [Footnote:
_Classical Review_ xviii. 148.]

The editor of Pisistratus is hardly in fashion, though that is of
no importance. Of importance is the want of evidence for the
editor, and, as we have shown, the impossible character of the
task allotted to him by the theory.

As I suppose Mr. Leaf to insinuate, "fashion" has really nothing
to do with the question. People who disbelieve in written texts
must, and do, oscillate between the theory of an Homeric "school"
and the Wolfian theory that Pisistratus, or Solon, or somebody
procured the making of the first written text at Athens in the
sixth century--a theory which fails to account for the harmony of
the picture of life in the poems, and, as Mr. Monro, Grote,
Nutzhorn, and many others argue, lacks evidence.

As Mr. Monro reasons, and as Blass states the case bluntly,
"Solon, or Pisistratus, or whoever it was, put a stop, at least as
far as Athens was concerned, to the mangling of Homer" by the
rhapsodists or reciters, each anxious to choose a pet passage, and
not going through the whole _Iliad_ in due sequence. "But the
unity existed before the mangling. That this has been so long and
so stubbornly misunderstood is no credit to German scholarship:
blind uncritical credulity on one side, limitless and arbitrary
theorising on the other!" We are not solitary sceptics when we
decline to accept the theory of Mr. Leaf. It is neither bottomed
on evidence nor does it account for the facts in the case. That is
to say, the evidence appeals to Mr. Leaf as valid, but is thought
worse than inadequate by other great scholars, such as Monro and
Blass; while the fact of the harmony of the picture of life,
preserved through four or five centuries, appears to be left
without explanation.

Mr. Leaf holds that, in order to organise recitations in due
sequence, the making of a text, presenting, for the first time, a
due sequence, was necessary. His opponents hold that the sequence
already existed, but was endangered by the desultory habits of the
rhapsodists. We must here judge each for himself; there is no
court of final appeal.

I confess to feeling some uncertainty about the correctness of my
statement of Mr. Leaf's opinions. He and I both think an early
Attic "recension" probable, or almost certain. But (see'
"Conclusion") I regard such recension as distinct from the
traditional "edition" of Pisistratus. Mr. Leaf, I learn, does not
regard the "edition" as having "made" the _Iliad_; yet his
descriptions of the processes and methods of his Pisistratean
editor correspond to my idea of the "making" of our _Iliad_
as it stands. See, for example, Mr. Leaf's Introduction to
_Iliad_, Book II. He will not even insist on the early Attic
as the first _written_ text; if it was not, its general
acceptance seems to remain a puzzle. He discards the idea of one
Homeric "school" of paramount authority, but presumes that, as
recitation was a profession, there must have been schools. We do
not hear of them or know the nature of their teaching. The
Beauvais "school" of _jongleurs_ in Lent (fourteenth century
A.D.) seems to have been a holiday conference of strollers.




CHAPTER IV


LOOSE FEUDALISM: THE OVER-LORD IN "ILIAD," BOOKS I. AND II.

We now try to show that the Epics present an historical unity, a
complete and harmonious picture of an age, in its political,
social, legal, and religious aspects; in its customs, and in its
military equipment. A long epic can only present an unity of
historical ideas if it be the work of one age. Wandering
minstrels, living through a succession of incompatible ages,
civic, commercial, democratic, could not preserve, without flaw or
failure, the attitude, in the first place, of the poet of feudal
princes towards an Over-Lord who rules them by undisputed right
divine, but rules weakly, violently, unjustly, being subject to
gusts of arrogance, and avarice, and repentance. Late poets not
living in feudal society, and unfamiliar alike with its customary
law, its jealousy of the Over-Lord, its conservative respect for
his consecrated function, would inevitably miss the proper tone,
and fail in some of the many [blank space] of the feudal
situation. This is all the more certain, if we accept Mr. Leaf's
theory that each poet-rhapsodist's _rpertoire_ varied from
the _rpertoires_ of the rest. There could be no unity of
treatment in their handling of the character and position of the
Over-Lord and of the customary law that regulates his relations
with his peers. Again, no editor of 540 B.C. could construct an
harmonious picture of the Over-Lord in relation to the princes out
of the fragmentary _rpertoires_ of strolling rhapsodists,
which now lay before him in written versions. If the editor could
do this, he was a man of Shakespearian genius, and had minute
knowledge of a dead society. This becomes evident when, in place
of examining the _Iliad_ through microscopes, looking out for
discrepancies, we study it in its large lines as a literary whole.
The question being, Is the _Iliad_ a literary whole or a mere
literary mosaic? we must ask "What, taking it provisionally as a
literary whole, are the qualities of the poet as a painter of what
we may call feudal society?"

Choosing the part of the Over-Lord Agamemnon, we must not forget
that he is one of several analogous figures in the national poetry
and romance of other feudal ages. Of that great analogous figure,
Charlemagne, and of his relations with his peers in the earlier
and later French mediaeval epics we shall later speak. Another
example is Arthur, in some romances "the blameless king," in
others _un roi fainant_.

The parallel Irish case is found in the Irish saga of Diarmaid and
Grainne. We read Mr. O'Grady's introduction on the position of
Eionn Mac Cumhail, the legendary Over-Lord of Ireland, the
Agamemnon of the Celts. "Fionn, like many men in power, is
variable; he is at times magnanimous, at other times tyrannical
and petty. Diarmaid, Oisin, Oscar, and Caoilte Mac Rohain are
everywhere the [Greek: kaloi kachotoi] of the Fenians; of them we
never hear anything bad." [Footnote: _Transactions of the
Ossianic_ Society, vol. iii. p. 39.]

Human nature eternally repeats itself in similar conditions of
society, French, Norse, Celtic, and Achaean. "We never hear
anything bad" of Diomede, Odysseus, or Aias, and the evil in
Achilles's resentment up to a certain point is legal, and not
beyond what the poet thinks natural and pardonable in his
circumstances.

The poet's view of Agamemnon is expressed in the speeches and
conduct of the peers. In Book I. we see the bullying truculence of
Agamemnon, wreaked first on the priest of Apollo, Chryses, then in
threats against the prophet Chalcas, then in menaces against any
prince on whom he chooses to avenge his loss of fair Chryseis,
and, finally, in the Seizure of Briseis from Achilles.

This part of the First Book of the _Iliad_ is confessedly
original, and there is no varying, throughout the Epic, from the
strong and delicate drawing of an historical situation, and of a
complex character. Agamemnon is truculent, and eager to assert his
authority, but he is also possessed of a heavy sense of his
responsibilities, which often unmans him. He has a legal right to
a separate "prize of honour" (geras) after each capture of spoil.
Considering the wrath of Apollo for the wrong done in refusing his
priest's offered ransom for his daughter, Agamemnon will give her
back, "if that is better; rather would I see my folks whole than
perishing." [Footnote: _Iliad_, I. 115-117.]

Here we note points of feudal law and of kingly character. The
giving and taking of ransom exists as it did in the Middle Ages;
ransom is refused, death is dealt, as the war becomes more fierce
towards its close. Agamemnon has sense enough to waive his right
to the girlish prize, for the sake of his people, but is not so
generous as to demand no compensation. But there are no fresh
spoils to apportion, and the Over-Lord threatens to take the prize
of one of his peers, even of Achilles.

Thereon Achilles does what was frequently done in the feudal age
of western Europe, he "renounces his fealty," and will return to
Phthia. He adds insult, "thou dog-face!" The whole situation, we
shall show, recurs again and again in the epics of feudal France,
the later epics of feudal discontent. Agamemnon replies that
Achilles may do as he pleases. "I have others by my side that
shall do me honour, and, above all, Zeus, Lord of Counsel" (I.
175). He rules, literally, by divine right, and we shall see that,
in the French feudal epics, as in Homer, this claim of divine
right is granted, even in the case of an insolent and cowardly
Over-Lord. Achilles half draws "his great sword," one of the long,
ponderous cut-and-thrust bronze swords of which we have actual
examples from Mycenae and elsewhere. He is restrained by Athene,
visible only to him. "With words, indeed," she says, "revile him
.... hereafter shall goodly gifts come to thee, yea, in threefold
measure...."

Gifts of atonement for "surquedry," like that of Agamemnon, are
given and received in the French epics, for example, in the [blank
space]. The _Iliad_ throughout exhibits much interest in such
gifts, and in the customary law as to their acceptance, and other
ritual or etiquette of reconciliation. This fact, it will be
shown, accounts for a passage which critics reject, and which is
tedious to our taste, as it probably was tedious to the age of the
supposed late poets themselves. (Book XIX.). But the taste of a
feudal audience, as of the audience of the Saga men, delighted in
"realistic" descriptions of their own customs and customary law,
as in descriptions of costume and armour. This is fortunate for
students of customary law and costume, but wearies hearers and
readers who desire the action to advance. Passages of this kind
would never be inserted by late poets, who had neither the
knowledge of, nor any interest in, the subjects.

To return to Achilles, he is now within his right; the moral
goddess assures him of that, and he is allowed to give the: reins
to his tongue, as he does in passages to which the mediaeval epics
offer many parallels. In the mediaeval epics, as in Homer, there
is no idea of recourse to a duel between the Over-Lord and his
peer. Achilles accuses Agamemnon of drunkenness, greed, and
poltroonery. He does not return home, but swears by the sceptre
that Agamemnon shall rue his _outrecuidance_ when Hector
slays the host. By the law of the age Achilles remains within his
right. His violent words are not resented by the other peers. They
tacitly admit, as Athene admits, that Achilles has the right,
being so grievously injured, to "renounce his fealty," till
Agamemnon makes apology and gives gifts of atonement. Such,
plainly, is the unwritten feudal law, which gives to the Over-Lord
the lion's share of booty, the initiative in war and council, and
the right to command; but limits him by the privilege of the peers
to renounce their fealty under insufferable provocation. In no
Book is Agamemnon so direfully insulted as in the First, which is
admitted to be of the original "kernel." Elsewhere the sympathy of
the poet occasionally enables him to feel the elements of pathos
in the position of the over-tasked King of Men.

As concerns the apology and the gifts of atonement, the poet has
feudal customary law and usage clearly before his eyes. He knows
exactly what is due, and the limits of the rights of Over-Lord and
prince, matters about which the late Ionian poets could only pick
up information by a course of study in constitutional history--the
last thing they were likely to attempt--unless we suppose that
they all kept their eyes on the "kernel," and that steadily,
through centuries, generations of strollers worked on the lines
laid down in that brief poem.

Thus the poet of Book IX.--one of "the latest expansions,"--
thoroughly understands the legal and constitutional situation, as
between Agamemnon and Achilles. Or rather all the poets who
collaborated in Book IX., which "had grown by a process of
accretion," [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. 371.] understood
the legal situation.

Returning to the poet's conception of Agamemnon, we find in the
character of Agamemnon himself the key to the difficulties which
critics discover in the Second Book. The difficulty is that when
Zeus, won over to the cause of Achilles by Thetis, sends a false
Dream to Agamemnon, the Dream tells the prince that he shall at
once take Troy, and bids him summon the host to arms. But
Agamemnon, far from doing that, summons the host to a peaceful
assembly, with the well-known results of demoralisation.

Mr. Leaf explains the circumstances on his own theory of
expansions compiled into a confused whole by a late editor. He
thinks that probably there were two varying versions even of this
earliest Book of the poem. In one (A), the story went on from the
quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, to the holding of a
general assembly "to consider the altered state of affairs." This
is the Assembly of Book H, but debate, in version A, was opened by
Thersites, not by Agamemnon, and Thersites proposed instant
flight! That was probably the earlier version.

In the other early version (B), after the quarrel between the
chiefs, the story did not, as in A, go on straight to the
Assembly, but Achilles appealed to his mother, the fair sea-
goddess, as in our Iliad, and she obtained from Zeus, as in the
actual _Iliad_, his promise to honour Achilles by giving
victory, in his absence, to the Trojans. The poet of version B, in
fact, created the beautiful figure of Thetis, so essential to the
development of the tenderness that underlies the ferocity of
Achilles. The other and earliest poet, who treated of the Wrath of
the author of version A, neglected that opportunity with all that
it involved, and omitted the purpose of Zeus, which is mentioned
in the fifth line of the Epic. The editor of 540 B.C., seeing good
in both versions, A and B, "combined his information," and
produced Books I. and II. of the _ILIAD_ as they stand.
[Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 47.]

Mr. Leaf suggests that "there is some ground for supposing that
the oldest version of the Wrath of Achilles did not contain the
promise of Zeus to Thetis; it was a tale played exclusively on the
earthly stage." [Footnote: _Ibid_, vol. i. p. xxiii.] In that
case the author of the oldest form (A) must have been a poet very
inferior indeed to the later author of B who took up and altered
his work. In _his_ version, Book I. does not end with the
quarrel of the princes, but Achilles receives, with all the
courtesy of his character, the unwelcome heralds of Agamemnon, and
sends Briseis with them to the Over-Lord. He then with tears
appeals to his goddess-mother, Thetis of the Sea, who rose from
the grey mere like a mist, leaving the sea deeps where she dwelt
beside her father, the ancient one of the waters. Then sat she
face to face with her son as he let the tears down fall, and
caressed him, saying, "Child, wherefore weepest thou, for what
sorrow of heart? Hide it not, tell it to me; that I may know it as
well as thou." Here the poet strikes the keynote of the character
of Achilles, the deadly in war, the fierce in council, who weeps
for his lost lady and his wounded honour, and cries for help to
his mother, as little children cry.

Such is the Achilles of the _Iliad_ throughout and
consistently, but such he was not to the mind of Mr. Leaf's
probably elder poet, the author of version A. Thetis, in version
B, promises to persuade Zeus to honour Achilles by making
Agamemnon rue his absence, and, twelve days after the quarrel,
wins the god's consent.

In Book II. Zeus reflects on his promise, and sends a false Dream
to beguile Agamemnon, promising that now he shall take Troy.
Agamemnon, while asleep, is full of hope; but when he wakens he
dresses in mufti, in a soft doublet, a cloak, and sandals; takes
his sword (swords were then worn as part of civil costume), and
the ancestral sceptre, which he wields in peaceful assemblies. Day
dawns, and "he bids the heralds...." A break here occurs,
according to the theory.

Here (_Iliad_, Book II., line 50) the kernel ceases, Mr. Leaf
says, and the editor of 540 B.C. plays his pranks for a while.

The kernel (or one of the _two_ kernels), we are to take up
again at Book II., 443-483, and thence "skip" to XI. 56, and now
"we have a narrative masterly in conception and smooth in
execution," [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 47.] says Mr.
Leaf. This kernel is kernel B, probably the later kernel of the
pair, that in which Achilles appeals to his lady mother, who wins
from Zeus the promise to cause Achaean defeat, till Achilles is
duly honoured. The whole Epic turns on this promise of Zeus, as
announced in the fifth, sixth, and seventh lines of the very first
Book. If kernel A is the first kernel, the poet left out the
essence of the plot he had announced. However, let us first
examine probable kernel B, reading, as advised, Book II. 1-50,
[blank space]; XI. 56 ff.

We left Agamemnon (though the Dream bade him summon the host to
arms) dressed in _civil costume_. His ancestral sceptre in
his hand, he is going to hold a deliberative assembly of the
unarmed host. His attire proves that fact ([Greek: _prepodaes de
ae stolae to epi Boulaen exionti_], says the scholiast). Then
if we skip, as advised, to II. 443-483 he bids the heralds call
the host not to peaceful council, for which his costume is
appropriate, but to _war_! The host gathers, "and in their
midst the lord Agamemnon,"--still in civil costume, with his
sceptre (he has not changed his attire as far as we are told)--
"in face and eyes like Zeus; in waist like Ares" (god of war);
"in breast like Poseidon,"--yet, for all that we are told,
entirely unarmed! The host, however, were dressed "in innumerable
bronze," "war was sweeter to them than to depart in their ships to
their dear native land,"--so much did Athene encourage them.

But nobody had been speaking of flight, in THE KERNEL B: THAT
proposal was originally made by Thersites, in kernel A, and was
attributed to Agamemnon in the part of Book II. where the editor
blends A and B. This part, at present, Mr. Leaf throws aside as a
very late piece of compilation. Turning next, as directed, to XI.
56, we find the Trojans deploying in arms, and the hosts encounter
with fury--Agamemnon still, for all that appears, in the raiment
of peace, and with the sceptre of constitutional monarchy. "In he
rushed, first of all, and slew Bienor," and many other gentlemen
of Troy, not with his sceptre!

Clearly all this is the reverse of "a narrative masterly in
conception and smooth in execution:" it is an impossible
narrative.

Mr. Leaf has attempted to disengage one of two forms of the old
original poem from the parasitic later growths; he has promised to
show us a smooth and masterly narrative, and the result is a
narrative on which no Achasan poet could have ventured. In II. 50
the heralds are bidden [Greek: _kurussein_], that is to
summon the host--to _what_? To a peaceful assembly, as
Agamemnon's costume proves, says the next line (II. 51), but that
is excised by Mr. Leaf, and we go on to II. 443, and the reunited
passage now reads, "Agamemnon bade the loud heralds" (II. 50)
"call the Achaeans to battle" (II. 443), and they came, in
harness, but their leader--when did he exchange chiton, cloak, and
sceptre for helmet, shield, and spear? A host appears in arms; a
king who set out with sceptre and doublet is found with a spear,
in bronze armour: and not another word is said about the Dream of
Agamemnon.

It is perfectly obvious and certain that the two pieces of the
broken kernel B do not fit together at all. Nor is this strange,
if the kernel was really broken and endured the insertion of
matter enough to fill nine Books (IL-XL). If kernel B really
contained Book II., line 50, as Mr. Leaf avers, if Agamemnon, as
in that line (50) "bade the clear-voiced heralds do...."
something--what he bade them do was, necessarily, as his peaceful
costume proves, to summon the peaceful assembly which he was to
moderate with his sceptre. At such an assembly, or at a
preliminary council of Chiefs, he would assuredly speak of his
Dream, as he does in the part excised. Mr. Leaf, if he will not
have a peaceful assembly as part of kernel B, must begin his
excision at the middle of line 42, in II., where Agamemnon wakens;
and must make him dress not in mufti but in armour, and call the
host of the Achaeans to arm, as the Dream bade him do, and as he
does in II. 443. Perhaps we should then excise II. 45 2, 45 3,
with the reference to the plan of retreat, for _THAT_ is part
of kernel A where there was no promise of Zeus, and no Dream sent
to Agamemnon. Then from II. 483, the description of the glorious
armed aspect of Agamemnon, Mr. Leaf may pass to XI. 56, the
account of the Trojans under Hector, of the battle, of the prowess
of Agamemnon, inspired by the Dream which he, contrary to Homeric
and French epic custom, has very wisely mentioned to nobody--that
is, in the part not excised.

This appears to be the only method by which Mr. Leaf can restore
the continuity of his kernel B.

Though Mr. Leaf has failed to fit Book XI. to any point in Book
II., of course it does not follow that Book XI. cannot be a
continuation of the original _Wrath_ of _Achilles_
(version B). If so, we understand why Agamemnon plucks up heart,
in Book XI., and is the chief cause of a temporary Trojan reverse.
He relies on the Dream sent from Zeus in the opening lines of Book
II., the Dream which was not in kernel A; the Dream which he
communicated to nobody; the Dream conveying the promise that he
should at once take Troy. This is perhaps a tenable theory, though
Agamemnon had much reason to doubt whether the host would obey his
command to arm, but an alternative theory of why and wherefore
Agamemnon does great feats of valour, in Book XI., will later be
propounded. Note that the events of Books XL.-XVIII., by Mr.
Leaf's theory, all occur on the very day after Thetis (according
to kernel B)' [79] obtains from Zeus his promise to honour
Achilles by the discomfiture of the Achaeans; they have suffered
nothing till that moment, as far as we learn, from the absence of
Achilles and his 2500 men: allowing for casualties, say 2000.

So far we have traced--from Books I. and II. to Book XI.--the
fortunes of kernel B, of the supposed later of two versions of the
opening of the _Iliad_. But there may have been a version (A)
probably earlier, we have been told, in which Achilles did not
appeal to his mother, nor she to Zeus, and Zeus did not promise
victory to the Trojans, and sent no false Dream of success to
Agamemnon. What were the fortunes of that oldest of all old
kernels? In this version (A) Agamemnon, having had no Dream,
summoned a peaceful assembly to discuss the awkwardness caused by
the mutiny of Achilles. The host met (_Iliad,_ II. 87-99).
Here we pass from line 99 to 212-242: Thersites it is who opens
the debate, (in version A) insults Agamemnon, and advises flight.
The army rushed off to launch the ships, as in II. 142-210, and
were brought back by Odysseus, who made a stirring speech, and was
well backed by Agamemnon, urging to battle.

Version A appears to us to have been a version that no heroic
audience would endure. A low person like Thersites opens a debate
in an assembly called by the Over-Lord; this could not possibly
pass unchallenged among listeners living in the feudal age. When a
prince called an assembly, he himself opened the debate, as
Achilles does in Book I. 54-67. That a lewd fellow, the buffoon
and grumbler of the host, of "the people," nameless and silent
throughout the Epic, should rush in and open debate in an assembly
convoked by the Over-Lord, would have been regarded by feudal
hearers, or by any hearers with feudal traditions, as an
intolerable poetical license. Thersites would have been at once
pulled down and beaten; the host would not have rushed to the
ships on _his_ motion. Any feudal audience would know better
than to endure such an impossibility; they would have asked, "How
could Thersites speak--without the sceptre?"

As the poem stands, and ought to stand, nobody less than the Over-
Lord, acting within his right, ([Greek: ae themis esti] II. 73),
could suggest the flight of the host, and be obeyed.

It is the absolute demoralisation of the host, in consequence of
the strange test of their Lord, Agamemnon, making a feigned
proposal to fly, and it is their confused, bewildered return to
the assembly under the persuasions of Odysseus, urged by Athene,
that alone, in the poem, give Thersites his unique opportunity to
harangue. When the Over-Lord had called an assembly the first
word, of course, was for to speak, as he does in the poem as it
stands. That Thersifes should rise in the arrogance bred by the
recent disorderly and demoralised proceedings is one thing; that
he should open the debate when excitement was eager to hear
Agamemnon, and before demoralisation set in, is quite another. We
never hear again of Thersites, or of any one of the commonalty,
daring to open his mouth in an assembly. Thersites sees his one
chance, the chance of a life time, and takes it; because
Agamemnon, by means of the test--a proposal to flee homewards--
which succeeded, it is said, in the case of Corts,--has reduced
the host, already discontented, to a mob.

Before Agamemnon thus displayed his ineptitude, as he often does
later, Thersites had no chance. All this appears sufficiently
obvious, if we put ourselves at the point of view of the original
listeners. Thersites merely continues, in full assembly, the
mutinous babble which he has been pouring out to his neighbours
during the confused rush to launch the ships and during the return
produced by the influence of Odysseus. The poet says so himself
(_Iliad_, II. 212). "The rest sat down ... only Thersites still
chattered on." No original poet could manage the situation in any
other way.

We have now examined Mr. Leaf's two supposed earliest versions of
the beginning of the _Iliad_. His presumed earlier version
(A), with no Thetis, no promise of Zeus, and no Dream, and with
Thersites opening debate, is jejune, unpoetical, and omits the
gentler and most winning aspect of the character of Achilles,
while it could not possibly have been accepted by a feudal
audience for the reasons already given. His presumed later version
(B), with Thetis, Zeus, and the false Dream, cannot be, or
certainly has not been, brought by Mr. Leaf into congruous
connection with Book XI., and it results in the fighting of the
_unarmed_ Agamemnon, which no poet could have been so
careless as to invent. Agamemnon could not go into battle without
helmet, shield, and spears (the other armour we need not dwell
upon here), and Thersites could not have opened a debate when the
Over-Lord had called the Assembly, nor could he have moved the
chiefs to prepare for flight, unless, as in the actual
_Iliad_, they had already been demoralised by the result of
the feigned proposal of flight by Agamemnon, and its effect upon
the host. Probably every reader who understands heroic society,
temper, and manners will, so far, agree with us.

Our own opinion is that the difficulties in the poem are caused
partly by the poet's conception of the violent, wavering,
excitable, and unstable character of Agamemnon; partly by some
accident, now indiscoverable, save by conjecture, which has
happened to the text.

The story in the actual _Iliad_ is that Zeus, planning
disaster for the Achaeans, in accordance with his promise to
Thetis, sends a false Dream, to tell Agamemnon that he will take
Troy instantly. He is bidden by the Dream to summon the host to
arms. Agamemnon, _still asleep_, "has in his mind things not
to be fulfilled: Him seemeth that he shall take Priam's town that
very day" (II. 36, 37). "Then he awoke" (II. 41), and, obviously,
was no longer so sanguine, once awake!

Being a man crushed by his responsibility, and, as commander-in-
chief, extremely timid, though personally brave, he disobeys the
Dream, dresses in civil costume, and summons the host to a
_peaceful_ assembly, not to war, as the Dream bade him do.
Probably he thought that the host was disaffected, and wanted to
argue with them, in place of commanding.

Here it is that the difficulty comes in, and our perplexity is
increased by our ignorance of the regular procedure in Homeric
times. Was the host not in arms and fighting every day, when there
was no truce? There seems to have been no armistice after the
mutiny of Achilles, for we are told that, in the period between
his mutiny and the day of the Dream of Agamemnon, Achilles "was
neither going to the Assembly, nor into battle, but wasted his
heart, abiding there, longing for war and the slogan" (I. 489,
492). Thus it seems that war went on, and that assemblies were
being held, in the absence of Achilles. It appears, however, that
the fighting was mere skirmishing and raiding, no general
onslaught was attempted; and from Book II. _73_, 83 it seems
to have been a matter of doubt, with Agamemnon and Nestor, whether
the army would venture a pitched battle.

It also appears, from the passage cited (I. 489, 492) that
assemblies were being regularly held; we are told that Achilles
did not attend them. Yet, when we come to the assembly (II. 86-
100) it seems to have been a special and exciting affair, to judge
by the brilliant picture of the crowds, the confusion, and the
cries. Nothing of the sort is indicated in the meeting of the
assembly in I. _54-5_ 8. Why is there so much excitement at
the assembly of Book II.? Partly because it was summoned _at_
dawn, whereas the usual thing was for the host to meet in arms
before fighting on the plain or going on raids; assemblies were
held when the day's work was over. The host, therefore, when
summoned to an assembly _at dawn_, expects to hear of
something out of the common--as the mutiny of Achilles suggests--
and is excited.

We must ask, then, why does Agamemnon, after the Dream has told
him merely to summon the host to arm--a thing of daily routine--
call a deliberative morning assembly, a thing clearly not of
routine? If Agamemnon is really full of confidence, inspired by
the Dream, why does he determine, not to do what is customary,
call the men to arms, but as Jeanne d'Arc said to the Dauphin, to
"hold such long and weary councils"? Mr. Jevons speaks of
Agamemnon's "confidence in the delusive dream" as at variance with
his proceedings, and would excise II. 35-41, "the only lines which
represent Agamemnon as confidently believing in the Dream."
[Footnote: _Journal_ of _Hellenic_ Studies, vol. vii.
pp. 306, 307.] But the poet never once says that Agamemnon, awake,
did believe confidently in the Dream! Agamemnon dwelt with hope
_while_ asleep; when he wakened--he went and called a
peaceful morning assembly, though the Dream bade him call to arms.
He did not dare to risk his authority. This was exactly in keeping
with his character. The poet should have said, "When he woke, the
Dream appeared to him rather poor security for success" (saying so
in poetic language, of course), and then there would be no
difficulty in the summoning of an assembly at dawn. But either the
poet expected us to understand the difference between the hopes of
Agamemnon sleeping, and the doubts of Agamemnon waking to chill
realities--an experience common to all of us who dream--or some
explanatory lines have been dropped out--one or two would have
cleared up the matter.

If I am right, the poet has not been understood. People have not
observed that Agamemnon hopes while asleep, and doubts, and acts
on his doubt, when awake. Thus Mr. Leaf writes: "Elated by the
dream, as we are led to suppose, Agamemnon summons the army--to
lead them into battle? Nothing of the sort; he calls them to
assembly." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 46.] But we ought
not to have been led to suppose that the waking Agamemnon was so
elated as the sleeping Agamemnon. He was "disillusioned" on waking;
his conduct proves it; he did not know what to think about the
Dream; he did not know how the host would take the Dream; he
doubted whether they would fight at his command, so he called an
assembly.

Mr. Jevons very justly cites a parallel case. Grote has remarked
that in Book VII. of Herodotus, "The dream sent by the Gods to
frighten Xerxes when about to recede from his project," has "a
marked parallel in the _Iliad_." Thus Xerxes, after the
defection of Artabanus, was despondent, like Agamemnon after the
mutiny of Achilles, and was about to recede from his project. To
both a delusive dream is sent urging them to proceed. Xerxes calls
an assembly, however, and says that he will not proceed. Why?
Because, says Herodotus, "when day came, he thought nothing of his
dream." Agamemnon, once awake, thought doubtfully of _his_
dream; he called a Privy Council, told the princes about his
dream--of which Nestor had a very dubious opinion--and said that
he would try the temper of the army by proposing instant flight:
the chiefs should restrain the men if they were eager to run away.

Now the epic prose narrative of Herodotus is here clearly based on
_Iliad_, II., which Herodotus must have understood as I do.
But in Homer there is no line to say--and one line or two would
have been enough--that Agamemnon, when awake, doubted, like
Xerxes, though Agamemnon, when asleep, had been confident. The
necessary line, for all that we know, still existed in the text
used by Herodotus. Homer may lose a line as well as Dieuchidas of
Megara, or rather Diogenes Laertius. Juvenal lost a whole passage,
re-discovered by Mr. Winstedt in a Bodleian manuscript. If Homer
expected modern critics to note the delicate distinction between
Agamemnon asleep and Agamemnon awake, or to understand Agamemnon's
character, he expected too much. [Footnote: Cf. Jevons, _Journal
of Hellenic Studies_, vol. vii. pp. 306, 307.] The poet then
treats the situation on these lines: Agamemnon, awake and free
from illusion, does not obey the dream, does _not_ call the
army to war; he takes a middle course.

In the whole passage the poet's main motive, as Mr. Monro remarks
with obvious truth, is "to let his audience become acquainted with
the temper and spirit of the army as it was affected by the long
siege ... and by the events of the First Book." [Footnote: Monro,
_Iliad_, vol. i. p. 261.] The poet could not obtain his
object if Agamemnon merely gave the summons to battle; and he
thinks Agamemnon precisely the kind of waverer who will call,
first the Privy Council of the Chiefs, and then an assembly.
Herein the homesick host will display its humours, as it does with
a vengeance. Agamemnon next tells his Dream to the chiefs (if he
had a dream of this kind he would most certainly tell it), and
adds (as has been already stated) that he will first test the
spirit of the army by a feigned proposal of return to Greece,
while the chiefs are to restrain them if they rush to launch the
ships. Nestor hints that there is not much good in attending to
dreams; however, this is the dream of the Over-Lord, who is the
favoured of Zeus.

Agamemnon next, addressing the assembly, says that posterity will
think it a shameful thing that the Achaeans raised the siege of a
town with a population much smaller than their own army; but
allies from many cities help the Trojans, and are too strong for
him, whether posterity understands that or not. "Let us flee with
our ships!"

On this the host break up, in a splendid passage of poetry, and
rush to launch the ships, the passion of _nostalgie_ carrying
away even the chiefs, it appears--a thing most natural in the
circumstances. But Athene finds Odysseus in grief: "neither laid
he any hand upon his ship," as the others did, and she encouraged
him to stop the flight. This he does, taking the sceptre of
Agamemnon from his unnerved hand.

He goes about reminding the princes "have we not heard Agamemnon's
real intention in council?" (II. 188-197), and rating the common
sort. The assembly meets again in great confusion; Thersites
seizes the chance to be insolent, and is beaten by Odysseus. The
host then arms for battle.

The poet has thus shown Agamemnon in the colours which he wears
consistently all through the _Iliad_. He has, as usual,
contrasted with him Odysseus, the type of a wise and resolute man.
This contrast the poet maintains without fail throughout. He has
shown us the temper of the weary, home-sick army, and he has
persuaded us that he knows how subtle, dangerous, and contagious a
thing is military panic. Thus, at least, I venture to read the
passage, which, thus read, is perfectly intelligible. Agamemnon is
no personal coward, but the burden of the safety of the host
overcomes him later, and he keeps suggesting flight in the ships,
as we shall see. Suppose, then, we read on from II. 40 thus: "The
Dream left him thinking of things not to be, even that on this day
he shall take the town of Priam.... But he awoke from sleep with
the divine voice ringing in his ears. (_Then it seemed him that
some dreams are true and_ some _false, for all do_ not
_come through the Gate of_ Horn.) So he arose and sat up and
did on his soft tunic, and his great cloak, and grasped his
ancestral sceptre ... and bade the clear-voiced heralds summon the
Achaeans of the long locks to the deliberative assembly." He then,
as in II. 53-75 told his Dream to the preliminary council, and
proposed that he should try the temper of the host by proposing
flight--which, if it began, the chiefs were to restrain--before
giving orders to arm. The test of the temper of the host acted as
it might be expected to act; all rushed to launch the ships, and
the princes were swept away in the tide of flight, Agamemnon
himself merely looking on helpless. The panic was contagious; only
Odysseus escaped its influence, and redeemed the honour of the
Achaeans, as he did again on a later day.

The passage certainly has its difficulties. But Erhardt expresses
the proper state of the case, after giving his analysis. "The
hearer's imagination is so captured, first by the dream, then by
the brawling assembly, by the rush to the ships, by the
intervention of Odysseus, by the punishment of Thersites--all
these living pictures follow each other so fleetly before the eyes
that we have scarcely time to make objections." [Footnote: _Die
Enstehung der Homerische Gedichte_, p. 29.]. The poet aimed at
no more and no less effect than he has produced, and no more
should be required by any one, except by that anachronism--"the
analytical reader." _He_ has "time to make objections": the
poet's audience had none; and he must be criticised from their
point of view. Homer did not sing for analytical readers, for the
modern professor; he could not possibly conceive that Time would
bring such a being into existence.

To return to the character of Agamemnon. In moments of
encouragement Agamemnon is a valiant fighter, few better spearmen,
yet "he attains not to the first Three," Achilles, Aias, Diomede.
But Agamemnon is unstable as water; again and again, as in Book
II., the lives and honour of the Achaeans are saved in the Over-
Lord's despite by one or other of the peers. The whole
_Iliad_, with consistent uniformity, pursues the scheme of
character and conduct laid down in the two first Books. It is
guided at once by feudal allegiance and feudal jealousy, like the
_Chansons de Geste_ and the early sagas or romances of
Ireland. A measure of respect for Agamemnon, even of sympathy, is
preserved; he is not degraded as the kings and princes are often
degraded on the Attic stage, and even in the Cyclic poems. Would
wandering Ionian reciters at fairs have maintained this
uniformity? Would the tyrant Pisistratus have made his literary
man take this view?




CHAPTER V


AGAMEMNON IN THE LATER "ILIAD"

In the Third Book, Agamemnon receives the compliments due to his
supremacy, aspect, and valour from the lips of Helen and Priam.
There are other warriors taller by a head, and Odysseus was
shorter than he by a head, so Agamemnon was a man of middle
stature. He is "beautiful and royal" of aspect; "a good king and a
mighty spearman," says Helen.

The interrupted duel between Menelaus and Paris follows, and then
the treacherous wounding of Menelaus by Pandarus. One of
Agamemnon's most sympathetic characteristics is his intense love
of his brother, for whose sake he has made the war. He shudders on
seeing the arrow wound, but consoles Menelaus by the certainty
that Troy will fall, for the Trojans have broken the solemn oath
of truce. Zeus "doth fulfil at last, and men make dear amends."
But with characteristic inconsistency he discourages Menelaus by a
picture of many a proud Trojan leaping on his tomb, while the host
will return home-an idea constantly present to Agamemnon's mind.
He is always the first to propose flight, though he will "return
with shame" to Mycenae. Menelaus is of much better cheer: "Be of
good courage, [blank space] ALL THE HOST OF THE [misprint]"--a
thing which Agamemnon does habitually, though he is not a personal
poltroon. As Menelaus has only a slight flesh wound after all, and
as the Trojans are doomed men, Agamemnon is now "eager for
glorious battle." He encourages the princes, but, of all men,
rebukes Odysseus as "last at a fray and first at a feast": such is
his insolence, for which men detest him.

This is highly characteristic in Agamemnon, who has just been
redeemed from ruin by Odysseus. Rebuked by Odysseus, he "takes
back his word" as usual, and goes on to chide Diomede as better at
making speeches than at fighting! But Diomede made no answer,
"having respect to the chiding of the revered King." He even
rebukes the son of Capaneus for answering Agamemnon haughtily.
Diomede, however, does not forget; he bides his time. He now does
the great deeds of his day of valour (Book V.). Agamemnon
meanwhile encourages the host.

During Books V., VI. Agamemnon's business is "to bid the rest keep
fighting." When Hector, in Book VII., challenges any Achaean,
nobody volunteers except Menelaus, who has a strong sense of
honour. Agamemnon restrains him, and lots are cast: the host pray
that the lot may fall on Aias, Diomede, or Agamemnon (VII. 179-
180). Thus the Over-Lord is acknowledged to be a man of his hands,
especially good at hurling the spear, as we see again in Book
XXIII.

A truce is proposed for the burial of the dead, and Paris offers
to give up the wealth that he brought to Troy, and more, if the
Achaeans will go home, but Helen he will not give up. We expect
Agamemnon to answer as becomes him. But no! All are silent, till
Diomede rises. They will not return, he says, even if Helen be
restored, for even a fool knows that Troy is doomed, because of
the broken oath. The rest shout acquiescence, and Agamemnon
refuses the compromise. Apparently he would not have disdained it,
but for Diomede's reply.

On the following day the Trojans have the better in the battle,
and Agamemnon "has no heart to stand," nor have some of his peers.
But Diomede has more courage, and finally Agamemnon begins to call
to the host to fight, but breaks down, weeps, and prays to Zeus
"that we ourselves at least flee and escape;" he is not an
encouraging commander-in-chief! Zeus, in pity, sends a favourable
omen; Aias fights well; night falls, and the Trojans camp on the
open plain.

Agamemnon, in floods of tears, calls an assembly, and proposes to
"return to Argos with dishonour." "Let us flee with our ships to
our dear native land, for now shall we never take wide-wayed
Troy," All are silent, till Diomede rises and reminds Agamemnon
that "thou saidst I was no man of war, but a coward." (In Book
V.; we are now in Book IX.) "Zeus gave thee the honour of the
sceptre above all men, but valour he gave thee not.... Go thy way;
thy way is before thee, and thy ships stand beside the sea. But
all the other flowing-haired Achaeans will tarry here until we
waste Troy."

Nestor advises Agamemnon to set an advanced guard, which that
martialist had never thought of doing, and to discuss matters over
supper. A force of 700 men, under Meriones and the son of Nestor,
was posted between the foss and the wall round the camp; the
council met, and Nestor advised Agamemnon to approach Achilles
with gentle words and gifts of atonement. Agamemnon, full of
repentance, acknowledges his folly and offers enormous atonement.
Heralds and three ambassadors are sent; and how Achilles received
them, with perfect courtesy, but with absolute distrust of
Agamemnon and refusal of his gifts, sending the message that he
will fight only when fire comes to his own ships, we know.

Achilles is now entirely in the wrong, and the Over-Lord is once
more within his right. He has done all, or more than all, that
customary law demands. In Book IX. Phoenix states the case
plainly. "If Agamemnon brought thee not gifts, and promised thee
more hereafter, ... then were I not he that should bid thee cast
aside thine anger, and save the Argives...." (IX. 515-517). The
case so stands that, if Achilles later relents and fights, the
gifts of atonement will no longer be due to him, and he "will not
be held in like honour" (IX. 604).

The poet knows intimately, and, like his audience, is keenly
interested in the details of the customary law. We cannot easily
suppose this frame of mind and this knowledge in a late poet
addressing a late Ionian audience.

The ambassadors return to Agamemnon; their evil tidings are
received in despairing silence. But Diomede bids Agamemnon take
heart and fight next day, with his host arrayed "before the ships"
(IX. 708). This appears to counsel defensive war; but, in fact,
and for reasons, when it comes to fighting they do battle in the
open.

The next Book (X.) is almost universally thought a late
interpolation; an opinion elsewhere discussed (see [blank space]).
Let us, then, say with Mr. Leaf that the Book begins with
"exaggerated despondency" and ends with "hasty exultation," in
consequence of a brilliant camisade, wherein Odysseus and Diomede
massacre a Thracian contingent. Our point is that the poet
carefully (see _The Doloneia_) continues the study of
Agamemnon in despondency, and later, by his "hasty exultation,"
preludes to the valour which the Over-Lord displays in Book XI.

The poet knows that something in the way of personal valour is due
to Agamemnon's position; he fights brilliantly, receives a flesh
wound, retires, and is soon proposing a general flight in his
accustomed way. When the Trojans, in Book XIV., are attacking the
ships, Agamemnon remarks that he fears the disaffection of his
whole army (XIV. 49, 51), and, as for the coming defeat, that he
"knew it," even when Zeus helped the Greeks. They are all to
perish far from Argos. Let them drag the ships to the sea, moor
them with stones, and fly, "For there is no shame in fleeing from
ruin, even in the night. Better doth he fare who flees from
trouble than he that is overtaken." It is now the turn of Odysseus
again to save the honour of the army. "Be silent, lest some other
of the Achaeans hear this word, that no man should so much as
suffer to pass through his mouth.... And now I wholly scorn thy
thoughts, such a word hast thou uttered." On this Agamemnon
instantly repents. "Right sharply hast thou touched my heart with
thy stern reproof:" he has not even the courage of his
nervousness.

The combat is now in the hands of Aias and Patroclus, who is
slain. Agamemnon, who is wounded, does not reappear till Book
XIX., when Achilles, anxious to fight and avenge Patroclus at
once, without formalities of reconciliation, professes his desire
to let bygones be bygones. Agamemnon excuses his insolence to
Achilles as an inspiration of Ate: a predestined fault--"Not I am
the cause, but Zeus and Destiny."

Odysseus, to clinch the reunion and fulfil customary law, advises
Agamemnon to bring out the gifts of atonement (the gifts prepared
in Book IX.), after which the right thing is for him to give a
feast of reconciliation, "that Achilles may have nothing lacking
of his right." [Footnote: Book XIX. 179, 180.] The case is one
which has been provided for by customary law in every detail. Mr.
Leaf argues that all this part must be late, because of the
allusion to the gifts offered in Book IX. But we reply, with Mr.
Monro, that the Ninth Book is "almost necessary to any Achilleis."
The question is, would a late editor or poet know all the details
of customary law in such a case as a quarrel between Over-Lord and
peer? would a feudal audience have been satisfied with a poem
which did not wind the quarrel up in accordance with usage? and
would a late poet, in a society no longer feudal, know how to wind
it up? Would he find any demand on the part of his audience for a
long series of statements, which to a modern seem to interrupt the
story? To ourselves it appears that a feudal audience desired the
customary details; to such an audience they were most interesting.

This is a taste which, as has been said, we find in all early
poetry and in the sagas; hence the long "runs" of the Celtic
sagas, minutely repeated descriptions of customary things. The
Icelandic saga-men never weary, though modern readers do, of legal
details. For these reasons we reckon the passages in Book XIX.
about the reconciliation as original, and think they can be
nothing else. It is quite natural that, in a feudal society of men
who were sticklers for custom, the hearers should insist on having
all things done duly and in order--the giving of the gifts and the
feast of reconciliation--though the passionate Achilles himself
desires to fight at once. Odysseus insists that what we may call
the regular routine shall be gone through. It is tedious to the
modern reader, but it is surely much more probable that a feudal
poet thus gratified his peculiar audience (he looked for no other)
than that a late poet, with a different kind of audience, thrust
the Reconciliation in as an "after-thought." [Footnote: Leaf,
_Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 317.] The right thing must be done,
Odysseus assures Achilles, "for I was born first, and know more
things." It is not the right thing to fight at once, unfed, and
before the solemn sacrifice by the Over-Lord, the prayer, the Oath
of Agamemnon, and the reception of the gifts by Achilles; only
after these formalities, and after the army has fed, can the host
go forth. "I know more than you do; you are a younger man," says
Odysseus, speaking in accordance with feudal character, at the
risk of wearying later unforeseen generations.

This is not criticism inspired by mere "literary feeling," for
"literary feeling" is on the side of Achilles, and wishes the
story to hurry to his revenge. But ours is [blank space]
criticism; we must think of the poet in relation to his audience
and of their demands, which we can estimate by similar demands,
vouched for by the supply, in the early national poetry of other
peoples and in the Icelandic sagas.

We hear no more of Agamemnon till, in Book XXIII, 35-38, after the
slaying of Hector, Achilles "was brought to noble Agamemnon" (for
that, as Odysseus said, was the regular procedure) "by the Achaean
chiefs, hardly persuading him thereto, for his heart was wroth for
his comrade." Here they feast, Achilles still full of grief and
resentment. He merely goes through the set forms, much against his
will. It does appear to us that the later the poet the less he
would have known or cared about the forms. An early society is
always much interested in forms and in funerals and funeral games,
so the poet indulges their taste with the last rites of Patroclus.
The last view of Agamemnon is given when, at the end of the games,
Achilles courteously presents him with the flowered _lebes_,
the prize for hurling the spear, without asking him to compete,
since his superior skill is notorious. This act of courtesy is the
real reconciliation; previously Achilles had but gone reluctantly
through the set forms in such cases provided. Even when Agamemnon
offered the gifts of atonement, Achilles said, "Give them, as is
customary, or keep them, as you please" (XIX. 146, 148). Achilles,
young and passionate, cares nothing for the feudal procedure.

This rapid survey seems to justify the conclusion that the poet
presents an uniform and historically correct picture of the Over-
Lord and of his relations with his peers, a picture which no late
editor could have pieced together out of the widely varying
_repertoires_ of late strolling reciters. Such reciters would
gladly have forgotten, and such an editor would gladly have "cut"
the "business" of the reconciliation. They would also, in a
democratic spirit, have degraded the Over-Lord into the tyrant,
but throughout, however low Agamemnon may fall, the poet is guided
by the knowledge that his right to rule is _jure divino_,
that he has qualities, that his responsibilities are crushing, "I,
whom among all men Zeus hath planted for ever among labours, while
my breath abides within me, and my limbs move," says the Over-Lord
(X. Sg, go.[sic]). In short, the poet's conception of the Over-Lord is
throughout harmonious, is a contemporary conception entertained by
a singer who lives among peers that own, and are jealous of, and
obey an Over-Lord. The character and situation of Agamemnon are a
poetic work of one age, one moment of culture.




CHAPTER VI


ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE "ILIAD". BURIAL AND CREMATION

In archaeological discoveries we find the most convincing proofs
that the _Iliad_, on the whole, is the production of a single
age, not the patchwork of several changeful centuries. This may
seem an audacious statement, as archaeology has been interpreted
of late in such a manner as to demand precisely the opposite
verdict. But if we can show, as we think we can, that many recent
interpretations of the archaeological evidence are not valid,
because they are not consistent, our contention, though
unexpected, will be possible. It is that the combined testimony of
archaeology and of the Epic proves the _Iliad_ to represent,
as regards customs, weapons, and armour, a definite moment of
evolution; a period between the age recorded in the art of the
Mycenaean shaft graves and the age of early iron swords and the
"Dipylon" period.

Before the discoveries of the material remains of the "Mycenzean"
times, the evidence of archaeology was seldom appropriately
invoked in discussions of the Homeric question. But in the thirty
years since Schliemann explored the buried relics of the Mycenzean
Acropolis, his "Grave of Agamemnon," a series of excavations has
laid bare the interments, the works of art, and the weapons and
ornaments of years long prior to the revolution commonly
associated with the "Dorian Invasion" of about 1100-1000 B.C. The
objects of all sorts which have been found in many sites of Greece
and the isles, especially of Cyprus and Crete, in some respects
tally closely with Homeric descriptions, in others vary from them
widely. Nothing can be less surprising, if the heroes whose
legendary feats inspired the poet lived centuries before his time,
as Charlemagne and his Paladins lived some three centuries before
the composition of the earliest extant _Chansons de Geste_ on
their adventures. There was, in such a case, time for much change
in the details of life, art, weapons and implements. Taking the
relics in the graves of the Mycenaean Acropolis as a starting-
point, some things would endure into the age of the poet, some
would be modified, some would disappear.

We cannot tell how long previous to his own date the poet supposes
the Achaean heroes to have existed. He frequently ascribes to them
feats of strength which "no man of such as now are" could perform.
This gives no definite period for the interval; he might be
speaking of the great grandfathers of his own generation. But when
he regards the heroes as closely connected by descent of one or
two generations with the gods, and as in frequent and familiar
intercourse with gods and goddesses, we must suppose that he did
not think their period recent. The singers of the _Chansons de
Geste_ knew that angels' visits were few and far between at the
period, say, of the Norman Conquest; but they allowed angels to
appear in epics dealing with the earlier time, almost as freely as
gods intervene in Homer. In short, the Homeric poet undeniably
treats the age of his heroes as having already, in the phrase of
Thucydides, "won its way to the mythical," and therefore as
indefinitely remote.

It is impossible here to discuss in detail the complex problems of
Mycenaean chronology. If we place the Mycenaean "bloom-time" from
"the seventeenth or sixteenth to the twelfth century B.C.,"
[Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 322.] it is plain that there is
space to spare, between the poet's age and that of his heroes, for
the rise of changes in war, weapons, and costume. Indeed, there
are traces enough of change even in the objects and art discovered
in the bloom-time, as represented by the Mycenaean acropolis
itself and by other "Mycenaean" sites. The art of the fragment of
a silver vase in a grave, on which a siege is represented, is not
the art, the costumes are not the costumes, of the inlaid bronze
dagger-blade. The men shown on the vase and the lion-hunters on
the dagger both have their hair close cropped, but on the vase
they are naked, on the dagger they wear short drawers. On the
Vaphio cups, found in a _tholos_ chamber-tomb near Amyclae,
the men are "long-haired Achaeans," with heavy, pendent locks,
like the man on a pyxis from Knossos, published by Mr. Evans; they
are of another period than the close-cropped men of the vase and
dagger. [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol. xvi.
p. 102.] Two of the men on the silver vase are covered either with
shields of a shape and size elsewhere unknown in Mycenaean art, or
with cloaks of an unexampled form. The masonry of the city wall,
shown on the vase in the Mycenaean grave, is not the ordinary
masonry of Mycenae itself. On the vase the wall is "isodomic,"
built of cut stones in regular layers. Most of the Mycenaean
walls, on the other hand, are of "Cyclopean" style, in large
irregular blocks.

