Chapter XX: Part I: ch. 2, p. 15.) (2)

[191] Tyrtæus, in his military expressions, seems to conceive
the Homeric mode of hurling the spear as still prevalent,—δόρυ
δ᾽ εὐτόλμως ~βάλλοντες~ (Fragm. ix. Gaisford). Either he had his
mind prepossessed with the Homeric array, or else the close order
and conjunct spears of the hoplites had not yet been introduced
during the second Messenian war.

Thiersch and Schneidewin would substitute πάλλοντες in place of
βάλλοντες. Euripidês (Androm. 695) has a similar expression, yet
it does not apply well to hoplites; for one of the virtues of the
hoplite consisted in carrying his spear steadily: δοράτων κίνησις
betokens a disorderly march, and the want of steady courage and
self-possession. See the remarks of Brasidas upon the ranks of
the Athenians under Kleon at Amphipolis (Thucyd. v. 6).

[192] Euripid. Andromach. 696.

Even at the most advanced point of their tactics, the Greeks could effect little against a walled city, whilst the heroic weapons and array were still less available for such an undertaking as a siege. Fortifications are a feature of the age deserving considerable notice. There was a time, we are told, in which the primitive Greek towns or villages derived a precarious security, not from their walls, but merely from sites lofty and difficult of access. They were not built immediately upon the shore, or close upon any convenient landing-place, but at some distance inland, on a rock or elevation which could not be approached without notice or scaled without difficulty. It was thought sufficient at that time to guard against piratical or marauding surprise: but as the state of society became assured,—as the chance of sudden assault comparatively diminished and industry increased,—these uninviting abodes were exchanged for more convenient sites on the plain or declivity beneath; or a portion of the latter was inclosed within larger boundaries and joined on to the original foundation, which thus became the Acropolis of the new town. Thêbes, Athens, Argos, etc., belonged to the latter class of cities; but there were in many parts of Greece deserted sites on hilltops, still retaining, even in historical times, the traces of former habitation, and some of them still bearing the name of the old towns. Among the mountainous parts of Krête, in Ægina and Rhodes, in portions of Mount Ida and Parnassus, similar remnants might be perceived.[193]

[193] Ἡ παλαιὰ πόλις in Ægina (Herodot. vi. 88); Ἀστυπάλαια in
Samus (Polyæn. i. 23. 2; Etymol. Magn. v. Ἀστυπάλαια): it became
seemingly the acropolis of the subsequent city.

About the deserted sites in the lofty regions of Krête, see
Theophrastus, De Ventis, v. 13, ed. Schneider, p. 762.

The site of Παλαίσκηψις in Mount Ida,—ἐπάνω Κέβρηνος κατὰ τὸ
μετεωρότατον τῆς Ἴδης (Strabo, xiii. p. 607); ὕστερον δὲ κατωτέρω
σταδίοις ἑξήκοντα εἰς τὴν νῦν Σκῆψιν μετῳκίσθησαν. Paphos in
Cyprus was the same distance below the ancient Palæ-Paphos
(Strabo, xiv. p. 683).

Near Mantineia in Arcadia was situated ὄρος ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ, τὰ
ἐρείπια ἔτι Μαντινείας ἔχον τῆς ἀρχαίας· καλεῖται δὲ τὸ χωρίον
ἐφ᾽ ἡμῶν Πτόλις (Pausan. viii. 12, 4). See a similar statement
about the lofty sites of the ancient town of Orchomenus (in
Arcadia) (Paus. viii. 13, 2), of Nonakris (viii. 17, 5,) of Lusi
(viii. 18, 3), Lykoreia on Parnassus (Paus. x. 6, 2; Strabo, ix.
p. 418).

Compare also Plato, Legg. iii. 2, pp. 678-679, who traces
these lofty and craggy dwellings, general among the earliest
Grecian townships, to the commencement of human society after an
extensive deluge, which had covered all the lower grounds and
left only a few survivors.