Art, good and very bad, exists in many various stages in Mycenaean
relics. The drawing of a god, with a typical Mycenaean shield in
the form of a figure 8, on a painted sarcophagus from Milato in
Crete, is more crude and savage than many productions of the
Australian aboriginals, [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies,
vol. xvi. _p._ 174, fig. 50._ Grosse. _Les Debuts de
l'Art,_ pp. 124-176.] the thing is on the level of Red Indian
work. Meanwhile at Vaphio, Enkomi, Knossos, and elsewhere the art
is often excellent.

In one essential point the poet describes a custom without
parallel among the discovered relics of the Mycenaean age--namely,
the disposal of the bodies of the dead. They are neither buried
with their arms, in stately _tholos_ tombs nor in shaft
graves, as at Mycenae: whether they be princes or simple oarsmen,
they are cremated. A pyre of wood is built; on this the warrior's
body is laid, the pyre is lighted, the body is reduced to ashes,
the ashes are placed in a vessel or box of gold, wrapped round
with precious cloths (no arms are buried, as a general rule), and
a mound, howe, barrow, or tumulus is raised over all. Usually a
_stele_ or pillar crowns the edifice. This method is almost
uniform, and, as far as cremation and the cairn go, is universal
in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ whenever a burial is
described. Now this mode of interment must be the mode of a single
age in Greek civilisation. It is confessedly not the method of the
Mycenaeans of the shaft grave, or of the latter _tholos_ or
stone beehive-shaped grave; again, the Mycenaeans did not burn the
dead; they buried. Once more, the Homeric method is not that of
the Dipylon period (say 900-750 B.C.) represented by the tombs
outside the Dipylon gate of Athens. The people of that age now
buried, now burned, their dead, and did not build cairns over
them. Thus the Homeric custom comes between the shaft graves and
the latter _tholos_ graves, on the one hand, and the Dipylon
custom of burning or burying, with sunk or rock-hewn graves, on
the other.

The Homeric poets describe the method of their own period. They
assuredly do not adhere to an older epic tradition of shaft graves
or _tholos_ graves, though these must have been described in
lays of the period when such methods of disposal of the dead were
in vogue. The altar above the shaft-graves in Mycenae proves the
cult of ancestors in Mycenae; of this cult in the _Iliad_
there is no trace, or only a dim trace of survival in the
slaughter of animals at the funeral. The Homeric way of thinking
about the state of the dead, weak, shadowy things beyond the river
Oceanus, did not permit them to be worshipped as potent beings.
Only in a passage, possibly interpolated, of the _Odyssey_,
do we hear that Castor and Polydeuces, brothers of Helen, and sons
of Tyndareus, through the favour of Zeus have immortality, and
receive divine honours. [Footnote: Odyssey, XI. 298-304.]

These facts are so familiar that we are apt to overlook the
strangeness of them in the history of religious evolution. The
cult of ancestral spirits begins in the lowest barbarism, just
above the level of the Australian tribes, who, among the Dieri,
show some traces of the practice, at least, of ghost feeding.
[Footnote: Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-Eastern
Australia,_ p. 448. There are also traces of propitiation in
Western Australia (MS. of Mrs. Bates).] Sometimes, as in many
African tribes, ancestor worship is almost the whole of practical
cult. Usually it accompanies polytheism, existing beside it on a
lower plane. It was prevalent in the Mycenae of the shaft graves;
in Attica it was uninterrupted; it is conspicuous in Greece from
the ninth century onwards. But it is unknown to or ignored by the
Homeric poets, though it can hardly have died out of folk custom.
Consequently, the poems are of one age, an age of cremation and of
burial in barrows, with no ghost worship. Apparently some
revolution as regards burial occurred between the age of the
graves of the Mycenaean acropolis and the age of Homer. That age,
coming with its form of burning and its absence of the cult of the
dead, between two epochs of inhumation, ancestor worship, and
absence of cairns, is as certainly and definitely an age apart, a
peculiar period, as any epoch can be.

Cremation, with cairn burial of the ashes, is, then, the only form
of burial mentioned by Homer, and, as far as the poet tells us,
the period was not one in which iron was used for swords and
spears. At Assarlik (Asia Minor) and in Thera early graves, prove
the use of cremation, but also, unlike Homer, of iron weapons.
[Footnote: Paton, Journal _of Hellenic Studies,_ viii.
64_ff_. For other references, cf. Poulsen, _Die
Dipylongrben_, p. 2, Notes. Leipzig 1905.] In these graves the
ashes are inurned. There are examples of the same usage in
Salamis, without iron. In Crete, in graves of the period of
geometrical ornament ("Dipylon"), burning is more common than
inhumation. Cremation is attested in a _tholos_ or beehive-
shaped grave in Argos, where the vases were late Mycenaean. Below
this stratum was an older shaft grave, as is usual in
_tholos_ interments; it had been plundered? [Footnote:
Poulsen, p.2.]

The cause of the marked change from Mycenaean inhumation to
Homeric cremation is matter of conjecture. It has been suggested
that burning was introduced during the migrations after the Dorian
invasion. Men could carry the ashes of their friends to the place
where they finally settled. [Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische
Epos,_ p.83] The question may, perhaps, be elucidated by
excavation, especially in Asia Minor, on the sites of the earliest
Greek colonies. At Colophon are many cairns unexplored by science.
Mr. Ridgeway, as is well known, attributes the introduction of
cremation to a conquering northern people, the Achaeans, his
"Celts." It is certain that cremation and urn burial of the ashes
prevailed in Britain during the Age of Bronze, and co-existed with
inhumation in the great cemetery of Hallstatt, surviving into the
Age of Iron. [Footnote: Cf. _Guide to Antiquities of Early Iron
Age,_ British Museum, 1905, by Mr. Reginald A. Smith, under
direction of Mr. Charles H. Read, for a brief account of Hallstatt
culture.] Others suppose a change in Achaean ideas about the soul;
it was no longer believed to haunt the grave and grave goods and
be capable of haunting the living, but to be wholly set free by
burning, and to depart for ever to the House of Hades, powerless
and incapable of hauntings.

It is never easy to decide as to whether a given mode of burial is
the result of a definite opinion about the condition of the dead,
or whether the explanation offered by those who practise the
method is an afterthought. In Tasmania among the lowest savages,
now extinct, were found monuments over cremated human remains,
accompanied with "characters crudely marked, similar to those
which the aborigines tattooed on their forearms." In one such
grave was a spear, "for the dead man to fight with when he is
asleep," as a native explained. Some Tasmanian tribes burned the
dead and carried the ashes about in amulets; others buried in
hollow trees; others simply inhumed. Some placed the dead in a
hollow tree, and cremated the body after lapse of time. Some tied
the dead up tightly (a common practice with inhumation), and then
burned him. Some buried the dead in an erect 'posture. The common
explanation of burning was that it prevented the dead from
returning, thus it has always been usual to burn the bodies of
vampires. Did a race so backward hit on an idea unknown to the
Mycenaean Greeks? [Footnote: Ling Roth., _The Tasmanians_,
pp. 128-134. Reports of Early Discoverers.] If the usual
explanation be correct--burning prevents the return of the dead--
how did the Homeric Greeks come to substitute burning for the
worship and feeding of the dead, which had certainly prevailed?
How did the ancient method return, overlapping and blent with the
method of cremation, as in the early Dipylon interments? We can
only say that the Homeric custom is definite and isolated, and
that but slight variations occur in the methods of Homeric burial.

(1)In _Iliad_, VI, 4 I 6 _ff_, Andromache _SAYS_
that Achilles slew her father, "yet he despoiled him not, for his
soul had shame of that; but he burnt him in his inlaid armour, and
raised a barrow over him." We are not told that the armour was
interred with the ashes of Eetion. This is a peculiar case. We
always hear in the that the dead are burned, and the ashes of
princes are placed in a vessel of gold within an artificial
hillock; but we do not hear, except in this passage, that they are
burned in their armour, or that it is burned, or that it is buried
with the ashes of the dead. The invariable practice is for the
victor, if he can, to despoil the body of the fallen foe; but
Achilles for some reason spared that indignity in the case of
Eetion. [Footnote: German examples of burning the amis of the
cremated dead and then burying them are given by Mr. Ridgeway,
_Early Age of Greece,_ vol. i. pp. 498, 499.]

(2) _ILIAD,_ VII. 85. Hector, in his challenge to a single
combat, makes the conditions that the victor shall keep the arms
and armour of the vanquished, but shall restore his body to his
friends. The Trojans will burn him, if he falls; if the Achaean
falls, the others will do something expressed by the word [Greek:
tarchuchosi] probably a word surviving from an age of embalment.
[Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische Epos,_ pp. 55, 56.] It has
come to mean, generally, to do the funeral rites. The hero is to
have a barrow or artificial howe or hillock built over him,
"beside wide Hellespont," a memorial of him, and of Hector's
valour.

On the River Helmsdale, near Kildonan, on the left bank, there is
such a hillock which has never, it is believed, been excavated. It
preserves the memory of its occupant, an early Celtic saint;
whether he was cremated or not it is impossible to say. But his
memory is not lost, and the howe, cairn, or hillock, in Homer is
desired by the heroes as a MEMORIAL.

On the terms proposed by Hector the arms of the dead could not be
either burned or buried with him.

(3) Iliad, IX. 546. Phoenix says that the Calydonian boar "brought
many to the mournful pyre." All were cremated.

(4) _Iliad_, XXII 50-55. Andromache in her dirge (the
_regret_ of the French mediaeval epics) says that Hector lies
unburied by the ships and naked, but she will burn raiment of his,
"delicate and fair, the work of women ... to thee no profit, since
thou wilt never lie therein, yet this shall be honour to thee from
the men and women of Troy." Her meaning is not very clear, but she
seems to imply that if Hector's body were in Troy it would be clad
in garments before cremation.

Helbig appears to think that to clothe the dead in _garments_
was an Ionian, not an ancient epic custom. But in Homer the dead
always wear at least one garment, the [Greek: pharos], a large
mantle, either white or purple, such as Agamemnon wears in peace
(Iliad, II 43), except when, like Eetion and Elpenor in the
Odyssey, they are burned in their armour. In _Iliad,_ XXIII.
69 _ff_., the shadow of the dead unburned Patroclus appears
to Achilles in his sleep asking for "his dues of fire." The whole
passage, with the account of the funeral of Patroclus, must be
read carefully, and compared with the funeral rites of Hector at
the end of Book XXIV. Helbig, in an essay of great erudition,
though perhaps rather fantastic in its generalisations, has
contrasted the burials of the two heroes. Patroclus is buried, he
says, in a true portion of the old Aeolic epic (Sir Richard Jebb
thought the whole passage "Ionic"), though even into this the late
Ionian _bearbeiter_ (a spectral figure), has introduced his
Ionian notions. But the Twenty-fourth Book itself is late and
Ionian, Helbig says, not genuine early Aeolian epic poetry.
[Footnote: Helbig, _Zu den Homerischen Bestattungsgebrachen_.
Aus den Sitzungsberichten der philos. philol. und histor. Classe
der Kgl. bayer. Academie der Wissenschaften. 1900. Heft. ii. pp.
199-299.] The burial of Patroclus, then, save for Ionian late
interpolations, easily detected by Helbig, is, he assures us, genuine
"kernel," [Footnote: 2 Op. _laud._, p. 208.] while Hector's
burial "is partly Ionian, and describes the destiny of the dead
heroes otherwise than as in the old Aeolic epos."

Here Helbig uses that one of his two alternate theories according
to which the late Ionian poets do not cling to old epic tradition,
but bring in details of the life of their own date. By Helbig's
other alternate theory, the late poets cling to the model set in
old epic tradition in their pictures of details of life.

Disintegrationists differ: far from thinking that the late Ionian
poet who buried Hector varied from the AEolic minstrel who buried
Patroclus (in Book XXIII.), Mr. Leaf says that Hector's burial is
"almost an abstract" of that of Patroclus. [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad,
XXII Note to 791.] He adds that Helbig's attempts "to distinguish
the older AEolic from the newer and more sceptical 'Ionic' faith
seem to me visionary." [Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii. p. 619. Note 2]
Visionary, indeed, they do seem, but they are examples of the
efforts made to prove that the Iliad bears marks of composition
continued through several centuries. We must remember that,
according to Helbig, the Ionians, colonists in a new country, "had
no use for ghosts." A fresh colony does not produce ghosts. "There
is hardly an English or Scottish castle without its spook
(_spuck_). On the other hand, you look in vain for such a
thing in the United States"--spiritualism apart. [Footnote: Op.
_laud._, p. 204.]

This is a hasty generalisation! Helbig will, if he looks, find
ghosts enough in the literature of North America while still
colonial, and in Australia, a still more newly settled country,
sixty years ago Fisher's ghost gave evidence of Fisher's murder,
evidence which, as in another Australian case, served the ends of
justice. [Footnote: See, in _The_ Valet's Tragedy (A. L.):
"Fisher's Ghost."] More recent Australian ghosts are familiar to
psychical research.

This colonial theory is one of Helbig's too venturous
generalisations. He studies the ghost, or rather dream-apparition,
of Patroclus after examining the funeral of Hector; but we shall
begin with Patroclus. Achilles (XXIII. 4-16) first hails his
friend "even in the House of Hades" (so he believes that spirits
are in Hades), and says that he has brought Hector "raw for dogs
to devour," and twelve Trojans of good family "to slaughter before
thy pyre." That night, when Achilles is asleep (XXIII. 65) the
spirit ([Greek: psyche]) of Patroclus appears to him, says that he
is forgotten, and begs to be burned at once, that he may pass the
gates of Hades, for the other spirits drive him off and will not
let him associate with them "beyond the River," and he wanders
vaguely along the wide-gated dwelling of Hades. "Give me thy hand,
for never more again shall I come back from Hades, when ye have
given me my due of fire." Patroclus, being newly discarnate, does
not yet know that a spirit cannot take a living man's hand,
though, in fact, tactile hallucinations are not uncommon in the
presence of phantasms of the dead. "Lay not my bones apart from
thine ... let one coffer" ([Greek: soros]) "hide our bones."

 [Greek: Soros], like _larnax_, is a coffin (_Sarg_), or
what the Americans call a "casket," in the opinion of Helbig:
[Footnote: OP. _laud_., p.217.] it is an oblong receptacle of
the bones and dust. Hector was buried in a _larnax_; SO will
Achilles and Patroclus be when Achilles falls, but the dust of
Patroclus is kept, meanwhile, in a golden covered cup (phialae) in
the quarters of Achilles; it is not laid in howe after his
cremation (XXIII. 243).

Achilles tries to embrace Patroclus, but fails, like Odysseus with
the shade of his mother in Hades, in the _ODYSSEY_. He
exclaims that "there remaineth then even in the House of Hades a
spirit and phantom of the dead, albeit the life" (or the wits) "be
not anywise therein, for all night hath the spirit of hapless
Patroclus stood over me...."

In this speech Helbig detects the hand of the late Ionian poet.
What goes before is part of the genuine old Epic, the kernel, done
at a time when men believed that spooks could take part in the
affairs of the upper world. Achilles therefore (in his dream),
thought that he could embrace his friend. It was the sceptical
Ionian, in a fresh and spookless colony, who knew that he could
not; he thinks the ghost a mere dream, and introduces his
scepticism in XXIII. 99-107. He brought in "the ruling ideas of
his own period." The ghost, says the Ionian _bearbeiter_, is
intangible, though in the genuine old epic the ghost himself
thought otherwise--he being new to the situation and without
experience. This is the first sample of the critical Ionian
spirit, later so remarkable in philosophy and natural science,
says Helbig. [Footnote: Op. laud., pp. 233,234.]

We need not discuss this acute critical theory. The natural
interpretation of the words of Achilles is obvious; as Mr. Leaf
remarks, the words are "the cry of sudden personal conviction in a
matter which has hitherto been lazily accepted as an orthodox
dogma." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 620.] Already, as we
have seen, Achilles has made promises to Patroclus in the House of
Hades, now he exclaims "there really is something in the doctrine
of a feeble future life."

It is vain to try to discriminate between an old epic belief in
able-bodied ghosts and an Ionian belief in mere futile
_shades_, in the Homeric poems. Everywhere the dead are too
feeble to be worth worshipping after they are burned; but, as Mr.
Leaf says with obvious truth, and with modern instances, "men are
never so inconsistent as in their beliefs about the other world."
We ourselves hold various beliefs simultaneously. The natives of
Australia and of Tasmania practise, or did practise, every
conceivable way of disposing of the dead--burying, burning,
exposure in trees, carrying about the bodies or parts of them,
eating the bodies, and so forth. If each such practice
corresponded, as archaeologists believe, to a different opinion
about the soul, then all beliefs were held together at once, and
this, in fact, is the case. There is not now one and now another
hard and fast orthodoxy of belief about the dead, though now we
find ancestor worship prominent and now in the shade.

After gifts of hair and the setting up of jars full of oil and
honey, Achilles has the body laid on the top of the pyre in the
centre. Bodies of sheep and oxen, two dogs and four horses, are
strewed around: why, we know not, for the dead is not supposed to
need food: the rite may be a survival, for there were sacrifices
at the burials of the Mycenaean shaft graves. Achilles slays also
the twelve Trojans, "because of mine anger at thy slaying," he
says (XXIII. 23). This was his reason, as far as he consciously
had any reason, not that his friend might have twelve thralls in
Hades. After the pyre is alit Achilles drenches it all night with
wine, and, when the flame dies down, the dead hero's bones are
collected and placed in the covered cup of gold. The circle of the
barrow is then marked out, stones are set up round it (we see them
round Highland tumuli), and earth is heaped up; no more is done;
the tomb is empty; the covered cup holding the ashes is in the hut
of Achilles.

We must note another trait. After the body of Patroclus was
recovered, it was washed, anointed, laid on a bier, and covered
from head to foot [Greek: heano liti], translated by Helbig, "with
a linen sheet" (cf. XXIII. 254). The golden cup with the ashes is
next wrapped [Greek: heano liti]; here Mr. Myers renders the
words "with a linen veil." Scottish cremation burials of the
Bronze Age retain traces of linen wrappings of the urn. [Footnote:
_Proceedings of the Scottish society of Antiquaries_, 1905,
p. 552. For other cases, _cf._ Leaf, _Iliad_, XXIV. 796.
Note.] Over all a white [Greek: pharos] (mantle) was spread. In
_Iliad_, XXIV. 231, twelve [Greek: pharea] with chitons,
single cloaks, and other articles of dress, are taken to Achilles
by Priam as part of the ransom of Hector's body. Such is the
death-garb of Patroclus; but Helbig, looking for Ionian
innovations in Book XXIV., finds that the death-garb of Hector is
not the same as that of Patroclus in Book XXIII. One difference is
that when the squires of Achilles took the ransom of Hector from
the waggon of Priam, they left in it two [Greek: pharea] and a
well-spun chiton. The women washed and anointed Hector's body;
they clad him in the chiton, and threw one [Greek: pharos] over
it; we are not told what they did with the other. Perhaps, as Mr.
Leaf says, it was used as a cover for the bier, perhaps it was
not, but was laid under the body (Helbig). All we know is that
Hector's body was restored to Priam in a chiton and a [Greek:
pharos], which do not seem to have been removed before he was
burned; while Patroclus had no chiton in death, but a [Greek:
pharos] and, apparently, a linen sheet.

To the ordinary reader this does not seem, in the circumstances, a
strong mark of different ages and different burial customs. Priam
did not bring any linen sheet--or whatever [Greek: heanos lis] may
be--in the waggon as part of Hector's ransom; and it neither
became Achilles to give nor Priam to receive any of Achilles's
stuff as death-garb for Hector. The squires, therefore, gave back
to Priam, to clothe his dead son, part of what he had brought;
nothing can be more natural, and there, we may say, is an end
on't. They did what they could in the circumstances. But Helbig
has observed that, in a Cean inscription of the fifth century
B.C., there is a sumptuary law, forbidding a corpse to wear more
than three white garments, a sheet under him, a chiton, and a
mantle cast over him. [Footnote: op. _laud_., p. 209.] He
supposes that Hector wore the chiton, and had one [Greek: pharos]
over him and the other under him, though Homer does not say that.
The Laws of Solon also confined the dead man to three articles of
dress. [Footnote: Plutarch, Solon, 21.] In doing so Solon
sanctioned an old custom, and that Ionian custom, described by the
author of Book XXIV., bewrays him, says Helbig, for a late Ionian
_bearbeiter_, deserting true epic usages and inserting those
of his own day. But in some Attic Dipylon vases, in the pictures
of funerals, we see no garments or sheets over the corpses.

Penelope also wove a [Greek: charos] against the burial of old
Laertes, but surely she ought to have woven for him; on Helbig's
showing Hector had _two_, Patroclus had only one; Patroclus
is in the old epic, Hector and Laertes are in the Ionian epics;
therefore, Laertes should have had two [Greek: charea] but we only
hear of one. Penelope had to finish the [Greek: charos] and show
it; [Footnote: Odyssey, XXIV. 147.] now if she wanted to delay her
marriage, she should have begun the second [Greek: charos] just as
necessary as the first, if Hector, with a pair of [Greek: charea]
represents Ionian usage. But Penelope never thought of what, had
she read Helbig, she would have seen to be so obvious. She thought
of no funeral garments for the old man but one shroud [Greek:
speiron] (Odyssey, II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a
character of late Ionian, not of genuine old AEolic epic, she
should have known better. It is manifest that if even the
acuteness and vast erudition of Helbig can only find such
invisible differences as these between the manners of the genuine
old epic and the late Ionian innovations, there is really no
difference, beyond such trifles as diversify custom in any age.

Hector, when burned and when his ashes have been placed in the
casket, is laid in a [Greek: kapetos], a ditch or trench
(_Iliad_, XV. 356; XVIII. 564); but here (XXIV. 797) [Greek:
kapetos] is a chamber covered with great stones, within the howe,
the casket being swathed with purple robes, and this was the end.
The ghost of Hector would not revisit the sun, as ghosts do freely
in the Cyclic poems, a proof that the Cyclics are later than the
Homeric poems. [Footnote: Helbig, op. _laud_., pp. 240, 241.]

If the burning of the weapons of Eetion and Elpenor are traces of
another than the _old_ AEolic epic faith, [Footnote: Ibid.,
p. 253.] they are also traces of another than the late
_Ionic_ epic faith, for no weapons are burned with Hector. In
the _Odyssey_ the weapons of Achilles are not burned; in the
_Iliad_ the armour of Patroclus is not burned. No victims of
any kind are burned with Hector: possibly the poet was not anxious
to repeat what he had just described (his last book is already a
very long book); possibly the Trojans did not slay victims at the
burning.

The howes or barrows built over the Homeric dead were hillocks
high enough to be good points of outlook for scouts, as in the
case of the barrow of AEsyetes (_Iliad_, II. 793) and "the
steep mound," the howe of lithe Myrine (II. 814). We do not know
that women were usually buried in howe, but Myrine was a warrior
maiden of the Amazons. We know, then, minutely what the Homeric
mode of burial was, with such variations as have been noted. We
have burning and howe even in the case of an obscure oarsman like
Elpenor. It is not probable, however, that every peaceful mechanic
had a howe all to himself; he may have had a small family cairn;
he may not have had an expensive cremation.

The interesting fact is that no barrow burial precisely of the
Homeric kind has ever been discovered in Greek sites. The old
Mycenaeans buried either in shaft graves or in a stately
_tholos_; and in rock chambers, later, in the town cemetery:
they did not burn the bodies. The people of the Dipylon period
sometimes cremated, sometimes inhumed, but they built no barrow
over the dead. [Footnote: _Annal. de l'Inst., 1872, pp. 135,
147, 167. Plausen, _ut supra_.] The Dipylon was a period of
early iron swords, made on the lines of not the best type of
bronze sword. Now, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, our Homeric accounts of
burial "are all late; the oldest parts of the poems tell us
nothing." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 619. Note 2. While
Mr. Leaf says that "the oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing"
of burial, he accepts XXII. 342, 343 as of the oldest part. These
lines describe cremation, and Mr. Leaf does not think them
borrowed from the "later" VII. 79, 80, but that VII. 79, 80 are
"perhaps borrowed" from XXII. 342, 343. It follows that "the
oldest parts of the poems" do tell us of cremation.] We shall
show, however, that Mr. Leaf's "kernel" alludes to cremation. What
is "late"? In this case it is not the Dipylon period, say 900-750
B.C. It is not any later period; one or two late barrow burials do
not answer to the Homeric descriptions. The "late" parts of the
poems, therefore, dealing with burials, in Books VI., VII., XIX.,
XXIII., XXIV., and the Odyssey, are of an age not in "the
Mycenaean prime," not in the Dipylon period, not in any later
period, say the seventh or sixth centuries B.C., and, necessarily,
not of any subsequent period. Yet nobody dreams of saying that the
poets describe a purely fanciful form of interment. They speak of
what they know in daily life. If it be argued that the late poets
preserve, by sheer force of epic tradition, a form of burial
unknown in their own age, we ask, "Why did epic tradition not
preserve the burial methods of the Mycenaean prime, the shaft
grave, or the _tholos_, without cremation?"

Mr. Leaf's own conclusion is that the people of Mycenae were
"spirit worshippers, practising inhumation, and partial
mummification;" the second fact is dubious. "In the post-Mycenaean
'Dipylon' period, we find cremation and sepulture practised side
by side. In the interval, therefore, two beliefs have come into
conflict. [Footnote: All conceivable beliefs, we have said, about
the dead are apt to coexist. For every conceivable and some rather
inconceivable contemporary Australian modes of dealing with the
dead, see Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_;
Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_.]
It seems that the Homeric poems mark this intermediate point...."
[Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 622.] In that case the
Homeric poems are of one age, or, at least, all of them save "the
original kernel" are of one age, namely, a period subsequent to
the Mycenaean prime, but considerably prior to the Dipylon period,
which exhibits a mixture of custom; cremation and inhumation
coexisting, without barrows or howes.

We welcome this conclusion, and note that (whatever may be the
case with the oldest parts of the poems which say nothing about
funerals) the latest expansions must be of about 1100-1000 B.C.
(?). The poem is so early that it is prior to hero worship and
ancestor worship; or it might be more judicious to say that the
poem is of an age that did not, officially, practise ancestor
worship, whatever may have occurred in folk-custom. The Homeric
age is one which had outgrown ancestor and hero worship, and had
not, like the age of the Cyclics, relapsed into it. _Enfin_,
unless we agree with Helbig as to essential variations of custom,
the poems are the work of one age, and that a brief age, and an
age of peculiar customs, cremation and barrow burial; and of a
religion that stood, without spirit worship, between the Mycenzean
period and the ninth century. That seems as certain as anything in
prehistoric times can be, unless we are to say, that after the age
of shaft graves and spirit worship came an age of cremation and of
no spirit worship; and that late poets consciously and
conscientiously preserved the tradition of _this_ period into
their own ages of hero worship and inhumation, though they did not
preserve the tradition of the shaft-grave period. We cannot accept
this theory of adherence to stereotyped poetical descriptions, nor
can any one consistently adopt it in this case.

The reason is obvious. Mr. Leaf, with many other critics,
distinguishes several successive periods of "expansion." In the
first stratum we have the remains of "the original kernel." Among
these remains is The Slaying of Hector (XXII. 1-404), "with but
slight additions." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. xi.]
In the Slaying of Hector that hero indicates cremation as the mode
of burial. "Give them my body back again, that the Trojans and
Trojans' wives grant me my due of fire after my death." Perhaps
this allusion to cremation, in the "original kernel" in the
Slaying of Hector, may be dismissed as a late borrowing from Book
VII. 79, 80, where Hector makes conditions that the fallen hero
shall be restored to his friends when he challenges the Achaeans
to a duel. But whoever knows the curious economy by way of
repetition that marks early national epics has a right to regard
the allusion to cremation (XXII, 342,343) as an example of this
practice. Compare _La Chancun de Williame_, lines 1041-1058
with lines 1140-1134. In both the dinner of a knight who has been
long deprived of food is described in passages containing many
identical lines. The poet, having found his formula, uses it
whenever occasion serves. There are several other examples in the
same epic. [Footnote: _Romania_, xxxiv. PP. 245, 246.]
Repetitions in Homer need not indicate late additions; the
artifice is part of the epic as it is of the ballad manner. If we
are right, cremation is the mode of burial even in "the original
kernel." Hector, moreover, in the kernel (XXII. 256-259) makes,
before his final fight with Achilles, the same proposal as he
makes in his challenge to a duel (VII. 85 et _seqq_.). The
victor shall give back the body of the vanquished to his friends,
but how the friends are to bury it Hector does not say--in this
place. When dying, he does say (XXII. 342, 343).

In the kernel and all periods of expansion, funeral rites are
described, and in all the method is cremation, with a howe or a
barrow. Thus the method of cremation had come in as early as the
"kernel," The Slaying of Hector, and as early as the first
expansions, and it lasted till the period of the latest
expansions, such as Books XXIII., XXIV.

But what is the approximate date of the various expansions of the
original poem? On that point Mr. Leaf gives his opinion. The
Making of the Arms of Achilles (Books XVIII., XIX. 1-39) is, with
the Funeral of Patroclus (XXIII. 1-256), in the second set of
expansions, and is thus two removes later than the original
"kernel." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. xii.] Now
this is the period--the Making of the Shield for Achilles is, at
least, in touch with the period--of "the eminently free and
naturalistic treatment which we find in the best Mycenaean work,
in the dagger blades, in the siege fragment, and notably in the
Vaphio cups," (which show long-haired men, not men close-cropped,
as in the daggers and siege fragment). [Footnote: Leaf,
_Iliad_, vol. ii. p, 606.] The poet of the age of the second
expansions, then,' is at least in touch with the work of the shaft
grave and ages. He need not be contemporary with that epoch, but
"may well have had in his mind the work of artists older than
himself." It is vaguely possible that he may have seen an ancient
shield of the Mycenaean prime, and may be inspired by that.
[Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. pp. 606, 607.]

Moreover, and still more remarkable, the ordinary Homeric form of
cremation and howe-burial is even older than the period which, if
not contemporary with, is clearly reminiscent of, the art of the
shaft graves. For, in the period of the first expansions (VII. 1-3
I 2), the form of burial is cremation, with a barrow or tumulus.
[Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. xi. and pp. 606, 607.] Thus
Mr. Leaf's opinion might lead us to the conclusion that the usual
Homeric form of burial occurs in a period _PRIOR_ to an age
in which the poet is apparently reminiscent of the work of two
early epochs--the epoch of shaft graves and that of _THOLOS_
graves. If this be so, cremation and urn burial in cairns may be
nearly as old as the Mycenaean shaft graves, or as old as the
_THOLOS_ graves, and they endure into the age of the latest
expansions.

We must not press, however, opinions founded on the apparent
technical resemblance of the free style and coloured metal work on
the shield of Achilles, to the coloured metal work and free design
on the daggers of the Mycenaean shaft graves. It is enough for us
to note that the passages concerning burial, from the "kernel"
itself, and also from the earliest to the latest expansions, are
all perfectly harmonious, and of a single age--unless we are
convinced by Helbig's objections. That age must have been brief,
indeed, for, before it arrives, the period of _tholos_
graves, as at Vaphio, must expire, on one hand, while the blending
of cremation with inhumation, in the Dipylon age, must have been
evolved after the cremation age passed, on the other. That brief
intervening age, however, was the age of the _ILIAD_ and
Odyssey. This conclusion can only be avoided by alleging that late
poets, however recent and revolutionary, carefully copied the
oldest epic model of burial, while they innovated in almost every
other point, so we are told. We can go no further till we find an
unrifled cairn burial answering to Homeric descriptions. We have,
indeed, in Thessaly, "a large tumulus which contained a silver urn
with burned remains." But the accompanying pottery dated it in the
second century B.C. [Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age Of
Greece_, vol. i. p. 491; _Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol.
xx_. pp. 20-25.] It is possible enough that all tumuli of the
Homeric period have been robbed by grave plunderers in the course
of the ages, as the Vikings are said to have robbed the cairns of
Sutherlandshire, in which they were not likely to find a rich
reward for their labours. A conspicuous howe invites robbery--the
heroes of the Saga, like Grettir, occasionally rob a howe--and the
fact is unlucky for the Homeric archaeologist.

We have now tried to show that, as regards (1) to the absence from
Homer of new religious and ritual ideas, or of very old ideas
revived in Ionia, (2) as concerns the clear conception of a loose
form of feudalism, with an Over-Lord, and (3) in the matter of
burial, the _Iliad_ and Odyssey are self-consistent, and bear
the impress of a single and peculiar moment of culture.

The fact, if accepted, is incompatible with the theory that the
poets both introduced the peculiar conditions of their own later
ages and also, on other occasions, consciously and consistently
"archaised." Not only is such archaising inconsistent with the art
of an uncritical age, but a careful archaiser, with all the
resources of Alexandrian criticism at his command, could not
archaise successfully. We refer to Quintus Smyrnaeus, author of
the _Post Homerica_, in fourteen books. Quintus does his
best; but we never observe in him that _naf_ delight in
describing weapons and works of art, and details of law and custom
which are so conspicuous in Homer and in other early poets. He
does give us Penthesilea's great sword, with a hilt of ivory and
silver; but of what metal was the blade? We are not told, and the
reader of Quintus will observe that, though he knows [Greek:
chalkos], bronze, as a synonym for weapons, he scarcely ever, if
ever, says that a sword or spear or arrow-head was of bronze--a
point on which Homer constantly insists. When he names the
military metal Quintus usually speaks of iron. He has no interest
in the constitutional and legal sides of heroic life, so
attractive to Homer.

Yet Quintus consciously archaises, in a critical age, with Homer
as his model. Any one who believes that in an uncritical age
rhapsodists archaised, with such success as the presumed late
poets of the _ILIAD_ must have done, may try his hand in our
critical age, at a ballad in the style of the Border ballads. If
he succeeds in producing nothing that will at once mark his work
as modern, he will be more successful than any poet who has made
the experiment, and more successful than the most ingenious modern
forgers of gems, jewels, and terra-cottas. They seldom deceive
experts, and, when they do, other experts detect the deceit.




CHAPTER VII


HOMERIC ARMOUR

Tested by their ideas, their picture of political society, and
their descriptions of burial rites, the presumed authors of the
alleged expansions of the _Iliad_ all lived in one and the
same period of culture. But, according to the prevalent critical
theory, we read in the _Iliad_ not only large "expansions" of
many dates, but also briefer interpolations inserted by the
strolling reciters or rhapsodists. "Until the final literary
redaction had come," says Mr. Leaf--that is about 540 B.C.--"we
cannot feel sure that any details, even of the oldest work, were
secure from the touch of the latest poet." [Footnote: Leaf,
_Iliad_, vol. ii. p. ix.]

Here we are far from Mr. Leaf's own opinion that "the whole
scenery of the poems, the details of armour, palaces, dress,
decoration ... had become stereotyped, and formed a foundation
which the Epic poet dared not intentionally sap...." [Footnote:
_Ibid_., vol. i. p. xv.] We now find [Footnote: _Ibid_.,
vol. ii. p. ix.] that "the latest poet" saps as much as he pleases
down to the middle of the sixth century B.C. Moreover, in the
middle of the sixth century B.C., the supposed editor employed by
Hsistratus made "constant additions of transitional passages," and
added many speeches by Nestor, an ancestor of Pisistratus.

Did these very late interlopers, down to the sixth century,
introduce modern details into the picture of life? did they blur
the _unus_ color? We hope to prove that, if they did so at
all, it was but slightly. That the poems, however, with a
Mycenaean or sub-Mycenaean basis of actual custom and usage,
contain numerous contaminations from the usage of centuries as
late as the seventh, is the view of Mr. Leaf, and Reichel and his
followers. [Footnote: Homerische Waffen. Von Wolfgang Reichel.
Wien, 1901.]

Reichel's hypothesis is that the heroes of the original poet had
no defensive armour except the great Mycenaean shields; that the
ponderous shield made the use of chariots imperatively necessary;
that, after the Mycenaean age, a small buckler and a corslet
superseded the unwieldy shield; that chariots were no longer used;
that, by the seventh century B.C., a warrior could not be
thought of without a breastplate; and that new poets thrust
corslets and greaves into songs both new and old.

How the new poets could conceive of warriors as always in
chariots, whereas in practice they knew no war chariots, and yet
could not conceive of them without corslets which the original
poet never saw, is Reichel's secret. The new poets had in the old
lays a plain example to follow. They did follow it as to chariots
and shields; as to corslets and greaves they reversed it. Such is
the Reichelian theory.

 THE SHIELD

As regards armour, controversy is waged over the shield, corslet,
and bronze greaves. In Homer the shield is of leather, plated with
bronze, and of bronze is the corslet. No shields of bronze plating
and no bronze corslets have been found in Mycenaean excavations.

We have to ask, do the Homeric descriptions of shields tally with
the representations of shields in works of art, discovered in the
graves of Mycenae, Spata in Attica, Vaphio in Sparta, and
elsewhere? If the descriptions in Homer vary from these relics, to
what extent do they vary? and do the differences arise from the
fact that the poet describes consistently what he sees in his own
age, or are the variations caused by late rhapsodists in the Iron
Age, who keep the great obsolete shields and bronze weapons, yet
introduce the other military gear of their day, say 800-600 B.C.--
gear unknown to the early singers?

It may be best to inquire, first, what does the poet, or what do
the poets, say about shields? and, next, to examine the evidence
of representations of shields in Mycenaean art; always remembering
that the poet does not pretend to live, and beyond all doubt does
not live, in the Mycenaean prime, and that the testimony of the
tombs is liable to be altered by fresh discoveries.

In _Iliad_, II. 388, the shield (_aspis_) is spoken of
as "covering a man about" ([Greek: _amphibrotae_]), while, in
the heat of battle, the baldric (_telamon_), or belt of the
shield, "shall be wet with sweat." The shield, then, is not an
Ionian buckler worn on the left arm, but is suspended by a belt,
and covers a man, or most of him, just as Mycenaean shields are
suspended by belts shown in works of art, and cover the body and
legs. This (II. 388) is a general description applying to the
shields of all men who fight from chariots. Their great shield
answers to the great mediaeval shield of the knights of the
twelfth century, the "double targe," worn suspended from the neck
by a belt. Such a shield covers a mounted knight's body from mouth
to stirrup in an ivory chessman of the eleventh to twelfth century
A.D., [Footnote: _Catalogue of Scottish National
Antiquities_, p. 375.] so also in the Bayeux tapestry,
[Footnote: Gautier, _Chanson de Roland_. Seventh edition, pp.
393, 394.] and on seals. Dismounted men have the same shield (p.
132).

The shield of Menelaus (III. 348) is "equal in all directions,"
which we might conceive to mean, mathematically "circular," as the
words do mean that. A shield is said to have "circles," and a
spear which grazes a shield--a shield which was _[Greek: panton
eesae]_, "every way equal"--rends both circles, the outer
circle of bronze, and the inner circle of leather (_Iliad_,
XX. 273-281). But the passage is not unjustly believed to be late;
and we cannot rely on it as proof that Homer knew circular shields
among others. The epithet _[Greek: eukuklykos]_, "of good
circle," is commonly given to the shields, but does not mean that
the shield was circular, we are told, but merely that it was "made
of circular plates." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
573.] As for the shield of Menelaus, and other shields described
in the same words, "every way equal," the epithet is not now
allowed to mean "circular." Mr. Leaf, annotating _Iliad_, I.
306, says that this sense is "intolerably mathematical and
prosaic," and translates _[Greek: panton eesae]_ as "well
balanced on every side." Helbig renders the epithets in the
natural sense, as "circular." [Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische
Epos_, p. 315; cf., on the other hand, p. 317, Note I.]

To the rendering "circular" it is objected that a circular shield
of, say, four feet and a half in diameter, would be intolerably
heavy and superfluously wide, while the shields represented in
Mycenaean art are not circles, but rather resemble a figure of
eight, in some cases, or a section of a cylinder, in others, or,
again, a door (Fig. 5, p. 130).

What Homer really meant by such epithets as "equal every way,"
"very circular," "of a good circle," cannot be ascertained, since
Homeric epithets of the shield, which were previously rendered
"circular," "of good circle," and so on, are now translated in
quite other senses, in order that Homeric descriptions may be made
to tally with Mycenaean representations of shields, which are
never circular as represented in works of art. In this position of
affairs we are unable to determine the shape, or shapes, of the
shields known to Homer.

A scholar's rendering of Homer's epithets applied to the shield is
obliged to vary with the variations of his theory about the
shield. Thus, in 1883, Mr. Leaf wrote, "The poet often calls the
shield by names which seem to imply that it was round, and yet
indicates that it was large enough to cover the whole body of a
man.... In descriptions the round shape is always implied." The
words which indicated that the shield (or one shield) "really
looked like a tower, and really reached from neck to ankles" (in
two or three cases), were "received by the poet from the earlier
Achaean lays." "But to Homer the warriors appeared as using the
later small round shield. His belief in the heroic strength of the
men of old time made it quite natural to speak of them as bearing
a shield which at once combined the later circular shape and the
old heroic expanse...." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies,
iv. pp._ 283-285.]

Here the Homeric words which naturally mean "circular" or "round"
are accepted as meaning "round" or "circular." Homer, it is
supposed, in practice only knows the round shields of the later
age, 700 B.C., so he calls shields "round," but, obedient to
tradition, he conceives of them as very large.

But, after the appearance of Reichel's speculations, the Homeric
words for "round" and "circular" have been explained as meaning
something else, and Mr. Leaf, in place of maintaining that Homer
knew no shields but round shields, now writes (1900), "The small
circular shield of later times...is equally unknown to Homer, with
a very few curious exceptions," which Reichel discovered--
erroneously, as we shall later try to show. [Footnote: Leaf,
_Iliad_, vol. i. p. 575.]

Thus does science fluctuate! Now Homer knows in practice none but
light round bucklers, dating from about 700 B.C.; again, he does
not know them at all, though they were habitually used in the
period at which the later parts of his Epic were composed. We
shall have to ask, how did small round bucklers come to be unknown
to late poets who saw them constantly?

Some scholars, then, believe that the old original poet always
described Mycenaean shields, which are of various shapes, but
never circular in Mycenaean art. If there are any circular shields
in the poems, these, they say, must have been introduced by poets
accustomed, in a much later age, to seeing circular bucklers.
Therefore Homeric words, hitherto understood as meaning
"circular," must now mean something else--even if the reasoning
seems circular.

Other scholars believe that the poet in real life saw various
types of shields in use, and that some of them were survivals of
the Mycenaean shields, semi-cylindrical, or shaped like figures
of 8, or like a door; others were circular; and these scholars
presume that Homer meant "circular" when he said "circular."
Neither school will convert the other, and we cannot decide
between them. We do not pretend to be certain as to whether the
original poet saw shields of various types, including the round
shape, in use, though that is possible, or whether he saw only the
Mycenaean types.

As regards size, Homer certainly describes, in several cases,
shields very much larger than most which we know for certain to
have been common after, say, 700 B.C. He speaks of shields
reaching from neck to ankles, and "covering the body of a man
about." Whether he was also familiar with smaller shields of
various types is uncertain; he does not explicitly say that any
small bucklers were used by the chiefs, nor does he explicitly say
that all shields were of the largest type. It is possible that at
the time when the Epic was composed various types of shield were
being tried, while the vast ancient shield was far from obsolete.

To return to the _size_ of the shield. In a feigned tale of
Odysseus (Odyssey, XIV. 474-477), men in a wintry ambush place
their shields over their shoulders, as they lie on the ground, to
be a protection against snow. But any sort of shield, large or
small, would protect the shoulders of men in a recumbent position.
Quite a large shield may seem to be indicated in _Iliad_,
XIII. 400-405, where Idomeneus curls up his whole person behind
his shield; he was "hidden" by it. Yet, as any one can see by
experiment, a man who crouched low would be protected entirely by
a Highland targe of less than thirty inches in diameter, so
nothing about the size of the shield is ascertained in this
passage. On a black-figured vase in the British Museum (B, 325)
the entire body of a crouching warrior is defended by a large
Boeotian buckler, oval, and with _chancrures_ in the sides.
The same remark applies to _Z&ad_[sic], XXII. 273-275. Hector
watches the spear of Achilles as it flies; he crouches, and the
spear flies over him. Robert takes this as an "old Mycenaean"
dodge--to duck down to the bottom of the shield. [Footnote:
_Studien zur Ilias_, p. 21.] The avoidance by ducking can be
managed with no shield, or with a common Highland targe, which
would cover a man in a crouching posture, as when Glenbucket's
targe was peppered by bullets at Clifton (746), and Cluny shouted
"What the devil is this?" the assailants firing unexpectedly from
a ditch. A few moments of experiment, we repeat, prove that a
round targe can protect a man in Hector's attitude, and that the
Homeric texts here throw no light on the _size_ of the
shield.

The shield of Hector was of black bull's-hide, and as large and
long as any represented in Mycenaean art, so that, as he walked,
the rim knocked against his neck and ankles. The shape is not
mentioned. Despite its size, he _walked_ under it from the
plain and field of battle into Troy (_Iliad_, VI. 116-118).
This must be remembered, as Reichel [Footnote: Reichel, 38, 39.
Father Browne (_Handbook_, p. 230) writes, "In
_Odyssey_, XIV 475, Odysseus says he slept within the
shield." He says "under arms" (_Odyssey_, XIV. 474, but
_cf_. XIV. 479).] maintains that a man could not walk under
shield, or only for a short way; wherefore the war chariot was
invented, he says, to carry the fighting man from point to point
(Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 573). Mr. Leaf elaborates these
points: "Why did not the Homeric heroes ride? Because no man could
carry such a shield on horseback." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol.
i. p. 573.] We reply that men could and did carry such shields on
horseback, as we know on the evidence of works of art and poetry
of the eleventh to twelfth centuries A.D. Mr. Ridgeway has
explained the introduction of chariots as the result of horses too
small to carry a heavy and heavily-armed man as a cavalier.

The shield ([Greek: aspis]), we are told by followers of Reichel,
was only worn by princes who could afford to keep chariots,
charioteers, and squires of the body to arm and disarm them. But
this can scarcely be true, for all the comrades of Diomede had the
shield ([Greek: aspis], _Iliad_, X. 152), and the whole host
of Pandarus of Troy, a noted bowman, were shield-bearers ([Greek:
aspistaon laon], _Iliad_, IV. 90), and some of them held
their shields ([Greek: sakae]) in front of Pandarus when he took a
treacherous shot at Menelaus (IV. 113). The whole host could not
have chariots and squires, we may presume, so the chariot was not
indispensable to the _cuyer_ or shield-bearing man.

The objections to this conjecture of Reichel are conspicuous, as
we now prove.

No Mycenaean work of art shows us a shielded man in a chariot; the
men with the monstrous shields are always depicted on foot. The
only modern peoples who, to our knowledge, used a leather shield
of the Mycenaean size and even of a Mycenaean shape had no horses
and chariots, as we shall show. The ancient Eastern peoples, such
as the Khita and Egyptians, who fought from chariots, carried
_small_ shields of various forms, as in the well-known
picture of a battle between the Khita, armed with spears, and the
bowmen of Rameses II, who kill horse and man with arrows from
their chariots, and carry no spears; while the Khita, who have no
bows, merely spears, are shot down as they advance. [Footnote:
Maspero, _Hist. Ancienne_, ii. p. 225.]. Egyptians and Khita,
who fight from chariots, use _small_ bucklers, whence it
follows that war chariots were not invented, or, at least, were
not retained in use, for the purpose of giving mobility to men
wearing gigantic shields, under which they could not hurry from
point to point. War chariots did not cease to be used in Egypt,
when men used small shields.

Moreover, Homeric warriors can make marches under shield, while
there is no mention of chariots to carry them to the point where
they are to lie in ambush (Odyssey, XIV. 470-510). If the shield
was so heavy as to render a chariot necessary, would Homer make
Hector trudge a considerable distance under shield, while
Achilles, under shield, sprints thrice round the whole
circumference of Troy? Helbig notices several other cases of long
runs under shield. Either Reichel is wrong, when he said that the
huge shield made the use of the war chariot necessary, or the poet
is "late"; he is a man who never saw a large shield like Hector's,
and, though he speaks of such shields, he thinks that men could
walk and run under them. When men did walk or run under shield, or
ride, if they ever rode, they would hang it over the left side,
like the lion-hunters on the famous inlaid dagger of Mycenae,
[Footnote: For the chariots, _cf_. Reichel, _Homerische
Waffen_, 120_ff_. Wien, 1901.] or the warrior on the
chessman referred to above (p. 111).

Aias, again, the big, brave, stupid Porthos of the _Iliad_,
has the largest shield of all, "like a tower" (this shield cannot
have been circular), and is recognised by his shield. But he never
enters a chariot, and, like Odysseus, has none of his own, because
both men come from rugged islands, unfit for chariot driving.
Odysseus has plenty of shields in his house in Ithaca, as we learn
from the account of the battle with the Wooers in the
_Odyssey;_ yet, in Ithaca, as at Troy, he kept no chariot.
Here, then, we have nations who fight from chariots, yet use small
shields, and heroes who wear enormous shields, yet never own a
chariot. Clearly, the great shield cannot have been the cause of
the use of the war chariot, as in the theory of Reichel.

Aias and his shield we meet in _Iliad_, VII. 206-220. "He
clothed himself upon his flesh in _all_ his armour" ([Greek:
teuchea]), to quote Mr. Leaf's translation; but the poet only
_describes_ his shield: his "towerlike shield of bronze, with
sevenfold ox-hide, that Tychius wrought him cunningly; Tychius,
the best of curriers, that had his home in Hyle, who made for him
his glancing shield of sevenfold hides of stalwart bulls, and
overlaid the seven with bronze."

The shield known to Homer then is, in this case, so tall as to
resemble a tower, and has bronze plating over bull's hide. By
tradition from an age of leather shields the Currier is still the
shield-maker, though now the shield has metal plating. It is
fairly clear that Greek tradition regarded the shield of Aias as
of the kind which covered the body from chin to ankles, and
resembled a bellying sail, or an umbrella unfurled, and drawn in
at the sides in the middle, so as to offer the semblance of two
bellies, or of one, pinched in at or near the centre. This is
probable, because the coins of Salamis, where Aias was worshipped
as a local hero of great influence, display this shield as the
badge of the AEginetan dynasty, claiming descent from Aias. The
shield is bossed, or bellied out, with two half-moons cut in the
centre, representing the _waist_, or pinched--in part, of the
ancient Mycenaean shield; the same device occurs on a Mycenaean
ring from AEgina in the British Museum. [Footnote: Evans,
_Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xiii. 213-216.]

In a duel with Aias the spear of Hector pierced the bronze and six
layers of hide on his shield, but stuck in the seventh. The spear
of Aias went through the circular (or "every way balanced") huge
shield of Hector, and through his corslet and _chiton_, but
Hector had doubled himself up laterally ([Greek: eklinthae], VII.
254), and was not wounded. The next stroke of Aias pierced his
shield, and wounded his neck; Hector replied with a boulder that
lighted on the centre of the shield of Aias, "on the boss,"
whether that means a mere ornament or knob, or whether it was the
genuine boss--which is disputed. Aias broke in the shield of
Hector with another stone; and the gentle and joyous passage of
arms was stopped.

The shield of Agamemnon was of the kind that "cover all the body
of a man," and was "every way equal," or "circular." It was plated
with twelve circles of bronze, and had twenty [Greek: omphaloi],
or ornamental knobs of tin, and the centre was of black cyanus
(XI. 31-34). There was also a head of the Gorgon, with Fear and
Panic. The description is not intelligible, and I do not discuss
it.

A man could be stabbed in the middle of the belly, "under his
shield" (XI. 424-425), not an easy thing to do, if shields covered
the whole body to the feet; but, when a hero was leaping from his
chariot (as in this case), no doubt a spear could be pushed up
under the shield. The ancient Irish romances tell of a _gae
bulg_, a spear held in the warrior's toes, and jerked up under
the shield of his enemy! Shields could be held up on high, in an
attack on a wall garrisoned by archers (XII. 139), the great
Norman shield, also, could be thus lifted.

The Locrians, light armed infantry, had no shields, nor bronze
helmets, nor spears, but slings and bows (XIII. 714). Mr. Leaf
suspects that this is a piece of "false archaism," but we do not
think that early poets in an uncritical age are ever
archaeologists, good or bad. The poet is aware that some men have
larger, some smaller shields, just as some have longer and some
shorter spears (XIV. 370-377); but this does not prove that the
shields were of different types. A tall man might inherit the
shield of a short father, or _versa_.

A man in turning to fly might trip on the rim of his shield, which
proves how large it was: "it reached to his feet." This accident
of tripping occurred to Periphetes of Mycenae, but it might have
happened to Hector, whose shield reached from neck to ankles.
[Footnote: _Iliad_, XV. 645-646.]

Achilles must have been a large man, for he knew nobody whose
armour would fit him when he lost his own (though his armour
fitted Patroclus), he could, however, make shift with the tower-
like shield of Aias, he said.

[Illustration 1: "THE VASE OF ARISTONOTHOS"]

The evidence of the Iliad, then, is mainly to the effect that the
heroes carried huge shields, suspended by belts, covering the body
and legs. If Homer means, by the epithets already cited, "of good
circle" and "every way equal," that some shields of these vast
dimensions were circular, we have one example in early Greek art
which corroborates his description. This is "the vase of
Aristonothos," signed by that painter, and supposed to be of the
seventh century (Fig. 1). On one side, the companions of Odysseus
are boring out the eye of the Cyclops; on the other, a galley is
being rowed to the attack of a ship. On the raised deck of the
galley stand three warriors, helmeted and bearing spears. The
artist has represented their shields as covering their right
sides, probably for the purpose of showing their devices or
blazons. _Their_ shields are small round bucklers. On the
ship are three warriors whose shields, though circular, _cover
THE BODY from CHIN TO ANKLES_, as in Homer. One shield bears a
bull's head; the next has three crosses; the third blazon is a
crab. [Footnote: Mon. _dell_. Inst., is. pl. 4.]

Such personal armorial bearings are never mentioned by Homer. It
is not usually safe to argue, from his silence, that he is
ignorant of anything. He never mentions seals or signet rings, yet
they cannot but have been familiar to his time. Odysseus does not
seal the chest with the Phaeacian presents; he ties it up with a
cunning knot; there are no rings named among the things wrought by
Hephaestus, nor among the offerings of the Wooers of Penelope.
[Footnote: Helbig citing Odyssey, VIII. 445-448; _Iliad_,
XVIII. 401; Odyssey, xviii. 292-301.]

But, if we are to admit that Homer knew not rings and seals, which
lasted to the latest Mycenaean times, through the Dipylon age, to
the very late AEginetan treasure (800 B.C.) in the British Museum,
and appear again in the earliest dawn of the classical age and in
a Cyclic poem, it is plain that all the expansionists lived in
one, and that a most peculiar _ringless_ age. This view suits
our argument to a wish, but it is not credible that rings and
seals and engraved stones, so very common in Mycenaean and later
times, should have vanished wholly in the Homeric time. The poet
never mentions them, just as Shakespeare never mentions a thing so
familiar to him as tobacco. How often are finger rings mentioned
in the whole mass of Attic tragic poetry? We remember no example,
and instances are certainly rare: Liddell and Scott give none. Yet
the tragedians were, of course, familiar with rings and seals.

Manifestly, we cannot say that Homer knew no seals, because he
mentions none; but armorial blazons on shields could be ignored by
no poet of war, if they existed.

Meanwhile, the shields of the warriors on the vase, being circular
and covering body and legs, answer most closely to Homer's
descriptions. Helbig is reduced to suggest, first, that these
shields are worn by men aboard ship, as if warriors had one sort
of shield when aboard ship and another when fighting on land, and
as if the men in the other vessel were not equally engaged in a
sea fight. No evidence in favour of such difference of practice,
by sea and land, is offered. Again, Helbig does not trust the
artist, in this case, though the artist is usually trusted to draw
what he sees; and why should he give the men in the other ship or
boat small bucklers, genuine, while bedecking the warriors in the
adverse vessel with large, purely imaginary shields? [Footnote:
Helbig, _Das Homerische Epos_, ii. pp. 313-314.] It is not in
the least "probable," as Helbig suggests, that the artist is
shirking the trouble of drawing the figure.

Reichel supposes that round bucklers were novelties when the vase
was painted (seventh century), and that the artist did not
understand how to depict them. [Footnote: _Homerische
Waffen_, p. 47.] But he depicted them very well as regards the
men in the galley, save that, for obvious aesthetic reasons, he
chose to assume that the men in the galley were left-handed and
wore their shields on their right arms, his desire being to
display the blazons of both parties. [Footnote: See the same
arrangement in a Dipylon vase. Baumeister, _Denkmaler_, iii.
p. 1945.] We thus see, if the artist may be trusted, that shields,
which both "reached to the feet" and were circular, existed in his
time (the seventh century), so that possibly they may have existed
in Homer's time and survived into the age of small bucklers.
Tyrtaeus (late seventh century), as Helbig remarks, speaks of "a
_wide_ shield, covering thighs, shins, breast, and
shoulders." [Footnote: _Tyrtaeus_, xi. 23; Helbig, _Das
Homerische Epos_, ii. p. 315, Note 2.]

Nothing can be more like the large shields of the vase of
Aristonothos. Thus the huge circular shield seems to have been a
practicable shield in actual use. If so, when Homer spoke of large
circular shields he may have meant large circular shields. On the
Dodwell pyxis of 650 to 620 B.C., a man wears an oval shield,
covering him from the base of the neck to the ankles. He wears it
on his left arm. [Footnote: Walters, _Ancient Pottery_, p.
316.]

Of shields certainly small and light, worn by the chiefs, there is
not a notice in the _Iliad_, unless there be a hint to that
effect in the accounts of heroes running, walking considerable
distances, and "stepping lightly" under shields, supposed, by the
critics, to be of crushing weight. In such passages the poet may
be carried away by his own _verve_, or the heroes of ancient
times may be deemed capable of exertions beyond those of the
poet's contemporaries, as he often tells us that, in fact, the old
heroes were. A poet is not a scientific military writer; and in
the epic poetry of all other early races very gross exaggeration
is permitted, as in the [blank space] the old Celtic romances,
and, of course, the huge epics of India. In Homer "the skill of
the poet makes things impossible convincing," Aristotle says; and
it is a critical error to insist on taking Homer absolutely and
always _au pied de la lettre_. He seems, undeniably, to have
large body-covering shields present to his mind as in common use.

Small shields of the Greek historic period are "unknown to Homer,"
Mr. Leaf says, "with a very few curious exceptions," [Footnote:
_Iliad_, vol. i. p. 575.] detected by Reichel in Book X. 15
[Footnote: _Ibid, vol. i. p. 569, fig. 2.], where Diomede's men
sleep with their heads resting on their shields, whereas a big-
bellied Mycenaean shield rises, he says, too high for a pillow.
But some Mycenzean shields were perfectly flat; while, again,
nothing could be more comfortable, as a head-rest, than the hollow
between the upper and lower bulges of the Mycenzean huge shield.
The Zulu wooden head-rest is of the same character. Thus this
passage in Book X. does not prove that small circular shields were
known to Homer, nor does X. 5 13. 526-530, an obscure text in
which it is uncertain whether Diomede and Odysseus ride or drive
the horses of Rhesus. They _could_ ride, as every one must
see, even though equipped with great body-covering shields. True,
the shielded hero could neither put his shield at his back nor in
front of him when he rode; but he could hang it sidewise, when it
would cover his left side, as in the early Middle Ages (1060-1160
A.D.).

The taking of the shield from a man's shoulders (XI. 374) does not
prove the shield to be small; the shield hung by the belt
(_telamon_) from the shoulder. [Footnote: On the other side,
see Reichel, _Homerische Waffen_, pp. 40-44. Wien, 1901. We
have replied to his arguments above.]

So far we have the results that Homer seems most familiar with
vast body-covering shields; that such shields were suspended by a
baldric, not worn on the left arm; that they were made of layers
of hide, plated with bronze, and that such a shield as Aias wore
must have been tall, doubtless oblong, "like a tower," possibly it
was semi-cylindrical. Whether the epithets denoting roundness
refer to circular shields or to the double _targe_, g-shaped,
of Mycenaean times is uncertain.

We thus come to a puzzle of unusual magnitude. If Homer does not
know small circular shields, but refers always to huge shields,
whereas, from the eighth century B.C. onwards, such shields were
not in use (disregarding Tyrtaeus, and the vase of Aristonothos on
which they appear conspicuously, and the Dodwell pyxis), where are
we? Either we have a harmonious picture of war from a very ancient
date of large shields, or late poets did not introduce the light
round buckler of their own period. Meanwhile they are accused of
introducing the bronze corslets and other defensive armour of
their own period. Defensive armour was unknown, we are told, in
the Mycenaean prime, which, if true, does not affect the question.
Homer did not live in or describe the Mycenaean prime, with its
stone arrow-tips. Why did the late poets act so inconsistently?
Why were they ignorant of small circular shields, which they saw
every day? Or why, if they knew them, did they not introduce them
in the poems, which, we are told, they were filling with non-
Mycenaean greaves and corslets?

This is one of the dilemmas which constantly arise to confront the
advocates of the theory that the _Iliad_ is a patchwork of
many generations. "Late" poets, if really late, certainly in
every-day life knew small parrying bucklers worn on the left arm,
and huge body-covering shields perhaps they rarely saw in use.
They also knew, and the original poet, we are told, did not know
bronze corslets and greaves. The theory of critics is that late
poets introduced the bronze corslets and greaves with which they
were familiar into the poems, but scrupulously abstained from
alluding to the equally familiar small shields. Why are they so
recklessly anachronistic and "up-to-date" with the corslets and
greaves, and so staunchly but inconsistently conservative about
keeping the huge shields?

Mr. Leaf explains thus: "The groundwork of the Epos is Mycenaean,
in the arrangement of the house, in the prevalence of copper" (as
compared with iron), "and, as Reichel has shown, in armour. Yet in
many points the poems are certainly later than the prime, at
least, of the Mycenaean age"--which we are the last to deny. "Is
it that the poets are deliberately trying to present the
conditions of an age anterior to their own? or are they depicting
the circumstances by which they are surrounded--circumstances
which slowly change during the period of the development of the
Epos? Cauer decides for the latter alternative, _the only one
which is really conceivable_ [Footnote: Then how is the alleged
archaeology of the poet of Book X. conceivable?] in an age whose
views are in many ways so nave as the poems themselves prove them
to have been." [Footnote: _Classical Review, ix. pp. 463,
464._]

Here we entirely side with Mr. Leaf. No poet, no painter, no
sculptor, in a naf, uncritical age, ever represents in art
anything but what he sees daily in costume, customs, weapons,
armour, and ways of life. Mr. Leaf, however, on the other hand,
occasionally chides pieces of deliberate archaeological pedantry
in the poets, in spite of his opinion that they are always
"depicting the circumstances by which they are surrounded." But as
huge man-covering shields are _not_ among the circumstances
by which the supposed late poets were surrounded, why do they
depict them? Here Mr. Leaf corrects himself, and his argument
departs from the statement that only one theory is "conceivable,"
namely, that the poets depict their own surroundings, and we are
introduced to a new proposition. "Or rather we must recognise
everywhere a compromise between two opposing principles: the
singer, on the one hand, has to be conservatively tenacious of the
old material which serves as the substance of his song; on the
other hand, he has to be vivid and actual in the contributions
which he himself makes to the common stock." [Footnote:
_Ibid._, ix. pp. 463, 464.]

The conduct of such singers is so weirdly inconsistent as not to
be easily credible. But probably they went further, for "it is
possible that the allusions" to the corslet "may have been
introduced in the course of successive modernisation such as the
oldest parts of the _Iliad_ seem in many cases to have passed
through. But, in fact, _Iliad_, XI. 234 is the only mention
of a corslet in any of the oldest strata, so far as we can
distinguish them, and here Reichel translates _thorex_
'shield.'" [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 578.] Mr.
Leaf's statement we understand to mean that, when the singer or
reciter was delivering an ANCIENT lay he did not introduce any of
the military gear--light round bucklers, greaves, and corslets--
with which his audience were familiar. But when the singer
delivers a new lay, which he himself has added to "the kernel,"
then he is "vivid and actual," and speaks of greaves and corslets,
though he still cleaves in his new lay to the obsolete chariot,
the enormous shield, and, in an age of iron, to weapons of bronze.
He is a sadly inconsistent new poet!

Meanwhile, sixteen allusions to the corslet "can be cut out," as
probably "some or all these are additions to the text made at a
time when it seemed absurd to think of a man in full armour
without a corslet." [Footnote: _Ibid_, vol. i. p. 577.] Thus
the reciters, after all, did not spare "the old material" in the
matter of corslets. The late singers have thus been
"conservatively tenacious" in clinging to chariots, weapons of
bronze, and obsolete enormous shields, while they have also been
"vivid and actual" and "up to date" in the way of introducing
everywhere bronze corslets, greaves, and other armour unknown, by
the theory, in "the old material which is the substance of their
song." By the way, they have not even spared the shield of the old
material, for it was of leather or wood (we have no trace of metal
plating on the old Mycenaean shields), and the singer, while
retaining the size of it, has added a plating of bronze, which we
have every reason to suppose that Mycenaean shields of the prime
did not present to the stone-headed arrow.

This theory of singers, who are at once "conservatively tenacious"
of the old and impudently radical in pushing in the new, appears
to us to be logically untenable. We have, in Chapter I, observed
the same inconsistency in Helbig, and shall have occasion to
remark again on its presence in the work of that great
archaeologist. The inconsistency is inseparable from theories of
expansion through several centuries. "Many a method," says Mr.
Leaf, "has been proposed which, up to a certain point, seemed
irresistible, but there has always been a residuum which returned
to plague the inventor." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. X.]
This is very true, and our explanation is that no method which
starts from the hypothesis that the poems are the product of
several centuries will work. The "residuum" is the element which
cannot be fitted into any such hypothesis. But try the hypothesis
that the poems are the product of a single age, and all is
harmonious. There is no baffling "residuum." The poet describes
the details of a definite age, not that of the Mycenaean bloom,
not that of 900-600 A.D.

We cannot, then, suppose that many generations of irresponsible
reciters at fairs and public festivals conservatively adhered to
the huge size of the shield, while altering its material; and also
that the same men, for the sake of being "actual" and up to date,
dragged bronze corslets and greaves not only into new lays, but
into passages of lays by old poets who had never heard of such
things. Consequently, the poetic descriptions of arms and armour
must be explained on some other theory. If the poet, again, as
others suppose--Mr. Ridgeway for one--knew such bronze-covered
circular shields as are common in central and western Europe of
the Bronze Age, why did he sometimes represent them as extending
from neck to ankles, whereas the known bronze circular shields are
not of more than 2 feet 2 inches to 2 feet 6 inches in diameter?
[Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece, vol. i pp. 453,
471._] Such a shield, without the wood or leather, weighed 5
lbs. 2 ozs., [Footnote: _Ibid., vol._ i. p. 462.] and a
strong man might walk or run under it. Homer's shields would be
twice as heavy, at least, though, even then, not too heavy for a
Hector, or an Aias, or Achilles. I do not see that the round
bronze shields of Limerick, Yetholm, Beith, Lincolnshire, and
Tarquinii, cited by Mr. Ridgeway, answer to Homer's descriptions
of huge shields. They are too small. But it is perfectly possible,
or rather highly probable, that in the poet's day shields of
various sizes and patterns coexisted.

 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SHIELDS

Turning to archaeological evidence, we find no remains in the
graves of the Mycenaean prime of the bronze which covered the ox-
hides of Homeric shields, though we do find gold ornaments
supposed to have been attached to shields. There is no evidence
that the Mycenaean shield was plated with bronze. But if we judge
from their shape, as represented in works of Mycenaean art, some
of the Mycenaean shields were not of wood, but of hide. In works
of art, such as engraved rings and a bronze dagger (Fig. 2) with
pictures inlaid in other metals, the shield, covering the whole
body, is of the form of a bellying sail, or a huge umbrella "up,"
and pinched at both sides near the centre: or is like a door, or a
section of a cylinder; only one sort of shield resembles a big-
bellied figure of 8. Ivory models of shields indicate the same
figure. [Footnote: Schuchardt, _Schliemann's Excavations_, p.
192.] A gold necklet found at Enkomi, in Cyprus, consists of a
line of models of this Mycenaean shield. [Footnote: _Excavations
in Cyprus_, pl. vii. fig. 604. A. S. Murray, 1900.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2. DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS]

[Illustration: FIG. 3.]

There also exists a set of small Mycenaean relics called Palladia,
found at Mycenae, Spata and in the earliest strata of the
Acropolis at Athens. They resemble "two circles joined together so
as to intersect one another slightly," or "a long oval pinched in
at the middle." They vary in size from six inches to half an inch,
and are of ivory, glazed ware, or glass. Several such shields are
engraved on Mycenaean gems; one, in gold, is attached to a silver
vase. The ornamentation shown on them occurs, too, on Mycenaean
shields in works of art; in short, these little objects are
representations in miniature of the big double-bellied Mycenaean
shield. Mr. Ernest Gardner concludes that these objects are the
"schematised" reductions of an armed human figure, only the shield
which covered the whole body is left. They are talismans
symbolising an armed divinity, Pallas or another. A Dipylon vase
(Fig. 3) shows a man with a shield, possibly evolved out of this
kind, much scooped out at the waist, and reaching from neck to
knees. The shield covers his side, not his back or front.
[Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol. xiii. pp. 21-
24.]

[Illustration: FIG. 4.]

One may guess that the original pinch at the waist of the
Mycenaean shield was evolved later into the two deep scoops to
enable the warrior to use his arms more freely, while the shield,
hanging from his neck by a belt, covered the front of his body.
Fig. 4 shows shields of 1060-1160 A.D. equally designed to cover
body and legs. Men wore shields, if we believe the artists of
Mycenae, when lion-hunting, a sport in which speed of foot is
desirable; so they cannot have been very weighty. The shield then
was hung over one side, and running was not so very difficult as
if it hung over back or front (_cf._ Fig. 5). The shields
sometimes reach only from the shoulders to the calf of the leg.
[Footnote: Reichel, p. 3, fig. 5, Grave III. at Mycenae.] The
wearer of the largest kind could only be got at by a sword-stab
over the rim into the throat [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 2, fig.
2.] (Fig. 5). Some shields of this shape were quite small, if an
engraved rock-crystal is evidence; here the shield is not half so
high as an adjacent goat, but it may be a mere decoration to fill
the field of the gem. [Footnote: Reichel, p. 3, fig. 7.]

[Illustration: FIG. 5. RINGS: SWORDS AND SHIELDS]

Other shields, covering the body from neck to feet, were sections
of cylinders; several of these are represented on engraved
Mycenaean ring stones or on the gold; the wearer was protected in
front and flank [Footnote: _Ibid._, p. 4, fig II, 12; p. I,
fig I.] (Fig. 5).

In a "maze of buildings" outside the precincts of the graves of
Mycenae, Dr. Schliemann found fragments of vases much less ancient
than the contents of the sepulchres. There was a large amphora,
the "Warrior Vase" (Fig. 6). The men wear apparently a close-
fitting coat of mail over a chiton, which reaches with its fringes
half down the thigh. The shield is circular, with a half-moon cut
out at the bottom. The art is infantile. Other warriors carry long
oval shields reaching, at least, from neck to shin. [Footnote:
Schuchardt, _Schliemann's_ Excavations, pp. 279-285.] They
wear round leather caps, their enemies have helmets. On a
Mycenaean painted _stele_, apparently of the same relatively
late period, the costume is similar, and the shield--oval--reaches
from neck to knee. [Footnote: Ridgeway, vol. i. p. 314.] The
Homeric shields do not answer to the smaller of these late and
ugly representations, while, in their bronze plating, Homeric
shields seem to differ from the leather shields of the Mycenaean
prime.

Finally, at Enkomi, near Salamis, in Cyprus, an ivory carving (in
the British Museum) shows a fighting man whose perfectly circular
shield reaches from neck to knee; this is one of several figures
in which Mr. Arthur Evans finds "a most valuable illustration of
the typical Homeric armour." [Footnote: _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute, vol. xxx. pp. 209-214, figs. 5, 6,
9._] The shield, however, is not so huge as those of Aias,
Hector, and Periphetes.

I can only conclude that Homer describes intermediate types of
shield, as large as the Mycenaean but plated with bronze, for a
reason to be given later. This kind of shield, the kind known to
Homer, was not the invention of late poets living in an age of
circular bucklers, worn on the left arm, and these supposed late
poets never introduce into the epics such bucklers.

What manner of military needs prompted the invention of the great
Mycenaean shields which, by Homer's time, were differentiated by
the addition of metal plating?

[Illustration: FIG. 6. FRAGMENTS OF WARRIOR VASE]

The process of evolution of the huge Mycenaean shields, and of the
Homeric shields covering the body from chin to ankles, can easily
be traced. The nature of the attack expected may be inferred from
the nature of the defence employed. Body-covering shields were,
obviously, at first, _defences against showers of arrows_
tipped with stone. "In the earlier Mycenaean times the arrow-head
of obsidian alone appears," as in Mycenaean Grave IV. In the upper
strata of Mycenae and in the later tombs the arrow-head is usually
of bronze. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 206.] No man going
into battle naked, without body armour, like the Mycenaeans (if
they had none), could protect himself with a small shield, or even
with a round buckler of twenty-six inches in diameter, against the
rain of shafts. In a fight, on the other hand, where man singled
out man, and spears were the missiles, and when the warriors had
body armour, or even when they had not, a small shield sufficed;
as we see among the spear-throwing Zulus and the spear-throwing
aborigines of Australia (unacquainted with bows and arrows), who
mainly use shields scarcely broader than a bat. On the other hand,
the archers of the Algonquins in their wars with the Iroquois,
about 1610, used clubs and tomahawks but no spears, no missiles
but arrows, and their leather shield was precisely the [Greek:
amphibrotae aspis] of Homer, "covering the whole of a man." It is
curious to see, in contemporary drawings (1620), Mycenaean shields
on Red Indian shoulders!

In Champlain's sketches of fights between French and Algonquins
against Iroquois (1610-1620), we see the Algonquins outside the
Iroquois stockade, which is defended by archers, sheltering under
huge shields shaped like the Mycenaean "tower" shield, though less
cylindrical; in fact, more like the shield of the fallen hunter
depicted on the dagger of Mycenae. These Algonquin shields
partially cover the sides as well as the front of the warrior, who
stoops behind them, resting the lower rim of the shield on the
ground. The shields are oblong and rounded at the top, much like
that of Achilles [Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii p. 605] in Mr. Leaf's
restoration? The sides curve inward. Another shield, oval in shape
and flat, appears to have been suspended from the neck, and covers
an Iroquois brave from chin to feet. The Red Indian shields, like
those of Mycenae, were made of leather; usually of buffalo hide,
[Footnote: _Les Voyages de Sr. de Champlain_, Paris, 1620, f.
22: "rondache de cuir bouili, qui est d'un animal, comme le
boufle."] good against stone-tipped arrows. The braves are naked,
like the unshielded archers on the Mycenaean silver vase fragment
representing a siege (Fig. 7). The description of the Algonquin
shields by Champlain, when compared with his drawings, suggests
that we cannot always take artistic representations as exact. In
his designs only a few Algonquins and one Iroquois carry the huge
shields; the unshielded men are stark naked, as on the Mycenaean
silver vase. But in his text Champlain says that the Iroquois,
like the Algonquins, "carried arrow-proof shields" and "a sort of
armour woven of cotton thread"--Homer's [Greek: linothoraex]
(_Iliad_, II. 259, 850). These facts appear in only one of
Champlain's drawings [Footnote: Dix's _Champlain_, p. 113.
Appleton, New York, 1903. Laverdire's _Champlain_, vol. iv.,
plate opposite p. 85 (1870).] (Fig. 8).

These Iroquois and Algonquin shields are the armour of men
exposed, not to spears, but to a hail of flint-tipped arrows. As
spears came in for missiles in Greek warfare, arrows did not
wholly go out, but the noble warriors preferred spear and sword.
[Footnote: Cf. Archilochus, 3.] Mr. Ridgeway erroneously says that
"no Achaean warrior employs the bow for war." [Footnote: _Early
Age of Greece_, i. 301.] Teucer, frequently, and Meriones use
the bow; like Pandarus and Paris, on the Trojan side, they resort
to bow or spear, as occasion serves. Odysseus, in _Iliad_,
Book X., is armed with the bow and arrows of Meriones when acting
as a spy; in the _Odyssey_ his skill as an archer is
notorious, but he would not pretend to equal famous bowmen of an
older generation, such as Heracles and Eurytus of OEchalia, whose
bow he possessed but did not take to Troy. Philoctetes is his
master in archery. [Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 219-222.]

[Illustration: FIG. 7. FRAGMENT OF SIEGE VASE]

The bow, however, was little esteemed by Greek warriors who
desired to come to handstrokes, just as it was despised, to their
frequent ruin, by the Scots in the old wars with England. Dupplin,
Falkirk, Halidon Hill and many another field proved the error.

There was much need in Homeric warfare for protection against
heavy showers of arrows. Mr. Monro is hardly correct when he says
that, in Homer, "we do not hear of _BODIES_ of archers, of
arrows darkening the air, as in descriptions of oriental warfare."
[Footnote: _Ibid._, vol. ii. 305.] These precise phrases are
not used by Homer; but, nevertheless, arrows are flying thick in
his battle pieces. The effects are not often noticed, because, in
Homer, helmet, shield, corslet, _zoster_, and greaves, as a
rule prevent the shafts from harming the well-born, well-armed
chiefs; the nameless host, however, fall frequently. When Hector
came forward for a parley (_Iliad_, III. 79), the Achaens
"kept shooting at him with arrows," which he took unconcernedly.
Teucer shoots nine men in _Iliad_, VIII. 297-304. In XI.
_85_ the shafts ([Greek: belea]) showered and the common
soldiers fell--[misprint] being arrows as well as thrown spears.
[Footnote: _Iliad_, IV. 465; XVI. 668, 678.] Agamemnon and
Achilles are as likely, they say, to be hit by arrow as by spear
(XI. 191; XXI. 13). Machaon is wounded by an arrow. Patroclus
meets Eurypylus limping, with an arrow in his thigh--archer
unknown. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XI. 809, 810.] Meriones, though
an Achaean paladin, sends a bronze-headed arrow through the body
of Harpalion (XIII. _650_). The light-armed Locrians are all
bowmen and slingers (XIII. 716). Acamas taunts the Argives as
"bowmen" (XIV. 479). "The war-cry rose on both sides, and the
arrows leaped from the bowstrings" (XV. 313). Manifestly the
arrows are always on the wing, hence the need for the huge Homeric
and Mycenaean shields. Therefore, as the Achaeans in Homer wore
but flimsy corslets (this we are going to prove), the great body-
covering shield of the Mycenaean prime did not go out of vogue in
Homer's time, when bronze had superseded stone arrow-heads, but
was strengthened by bronze plating over the leather. In a later
age the bow was more and more neglected in Greek warfare, and
consequently large shields went out, after the close of the
Mycenaean age, and round parrying bucklers came into use.

The Greeks appear never to have been great archers, for some vases
show even the old heroes employing the "primary release," the
arrow nock is held between the thumb and forefinger--an
ineffectual release. [Footnote: C. J. Longman, _Archery_.
Badminton Series.] The archers in early Greek art often stoop or
kneel, unlike the erect archers of old England; the bow is usually
small--a child's weapon; the string is often drawn only to the
breast, as by Pandarus in the _Iliad_ (IV. i 23). By 730 B.C.
the release with three fingers, our western release, had become
known. [Footnote: Leaf _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 585.]

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--ALGONQUIN CORSLET. From Laverdiere,
_Oeuvres de Champlain_, vol. iv. fol. 4. Quebec, 1870.]

The course of evolution seems to be: (1) the Mycenaean prime of
much archery, no body armour (?); huge leather "man-covering"
shields are used, like those of the Algonquins; (2) the same
shields strengthened with metal, light body armour-thin corslets--
and archery is frequent, but somewhat despised (the Homeric age);
(3) the parrying shield of the latest Mycenaean age (infantry with
body armour); (4) the Ionian hoplites, with body armour and small
circular bucklers.

It appears, then, that the monstrous Mycenaean shield is a
survival of an age when bows and arrows played the same great part
as they did in the wars of the Algonquins and Iroquois. The
celebrated picture of a siege on a silver vase, of which fragments
were found in Grave IV., shows archers skirmishing; there is an
archer in the lion hunt on the dagger blade; thirty-five obsidian
arrow-heads were discovered in Grave IV., while "in the upper
strata of Mycenae and in the later tombs the arrow-head is usually
of bronze, though instances of obsidian still occur." In 1895 Dr.
Tsountas found twenty arrow-heads of bronze, ten in each bundle,
in a Mycenaean chamber tomb. Messrs. Tsountas and Manatt say, "In
the Acropolis graves at Mycenae... the spear-heads were but few...
arrow-heads, on the contrary, are comparatively abundant." They
infer that "picked men used shield and spear; the rank and file
doubtless fought simply with bow and sling." [Footnote: Tsountas
and Manatt, zog. [sic]]. The great Mycenaean shield was obviously
evolved as a defence against arrows and sling-stones flying too
freely to be parried with a small buckler. What other purpose
could it have served? But other defensive armour was needed, and
was evolved, by Homer's men, as also, we shall see, by the
Algonquins and Iroquois. The Algonquins and Iroquois thus prove
that men who thought their huge shields very efficient, yet felt
the desirableness of the protection afforded by corslets, for they
wore, in addition to their shields, such corslets as they were
able to manufacture, made of cotton, and corresponding to the
Homeric [Greek: linothoraex]. [Footnote: In the interior of some
shields, perhaps of all, were two [Greek: kanones] (VIII 193;
XIII. 407). These have been understood as meaning a brace through
which the left arm went, and another brace which the left hand
grasped. Herodotus says that the Carians first used shield grips,
and that previously shields were suspended by belts from the neck
and left shoulder (Herodotus, i. 171). It would be interesting to
know how he learned these facts-perhaps from Homer; but certainly
the Homeric shield is often described as suspended by a belt. Mr.
Leaf used to explain the [Greek: kanones] (XIII. 407) as "serving
to attach the two ends of the baldrick to the shield"
(_Hellenic_ Society's _Journal_, iv. 291), as does Mr.
Ridgeway. But now he thinks that they were two pieces of wood,
crossing each other, and making the framework on which the leather
of the shield was stretched. The hero could grasp the cross-bar,
at the centre of gravity, in his left hand, rest the lower rim of
the shield on the ground, and crouch behind it (XI. 593; XIII
157). In neither passage cited is anything said about resting the
lower rim "on the ground," and in the second passage the warrior
is actually advancing. In this attitude, however-grounding the
lower rim of the great body-covering shield, and crouching behind
it--we see Algonquin warriors of about 1610 in Champlain's
drawings of Red Indian warfare.]

Mr. Leaf, indeed, when reviewing Reichel, says that "the use of
the Mycenaean shield is inconsistent with that of the metal
breastplate; "the shield" covers the wearer in a way which makes a
breastplate an useless encumbrance; or rather, it is ignorance of
the breastplate which alone can explain the use of such
frightfully cumbrous gear as the huge shield." [Footnote:
_Classical Review_, ix. p. 55. 1895.]

But the Algonquins and Iroquois wore such breastplates as they
could manufacture, though they also used shields of great size,
suspended, in Mycenaean fashion, from the neck and shoulder by a
_telamon_ or belt. The knights of the eleventh century A.D.,
in addition to very large shields, wore ponderous hauberks or
byrnies, as we shall prove presently. As this combination of great
shield with corslet was common and natural, we cannot agree with
Mr. Leaf when he says, "it follows that the Homeric warriors wore
no metal breastplate, and that all the passages where the [Greek:
thoraes] is mentioned are either later interpolations or refer to
some other sort of armour," which, _ex hypothesi_, would
itself be superfluous, given the body-covering shield.

Shields never make corslets superfluous when men can manufacture
corslets.

The facts speak for themselves: the largest shields are not
exclusive, so to speak, of corslets; the Homeric warriors used
both, just as did Red Indians and the mediaeval chivalry of
Europe. The use of the aspis in Homer, therefore, throws no
suspicion on the concomitant use of the corslet. The really
surprising fact would be if late poets, who knew only small round
bucklers, never introduced them into the poems, but always spoke
of enormous shields, while they at the same time did introduce
corslets, unknown to the early poems which they continued. Clearly
Reichel's theory is ill inspired and inconsistent. This becomes
plain as soon as we trace the evolution of shields and corslets in
ages when the bow played a great part in war. The Homeric bronze-
plated shield and bronze corslet are defences of a given moment in
military evolution; they are improvements on the large leather
shield of Mycenaean art, but, as the arrows still fly in clouds,
the time for the small parrying buckler has not yet come.

By the age of the Dipylon vases with human figures, the shield had
been developed into forms unknown to Homer. In Fig. 3 (p. 131) we
see one warrior with a fantastic shield, slim at the waist, with
horns, as it were, above and below; the greater part of the shield
is expended uselessly, covering nothing in particular. In form
this targe seems to be a burlesque parody of the figure of a
Mycenaean shield. The next man has a short oblong shield, rather
broad for its length--perhaps a reduction of the Mycenaean door-
shaped shield. The third warrior has a round buckler. All these
shields are manifestly post-Homeric; the first type is the most
common in the Dipylon art; the third survived in the eighth-
century buckler.

[Illustration: FIG. 9.-GOLD CORSLET]




CHAPTER VIII


THE BREASTPLATE

No "practicable" breastplates, hauberks, corslets, or any things
of the kind have so far been discovered in graves of the Mycenaean
prime. A corpse in Grave V. at Mycenae had, however, a golden
breastplate, with oval bosses representing the nipples and with
prettily interlaced spirals all over the remainder of the gold
(Fig. 9). Another corpse had a plain gold breastplate with the
nipples indicated. [Footnote: Schuchardt, _Schliemann's_
Excavations, pp. 254-257, fig. 256.] These decorative corslets of
gold were probably funereal symbols of practicable breastplates of
bronze, but no such pieces of armour are worn by the fighting-men
on the gems and other works of art of Mycenae, and none are found
in Mycenaean graves. But does this prove anything? Leg-guards,
broad metal bands clasping the leg below the knee, are found in
the Mycenaean shaft graves, but are never represented in Mycenaean
art. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 575.] Meanwhile,
bronze corslets are very frequently mentioned in the "rarely
alluded to," says Mr. Leaf, [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
576.] but this must be a slip of the pen. Connected with the
breastplate or _thorex_ ([Greek: thoraex]) is the verb
[Greek: thoraesso, thoraessethai], which means "to arm," or
"equip" in general.

The Achaeans are constantly styled in the _ILIAD_ and in the
_ODYSSEY_ "_chalkochitones_," "with bronze chitons."
epics have therefore boldly argued that by "bronze chitons" the
poet pleasantly alludes to shields. But as the Mycenaeans seem
scarcely to have worn any _CHITONS_ in battle, as far as we
are aware from their art, and are not known to have had any bronze
shields, the argument evaporates, as Mr. Ridgeway has pointed out.
Nothing can be less like a _chiton_ or smock, loose or tight,
than either the double-bellied huge shield, the tower-shaped
cylindrical shield, or the flat, doorlike shield, covering body
and legs in Mycenaean art. "The bronze _chiton_," says
Helbig, "is only a poetic phrase for the corslet."

Reichel and Mr. Leaf, however, think that "bronze chitoned" is
probably "a picturesque expression... and refers to the bronze-
covered shield." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, i. 578.] The
breastplate covered the upper part of the _chiton_, and so
might be called a "bronze _chiton_," above all, if it had
been evolved, as corselets usually have been, out of a real
_chiton_, interwoven with small plates or rings of bronze.
The process of evolution might be from a padded linen
_chiton_ ([Greek: linothooraes]) worn by Teucer, and on the
Trojan side by Amphius (as by nervous Protestants during Oates's
"Popish Plot"), to a leathern _chiton_, strengthened by
rings, or studs, or scales of bronze, and thence to plates.
[Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. pp. 309,
310.] Here, in this armoured _chiton_, would be an object
that a poet might readily call "a _chiton_ of bronze." But
that, if he lived in the Mycenaean age, when, so far as art shows,
_CHITONS_ were not worn at all, or very little, and scarcely
ever in battle, and when we know nothing of bronze-plating on
shields, the poet should constantly call a monstrous double-
bellied leather shield, or any other Mycemean type of shield, "a
_bronze chiton_," seems almost unthinkable. "A leather cloak"
would be a better term for such shields, if cloaks were in
fashion.

According to Mr. Myres (1899) the "stock line" in the
_Iliad_, about piercing a [Greek: poludaidalos thoraex] or
corslet, was inserted "to satisfy the practical criticisms of a
corslet-wearing age," the age of the later poets, the Age of Iron.
But why did not such practical critics object to the constant
presence in the poems of bronze weapons, in their age out of date,
if they objected to the absence from the poems of the corslets
with which they were familiar? Mr. Myres supposes that the line
about the [Greek: poludaidalos] corslet was already old, but had
merely meant "many-glittering body clothing"--garments set with
the golden discs and other ornaments found in Mycemean graves. The
bronze corslet, he says, would not be "many glittering," but would
reflect "a single star of light." [Footnote: _Journal of
Hellenic Studies._ 1899] Now, first, even if the star were a
single star, it would be as "many glittering" when the warrior was
in rapid and changeful motion as the star that danced when Beatrix
was born. Secondly, if the contemporary corslets of the Iron Age
were NOT "many glittering," practical corslet-wearing critics
would ask the poet, "why do you call corslets 'many glittering'?"
Thirdly, [Greek: poludaidalos] may surely be translated "a thing
of much art," and Greek corslets were incised with ornamental
designs. Thus Messrs. Hogarth and Bosanquet report "a very
remarkable 'Mycemean' bronze breastplate" from Crete, which "shows
four female draped figures, the two central ones holding a wreath
over a bird, below which is a sacred tree. The two outer figures
are apparently dancing. It is probably a ritual scene, and may
help to elucidate the nature of early AEgean cults." [Footnote:
_Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xx_. p. 322. 1899.] Here,
[Greek: poludaidalos]--if that word means "artistically wrought."
Helbig thinks the Epics silent about the gold spangles on dresses.
[Footnote: Helbig, p. 71.]

Mr. Myres applauds Reichel's theory that [blank space] first meant
a man's chest. If _thorex_ means a man's breast, then
_THOREX_ in a secondary sense, one thinks, would mean
"breastplate," as waist of a woman means, first, her waist; next,
her blouse (American). But Mr. Myres and Reichel say that the
secondary sense of _THOREX_ is not breastplate but "body
clothing," as if a man were all breast, or wore only a breast
covering, whereas Mycenaean art shows men wearing nothing on their
breasts, merely drawers or loin-cloths, which could not be called
_THOREX_, as they cover the antipodes of the breast.

The verb [Greek: thoraesestai], the theory runs on, merely meant
"to put on body clothing," which Mycenaeans in works of art, if
correctly represented, do not usually put on; they fought naked or
in bathing drawers. Surely we might as well argue that a
"waistcoat" might come to mean "body clothing in general," as that
a word for the male breast became, first, a synonym for the
covering of the male buttocks and for apparel in general, and,
next, for a bronze breastplate. These arguments appear rather
unconvincing, [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol.
xx. pp. 149, 150.] nor does Mycenaean art instruct us that men
went into battle dressed in body clothing which was thickly set
with many glittering gold ornaments, and was called "a many-
glittering _thorex_."

Further, if we follow Reichel and Mr. Leaf, the Mycenaeans wore
_chitons_ and called them _chitons_. They also used
bronze-plated shields, though of this we have no evidence. Taking
the bronze-plated (?) shield to stand poetically for the
_chiton_, the poet spoke of "_the bronze-chitoned
Achaeans_" But, if we follow Mr. Myres, the Mycenaeans also
applied the word _thorex_ to body clothing at large, in place
of the word _chiton_; and when a warrior was transfixed by a
spear, they said that his "many-glittering, gold-studded
_thorex_," that is, his body clothing in general, was
pierced. It does seem simpler to hold that _chiton_ meant
_chiton_; that _thorex_ meant, first, "breast," then
"breastplate," whether of linen, or plaited leather, or bronze,
and that to pierce a man through his [Greek: poludaidalos thoraex]
meant to pierce him through his handsome corslet. No mortal ever
dreamt that this was so till Reichel tried to make out that the
original poet describes no armour except the large Mycenaean
shield and the _mitr_, and that all corslets in the poems
were of much later introduction. Possibly they were, but they had
plenty of time wherein to be evolved long before the eighth
century, Reichel's date for corslets.

The argument is that a man with a large shield needs no body
armour, or uses the shield because he has no body armour.

But the possession and use of a large shield did not in the Middle
Ages, or among the Iroquois and Algonquins, make men dispense with
corslets, even when the shield was worn, as in Homer, slung round
the neck by a _telamon_ (_guige_ in Old French), belt,
or baldric.

We turn to a French _Chanson de Geste--La Chancun de Willem_
--of the twelfth century A.D., to judge by the handwriting. One of
the heroes, Girard, having failed to rescue Vivien in battle,
throws down his weapons and armour, blaming each piece for having
failed him. Down goes the heavy lance; down goes the ponderous
shield, suspended by a _telamon: "Ohitarge grant cume peises al
col_!" down goes the plated byrnie, "_Ohi grant broine cum me
vas apesant_" [Footnote: _La Chancun de Willame_, lines
716-726.]

The mediaeval warrior has a heavy byrnie as well as a great shield
suspended from his neck. It will be remarked also that the
Algonquins and Iroquois of the beginning of the seventeenth
century, as described by Champlain, give us the whole line of
Mycenaean evolution of armour up to a certain point. Not only had
they arrow-proof, body-covering shields of buffalo hide, but, when
Champlain used his arquebus against the Iroquois in battle, "they
were struck amazed that two of their number should have been
killed so promptly, seeing that they wore a sort of armour, woven
of cotton thread, and carried arrow-proof shields." We have
already alluded to this passage, but must add that Parkman,
describing from French archives a battle of Illinois against
Iroquois in 1680, speaks of "corslets of tough twigs interwoven
with cordage." [Footnote: _Discovery of the Great IV_,
[misprint] 1869.] Golden, in his _Five Nations_, writes of
the Red Indians as wearing "a kind of cuirass made of pieces of
wood joined together." [Footnote: Dix, _Champlion_ [misprint]]

To the kindness of Mr. Hill Tout I also owe a description of the
armour of the Indian tribes of north-west America, from a work of
his own. He says: "For protective purposes in warfare they
employed shields and coat-armour. The shields varied in form and
material from tribe to tribe. Among the Interior Salish they were
commonly made of wood, which was afterwards covered with hide.
Sometimes they consisted of several thicknesses of hide only. The
hides most commonly used were those of the elk, buffalo, or bear.
After the advent of the Hudson's Bay Co. some of the Indians used
to beat out the large copper kettles they obtained from the
traders and make polished circular shields of these. In some
centres long rectangular shields, made from a single or double
hide, were employed. These were often from 4 to 5 feet in length
and from 3 to 4 feet in width--large enough to cover the whole
body. Among the Dn tribes (Sikanis) the shield was generally
made of closely-woven wicker-work, and was of an ovaloid form
(exact size not given).

"The coat armour was _everywhere used_, and varied in form
and style in almost every centre. There were two ways in which
this was most commonly made. One of these was the slatted cuirass
or corslet, which was formed of a series of narrow slats of wood
set side by side vertically and fastened in place by interfacings
of raw hide. It went all round the body, being hung from the
shoulders with straps. The other was a kind of shirt of double or
treble elk hide, fastened at the side with thongs. Another kind of
armour, less common than that just described, was the long elk-
hide tunic, which reached to and even _below the knees and was
sleeved to the elbow."_

Mr. Hill Tout's minute description, with the other facts cited,
leaves no doubt that even in an early stage, as in later stages of
culture, the use of the great shield does not exclude the use of
such body armour as the means of the warriors enable them to
construct. To take another instance, Pausanias describes the
corslets of the neolithic Sarmatae, which he saw dedicated in the
temple of Asclepius at Athens. Corslets these bowmen and users of
the lasso possessed, though they did not use the metals. They
fashioned very elegant corslets out of horses' hoofs, cutting them
into scales like those of a pine cone, and sewing them on to
cloth. [Footnote: Pausanias, i. 211. [misprint] 6.]

Certain small, thin, perforated discs of stone found in Scotland
have been ingeniously explained as plates to be strung together on
a garment of cloth, a neolithic _chiton_. However this may
be, since Iroquois and Algonquins and Dn had some sort of woven,
or plaited, or wooden, or buff corslet, in addition to their great
shields, we may suppose that the Achaeans would not be less
inventive. They would pass from the [Greek: linothoraex]
(answering to the cotton corslet of the Iroquois) to a sort of
jack or _jaseran_ with rings, scales, or plates, and thence
to bronze-plate corslets, represented only by the golden
breastplates of the Mycenaean grave. Even if the Mycenaeans did
not evolve the corslet, there is no reason why, in the Homeric
times, it should not have been evolved.

For linen corslets, such as Homer mentions, in actual use and
represented in works of art we consult Mr. Leaf on _The
Armour_ of _Homeric_ Heroes.' He finds Memnon in a white
corslet, on a black-figured vase in the British Museum. There is
another white corsleted [Footnote: _Journal_ of
_Hellenic_ Studies, vol. iv. pp. 82, 83, 85.] Memnon figured
in the _Vases Peints_ of the Duc de Luynes (plate xii.). Mr.
Leaf suggests that the white colour represents "a corslet not of
metal but of linen," and cites _Iliad_, II. 529, 5 30.
"Xenophon mentions linen corslets as being worn by the Chalybes"
(_Anabasis_, iv. 15). Two linen corslets, sent from Egypt to
Sparta by King Amasis, are recorded by Herodotus (ii. 182; iii.
47). The corslets were of linen, embroidered in cotton and gold.
Such a piece of armour or attire might easily develop into the
[Greek: streptos chitoon] of _Iliad_, V. 113, in which
Aristarchus appears to have recognised chain or scale armour; but
we find no such object represented in Mycenaean art, which, of
course, does not depict Homeric armour or costume, and it seems
probable that the bronze corslets mentioned by Homer were plate
armour. The linen corslet lasted into the early sixth century B.C.
In the poem called _Stasiotica_, Alcaeus (_No_. 5)
speaks of his helmets, bronze greaves and corslets of linen
([Choorakes te neoi linoo]) as a defence against arrows.

Meanwhile a "bronze _chiton_" or corslet would turn spent
arrows and spent spears, and be very useful to a warrior whose
shield left him exposed to shafts shot or spears thrown from a
distance. Again, such a bronze _chiton_ might stop a spear of
which the impetus was spent in penetrating the shield. But Homeric
corslets did not, as a rule, avail to keep out a spear driven by
the hand at close quarters, or powerfully thrown from a short
distance. Even the later Greek corslets do not look as if they
could resist a heavy spear wielded by a strong hand.

I proceed to show that the Homeric corslet did not avail against a
spear at close quarters, but could turn an arrow point (once), and
could sometimes turn a spear which had perforated a shield. So
far, and not further, the Homeric corslet was serviceable. But if
a warrior's breast or back was not covered by the shield, and
received a thrust at close quarters, the corslet was pierced more
easily than the pad of paper which was said to have been used as
secret armour in a duel by the Master of Sinclair (1708).
[Footnote: _Proceedings in Court Marshal held upon John, Master
of Sinclair_. Sir Walter Scott. Roxburghe Club. (Date of event,
1708.)] It is desirable to prove this feebleness of the corslet,
because the poet often says that a man was smitten with the spear
in breast or back when unprotected by the shield, without
mentioning the corslet, whence it is argued by the critics that
corslets were not worn when the original lays were fashioned, and
that they have only been sporadically introduced, in an after age
when the corslet was universal, by "modernising" later rhapsodists
aiming at the up-to-date.

A weak point is the argument that Homer says back or breast was
pierced, without mentioning the corslet, whence it follows that he
knew no corslets. Quintus Smyrnaeus does the same thing. Of
course, Quintus knew all about corslets, yet (Book I. 248, 256,
257) he makes his heroes drive spear or sword through breast or
belly without mentioning the resistance of the corslet, even when
(I. 144, 594) he has assured us that the victim was wearing a
corslet. These facts are not due to inconsistent interpolation of
corslets into the work of this post-Christian poet Quintus.
[Footnote: I find a similar omission in the _Chanson de
Roland_.]