Probably, in such primitive hill villages, a continuous circle of wall would hardly be required as an additional means of defence, and would often be rendered very difficult by the rugged nature of the ground. But Thucydidês represents the earliest Greeks—those whom he conceives anterior to the Trojan war—as living thus universally in unfortified villages, chiefly on account of their poverty, rudeness, and thorough carelessness for the morrow. Oppressed, and held apart from each other by perpetual fear, they had not yet contracted the sentiment of fixed abodes: they were unwilling even to plant fruit-trees because of the uncertainty of gathering the produce,—and were always ready to dislodge, because there was nothing to gain by staying, and a bare subsistence might be had any where. He compares them to the mountaineers of Ætolia and of the Ozolian Lokris in his own time, who dwelt in their unfortified hill villages with little or no intercommunication, always armed and fighting, and subsisting on the produce of their cattle and their woods,[194]—clothed in undressed hides, and eating raw meat.

[194] Thucyd. i. 2. Φαίνεται γὰρ ἡ νῦν Ἑλλὰς καλουμένη, οὐ πάλαι
βεβαίως οἰκουμένη, ἀλλὰ μεταναστάσεις τε οὖσαι τὰ πρότερα, καὶ
ῥᾳδίως ἕκαστοι τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀπολείποντες, βιαζόμενοι ὑπὸ τινῶν ἀεὶ
πλειόνων· τῆς γὰρ ἐμπορίας οὐκ οὔσης, οὐδ᾽ ἐπιμιγνύντες ἀδεῶς
ἀλλήλοις, οὔτε κατὰ γῆν οὔτε διὰ θαλάσσης, νεμόμενοι δὲ τὰ αὑτῶν
ἕκαστοι ὅσον ἀποζῇν, καὶ περιουσίαν χρημάτων οὐκ ἔχοντες οὐδὲ
γῆν φυτεύοντες, ἄδηλον ὂν ὅποτέ τις ἐπελθὼν, καὶ ἀτειχίστων ἅμα
ὄντων, ἄλλος ἀφαιρήσεται, τῆς τε καθ᾽ ἡμέραν ἀναγκαίου τροφῆς
πανταχοῦ ἂν ἡγούμενοι ἐπικρατεῖν, οὐ χαλεπῶς ἀπανίσταντο, καὶ δι᾽
αὐτὸ οὔτε μεγέθει πόλεων ἴσχυον, οὔτε τῇ ἄλλῃ παρασκευῇ.

About the distant and unfortified villages and rude habits of the
Ætolians and Lokrians, see Thucyd. iii. 94; Pausan. x. 38, 3:
also of the Cisalpine Gauls, Polyb. ii. 17.

Both Thucydidês and Aristotle seem to have conceived the Homeric
period as mainly analogous to the βάρβαροι of their own day—Λύει
δ᾽ Ἀριστοτέλης λέγων, ὅτι τοιαῦτα ἀεὶ ποιεῖ Ὅμηρος οἷα ἦν τότε·
ἦν δὲ τοιαῦτα τὰ παλαιὰ οἷάπερ καὶ νῦν ἐν τοῖς βαρβάροις (Schol.
Iliad. x. 151).

The picture given by Thucydidês, of these very early and unrecorded times, can only be taken as conjectural,—the conjectures, indeed, of a statesman and a philosopher,—generalized too, in part, from the many particular instances of contention and expulsion of chiefs which he found in the old legendary poems. The Homeric poems, however, present to us a different picture. They recognize walled towns, fixed abodes, strong local attachments, hereditary individual property in land, vineyards planted and carefully cultivated, established temples of the gods, and splendid palaces of the chiefs.[195] The description of Thucydidês belongs to a lower form of society, and bears more analogy to that which the poet himself conceives as antiquated and barbarous,—to the savage Cyclopes, who dwell on the tops of mountains, in hollow caves, without the plough, without vine or fruit culture, without arts or instruments,—or to the primitive settlement of Dardanus son of Zeus, on the higher ground of Ida, while it was reserved for his descendants and successors to found the holy Ilium on the plain.[196] Ilium or Troy represents the perfection of Homeric society. It is a consecrated spot, containing temples of the gods as well as the palace of Priam, and surrounded by walls which are the fabric of the gods; while the antecedent form of ruder society, which the poet briefly glances at, is the parallel of that which the theory of Thucydidês ascribes to his own early semi-barbarous ancestors.

[195] Odyss. vi. 10; respecting Nausithous, past king of the
Phæakians:

Ἀμφὶ δὲ τεῖχος ἔλασσε πόλει, καὶ ἐδείματο οἴκους,
Καὶ νηοὺς ποίησε θεῶν, καὶ ἐδάσσατ᾽ ἀρούρας.