Corslets, in Homer, are flimsy; that of Lycaon, worn by Paris, is
pierced by a spear which has also perforated his shield, though
the spear came only from the weak hand of Menelaus (_Iliad_,
III. 357, 358). The arrow of Pandarus whistles through the corslet
of Menelaus (IV. 136). The same archer pierces with an arrow the
corslet of Diomede (V. 99, 100). The corslet of Diomede, however,
avails to stop a spear which has traversed his shield (V. 281).
The spear of Idomeneus pierces the corslet of Othryoneus, and the
spear of Antilochus perforates the corslet of a charioteer (XIII.
371, 397). A few lines later Diomede's spear reaches the midriff
of Hypsenor. No corslet is here mentioned, but neither is the
shield mentioned (this constantly occurs), and we cannot argue
that Hypsenor wore no corslet, unless we are also to contend that
he wore no shield, or a small shield. Idomeneus drives his spear
through the "_bronze chiton_" of Alcathus (XIII. 439, 440).
Mr. Leaf reckons these lines "probably an interpolation to turn
the linen _chiton_, the rending of which is the sign of
triumph, into a bronze corslet." But we ask why, if an editor or
rhapsodist went through the _Iliad_ introducing corslets, he
so often left them out, where the critics detect their absence
because they are not mentioned?

The spear of Idomeneus pierces another feeble corslet over the
victim's belly (XIII. 506-508). It is quite a surprise when a
corslet does for once avail to turn an arrow (XIII. 586-587). But
Aias drives his spear through the corslet of Phorcys, into his
belly (XVII 311-312). Thus the corslet scarcely ever, by itself,
protects a hero; it never protects him against an unspent spear;
even when his shield stands between his corslet and the spear both
are sometimes perforated. Yet occasionally the corslet saves a man
when the spear has gone through the shield. The poet, therefore,
sometimes gives us a man pierced in a part which the corslet
covers, without mentioning the flimsy article that could not keep
out a spear.

Reichel himself came to see, before his regretted death, that he
could not explain away the _thorex_ or corslet, on his
original lines, as a mere general name for "a piece of armour";
and he inclined to think that jacks, with metal plates sewn on,
did exist before the Ionian corslet. [Footnote: _Homerische
Waffen_, pp. 93-94. 1901.] The gold breastplates of the
Mycenaean graves pointed in this direction. But his general
argument is that corslets were interpolated into the old lays by
poets of a corslet-wearing age; and Mr. Leaf holds that corslets
may have filtered in, "during the course of successive
modernisation, such as the oldest parts of the _Iliad_ seem
in many cases to have passed through," [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, i.
p. 578.] though the new poets were, for all that, "conservatively
tenacious of the old material." We have already pointed out the
difficulty.

The poets who did not introduce the new small bucklers with which
they were familiar, did stuff the _Iliad_ full of corslets
unknown, by the theory, to the original poet, but familiar to
rhapsodists living centuries later. Why, if they were bent on
modernising, did they not modernise the shields? and how, if they
modernised unconsciously, as all uncritical poets do, did the
shield fail to be unconsciously "brought up to date"? It seems
probable that Homer lived at a period when both huge shield and
rather feeble corslet were in vogue.

We shall now examine some of the passages in which Mr. Leaf,
mainly following Reichel, raises difficulties about corslets. We
do not know their mechanism; they were composed of [Greek: guala],
presumed to be a backplate and a breastplate. The word
_gualon_ appears to mean a hollow, or the converse, something
convex. We cannot understand the mechanism (see a young man
putting on a corslet, on an amphora by Euthymides. Walter, vol.
ii. p. 176); but, if late poets, familiar with such corslets, did
not understand how they worked, they were very dull men. When
their descriptions puzzle us, that is more probably because we are
not at the point of view than because poets interpolated mentions
of pieces of armour which they did not understand, and therefore
cannot have been familiar with, and, in that case, would not
introduce.

Mr. Leaf starts with a passage in the _Iliad_ (III. 357-360)
--it recurs in another case: "Through the bright shield went the
ponderous spear, and through the inwrought" (very artfully
wrought), [Greek: poludaidalou] "breastplate it pressed on, and
straight beside his flank it rent the tunic, but he swerved and
escaped black death." Mr. Leaf says, "It is obvious that, after a
spear has passed through a breastplate, there is no longer any
possibility for the wearer to bend aside and so to avoid the
point...." But I suppose that the wearer, by a motion very
natural, doubled up sideways, so to speak, and so the spear merely
grazed his flesh. That is what I suppose the poet to intend. The
more he knew of corslets, the less would he mention an impossible
circumstance in connection with a corslet.

Again, in many cases the late poets, by the theory--though it is
they who bring the corslets in--leave the corslets out! A man
without shield, helmet, and spear calls himself "naked." Why did
not these late poets, it is asked, make him take off his corslet,
if he had one, as well as his shield? The case occurs in XXII.
111-113,124-125. Hector thinks of laying aside helmet, spear, and
shield, and of parleying with Achilles. "But then he will slay me
naked," that is, unarmed. "He still had his corslet," the critics
say, "so how could he be naked? or, if he had no corslet, this is
a passage uncontaminated by the late poets of the corslet age."
Now certainly Hector _was_ wearing a corslet, which he had
taken from Patroclus: that is the essence of the story. He would,
however, be "naked" or unprotected if he laid aside helmet, spear,
and shield, because Achilles could hit him in the head or neck (as
he did), or lightly drive the spear through the corslet, which, we
have proved, was no sound defence against a spear at close
quarters, though useful against chance arrows, and occasionally
against spears spent by traversing the shield.

We next learn that no corslet occurs in the _Odyssey_, or in
_Iliad_, Book X., called "very late": Mr. Leaf suggests that
it is of the seventh century B.C. But if the Odyssey and Iliad,
Book X., are really very late, their authors and interpolators
were perfectly familiar with Ionian corslets. Why did they leave
corslets out, while their predecessors and contemporaries were
introducing them all up and down the _Iliad_? In fact, in
Book X, no prince is regularly equipped; they have been called up
to deliberate in the dead of night, and when two go as spies they
wear casual borrowed gear. It is more important that no corslet is
mentioned in Nestor's arms in his tent. But are we to explain
this, and the absence of mention of corslets in the Odyssey (where
there is little about regular fighting), on the ground that the
author of _Iliad_, Book X., and all the many authors and
editors of the _Odyssey_ happened to be profound
archaeologists, and, unlike their contemporaries, the later poets
and interpolators of the _Iliad_, had formed the theory that
corslets were not known at the time of the siege of Troy and
therefore must not be mentioned? This is quite incredible. No
hypothesis can be more improbable. We cannot imagine late Ionian
rhapsodists listening to the _Iliad_, and saying, "These
poets of the _Iliad_ are all wrong: at the date of the
Mycenaean prime, as every educated man knows, corslets were not
yet in fashion. So we must have no corslets in the
_Odyssey_?"

A modern critic, who thinks this possible, is bringing the
practice of archaising poets of the late nineteenth century into
the minds of rhapsodists of the eighth century before Christ.
Artists of the middle of the sixteenth century always depict
Jeanne d'Arc in the armour and costume of their own time, wholly
unlike those of 1430. This is the regular rule. Late rhapsodists
would not delve in the archaeology of the Mycenaean prime. Indeed,
one does not see how they could discover, in Asia, that corslets
were not worn, five centuries earlier, on the other side of the
sea.

We are told that Aias and some other heroes are never spoken of as
wearing corslets. But Aias certainly did put on a set of pieces of
armour, and did not trust to his shield alone, tower-like as it
was. The description runs thus: The Achaeans have disarmed, before
the duel of Aias and Hector. Aias draws the lucky lot; he is to
'meet Hector, and bids the others pray to Zeus "while I clothe me
in my armour of battle." While they prayed, Aias "arrayed himself
in flashing bronze. And when he had now clothed upon his flesh
_all_ his pieces of armour" ([Greek: panta teuchae]) "he went
forth to fight." If Aias wore only a shield, as on Mr. Leaf's
hypothesis, he could sling it on before the Achaeans could breathe
a _pater noster_. His sword he would not have taken off;
swords were always worn. What, then, are "all his pieces of
armour"? (VII. 193, 206).

Carl Robert cites passages in which the [Greek: teuchea], taken
from the shoulders, include corslets, and are late and Ionian,
with other passages which are Mycenaean, with no corslet involved.
He adds about twenty more passages in which [Greek: teuchea]
include corslets. Among these references two are from the
_Doloneia_ (X. 254, 272), where Reichel finds no mention of
corslets. How Robert can tell [Greek: teuchea], which mean
corslets, from [Greek: teuchea], which exclude corslets, is not
obvious. But, at all events, he does see corslets, as in VII. 122,
where Reichel sees none, [Footnote: Robert, _Studien zur
Ilias_, pp. 20-21.] and he is obviously right.

It is a strong point with Mr. Leaf that "we never hear of the
corslet in the case of Aias...." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_,
vol. i. p. 576.] Robert, however, like ourselves, detects the
corslet among "_al_ the [Greek: teuchea]" which Aias puts on
for his duel with Hector (Iliad, VII. 193, 206-207).

In the same Book (VII. 101-103, 122) the same difficulty occurs.
Menelaus offers to fight Hector, and says, "I will put on my
harness" [Greek: thooraxomai], and does "put on his fair pieces of
armour" [Greek: teuchea kala], Agamemnon forbids him to fight, and
his friends "joyfully take his pieces of armour" [Greek: teuchea]
"from his shoulders" (_Iliad_, VII. 206-207). They take off
pieces of armour, in the plural, and a shield cannot be spoken of
in the plural; while the sword would not be taken off--it was worn
even in peaceful costume.

Idomeneus is never named as wearing a corslet, but he remarks that
he has plenty of corslets (XIII. 264); and in this and many cases
opponents of corslets prove their case by cutting out the lines
which disprove it. Anything may be demonstrated if we may excise
whatever passage does not suit our hypothesis. It is impossible to
argue against this logical device, especially when the critic, not
satisfied with a clean cut, supposes that some late enthusiast for
corslets altered the prayer of Thetis to Hephaestus for the very
purpose of dragging in a corslet. [Footnote: Leaf, Note to
_Iliad_, xviii. 460, 461.] If there is no objection to a line
except that a corslet occurs in it, where is the logic in excising
the line because one happens to think that corslets are later than
the oldest parts of the _Iliad_?

Another plan is to maintain that if the poet does not in any case
mention a corslet, there was no corslet. Thus in V. 99, an arrow
strikes Diomede "hard by the right shoulder, the plate of the
corslet." Thirteen lines later (V. 112, 113) "Sthenelus drew the
swift shaft right through out of Diomede's shoulder, and the blood
darted up through the pliant _chiton_." We do not know what
the word here translated "pliant" [Greek: streptos] means, and
Aristarchus seems to have thought it was "a coat of mail, chain,
or scale armour." If so, here is the corslet, but in this case, if
a corslet or jack with intertwisted small plates or scales or
rings of bronze be meant, _gualon_ cannot mean a large
"plate," as it does. Mr. Ridgeway says, "It seems certain that
[Greek: streptos chitoon] means, as Aristarchus held, a shirt of
mail." [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. p, 306.] Mr.
Leaf says just the reverse. As usual, we come to a deadlock; a
clash of learned opinion. But any one can see that, in the space
of thirteen lines, no poet or interpolator who wrote V. i 12, i 13
could forget that Diomede was said to be wearing a corslet in V.
99; and even if the poet could forget, which is out of the
question, the editor of 540 B.C. was simply defrauding his
employer, Piaistratus, if he did not bring a remedy for the stupid
fault of the poet. When this or that hero is not specifically said
to be wearing a corslet, it is usually because the poet has no
occasion to mention it, though, as we have seen, a man is
occasionally smitten, in the midriff, say, without any remark on
the flimsy piece of mail.

That corslets are usually taken for granted as present by the
poet, even when they are not explicitly named, seems certain. He
constantly represents the heroes as "stripping the pieces of mail"
[Greek: teuchea], when they have time and opportunity, from fallen
foes. If only the shield is taken, if there is nothing else in the
way of bronze body armour to take, why have we the plural, [Greek:
teuchea]? The corslet, as well as the shield, must be intended.
The stripping is usually "from the shoulders," and it is "from his
shoulders" that Hector hopes to strip the corslet of Diomede
(Iliad, VIII. 195) in a passage, to be sure, which the critics
think interpolated. However this may be, the stripping of the
(same Greek characters), cannot be the mere seizure of the shield,
but must refer to other pieces of armour: "all the pieces of
armour." So other pieces of defensive armour besides the shield
are throughout taken for granted. If they were not there they
could not be stripped. It is the chitons that Agamemnon does
something to, in the case of two fallen foes (_Iliad_, XI.
100), and Aristarchus thought that these _chitons_ were
corslets. But the passage is obscure. In _Iliad_, XI. 373,
when Diomede strips helmet from head, shield from shoulder,
corslet from breast of Agastrophus, Reichel was for excising the
corslet, because it was not mentioned when the hero was struck on
the hip joint. I do not see that an inefficient corslet would
protect the hip joint. To do that, in our eighteenth century
cavalry armour, was the business of a _zoster_, as may be
seen in a portrait of the Chevalier de St. George in youth. It is
a thick ribbed _zoster_ that protects the hip joints of the
king.

Finally, Mr. Evans observes that the western invaders of Egypt,
under Rameses III, are armed, on the monuments, with cuirasses
formed of a succession of plates, "horizontal, or rising in a
double curve," while the Enkomi ivories, already referred to,
corroborate the existence of corslet, _zoster_, and
_zoma_ as articles of defensive armour. [Footnote: _Journal
of Anthropological Institute_, xxx. p. 213.] "Recent
discoveries," says Mr. Evans, "thus supply a double corroboration
of the Homeric tradition which carries back the use of the round
shield and the cuirass or [Greek: thoraex] to the earlier epic
period... With such a representation before us, a series of
Homeric passages on which Dr. Reichel... has exhausted his powers
of destructive criticism, becomes readily intelligible."
[Footnote: Ibid., p. 214.]

Homer, then, describes armour _later_ than that of the
Mycenaean prime, when, as far as works of art show, only a huge
leathern shield was carried, though the gold breastplates of the
corpses in the grave suggest that corslets existed. Homer's men,
on the other hand, have, at least in certain cases quoted above,
large bronze-plated shields and bronze cuirasses of no great
resisting power, perhaps in various stages of evolution, from the
byrnie with scales or small plates of bronze to the breastplate
and backplate, though the plates for breast and back certainly
appear to be usually worn.

It seems that some critics cannot divest themselves of the idea
that "the original poet" of the "kernel" was contemporary with
them who slept in the shaft graves of Mycenae, covered with golden
ornaments, and that for body armour he only knew their monstrous
shields. Mr. Leaf writes: "The armour of Homeric heroes
corresponds closely to that of the Mykenaean age as we learn it
from the monuments. The heroes wore no breastplate; their only
defensive armour was the enormous Mykenaean shield...."

This is only true if we excise all the passages which contradict
the statement, and go on with Mr. Leaf to say, "by the seventh
century B.C., or thereabouts, the idea of a panoply without a
breastplate had become absurd. By that time the epic poems had
almost ceased to grow; but they still admitted a few minor
episodes in which the round shield" (where ?) "and corslet played
a part, as well as the interpolation of a certain number of lines
and couplets in which the new armament was mechanically introduced
into narratives which originally knew nothing of it." [Footnote:
_Iliad_, vol. i. p. 568.]

On the other hand, Mr. Leaf says that "the small circular shield
of later times is unknown to Homer," with "a very few curious
exceptions," in which the shields are not said to be small or
circular. [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p, 575.]

Surely this is rather arbitrary dealing! We start from our theory
that the original poet described the armour of "the monuments"
though _they_ are "of the, prime," while he professedly lived
long after the prime--lived in an age when there must have been
changes in military equipment. We then cut out, as of the seventh
century, whatever passages do not suit our theory. Anybody can
prove anything by this method. We might say that the siege scene
on the Mycenaean silver vase represents the Mycenaean prime, and
that, as there is but one jersey among eight men otherwise stark
naked, we must cut out seven-eighths of the _chitons_ in the
_Iliad_, these having been interpolated by late poets who did
not run about with nothing on. We might call the whole poem late,
because the authors know nothing of the Mycenaean bathing-drawers
so common on the "monuments." The argument compels Mr. Leaf to
assume that a shield can be called [Greek: teuchea] in the plural,
so, in _Iliad_, VII. 122, when the squires of Menelaus "take
the [Greek: teuchea] from his shoulders," we are assured that "the
shield (aspis) was for the chiefs alone" (we have seen that all
the host of Pandarus wore shields), "for those who could keep a
chariot to carry them, and squires to assist them in taking off
this ponderous defence" (see VII 122). [Footnote: _Iliad_,
vol. i. p. 583.]

We do "see VII. 122," and find that not a _single_ shield,
but pieces of gear in the plural number were taken off Menelaus.
The feeblest warrior without any assistance could stoop his head
and put it through the belt of his shield, as an angler takes off
his fishing creel, and there he was, totally disarmed. No squire
was needed to disarm him, any more than to disarm Girard in the
_Chancun de Willame_. Nobody explains why a shield is spoken
of as a number of things, in the plural, and that constantly, and
in lines where, if the poet means a shield, prosody permits him to
_say_ a shield, [Greek: therapontes ap oopoon aspid elonto].

It really does appear that Reichel's logic, his power of
visualising simple things and processes, and his knowledge of the
evolution of defensive armour everywhere, were not equal to his
industry and classical erudition. Homer seems to describe what he
saw: shields, often of great size, made of leather, plated with
bronze, and suspended by belts; and, for body armour, feeble
bronze corslets and _zosters_. There is nothing inconsistent
in all this: there was no more reason why an Homeric warrior
should not wear a corslet as well as a shield than there was
reason why a mediaeval knight who carried a _targe_ should
not also wear a hauberk, or why an Iroquois with a shield should
not also wear his cotton or wicker-work armour. Defensive gear
kept pace with offensive weapons. A big leather shield could keep
out stone-tipped arrows; but as bronze-tipped arrows came in and
also heavy bronze-pointed spears, defensive armour was necessarily
strengthened; the shield was plated with bronze, and, if it did
not exist before, the bronze corslet was developed.

To keep out stone-tipped arrows was the business of the Mycenaean
wooden or leather shield. "Bronze arrow-heads, so common in the
_Iliad_, are never found," says Schuchardt, speaking of
Schliemann's Mycenaean excavations. [Footnote: Schuchardt, p.
237.]

There was thus, as far as arrows went, no reason why Mycenaean
shields should be plated with bronze. If the piece of wood in
Grave V. was a shield, as seems probable, what has become of its
bronze plates, if it had any? [Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 269] Gold
ornaments, which could only belong to shields, [Footnote:
_Ibid_., p. 237.] were found, but bronze shield plates never.
The inference is certain. The Mycenaean shields of the prime were
originally wooden or leather defences against stone-headed arrows.
Homer's shields are bronze-plated shields to keep out bronze-
headed or even, perhaps, iron-pointed arrows of primitive
construction (IV. 123). Homer describes armour based on Mycenaean
lines but developed and advanced as the means of attack improved.

Where everything is so natural it seems fantastic to explain the
circumstances by the theory that poets in a late age sometimes did
and sometimes did not interpolate the military gear of four
centuries posterior to the things known by the original singer.
These rhapsodists, we reiterate, are now said to be anxiously
conservative of Mycenaean detail and even to be deeply learned
archaeologists. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 629.]
At other times they are said to introduce recklessly part of the
military gear of their own age, the corslets, while sternly
excluding the bucklers. All depends on what the theory of very
late developments of the Epic may happen to demand at this or that
moment.

Again, Mr. Leaf informs us that "the first rhapsodies were born in
the bronze age, in the day of the ponderous Mycenaean shield; the
last in the iron age, when men armed themselves with breastplate
and light round buckler." [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. x.]
We cannot guess how he found these things out, for corslets are as
common in one "rhapsody" as in another when circumstances call for
the mention of corslets, and are entirely unnamed in the Odyssey
(save that the Achaeans are "bronze-chitoned"), while the Odyssey
is alleged to be much later than the _Iliad_. As for "the
iron age," no "rhapsodist" introduces so much as one iron spear
point. It is argued that he speaks of bronze in deference to
tradition. Then why does he scout tradition in the matter of
greaves and corslets, while he sometimes actually goes behind
tradition to find Mycenaean things unknown to the original poets?

These theories appear too strangely inconsistent; really these
theories cannot possibly be accepted. The late poets, of the
theory, are in the iron age, and are, of course, familiar with
iron weapons; yet, in conservative deference to tradition, they
keep them absolutely out of their rhapsodies. They are equally
familiar with bronze corslets, so, reckless this time of
tradition, they thrust them even into rhapsodies which are
centuries older than their own day. They are no less familiar with
small bucklers, yet they say nothing about them and cling to the
traditional body-covering shield. The source of the inconsistent
theories which we have been examining is easily discovered. The
scholars who hold these opinions see that several things in the
Homeric picture of life are based on Mycenaean facts; for example,
the size of the shields and their suspension by baldrics. But the
scholars also do steadfastly believe, following the Wolfian
tradition, that there could be no _long_ epic in the early
period. Therefore the greater part, much the greater part of the
_Iliad_, must necessarily, they say, be the work of
continuators through several centuries. Critics are fortified in
this belief by the discovery of inconsistencies in the Epic,
which, they assume, can only be explained as the result of a
compilation of the patchwork of ages. But as, on this theory, many
men in many lands and ages made the Epic, their contributions
cannot but be marked by the inevitable changes in manners,
customs, beliefs, implements, laws, weapons, and so on, which
could not but arise in the long process of time. Yet traces of
change in law, religion, manners, and customs are scarcely, if at
all, to be detected; whence it logically follows that a dozen
generations of irresponsible minstrels and vagrant reciters were
learned, conscientious, and staunchly conservative of the archaic
tone. Their erudite conservatism, for example, induced them, in
deference to the traditions of the bronze age, to describe all
weapons as of bronze, though many of the poets were living in an
age of weapons of iron. It also prompted them to describe all
shields as made on the far-away old Mycenaean model, though they
were themselves used to small circular bucklers, with a bracer and
a grip, worn on the left arm.

But at this point the learning and conservatism of the late poets
deserted them, and into their new lays, also into the old lays,
they eagerly introduced many unwarrantable corslets and greaves--
things of the ninth to seventh centuries. We shall find Helbig
stating, on the same page, that in the matter of usages "the epic
poets shunned, as far as possible, all that was recent," and also
that for fear of puzzling their military audiences they did the
reverse: "they probably kept account of the arms and armour of
their own day." [Footnote: La _Question Mycnienne_, p. 50.
_Cf_. Note I.] Now the late poets, on this showing, must have
puzzled warriors who used iron weapons by always speaking of
bronze weapons. They pleased the critical warriors, on the other
hand, by introducing the corslets and greaves which every military
man of their late age possessed. But, again, the poets startled an
audience which used light bucklers, worn on the left arm, by
talking of enormous _targes_, slung round the neck.

All these inconsistencies of theory follow from the assumption
that the _Iliad_ _must_ be a hotch-potch of many ages.
If we assume that, on the whole, it is the work of one age, we see
that the poet describes the usages which obtained in his own day.
The dead are cremated, not, as in the Mycenaean prime, inhumed.
The shield has been strengthened to meet bronze, not stone-tipped,
arrows by bronze plates. Corslets and greaves have been
elaborated. Bronze, however, is still the metal for swords and
spears, and even occasionally for tools and implements, though
these are often of iron. In short, we have in Homer a picture of a
transitional age of culture; we have not a medley of old and new,
of obsolete and modern. The poets do not describe inhumation, as
they should do, if they are conservative archaeologists. In that
case, though they burn, they would have made their heroes bury
their dead, as they did at Mycenas. They do not introduce iron
swords and spears, as they must do, if, being late poets, they
keep in touch with the armament of their time. If they speak of
huge shields only because they are conservative archaeologists,
then, on the other hand, they speak of corslets and greaves
because they are also reckless innovators.

They cannot be both at once. They are depicting a single age, a
single "moment in culture." That age is certainly sundered from
the Mycenaean prime by the century or two in which changing ideas
led to the superseding of burial by burning, or it is sundered
from the Mycenaean prime by a foreign conquest, a revolution, and
the years in which the foreign conquerors acquired the language of
their subjects.

In either alternative, and one or other must be actual, there was
time enough for many changes in the culture of the Mycenaean prime
to be evolved. These changes, we say, are represented by the
descriptions of culture in the Iliad. That hypothesis explains,
simply and readily, all the facts. The other hypothesis, that the
_Iliad_ was begun near the Mycenaean prime and was continued
throughout four or five centuries, cannot, first, explain how the
_Iliad_ was _composed_, and, next, it wanders among
apparent contradictories and through a maze of inconsistencies.



 THE ZOSTER, ZOMA, AND MITRE

 We are far from contending that it is always possible to
understand Homer's descriptions of defensive armour. But as we
have never seen the actual objects, perhaps the poet's phrases
were clear enough to his audience and are only difficult to us. I
do not, for example, profess to be sure of what happened when
Pandarus shot at Menelaus. The arrow lighted "where the golden
buckles of the _zoster_ were clasped, and the doubled
breastplate met them. So the bitter arrow alighted upon the firm
_zoster_; through the wrought _zoster_ it sped, and
through the curiously wrought breastplate it pressed on, and
through the _mitre_ he wore to shield his flesh, a barrier
against darts; and this best shielded him, yet it passed on even
through this," and grazed the hero's flesh (_Iliad_, IV. I 32
seq.). Menelaus next says that "the glistering _zoster_ in
front stayed the dart, and the _zoma_ beneath, and the
_mitr_ that the coppersmiths fashioned" (IV. 185-187). Then
the surgeon, Machaon, "loosed the glistering _zoster_ and the
_zoma_, and the _mitr_ beneath that the coppersmiths
fashioned" (IV. 215, 216).

Reading as a mere student of poetry I take this to mean that the
corslet was of two pieces, fastening in the middle of the back and
the middle of the front of a man (though Mr. Monro thinks that the
plates met and the _zoster_ was buckled at the side); that
the _zoster_, a mailed belt, buckled just above the place
where the plates of the corslet met; that the arrow went through
the meeting-place of the belt buckles, through the place where the
plates of the corslet met, and then through the _mitr_, a
piece of bronze armour worn under the corslet, though the nature
of this _mitr_ and of the _zoma_ I do not know. Was the
_mitr_ a separate article or a continuation of the
breastplate, lower down, struck by a dropping arrow?

In 1883 Mr. Leaf wrote: "I take it that the _zoma_ means the
waist of the cuirass which is covered by the _zoster_, and
has the upper edge of the _mitr_ or plated apron beneath it
fastened round the warrior's body. ... This view is strongly
supported by all the archaic vase paintings I have been able to
find." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic studies, vol. iv. pp.
74,75_.] We see a "corslet with a projecting rim"; that rim is
called zoma and holds the _zoster_. "The hips and upper part
of the thighs were protected either by a belt of leather,
sometimes plated, called the _mitr_, or else only by the
lower part of the _chiton_, and this corresponds exactly with
Homeric description." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic_
Studies, _pp. 76, 77_.]

At this time, in days before Reichel, Mr. Leaf believed in bronze
corslets, whether of plates or plated jacks; he also believed, we
have seen, that the huge shields, as of Aias, were survivals in
poetry; that "Homer" saw small round bucklers in use, and supposed
that the old warriors were muscular enough to wear circular
shields as great as those in the vase of Aristonothos, already
described. [Footnote: _Ibid., vol. iv p. 285_.]

On the corslet, as we have seen, Mr. Leaf now writes as a disciple
of Reichel. But as to the _mitr_, he rejects Helbig's and
Mr. Ridgeway's opinion that it was a band of metal a foot wide in
front and very narrow behind. Such things have been found in
Euboea and in Italy. Mr. Ridgeway mentions examples from Bologna,
Corneto, Este, Hallstatt, and Hungary. [Footnote: _Early Age of
Greece, p. 31 I_.] The _zoster_ is now, in Mr. Leaf's
opinion, a "girdle" "holding up the waist-cloth (_zoma_), so
characteristic of Mycenaean dress!" Reichel's arguments against
corslets "militate just as strongly against the presence of such a
_mitr_, which is, in fact, just the lower half of a
corslet.... The conclusion is that the metallic _mitr_ is
just as much an intruder into the armament of the _Epos_ as
the corslet." The process of evolution was, Mr. Leaf suggests,
first, the abandonment of the huge shield, with the introduction
of small round bucklers in its place. Then, second, a man
naturally felt very unprotected, and put on "the metallic
_mitr_" of Helbig (which covered a foot of him in front and
three inches behind). "Only as technical skill improved could the
final stage, that of the elaborate cuirass, be attained."

This appears to us an improbable sequence of processes. While
arrows were flying thick, as they do fly in the _Iliad_, men
would not reject body-covering shields for small bucklers while
they were still wholly destitute of body armour. Nor would men arm
only their stomachs when, if they had skill enough to make a
metallic _mitr_, they could not have been so unskilled as to
be unable to make corslets of some more or less serviceable type.
Probably they began with huge shields, added the _linothorex_
(like the Iroquois cotton _thorex_), and next, as a rule,
superseded that with the bronze _thorex_, while retaining the
huge shield, because the bronze _thorex_ was so inadequate to
its purpose of defence. Then, when archery ceased to be of so much
importance as coming to the shock with heavy spears, and as the
bronze _thorex_ really could sometimes keep out an arrow,
they reduced the size of their shields, and retained surface
enough for parrying spears and meeting point and edge of the
sword. That appears to be a natural set of sequences, but I cannot
pretend to guess how the corslet fastened or what the _mitr_
and _zoster_ really were, beyond being guards of the stomach
and lower part of the trunk.



 HELMETS, GREAVES, SPEARS

 No helmets of metal, such as Homer mentions, have been found in
Mycenaean graves. A quantity of boars' teeth, sixty in all, were
discovered in Grave V. and may have adorned and strengthened
leather caps, now mouldered into dust. An ivory head from Mycenae
shows a conical cap set with what may be boars' tusks, with a band
of the same round the chin, and an earpiece which was perhaps of
bronze? Spata and the graves of the lower town of Mycenae and the
Enkomi ivories show similar headgear. [Footnote: Tsountas and
Manatt, pp. 196, 197.]

This kind of cap set with boars' tusks is described in
_Iliad_, Book X., in the account of the hasty arraying of two
spies in the night of terror after the defeat and retreat to the
ships. The Trojan spy, Dolon, also wears a leather cap. The three
spies put on no corslets, as far as we can affirm, their object
being to remain inconspicuous and unburdened with glittering
bronze greaves and corslets. The Trojan camp was brilliantly lit
up with fires, and there may have been a moon, so the less bronze
the better. In these circumstances alone the heroes of the Iliad
are unequipped, certainly, with bronze helmets, corslets, and
bronze greaves. [Dislocated Footnote: Evans, _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute, xxx. pp._ 209-215.] [Footnote:
_Iliad, X._ 255-265.]

The author of Book X. is now regarded as a precise archaeologist,
who knew that corslets and bronze helmets were not used in
Agamemnon's time, but that leather caps with boars' tusks were in
fashion; while again, as we shall see, he is said to know nothing
about heroic costume (cf. The _Doloneia_). As a fact, he has
to describe an incident which occurs nowhere else in Homer, though
it may often have occurred in practice--a hurried council during a
demoralised night, and the hasty arraying of two spies, who wish
to be lightfooted and inconspicuous. The author's evidence as to
the leather cap and its garnishing of boars' tusks testifies to a
survival of such gear in an age of bronze battle-helmets, not to
his own minute antiquarian research.



 GREAVES

 Bronze greaves are not found, so far, in Mycenaean tombs in
Greece, and Reichel argued that the original Homer knew none. The
greaves, [Greek: kunmides] "were gaiters of stuff or leather"; the
one mention of bronze greaves is stuff and nonsense interpolated
(VII. 41). But why did men who were interpolating bronze corslets
freely introduce bronze so seldom, if at all, as the material of
greaves?

Bronze greaves, however, have been found in a Cypro-Mycenaean
grave at Enkomi (Tomb XV.), _accompanied_ by _an early
type_ of _bronze_ dagger, while bronze greaves adorned
with Mycenaean ornament are discovered in the Balkan peninsula at
Glassinav. [Footnote: Evans, _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, pp. 214, 215, figs. 10, 11.] Thus all Homer's
description of arms is here corroborated by archaeology, and
cannot be cut out by what Mr. Evans calls "the Procrustean method"
of Dr. Reichel.

A curious feature about the spear may be noticed. In Book X. while
the men of Diomede slept, "their spears were driven into the
ground erect on the spikes of the butts" (X. 153). Aristotle
mentions that this was still the usage of the Illyrians in his
day. [Footnote: _Poctica_, 25.] Though the word for the spike
in the butt (_sauroter_) does not elsewhere occur in the
_Iliad_, the practice of sticking the spears erect in the
ground during a truce is mentioned in III. 135: "They lean upon
their shields" (clearly large high shields), "and the tall spears
are planted by their sides." No butt-spikes have been found in
graves of the Mycenaean prime. The _sauroter_ was still used,
or still existed, in the days of Herodotus. [Footnote: Tsountas
and Manatt, p. 205; Ridgeway, vol. i. pp. 306, 307.]

On the whole, Homer does not offer a medley of the military gear
of four centuries--that view we hope to have shown to be a mass of
inconsistencies--but describes a state of military equipment in
advance of that of the most famous Mycenaean graves, but other
than that of the late "warrior vase." He is also very familiar
with some uses of iron, of which, as we shall see, scarcely any
has been found in Mycenaean graves of the central period, save in
the shape of rings. Homer never mentions rings of any metal.




CHAPTER IX


BRONZE AND IRON

Taking the Iliad and Odyssey just as they have reached us they
give, with the exception of one line, an entirely harmonious
account of the contemporary uses of bronze and iron. Bronze is
employed in the making of weapons and armour (with cups,
ornaments, &c.); iron is employed (and bronze is also used) in the
making of tools and implements, such as knives, axes, adzes, axles
of a chariot (that of Hera; mortals use an axle tree of oak), and
the various implements of agricultural and pastoral life.
Meanwhile, iron is a substance perfectly familiar to the poets;
it is far indeed from being a priceless rarity (it is impossible
to trace Homeric stages of advance in knowledge of iron), and it
yields epithets indicating strength, permanence, and stubborn
endurance. These epithets are more frequent in the Odyssey and the
"later" Books of the Iliad than in the "earlier" Books of the
Iliad; but, as articles made of iron, the Odyssey happens to
mention only one set of axes, which is spoken of ten times--axes
and adzes as a class--and "iron bonds," where "iron" probably
means "strong," "not to be broken." [Footnote: In these
circumstances, it is curious that Mr. Monro should have written
thus: "In Homer, as is well known, iron is rarely mentioned in
comparison with bronze, but the proportion is greater in the
Odyssey (25 iron, 80 bronze) than in the Iliad" (23 iron, 279
bronze).--Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 339. These statistics
obviously do not prove that, at the date of the composition of the
Odyssey, the use of iron was becoming more common, or that the use
of bronze was becoming more rare, than when the _Iliad_ was
put together. Bronze is, in the poems, the military metal: the
_Iliad_ is a military poem, while the _Odyssey_ is an
epic of peace; consequently the _Iliad_ is much more copious
in references to bronze than the _Odyssey_ has any occasion
to be. Wives are far more frequently mentioned in the Odyssey than
in the _Iliad_, but nobody will argue that therefore marriage
had recently come more into vogue. Again, the method of counting
up references to iron in the Odyssey is quite misleading, when we
remember that ten out of the twenty references are only _one_
reference to one and the same set of iron tools-axes. Mr. Monro
also proposed to leave six references to iron in the _Iliad_
out of the reckoning, "as all of them are in lines which can be
omitted without detriment to the sense." Most of the six are in a
recurrent epic formula descriptive of a wealthy man, who possesses
iron, as well as bronze, gold, and women. The existence of the
formula proves familiarity with iron, and to excise it merely
because it contradicts a theory is purely arbitrary.--Monro,
Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 339.]. The statement of facts given here is
much akin to Helbig's account of the uses of bronze and iron in
Homer. [Footnote: Helbig, _Das Homerischi Epos_, pp. 330,
331. _1887_.] Helbig writes: "It is notable that in the Epic
there is much more frequent mention of iron _implements_ than
of iron _weapons of war_." He then gives examples, which we
produce later, and especially remarks on what Achilles says when
he offers a mass of iron as a prize in the funeral games of
Patroclus. The iron, says Achilles, will serve for the purposes of
the ploughman and shepherd, "a surprising speech from the son of
Peleus, from whom we rather expect an allusion to the military
uses of the metal." Of course, if iron weapons were not in vogue
while iron was the metal for tools and implements, the words of
Achilles are appropriate and intelligible.

The facts being as we and Helbig agree in stating them, we suppose
that the Homeric poets sing of the usages of their own time. It is
an age when iron, though quite familiar, is not yet employed for
armour, or for swords or spears, which must be of excellent
temper, without great weight in proportion to their length and
size. Iron is only employed in Homer for some knives, which are
never said to be used in battle (not even for dealing the final
stab, like the mediaeval poniard, the _misricorde_), for
axes, which have a short cutting edge, and may be thick and
weighty behind the edge, and for the rough implements of the
shepherd and ploughman, such as tips of ploughshares, of goads,
and so forth.

As far as archaeological excavations and discoveries enlighten us,
these relative uses of bronze and iron did not exist in the ages
of Mycenaean culture which are represented in the _tholos_ of
Vaphio and the graves, earlier and later, of Mycenae. Even in the
later Mycenaean graves iron is found only in the form of finger
rings (iron rings were common in late Greece). [Footnote: Tsountas
and Manatt, pp. 72, 146, 165.] Iron was scarce in the Cypro-
Mycenaean graves of Enkomi. A small knife with a carved handle had
left traces of an iron blade. A couple of lumps of iron, one of
them apparently the head of a club, were found in Schliemann's
"Burned City" at Hissarlik; for the rest, swords, spear-heads,
knives, and axes are all of bronze in the age called "Mycenaean."
But we do not know whether iron _implements_ may not yet be
found in the sepulchres of _Thetes_, and other poor and
landless men. The latest discoveries in Minoan graves in Crete
exhibit tools of bronze.

Iron, we repeat, is in the poems a perfectly familiar metal.
Ownership of "bronze, gold, and iron, which requires much labour"
(in the smithying or smelting), appears regularly in the recurrent
epic formula for describing a man of wealth. [Footnote:
_Iliad_, VI. 48; IX. 365-366; X. 379; XI. 133;
_Odyssey_, XIV. 324; XXI. 10.] Iron, bronze, slaves, and
hides are bartered for sea-borne wine at the siege of
Troy? [Footnote: _Iliad_, VII. 472-475.] Athene, disguised as
Mentes, is carrying a cargo of iron to Temesa (Tamasus in
Cyprus?), to barter for copper. The poets are certainly not
describing an age in which only a man of wealth might indulge in
the rare and extravagant luxury of an iron ring: iron was a common
commodity, like cattle, hides, slaves, bronze, and other such
matters. Common as it was, Homer never once mentions its use for
defensive armour, or for swords and spears.

Only in two cases does Homer describe any weapon as of iron. There
is to be sure the "iron," the knife with which Antilochus fears
Achilles will cut his own throat. [Footnote: _Iliad_ XVIII.
34.] But no knife is ever used as a weapon of war: knives are
employed in cutting the throats of victims (see _Iliad_, III.
271 and XXIII. 30); the knife is said to be of iron, in this last
passage; also Patroclus uses the knife to cut the arrow-head out
of the flesh of a wounded friend. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XI.
844.] It is the _knife_ of Achilles that is called "the
iron," and on "the iron" perish the cattle in _Iliad_, XXIII.
30. Mr. Leaf says that by "the usual use, the metal" (iron) "is
confined to tools of small size." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_,
xxiii. 30, Note.] This is incorrect; the Odyssey speaks of
_great axes_ habitually made of iron. [Footnote: Odyssey, IX.
391.] But we do find a knife of bronze, that of Agamemnon, used in
sacrificing victims; at least so I infer from Iliad, III. 271-292.

The only two specimens of _weapons_ named by Homer as of iron
are one arrow-head, used by Pandarus, [Footnote: _Iliad_, IV.
123.] and one mace, borne, before Nestor's time, by Areithus. To
fight with an iron mace was an amiable and apparently unique
eccentricity of Areithbus, and caused his death. On account of his
peculiar practice he was named "The Mace man." [Footnote: Iliad,
VII. 141.] The case is mentioned by Nestor as curious and unusual.

 Mr. Leaf gets rid of this solitary iron _casse tte_ in a
pleasant way. Since he wrote his _Companion to the Iliad_,
1902, he has become converted, as we saw, to the theory,
demolished by Mr. Monro, Nutzhorn, and Grote, and denounced by
Blass, that the origin of our Homer is a text edited by some
literary retainer of Pisistratus of Athens (about 560-540 B.C.).
The editor arranged current lays, "altered" freely, and "wrote in"
as much as he pleased. Probably he wrote this passage in which
Nestor describes the man of the iron mace, for "the tales of
Nestor's youthful exploits, all of which bear the mark of late
work, are introduced with no special applicability to the context,
but rather with the intention of glorifying the ancestor of
Pisistratus." [Footnote: Iliad (1900), VII. 149, Note.] If
Pisistratus was pleased with the ancestral portrait, nobody has a
right to interfere, but we need hardly linger over this hypothesis
(cf. pp. 281-288).

 Iron axes are offered as prizes by Achilles, [Footnote: Iliad,
XXIII. 850.] and we have the iron axes of Odysseus, who shot an
arrow through the apertures in the blades, at the close of the
Odyssey. But all these axes, as we shall show, were not weapons,
but _peaceful implements_.

 As a matter of certain fact the swords and spears of Homer's
warriors are invariably said by the poet to be of bronze, not of
iron, in cases where the metal of the weapons is specified.

Except for an arrow-head (to which we shall return) and the one
iron mace, noted as an eccentricity, no weapon in Homer is ever
said to be of iron.

The richest men use swords of bronze. Not one chooses to indulge
in a sword said to be of iron. The god, Hephaestus, makes a bronze
sword for Achilles, whose own bronze sword was lent to Patroclus,
and lost by him to Hector. [Footnote: _Iliad_ XVI. 136; XIX.
372-373.] This bronze sword, at least, Achilles uses, after
receiving the divine armour of the god. The sword of Paris is of
bronze, as is the sword of Odysseus in the Odyssey. [Footnote:
_Iliad_, III. 334-335] Bronze is the sword which he brought
from Troy, and bronze is the sword presented to him by Euryalus in
Phaeacia, and bronze is the spear with which he fought under the
walls of Ilios. [Footnote: _Odyssey_, X. 162, 261-262] There
are other examples of bronze swords, while spears are invariably
said to be of bronze, when the metal of the spear is specified.

Here we are on the ground of solid certainty: we see that the
Homeric warrior has regularly spear and sword of bronze. If any
man used a spear or sword of iron, Homer never once mentions the
fact. If the poets, in an age of iron weapons, always spoke of
bronze, out of deference to tradition, they must have puzzled
their iron-using military patrons.

Thus, as regards weapons, the Homeric heroes are in the age of
bronze, like them who slept in the tombs of the Mycenaean age.
When Homer speaks of the use of cutting instruments of iron, he is
always concerned, except in the two cases given, not with [blank
space] but with _implements_, which really were of iron. The
wheelwright fells a tree "with the iron," that is, with an axe;
Antilochus fears that Achilles "will cut his own throat with the
iron," that is, with his knife, a thing never used in battle; the
cattle struggle when slain with "the iron," that is, the butcher's
knife; and Odysseus shoots "through the iron," that is, through
the holes in the blade of the iron axes. [Footnote: For this
peculiar kind of Mycenaean axe with holes in the blade, see the
design of a bronze example from Vaphio in Tsountas and Manatt,
_The Mycenaean Age_, p. 207, fig. 94.] Thus Homer never says
that this or that was done "with the iron" in the case of any but
one weapon of war. Pandarus "drew the bow-string to his breast and
to the bow." [Footnote: Iliad, W. 123.] Whoever wrote that line
was writing in an age, we may think, when arrow-heads were
commonly of iron; but in Homer, when the metal of the arrow-head
is mentioned, except, in this one case, it is always bronze. The
iron arrow-tip of Pandarus was of an early type, the shaft did not
run into the socket of the arrow-head; the tang of the arrow-head,
on the other hand, entered the shaft, and was whipped on
with sinew. [_Iliad_, IV. 151.] Pretty primitive this method,
still the iron is an advance on the uniform bronze of Homer. The
line about Pandarus and the iron arrow-head may really be early
enough, for the arrow-head is of a primitive kind--socketless--and
primitive is the attitude of the archer: he "drew the arrow to his
breast." On the Mycenaean silver bowl, representing a siege, the
archers draw to the breast, in the primitive style, as does the
archer on the bronze dagger with a representation of a lion hunt.
The Assyrians and Khita drew to the ear, as the monuments prove,
and so does the "Cypro-Mycenaean" archer of the ivory draught-box
from Enkomi. [Footnote: Evans, Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, vol. xxx. p. 210.] In these circumstances we cannot
deny that the poet may have known iron arrow-heads.

We now take the case of axes. We never hear from Homer of the use
of an iron axe in battle, and warlike use of an axe only occurs
twice. In _Iliad_, XV. 711, in a battle at and on the ships,
"they were fighting with sharp axes and battle-axes" ([Greek text:
axinai]) "and with great swords, and spears armed at butt and
tip." At and on the ships, men would set hand to whatever tool of
cutting edge was accessible. Seiler thinks that only the Trojans
used the battle-axe; perhaps for damaging the ships: he follows
the scholiast. [Greek text: Axinae], however, [Footnote:
_Iliad_, XIII. 611.] may perhaps be rendered "battle-axe,"
as a Trojan, Peisandros, fights with an [Greek text: Axinae], and
this is the only place in the _Iliad_, except XV. 711, where
the thing is said to be used as a weapon. But it is not an
_iron_ axe; it is "of fine bronze." Only one bronze
_battle-axe_, according to Dr. Joseph Anderson, is known to
have been found in Scotland, though there are many bronze heads of
axes which were tools.

Axes ([Greek text: pelekeis]) were _implements_, tools of the
carpenter, woodcutter, shipwright, and so on; they were not
weapons of war of the Achaeans.

As implements they are, with very rare exceptions, of iron. The
wheelwright fells trees "with the gleaming iron," iron being a
synonym for axe and for knife. [Footnote: _Iliad_, IV. 485]
In _Iliad_, XIII. 391, the shipwrights cut timber with axes.
In _Iliad_, XXIII. 114, woodcutters' axes are employed in
tree-felling, but the results are said to be produced [Greek text:
tanaaekei chalcho], "by the long-edged bronze," where the word
[Greek text: tanaaekaes] is borrowed from the usual epithet of
swords; "the long edge" is quite inappropriate to a woodcutter's
axe. On Calypso's isle Calypso gives to Odysseus a bronze axe for
his raft-making. Butcher's work is done with an axe. [Footnote:
_Iliad_, XVII. 520; Odyssey, III. 442-449.] The axes offered
by Achilles as a prize for archers and the axes through which
Odysseus shot are _implements_ of iron. [Footnote:
_Iliad_, XXIII. 850; Odyssey, XXI. 3, 81, 97.]

In the Odyssey, when the poet describes the process of tempering
iron, we read, "as when a smith dips a great axe or an adze in
chill water, for thus men temper iron." [Footnote: Odyssey, IX.
391-393.] He is not using iron to make a sword or spear, but a
tool-adze or axe. The poet is perfectly consistent. There are also
examples both of bronze axes and, apparently, of bronze knives.
Thus, though the woodcutter's or carpenter's axe is of bronze in
two passages cited, iron is the usual material of the axe or adze.
Again we saw, when Achilles gives a mass of iron as a prize in the
games, he does not mean the armourer to fashion it into sword or
spear, but says that it will serve the shepherd or ploughman for
domestic implements, [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_ (1902), XXIII.
line 30, Note.] so that the men need not, on an upland farm, go to
the city for iron implements. In commenting upon this Mr. Leaf is
scarcely at the proper point of view. He says, [Footnote:
_Iliad_, XXIII. 835, Note.] "the idea of a state of things
when the ploughman and shepherd forge their own tools from a lump
of raw iron has a suspicious appearance of a deliberate attempt to
represent from the inner consciousness an archaic state of
civilisation. In Homeric times the [Greek: chalceus] is already
specialised as a worker in metals...." However, Homer does not say
that the ploughman and shepherd "forge their own tools." A Homeric
chief, far from a town, would have his own smithy, just as the
laird of Runraurie (now Urrard) had his smithy at the time of the
battle of Killicrankie (1689). Mackay's forces left their
_impedimenta_ "at the laird's smithy," says an eye-witness.
[Footnote: Napier's _Life_ Of _Dundee_, iii. p. 724.]

The idea of a late Homeric poet trying to reconstruct from his
fancy a prehistoric state of civilisation is out of the question.
Even historical novelists of the eighteenth century A.D. scarcely
attempted such an effort.

This was the regular state of things in the Highlands during the
eighteenth century, when many chiefs, and most of the clans, lived
far from any town. But these rural smiths did not make sword-
blades, which Prince Charles, as late as 1750, bought on the
Continent. The Andrea Ferrara-marked broadsword blades of the
clans were of foreign manufacture. The Highland smiths did such
rough iron work as was needed for rural purposes. Perhaps the
Homeric chief may have sometimes been a craftsman like the heroes
of the Sagas, great sword-smiths. Odysseus himself, notably an
excellent carpenter, may have been as good a sword-smith, but
every hero was not so accomplished.

In searching with microscopes for Homeric discrepancies and
interpolations, critics are apt to forget the ways of old rural
society.

The Homeric poems, whether composed in one age or throughout five
centuries, are thus entirely uniform in allotting bronze as the
material for all sorts of warlike gear, down to the solitary
battle-axe mentioned; and iron as the usual metal for heavy tools,
knives, carpenters' axes, adzes, and agricultural implements, with
the rare exceptions which we have cited in the case of bronze
knives and axes. Either this distinction--iron for tools and
implements; bronze for armour, swords, and spears--prevailed
throughout the period of the Homeric poets or poet; or the poets
invented such a stage of culture; or poets, some centuries later,
deliberately kept bronze for weapons only, while introducing iron
for implements. In that case they were showing archaeological
conscientiousness in following the presumed earlier poets of the
bronze age, the age of the Mycenaean graves.

Now early poets are never studious archaeologists. Examining the
[blank space] certainly based on old lays and legends which
survive in the Edda, we find that the poets of the
_Nibelungenlied_ introduce chivalrous and Christian manners.
They do not archaeologise. The poets of the French _Chansons de
Geste_ (eleventh to thirteenth centuries) bring their own
weapons, and even armorial bearings, into the 'remote age of
Charlemagne, which they know from legends and _cantilnes_.
Again, the later _remanieurs_ of the earliest _Chansons de
Geste_ modernise the details of these poems. But, _per
impossibile_, and for the sake of argument, suppose that the
later interpolators and continuators of the Homeric lays were
antiquarian precisians, or, on the other hand, "deliberately
attempted to reproduce from their inner consciousness an archaic
state of civilisation." Suppose that, though they lived in an age
of iron weapons, they knew, as Hesiod knew, that the old heroes
"had warlike gear of bronze, and ploughed with bronze, and there
was no black iron." [Footnote: Hesiod, _Works and Days_, pp.
250, 251.] In that case, why did the later interpolating poets
introduce iron as the special material of tools and implements,
knives and axes, in an age when they knew that there was no iron?
Savants such as, by this theory, the later poets of the full-blown
age of iron were, they must have known that the knives and axes of
the old heroes were made of bronze. In old votive offerings in
temples and in any Mycenaean graves which might be opened, the
learned poets of 800-600 B.C. saw with their eyes knives and axes
of bronze. [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i. 413-416.] The
knife of Agamemnon ([Greek: machaira]), which hangs from his
girdle, beside his sword, [Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 271; XIX.
252.] corresponds to the knives found in Grave IV. at Mycenae; the
handles of these dirks have a ring for suspension. [Footnote:
Tsountas and Manatt, p. 204.] But these knives, in Mycenaean
graves, are of bronze, and of bronze are the axes in the Mycenaean
deposits and the dagger of Enkomi. [Footnote: _Ibid._, pp.
145, 207, 208, 256. _Evans, Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, vol xxx. p, 214.]

Why, then, did the late poetic interpolators, who knew that the
spears and swords of the old warriors were of bronze, and who
describe them as of bronze, not know that their knives and axes
were also of bronze? Why did they describe the old knives and axes
as of iron, while Hesiod knew, and could have told them--did tell
them, in fact--that they were of bronze? Clearly the theory that
Homeric poets were archaeological precisians is impossible. They
describe arms as of bronze, tools usually as of iron, because they
see them to be such in practice.

The poems, in fact, depict a very extraordinary condition of
affairs, such as no poets could invent and adhere to with
uniformity. We are accustomed in archaeology to seeing the bronze
sword pass by a gradual transition into the iron sword; but, in
Homer, people with abundance of iron never, in any one specified
case, use iron sword blades or spears. The greatest chiefs, men
said to be rich in gold and iron, always use swords and spears of
_bronze_ in _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.

The usual process of transition from bronze to iron swords, in a
prehistoric European age, is traced by Mr. Ridgeway at Hallstatt,
"in the heart of the Austrian Alps," where a thousand old graves
have been explored. The swords pass from bronze to iron with
bronze hilts, and, finally, are wholly of iron. Weapons of bronze
are fitted with iron edges. Axes of iron were much more common
than axes of bronze. [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i.
413-416.] The axes were fashioned in the old shapes of the age of
bronze, were not of the _bipennis_ Mycenaean model--the
double axe--nor of the shape of the letter D, very thick, with
two round apertures in the blade, like the bronze axe of Vaphio.
[Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. 176.] Probably the axes
through which Odysseus shot an arrow were of this kind, as Mr.
Monro, and, much earlier, Mr. Butcher and I have argued.
[Footnote: _Ibid_. (1901), vol. ii. Book XIX. line 572. Note.
Butcher and Lang, Odyssey, Appendix (1891).]

At Hallstatt there was the _normal_ evolution from bronze
swords and axes to iron swords and axes. Why, then, had Homer's
men in his time not made this step, seeing that they were familiar
with the use of iron? Why do they use bronze for swords and
spears, iron for tools? The obvious answer is that they could
temper bronze for military purposes much better than they could
temper iron. Now Mr. Ridgeway quotes Polybius (ii. 30; ii. 33) for
the truly execrable quality of the iron of the Celtic invaders of
Italy as late as 225 B.C. Their swords were as bad as, or worse
than, British bayonets; they _always_ "doubled up." "Their
long iron swords were easily bent, and could only give one
downward stroke with any effect; but after this the edges got so
turned and the blades so bent that, unless they had time to
straighten them with the foot against the ground, they could not
deliver a second blow." [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_,
vol. i. 408.] If the heroes in Homer's time possessed iron as
badly tempered as that of the Celts of 225 B.C., they had every
reason to prefer, as they did, excellent bronze for all their
military weapons, while reserving iron for pacific purposes. A
woodcutter's axe might have any amount of weight and thickness of
iron behind the edge; not so a sword blade or a spear point.
[Footnote: Monsieur Salomon Reinach suggests to me that the story
of Polybius may be a myth. Swords and spear-heads in graves are
often found doubled up; possibly they are thus made dead, like the
owner, and their spirits are thus set free to be of use to his
spirit. Finding doubled up iron swords in Celtic graves, the
Romans, M. Beinach suggests, may have explained their useless
condition by the theory that they doubled up in battle, leaving
their owners easy victims, and this myth was accepted as fact by
Polybius. But he was not addicted to myth, nor very remote from
the events which he chronicles. Again, though bronze grave-weapons
in our Museum are often doubled up, the myth is not told of the
warriors of the age of bronze. We later give examples of the
doubling up, in battle, of Scandinavian iron swords as late as
1000 A.D.]

In the _Iliad_ we hear of swords breaking at the hilt in
dealing a stroke at shield or helmet, a thing most incident to
bronze swords, especially of the early type, with a thin bronze
tang inserted in a hilt of wood, ivory, or amber, or with a slight
shelf of the bronze hilt riveted with three nails on to the bronze
blade.

Lycaon struck Peneleos on the socket of his helmet crest, "and his
sword brake at the hilt." [Footnote: _Iliad_, XVI. 339.] The
sword of Menelaus broke into three or four pieces when he smote
the helmet ridge of Paris. [Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 349,
380.] Iron of the Celtic sort described by Polybius would have
bent, not broken. There is no doubt on that head: if Polybius is
not romancing, the Celtic sword of 225 B.C. doubled up at every
stroke, like a piece of hoop iron. But Mr. Leaf tells us that, "by
primitive modes of smelting," iron is made "hard and brittle, like
cast iron." If so, it would be even less trustworthy for a sword
than bronze. [Footnote: _Iliad_ (1900), Book VI, line 48,
Note.] Perhaps the Celts of 225 B.C. did not smelt iron by
primitive methods, but discovered some process for making it not
hard and brittle, but flabby.

The swords of the Mycenaean graves, we know, were all of bronze,
and, in three intaglios on rings from the graves, the point, not
the edge, is used, [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 199.] once
against a lion, once over the rim of a shield which covers the
whole body of an enemy, and once at too close quarters to permit
the use of the edge. It does not follow from these three cases (as
critics argue) that no bronze sword could be used for a swashing
blow, and there are just half as many thrusts as strokes with the
bronze sword in the _Iliad_. [Footnote: Twenty-four cuts to
eleven lunges, in the _Iliad_.] As the poet constantly dwells
on the "long edge" of the _bronze_ swords and makes heroes
use both point and edge, how can we argue that Homeric swords were
of iron and ill fitted to give point? The Highlanders at Clifton
(1746) were obliged, contrary to their common practice, to use the
point against Cumberland's dragoons. They, like the Achaeans, had
heavy cut and thrust swords, but theirs were of steel.

If the Achaeans had thoroughly excellent bronze, and had iron as
bad as that of the Celts a thousand years later, their preference
for bronze over iron for weapons is explained. In Homer the
fighters do not very often come to sword strokes; they fight
mainly with the spear, except in pursuit, now and then. But when
they do strike, they cleave heads and cut off arms. They could not
do this with bronze rapiers, such as those with which men give
point over the rim of the shield on two Mycenaean gems. But Mr.
Myres writes, "From the shaft graves (of Mycenae) onwards there
are two types of swords in the Mycenaean world--one an exaggerated
dagger riveted into the front end of the hilt, the other with a
flat flanged tang running the whole length of the hilt, and
covered on either face by ornamental grip plates riveted on. This
sword, though still of bronze, can deal a very effective cut; and,
as the Mycenaeans had no armour for body or head," (?) "the danger
of breaking or bending the sword on a cuirass or helmet did not
arise." [Footnote: _Classical Review_, xvi. 72.] The danger
did exist in Homer's time, as we have seen. But a bronze sword,
published by Tsountas and Manatt (_Mycenaean Age_, p. 199,
fig. 88), is emphatically meant to give both point and edge,
having a solid handle--a continuation of the blade--and a very
broad blade, coming to a very fine point. Even in Grave V. at
Mycenae, we have a sword blade so massive at the top that it was
certainly capable of a swashing blow. [Footnote: Schuchardt,
_Schliemann's Excavations_, p. _265, fig._ 269.] The
sword of the charioteer on the _stl_ of Grave V. is equally
good for cut and thrust. A pleasanter cut and thrust bronze sword
than the one found at Ialysus no gentleman could wish to handle.
[Footnote: Furtwngler und Loeschke, _Myk. Va._ Taf. D.]
Homer, in any case, says that his heroes used bronze swords, well
adapted to strike. If his age had really good bronze, and iron as
bad as that of the Celts of Polybius, a thousand years later,
their preference of bronze over iron for weapons needs no
explanation. If their iron was not so bad as that of the Celts,
their military conservatism might retain bronze for weapons, while
in civil life they often used iron for implements.

The uniform evidence of the Homeric poems can only be explained on
the supposition that men had plenty of iron; but, while they used
it for implements, did not yet, with a natural conservatism, trust
life and victory to iron spears and swords. Unluckily, we cannot
test the temper of the earliest known iron swords found in Greece,
for rust hath consumed them, and I know not that the temper of the
Mycenaean bronze swords has been tested against helmets of bronze.
I can thus give no evidence from experiment.

There is just one line in Homer which disregards the distinction--
iron for implements, bronze for weapons; it is in _Odyssey_,
XVI. 294; XIX. 13. Telemachus is told to remove the warlike
harness of Odysseus from the hall, lest the wooers use it in the
coming fray. He is to explain the removal by saying that it has
been done, "Lest you fall to strife in your cups, and harm each
other, and shame the feast, and _this_ wooing; _for iron of
himself draweth a man to him_." The proverb is manifestly of an
age when iron was almost universally used for weapons, and thus
was, as in Thucydides, synonymous with all warlike gear; but
throughout the poems no single article of warlike gear is of iron
except one eccentric mace and one arrow-head of primitive type.
The line in the Odyssey must therefore be a very late addition; it
may be removed without injuring the sense of the passage in which
it occurs. [Footnote: This fact, in itself, is of course no proof
of interpolation. _Cf._ Helbig, _op_. cit., p. 331. He
thinks the line very late.] If, on the other hand, the line be as
old as the oldest parts of the poem, the author for once forgets
his usual antiquarian precision.

We are thus led to the conclusion that either there was in early
Greece an age when weapons were all of bronze while implements
were often of iron, or that the poet, or crowd of poets, invented
that state of things. Now early poets never invent in this way;
singing to an audience of warriors, critical on such a point, they
speak of what the warriors know to be actual, except when, in a
recognised form of decorative exaggeration, they introduce

"Masts of the beaten gold
 And sails of taffetie."

Our theory is, then, that in the age when the Homeric poems were
composed iron, though well known, was on its probation. Men of the
sword preferred bronze for all their military purposes, just as
fifteenth-century soldiers found the long-bow and cross-bow much
more effective than guns, or as the Duke of Wellington forbade the
arming of all our men with rifles in place of muskets ... for
reasons not devoid of plausibility.

Sir John Evans supposes that, in the seventh century, the Carian
and Ionian invaders of Egypt were still using offensive arms of
bronze, not of iron. [Footnote: Ancient _Bronze Implements_,
p. 8 (1881), citing Herodotus, ii. c. 112. Sir John is not sure
that Achaean spear-heads were not of copper, for they twice double
up against a shield. _Iliad_, III. 348; VII. 259; Evans, p.
13.] Sir John remarks that "for a considerable time after the
Homeric period, bronze remained in use for offensive weapons,"
especially for "spears, lances, and arrows." Hesiod, quite unlike
his contemporaries, the "later" poets of Iliad and _Odyssey_,
gives to Heracles an iron helmet and sword. [Footnote: _Scutum
Herculis_, pp. 122-138.] Hesiod knew better, but was not a
consistent archaiser. Sir John thinks that as early as 500 or even
600 B.C. iron and steel were in common use for weapons in Greece,
but not yet had they altogether superseded bronze battle-axes and
spears. [Footnote: Evans, p. 18.] By Sir John's showing, iron for
offensive weapons superseded bronze very slowly indeed in Greece;
and, if my argument be correct, it had not done so when the
Homeric poems were composed. Iron merely served for utensils, and
the poems reflect that stage of transition which no poet could
dream of inventing.

These pages had been written before my attention was directed to
M. Brard's book, _Les Pheniciens et l'Odysse_ (Paris,
1902). M. Brard has anticipated and rather outrun my ideas. "I
might almost say," he remarks, "that iron is the popular metal,
native and rustic... the shepherd and ploughman can extract and
work it without going to the town." The chief's smith could work
iron, if he had iron to work, and this iron Achilles gave as a
prize. "With rustic methods of working it iron is always impure;
it has 'straws' in it, and is brittle. It may be the metal for
peace and for implements. In our fields we see the reaper sit down
and repair his sickle. In war is needed a metal less hard,
perhaps, but more tough and not so easily broken. You cannot sit
down in the field of battle, as in a field of barley, to beat your
sword straight...." [Footnote: Brard, i. 435.]

So the Celts found, if we believe Polybius.

On the other hand, iron swords did supersede bronze swords in the
long run. Apparently they had not done so in the age of the poet,
but iron had certainly ceased to be "a precious metal"; knives and
woodcutters' axes are never made of a metal that is precious and
rare. I am thus led, on a general view, to suppose that the poems
took shape when iron was very well known, but was not yet, as in
the "Dipylon" period in Crete, commonly used by sword-smiths.

The ideas here stated are not unlike those of Paul Cauer.
[Footnote: _Grundfrager des Homerkritik,_ pp. 183-187.
Leipsic, 1895.] I do not, however, find the mentions of iron
useful as a test of "early" and "late" lays, which it is his
theory that they are. Thus he says:--

(1) Iron is often mentioned as part of a man's personal property,
while we are not told how he means to use it. It is named with
bronze, gold, and girls. The poet has no definite picture before
his eyes; he is vague about iron. But, we reply, his picture of
iron in these passages is neither more nor less definite than his
mental picture of the other commodities. He calls iron "hard to
smithy," "grey," "dark-hued"; he knows, in fact, all about it. He
does not tell us what the owner is going to do with the gold and
the bronze and the girls, any more than he tells us what is to be
done with the iron. Such information was rather in the nature of a
luxury than a necessity. Every hearer knew the uses of all four
commodities. This does not seem to have occurred to Cauer.

(2) Iron is spoken of as an emblem of hard things, as, to take a
modern example, in Mr. Swinburne's "armed and iron maidenhood "--
said of Atalanta. Hearts are "iron," strength is "iron," flesh is
not "iron," an "iron" noise goes up to the heaven of bronze. It
may not follow, Cauer thinks, from these phrases that iron was
used in any way. Men are supposed to marvel at its strange
properties; it was "new and rare." I see no ground for this
inference.

(3) We have the "iron gates" of Tartarus, and the "iron bonds" in
which Odysseus was possibly lying; it does not follow that chains
or gates were made of iron any more than that gates were of
chrysoprase in the days of St. John.

(4) Next, we have mention of implements, not weapons, of iron--a
remarkable trait of culture. Greek ploughs and axes were made of
iron before spears and swords were of iron.

(5) We have mention of iron weapons, namely, the unique iron mace
of Areithous and the solitary iron arrow-head of Pandarus, and
what Cauer calls the iron swords (more probably knives) of
Achilles and others. It is objected to the "iron" of Achilles that
Antilochus fears he will cut his throat with it on hearing of the
death of Patroclus, while there is no other mention of suicide in
the _Iliad_. It does not follow that suicide was unheard of;
indeed, Achilles may be thinking of suicide presently, in XIII.
98, when he says to his mother: "Let me die at once, since it was
not my lot to succour my comrade."

(6) We have the iron-making spoken of in Book IX. 393 of the
_Odyssey_.

It does not appear to us that the use of iron as an epithet
bespeaks an age when iron was a mysterious thing, known mainly by
reputation, "a costly possession." The epithets "iron strength,"
and so on, may as readily be used in our own age or any other. If
iron were at first a "precious" metal, it is odd that Homeric men
first used it, as Cauer sees that they did, to make points to
ploughshares and "tools of agriculture and handiwork." "Then
people took to working iron for weapons." Just so, but we cannot
divide the _Iliad_ into earlier and later portions in
proportion to the various mentions of iron in various Books. These
statistics are of no value for separatist purposes. It is
impossible to believe that men when they spoke of "iron strength,"
"iron hearts," "grey iron," "iron hard to smithy," did so because
iron was, first, an almost unknown legendary mineral, next, "a
precious metal," then the metal of drudgery, and finally the metal
of weapons.

The real point of interest is, as Cauer sees, that domestic
preceded military uses of iron among the Achaeans. He seems,
however, to think that the confinement of the use of bronze to
weapons is a matter of traditional style. [Footnote: "Nur die
Sprache der Dichter hielt an dem Gebrauch der Bronze fest, die in
den Jahrhunderten, whrend deren der Epische Stil erwachsen war,
allein geherrscht hatte."] But, in the early days of the waxing
epics, tools as well as weapons were, as in Homer they
occasionally are, of bronze. Why, then, do the supposed late
continuators represent tools, not weapons, as of iron? Why do they
not cleave to the traditional term--bronze--in the case of tools,
as the same men do in the case of weapons?

Helbig offers an apparently untenable explanation of this fact. He
has proposed an interpretation of the uses of bronze and iron in
the poems entirely different from that which I offer. [Footnote:
_Sur la Question Mycnienne_. 1896.] Unfortunately, one can
scarcely criticise his theory without entering again into the
whole question of the construction of the Epics. He thinks that
the origin of the poems dates from "the Mycenaean period," and
that the later continuators of the poems retained the traditions
of that remote age. Thus they thrice call Mycenae "golden,"
though, in the changed economic conditions of their own period,
Mycenae could no longer be "golden"; and I presume that, if
possible, the city would have issued a papyrus currency without a
metallic basis. However this may be, "in the description of
customs the epic poets did their best to avoid everything modern."
Here we have again that unprecedented phenomenon--early poets who
are archaeologically precise.

We have first to suppose that the kernel of the _Iliad_
originated in the Mycenaean age, the age of bronze. We are next to
believe that this kernel was expanded into the actual Epic in
later and changed times, but that the later poets adhered in their
descriptions to the Mycenaean standard, avoiding "everything
modern." That poets of an uncritical period, when treating of the
themes of ancient legend or song, carefully avoid everything
modern is an opinion not warranted by the usage of the authors of
the _Chansons de Geste_, of _Beowulf_, and of the
_Nibelungenlied_. These poets, we must repeat, invariably
introduce in their chants concerning ancient days the customs,
costume, armour, religion, and weapons of their own time. Dr.
Helbig supposes that the late Greek poets, however, who added to
the _Iliad_, carefully avoided doing what other poets of
uncritical ages have always done. [Footnote: _La Question
Mycnienne_, p. 50.]

This is his position in his text (p. 50). In his note 1 to page
50, however, he occupies the precisely contrary position. "The
epic poems were chanted, as a rule, in the houses of more or less
warlike chiefs. It is, then, _ priori_ probable that the
later poets took into account the _contemporary_ military
state of things. Their audience would have been much perturbed
(_bien chequs_) if they had heard the poet mention nothing
but arms and forms of attack and defence to which they were
unaccustomed." If so, when iron weapons came in the poets would
substitute iron for bronze, in lays new and old, but they never
do. However, this is Helbig's opinion in his note. But in his text
he says that the poets, carefully avoiding the contemporary, "the
modern," make the heroes fight, not on horseback, but from
chariots. Their listeners, according to his note, must have been
_bien chequs_, for there came a time when _they_ were
not accustomed to war chariots.

Thus the poets who, in Dr. Helbig's text, "avoid as far as
possible all that is modern," in his note, on the same page, "take
account of the contemporary state of things," and are as modern as
possible where weapons _are_ concerned. Their audience would
be sadly put out (_bien chequs_) "if they heard talk only of
arms ... to which they were unaccustomed"; talk of large suspended
shields, of uncorsleted heroes, and of bronze weapons. They had to
endure it, whether they liked it or not, _teste_ Reichel. Dr.
Helbig seems to speak correctly in his note; in his text his
contradictory opinion appears to be wrong. Experience teaches us
that the poets of an uncritical age--Shakespeare, for example--
introduce the weapons of their own period into works dealing with
remote ages. Hamlet uses the Elizabethan rapier.

In his argument on bronze and iron, unluckily, Dr. Helbig deserts
the judicious opinions of his note for the opposite theory of his
text. His late poets, in the age of iron, always say that the
weapons of the heroes are made of bronze. [Footnote: _Op.
laud_., p. 51.] They thus, "as far as possible avoid what is
modern." But, of course, warriors of the age of iron, when they
heard the poet talk only of weapons of bronze, "_aurient t
bien choqus_" (as Dr. Helbig truly says in his note), on
hearing of nothing but "_armes auxquels ils n'taient pas
habitus,_"--arms always of bronze.

Though Dr. Helbig in his text is of the opposite opinion, I must
agree entirely with the view which he states so clearly in his
note. It follows that if a poet speaks invariably of weapons of
bronze, he is living in an age when weapons are made of no other
material. In his text, however, Dr. Helbig maintains that the poets
of later ages "as far as possible avoid everything modern," and,
therefore, mention none but bronze weapons. But, as he has pointed
out, they do mention iron tools and implements. Why do they desert
the traditional bronze? Because "it occasionally happened that a
poet, when thinking of an entirely new subject, wholly emancipated
himself from traditional forms," [Footnote: _Op. laud_., pp.
51, 52]

The examples given in proof are the offer by Achilles of a lump of
iron as the prize for archery--the iron, as we saw, being destined
for the manufacture of pastoral and agricultural implements, in
which Dr. Helbig includes the lances of shepherds and ploughmen,
though the poet never says that they were of iron. [Footnote:
_Iliad_, XXIII. 826, 835; Odyssey, XIV. 531; XIII. 225.]
There are also the axes through which Odysseus shoots his arrow.
[Footnote: _Odyssey_, XIX. 587; XXI. 3, X, 97, 114, 127, 138;
XXIV. 168, 177; cf. XXI. 61.] "The poet here treated an entirely
new subject, in the development of which he had perfect liberty."
So he speaks freely of iron. "But," we exclaim, "tools and
implements, axes and knives, are not a perfectly new subject!"
They were extremely familiar to the age of bronze, the Mycenaean
age. Examples of bronze tools, arrow-heads, and implements are
discovered in excavations on Mycenaean sites. There was nothing
new about bronze tools and implements. Men had bronze tips to
their ploughshares, bronze knives, bronze axes, bronze arrow-heads
before they used iron.

Perhaps we are to understand that feats of archery, non-military
contests in bowmanship, are _un sujet  fait nouveau_: a
theme so very modern that a poet, in singing of it, could let
himself go, and dare to speak of iron implements. But where was
the novelty? All peoples who use the bow in war practise archery
in time of peace. The poet, moreover, speaks of bronze tools, axes
and knives, in other parts of the _Iliad_; neither tools nor
bronze tools constitute _un sujet tout  fait nouveau_. There
was nothing new in shooting with a bow and nothing new in the
existence of axes. Bows and axes were as familiar to the age of
stone and to the age of bronze as to the age of iron. Dr. Helbig's
explanation, therefore, explains nothing, and, unless a better
explanation is offered, we return to the theory, rejected by Dr.
Helbig, that implements and tools were often, not always, of iron,
while weapons were of bronze in the age of the poet. Dr. Helbig
rejects this opinion. He writes: "We cannot in any way admit that,
at a period when the socks of the plough, the lance points of
shepherds" (which the poet never describes as of iron), "and axe-
heads were of iron, warriors still used weapons of bronze."
[Footnote: op. _laud._, p. 53.] But it is logically possible
to admit that this was the real state of affairs, while it is
logically impossible to admit that bows and tools were "new
subjects"; and that late poets, when they sang of military gear,
"_tenaient compte de l'armement contemporain,_" carefully
avoiding the peril of bewildering their hearers by speaking of
antiquated arms, and, at the same time, spoke of nothing but
antiquated arms--weapons of bronze--and of war chariots, to
fighting men who did not use war chariots and did use weapons of
iron.

These logical contradictions beset all arguments in which it is
maintained that "the late poets" are anxious archaisers, and at
the same time are eagerly introducing the armour and equipment of
their own age. The critics are in the same quandary as to iron and
bronze as traps them in the case of large shields, small bucklers,
greaves, and corslets. They are obliged to assign contradictory
attitudes to their "late poets." It does not seem possible to
admit that a poet, who often describes axes as of iron in various
passages, does so in his account of a peaceful contest in
bowmanship, because contests in bowmanship are _UN sujet TOUT 
FAIT NOUVEAU;_ and so he feels at liberty to describe axes as
of iron, while he adheres to bronze as the metal for weapons. He,
or one of the Odyssean poets, had already asserted (Odyssey, IX.
391) that iron _was_ the metal for adzes and axes.

Dr. Helbig's argument [Footnote: _La Question Mycnienne_, p.
54.] does not explain the facts. The bow of Eurytus and the uses
to which Odysseus is to put it have been in the poet's mind all
through the conduct of his plot, and there is nothing to suggest
that the exploit of bowmanship is a very new lay, tacked on to the
Odyssey.

After writing this chapter, I observed that my opinion had been
anticipated by S. H. Naber. [Footnote: _Quaestiones
Homericae_, p. 60. Amsterdam. Van der Post, 1897.] "Quod
Herodoti diserto testimonio novimus, Homeri restate ferruminatio
nondum inventa erat necdum bene noverant mortales, uti opinor,
_acuere_ ferrum. Hinc pauperes homines ubi possunt, ferro
utuntur; sed in plerisque rebus turn domi turn militiae imprimis
coguntur uti aere...."

The theory of Mr. Ridgeway as to the relative uses of iron and
bronze is not, by myself, very easily to be understood. "The
Homeric warrior ... has regularly, as we have seen, spear and
sword of iron." [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. p.
301.] As no spear or sword of iron is ever mentioned in the
_Iliad_ or Odyssey, as both weapons are always of bronze when
the metal is specified, I have not "seen" that they are
"regularly," or ever, of iron. In proof, Mr. Ridgeway cites the
axes and knives already mentioned--which are not spears or swords,
and are sometimes of bronze. He also quotes the line in the
Odyssey, "Iron of itself doth attract a man." But if this line is
genuine and original, it does not apply to the state of things in
the _Iliad_, while it contradicts the whole Odyssey, in which
swords and spears are _ALWAYS_ of bronze when their metal is
mentioned. If the line reveals the true state of things, then
throughout the Odyssey, if not throughout the _Iliad_, the
poets when they invariably speak of bronze swords and spears
invariably say what they do not mean. If they do this, how are we
to know when they mean what they say, and of what value can their
evidence on points of culture be reckoned? They may always be
retaining traditional terms as to usages and customs in an age
when these are obsolete.

If the Achaeans were, as in Mr. Ridgeway's theory, a northern
people--"Celts"--who conquered with iron weapons a Pelasgian
bronze-using Mycenaean people, it is not credible to me that
Achaean or Pelasgian poets habitually used the traditional
Pelasgian term for the metal of weapons, namely, bronze, in songs
chanted before victors who had won their triumph with iron. The
traditional phrase of a conquered bronze-using race could not thus
survive and flourish in the poetry of an outlandish iron-using
race of conquerors.

Mr. Ridgeway cites the Odyssey, wherein we are told that
"Euryalus, the Phaeacian, presented to Odysseus a bronze sword,
though, as we have seen" (Mr. Ridgeway has seen), "the usual
material for all such weapons is iron. But the Phoeacians both
belonged to the older race and lived in a remote island, and
therefore swords of bronze may well have continued in use in such
out-of-the-world places long after iron swords were in use
everywhere else in Greece. The man who could not afford iron had
to be satisfied with bronze." [Footnote: _Early Age of
Greece_, p. 305.] Here the poet is allowed to mean what he
says. The Phaeacian sword is really of bronze, with silver studs,
probably on the hilt (Odyssey, VIII. 401-407), which was of ivory.
The "out-of-the-world" islanders could afford ivory, not iron. But
when the same poet tells us that the sword which Odysseus brought
from Troy was "a great silver-studded bronze sword" (Odyssey, X.
261, 262), then Mr. Ridgeway does not allow the poet to mean what
he says. The poet is now using an epic formula older than the age
of iron swords.

That Mr. Ridgeway adopts Helbig's theory--the poet says "bronze,"
by a survival of the diction of the bronze age, when he means
iron--I infer from the following passage: "_Chalkos_ is the
name for the older metal, of which cutting weapons were made, and
it thus lingered in many phrases of the Epic dialect; 'to smite
with the _chalkos_' was equivalent to our phrase 'to smite
with the steel.'" [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i. 295.]
But we certainly do smite with the steel, while the question is,
"_DID_ Homer's men smite with the iron?" Homer says not; he
does not merely use "an epic phrase" "to smite with the
_CHALKOS_," but he carefully describes swords, spears, and
usually arrow-heads as being of bronze (_CHALKOS_), while
axes, adzes, and knives are frequently described by him as of
iron.

Mr. Ridgeway has an illustrative argument with some one, who says:
"The dress and weapons of the Saxons given in the lay of
_Beowulf_ fitted exactly the bronze weapons in England, for
they had shields, and spears, and battle-axes, and swords." If you
pointed out to him that the Saxon poem spoke of these weapons as
made of iron, he would say, "I admit that it is a difficulty, but
the resemblances are so many that the discrepancies may be
jettisoned." [Footnote: _Ridgeway,_ i. 83, 84.]

Now, if the supposed controversialist were a Homeric critic, he
would not admit any difficulty. He would say, "Yes; in
_Beowulf_ the weapons are said to be of iron, but that is the
work of the Christian _remanieur,_ or _bearbeiter,_ who
introduced all the Christian morality into the old heathen lay,
and who also, not to puzzle his iron-using audience, changed the
bronze into iron weapons."

We may prove anything if we argue, now that the poets retain the
tradition of obsolete things, now that they modernise as much as
they please. Into this method of reasoning, after duly considering
it, I am unable to come with enthusiasm, being wedded to the
belief that the poets say what they mean. Were it otherwise, did
they not mean what they say, their evidence would be of no value;
they might be dealing throughout in terms for things which were
unrepresented in their own age. To prove this possible, it would
be necessary to adduce convincing and sufficient examples of early
national poets who habitually use the terminology of an age long
prior to their own in descriptions of objects, customs, and
usages. Meanwhile, it is obvious that my whole argument has no
archaeological support. We may find "Mycenaean" corslets and
greaves, but they are not in cremation burials. No Homeric cairn
with Homeric contents has ever been discovered; and if we did find
examples of Homeric cairns, it appears, from the poems, that they
would very seldom contain the arms of the dead.

Nowhere, again, do we find graves containing bronze swords and
iron axes and adzes. I know nothing nearer in discoveries to my
supposed age of bronze weapons and iron tools than a grave of the
early iron and geometrical ornament age of Crete--a _tholos_
tomb, with a bronze spear-head and a set of iron tools, among
others a double axe and a pick of iron. But these were in company
with iron swords? To myself the crowning mystery is, what has
become of the Homeric tumuli with their contents? One can but say
that only within the last thirty years have we found, or, finding,
have recognised Mycenaean burial records. As to the badness of the
iron of the North for military purposes, and the probable badness
of all early iron weapons, we have testimony two thousand years
later than Homer and some twelve hundred years later than
Polybius. In the Eyrbyggja Saga (Morris and Magusson, chap,
xxiv.) we read that Steinthor "was girt with a sword that was
cunningly wrought; the hilts were white with silver, and the grip
wrapped round with the same, but the strings thereof were gilded."
This was a splendid sword, described with the Homeric delight in
such things; but the battle-cry arises, and then "the fair-
wrought sword bit not when it smote armour, and Steinthor must
_straighten it under_ his _foot._" Messrs. Morris and
Magusson add in a note: "This is a very common experience in
Scandinavian weapons, and for the first time heard of at the
battle of Aquae Sextiae between Marius and the Teutons."
[Footnote: The reference is erroneous.] "In the North weapon-
smiths who knew how to forge tempered or steel-laminated weapons
were, if not unknown, at least very rare." When such skill was
unknown or rare in Homer's time, nothing was more natural than
that bronze should hold its own, as the metal for swords and
spears, after iron was commonly used for axes and ploughshares.




CHAPTER X


THE HOMERIC HOUSE

If the Homeric poems be, as we maintain, the work of a peculiar
age, the Homeric house will also, in all likelihood, be peculiar.
It will not be the Hellenic house of classical times. Manifestly
the dwelling of a military-prince in the heroic age would be
evolved to meet his needs, which were not the needs of later
Hellenic citizens. In time of peace the later Greeks are
weaponless men, not surrounded by and entertaining throngs of
armed retainers, like the Homeric chief. The women of later
Greece, moreover, are in the background of life, dwelling in the
women's chambers, behind those of the men, in seclusion. The
Homeric women also, at least in the house of Odysseus, have their
separate chambers, which the men seem not to enter except on
invitation, though the ladies freely honour by their presence the
hall of the warriors. The circumstances, however, were peculiar--
Penelope being unprotected in the absence of her lord.

The whole domestic situation in the Homeric poems--the free
equality of the women, the military conditions, the life of the
chiefs and retainers--closely resembles, allowing for differences
of climate, that of the rich landowners of early Iceland as
described in the sagas. There can be no doubt that the house of
the Icelandic chief was analogous to the house of the Homeric
prince. Societies remarkably similar in mode of life were
accommodated in dwellings similarly arranged. Though the
Icelanders owned no Over-Lord, and, indeed, left their native
Scandinavia to escape the sway of Harold Fairhair, yet each
wealthy and powerful chief lived in the manner of a Homeric
"king." His lands and thralls, horses and cattle, occupied his
attention when he did not chance to be on Viking adventure--
"bearing bane to alien men." He always carried sword and spear,
and often had occasion to use them. He entertained many guests,
and needed a large hall and ample sleeping accommodation for
strangers and servants. His women were as free and as much
respected as the ladies in Homer; and for a husband to slap a wife
was to run the risk of her deadly feud. Thus, far away in the
frosts of the north, the life of the chief was like that of the
Homeric prince, and their houses were alike.

It is our intention to use this parallel in the discussion of the
Homeric house. All Icelandic chiefs' houses in the tenth and
eleventh centuries were not precisely uniform in structure and
accommodation, and saga writers of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, living more comfortably than their forefathers,
sometimes confuse matters by introducing the arrangements of their
own into the tale of past times. But, in any case, one Icelandic
house of the tenth or eleventh century might differ from another
in certain details. It is not safe, therefore, to argue that
difference of detail in Homer's accounts of various houses means
that the varying descriptions were composed in different ages. In
the _Odyssey_ the plot demands that the poet must enter into
domestic details much more freely than he ever has occasion to do
in the Iliad. He may mention upper chambers freely, for example;
it will not follow that in the _Iliad_ upper chambers do not
exist because they are only mentioned twice in that Epic.

It is even more important to note that in the house of Odysseus we
have an unparalleled domestic situation. The lady of the house is
beset by more than a hundred wooers--"sorning" on her, in the old
Scots legal phrase--making it impossible for her to inhabit her
own hall, and desirable to keep the women as much as possible
apart from the men. Thus the Homeric house of which we know most,
that of Odysseus, is a house in a most abnormal condition.

For the sake of brevity we omit the old theory that the Homeric
house was practically that of historical Greece, with the men's
hall approached by a door from the courtyard; while a door at the
upper end of the men's hall yields direct access to the quarters
where the women dwelt apart, at the rear of the men's hall.

That opinion has not survived the essay by Mr. J. L. Myres on the
"Plan of the Homeric House." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic
Studies_, vol. XX, 128-150.] Quite apart from arguments that
rest on the ground plans of palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns, Mr.
Myres has proved, by an exact reading of the poet's words, that
the descriptions in the _Odyssey_ cannot be made intelligible
on the theory that the poet has in his mind a house of the
Hellenic pattern. But in his essay he hardly touches on any
Homeric house except that of Odysseus, in which the circumstances
were unusual. A later critic, Ferdinand Noack, has demonstrated
that we must take other Homeric houses into consideration.
[Footnote: _Homerische Palste_. Teubner. Leipzig, 1903.] The
prae-Mycenaean house is, according to Mr. Myres, on the whole of
the same plan as the Hellenic house of historic days; between
these comes the Mycenaean and Homeric house; "so that the
Mycenaean house stands out _as an intrusive phenomenon_, of
comparatively late arrival _and short of duration_..."
[Footnote: Myres, _Journal_ of _Hellenic_ Studies, vol.
xx. p. 149.] Noack goes further; he draws a line between the
Mycenaean houses on one hand and the houses described by Homer on
the other; while he thinks that the "_late_ Homeric house,"
that of the closing Books of the Odyssey, is widely sundered from
the Homeric house of the _Iliad_ and from the houses of
Menelaus and Alcinous in earlier Books of the _Odyssey._
[Footnote: Noack, p. 73.]

In this case the Iliadic and earlier Odyssean houses are those of
a single definite age, neither Mycenaean of the prime, nor
Hellenic--a fact which entirely suits our argument. But it is not
so certain, that the house of Odysseus is severed from the other
Homeric houses by the later addition of an upper storey, as Noack
supposes, and of women's quarters, and of separate sleeping
chambers for the heads of the family.

The _Iliad,_ save in two passages, and earlier Books of the
_Odyssey_ may not mention upper storeys because they have no
occasion, or only rare occasion, to do so; and some houses may
have had upper sleeping chambers while others of the same period
had not, as we shall prove from the Icelandic parallel.

Mr. Myres's idea of the Homeric house, or, at least, of the house
of Odysseus, is that the women had a _meguron,_ or common
hall, apart from that of the men, with other chambers. These did
not lie to the direct rear of the men's hall, nor were they
entered by a door that opened in the back wall of the men's hall.
Penelope has a chamber, in which she sleeps and does woman's work,
upstairs; her connubial chamber, unoccupied during her lord's
absence, is certainly on the ground floor. The women's rooms are
severed from the men's hall by a courtyard; in the courtyard are
chambers. Telemachus has his [Greek: Thalamos], or chamber, in the
men's courtyard. All this appears plain from the poet's words; and
Mr. Myres corroborates, by the ground plans of the palaces of
Tiryns and Mycenae, a point on which Mr. Monro had doubts, as
regards Tiryns, while he accepted it for Mycenae. [Footnote:
Monro, Odyssey, ii. 497; _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xx.
136.]

Noack [Footnote: Noack, p. 39.] does not, however, agree.

There appears to be no doubt that in the centre of the great halls
of Tiryns and of Mycenae, as of the houses in Homer, was the
hearth, with two tall pillars on each side, supporting a
_louvre_ higher than the rest of the roof, and permitting
some, at least, of the smoke of the fire to escape. Beside the
fire were the seats of the master and mistress of the house, of
the minstrel, and of honoured guests. The place of honour was not
on a dais at the inmost end of the hall, like the high table in
college halls. Mr. Myres holds that in the Homeric house the
[Greek: prodomos], or "forehouse," was a chamber, and was not
identical with the [Greek: aethousa], or portico, though he admits
that the two words "are used indifferently to describe the
sleeping place of a guest." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic
Studies_, xx. 144, 155.] This was the case at Tiryns; and in
the house of the father of Phoenix, in the _Iliad_, the
_prodomos_, or forehouse, and the _aethousa_, or
portico, are certainly separate things (Iliad, IX. 473). Noack
does not accept the Tiryns evidence for the Homeric house.

On Mr. Myres's showing, the women in the house of Odysseus had
distinct and separate quarters into which no man goes uninvited.
Odysseus when at home has, with his wife, a separate bedroom; and
in his absence Penelope sleeps upstairs, where there are several
chambers for various purposes.

Granting that all this is so, how do the pictures of the house
given in the final part of the _Odyssey_ compare with those
in the [Blank space] and with the accounts of the dwellings of
Menelaus and Alcinous in the Odyssey? Noack argues that the house
of Odysseus is unlike the other Homeric houses, because in these,
he reasons, the women have no separate quarters, and the lord and
lady of the house sleep in the great hall, and have no other
bedroom, while there are no upper chambers in the houses of the
_Iliad_, except in two passages dismissed as "late."

If all this be so, then the Homeric period, as regards houses and
domestic life, belongs to an age apart, not truly Mycenaean, and
still less later Hellenic.

It must be remembered that Noack regards the Odyssey as a
composite and in parts very late mosaic (a view on which I have
said what I think in _Homer and the Epic_). According to this
theory (Kirchhoff is the exponent of a popular form thereof) the
first Book of the Odyssey belongs to "the latest stratum," and is
the "copy" of the general "worker-up," whether he was the editor
employed by Pisistratus or a laborious amateur. This theory is
opposed by Sittl, who makes his point by cutting out, as
interpolations, whatever passages do not suit his ideas, and do
suit Kirchhoff's--this is the regular method of Homeric criticism.
The whole cruise of Telemachus (Book IV.) is also regarded as a
late addition: on this point English scholars hitherto have been
of the opposite opinion. [Footnote: Cf. Monro, _Odyssey_,
vol. ii. 313-317.]

The method of all parties is to regard repetitions of phrases as
examples of borrowing, except, of course, in the case of the
earliest poet from whom the others pilfer, and in other cases of
prae-Homeric surviving epic formulae. Critics then dispute as to
which recurrent passage is the earlier, deciding, of course, as may
happen to suit their own general theory. In our opinion these
passages are traditional formulae, as in our own old ballads and
in the _Chansons de Geste_, and Noack also takes this view
every now and then. They may well be older, in many cases, than
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_; or the poet, having found his own
formula, economically used it wherever similar circumstances
occurred. Such passages, so considered, are no tests of earlier
composition in one place, of later composition in another.

We now look into Noack's theory of the Homeric house. Where do the
lord and lady sleep? _Not_, he says, as Odysseus and Penelope
do (when Odysseus is at home), in a separate chamber
(_thalamos_) on the ground floor, nor, like Gunnar and
Halgerda (Njal's Saga), in an upper chamber. They sleep _mucho
domou_; that is, not in a separate recess in the _house_,
but in a recess of the great hall or _megaron_. Thus, in the
hall of Alcinous, the whole space runs from the threshold to the
_muchos_, the innermost part (_Odyssey_, VII. 87-96). In
the hall of Odysseus, the Wooers retreat to the _muchos_,
"the innermost part of the hall" (_Odyssey_, XXII. 270). "The
_muchos_, in Homer, never denotes a separate chamber."
[Footnote: Noack, p. 45. _Cf_. Monro, Note to Odyssey, XXII.
270.]

In Odyssey, XI. 373, Alcinous says it is not yet time to sleep
_ev megaro_, "in the hall." Alcinous and Arete, his wife,
sleep "in the recess of the lofty _domos_," that is, in the
recess of the _hall_, not of "the house" (Odyssey, VII. 346).
The same words are used of Helen and Menelaus (Odyssey, IV. 304).
But when Menelaus goes forth next morning, he goes _ek
thalamoio_, "out of his _chamber_" (_Odyssey_, IV.
310). But this, says Noack, is a mere borrowing of Odyssey, II 2-
5, where the same words are used of Telemachus, leaving his
chamber, which undeniably was a separate chamber in the court:
Eurycleia lighted him thither at night (Odyssey, I. 428). In
Odyssey, IV. 121, Helen enters the hall "from her fragrant, lofty
chamber," so she _had_ a chamber, not in the hall. But, says
Noack, this verse "is not original." The late poet of
_Odyssey_, IV. has cribbed it from the early poet who
composed _Odyssey, XIX. 53._ In that passage Penelope "comes
from her chamber, like Artemis or golden Aphrodite." Penelope
_had_ a chamber--being "a lone lorn woman," who could not
sleep in a hall where the Wooers sat up late drinking--and the
latest poet transfers this chamber to Helen. But however late and
larcenous he may have been, the poet of IV. 121 certainly did not
crib the words of the poet of XIX. 53, for he says, "Helen came
out of her _fragrant, high-roofed_ chamber." The _hall_
was not precisely "fragrant"! However, Noack supposes that the
late poet of Book IV. let Helen have a chamber apart, to lead up
to the striking scene of her entry to the hall where her guests
are sitting. May Helen not even have a boudoir? In _Odyssey_,
IV. 263, Helen speaks remorsefully of having abandoned her
"chamber," and husband, and child, with Paris; but the late poet
says this, according to Noack, because he finds that he is in for
a chamber, so to speak, at all events, as a result of his having
previously cribbed the word "chamber" from Odyssey, XIX. 53.
Otherwise, we presume Helen would have said that she regretted
having left "the recess of the lofty hall" where she really did
sleep. [Footnote: Noack, pp. 47-48]

The merit of this method of arguing may be left to the judgment of
the reader, who will remark that wedded pairs are not described as
leaving the hall when they go to bed; they sleep in "a recess of
the lofty house," the innermost part. Is this the same as the
"recess of the _hall_" or is it an innermost part of the
_house?_ Who can be certain?

The bridal chamber, built so cunningly, with the trunk of a tree
for the support of the bed, by Odysseus (odyssey, XXIII. 177-204),
is, according to Noack, an exception, a solitary freak of
Odysseus. But we may reply that the _thalamos_, the separate
chamber, is no freak; the freak, by knowledge of which Odysseus
proves his identity, is the use of the tree in the construction of
the bed. [blank space] was highly original.

That separate chambers are needed for grown-up children,
_BECAUSE_ the parents sleep in the hall, is no strong
argument. If the parents had a separate chamber, the young people,
unless they slept in the hall, would still need their own. The
girls, of course, could not sleep in the hall; and, in the absence
of both Penelope and Odysseus from the hall, ever since Telemachus
was a baby, Telemachus could have slept there. But it will be
replied that the Wooers did not beset the hall, and Penelope did
not retire to a separate chamber, till Telemachus was a big boy of
sixteen. Noack argues that he had a separate chamber, though the
hall was free, _tradition_. [Footnote: Noack, p. 49.]

Where does Noack think that, in a normal Homeric house, the girls
of the family slept? _They_ could not sleep in the hall, and
on the two occasions when the _Iliad_ has to mention the
chambers of the young ladies they are "upper chambers," as is
natural. But as Noack wants to prove the house of Odysseus, with
its upper chambers, to be a late peculiar house, he, of course,
expunges the two mentions of girls' upper chambers in the
_Odyssey_. The process is simple and easy.

We find (_Iliad_, XVII. 36) that a son, wedding in his
father's and mother's life-time, has a _thalamos_ built for
him, and a _muchos_ in the _THALAMOS_, where he leaves
his wife when he goes to war. This dwelling of grown-up married
children, as in the case of the sons of Priam, has a
_thalamos_, or _doma_, and a courtyard--is a house, in
fact (_Iliad_, VI. 3 16). Here we seem to distinguish the
bed-chamber from the _doma_, which is the hall. Noack objects
that when Odysseus fumigates his house, after slaying the Wooers,
he thus treats the _megaron_, _AND_ the _doma_,
_AND_ the courtyard. Therefore, Noack argues, the
_megaron_, or hall, is one thing; the _doma_ is another.
Mr. Monro writes, "_doma_ usually means _megaron_," and
he supposes a slip from another reading, _thalamon_ for
_megaron_, which is not satisfactory. But if _doma_ here
be not equivalent to _megaron_, what room can it possibly be?
Who was killed in another place? what place therefore needed
purification except the hall and courtyard? No other places needed
purifying; there is therefore clearly a defect in the lines which
cannot be used in the argument.

Noack, in any case, maintains that Paris has but one place to live
in by day and to sleep in by night--his [Greek: talamos]. There
he sleeps, eats, and polishes his weapons and armour. There Hector
finds him looking to his gear; Helen and the maids are all there
(_Iliad,_ VI. 321-323). Is this quite certain? Are Helen and
the maids in the [Greek: talamos], where Paris is polishing his
corslet and looking to his bow, or in an adjacent room? If not in
another room, why, when Hector is in the room talking to Paris,
does Helen ask him to "come in"? (_Iliad,_ VI. 354). He is
in, is there another room whence she can hear him?

The minuteness of these inquiries is tedious!

In _Iliad,_ III. 125, Iris finds Helen "in the hall" weaving.
She summons her to come to Priam on the gate. Helen dresses in
outdoor costume, and goes forth "from the chamber," [Greek:
talamos] (III. 141-142). Are hall and chamber the same room, or
did not Helen dress "in the chamber"? In the same Book (III. 174)
she repents having left the [Greek: talamos] of Menelaus, not his
hall: the passage is not a repetition in words of her speech in
the Odyssey.

The gods, of course, are lodged like men. When we find that Zeus
has really a separate sleeping chamber, built by Hephaestus, as
Odysseus has (_Iliad,_ XIV. 166-167), we are told that this
is a late interpolation. Mr. Leaf, who has a high opinion of this
scene, "the Beguiling of Zeus," places it in the "second
expansions"; he finds no "late Odyssean" elements in the language.
In _Iliad,_ I. 608-611, Zeus "departed to his couch"; he
seems not to have stayed and slept in the hall.

Here a quaint problem occurs. Of all late things in the Odyssey
the latest is said to be the song of Demodocus about the loves of
Ares and Aphrodite in the house of Hephaestus. [Footnote: Odyssey,
VIII. 266-300.] We shall show that this opinion is far from
certainly correct. Hephaestus sets a snare round the bed in his
[Greek: talamos] and catches the guilty lovers. _Now_, was
his [Greek: talamos] or bedroom, also his dining-room? If so, the
author of the song, though so "late," knows what Noack knows, and
what the poets who assign sleeping chambers to wedded folks do not
know, namely, that neither married gods nor married men have
separate bedrooms. This is plain, for he makes Hephaestus stand at
the front door of his house, and shout to the gods to come and see
the sinful lovers. [Footnote: Ibid., VI. 304-305] They all come
and look on _from the front door_ (_Odyssey_, VII. 325),
which leads into the [Greek: megaron], the hall. If the lovers are in
bed in the hall, then hall and bedroom are all one, and the terribly
late poet who made this lay knows it, though the late poets of the
_Odyssey_ and _Iliad_ do not.

It would appear that the author of the lay is not "late," as we
shall prove in another case.

Noack, then, will not allow man or god to have a separate wedding
chamber, nor women, before the late parts of the _Odyssey_,
to have separate quarters, except in the house of Odysseus.
Women's chambers do not exist in the Homeric house. [Footnote:
Noack, p. 50.] If so, how remote is the true Homeric house from
the house of historical Greece!

As for upper chambers, those of the daughter of the house
(_Iliad,_ II. 514; XVI. 184), both passages are "late," as we
saw (Noack, p.[blank space]). In the _Odyssey_ Penelope both
sleeps and works at the shroud in an upper chamber. But the whole
arrangement of upper chambers as women's apartments is as late,
says Noack, as the time of the poets and "redactors" (whoever they
may have been) of the Odyssey, XXI., XXII., XXIII. [Footnote:
Noack, p. 68.] At the earliest these Books are said to be of the
eighth century B.C. Here the late poets have their innings at
last, and do modernise the Homeric house.

To prove the absence of upper rooms in the _Iliad_ we have to
abolish II. 514, where Astyoche meets her divine lover in her
upper chamber, and XVI. 184, where Polyml celebrates her amour
with Hermes "in the upper chambers." The places where these two
passages occur, _Catalogue_ (Book II.) and the
_Catalogue_ of the _Myrmidons_ (Book XVI.) are, indeed,
both called "late," but the author of the latter knows the early
law of bride-price, which is supposed to be unknown to the authors
of "late" passages in the Odyssey (XVI. 190).

Stated briefly, such are the ideas of Noack. They leave us, at
least, with permission to hold that the whole of the Epics, except
Books XXI., XXII., and XXIII. of the Odyssey, bear, as regards the
house, the marks of a distinct peculiar age, coming between the
period of Mycenae and Tiryns on one hand and the eighth century
B.C. on the other.

This is the point for which we have contended, and this suits our
argument very well, though we are sorry to see that Odyssey, Books
XXI., XXII., and XXIII., are no older than the eighth century B.C.
But we have not been quite convinced that Helen had not her
separate chamber, that Zeus had not his separate chamber, and that
the upper chambers of the daughters of the house in the Iliad are
"late." Where, if not in upper chambers, did the young princesses
repose? Again, the marked separation of the women in the house of
Odysseus may be the result of Penelope's care in unusual
circumstances, though she certainly would not build a separate
hall for them. There are over a hundred handsome young scoundrels
in her house all day long and deep into the night; she would,
vainly, do her best to keep her girls apart.

It stands to reason that young girls of princely families would
have bedrooms in the house, not in the courtyard-bedrooms out of
the way of enterprising young men. What safer place could be found
for them than in upper chambers, as in the Iliad? But, if their
lovers were gods, we know that none "can see a god coming or going
against his will." The arrangements of houses may and do vary in
different cases in the same age.

As examples we turn to the parallel afforded by the Icelandic
sagas and their pictures of houses of the eleventh century B.C.
The present author long ago pointed out the parallel of the houses
in the sagas and in Homer. [Footnote: _The_ House. Butcher
and Lang. Translation of the Odyssey.] He took his facts from
Dasent's translation of the Njal Saga (1861, vol. i. pp. xcviii.,
ciii., with diagrams). As far as he is aware, no critic looked
into the matter till Mr. Monro (1901), being apparently
unacquainted with Dasent's researches, found similar lore in works
by Dr. Valtyr Gudmundsson [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp.
491-495; _cf_. Gudmundsson, _Der Islandske Bottg i Fristats
Tiden_, 1894; _cf_. Dasent, _Oxford_ Essays, 1858.]
The roof of the hall is supported by four rows of columns, the two
inner rows are taller, and between them is the hearth, with seats
of honour for the chief guests and the lord. The fire was in a
kind of trench down the hall; and in very cold weather, we learn
from Dasent, long fires could be lit through the extent of the
hall. The chief had a raised seat; the guests sat on benches. The
high seats were at the centre; not till later times on the dais,
as in a college hall. The tables were relatively small, and, as in
Homer, could be removed after a meal. The part of the hall with
the dais in later days was partitioned off as a _stofa_ or
parlour. In early times cooking was done in the hall.

Dr. Gudmundsson, if I understand him, varies from Dasent in some
respects. I quote an abstract of his statement.

"About the year 1000 houses generally consisted of, at least, four
rooms; often a fifth was added, the so-called bath-room. The
oldest form for houses was that of one long line or row of
separate rooms united by wooden or clay corridors or partitions,
and each covered with a roof. Later, this was considered
unpractical, and they began building some of the houses or rooms
behind the others, which facilitated the access from one to
another, and diminished the number of outer doors and corridors."

"Towards the latter part of the tenth century the _skaal_ was
used as common sleeping-room for the whole family, including
servants and serfs; it was fitted up in the same way as the hall.
Like this, it was divided in three naves by rows of wooden
pillars; the middle floor was lower than that of the two side
naves. In these were placed the so-called _saet_ or bed-
places, not running the whole length of the [blank space] from
gable to gable, but sideways, filling about a third part. Each
_saet_ was enclosed by broad, strong planks joined into the
pillars, but not nailed on, so they might easily be taken out.
These planks, called _SATTESTOKKE_, could also be turned
sideways and used as benches during the day; they were often
beautifully carved, and consequently highly valued."

"When settling abroad the people took away with them these planks,
and put them up in their new home as a symbol of domestic
happiness. The _saet_ was occupied by the servants of the
farm as sleeping-rooms; generally it was screened by hangings and
low panels, which partitioned it off like huge separate boxes,
used as beds."

"All beds were filled with hay or straw; servants and serfs slept
on this without any bedclothes, sometimes a sleeping-bag was used,
or they covered themselves with deerskins or a mantle. The family
had bed-clothes, but only in very wealthy houses were they also
provided for the servants. Moveable beds were extremely rare, but
are sometimes mentioned. Generally two people slept in each bed."

"In the further end of the _skaal_, facing the door, opened
out one or several small bedrooms, destined for the husband with
wife and children, besides other members of the family, including
guests of a higher standing. These small dormitories were
separated by partitions of planks into bedrooms with one or
several beds, and shut away from the outer _SKAAL_ either by
a sliding-door in the wall or by an ordinary door shutting with a
hasp. Sometimes only a hanging covered the opening."

"In some farms were found underground passages, leading from the
master's bedside to an outside house, or even as far as a wood or
another sheltered place in the neighbourhood, to enable the
inhabitants to save themselves during a night attack. For the same
reason each man had his arms suspended over his bed."

"_Ildhus_ or fire-house was the kitchen, often used besides
as a sleeping-room when the farms were very small. This was quite
abolished after the year 1000."

"_Buret_ was the provision house."

"The bathroom was heated from a stone oven; the stones were heated
red-hot and cold water thrown upon them, which developed a
quantity of vapour. As the heat and the steam mounted, the people--
men and women--crawled up to a shelf under the roof and remained
there as in a Turkish bath."

"In large and wealthy houses there was also a women's room, with a
fireplace built low down in the middle, as in the hall, where the
women used to sit with their handiwork all day. The men were
allowed to come in and talk to them, also beggar-women and other
vagabonds, who brought them the news from other places. Towards
evening and for meals all assembled together in the hall."

On this showing, people did not sleep in cabins partitioned off
the dining-hall, but in the _skaale_; and two similar and
similarly situated rooms, one the common dining-hall, the other
the common sleeping-hall, have been confused by writers on the
sagas. [Footnote: Gudmundsson, p, 14, Note I.] Can there be a
similar confusion in the uses of _megaron_, _doma_, and
_domos_?

In the Eyrbyggja Saga we have descriptions of the "fire-hall,"
_skli_ or _eldhs_. "The fire-hall was the common
sleeping-room in Icelandic homesteads." Guests and strangers slept
there; not in the portico, as in Homer. "Here were the lock-beds."
There were butteries; one of these was reached by a ladder. The
walls were panelled. [Footnote: _The Ere Dwellers_, p. 145.]
Thorgunna had a "berth," apparently partitioned off, in the hall.
[Footnote: _Ibid_., 137-140.] As in Homer the hall was
entered from the courtyard, in which were separate rooms for
stores and other purposes. In the courtyard also, in the houses of
Gunnar of Lithend and Gisli at Hawkdale, and doubtless in other
cases, were the _dyngfur_, or ladies' chambers, their
"bowers" (_Thalamos_, like that of Telemachus in the
courtyard), where they sat spinning and gossiping. The
_dyngja_ was originally called _br_, our "bower"; the
ballads say "in bower and hall." In the ballad of _MARGARET_,
her parents are said to put her in the way of deadly sin by
building her a bower, apparently separate from the main building;
she would have been safer in an upper chamber, though, even there,
not safe--at least, if a god wooed her! It does not appear that
all houses had these chambers for ladies apart from the main
building. You did not enter the main hall in Iceland from the
court directly in front, but by the "man's door" at the west side,
whence you walked through the porch or outer hall
(_prodomos_, _aithonsa_), in the centre of which, to the
right, were the doors of the hall. The women entered by the
women's door, at the eastern extremity.

Guests did not sleep, as in Homer, in the _prodomos_, or the
portico--the climate did not permit it--but in one or other hall.
The hall was wainscotted; the walls were hung with shields and
weapons, like the hall of Odysseus. The heads of the family
usually slept in the aisles, in chambers entered through the
wainscot of the hall. Such a chamber might be called
_muchos_; it was private from the hall though under the same
roof. It appears not improbable that some Homeric halls had
sleeping places of this kind; such a _muchos_ in Iceland
seems to have had windows. [Footnote: Story of Burnt _Njal_,
i. 242.]

 Gunnar himself, however, slept with his wife, Halegerda, in an
upper chamber; his mother, who lived with him, also had a room
upstairs.

In Njal's house, too, there was an upper chamber, wherein the foes
of Njal threw fire. [Footnote:_Ibid_., ii. 173.] But Njal and
Bergthora, his wife, when all hope was ended, went into their own
bride-chamber in the separate aisle of the hall "and gave over
their souls into God's hand." Under a hide they lay; and when men
raised up the hide, after the fire had done its work, "they were
unburnt under it. All praised God for that, and thought it was a
_GREAT_ token." In this house was a weaving room for the
women. [Footnote:_Ibid_, ii. 195.]

It thus appears that Icelandic houses of the heroic age, as
regards structural arrangements, were practically identical with
the house of Odysseus, allowing for a separate sleeping-hall,
while the differences between that and other Homeric houses may be
no more than the differences between various Icelandic dwellings.
The parents might sleep in bedchambers off the hall or in upper
chambers. Ladies might have bowers in the courtyard or might have
none. The [Greek: laurae]--each passage outside the hall--yielded
sleeping rooms for servants; and there were store-rooms behind the
passage at the top end of the hall, as well as separate chambers
for stores in the courtyard. Mr. Leaf judiciously reconstructs the
Homeric house in its "public rooms," of which we hear most, while
he leaves the residential portion with "details and limits
probably very variable." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. 586-
589, with diagram based on the palace of Tiryns.]

Given variability, which is natural and to be expected, and given
the absence of detail about the "residential portion" of other
houses than that of Odysseus in the poems, it does not seem to us
that this house is conspicuously "late," still less that it is the
house of historical Greece. Manifestly, in all respects it more
resembles the houses of Njal and Gunnar of Lithend in the heroic
age of Iceland.

In the house, as in the uses of iron and bronze, the weapons,
armour, relations of the sexes, customary laws, and everything
else, Homer gives us an harmonious picture of a single and
peculiar age. We find no stronger mark of change than in the
Odyssean house, if that be changed, which we show reason to doubt.




CHAPTER XI


NOTES OF CHANGE IN THE "ODYSSEY"

If the Homeric descriptions of details of life contain
anachronisms, points of detail inserted in later progressive ages,
these must be peculiarly conspicuous in the Odyssey. Longinus
regarded it as the work of Homer's advanced life, the sunset of
his genius, and nobody denies that it assumes the existence of the
_Iliad_ and is posterior to that epic. In the Odyssey, then,
we are to look, if anywhere, for indications of a changed society.
That the language of the _Odyssey_, and of four Books of the
_Iliad_ (IX., X., XXIII., XXIV.), exhibits signs of change is
a critical commonplace, but the language is matter for a separate
discussion; we are here concerned with the ideas, manners,
customary laws, weapons, implements, and so forth of the Epics.

Taking as a text Mr. Monro's essay, _The Relation of the Odyssey
to the Iliad_, [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 324,
_seqq_.] we examine the notes of difference which he finds
between the twin Epics. As to the passages in which he discovers
"borrowing or close imitation of passages" in the _Iliad_ by
the poet of the _Odyssey_, we shall not dwell on the matter,
because we know so little about the laws regulating the repetition
of epic formulae. It is tempting, indeed, to criticise Mr. Monro's
list of twenty-four Odyssean "borrowings," and we might arrive at
some curious results. For example, we could show that the
_Klthes_, the spinning women who "spae" the fate of each
new-born child, are not later, but, as less abstract, are if
anything earlier than "the simple _Aisa_ of the
_Iliad_." [Footnote: _Odyssey_, VII. 197; _Iliad_,
xx. 127.] But our proof would require an excursion into the
beliefs of savage and barbaric peoples who have their
_Klthes_, spae-women attending each birth, but who are not
known to have developed the idea of _Aisa_ or Fate.

We might also urge that "to send a spear through the back of a
stag" is not, as Mr. Monro thought, "an improbable feat," and that
a man wounded to death as Leiocritus was wounded, would not, as
Mr. Monro argued, fall backwards. He supposes that the poet of the
_Odyssey_ borrowed the forward fall from a passage in the
_Iliad_, where the fall is in keeping. But, to make good our
proof, it might be necessary to spear a human being in the same
way as Leiocritus was speared. [Footnote: Monro, odyssey, vol. ii.
pp. 239, 230.]

The repetitions of the Epic, at all events, are not the result of
the weakness of a poet who had to steal his expressions like a
schoolboy. They have some other cause than the indolence or
inefficiency of a _cento_--making undergraduate. Indeed, a
poet who used the many terms in the _Odyssey_ which do not
occur in the _Iliad_ was not constrained to borrow from any
predecessor.

It is needless to dwell on the Odyssean novelties in vocabulary,
which were naturally employed by a poet who had to sing of peace,
not of war, and whose epic, as Aristotle says, is "ethical," not
military. The poet's rich vocabulary is appropriate to his novel
subject, that is all.

Coming to Religion (I) we find Mr. Leaf assigning to his original
_Achilleis_--"the kernel"--the very same religious ideas as
Mr. Monro takes to be marks of "lateness" and of advance when he
finds them in the Odyssey!

In the original oldest part of the _Iliad_, says Mr. Leaf,
"the gods show themselves just so much as to let us know what are
the powers which control mankind from heaven.... Their
interference is such as becomes the rulers of the world, not
partisans in the battle." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii.
pp. xii., xiii.] It is the later poets of the _Iliad_, in Mr.
Leaf's view, who introduce the meddlesome, undignified, and
extremely unsportsmanlike gods. The original early poet of the
_Iliad_ had the nobler religious conceptions.

In that case--the _Odyssey_ being later than the original
kernel of the Iliad--the _Odyssey_ ought to give us gods as
undignified and unworthy as those exhibited by the later
continuators of the _Iliad_.

But the reverse is the case. The gods behave fairly well in Book
XXIV. of the _Iliad_, which, we are to believe, is the
latest, or nearly the latest, portion. They are all wroth with the
abominable behaviour of Achilles to dead Hector (XXIV. 134). They
console and protect Priam. As for the _Odyssey_, Mr. Monro
finds that in this late Epic the gods are just what Mr. Leaf
proclaims them to have been in his old original kernel. "There is
now an Olympian concert that carries on something like a moral
government of the world. It is very different in the _Iliad...."
[Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, ii. 335.]

But it was not very different; it was just the same, in Mr. Leaf's
genuine old original germ of the _Iliad_. In fact, the gods
are "very much like you and me." When their _ichor_ is up,
they misbehave as we do when our blood is up, during the fury of
war. When Hector is dead and when the war is over, the gods give
play to their higher nature, as men do. There is no difference of
religious conception to sever the _Odyssey_ from the later
but not from the original parts of the _Iliad_. It is all an
affair of the circumstances in each case.

The _Odyssey_ is calmer, more reflective, more
_religious_ than the _Iliad_, being a poem of peace. The
_Iliad_, a poem of war, is more _mythological_ than the
_Odyssey_: the gods in the _Iliad_ are excited, like the
men, by the great war and behave accordingly. That neither gods
nor men show any real sense of the moral weakness of Agamemnon or
Achilles, or of the moral superiority of Hector, is an
unacceptable statement. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p.
336.] Even Achilles and Agamemnon are judged by men and by the
poet according to their own standard of ethics and of customary
law. There is really no doubt on this point. Too much (2) is made
of the supposed different views of Olympus--a mountain in Thessaly
in the _Iliad_; a snowless, windless, supra-mundane place in
_Odyssey_, V. 41-47. [Footnote: _Ibid_., ii. 396.] Of
the Odyssean passage Mr. Merry justly says, "the actual
description is not irreconcilable with the general Homeric picture
of Olympus." It is "an idealised mountain," and conceptions of it
vary, with the variations which are essential to and inseparable
from all mythological ideas. As Mr. Leaf says, [Footnote: Note to
_Iliad_, V. 750.] "heaven, _ouranos_ and Olympus, if not
identical, are at least closely connected." In V. 753, the poet
"regarded the summit of Olympus as a half-way stage between heaven
and earth," thus "departing from the oldest Homeric tradition,
which made the earthly mountain Olympus, and not any aerial
region, the dwelling of the gods." But precisely the same
confusion of mythical ideas occurs among a people so backward as
the Australian south-eastern tribes, whose All Father is now
seated on a hill-top and now "above the sky." In _ILIAD_,
VIII. 25, 26, the poet is again said to have "entirely lost the
real Epic conception of Olympus as a mountain in Thessaly," and to
"follow the later conception, which removed it from earth to
heaven." In _Iliad_, XI. 184, "from heaven" means "from the
summit of Olympus, which, though Homer does not identify it with
_oupavos_, still, as a mountain, reached into heaven" (Leaf).
The poet of Iliad, XI. 184, says plainly that Zeus descended
"_from_ heaven" to Mount Ida. In fact, all that is said of
Olympus, of heaven, of the home of the gods, is poetical, is
mythical, and so is necessarily subject to the variations of
conception inseparable from mythology. This is certain if there be
any certainty in mythological science, and here no hard and fast
line can be drawn between _ODYSSEY_ and _Iliad_.

(3) The next point of difference is that, "we hear no more of Iris
as the messenger of Zeus;" in the Odyssey, "the agent of the will
of Zeus is now Hermes, as in the Twenty-fourth Book of the
_Iliad_," a late "Odyssean" Book. But what does that matter,
seeing that _ILIAD_, Book VIII, is declared to be one of the
latest additions; yet in Book VIII. Iris, not Hermes, is the
messenger (VIII. 409-425). If in late times Hermes, not Iris, is
the messenger, why, in a very "late" Book (VIII.) is Iris the
messenger, not Hermes? _Iliad_, Book XXIII., is also a late
"Odyssean" Book, but here Iris goes on her messages (XXIII. 199)
moved merely by the prayers of Achilles. In the late Odyssean Book
(XXIV.) of the _Iliad_, Iris runs on messages from Zeus both
to Priam and to Achilles. If Iris, in "Odyssean" times, had
resigned office and been succeeded by Hermes, why did Achilles
pray, not to Hermes, but to Iris? There is nothing in the argument
about Hermes and Iris. There is nothing in the facts but the
variability of mythical and poetical conceptions. Moreover, the
conception of Iris as the messenger certainly existed through the
age of the Odyssey, and later. In the Odyssey the beggar man is
called "Irus," a male Iris, because he carries messages; and Iris
does her usual duty as messenger in the Homeric Hymns, as well as
in the so-called late Odyssean Books of the _Iliad_. The poet
of the Odyssey knew all about Iris; there had arisen no change of
belief; he merely employed Hermes as messenger, not of the one
god, but of the divine Assembly.

(4) Another difference is that in the _Iliad_ the wife of
Hephaestus is one of the Graces; in the Odyssey she is Aphrodite.
[Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 336.] This is one of
the inconsistencies which are the essence of mythology. Mr. Leaf
points out that when Hephaestus is about exercising his craft, in
making arms for Achilles, Charis "is made wife of Hephaestus by a
more transparent allegory than we find elsewhere in Homer,"
whereas, when Aphrodite appears in a comic song by Demodocus
(Odyssey, VIII. 266-366), "that passage is later and un-Homeric."
[Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 246.]

Of this we do not accept the doctrine that the lay is un-Homeric.
The difference comes to no more than _that;_ the accustomed
discrepancy of mythology, of story-telling about the gods. But as
to the lay of Demodocus being un-Homeric and late, the poet at
least knows the regular Homeric practice of the bride-price, and
its return by the bride's father to the husband of an adulterous
wife (Odyssey, VIII. 318, 319). The poet of this lay, which Mr.
Merry defends as Homeric, was intimately familiar with Homeric
customary law. Now, according to Paul Cauer, as we shall see,
other "Odyssean" poets were living in an age of changed law, later
than that of the author of the lay of Demodocus. All these so-
called differences between _Iliad_ and Odyssey do not point
to the fact that the _Odyssey_ belongs to a late and changed
period of culture, of belief and customs. There is nothing in the
evidence to prove that contention.

There (5) are two references to local oracles in the
_Odyssey,_ that of Dodona (XIV. 327; XIX. 296) and that of
Pytho (VIII. 80). This is the old name of Delphi. Pytho occurs in
_Iliad,_ IX. 404, as a very rich temple of Apollo--the oracle
is not named, but the oracle brought in the treasures. Achilles
(XVI. 233) prays to Pelasgian Zeus of Dodona, whose priests were
thickly tabued, but says nothing of the oracle of Dodona. Neither
when in leaguer round Troy, nor when wandering in fairy lands
forlorn, had the Achaeans or Odysseus much to do with the local
oracles of Greece; perhaps not, in Homer's time, so important as
they were later, and little indeed is said about them in either
Epic.

(6) "The geographical knowledge shown in the Odyssey goes beyond
that of the _Iliad_ ... especially in regard to Egypt and
Sicily." But a poet of a widely wandering hero of Western Greece
has naturally more occasion than the poet of a fixed army in Asia
to show geographical knowledge. Egyptian Thebes is named, in
_ILIAD_, IX., as a city very rich, especially in chariots;
while in the _ODYSSEY_ the poet has occasion to show more
knowledge of the way to Egypt and of Viking descents from Crete on
the coast (Odyssey, III. 300; IV. 351; XIV. 257; XVII. 426).
Archaeology shows that the Mycenaean age was in close commercial
relation with Egypt, and that the Mycenaean civilisation extended
to most Mediterranean lands and islands, and to Italy and Sicily.
[Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, i. 69.] There is
nothing suspicious, as "late," in the mention of Sicily by
Odysseus in Ithaca (Odyssey, XX. 383; XXIV. 307). In the same way,
if the poet of a western poem does not dilate on the Troad and the
people of Asia Minor as the poet of the _ILIAD_ does, that is
simply because the scene of the _ILIAD_ is in Asia and the
scene of the Odyssey is in the west, when it is not in No Man's
land. From the same cause the poet of sea-faring has more occasion
to speak of the Phoenicians, great sea-farers, than the poet of
the Trojan leaguer.

(7) We know so little about land tenure in Homeric times--and,
indeed, early land tenure is a subject so complex and obscure that
it is not easy to prove advance towards separate property in the
_Odyssey_--beyond what was the rule in the time of the
_ILIAD_. In the Making of the Arms (XVIII. 541-549) we find
many men ploughing a field, and this may have been a common field.
But in what sense? Many ploughs were at work at once on a Scottish
runrig field, and each farmer had his own strip on several common
fields, but each farmer held by rent, or by rent and services,
from the laird. These common fields were not common property. In
XII. 422 we have "a common field," and men measuring a strip and
quarrelling about the marking-stones, across the "baulk," but it
does not follow that they are owners; they may be tenants. Such
quarrels were common in Scotland when the runrig system of common
fields, each man with his strip, prevailed. [Footnote: Grey
Graham, _Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century_,
i. 157.]

A man had a [Greek: klaeros] or lot (_ILIAD_, XV. 448), but
what was a "lot"? At first, probably, a share in land periodically
shifted-& _partage noir_ of the Russian peasants. Kings and
men who deserve public gratitude receive a [Greek: temenos] a
piece of public land, as Bellerophon did from the Lycians (VI.
194). In the case of Melager such an estate is offered to him, but
by whom? Not by the people at large, but by the [Greek: gerontes]
(IX. 574).

Who are the [Greek: gerontes]? They are not ordinary men of the
people; they are, in fact, the gentry. In an age so advanced from
tribal conditions as is the Homeric time--far advanced beyond
ancient tribal Scotland or Ireland--we conceive that, as in these
countries during the tribal period, the [Greek: gerontes] (in
Celtic, the _Flaith_) held in POSSESSION, if not in
accordance with the letter of the law, as property, much more land
than a single "lot." The Irish tribal freeman had a right to a
"lot," redistributed by rotation. Wealth consisted of cattle; and
a _bogire_, a man of many kine, let _them_ out to
tenants. Such a rich man, a _flatha_, would, in accordance
with human nature, use his influence with kineless dependents to
acquire in possession several lots, avoid the partition, and keep
the lots in possession though not legally in property. Such men
were the Irish _flaith_, gentry under the _RI_, or king,
his [Greek: gerontes], each with his _ciniod_, or near
kinsmen, to back his cause.

"_Flaith_ seems clearly to mean land-owners," or squires,
says Sir James Ramsay. [Footnote: _Foundations of England_,
i. 16, Note 4.] If land, contrary to the tribal ideal, came into
private hands in early Ireland, we can hardly suppose that, in the
more advanced and settled Homeric society, no man but the king
held land equivalent in extent to a number of "lots." The [Greek:
gerontes], the gentry, the chariot-owning warriors, of whom there
are hundreds not of kingly rank in Homer (as in Ireland there were
many _flaith_ to one _Ri_) probably, in an informal but
tight grip, held considerable lands. When we note their position
in the _Iliad_, high above the nameless host, can we imagine
that they did not hold more land than the simple, perhaps
periodically shifting, "lot"? There were "lotless" men (Odyssey,
XL 490), lotless _freemen_, and what had become of their
lots? Had they not fallen into the hands of the [Greek: gerontes]
or the _flaith_?

Mr. Ridgeway in a very able essay [Footnote: _Journal of
Hellenic Studies_, vi. 319-339.] holds different opinions. He
points out that among a man's possessions, in the _Iliad_, we
hear only of personal property and live stock. It is in one
passage only in the Odyssey (XIV. 211) that we meet with men
holding several lots of land; but _they_, we remark, occur in
Cretean isle, as we know, of very advanced civilisation from of
old.

Mr. Ridgeway also asks whether the lotless men may not be
"outsiders," such as are attached to certain villages of Central
and Southern India; [Footnote: Maine, _Village Communities_,
P. 127.] or they may answer to the _Fuidhir_, or "broken
men," of early Ireland, fugitives from one to another tribe. They
would be "settled on the waste lands of a community." If so, they
would not be lotless; they would have new lots. [Footnote:
_Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vi. 322, 323.]

Laertes, though a king, is supposed to have won his farm by his
own labours from the waste (Odyssey, XXIV. 207). Mr. Monro says,
"the land having thus been won from the wastes (the [Greek: gae
aklaeros te kai aktitos] of _H., Ven._ 123), was a [Greek:
temenos] or separate possession of Laertes." The passage is in the
rejected conclusion of the Odyssey; and if any man might go and
squat in the waste, any man might have a lot, or better than one
lot. In _Iliad_, XXIII. 832-835, Achilles says that his
offered prize of iron will be useful to a man "whose rich fields
are very remote from any town," Teucer and Meriones compete for
the prize: probably they had such rich remote fields, not each a
mere lot in a common field. These remote fields they are supposed
to hold in perpetuity, apart from the _temenos_, which, in
Mr. Ridgeway's opinion, reverted, on the death of each holder, to
the community, save where kingship was hereditary. Now, if [Greek:
klaeros] had come to mean "a lot of land," as we say "a building
lot," obviously men like Teucer and Meriones had many lots, rich
fields, which at death might sometimes pass to their heirs. Thus
there was separate landed property in the _Iliad_; but the
passage is denounced, though not by Mr. Ridgeway, as "late."

The absence of enclosures ([Greek: herkos arouraes]) proves
nothing about absence of several property in land. In Scotland the
laird's lands were unenclosed till deep in the eighteenth century.

My own case for land in private possession, in Homeric times,
rests mainly on human nature in such an advanced society. Such
possession as I plead for is in accordance with human nature, in a
society so distinguished by degrees of wealth as is the Homeric.

Unless we are able to suppose that all the gentry of the
_Iliad_ held no "rich fields remote from towns," each having
but one rotatory lot apiece, there is no difference in Iliadic and
Odyssean land tenure, though we get clearer lights on it in the
_Odyssey_.

The position of the man of several lots may have been
indefensible, if the ideal of tribal law were ever made real, but
wealth in growing societies universally tends to override such
law. Mr. Keller [Footnote: Homeric Society, p. 192. 1902.] justly
warns us against the attempt "to apply universally certain fixed
rules of property development. The passages in Homer upon which
opinions diverge most are isolated ones, occurring in similes and
fragmentary descriptions. Under such conditions the formulation of
theories or the attempt rigorously to classify can be little more
than an intellectual exercise."

We have not the materials for a scientific knowledge of Homeric
real property; and, with all our materials in Irish law books, how
hard it is for us to understand the early state of such affairs in
Ireland! But does any one seriously suppose that the knightly
class of the _Iliad_, the chariot-driving gentlemen, held no
more land--legally or by permitted custom--than the two Homeric
swains who vituperate each other across a baulk about the right to
a few feet of a strip of a runrig field? Whosoever can believe
that may also believe that the practice of adding "lot" to "lot"
began in the period between the finished composition of the
_Iliad_ (or of the parts of it which allude to land tenure)
and the beginning of the _Odyssey_ (or of the parts of it
which refer to land tenure). The inference is that, though the
fact is not explicitly stated in the _Iliad_, there were men
who held more "lots" than one in Iliadic times as well as in the
Odyssean times, when, in a solitary passage of the Odyssey, we do
hear of such men in Crete. But whosoever has pored over early
European land tenures knows how dim our knowledge is, and will not
rush to employ his lore in discriminating between the date of the
_Iliad_ and the date of the Odyssey.

Not much proof of change in institutions between Iliadic and
Odyssean times can be extracted from two passages about the ethna,
or bride-price of Penelope. The rule in both _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ is that the wooer gives a bride-price to the father
of the bride, ethna. This was the rule known even to that
painfully late and un-Homeric poet who made the Song of Demodocus
about the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. In that song the injured
husband, Hephaestus, claims back the bride-price which he had paid
to the father of his wife, Zeus. [Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 318.]
This is the accepted custom throughout the _Odyssey_ (VI.
159; XVI. 77; XX. 335; XXI. 162; XV. 17, &c.). So far there is no
change of manners, no introduction of the later practice, a dowry
given with the bride, in place of a bride-price given to the
father by the bridegroom. But Penelope was neither maid, wife, nor
widow; her husband's fate, alive or dead, was uncertain, and her
son was so anxious to get her out of the house that he says he
offered gifts _with_ her (XX. 342). In the same way, to buy
back the goodwill of Achilles, Agamemnon offers to give him his
daughter without bride-price, and to add great gifts
(_Iliad_, IX. l47)--the term for the gifts is [Greek:
mailia]. People, of course, could make their own bargain; take as
much for their daughter as they could get, or let the gifts go
from husband to bride, and then return to the husband's home with
her (as in Germany in the time of Tacitus, _Germania_, 18),
or do that, and throw in more gifts. But in Odyssey, II. 53,
Telemachus says that the Wooers shrink from going to the house of
Penelope's father, Icarius, who would endow (?) his daughter
([Greek: eednoosaito]) And again (_Odyssey_, I. 277; II.
196), her father's folk will furnish a bridal feast, and "array
the [Greek: heedna], many, such as should accompany a dear
daughter." Some critics think that the gifts here are
_dowry_, a later institution than bride-price; others, that
the father of the dear daughter merely chose to be generous, and
returned the bride-price, or its equivalent, in whole or part.
[Footnote: Merry, Odyssey, vol. i. p. 50. Note to Book I 277.] If
the former view be correct, these passages in Odyssey, I., II. are
later than the exceedingly "late" song of Demodocus. If the latter
theory be correct the father is merely showing goodwill, and doing
as the Germans did when they were in a stage of culture much
earlier than the Homeric.

The position of Penelope is very unstable and legally perplexing.
Has her father her marriage? has her son her marriage? is she not
perhaps still a married woman with a living husband? Telemachus
would give much to have her off his hands, but he refuses to send
her to her father's house, where the old man might be ready enough
to return the bride-price to her new husband, and get rid of her
with honour. For if Telemachus sends his mother away against her
will he will have to pay a heavy fine to her father, and to thole
his mother's curse, and lose his character among men (odyssey, II.
130-138). The Icelanders of the saga period gave dowries with
their daughters. But when Njal wanted Hildigunna for his foster-
son, Hauskuld, he offered to give [Greek: hedna]. "I will lay down
as much money as will seem fitting to thy niece and thyself," he
says to Flosi, "if thou wilt think of making this match."
[Footnote: Story of _Burnt Njal_, ii. p. 81.]

Circumstances alter cases, and we must be hard pressed to discover
signs of change of manners in the Odyssey as compared with the
_Iliad_ if we have to rely on a solitary mention of "men of
many lots" in Crete, and on the perplexed proposals for the second
marriage of Penelope. [Footnote: For the alleged "alteration of
old customs" see Cauer, _Grundfragen der Homerkritik_, pp.
193-194.] We must not be told that the many other supposed signs
of change, Iris, Olympus, and the rest, have "cumulative weight."
If we have disposed of each individual supposed note of change in
beliefs and manners in its turn, then these proofs have, in each
case, no individual weight and, cumulatively, are not more
ponderous than a feather.




CHAPTER XII


LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES

The great strength of the theory that the poems are the work of
several ages is the existence in them of various strata of
languages, earlier and later.

Not to speak of differences of vocabulary, Mr. Monro and Mr. Leaf,
with many scholars, detect two strata of earlier and later
_grammar_ in Iliad and Odyssey. In the _Iliad_ four or
five Books are infected by "the later grammar," while the Odyssey
in general seems to be contaminated. Mr. Leafs words are: "When we
regard the Epos in large masses, we see that we can roughly
arrange the inconsistent elements towards one end or the other of
a line of development both linguistic and historical. The main
division, that of _Iliad_ and Odyssey, shows a distinct
advance along this line; and the distinction is still more marked
if we group with the _Odyssey_ four Books of the _Iliad_
whose Odyssean physiognomy is well marked. Taking as our main
guide the dissection of the plot as shown in its episodes, we find
that marks of lateness, though nowhere entirely absent, group
themselves most numerously in the later additions ..." [Footnote:
_Iliad_, vol. ii. p. X.] We are here concerned with
_linguistic_ examples of "lateness." The "four Books whose
Odyssean physiognomy" and language seem "well marked," are IX.,
X., XXIII., XXIV. Here Mr. Leaf, Mr. Monro, and many authorities
are agreed. But to these four Odyssean Books of the _Iliad_
Mr. Leaf adds _Iliad_, XI. 664-772: "probably a later
addition," says Mr. Monro. "It is notably Odyssean in character,"
says Mr. Leaf; and the author "is ignorant of the geography of the
Western Peloponnesus. No doubt the author was an Asiatic Greek."
[Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. 465-466. Note on Book XI.
756.] The value of this discovery is elsewhere discussed (see
_The Interpolations of Nestor_).

The Odyssean notes in this passage of a hundred lines
(_Iliad_, XI. 670-762) are the occurrence of "a purely
Odyssean word" (677), an Attic form of an epic word, and a
"forbidden trochaic caesura in the fourth foot"; an Odyssean word
for carving meat, applied in a _non_-Odyssean sense (688), a
verb for "insulting," not elsewhere found in the _Iliad_
(though the noun is in the _Iliad_) (695), an Odyssean
epithet of the sun, "four times in the _Odyssey_" (735). It
is also possible that there is an allusion to a four-horse chariot
(699).

These are the proofs of Odyssean lateness.

The real difficulty about Odyssean words and grammar in the
_Iliad_ is that, if they were in vigorous poetic existence
down to the time of Pisistratus (as the Odysseanism of the Asiatic
editor proves that they were), and if every rhapsodist could add
to and alter the materials at the disposal of the Pisistratean
editor at will, we are not told how the fashionable Odysseanisms
were kept, on the whole, out of twenty Books of the Iliad.

This is a point on which we cannot insist too strongly, as an
argument against the theory that, till the middle of the sixth
century B.C., the _Iliad_ scarcely survived save in the
memory of strolling rhapsodists. If that were so, all the Books of
the _Iliad_ would, in the course of recitation of old and
composition of new passages, be equally contaminated with late
Odyssean linguistic style. It could not be otherwise; all the
Books would be equally modified in passing through the lips of
modern reciters and composers. Therefore, if twenty out of twenty-
four Books are pure, or pure in the main, from Odysseanisms, while
four are deeply stained with them, the twenty must not only be
earlier than the four, but must have been specially preserved, and
kept uncontaminated, in some manner inconsistent with the theory
that all alike scarcely existed save in the memory or invention of
late strolling reciters.

How the twenty Books relatively pure "in grammatical forms, in
syntax, and in vocabulary," could be kept thus clean without the
aid of written texts, I am unable to imagine. If left merely to
human memory and at the mercy of reciters and new poets, they
would have become stained with "the defining article"--and,
indeed, an employment of the article which startles grammarians,
appears even in the eleventh line of the First Book of the
_Iliad_? [Footnote (exact placing uncertain): Cf. Monro and
Leaf, on Iliad, I. 11-12.]

 Left merely to human memory and the human voice, the twenty more
or less innocent Books would have abounded, like the Odyssey, in
[Greek: amphi] with the dative meaning "about," and with [Greek:
ex] "in consequence of," and "the extension of the use of [Greek:
ei] clauses as final and objective clauses," and similar marks of
lateness, so interesting to grammarians. [Footnote: Monro,
_Odyssey_, ii. pp. 331-333.] But the twenty Books are almost,
or quite, inoffensive in these respects.

Now, even in ages of writing, it has been found difficult or
impossible to keep linguistic novelties and novelties of metre out
of old epics. We later refer (_Archaeology of the Epic_) to
the _Chancun de Willame_, of which an unknown benefactor
printed two hundred copies in 1903. Mr. Raymond Weeks, in
_Romania_, describes _Willame_ as taking a place beside
the _Chanson de Roland_ in the earliest rank of _Chansons
de Geste_. If the text can be entirely restored, the poem will
appear as "the most primitive" of French epics of the eleventh and
twelfth centuries. But it has passed from copy to copy in the
course of generations. The methods of versification change, and,
after line 2647, "there are traces of change in the language. The
word _o_, followed by a vowel, hitherto frequent, never
again reappears. The vowel _i_, of _li_, nominative
masculine of the article" (_li Reis_, "the king"), "never
occurs in the text after line 2647. Up to that point it is elided
or not at pleasure.... There is a progressive tendency towards
hiatus. After line 1980 the system of assonance changes. _An_
and en have been kept distinct hitherto; this ceases to be the
case." [Footnote: _Romania_, xxxiv. pp. 240-246.]

The poem is also notable, like the _Iliad_, for textual
repetition of passages, but that is common to all early poetry,
which many Homeric critics appear not to understand. In this
example we see how apt novelties in grammar and metre are to steal
into even written copies of epics, composed in and handed down
through uncritical ages; and we are confirmed in the opinion that
the relatively pure and orthodox grammar and metre of the twenty
Books must have been preserved by written texts carefully
'executed. The other four Books, if equally old, were less
fortunate. Their grammar and metre, we learn, belong to a later
stratum of language.

These opinions of grammarians are not compatible with the
hypothesis that _all_ of the _Iliad_, even the
"earliest" parts, are loaded with interpolations, forced in at
different places and in any age from 1000 B.C. to 540 B.C.; for if
that theory were true, the whole of the _Iliad_ would equally
be infected with the later Odyssean grammar. According to Mr.
Monro and Sir Richard Jebb, it is not.

But suppose, on the other hand, that the later Odyssean grammar
abounds all through the whole _Iliad_, then that grammar is
not more Odyssean than it is Iliadic. The alleged distinction of
early Iliadic grammar, late Odyssean grammar, in that case
vanishes. Mr. Leaf is more keen than Mr. Monro and Sir Richard
Jebb in detecting late grammar in the _Iliad_ beyond the
bounds of Books IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. But he does not carry these
discoveries so far as to make the late grammar no less Iliadic
than Odyssean. In Book VIII. of the _Iliad_, which he thinks
was only made for the purpose of introducing Book IX., [Footnote:
_Iliad_, vol. i. p. 332. 1900.] we ought to find the late
Odyssean grammar just as much as we do in Book IX., for it is of
the very same date, and probably by one or more of the same
authors as Book IX. But we do not find the Odyssean grammar in
Book VIII.

Mr. Leaf says, "The peculiar character" of Book VIII. "is easily
understood, when we recognise the fact that Book VIII. is intended
to serve only as a means for the introduction of Book IX...."
which is "late" and "Odyssean." Then Book VIII., intended to
introduce Book IX., must be at least as late as Book IX. and might
be expected to be at least as Odyssean, indeed one would think it
could not be otherwise. Yet it is not so.

Mr. Leaf's theory has thus to face the difficulty that while the
whole _Iliad_, by his view, for more than four centuries, was
stuffed with late interpolations, in the course of oral recital
through all Greek lands, and was crammed with original "copy" by a
sycophant of Pisistratus about 540 B.C., the late grammar
concentrated itself in only some four Books. Till some reasonable
answer is given to this question--how did twenty Books of the
Iliad preserve so creditably the ancient grammar through centuries
of change, and of recitation by rhapsodists who used the Odyssean
grammar, which infected the four other Books, and the whole of the
_Odyssey?_--it seems hardly worth while to discuss this
linguistic test.

Any scholar who looks at these pages knows all about the proofs of
grammar of a late date in the _Odyssey_ and the four
contaminated Books of the _Iliad_. But it may be well to give
a few specimens, for the enlightenment of less learned readers of
Homer.

The use of [Greek: amfi], with the dative, meaning "about," when
_thinking_ or _speaking_ "about" Odysseus or anything
else, is peculiar to the _Odyssey_. But how has it not crept
into the four Odyssean contaminated Books of the _Iliad_?

 [Greek: peri], with the genitive, "follows verbs meaning to speak
or know _about_ a person," but only in the _Odyssey_.
What preposition follows such verbs in the _Iliad_?

Here, again, we ask: how did the contaminated Books of the
_Iliad_ escape the stain of [Greek: peri], with the genitive,
after verbs meaning to speak or know? What phrase do they use in
the _Iliad_ for speaking or asking _about_ anybody?
[Footnote (exact placing uncertain): Monro, Homeric
_Grammar_. See Index, under _Iliad_, p. 339.]

 [Greek: meta], with the genitive, meaning "among" or "with,"
comes twice in the Odyssey (X. 320; XVI. 140) and thrice in the
_Iliad_ (XIII. 700; XXI. 458; XXIV. 400); but all these
passages in the _Iliad_ are disposed of as "late" parts of
the poem.

 [Greek: epi], with the accusative, meaning _towards_ a
person, comes often in the _Iliad_; once in the Odyssey. But
it comes four times in _Iliad_, Book X., which almost every
critic scouts as very "late" indeed. If so, why does the "late"
_Odyssey_ not deal in this grammatical usage so common in the
"late" Book X. of the _Iliad_?

 [Greek: epi], with the accusative, "meaning _extent_
(without _motion_)," is chiefly found in the _Odyssey_,
and in the Iliad, IX., X., XXIV. On consulting grammarians one
thinks that there is not much in this.

 [Greek: proti] with the dative, meaning "in addition to," occurs
only once (_Odyssey, X. 68_). If it occurs only once, there
is little to be learned from the circumstance.

 [Greek: ana] with the genitive, is only in _Odyssey_, only
thrice, always of going on board a ship. There are not many ship-
farings in the _Iliad_. Odysseus and his men are not
described as going on board their ship, in so many words, in
_Iliad_, Book I. The usage occurs in the poem where the
incidents of seafaring occur frequently, as is to be expected? It
is not worth while to persevere with these tithes of mint and
cummin. If "Neglect of Position" be commoner--like "Hiatus in the
Bucolic Diaeresis"--in the _Odyssey_ and in _Iliad_,
XXIII., XXIV., why do the failings not beset _Iliad_, IX.,
X., these being such extremely "late" books? As to the later use
of the Article in the _Odyssey_ and the Odyssean Books of the
_Iliad_, it appears to us that Book I. of the _Iliad_
uses the article as it is used in Book X.; but on this topic we
must refer to a special treatise on the language of _Iliad_,
Book X., which is promised.

Turning to the vocabulary: "words expressive of civilisation" are
bound to be more frequent, as they are, in the Odyssey, a poem of
peaceful life, than in a poem about an army in action, like the
_Iliad_. Out of all this no clue to the distance of years
dividing the two poems can be found. As to words concerning
religion, the same holds good. The Odyssey is more frequently
_religious_ (see the case of Eumaeus) than the _Iliad_.

In morals the term [Greek: dikaios] is more used in the
_Odyssey_, also [Greek: atemistos] ("just" and "lawless").
But that is partly because the Odyssey has to contrast civilised
("just") with wild outlandish people--Cyclopes and Laestrygons,
who are "lawless." The _Iliad_ has no occasion to touch on
savages; but, as the [Greek: hybris] of the Wooers is a standing
topic in the Odyssey (an ethical poem, says Aristotle), the word
[Greek: hybris] is of frequent occurrence in the _Odyssey_,
in just the same sense as it bears in _Iliad_, I 214--the
insolence of Agamemnon. Yet when Achilles has occasion to speak of
Agamemnon's insolence in _Iliad_, Book IX., he does not use
the _word_ [Greek: hybris], though Book IX. is so very "late"
and "Odyssean." It would be easy to go through the words for moral
ideas in the _Odyssey_, and to show that they occur in the
numerous moral situations which do not arise, or arise much less
frequently, in the _Iliad_. There is not difference enough in
the moral standard of the two poems to justify us in assuming that
centuries of ethical progress had intervened between their dates
of composition. If the _Iliad_, again, were really, like the
_Odyssey_, a thing of growth through several centuries, which
overlapped the centuries in which the _Odyssey_ grew, the
moral ideas of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ would
necessarily be much the same, would be indistinguishable. But, as
a matter of fact, it would be easy to show that the moral standard
of the _Iliad_ is higher, in many places, than the moral
standard of the _Odyssey_; and that, therefore, by the
critical hypothesis, the _Iliad_ is the later poem of the
twain. For example, the behaviour of Achilles is most obnoxious to
the moralist in _Iliad_, Book IX., where he refuses gifts of
conciliation. But by the critical hypothesis this is not the fault
of the _Iliad_, for Book IX. is declared to be "late," and of
the same date as late parts of the _Odyssey_. Achilles is not
less open to moral reproach in his abominable cruelty and impiety,
as shown in his sacrifice of prisoners of war and his treatment of
dead Hector, in _Iliad_, XXIII., XXIV. But these Books also
are said to be as late as the _Odyssey_.

The solitary "realistic" or "naturalistic" passage in Homer, with
which a lover of modern "problem novels" feels happy and at home,
is the story of Phoenix, about his seduction of his father's
mistress at the request of his mother. What a charming situation!
But that occurs in an "Odyssean" Book of the _Iliad_, Book
IX.; and thus Odyssean seems lower, not more advanced, than
Iliadic taste in morals. To be sure, the poet disapproves of all
these immoralities.

In the Odyssey the hero, to the delight of Athene, lies often and
freely and with glee. The Achilles of the _Iliad_ hates a
liar "like the gates of Hades"; but he says so in an "Odyssean"
Book (Book IX.), so there were obviously different standards in
Odyssean ethics.

As to the Odyssey being the work of "a milder age," consider the
hanging of Penelope's maids and the abominable torture of
Melanthius. There is no torturing in the [blank space] for the
_Iliad_ happens not to deal with treacherous thralls.

_Enfin_, there is no appreciable moral advance in the
_ODYSSEY_ on the moral standard of the _ILIAD_. It is
rather the other way. Odysseus, in the _ODYSSEY_, tries to
procure poison for his arrow-heads. The person to whom he applies
is too moral to oblige him. We never learn that a hero of the
_Iliad_ would use poisoned arrows. The poet himself obviously
disapproves; in both poems the poet is always on the side of
morality and of the highest ethical standard of his age. The
standard in both Epics is the same; in both some heroes fall short
of the standard.

To return to linguistic tests, it is hard indeed to discover what
Mr. Leaf's opinion of the value of linguistic tests of lateness
really is. "It is on such fundamental discrepancies"--as he has
found in Books IX., XVI.--"that we can depend, _AND ON THESE
ALONE_, when we come to dissect the _ILIAD_ ... Some
critics have attempted to base their analysis on evidences from
language, but I do not think they are sufficient to bear the
super-structure which has been raised on them." [Footnote:
_Companion,_ p. 25.]

He goes on, still placing a low value on linguistic tests alone,
to say: "It is on the broad grounds of the construction and
motives of the poem, _AND NOT ON ANY MERELY linguistic
CONSIDERATIONS_, that a decision must be sought." [Footnote:
_Ibid_., p. x.]

But he contradicts these comfortable words when he comes to "the
latest expansions," such as Books XXIII., XXIV. "The latest
expansions are thoroughly in the spirit of those which precede,
_them ON ACCOUNT OF linguistic EVIDENCE,_ which definitely
classes them with the _ODYSSEY_ rather than the rest of the
_ILIAD_." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. xiv.]

Now as Mr. Leaf has told us that we must depend on "fundamental
discrepancies," "on these alone," when we want to dissect the
_ILIAD;_ as he has told us that linguistic tests alone are
"not sufficient to bear the superstructure," &c., how can we lop
off two Books "only on account of linguistic evidence"? It would
appear that on this point, as on others, Mr. Leaf has entirely
changed his mind. But, even in the _Companion_ (p. 388), he
had amputated Book XXIV. for no "fundamental discrepancy," but
because of "its close kinship to the _ODYSSEY_, as in the
whole language of the Book."

Here, as in many other passages, if we are to account for
discrepancies by the theory of multiplex authorship, we must
decide that Mr. Leaf's books are the work of several critics, not
of one critic only. But there is excellent evidence to prove that
here we would be mistaken.

Confessedly and regretfully no grammarian, I remain unable, in
face of what seem contradictory assertions about the value of
linguistic tests, to ascertain what they are really worth, and
what, if anything, they really prove.

Mr. Monro allows much for "the long insensible influence of Attic
recitation upon the Homeric text;" ... "many Attic peculiarities may
be noted" (so much so that Aristarchus thought Homer must have
been an Athenian!). "The poems suffered a gradual and unsystematic
because generally unconscious process of modernising, the chief
agents in which were the rhapsodists" (reciters in a later
democratic age), "who wandered over all parts of Greece, and were
likely to be influenced by all the chief forms of literature."
[Footnote: Monro, _Homeric Grammar_, pp 394-396. 1891]

Then, wherefore insist so much on tests of language?

Mr. Monro was not only a great grammarian; he had a keen
appreciation of poetry. Thus he was conspicuously uneasy in his
hypothesis, based on words and grammar, that the two last Books of
the _Iliad_ are by a late hand. After quoting Shelley's
remark that, in these two Books, "Homer truly begins to be
himself," Mr. Monro writes, "in face of such testimony can we say
that the Book in which the climax is reached, in which the last
discords of the _Iliad_ are dissolved in chivalrous pity and
regret, is not the work of the original poet, but of some Homerid
or rhapsodist?"

Mr. Monro, with a struggle, finally voted for grammar, and other
indications of lateness, against Shelley and against his own sense
of poetry. In a letter to me of May 1905, Mr. Monro sketched a
theory that Book IX. (without which he said that he deemed an
_Achilleis_ hardly possible) might be a _remani_
representative of an earlier lay to the same general effect. Some
Greek Shakespeare, then, treated an older poem on the theme of
Book IX. as Shakespeare treated old plays, namely, as a canvas to
work over with a master's hand. Probably Mr. Monro would not have
gone _so_ far in the case of Book XXIV., _The
Repentance_ of Achilles. He thought it in too keen contrast
with the brutality of Book XXII. (obviously forgetting that in
Book XXIV. Achilles is infinitely more brutal than in Book XXII.),
and thought it inconsistent with the refusal of Achilles to grant
burial at the prayer of the dying Hector, and with his criminal
treatment of the dead body of his chivalrous enemy. But in Book
XXIV. his ferocity is increased. Mr. Leaf shares Mr. Monro's view;
but Mr. Leaf thinks that a Greek audience forgave Achilles,
because he was doing "the will of heaven," and "fighting the great
fight of Hellenism against barbarism." [Footnote: Leaf,
_Iliad,_ vol.-ii. p. 429. 1902.] But the Achzeans were not
Puritans of the sixteenth century! Moreover, the Trojans are as
"Hellenic" as the Achzeans. They converse, clearly, in the same
language. They worship the same gods. The Achzeans cannot regard
them (unless on account of the breach of truce, by no Trojan, but
an ally) as the Covenanters regarded "malignants," their name for
loyal cavaliers, whom they also styled "Amalekites," and treated
as Samuel treated Agag. The Achaeans to whom Homer sang had none
of this sanguinary Pharisaism.

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

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




CHAPTER XIII


THE "DOLONEIA"

"ILIAD," BOOK X.

Of all Books in the [blank space] Book X., called the
_Doloneia_, is most generally scouted and rejected. The Book,
in fact, could be omitted, and only a minutely analytic reader
would perceive the lacuna. He would remark that in Iliad, IX. 65-
84, certain military preparations are made which, if we suppress
Book X., lead up to nothing, and that in _Iliad_, XIV. 9-11,
we find Nestor with the shield of his son, Thrasymedes, while
Thrasymedes has his father's shield, a fact not explained, though
the poet certainly meant something by it. The explanation in both
cases is found in Book X., which may also be thought to explain
why the Achaeans, so disconsolate in Book IX., and why Agamemnon,
so demoralised, so gaily assume the offensive in Book XI. Some
ancient critics, Scholiast T and Eustathius, attributed the
_DOLONEIA_ to Homer, but supposed it to have been a separate
composition of his added to the _Iliad_ by Pisistratus. This
merely proves that they did not find any necessity for the
existence of the _DOLONEIA_. Mr. Allen, who thinks that "it
always held its present place," says, "the _DOLONEIA_ is
persistently written down." [Footnote: _Classical Review_,
May 1906, p. 194]

To understand the problem of the _DOLONEIA_, we must make a
summary of its contents. In Book IX. 65-84, at the end of the
disastrous fighting of Book VIII, the Achaeans, by Nestor's
advice, station an advanced guard of "_the young men_"
between the fosse and wall; 700 youths are posted there, under
Meriones, the squire of Idomeneus, and Thrasymedes, the son of
Nestor. All this is preparation for Book X., as Mr. Leaf remarks,
[Footnote: _Companion_, p. 174.] though in any case an
advanced guard was needed. Their business is to remain awake,
under arms, in case the Trojans, who are encamped on the plain,
attempt a night attack. At their station the young men will be
under arms till dawn; they light fires and cook their provisions;
the Trojans also surround their own watchfires.

The Achaean chiefs then hold council, and Agamemnon sends the
embassy to Achilles. The envoys bring back his bitter answer; and
all men go to sleep in their huts, deeply discouraged, as even
Odysseus avowed.

Here the Tenth Book begins, and it is manifest that the poet is
thoroughly well acquainted with the Ninth Book. Without the
arrangements made in the Ninth Book, and without the despairing
situation of that Book, his lay is impossible. It will be seen
that critics suppose him, alternately, to have "quite failed to
realise the conditions of life of the heroes of whom he sang"
(that is, if certain lines are genuine), and also to be a
peculiarly learned archaeologist and a valuable authority on
weapons. He is addicted to introducing fanciful "touches of heroic
simplicity," says Mr. Leaf, and is altogether a puzzling personage
to the critics.

The Book opens with the picture of Agamemnon, sleepless from
anxiety, while the other chiefs, save Menelaus, are sleeping. He
"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. He tears out his hair before
Zeus; no one else does so, in the _Iliad_, but no one else is
Agamemnon, alone and in despair.

He rises to consult Nestor, throwing a lion's skin over his
_chiton_, and grasping a spear. Much noise is made about the
furs, such as this lion's pelt, which the heroes, in Book X.,
throw about their shoulders when suddenly aroused. That sportsmen
like the heroes should keep the pelts of animals slain by them for
use as coverlets, and should throw on one of the pelts when
aroused in a hurry, is a marvellous thing to the critics. They
know that fleeces were used for coverlets of beds (IX. 661), and
pelts of wild animals, slain by Anchises, cover his bed in the
Hymn to Aphrodite.

But the facts do not enlighten critics. Yet no facts could be more
natural. A scientific critic, moreover, never reflects that the
poet is dealing with an unexampled situation--heroes wakened and
called into the cold air in a night of dread, but not called to
battle. Thus Reichel says: "The poet knows so little about true
heroic costume that he drapes the princes in skins of lions and
panthers, like giants.... But about a corslet he never thinks."
[Footnote: Reichel, p.70.]

The simple explanation is that the poet has not hitherto had to
tell us about men who are called up, not to fight, on a night that
must have been chilly. In war they do not wear skins, though
Paris, in archer's equipment, wears a pard's skin (III. 17).
Naturally, the men throw over themselves their fur coverlets; but
Nestor, a chilly veteran, prefers a _chiton_ and a wide,
double-folded, fleecy purple cloak. The cloak lay ready to his
hand, for such cloaks were used as blankets (XXIV. 646; Odyssey,
III. 349, 351; IV. 299; II. 189). We hear more of such bed-
coverings in the Odyssey than in the merely because in the
_ODYSSEY_ we have more references to beds and to people in
bed. That a sportsman may have (as many folk have now) a fur
coverlet, and may throw it over him as a kind of dressing-gown or
"bed-gown," is a simple circumstance which bewilders the critical
mind and perplexed Reichel.

If the poet knew so little as Reichel supposed his omission of
corslets is explained. Living in an age of corslets (seventh
century), he, being a literary man, knew nothing about corslets,
or, as he is also an acute archaeologist, he knew too much; he
knew that they were not worn in the Mycenaean prime, so he did not
introduce them. The science of this remarkable ignoramus, in
_this_ view, accounts for his being aware that pelts of
animals were in vogue as coverlets, just as fur dressing-gowns
were worn in the sixteenth century, and he introduces them
precisely as he leaves corslets out, because he knows that pelts
of fur were in use, and that, in the Mycenaean prime, corslets
were not worn.

In speaking to Nestor, Agamemnon awakens sympathy: "Me, of all
the Achaeans, Zeus has set in toil and labour ceaselessly." They
are almost the very words of Charlemagne in the _Chanson de
Roland: "Deus, Dist li Reis, si peneuse est ma vie."_ The
author of the _Doloneia_ consistently conforms to the
character of Agamemnon as drawn in the rest of the _Iliad_.
He is over-anxious; he is demoralising in his fits of gloom, but
all the burden of the host hangs on him--sipeneuse _est ma
via_.

To turn to higher things. Menelaus, too, was awake, anxious about
the Argives, who risked their lives in his cause alone. He got up,
put on a pard's skin and a bronze helmet (here the poet forgets,
what he ought to have known, that no bronze helmets have been
found in the Mycenaean graves). Menelaus takes a spear, and goes
to look for Agamemnon, whom he finds arming himself beside his
ship. He discovers that Agamemnon means to get Nestor to go and
speak to the advanced guard, as his son is their commander, and
they will obey Nestor. Agamemnon's pride has fallen very low! He
tells Menelaus to waken the other chief with all possible formal
courtesy, for, brutally rude when in high heart, at present
Agamemnon cowers to everybody. He himself finds Nestor in bed, his
_shield_, two spears, and helmet beside him, also his
glittering _zoster_. His corslet is not named; perhaps the
poet knew that the _zoster_, or broad metallic belt, had been
evolved, but that the corslet had not been invented; or perhaps he
"knows so little about the costume of the heroes" that he is
unaware of the existence of corslets. Nestor asks Agamemnon what
he wants; and Agamemnon says that his is a toilsome life, that he
cannot sleep, that his knees tremble, and that he wants Nestor to
come and visit the outposts.

There is really nothing absurd in this. Napoleon often visited his
outposts in the night before Waterloo, and Cromwell rode along his
lines all through the night before Dunbar, biting his lips till
the blood dropped on his linen bands. In all three cases hostile
armies were arrayed within striking distance of each other, and
the generals were careworn.

Nestor admits that it is an anxious night, and rather blames
Menelaus for not rousing the other chiefs; but Agamemnon explains
and defends his brother. Nestor then puts on the comfortable cloak
already described, and picks up a spear, [blank space] _in HIS
QUARTERS_.

As for Odysseus, he merely throws a shield over his shoulders. The
company of Diomede are sleeping with their heads on their shields.
Thence Reichel (see "The Shield") infers that the late poet of
Book X. gave them small Ionian round bucklers; but it has been
shown that no such inference is legitimate. Their spears were
erect by their sides, fixed in the ground by the _sauroter_,
or butt-spike, used by the men of the late "warrior vase" found at
Mycenae. To arrange the spears thus, we have seen, was a point of
drill that, in Aristotle's time, survived among the Illyrians.
[Footnote: _Poetics_, XXV.] The practice is also alluded to
in _Iliad_, III 135. During a truce "the tall spears are
planted by their sides." The poet, whether ignorant or learned,
knew that point of war, later obsolete in Greece, but still extant
in Illyria.

Nestor aroused Diomede, whose night apparel was the pelt of a
lion; he took his spear, and they came to the outposts, where the
men were awake, and kept a keen watch on all movements among the
Trojans. Nestor praised them, and the princes, taking Nestor's
son, Thrasymedes, and Meriones with them, went out into the open
in view of the Trojan camp, sat down, and held a consultation.

Nestor asked if any one would volunteer to go as a spy among the
Trojans and pick up intelligence. His reward will be "a black ewe
with her lamb at her foot," from their chiefs--"nothing like her
for value"--and he will be remembered in songs at feasts,
_or_ will be admitted to feasts and wine parties of the
chiefs. [Footnote: Leaf, Note on X. 215.] The proposal is very
odd; what do the princes want with black ewes, while at feasts
they always have honoured places? Can Nestor be thinking of
sending out any brave swift-footed young member of the outpost
party, to whom the reward would be appropriate?

After silence, Diomede volunteers to go, with a comrade, though
this kind of work is very seldom undertaken in any army of any age
by a chief, and by his remark about admission to wine parties it
is clear that Nestor was not thinking of a princely spy. Many
others volunteer, but Agamemnon bids Diomede choose his own
companion, with a very broad hint not to take Menelaus. _HIS_
death, Agamemnon knows, would mean the disgraceful return of the
host to Greece; besides he is, throughout the _ILIAD_, deeply
attached to his brother.

The poet of Book X., however late, knows the _ILIAD_ well,
for he keeps up the uniform treatment of the character of the
Over-Lord. As he knows the _ILIAD_ well, how can he be
ignorant of the conditions of life of the heroes? How can he dream
of "introducing a note of heroic simplicity" (Mr. Leaf's phrase),
when he must be as well aware as we are of the way in which the
heroes lived? We cannot explain the black ewes, if meant as a
princely reward, but we do not know everything about Homeric life.

Diomede chooses Odysseus, "whom Pallas Athene loveth"; she was
also the patroness of Diomede himself, in Books V., VI.

As they are unarmed--all of the chiefs hastily aroused were
unarmed, save for a spear there or a sword here--Thrasymedes gives
to Diomede his two-edged sword, _his_ shield, and "a helm of
bull's hide, without horns or crest, that is called a skull-cap
(knap-skull), and keeps the heads of strong young men." All the
advanced guard were young men, as we saw in Book IX. 77.
Obviously, Thrasymedes must then send back to camp, though we are
not told it, for another shield, sword, and helmet, as he is to
lie all night under arms. We shall hear of the shield later.

Meriones, who is an archer (XIII. 650), lends to Odysseus his bow
and quiver and a sword. He also gives him "a helm made of leather;
and with many a thong it was stiffly wrought within, while without
the white teeth of a boar of flashing tusks were arrayed, thick
set on either side well and cunningly... ." Here Reichel perceives
that the ignorant poet is describing a piece of ancient headgear
represented in Mycenaean art, while the boars' teeth were found by
Schliemann, to the number of sixty, in Grave IV. at Mycenae. Each
of them had "the reverse side cut perfectly flat, and with the
borings to attach them to some other object." They were "in a
veritable funereal armoury." The manner of setting the tusks on
the cap is shown on an ivory head of a warrior from Mycenae.
[Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, 196-197.]

Reichel recognises that the poet's description in Book X. is
excellent, "_ebenso klar als eingehend_." He publishes
another ivory head from Spata, with the same helmet set with
boars' tusks. [Footnote: Reichel, pp. 102-104] Mr. Leaf decides
that this description by the poet, wholly ignorant of heroic
costume, as Reichel thinks him, must be "another instance of the
archaic and archaeologising tendency so notable in Book X."
[Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 629.]

At the same time, according to Reichel and Mr. Leaf, the poet of
Book X. introduces the small round Ionian buckler, thus showing
his utter ignorance of the great Mycenaean shield. The ignorance
was most unusual and quite inexcusable, for any one who reads the
rest of the _Iliad_ (which the poet of Book X. knew well) is
aware that the Homeric shields were huge, often covering body and
legs. This fact the poet of Book X. did not know, in Reichel's
opinion. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 575]

How are we to understand this poet? He is such an erudite
archaeologist that, in the seventh century, he knows and carefully
describes a helmet of the Mycenaean prime. Did he excavate it? and
had the leather interior lasted with the felt cap through seven
centuries? Or did he see a sample in an old temple of the
Mycenaean prime, or in a museum of his own period? Or had he heard
of it in a lost Mycenaean poem? Yet, careful as he was, so
pedantic that he must have puzzled his seventh-century audience,
who never saw such caps, the poet knew nothing of the shields and
costumes of the heroes, though he might have found out all that is
known about them in the then existing Iliadic lays with which he
was perfectly familiar--see his portrait of Agamemnon. He was well
aware that corslets were, in Homeric poetry, anachronisms, for he
gave Nestor none; yet he fully believed, in his ignorance, that
small Ionian bucklers loveth; (which need the aid of corslets
badly) were the only wear among the heroes!

Criticism has, as we often observe, no right to throw the first
stone at the inconsistencies of Homer. As we cannot possibly
believe that one poet knew so much which his contemporaries did
not know (and how, in the seventh century, could he know it?), and
that he also knew so little, knew nothing in fact, we take our own
view. The poet of Book X. sings of _a_ fresh topic, a
confused night of dread; of young men wearing the headgear which,
he says, young men _do_ wear; of pelts of fur such as
suddenly wakened men, roused, but not roused for battle, would be
likely to throw over their bodies against the chill air. He
describes things of his own day; things with which he is familiar.
He is said to "take quite a peculiar delight in the minute
description of dress and weapons." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_,
vol. i. p. 423.] We do not observe that he does describe weapons
or shields minutely; but Homer always loves to describe weapons
and costume--scores of examples prove it--and here he happens to
be describing such costume as he nowhere else has occasion to
mention. By an accident of archaeological discovery, we find that
there were such caps set with boars' tusks as he introduces. They
had survived, for young men on night duty, into the poet's age. We
really cannot believe that a poet of the seventh century had made
excavations in Mycenaean graves. If he did and put the results
into his lay, his audience--not wearing boars' tusks--would have
asked, "What nonsense is the man talking?"

Erhardt, remarking on the furs which the heroes throw over their
shoulders when aroused, says that this kind of wrap is very late.
It was Peisander who, in the second half of the seventh century,
clothed Herakles in a lion's skin. Peisander brought this costume
into poetry, and the author of the _Doloneia_ knew no better
than to follow Peisander. [Footnote: _Die Enstehung der
Homerischen Gedichte_, pp. 163-164.] The poet of the
_Doloneia_ was thus much better acquainted with Peisander
than with the Homeric lays, which could have taught him that a
hero would never wear a fur coverlet when aroused--not to fight--
from slumber. Yet he knew about leathern caps set with boars'
tusks. He must have been an erudite excavator, but, in literature,
a reader only of recent minor poetry.

Having procured arms, without corslets (_with_ corslets,
according to Carl Robert)--whether, if they had none, because the
poet knew that corslets were anachronisms, or because spies
usually go as lightly burdened as possible--Odysseus and Diomede
approach the Trojan camp. The hour is the darkest hour before
dawn. They hear, but do not see, a heron sent by Athene as an
omen, and pray to the goddess, with promise of sacrifice.

In the Trojan camp Hector has called a council, and asked for a
volunteer spy to seek intelligence among the Achaeans. He offers
no black ewes as a reward, but the best horses of the enemy. This
allures Dolon, son of a rich Trojan, "an only son among five
sisters," a poltroon, a weak lad, ugly, but swift of foot, and an
enthusiastic lover of horses. He asks for the steeds of Achilles,
which Hector swears to give him; and to be lightly clad he takes
merely spear and bow and a cap of ferret skin, with the pelt of a
wolf for covering. Odysseus sees him approach; he and Diomede lie
down among the dead till Dolon passes, then they chase him towards
the Achaean camp and catch him. He offers ransom, which before
these last days of the war was often accepted. Odysseus replies
evasively, and asks for information. Dolon, thinking that the
bitterness of death is past, explains that only the Trojans have
watch-fires; the allies, more careless, have none. At the extreme
flank of the host sleep the newly arrived Thracians, under their
king, Rhesus, who has golden armour, and "the fairest horses that
ever I beheld" (the ruling passion for horses is strong in Dolon),
"and the greatest, whiter than snow, and for speed like the
winds."

Having learned all that he needs to know, Diomede ruthlessly slays
Dolon. Odysseus thanks Athene, and hides the poor spoils of the
dead, marking the place. They then creep into the dark camp of the
sleeping Thracians, and as Diomede slays them Odysseus drags each
body aside, to leave a clear path for the horses, that they may
not plunge and tremble when they are led forth, "for they were not
yet used to dead men." No line in Homer shows more intimate
knowledge and realisation of horses and of war. Odysseus drives
the horses of Rhesus out of the camp with the bow of Meriones; he
has forgotten to take the whip from the chariot. Diomede, having
slain King Rhesus asleep, thinks whether he shall lift out the
chariot (war chariots were very light) or drag it by the pole; but
Athene warns him to be going. He "springs upon the steeds," and
they make for their camp. It is not clearly indicated whether they
ride or drive (X., 5 I 3, 527-528, 541); but, suppose that they
ride, are we to conclude that the fact proves "lateness"? The
heroes always drive in Homer, but it is inconceivable that they
could not ride in cases of necessity, as here, if Diomede has
thought it wiser not to bring out the chariot and harness the
horses. Riding is mentioned in _Iliad_, XV. 679, in a simile;
again, in a simile, _Odyssey_, V. 37 I. It is not the custom
for heroes to ride; the chariot is used in war and in travelling,
but, when there are horses and no chariot, men could not be so
imbecile as not to mount the horses, nor could the poet be so
pedantic as not to make them do so.

The shields would cause no difficulty; they would be slung
sideways, like the shields of knights in the early Middle Ages.
The pair, picking up Dolon's spoils as they pass, hurry back to
the chiefs, where Nestor welcomes them. The others laugh and are
encouraged (to encourage them and his audience is the aim of the
poet); while the pair go to Diomede's quarters, wash off the blood
and sweat from their limbs in the sea, and then "enter the
polished baths," common in the _Odyssey_, unnamed in the
Iliad. But on no other occasion in the Iliad are we admitted to
view this part of heroic toilette. Nowhere else, in fact, do we
accompany a hero to his quarters and his tub after the day's work
is over. Achilles, however, refuses to wash, after fighting, in
his grief for Patroclus, though plenty of water was being heated
for the purpose, and it is to be presumed that a bath was ready
for the water (_Iliad_, XXIII. 40). See, too, for Hector's
bath, XXII. 444.

The two heroes then refresh themselves; breakfast, in fact, and
drink, as is natural. By this time the dawn must have been in the
sky, and in Book XI. men are stirring with the dawn. Such is the
story of Book X. The reader may decide as to whether it is
"_Very_ late; barely Homeric," or a late and deliberate piece
of burlesque, [Footnote: Henry, _Classical Review_. March
1906.] or whether it is very Homeric, though the whole set of
situations--a night of terror, an anxious chief, a nocturnal
adventure--are unexampled in the poem.

The poet's audience of warriors must have been familiar with such
situations, and must have appreciated the humorous, ruthless
treatment of Dolon, the spoiled only brother of five sisters. Mr.
Monro admitted that Dolon is Shakespearian, but added, "too
Shakespearian for Homer." One may as well say that Agincourt, in
Henry V., is "too Homeric for Shakespeare."

Mr. Monro argued that "the Tenth Book comes in awkwardly after the
Ninth." Nitzsche thinks just the reverse. The patriotic warrior
audience would delight in the _Doloneia_ after the anguish of
Book IX.; would laugh with Odysseus at the close of his adventure,
and rejoice with the other Achaeans (X. 505).

"The introductory part of the Book is cumbrous," says Mr. Monro.
To us it is, if we wish to get straight to the adventure, just as
the customary delays in Book XIX., before Achilles is allowed to
fight, are tedious to us. But the poet's audience did not
necessarily share our tastes, and might take pleasure (as I do) in
the curious details of the opening of Book X. The poet was
thinking of his audience, not of modern professors.

"We hear no more of Rhesus and his Thracians." Of Rhesus there was
no more to hear, and his people probably went home, like
Glenbuckie's Stewarts after the mysterious death of their chief in
Amprior's house of Leny before Prestonpans (1745). Glenbuckie was
mysteriously pistolled in the night. "The style and tone is unlike
that of the Iliad ... It is rather akin to comedy of a rough
farcical kind." But it was time for "comic relief." If the story
of Dolon be comic, it is comic with the practical humour of the
sagas. In an isolated nocturnal adventure and massacre we cannot
expect the style of an heroic battle under the sunlight. Is the
poet not to be allowed to be various, and is the scene of the
Porter in _Macbeth_, "in style and tone," like the rest of
the drama? (_Macbeth_, Act ii. sc. 3). Here, of course,
Shakespeare indulges infinitely more in "comedy of a rough
practical kind" than does the author of the _Doloneia_.

The humour and the cruelty do not exceed what is exhibited in many
of the _gabes_, or insulting boasts of heroes over dead foes
in other parts of the _Iliad_; such as the taunting
comparison of a warrior falling from his chariot to a diver after
oysters, or as "one of the Argives hath caught the spear in his
flesh, and leaning thereon for a staff, methinks that he will go
down within the house of Hades" (XIV. 455-457). The _Iliad_,
like the sagas, is rich in this extremely practical humour.

Mr. Leaf says that the Book "must have been composed before the
_Iliad_ had reached its present form, for it cannot have been
meant to follow on Book IX. It is rather another case of a
parallel rival to that Book, coupled with it only in the final
literary redaction," which Mr. Leaf dates in the middle of the
sixth century. "The Book must have been composed before the
_Iliad_ had reached its present form," [Footnote:
_Iliad_, vol. i. p. 424.] It is not easy to understand this
decision; for, as Mr. Leaf had previously written, about Book IX.
60-68, "the posting of the watch is at least not necessary to the
story, and it has a suspicious air of being merely a preparation
for the next Book, which is much later, and which turns entirely
upon a visit to the sentinels." [Footnote: _Companion,_
p.174.]

Now a military audience would not have pardoned the poet of Book
IX. if, in the circumstances of defeat, with a confident enemy
encamped within striking distance, he had not made the Achaeans
throw forth their outposts. The thing was inevitable and is not
suspicious; but the poet purposely makes the advanced guard
consist of young men under Nestor's son and Meriones. He needs
them for Book X. Therefore the poet of Book IX. is the poet of
Book X. preparing his effect in advance; or the poet of Book X. is
a man who cleverly takes advantage of Book IX., or he composed his
poem of "a night of terror and adventure," "in the air," and the
editor of 540 B.C., having heard it recited and copied it out,
went back to Book IX. and inserted the advanced guard, under
Thrasymedes and Meriones, to lead up to Book X.

On Mr. Leafs present theory, [Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p.424.]
Book X., we presume, was meant, not to follow Book IX., but to
follow the end of Book VII, being an alternative to Book VIII.
(composed, he says, to lead up to Book IX.) and Book IX. But Book
VII. closes with the Achaean refusal of the compromise offered by
Paris--the restoration of the property but not of the wife of
Menelaus. The Trojans and Achaeans feast all night; the Trojans
feast in the city. There is therefore no place here for Book X.
after Book VII, and the Achaeans cannot roam about all night, as
they are feasting; nor can Agamemnon be in the state of anxiety
exhibited by him in Book X.

Book X. could not exist without Book IX., and _must_ have
been "meant to follow on it." Mr. Leaf sees that, in his preface
to Book IX., [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 371.] "The
placing of sentinels" (in Book IX. 80, 84) "is needed as an
introduction to Book X. but has nothing to do with this Book"
(IX.). But, we have said, it was inevitable, given the new
situation in Book IX. (an Achaean repulse, and the enemy camped in
front), that an advanced guard must be placed, even if there
proved to be no need of their services. We presume that Mr. Leaf's
literary editor, finding that Book X. existed and that the
advanced guard was a necessity of its action, went back to Book
IX. and introduced an advanced guard of young men, with its
captains, Thrasymedes and Meriones. Even after this the editor had
much to do, if Book IX. originally exhibited Agamemnon as not in
terror and despair, as it now does.

We need not throw the burden of all this work on the editor. As
Mr. Leaf elsewhere writes, in a different mind, the Tenth Book "is
obviously adapted to its present place in the _Iliad_, for it
assumes a moment when Achilles is absent from the field, and when
the Greeks are in deep dejection from a recent defeat. These
conditions are exactly fulfilled by the situation at the end of
Book IX." [Footnote: _Companion_, p. 190.]

This is certainly the case. The Tenth Book could not exist without
the Ninth; yet Mr. Leaf's new opinion is that it "cannot have been
meant to follow on Book IX." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
424.] He was better inspired when he held the precisely opposite
opinion.

Dr. Adolf Kiene [Footnote: Die _Epen des Homer, Zweiter
Theil,_ pp. 90-94. Hanover, 1884.] accepts Book XI. as
originally composed to fill its present place in the _Iliad._
He points out the despondency of the chiefs after receiving the
reply of Achilles, and supposes that even Diomede (IX. 708) only
urges Agamemnon to "array before the ships thy folk and horsemen,"
for defensive battle. But, encouraged by the success of the night
adventure, Agamemnon next day assumes the offensive. To consider
thus is perhaps to consider too curiously. But it is clear that
the Achaeans have been much encouraged by the events of Book X.,
especially Agamemnon, whose character, as Kiene observes, is very
subtly and consistently treated, and "lies near the poet's heart."
This is the point which we keep urging. Agamemnon's care for
Menelaus is strictly preserved in Book X.

Nitzsche (I 897) writes, "Between Book IX. and Book XI there is a
gap; that gap the _Doloneia_ fills: it must have been
composed to be part of the _ILIAD_." But he thinks that the
_Doloneia_ has taken the place of an earlier lay which filled
the gap. [Footnote: Die _Echtheit der Doloneia,_ p. 32.
Programme des K. K. Staats Gymnasium zu Marburg, 1877.] That the
Book is never referred to later in the _Iliad_, even if it be
true, is no great argument against its authenticity. For when
later references are made to Book IX., they are dismissed as
clever late interpolations. If the horses of Rhesus took part, as
they do not, in the sports at the funeral of Patroclus, the
passage would be called a clever interpolation: in fact, Diomede
had better horses, divine horses to run. However, it is certainly
remarkable that the interpolation was not made by one of the
interpolators of critical theory.

Meanwhile there is, we think, a reference to Book X. in Book XIV.
[Footnote: This was pointed out to me by Mr. Shewan, to whose
great knowledge of Homer I am here much indebted.]

In _Iliad_, XIV. 9-11, we read that Nestor, in his quarters
with the wounded Machaon, on the day following the night of
Dolon's death, hears the cry of battle and goes out to see what is
happening. "He took the well-wrought shield of his son, horse-
taming Thrasymedes, which was lying in the hut, all glistening
with bronze, but _the son had the shield of his father_."

Why had Thrasymedes the shield of his father? At about 3 A.M.
before dawn the shield of Nestor was lying beside him in his own
bedroom (Book X. 76), and at the same moment his son Thrasymedes
_was_ on outpost duty, and had his own shield with him (Book
IX. 81).

When, then, did father and son exchange shields, and why? Mr. Leaf
says, "It is useless to inquire why father and son had thus
changed shields, as the scholiasts of course do."

The scholiasts merely babble. Homer, of course, meant
_something_ by this exchange of shields, which occurred late
in the night of Book IX. or very early in the following day, that
of Books XI-XVI.

Let us follow again the sequence of events. On the night before
the day when Nestor had Thrasymedes' shield and Thrasymedes had
Nestor's, Thrasymedes was sent out, with shield and all, in
command of one of the seven companies of an advanced guard, posted
between fosse and wall, in case of a camisade by the Trojans, who
were encamped on the plain (IX. 81). With him in command were
Meriones and five other young men less notable. They had supplies
with them and whatever was needed: they cooked supper in bivouac.

In the _Doloneia_ the wakeful princes, after inspecting the
advanced guard, go forward within view of the Trojan ranks and
consult. With them they take Nestor's son, Thrasymedes, and
Meriones (X. 196). The two young men, being on active service, are
armed; the princes are not. Diomede, having been suddenly roused
out of sleep, with no intention to fight, merely threw on his
dressing-gown, a lion's skin. Nestor wore a thick, double, purple
dressing-gown. Odysseus had cast his shield about his shoulders.
It was decided that Odysseus and Diomede should enter the Trojan
camp and "prove a jeopardy." Diomede had no weapon but his spear;
so Thrasymedes, who is armed as we saw, lends him his bull's-hide
cap, "that keeps the heads of stalwart youths," his sword (for
that of Diomede "was left at the ships"), and his shield.

Diomede and Odysseus successfully achieve their adventure and
return to the chiefs, where they talk with Nestor; and then they
go to Diomede's hut and drink. The outposts remain, of course, at
their stations.

Meanwhile, Thrasymedes, having lent his shield to Diomede, has
none of his own. Naturally, as he was to pass the night under
arms, he would send to his father's quarters for the old man's
shield, a sword, and a helmet. He would remain at his post (his
men had provisions) till the general _reveillez_ at dawn, and
would then breakfast at his post and go into the fray. Nestor,
therefore, missing his shield, would send round to Diomede's
quarters for the shield of Thrasymedes, which had been lent
overnight to Diomede, would take it into the fight, and would
bring it back to his own hut when he carried the wounded Machaon
thither out of the battle. When he arms to go out and seek for
information, he picks up the shield of Thrasymedes.

Nothing can be more obvious; the poet, being a man of imagination,
not a professor, sees it all, and casually mentions that the son
had the father's and the father had the son's shield. His
audience, men of the sword, see the case as clearly as the poet
does: only we moderns and the scholiasts, almost as modern as
ourselves, are puzzled.

It may also be argued, though we lay no stress on it, that in Book
XI. 312, when Agamemnon has been wounded, we find Odysseus and
Diomede alone together, without their contingents, because they
have not separated since they breakfasted together, after
returning from the adventure of Book X., and thus they have come
rather late to the field. They find the Achaeans demoralised by
the wounding of Agamemnon, and they make a stand. "What ails us,"
asks Odysseus, "that we forget our impetuous valour?" The passage
appears to take up the companionship of Odysseus and Diomede, who
were left breakfasting together at the end of Book X. and are not
mentioned till we meet them again in this scene of Book XI., as if
they had just come on the field.

As to the linguistic tests of lateness "there are exceptionally
numerous traces of later formation," says Mr. Monro; while Fick,
tout _contraire,_ writes, "clumsy Ionisms are not common,
and, as a rule, occur in these parts which on older grounds show
themselves to be late interpolations." "The cases of agreement"
(between Fick and Mr. Monro), "are few, and the passages thus
condemned are not more numerous in the _Doloneia_ than in any
average book." [Footnote: Jevons, _Journal of Hellenic
Studies_, vii. p. 302.] The six examples of "a post-Homeric use
of the article" do not seem so very post-Homeric to an ordinary
intelligence--parallels occur in Book I.--and "Perfects in
[Greek: ka] from derivative verbs" do not destroy the impression
of antiquity and unity which is left by the treatment of
character; by the celebrated cap with boars' tusks, which no human
being could archaeologically reconstruct in the seventh century;
and by the Homeric vigour in such touches as the horses unused to
dead men. As the _Iliad_ certainly passed through centuries
in which its language could not but be affected by linguistic
changes, as it could not escape from _remaniements_,
consciously or unconsciously introduced by reciters and copyists,
the linguistic objections are not strongly felt by us. An
unphilological reader of Homer notes that Duntzer thinks the
_Doloneia_ "older than the oldest portion of the Odyssey,"
while Gemoll thinks that the author of the _Doloneia_. was
familiar with the _Odyssey_. [Footnote: Duntzer, _Homer.
Abhanglungen_, p. 324. Gemoll, _Hermes_, xv. 557 ff.]

Meanwhile, one thing seems plain to us: when the author of Book
IX. posted the guards under Thrasymedes, he was deliberately
leading up to Book X.; while the casual remark in Book XIV. about
the exchange of shields between father and son, Nestor and
Thrasymedes, glances back at Book X. and possibly refers to some
lost and more explicit statement.

It is not always remembered that, if things could drop into the
interpolations, things could also drop out of the _ILIAD,_
causing _lacunae_, during the dark backward of its early
existence.

If the _Doloneia_ be "barely Homeric," as Father Browne
holds, this opinion was not shared by the listeners or readers of
the sixth century. The vase painters often illustrate the
_Doloneia;_ but it does not follow that "the story was fresh"
because it was "popular," as Mr. Leaf suggests, and "was treated
as public property in a different way" (namely, in a comic way)
"from the consecrated early legends" (_Iliad,_ II 424, 425).
The sixth century vase painters illustrated many passages in
Homer, not the _Doloneia_ alone. The "comic way" was the
ruthless humour of two strong warriors capturing one weak coward.
Much later, wild caricature was applied in vase painting to the
most romantic scenes in the Odyssey, which were "consecrated"
enough.




CHAPTER XIV


THE INTERPOLATIONS OF NESTOR

That several of the passages in which Nestor speaks are very late
interpolations, meant to glorify Pisistratus, himself of Nestor's
line, is a critical opinion to which we have more than once
alluded. The first example is in _Iliad,_ II. 530-568. This
passage "is meant at once to present Nestor as the leading
counsellor of the Greek army, and to introduce the coming
_Catalogue_." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad,_ vol. i. p. 70.]
Now the _Catalogue_ "originally formed an introduction to the
whole Cycle." [Footnote: Ibid., vol. i. p. 87.] But, to repeat an
earlier observation, surely the whole Cycle was much later than
the period of Pisistratus and his sons; that is, the compilation
of the Homeric and Cyclic poems into one body of verse, named "The
Cycle," is believed to have been much later.

It is objected that Nestor's advice in this passage, "Separate thy
warriors by tribes and clans" ([Greek: phyla, phraetras]), "is out
of place in the last year of the war"; but this suggestion for
military reorganisation may be admitted as a mere piece of
poetical perspective, like Helen's description of the Achaean
chiefs in Book III, or Nestor may wish to return to an obsolete
system of clan regiments. The Athenians had "tribes" and "clans,"
political institutions, and Nestor's advice is noted as a touch of
late Attic influence; but about the nature and origin of these
social divisions we know so little that it is vain to argue about
them. The advice of Nestor is an appeal to the clan spirit--a very
serviceable military spirit, as the Highlanders have often proved
--but we have no information as to whether it existed in Achaean
times. Nestor speaks as the aged Lochiel spoke to Claverhouse
before Killiecrankie. Did the Athenian army of the sixth century
fight in clan regiments? The device seems to belong to an earlier
civilisation, whether it survived in sixth century Athens or not.
It is, of course, notorious that tribes and clans are most
flourishing among the most backward people, though they were
welded into the constitution of Athens. The passage, therefore,
cannot with any certainty be dismissed as very late, for the words
for "tribe" and "clan" could not be novel Athenian inventions, the
institutions designated being of prehistoric origin.

Nestor shows his tactics again in IV. 303-309, offers his
"inopportune tactical lucubrations, doubtless under Athenian
(Pisistratean) influence." The poet is here denied a sense of
humour. That a veteran military Polonius should talk as
inopportunely about tactics as Dugald Dalgetty does about the
sconce of Drumsnab is an essential part of the humour of the
character of Nestor. This is what Nestor's critics do not see; the
inopportune nature of his tactical remarks is the point of them,
just as in the case of the laird of Drumthwacket, "that should
be." Scott knew little of Homer, but coincided in the Nestorian
humour by mere congruity of genius. The Pisistratidze must have
been humourless if they did not see that the poet smiled as he
composed Nestor's speeches, glorifying old deeds of his own and
old ways of fighting. He arrays his Pylians with chariots in
front, footmen in the rear. In the [blank space] the princely
heroes dismounted to fight, the chariots following close behind
them. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XI. 48-56.] In the same way during
the Hundred Years' War the English knights dismounted and defeated
the French chivalry till, under Jeanne d'Arc and La Hire, the
French learned the lesson, and imitated the English practice. On
the other hand, Egyptian wall-paintings show the Egyptian
chariotry advancing in neat lines and serried squadrons. According
to Nestor these had of old been the Achaean tactics, and he
preferred the old way. Nestor's advice in Book IV. is _not_
to dismount or break the line of chariots; these, he says, were
the old tactics: "Even so is the far better way; thus, moreover,
did men of old time lay low cities and walls." There was to be no
rushing of individuals from the ranks, no dismounting. Nestor's
were not the tactics of the heroes--they usually dismount and do
single valiances; but Nestor, commanding his local contingent,
recommends the methods of the old school, [Greek: hoi pretoroi].
What can be more natural and characteristic?

The poet's meaning seems quite clear. He is not flattering
Pisistratus, but, with quiet humour, offers the portrait of a
vain, worthy veteran. It is difficult to see how this point can be
missed; it never was missed before Nestor's speeches seemed
serviceable to the Pisistratean theory of the composition of the
_ILIAD_. In his first edition Mr. Leaf regarded the
interpolations as intended "to glorify Nestor" without reference
to Pisistratus, whom Mr. Leaf did not then recognise as the master
of a sycophantic editor. The passages are really meant to display
the old man's habit of glorifying himself and past times.
Pisistratus could not feel flattered by passages intended to
exhibit his ancestor as a conceited and inopportune old babbler. I
ventured in 1896 to suggest that the interpolator was trying to
please Pisistratus, but this was said in a spirit of mockery.

Of all the characters in Homer that of Nestor is most familiar to
the unlearned world, merely because Nestor's is a "character
part," very broadly drawn.

The third interpolation of flattery to Pisistratus in the person
of Nestor is found in VII. 125-160. The Achaean chiefs are loath
to accept the challenge of Hector to single combat. Only Menelaus
rises and arms himself, moved by the strong sense of honour which
distinguishes a warrior notoriously deficient in bodily strength.
Agamemnon refuses to let him fight; the other peers make no
movement, and Nestor rebukes them. It is entirely in nature that
he should fall back on his memory of a similar situation in his
youth; when the Arcadian champion, Ereuthalion, challenged any
prince of the Pylians, and when "no man plucked up heart" to meet
him except Nestor himself. Had there never been any Pisistratus,
any poet who created the part of a worthy and wordy veteran must
have made Nestor speak just as he does speak. Ereuthalion "was the
tallest and strongest of men that I have slain!" and Nestor, being
what he is, offers copious and interesting details about the
armour of Ereuthalion and about its former owners. The passage is
like those in which the Icelandic sagamen dwelt lovingly on the
history of a good sword, or the Maoris on the old possessors of an
ancient jade _patu_. An objection is now taken to Nestor's
geography: he is said not to know the towns and burns of his own
country. He speaks of the swift stream Keladon, the streams of
Iardanus, and the walls of Pheia. Pheia "is no doubt the same as
Pheai" [Footnote: Monro, Note on Odyssey, XV. 297.] (Odyssey, XV.
297), "but that was a maritime town not near Arkadia. There is
nothing known of a Keladon or Iardanus anywhere near it." Now
Didymus (Schol. A) "is said to have read [Greek: Phaeraes] for
[Greek: Pheias]," following Pherekydes. [Footnote: Leaf,
_Iliad_, vol. i. 308.] M. Victor Brard, who has made an
elaborate study of Elian topography, says that "Pheia is a cape,
not a town," and adopts the reading "Phera," the [Greek: Pherae]
of the journey of Telemachus, in the Odyssey. He thinks that the
[Greek: Pherae] of Nestor is the Aliphera of Polybius, and
believes that the topography of Nestor and of the journey of
Telemachus is correct. The Keladon is now the river or burn of
Saint Isidore; the Iardanus is at the foot of Mount Kaiapha.
Keladon has obviously the same sense as the Gaelic Altgarbh, "the
rough and brawling stream." Iardanus is also a stream in Crete,
and Mr. Leaf thinks it Semitic--"_Yarden_, from yarad to
flow"; but the Semites did not give the _Yar_ to the
_Yarrow_ nor to the Australian _Yarra Yarra_.

The country, says M. Brard, is a network of rivers, burns, and
rivulets; and we cannot have any certainty, we may add, as the
same river and burn names recur in many parts of the same country;
[Footnote: Brard, _Les Phniciens et L'Odysse,_ 108-113,
1902] many of them, in England, are plainly prae-Celtic.

While the correct geography may, on this showing, be that of
Homer, we cannot give up Homer's claim to Nestor's speech. As to
Nestor's tale about the armour of Ereuthalion, it is manifest that
the first owner of the armour of Ereuthalion, namely Are'ithous,
"the Maceman," so called because he had the singularity of
fighting with an iron _casse-tte,_ as Nestor explains (VII.
138-140), was a famous character in legendary history. He appears
"as Prince Areithous, the Maceman," father (or grand-father?) of
an Areithous slain by Hector (VII. 8-10). In Greece, it was not
unusual for the grandson to bear the grandfather's name, and, if
the Maceman was grand-father of Hector's victim, there is no
chronological difficulty. The chronological difficulty, in any
case, if Hector's victim is the son of the Maceman, is not at all
beyond a poetic narrator's possibility of error in genealogy. If
Nestor's speech is a late interpolation, if its late author
borrowed his vivid account of the Maceman and his _casse-
tte_ from the mere word "maceman" in VII. 9, he must be
credited with a lively poetic imagination.

Few or none of these reminiscences of Nestor are really
"inapplicable to the context." Here the context demands
encouragement for heroes who shun a challenge. Nestor mentions an
"applicable" and apposite instance of similar want of courage,
and, as his character demands, he is the hero of his own story.
His brag, or _gabe,_ about "he was the tallest and strongest
of all the men I ever slew," is deliciously in keeping, and
reminds us of the college don who said of the Czar, "he is the
nicest emperor I ever met." The poet is sketching an innocent
vanity; he is not flattering Pisistratus.

The next case is the long narrative of Nestor to the hurried
Patroclus, who has been sent by Achilles to bring news of the
wounded Machaon (XI. 604-702). Nestor on this occasion has useful
advice to give, namely, that Achilles, if he will not fight,
should send his men, under Patroclus, to turn the tide of Trojan
victory. But the poet wishes to provide an interval of time and of
yet more dire disaster before the return of Patroclus to Achilles.
By an obvious literary artifice he makes Nestor detain the
reluctant Patroclus with a long story of his own early feats of
arms. It is a story of a "hot-trod," so called in Border law; the
Eleians had driven a _creagh_ of cattle from the Pylians, who
pursued, and Nestor killed the Eleian leader, Itymoneus. The
speech is an Achaean parallel to the Border ballad of "Jamie
Telfer of the Fair Dodhead," in editing which Scott has been
accused of making a singular and most obvious and puzzling blunder
in the topography of his own sheriffdom of the Forest. On Scott's
showing the scene of the raid is in upper Ettrickdale, not, as
critics aver, in upper Teviotdale; thus the narrative of the
ballad would be impossible. [Footnote: In fact both sites on the
two Dodburns are impossible; the fault lay with the ballad-maker,
not with Scott.]

The Pisistratean editor is accused of a similar error. "No doubt
he was an Asiatic Greek, completely ignorant of the Peloponnesus."
[Footnote: _Iliad_. Note to XI. 756, and to the
_Catalogue_, II. 615-617.] It is something to know that
Pisistratus employed an editor, or that his editor employed a
collaborator who was an Asiatic Greek!

Meanwhile, nothing is less secure than arguments based on the
_Catalogue_. We have already shown how Mr. Leaf's opinions as
to the date and historical merits of the _Catalogue_ have
widely varied, while M. Brard appears to have vindicated the
topography of Nestor. Of the _Catalogue_ Mr. Allen writes,
"As a table, according to regions, of Agamemnon's forces it bears
every mark of venerable antiquity," showing "a state of things
which never recurred in later history, and which no one had any
interest to invent, or even the means for inventing." He makes a
vigorous defence of the _Catalogue,_ as regards the dominion
of Achilles, against Mr. Leaf. [Footnote: _Classical Review,_
May 1906, pp. x94-201.] Into the details we need not go, but it is
not questions of Homeric topography, obscure as they are, that can
shake our faith in the humorous portrait of old Nestor, or make us
suppose that the sympathetic mockery of the poet is the
sycophantic adulation of the editor to his statesman employer,
Pisistratus. If any question may be left to literary
discrimination it is the authentic originality of the portrayal of
Nestor.




CHAPTER XV


THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS

Though comparison is the method of Science, the comparative study
of the national poetry of warlike aristocracies, its conditions of
growth and decadence, has been much neglected by Homeric critics.
Sir Richard Jebb touched on the theme, and, after devoting four
pages to a sketch of Sanskrit, Finnish, Persian, and early
Teutonic heroic poetry and _SAGA,_ decided that "in our
country, as in others, we fail to find any true parallel to the
case of the Homeric poems. These poems must be studied in
themselves, without looking for aid, in this sense, to the
comparative method." [Footnote: _Homer_, p. 135.] Part of
this conclusion seems to us rather hasty. In a brief manual Sir
Richard had not space for a thorough comparative study of old
heroic poetry at large. His quoted sources are: for India, Lassen;
for France, Mr. Saintsbury's Short History of _FRENCH
LITERATURE_ (sixteen pages on this topic), and a work unknown
to me, by "M. Paul"; for Iceland he only quoted _THE
Encyclopedia BRITANNICA_ (Mr. Edmund Gosse); for Germany,
Lachmann and Bartsch; for the Finnish _Kalewala,_ the
_ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA_ (Mr. Sime and Mr. Keltie); and for
England, a _PRIMER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE_ by Mr. Stopford
Brooke.

These sources appear less than adequate, and Celtic heroic romance
is entirely omitted. A much deeper and wider comparative criticism
of early heroic national poetry is needed, before any one has a
right to say that the study cannot aid our critical examination of
the Homeric problem. Many peoples have passed through a stage of
culture closely analogous to that of Achaean society as described
in the _Iliad_ and Odyssey. Every society of this kind has
had its ruling military class, its ancient legends, and its
minstrels who on these legends have based their songs. The
similarity of human nature under similar conditions makes it
certain that comparison will discover useful parallels between the
poetry of societies separated in time and space but practically
identical in culture. It is not much to the credit of modern
criticism that a topic so rich and interesting has been, at least
in England, almost entirely neglected by Homeric scholars.

Meanwhile, it is perfectly correct to say, as Sir Richard
observes, that "we fail to find any true parallel to the case of
the Homeric poems," for we nowhere find the legends of an heroic
age handled by a very great poet--the greatest of all poets--
except in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. But, on the other
hand, the critics refuse to believe that, in the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey,_ we possess the heroic Achaean legends handled by
one great poet. They find a composite by many hands, good and bad,
and of many ages, they say; sometimes the whole composition and
part of the poems are ascribed to a late _littrateur_. Now
to that supposed state of things we do find several "true
parallels," in Germany, in Finland, in Ireland. But the results of
work by these many hands in many ages are anything but "a true
parallel" to the results which lie before us in the _Iliad_
and _ODYSSEY_. Where the processes of composite authorship
throughout many _AGES_ certainly occur, as in Germany and
Ireland, there we find no true parallel to the Homeric poems. It
follows that, in all probability, no such processes as the critics
postulate produced the _Iliad_ and Odyssey, for where the
processes existed, beyond doubt they failed egregiously to produce
the results.

Sir Richard's argument would have been logical if many efforts by
many hands, in many ages, in England, Finland, Ireland, Iceland,
and Germany did actually produce true parallels to the Achaean
epics. They did not, and why not? Simply because these other races
had no Homer. All the other necessary conditions were present, the
legendary material, the heroic society, the Court minstrels, all--
except the great poet. In all the countries mentioned, except
Finland, there existed military aristocracies with their courts,
castles, and minstrels, while the minstrels had rich material in
legendary history and in myth, and _Mrchen_, and old songs.
But none of the minstrels was adequate to the production of an
English, German, or Irish _ILIAD_ or _ODYSSEY_, or even
of a true artistic equivalent in France.

We have tried to show that the critics, rejecting a Homer, have
been unable to advance any adequate hypothesis to account for the
existence of the _ILIAD_ and _ODYSSEY_. Now we see that,
where such conditions of production as they postulate existed but
where there was no great epic genius, they can find no true
parallels to the Epics. Their logic thus breaks down at both ends.

It may be replied that in non-Greek lands one condition found in
Greek society failed: the succession of a reading age to an age of
heroic listeners. But this is not so. In France and Germany an age
of readers duly began, but they did not mainly read copies of the
old heroic poems. They turned to lyric poetry, as in Greece, and
they recast the heroic songs into modern and popular forms in
verse and prose, when they took any notice of the old heroic poems
at all.

One merit of the Greek epics is a picture of "a certain phase of
early civilisation," and that picture is "a naturally harmonious
whole," with "unity of impression," says Sir Richard Jebb.
[Footnote: Homer, p. 37.] Certainly we can find no true parallel,
on an Homeric scale, to this "harmonious picture" in the epics of
Germany and England or in the early literature of Ireland. Sir
Richard, for England, omits notice of _Beowulf_; but we know
that _Beowulf_, a long heroic poem, is a mass of
anachronisms--a heathen legend in a Christian setting. The hero,
that great heathen champion, has his epic filled full of Christian
allusions and Christian morals, because the clerical redactor, in
Christian England, could not but intrude these things into old
pagan legends evolved by the continental ancestors of our race. He
had no "painful anxiety," like the supposed Ionic continuators of
the Achaean poems (when they are not said to have done precisely
the reverse), to preserve harmony of ancient ideas. Such
archaeological anxieties are purely modern.

If we take the _Nibelungenlied_, [Footnote: See chapter on
the _Nibelungenlied_ in Homer _AND the Epic_, pp. 382-
404.] we find that it is a thing of many rehandlings, even in
existing manuscripts. For example, the Greeks clung to the
hexameter in Homer. Not so did the Germans adhere to old metres.
The poem that, in the oldest MS., is written in assonances, in
later MSS. is reduced to regular rhymes and is retouched in many
essential respects. The matter of the _Nibelungenlied_ is of
heathen origin. We see the real state of heathen affairs in the
Icelandic versions of the same tale, for the Icelanders were
peculiar in preserving ancient lays; and, when these were woven
into a prose saga, the archaic and heathen features were retained.
Had the post-Christian prose author of the _Volsunga_ been a
great poet, we might find in his work a true parallel to the
_Iliad_. But, though he preserves the harmony of his picture
of pre-Christian princely life (save in the savage beginnings of
his story), he is not a poet; so the true parallel to the Greek
epic fails, noble as is the saga in many passages. In the German
_Nibelungenlied_ all is modernised; the characters are
Christian, the manners are chivalrous, and _Mrchen_ older
than Homer are forced into a wandering mediaeval chronicle-poem.
The Germans, in short, had no early poet of genius, and therefore
could not produce a true parallel to _ILIAD_ or Odyssey. The
mediaeval poets, of course, never dreamed of archaeological
anxiety, as the supposed Ionian continuators are sometimes said to
have done, any more than did the French and late Welsh handlers of
the ancient Celtic Arthurian materials. The late German
_bearbeiter_ of the _Nibelungenlied_ has no idea of
unity of plot--_enfin_, Germany, having excellent and ancient
legendary material for an epic, but producing no parallel to
_ILIAD_ and Odyssey, only proves how absolutely essential a
Homer was to the Greek epics.

"If any inference could properly be drawn from the Edda" (the
Icelandic collection of heroic lays), says Sir Richard Jebb, "it
would be that short separate poems on cognate subjects can long
exist as a collection _without_ coalescing into such an
artistic whole as the Iliad or the Odyssey." [Footnote: Homer, p.
33.]

It is our own argument that Sir Richard states. "Short separate
poems on cognate subjects" can certainly co-exist for long
anywhere, but they cannot automatically and they cannot by aid of
an editor become a long epic. Nobody can stitch and vamp them into
a poem like the _ILIAD_ or Odyssey. To produce a poem like
either of these a great poetic genius must arise, and fuse the
ancient materials, as Hephaestus fused copper and tin, and then
cast the mass into a mould of his own making. A small poet may
reduce the legends and lays into a very inartistic whole, a very
inharmonious whole, as in the _Nibelungenlied_, but a
controlling poet, not a mere redactor or editor, is needed to
perform even that feat.

Where a man who is not a poet undertakes to produce the
coalescence, as Dr. Lnnrot (1835-1849) did in the case of the
peasant, not courtly, lays of Finland, he "fails to prove that
mere combining and editing can form an artistic whole out of
originally distinct songs, even though concerned with closely
related themes," says Sir Richard Jebb. [Footnote: Homer, p. 134-
135.]

This is perfectly true; much as Lnnrot botched and vamped the
Finnish lays he made no epic out of them. But, as it is true, how
did the late Athenian drudge of Pisistratus succeed where Lnnrot
failed? "In the dovetailing of the _ODYSSEY_ we see the work
of one mind," says Sir Richard. [Footnote: Homer, p. 129.] This
mind cannot have been the property of any one but a great poet,
obviously, as the _Odyssey_ is confessedly "an artistic
whole." Consequently the disintegrators of the Odyssey, when they
are logical, are reduced to averring that the poem is an
exceedingly inartistic whole, a whole not artistic at all. While
Mr. Leaf calls it "a model of skilful construction," Wilamowitz
Mollendorff denounces it as the work of "a slenderly-gifted
botcher," of about 650 B.C., a century previous to Mr. Leaf's
Athenian editor.

Thus we come, after all, to a crisis in which mere literary
appreciation is the only test of the truth about a work of
literature. The Odyssey is an admirable piece of artistic
composition, or it is the very reverse. Blass, Mr. Leaf, Sir
Richard Jebb, and the opinion of the ages declare that the
composition is excellent. A crowd of German critics and Father
Browne, S.J., hold that the composition is feeble. The criterion
is the literary taste of each party to the dispute. Kirchhoff and
Wilamowitz Mllendorff see a late bad patchwork, where Mr. Leaf,
Sir Richard Jebb, Blass, Wolf, and the verdict of all mankind see
a masterpiece of excellent construction. The world has judged: the
_Odyssey_ is a marvel of construction: therefore is not the
work of a late botcher of disparate materials, but of a great
early poet. Yet Sir Richard Jebb, while recognising the
_Odyssey_ as "an artistic whole" and an harmonious picture,
and recognising Lnnrot's failure "to prove that mere combining
and editing can form an artistic whole out of originally distinct
songs, even though concerned with closely related themes," thinks
that Kirchhoff has made the essence of his theory of late
combination of distinct strata of poetical material from different
sources and periods, in the _Odyssey_, "in the highest degree
probable." [Footnote: Homer, p. 131.]

It is, of course, possible that Mr. Leaf, who has not edited the
_Odyssey,_ may now, in deference to his belief in the
Pisistratean editor, have changed his opinion of the merits of the
poem. If the _Odyssey,_ like the _Iliad_, was, till
about 540 B.C., a chaos of lays of all ages, variously known in
various _rpertoires_ of the rhapsodists, and patched up by
the Pisistratean editor, then of two things one--either Mr. Leaf
abides by his enthusiastic belief in the excellency of the
composition, or he does not. If he does still believe that the
composition of the _Odyssey_ is a masterpiece, then the
Pisistratean editor was a great master of construction. If he now,
on the other hand, agrees with Wilamowitz Mllendorff that the
_Odyssey_ is cobbler's work, then his literary opinions are
unstable.




CHAPTER XVI


HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS

Sir Richard Jebb remarks, with truth, that "before any definite
solution of the Homeric problem could derive scientific support
from such analogies" (with epics of other peoples), "it would be
necessary to show that the particular conditions under which the
Homeric poems appear in early Greece had been reproduced with
sufficient closeness elsewhere." [Footnote: Homer, pp. 131, 132.]
Now we can show that the particular conditions under which the
Homeric poems confessedly arose were "reproduced with sufficient
closeness elsewhere," except that no really great poet was
elsewhere present.

This occurred among the Germanic aristocracy, "the Franks of
France," in the eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth centuries
of our era. The closeness of the whole parallel, allowing for the
admitted absence in France of a very great and truly artistic
poet, is astonishing.

We have first, in France, answering to the Achaean aristocracy,
the Frankish noblesse of warriors dwelling in princely courts and
strong castles, dominating an older population, owing a
practically doubtful fealty to an Over-Lord, the King, passing
their days in the chace, in private war, or in revolt against the
Over-Lord, and, for all literary entertainment, depending on the
recitations of epic poems by _jongleurs_, who in some cases
are of gentle birth, and are the authors of the poems which they
recite.

"This national poetry," says M. Gaston Paris, "was born and mainly
developed among the warlike class, princes, lords, and their
courts.... At first, no doubt, some of these men of the sword
themselves composed and chanted lays" (like Achilles), "but soon
there arose a special class of poets ... They went from court to
court, from castle ... Later, when the townsfolk began to be
interested in their chants, they sank a degree, and took their
stand in public open places ..." [Footnote: _Literature
Franaise au Moyen Age_, pp. 36, 37. 1898.]

In the _Iliad_ we hear of no minstrels in camp: in the
_Odyssey_ a prince has a minstrel among his retainers--
Demodocus, at the court of Phaeacia; Phemius, in the house of
Odysseus. In Ionia, when princes had passed away, rhapsodists
recited for gain in marketplaces and at fairs. The parallel with
France is so far complete.

The French national epics, like those of the Achaeans, deal mainly
with legends of a long past legendary age. To the French authors
the greatness and the fortunes of the Emperor Charles and other
heroic heads of great Houses provide a theme. The topics of song
are his wars, and the prowess and the quarrels of his peers with
the Emperor and among themselves. These are seen magnified through
a mist of legend; Saracens are substituted for Gascon foes, and
the great Charles, so nobly venerable a figure in the oldest
French epic (the _Chanson de Roland, circ._ 1050-1070 in its
earliest extant form), is more degraded, in the later epics, than
Agamemnon himself. The "machinery" of the gods in Homer is
replaced by the machinery of angels, but the machinery of dreams
is in vogue, as in the Iliad and _Odyssey_. The sources are
traditional and legendary.

We know that brief early lays of Charles and other heroes had
existed, and they may have been familiar to the French epic poets,
but they were not merely patched into the epics. The form of verse
is not ballad-like, but a series of _laisses_ of decasyllabic
lines, each _laisse_ presenting one assonance, not rhyme. As
time went on, rhyme and Alexandrine lines were introduced, and the
old epics were expanded, altered, condensed, _remanis_, with
progressive changes in taste, metre, language, manners, and ways
of life.

Finally, an age of Cyclic poems began; authors took new
characters, whom they attached by false genealogies to the older
heroes, and they chanted the adventures of the sons of the former
heroes, like the Cyclic poet who sang of the son of Odysseus by
Circe. All these conditions are undeniably "true parallels" to
"the conditions under which the Homeric poems appeared." The only
obvious point of difference vanishes if we admit, with Sir Richard
Jebb and M. Salomon Reinach, the possibility of the existence of
written texts in the Greece of the early iron age.

We do not mean texts prepared for a _reading_ public. In
France such a public, demanding texts for reading, did not arise
till the decadence of the epic. The oldest French texts of their
epics are small volumes, each page containing some thirty lines in
one column. Such volumes were carried about by the
_jongleurs_, who chanted their own or other men's verses.
They were not in the hands of readers. [Footnote: _popes
Franaises_, Lon Gautier, vol. i. pp. 226-228. 1878.]

An example of an author-reciter, Jendeus de Brie (he was the maker
of the first version of the _Bataille Loquifer_, twelfth
century) is instructive. Of Jendeus de Brie it is said that "he
wrote the poem, kept it very carefully, taught it to no man, made
much gain out of it in Sicily where he sojourned, and left it to
his son when he died." Similar statements are made in _Renaus de
Montauban_ (the existing late version is of the thirteenth
century) about Huon de Villeneuve, who would not part with his
poem for horses or furs, or for any price, and about other poets.
[Footnote: _popes Franaises, Lon Gautier_, vol. i. p.
215, Note I.]

These early _jongleurs_ were men of position and distinction;
their theme was the _gestes_ of princes; they were not under
the ban with which the Church pursued vulgar strollers, men like
the Greek rhapsodists. Pindar's story that Homer wrote the
_Cypria_ [Footnote: _Pindari Opera_, vol. iii. p. 654.
Boeckh.] and gave the copy, as the dowry of his daughter, to
Stasinus who married her, could only have arisen in Greece in
circumstances exactly like those of Jendeus de Brie. Jendeus lived
on his poem by reciting it, and left it to his son when he died.
The story of Homer and Stasinus could only have been invented in
an age when the possession of the solitary text of a poem was a
source of maintenance to the poet. This condition of things could
not exist, either when there were no written texts or when such
texts were multiplied to serve the wants of a reading public.

Again, a poet in the fortunate position of Jendeus would not teach
his Epic in a "school" of reciters unless he were extremely well
paid. In later years, after his death, his poem came, through
copies good or bad, into circulation.

Late, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we hear of a
"school" of _jongleurs_ at Beauvais. In Lent they might not
ply their profession, so they gathered at Beauvais, where they
could learn _cantilenae_, new lays. [Footnote: _popes
Franaises_, Lon Gautier, vol. ii. pp. 174, 175.] But by that
time the epic was decadent and dying?

The audiences of the _jongleurs_, too, were no longer, by
that time, what they had been. The rich and great, now, had
library copies of the epics; not small _jongleurs'_ copies,
but folios, richly illuminated and bound, with two or three
columns of matter on each page. [Footnote: Ibid., vol. i. p. 228.
See, too, photographs of an illuminated, double-columned library
copy in _La Chancun de Willame_., London, 1903.]

The age of recitations from a text in princely halls was ending or
ended; the age of a reading public was begun. The earlier
condition of the _jongleur_ who was his own poet, and
carefully guarded his copyright in spite of all temptations to
permit the copying of his MS., is regarded by Sir Richard Jebb as
quite a possible feature of early Greece. He thinks that there was
"no wide circulation of writings by numerous copies for a reading
public" before the end of the fifth century B.C. As Greek
mercenaries could write, and write well, in the seventh to sixth
centuries, I incline to think that there may then, and earlier,
have been a reading public. However, long before that a man might
commit his poems to writing. "Wolf allows that some men did, as
early at least as 776 B.C. The verses might never be read by
anybody except himself" (the author) "or those to whom he
privately bequeathed them" (as Jendeus de Brie bequeathed his poem
to his son), "but his end would have been gained." [Footnote:
_Homer_, p. 113.]

Recent discoveries as to the very early date of linear non-
Phoenician writing in Crete of course increase the probability of
this opinion, which is corroborated by the story of the
_Cypria_, given as a dowry with the author's daughter. Thus
"the particular conditions under which the Homeric poems appeared"
"been reproduced with sufficient closeness" in every respect, with
surprising closeness, in the France of the eleventh to thirteenth
centuries. The social conditions are the same; the legendary
materials are of identical character; the method of publication by
recitation is identical; the cyclic decadence occurs in both
cases, the _monomanie cyclique_. In the Greece of Homer we
have the four necessary conditions of the epic, as found by M.
Lon Gautier in mediaeval France. We have:--

(1) An uncritical age confusing history by legend.

(2) We have a national _milieu_ with religious uniformity.

(3) We have poems dealing with--

 "Old unhappy far-off things
 And battles long ago."

(4) We have representative heroes, the Over-Lord, and his peers or
paladins. [Footnote: _popes Franaises_, Lon Gautier, vol.
i. pp. 6-9]

It may be added that in Greece, as in France, some poets adapt
into the adventures of their heroes world-old _Mrchen_, as
in the Odyssey, and in the cycle of the parents of Charles.

In the French, as in the Greek epics, we have such early traits of
poetry as the textual repetition of speeches, and the recurring
epithets, "swift-footed Achilles," "Charles of the white beard,"
"blameless heroes" (however blamable). Ladies, however old, are
always "of the clear face." Thus the technical manners of the
French and Greek epics are closely parallel; they only differ in
the exquisite art of Homer, to which no approach is made by the
French poets.

The French authors of epic, even more than Homer, abound in
episodes much more distracting than those of the _Iliad_. Of
blood and wounds, of course, both the French and the Greek are
profuse: they were writing for men of the sword, not for modern
critics. Indeed, the battle pieces of France almost translate
those of Homer. The Achaean "does on his goodly corslet"; the
French knight "_sur ses espalles son halberc li colad_." The
Achaean, with his great sword, shears off an arm at the shoulder.
The French knight--

"_Trenchad le braz,
 Parmi leschine sun grant espee li passe_."

The huge shield of Aias becomes _cele grant targe duble_ in
France, and the warriors boast over their slain in France, as in
the _Iliad_. In France, as in Greece, a favourite epic theme
was "The Wrath" of a hero, of Achilles, of Roland, of Ganelon, of
Odysseus and Achilles wrangling at a feast to the joy of
Agamemnon, "glad that the bravest of his peers were at strife."
[Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 75-7s [sic].]

Of all the many parallels between the Greek and French epics, the
most extraordinary is the coincidence between Charles with his
peers and Agamemnon with his princes. The same historical
conditions occurred, at an interval of more than two thousand
years. Agamemnon is the Bretwalda, the Over-Lord, as Mr. Freeman
used to say, of the Achaeans: he is the suzerain. Charles in the
French epics holds the same position, but the French poets regard
him in different lights. In the earliest epic, the _Chanson_
de Roland, a divinity doth hedge the famous Emperor, whom Jeanne
d'Arc styled "St. Charlemagne." He was, in fact, a man of thirty-
seven at the date of the disaster of Roncesvaux, where Roland fell
(778 A.D.). But in the tradition that has reached the poet of the
_chanson_ he is a white-bearded warrior, as vigorous as he is
venerable. As he rules by advice of his council, he bids them
deliberate on the proposals of the Paynim King, Marsile--to
accept or refuse them. Roland, the counterpart of Achilles in all
respects (Oliver is his Patroclus), is for refusing: Ganelon
appears to have the rest with him when he speaks in favour of
peace and return to France out of Spain. So, in the _Iliad_
(II.), the Achaeans lend a ready ear to Agamemnon when he proposes
the abandonment of the siege of Troy. Each host, French and
Achaean, is heartily homesick.

Ganelon's advice prevailing, it is necessary to send an envoy to
the Saracen court. It is a dangerous mission; other envoys have
been sent and been murdered. The Peers, however, volunteer,
beginning with the aged Naismes, the Nestor of the Franks. His
offer is not accepted, nor are those of Oliver, Roland, and
Turpin. Roland then proposes that Ganelon shall be sent; and hence
arises the Wrath of Ganelon, which was the ruin of Roland and the
peers who stood by him. The warriors attack each other in speeches
of Homeric fury. Charles preserves his dignity, and Ganelon
departs on his mission. He deliberately sells himself, and seals
the fate of the peers whom he detests: the surprise of the
rearguard under Roland, the deadly battle, and the revenge of
Charles make up the rest of the poem. Not even in victory is
Charles allowed repose; the trumpet again summons him to war. He
is of those whom Heaven has called to endless combat--

"Their whole lives long to be winding
 Skeins of grievous wars, till every soul of them perish,"

in the words of Diomede.

Such is the picture of the imperial Charles in one of the oldest
of the French epics. The heart of the poet is with the aged, but
unbroken and truly imperial, figure of St. Charlemagne--wise,
just, and brave, a true "shepherd of the people," regarded as the
conqueror of all the known kingdoms of the world. He is, among his
fierce paladins, like "the conscience of a knight among his
warring members." "The greatness of Charlemagne has entered even
into his name;" but as time went on and the feudal princes began
the long struggle against the French king, the poets gratified
their patrons by degrading the character of the Emperor. They
created a second type of Charles, and it is the second type that
on the whole most resembles the Agamemnon of the _Iliad._

We ask why the widely ruling lord of golden Mycenae is so
skilfully and persistently represented as respectable, indeed, by
reason of his office, but detestable, on the whole, in character?

The answer is that just as the second type of Charles is the
result of feudal jealousies of the king, so the character of
Agamemnon reflects the princely hatreds of what we may call the
feudal age of Greece. The masterly portrait of Agamemnon could
only have been designed to win the sympathies of feudal listeners,
princes with an Over-Lord whom they cannot repudiate, for whose
office they have a traditional reverence, but whose power they
submit to with no good will, and whose person and character some
of them can barely tolerate.

 [blank space] _an historical unity._ The poem deals with
what may be called a feudal society, and the attitudes of the
Achaean Bretwalda and of his peers are, from beginning to end of
the _Iliad_ and in every Book of it, those of the peers and
king in the later _Chansons de Geste_.

Returning to the decadent Charles of the French epics, we lay no
stress on the story of his incest with his sister, Gilain, "whence
sprang Roland." The House of Thyestes, whence Agamemnon sprang, is
marked by even blacker legends. The scandal is mythical, like the
same scandal about the King Arthur, who in romance is so much
inferior to his knights, a reflection of feudal jealousies and
hatreds. In places the reproaches hurled by the peers at Charles
read like paraphrases of those which the Achaean princes cast at
Agamemnon. Even Naismes, the Nestor of the French epics, cries:
"It is for you that we have left our lands and fiefs, our fair
wives and our children ... But, by the Apostle to whom they pray
in Rome, were it not that we should be guilty before God we would
go back to sweet France, and thin would be your host." [Footnote:
_Chevalerie Ogier_, 1510-1529. _popes Franaises_,
Lon Gautier, vol. iii. pp. 156-157.] In the lines quoted we seem
to hear the voice of the angered Achilles: "We came not hither in
our own quarrel, thou shameless one, but to please thee! But now
go I back to Phthia with my ships--the better part." [Footnote:
_Iliad_, I. 158-169.]

Agamemnon answers that Zeus is on his side, just as even the angry
Naismes admits that duty to God demands obedience to Charles.
There cannot be parallels more close and true than these, between
poems born at a distance from each other of more than two thousand
years, but born in similar historical conditions.

In Guide _Bourgogne,_ a poem of the twelfth century, Ogier
cries, "They say that Charlemagne is the conqueror of kingdoms:
they lie, it is Roland who conquers them with Oliver, Naismes of
the long beard, and myself. As to Charles, he eats." Compare
Achilles to Agamemnon, "Thou, heavy with wine, with dog's eyes and
heart of deer, never hast thou dared to arm thee for war with the
host ..." [Footnote: _Iliad_, I. 227, 228. _Gui de
Bourgogne_, pp. 37-41.] It is Achilles or Roland who stakes his
life in war and captures cities; it is Agamemnon or Charles who
camps by the wine. Charles, in the _Chanson de Saisnes_,
abases himself before Herapois, even more abjectly than Agamemnon
in his offer of atonement to Achilles. [Footnote: _popes
Franaises_, Lon Gautier, vol. iii. p. 158.] Charles is as
arrogant as Agamemnon: he strikes Roland with his glove, for an
uncommanded victory, and then he loses heart and weeps as
copiously as the penitent Agamemnon often does when he rues his
arrogance. [Footnote: _Entre en Espagne_.]

The poet of the _Iliad_ is a great and sober artist. He does
not make Agamemnon endure the lowest disgraces which the latest
French epic poets heap on Charles. But we see how close is the
parallel between Agamemnon and the Charles of the decadent type.
Both characters are reflections of feudal jealousy of the Over-
Lord; both reflect real antique historical conditions, and these
were the conditions of the Achaeans in Europe, not of the Ionians
in Asia.

The treatment of Agamemnon's character is harmonious throughout.
It is not as if in "the original poem" Agamemnon were revered like
St. Charlemagne in the _Chanson de Roland_, and in the
"later" parts of the _Iliad_ were reduced to the contemptible
estate of the Charles of the decadent _Chanson de Geste_. In
the _Iliad_ Agamemnon's character is consistently presented
from beginning to end, presented, I think, as it could only be by
a great poet of the feudal Achaean society in Europe. The Ionians
--"democratic to the core," says Mr. Leaf--would either have taken
no interest in the figure of the Over-Lord, or would have utterly
degraded him below the level of the Charles of the latest
_Chansons_. Or the late rhapsodists, in their irresponsible
lays, would have presented a wavering and worthless portrait.

The conditions under which the _Chansons_ arose were truly
parallel to the conditions under which the Homeric poems arose,
and the poems, French and Achaean, are also true parallels, except
in genius. The French have no Homer: _cared vate sacro_. It
follows that a Homer was necessary to the evolution of the Greek
epics.

It may, perhaps, be replied to this argument that our _Iliad_
is only a very late _remaniement_, like the fourteenth
century _Chansons de Geste_, of something much earlier and
nobler. But in France, in the age of _remaniement_, even the
versification had changed from assonance to rhyme, from the
decasyllabic line to the Alexandrine in the decadence, while a
plentiful lack of seriousness and a love of purely fanciful
adventures in fairyland take the place of the austere spirit of
war. Ladies "in a coming on humour" abound, and Charles is
involved with his Paladins in _gauloiseries_ of a Rabelaisian
cast. The French language has become a new thing through and
through, and manners and weapons are of a new sort; but the high
seriousness of the _Iliad_ is maintained throughout, except
in the burlesque battle of the gods: the versification is the
stately hexameter, linguistic alterations are present, extant, but
inconspicuous. That the armour and weapons are uniform in
character throughout we have tried to prove, while the state of
society and of religion is certainly throughout harmonious. Our
parallel, then, between the French and the Greek national epics
appears as perfect as such a thing can be, surprisingly perfect,
while the great point of difference in degree of art is accounted
for by the existence of an Achaean poet of supreme genius. Not
such, certainly, were the composers of the Cyclic poems, men
contemporary with the supposed later poets of the _Iliad_.




CHAPTER XVII


CONCLUSION

The conclusion at which we arrive is that the _Iliad_, as a
whole, is the work of one age. That it has reached us without
interpolations and _lacunae_ and _remaniements_ perhaps
no person of ordinary sense will allege. But that the mass of the
Epic is of one age appears to be a natural inference from the
breakdown of the hypotheses which attempt to explain it as a late
mosaic. We have also endeavoured to prove, quite apart from the
failure of theories of expansion and compilation, that the
_Iliad_ presents an historical unity, unity of character,
unity of customary law, and unity in its archaeology. If we are
right, we must have an opinion as to how the Epic was preserved.

If we had evidence for an Homeric school, we might imagine that
the Epic was composed by dint of memory, and preserved, like the
Sanskrit Hymns of the Rig Veda, and the Hymns of the Maoris, the
Zuis, and other peoples in the lower or middle stage of
barbarism, by the exertions and teaching of schools. But religious
hymns and mythical hymns--the care of a priesthood--are one thing;
a great secular epic is another. Priests will not devote
themselves from age to age to its conservation. It cannot be
conserved, with its unity of tone and character, and, on the
whole, even of language, by generations of paid strollers, who
recite new lays of their own, as well as any old lays that they
may remember, which they alter at pleasure.

We are thus driven back to the theory of early written texts, not
intended to meet the wants of a reading public, but for the use of
the poet himself and of those to whom he may bequeath his work.
That this has been a method in which orally published epics were
composed and preserved in a non-reading age we have proved in our
chapter on the French Chansons _de Geste_. Unhappily, the
argument that what was done in mediaeval France might be done in
sub-Mycenaean Greece, is based on probabilities, and these are
differently estimated by critics of different schools. All seems
to depend on each individual's sense of what is "likely." In that
case science has nothing to make in the matter. Nitzsche thought
that writing might go back to the time of Homer. Mr. Monro thought
it "probable enough that writing, even if known at the time of
Homer, was not used for literary purposes." [Footnote:
_Iliad_, vol. i. p. xxxv.] Sir Richard Jebb, as we saw, took
a much more favourable view of the probability of early written
texts. M. Salomon Reinach, arguing from the linear written clay
tablets of Knossos and from a Knossian cup with writing on it in
ink, thinks that there may have existed whole "Minoan" libraries--
manuscripts executed on perishable materials, palm leaves,
papyrus, or parchment. [Footnote: _L'Anthropologie_, vol. xv,
pp. 292, 293.] Mr. Leaf, while admitting that "writing was known
in some form through the whole period of epic development," holds
that "it is in the highest degree unlikely that it was ever
employed to form a standard text of the Epic or any portion of
it.... At best there was a continuous tradition of those portions
of the poems which were especially popular ..." [Footnote:
_Iliad_, vol. i. pp. xvi., xvii.] Father Browne dates the
employment of writing for the preservation of the Epic "from the
sixth century onwards." [Footnote: _Handbook of Homeric
Study_, p. 134.] He also says that "it is difficult to suppose
that the Mycenaeans, who were certainly in contact with this form
of writing" (the Cretan linear), "should not have used it much
more freely than our direct evidence warrants us in asserting." He
then mentions the Knossian cup "with writing inscribed on it
apparently in pen and ink ... The conclusion is that ordinary
writing was in use, but that the materials, probably palm leaves,
have disappeared." [Footnote: _Ibid_., pp. 258, 259.]

Why it should be unlikely that a people confessedly familiar with
writing used it for the preservation of literature, when we know
that even the Red Indians preserve their songs by means of
pictographs, while West African tribes use incised characters, is
certainly not obvious. Many sorts of prae-Phoenician writing were
current during the Mycenaean age in Asia, Egypt, Assyria, and in
Cyprus. As these other peoples used writing of their own sort for
literary purposes, it is not easy to see why the Cretans, for
example, should not have done the same thing. Indeed, Father
Browne supposes that the Mycenaeans used "ordinary writing," and
used it freely. Nevertheless, the Epic was not written, he says,
till the sixth century B.C. Cauer, indeed, remarks that "the
Finnish epic" existed unwritten till Lbnnrot, its Pisistratus,
first collected it from oral recitation. [Footnote:
_Grundfragen der Homerkritik_, p. 94.] But there is not, and
never was, any "Finnish epic." There were cosmogonic songs, as
among the Maoris and Zuis--songs of the beginnings of things;
there were magical songs, songs of weddings, a song based on the
same popular tale that underlies the legend of the Argonauts.
There were songs of the Culture Hero, songs of burial and feast,
and of labour. Lnnrot collected these, and tried by
interpolations to make an epic out of them; but the point, as
Comparetti has proved, is that he failed. There is no Finnish
epic, only a mass of _Volkslieder._ Cauer's other argument,
that the German popular tales, Grimm's tales, were unwritten till
1812, is as remote from the point at issue. Nothing can be less
like an epic than a volume of _Mrchen._

As usual we are driven back upon a literary judgment. Is the
_Iliad_ a patchwork of metrical _Mrchen_ or is it an
epic nobly constructed? If it is the former, writing was not
needed; if it is the latter, in the absence of Homeric guilds or
colleges, only writing can account for its preservation.

It is impossible to argue against a critic's subjective sense of
what is likely. Possibly that sense is born of the feeling that
the Cretan linear script, for example, or the Cyprian syllabary,
looks very odd and outlandish. The critic's imagination boggles at
the idea of an epic written in such scripts. In that case his is
not the scientific imagination; he is checked merely by the
unfamiliar. Or his sense of unlikelihood may be a subconscious
survival of Wolf's opinion, formed by him at a time when the
existence of the many scripts of the old world was unknown.

Our own sense of probability leads us to the conclusion that, in
an age when people could write, people wrote down the Epic. If
they applied their art to literature, then the preservation of the
Epic is explained. Written first in a prae-Phoenician script, it
continued to be written in the Greek adaptation of the Phoenician
alphabet. There was not yet, probably, a reading public, but there
were a few clerkly men.

That the Cretans, at least, could write long before the age of
Homer, Mr. Arthur Evans has demonstrated by his discoveries. Prom
my remote undergraduate days I was of the opinion which he has
proved to be correct, starting, like him, from what I knew about
savage pictographs. [Footnote: Cretan _Pictographs_ and
_Prae-Phoenician_ Script. London, 1905. Annual of British
_School_ of Athens, 1900-1901, p. 10. Journal of _Hellenic
Studies,_ 1897, pp. 327-395.]

M. Reinach and Mr. Evans have pointed out that in this matter
tradition joins hands with discovery. Diodorus Siculus, speaking
of the Cretan Zeus and probably on Cretan authority, says: "As to
those who hold that the Syrians invented letters, from whom the
Phoenicians received them and handed them on to the Greeks, ...
and that for this reason the Greeks call letters 'Phoenician,'
some reply that the Phoenicians did not [blank space] letters, but
merely modified (transposed 3) the forms of the letters, and that
most men use this form of script, and thus letters came to be
styled 'Phoenician.'" [Footnote: Diodorus Siculus, v. 74.
_L'Anthropologie,_ vol. xi. pp. 497-502.] In fact, the
alphabet is a collection of signs of palaeolithic antiquity and of
vast diffusion. [Footnote: Origins of the Alphabet. A. L.
Fortnightly Review, 1904, pp. 634-645]

Thus the use of writing for the conservation of the Epic cannot
seem to me to be unlikely, but rather probable; and here one must
leave the question, as the subjective element plays so great a
part in every man's sense of what is likely or unlikely. That
writing cannot have been used for this literary purpose, that the
thing is impossible, nobody will now assert.

My supposition is, then, that the text of the Epic existed in
AEgean script till Greece adapted to her own tongue the
"Phoenician letters," which I think she did not later than the
ninth to eighth centuries; "at the beginning of the ninth
century," says Professor Bury. [Footnote: _History of
Greece_, vol. i. p. 78. 1902.] This may seem an audaciously
early date, but when we find vases of the eighth to seventh
centuries bearing inscriptions, we may infer that a knowledge of
reading and writing was reasonably common. When such a humble
class of hirelings or slaves as the pot-painters can sign their
work, expecting their signatures to be read, reading and writing
must be very common accomplishments among the more fortunate
classes.

If Mr. Gardner is right in dating a number of incised inscriptions
on early pottery at Naucratis before the middle of the seventh
century, we reach the same conclusion. In fact, if these
inscriptions be of a century earlier than the Abu Simbel
inscriptions, of date 590 B.C., we reach 690 B.C. Wherefore, as
writing does not become common in a moment, it must have existed
in the eighth century B.C. We are not dealing here with a special
learned class, but with ordinary persons who could write.
[Footnote: _The Early Ionic Alphabet: Journal of Hellenic
Studies_, vol. vii. pp. 220-239. Roberts, _Introduction to
Greek Epigraphy_, pp. 31, 151, 159, 164, 165-167]

Interesting for our purpose is the verse incised on a Dipylon
vase, found at Athens in 1880. It is of an ordinary cream-jug
shape, with a neck, a handle, a spout, and a round belly. On the
neck, within a zigzag "geometrical" pattern, is a doe, feeding,
and a tall water-fowl. On the shoulder is scratched with a point,
in very antique Attic characters running from right to left,
[Greek: os nun orchaeston panton hatalotata pais ei, tou tode].
"This is the jug of him who is the most delicately sportive of all
dancers of our time." The jug is attributed to the eighth century.
[Footnote: Walters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol. ii. p,
243; Kretschmer, _Griechischen Vasen inschriften_, p. 110,
1894, of the seventh century. H. von Rohden, _Denkmaler_,
iii. pp. 1945, 1946: "Probably dating from the seventh century."
Roberts, op. cit., vol. i. p. 74, "at least as far back as the
seventh century," p. 75.]

Taking the vase, with Mr. Walters, as of the eighth century, I do
not suppose that the amateur who gave it to a dancer and scratched
the hexameter was of a later generation than the jug itself. The
vase may have cost him sixpence: he would give his friend a
_new_ vase; it is improbable that old jugs were sold at
curiosity shops in these days, and given by amateurs to artists.
The inscription proves that, in the eighth to seventh centuries,
at a time of very archaic characters (the Alpha is lying down on
its side, the aspirate is an oblong with closed ends and a stroke
across the middle, and the Iota is curved at each end), people
could write with ease, and would put verse into writing. The
general accomplishment of reading is taken for granted.

Reading is also taken for granted by the Gortyn (Cretan)
inscription of twelve columns long, _boustro-phedon_ (running
alternately from left to right, and from right to left). In this
inscribed code of laws, incised on stone, money is not mentioned
in the more ancient part, but fines and prices are calculated in
"chalders" and "bolls" ([Greek: lebaetes] and [Greek: tripodes]),
as in Scotland when coin was scarce indeed. Whether the law
contemplated the value of the vessels themselves, or, as in
Scotland, of their contents in grain, I know not. The later
inscriptions deal with coined money. If coin came in about 650
B.C., the older parts of the inscription may easily be of 700 B.C.

The Gortyn inscription implies the power of writing out a long
code of laws, and it implies that persons about to go to law could
read the public inscription, as we can read a proclamation posted
up on a wall, or could have it read to them. [Footnote: Roberts,
vol. i. pp. 52-55.]

The alphabets inscribed on vases of the seventh century
(Abecedaria), with "the archaic Greek forms of every one of the
twenty-two Phoenician letters arranged precisely in the received
Semitic order," were, one supposes, gifts for boys and girls who
were learning to read, just like our English alphabets on
gingerbread. [Footnote: For Abecedaria, cf. Roberts, vol. i. pp.
16-21.]

Among inscriptions on tombstones of the end of the seventh
century, there is the epitaph of a daughter of a potter.
[Footnote: Roberts, vol. i. p. 76.] These writings testify to the
general knowledge of reading, just as much as our epitaphs testify
to the same state of education. The Athenian potter's daughter of
the seventh century B.C. had her epitaph, but the grave-stones of
highlanders, chiefs or commoners, were usually uninscribed till
about the end of the eighteenth century, in deference to custom,
itself arising from the illiteracy of the highlanders in times
past. [Footnote: Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen_, ii. p. 426.
1888.] I find no difficulty, therefore, in supposing that there
were some Greek readers and writers in the eighth century, and
that primary education was common in the seventh. In these
circumstances my sense of the probable is not revolted by the idea
of a written epic, in [blank space] characters, even in the eighth
century, but the notion that there was no such thing till the
middle of the sixth century seems highly improbable. All the
conditions were present which make for the composition and
preservation of literary works in written texts. That there were
many early written copies of Homer in the eighth century I am not
inclined to believe. The Greeks were early a people who could
read, but were not a reading people. Setting newspapers aside,
there is no such thing as a reading _people_.

The Greeks preferred to listen to recitations, but my hypothesis
is that the rhapsodists who recited had texts, like the
_jongleurs_' books of their epics in France, and that they
occasionally, for definite purposes, interpolated matter into
their texts. There were also texts, known in later times as "city
texts" ([Greek: ai kata poleis]), which Aristarchus knew, but he
did not adopt the various readings. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey,
vol. ii. p, 435.]

Athens had a text in Solon's time, if he entered the decree that
the whole Epic should be recited in due order, every five years,
at the Panathenaic festival. [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p.
395.] "This implies the possession of a complete text." [Footnote:
_Ibid_., vol. ii. p. 403.]

Cauer remarks that the possibility of "interpolation" "began only
after the fixing of the text by Pisistratus." [Footnote:
_Grundfragen_, p. 205.] But surely if every poet and reciter
could thrust any new lines which he chose to make into any old
lays which he happened to know, that was interpolation, whether he
had a book of the words or had none. Such interpolations would
fill the orally recited lays which the supposed Pisistratean
editor must have written down from recitation before he began his
colossal task of making the _Iliad_ out of them. If, on the
other hand, reciters had books of the words, they could
interpolate at pleasure into _them_, and such books may have
been among the materials used in the construction of a text for
the Athenian book market. But if our theory be right, there must
always have been a few copies of better texts than those of the
late reciters' books, and the effort of the editors for the book
market would be to keep the parts in which most manuscripts were
agreed.

But how did Athens, or any other city, come to possess a text? One
can only conjecture; but my conjecture is that there had always
been texts--copied out in successive generations--in the hands of
the curious; for example, in the hands of the Cyclic poets, who
knew our _Iliad_ as the late French Cyclic poets knew the
earlier _Chansons de Geste_. They certainly knew it, for they
avoided interference with it; they worked at epics which led up to
it, as in the _Cypria;_ they borrowed _motifs_ from
hints and references in the _Iliad_, [Footnote: Monro,
_Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 350, 351.] and they carried on the
story from the death of Hector, in the _AEthiopis_ of
Arctinus of Miletus. This epic ended with the death of Achilles,
when _The Little Iliad_ produced the tale to the bringing in
of the wooden horse. Arctinus goes on with his _Sack_ of
_Ilios_, others wrote of _The Return_ of _the
Heroes,_ and the _Telegonia_ is a sequel to the Odyssey.
The authors of these poems knew the _Iliad_, then, as a
whole, and how could they have known it thus if it only existed in
the casual _repertoire_ of strolling reciters? The Cyclic
poets more probably had texts of Homer, and themselves wrote their
own poems--how it paid, whether they recited them and collected
rewards or not, is, of course, unknown.

The Cyclic poems, to quote Sir Richard Jebb, "help to fix the
lowest limit for the age of the Homeric poems. [Footnote:
_Homer_, pp. 151, 154.] The earliest Cyclic poems, dating
from about 776 B.C., presuppose the _Iliad_, being planned to
introduce or continue it.... It would appear, then, that the
_Iliad_ must have existed in something like its present
compass as early as 800 B.C.; indeed a considerably earlier date
will seem probable, if due time is allowed for the poem to have
grown into such fame as would incite the effort to continue it and
to prelude to it"

Sir Richard then takes the point on which we have already
insisted, namely, that the Cyclic poets of the eighth century B.C.
live in an age of ideas, religions, ritual, and so forth which are
absent from the _Iliad_ [Footnote: Homer, pp. 154, 155.]

Thus the _Iliad_ existed with its characteristics that are
prior to 800 B.C., and in its present compass, and was renowned
before 800 B.C. As it could not possibly have thus existed in the
_repertoire_ of irresponsible strolling minstrels and
reciters, and as there is no evidence for a college, school, or
guild which preserved the Epic by a system of mnemonic teaching,
while no one can deny at least the possibility of written texts,
we are driven to the hypothesis that written texts there were,
whence descended, for example, the text of Athens.

We can scarcely suppose, however, that such texts were perfect in
all respects, for we know how, several centuries later, in a
reading age, papyrus fragments of the _Iliad_ display
unwarrantable interpolation. [Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_,
vol. ii. pp. 422-426.] But Plato's frequent quotations, of course
made at an earlier date, show that "whatever interpolated texts of
Homer were then current, the copy from which Plato quoted was not
one of them." [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 429] Plato had something
much better.

When a reading public for Homer arose--and, from the evidences of
the widespread early knowledge of reading, such a small public may
have come into existence sooner than is commonly supposed--Athens
was the centre of the book trade. To Athens must be due the prae-
Alexandrian Vulgate, or prevalent text, practically the same as
our own. Some person or persons must have made that text--not by
taking down from recitation all the lays which they could collect,
as Herd, Scott, Mrs. Brown, and others collected much of the
_Border Minstrelsy_, and not by then tacking the lays into a
newly-composed whole. They must have done their best with such
texts as were accessible to them, and among these were probably
the copies used by reciters and rhapsodists, answering to the MS.
books of the mediaeval _jongleurs._

Mr. Jevons has justly and acutely remarked that "we do not know,
and there is no external evidence of any description which leads
us to suppose, that the _Iliad_ was ever expanded" (_J. H.
S_, vii. 291-308).

That it was expanded is a mere hypothesis based on the idea that
"if there was an _Iliad_ at all in the ninth century, its
length must have been such as was compatible with the conditions
of an oral delivery,"--"a poem or poems short enough to be
recited at a single sitting."

But we have proved, with Mr. Jevons and Blass, and by the analogy
of the Chansons that, given a court audience (and a court audience
is granted), there were no such narrow limits imposed on the
length of a poem orally recited from night to night.

The length of the _Iliad_ yields, therefore, no argument for
expansions throughout several centuries. That theory, suggested by
the notion that the original poem _MUST_ have been short, is
next supposed to be warranted by the inconsistencies and
discrepancies. But we argue that these are only visible, as a
rule, to "the analytical reader," for whom the poet certainly was
not composing; that they occur in all long works of fictitious
narrative; that the discrepancies often are not discrepancies;
and, finally, that they are not nearly so glaring as the
inconsistencies in the theories of each separatist critic. A
theory, in such matter as this, is itself an explanatory myth, or
the plot of a story which the critic invents to account for the
facts in the case. These critical plots, we have shown, do not
account for the facts of the case, for the critics do not excel in
constructing plots. They wander into unperceived self-
contradictions which they would not pardon in the poet. These
contradictions are visible to "the analytical reader," who
concludes that a very early poet may have been, though Homer
seldom is, as inconsistent as a modern critic.

Meanwhile, though we have no external evidence that the
_Iliad_ was ever expanded--that it was expanded is an
explanatory myth of the critics--"we do know, on good evidence,"
says Mr. Jevons, "that the _Iliad_ was rhapsodised." The
rhapsodists were men, as a rule, of one day recitations, though at
a prolonged festival at Athens there was time for the whole
_Iliad_ to be recited. "They chose for recitation such
incidents as could be readily detached, were interesting in
themselves, and did not take too long to recite." Mr. Jevons
suggests that the many brief poems collected in the Homeric hymns
are invocations which the rhapsodists preluded to their recitals.
The practice seems to have been for the rhapsodist first to pay
his reverence to the god, "to begin from the god," at whose
festival the recitation was being given (the short proems
collected in the Hymns pay this reverence), "and then proceed with
his rhapsody"--with his selected passage from the _Iliad_,
"Beginning with thee" (the god of the festival), "I will go on to
another lay," that is, to his selection from the Epic. Another
conclusion of the proem often is, "I will be mindful both of thee
and of another lay," meaning, says Mr. Jevons, that "the local
deity will figure in the recitation from Homer which the
rhapsodist is about to deliver."

These explanations, at all events, yield good sense. The
invocation of Athene (Hymns, XI., XXVIII.) would serve as the
proem of invocation to the recital of _Iliad_, V., VI. 1-311,
the day of valour of Diomede, spurred on by the wanton rebuke of
Agamemnon, and aided by Athene. The invocation of Hephaestus (Hymn
XX.), would prelude to a recital of the _Making of the Awns of
Achilles_, and so on.

But the rhapsodist may be reciting at a festival of Dionysus,
about whom there is practically nothing said in the _Iliad_;
for it is a proof of the antiquity of the _Iliad_ that, when
it was composed, Dionysus had not been raised to the Olympian
peerage, being still a folk-god only. The rhapsodist, at a feast
of Dionysus in later times, has to introduce the god into his
recitation. The god is not in his text, but he adds him.
[Footnote:_Ibid_., VI. 130-141]

Why should any mortal have made this interpolation? Mr. Jevons's
theory supplies the answer. The rhapsodist added the passages to
suit the Dionysus feast, at which he was reciting.

The same explanation is offered for the long story of the
_Birth_ of [blank space] which Agamemnon tells in his speech
of apology and reconciliation. [Footnote:_Ibid_., XIX. 136.]
There is an invocation to Heracles (Hymns, XV.), and the author
may have added this speech to his rhapsody of the Reconciliation,
recited at a feast of Heracles. Perhaps the remark of Mr. Leaf
offers the real explanation of the presence of this long story in
the speech of Agamemnon: "Many speakers with a bad case take
refuge in telling stories." Agamemnon shows, says Mr. Leaf, "the
peevish nervousness of a man who feels that he has been in the
wrong," and who follows a frank speaker like Achilles, only eager
for Agamemnon to give the word to form and charge. So Agamemnon
takes refuge in a long story, throwing the blame of his conduct on
Destiny.

We do not need, then, the theory of a rhapsodist's interpolation,
but it is quite plausible in itself.

Local heroes, as well as gods, had their feasts in post-Homeric
times, and a reciter at a feast of AEneas, or of his mother,
Aphrodite, may have foisted in the very futile discourse of
Achilles and AEneas, [Footnote:_Ibid_., XX. 213-250.] with
its reference to Erichthonius, an Athenian hero.

In other cases the rhapsodist rounded off his selected passage by
a few lines, as in _Iliad_, XIII. 656-659, where a hero is
brought to follow his son's dead body to the grave, though the
father had been killed in _V. 576_. "It is really such a slip
as is often made by authors who write," says Mr. Leaf; and, in
_Esmond_, Thackeray makes similar errors. The passage in XVI.
69-80, about which so much is said, as if it contradicted Book IX.
(_The Embassy to Achilles_), is also, Mr. Jevons thinks, to
be explained as "inserted by a rhapsodist wishing to make his
extract complete in itself." Another example--the confusion in the
beginning of Book II.--we have already discussed (see Chapter
IV.), and do not think that any explanation is needed, when we
understand that Agamemnon, once wide-awake, had no confidence in
his dream. However, Mr. Jevons thinks that rhapsodists, anxious to
recite straight on from the dream to the battle, added II. 35-41,
"the only lines which represent Agamemnon as believing confidently
in his dream." We have argued that he only believed _till he
awoke_, and then, as always, wavered.

Thus, in our way of looking at these things, interpolations by
rhapsodists are not often needed as explanations of difficulties.
Still, granted that the rhapsodists, like the _jongleurs_,
had texts, and that these were studied by the makers of the
Vulgate, interpolations and errors might creep in by this way. As
to changes in language, "a poetical dialect... is liable to be
gradually modified by the influence of the ever-changing
colloquial speech. And, in the early times, when writing was
little used, this influence would be especially operative."
[Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 461.]

To conclude, the hypothesis of a school of mnemonic teaching of
the _Iliad_ would account for the preservation of so long a
poem in an age destitute of writing, when memory would be well
cultivated. There may have been such schools. We only lack
evidence for their existence. But against the hypothesis of the
existence of early texts, there is nothing except the feeling of
some critics that it is not likely. "They are dangerous guides,
the feelings."

In any case the opinion that the _Iliad_ was a whole,
centuries before Pisistratus, is the hypothesis which is by far
the least fertile in difficulties, and, consequently, in
inconsistent solutions of the problems which the theory of
expansion first raises, and then, like an unskilled magician,
fails to lay.





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