The vineyard, olive-ground, and garden of Laërtes, is a model of
careful cultivation (Odyss. xxiv. 245); see also the shield of
Achilles (Iliad, xvii. 541-580), and the Kalydônian plain (Iliad,
ix. 575).

[196] Odyss. x. 106-115; Iliad, xx. 216.

Walled towns serve thus as one of the evidences, that a large part of the population of Greece had, even in the Homeric times, reached a level higher than that of the Ætolians and Lokrians of the days of Thucydidês. The remains of Mykênæ and Tiryns demonstrate the massy and Cyclopian style of architecture employed in those early days: but we may remark that, while modern observers seem inclined to treat the remains of the former as very imposing, and significant of a great princely family, Thucydidês, on the contrary, speaks of it as a small place, and labors to elude the inference, which might be deduced from its insignificant size, in disproof of the grandeur of Agamemnôn.[197] Such fortifications supplied a means of defence incomparably superior to those of attack. Indeed, even in historical Greece, and after the invention of battering engines, no city could be taken except by surprise or blockade, or by ruining the country around, and thus depriving the inhabitants of their means of subsistence. And in the two great sieges of the legendary time, Troy and Thêbes, the former is captured by the stratagem of the wooden horse, while the latter is evacuated by its citizens, under the warning of the gods, after their defeat in the field.

[197] Thucyd. i. 10. Καὶ ὅτι μὲν Μυκῆναι μικρὸν ἦν, ἢ εἴ τι τῶν
τότε πόλισμα νῦν μὴ ἀξιόχρεων δοκεῖ εἶναι, etc.

This decided superiority of the means of defence over those of attack, in rude ages, has been one of the grand promotive causes both of the growth of civic life and of the general march of human improvement. It has enabled the progressive portions of mankind not only to maintain their acquisitions against the predatory instincts of the ruder and poorer, and to surmount the difficulties of incipient organization,—but ultimately, when their organization has been matured, both to acquire predominance, and to uphold it until their own disciplined habits have in part passed to their enemies. The important truth here stated is illustrated not less by the history of ancient Greece, than by that of modern Europe during the Middle Ages. The Homeric chief, combining superior rank with superior force, and ready to rob at every convenient opportunity, greatly resembles the feudal baron of the Middle Ages, but circumstances absorb him more easily into a city life, and convert the independent potentate into the member of a governing aristocracy.[198] Traffic by sea continued to be beset with danger from pirates, long after it had become tolerably assured by land: the “wet ways” have always been the last resort of lawlessness and violence, and the Ægean, in particular, has in all times suffered more than other waters under this calamity.

[198] Nägelsbach, Homerische Theologie, Abschn. v. sect. 54.
Hesiod strongly condemns robbery,—Δὼς ἀγαθὴ, ἅρπαξ δὲ κακὴ,
θανάτοιο δότειρα (Opp. Di. 356, comp. 320); but the sentiment
of the Grecian heroic poetry seems not to go against it,—it is
looked upon as a natural employment of superior force,—Αὐτόματοι
δ᾽ ἀγαθοὶ δειλῶν ἐπὶ δαῖτας ἴασιν (Athenæ. v. p. 178; comp.
Pindar, Fragm. 48, ed. Dissen.): the long spear, sword, and
breastplate, of the Kretan Hybreas, constitute his wealth
(Skolion 27, p. 877; Poet. Lyric. ed. Bergk), wherewith he
ploughs and reaps,—while the unwarlike, who dare not or cannot
wield these weapons, fall at his feet, and call him The Great
King. The feeling is different in the later age of Demêtrius
Poliorkêtês (about 310 B. C.): in the Ithyphallic Ode, addressed
to him at his entrance into Athens, robbery is treated as worthy
only of Ætolians:—

Αἰτωλικὸν γὰγ ἁρπάσαι τὰ τῶν πέλας,
Νυνὶ δὲ, καὶ τὰ πόῤῥω.—

(Poet. Lyr. xxv. p. 453, ed. Schneid.)

The robberies of powerful men, and even highway robbery generally
found considerable approving sentiment in the Middle Ages. “All
Europe (observes Mr. Hallam, Hist. Mid. Ag. ch. viii. part 3, p.
247) was a scene of intestine anarchy during the Middle Ages: and
though England was far less exposed to the scourge of private
war than most nations on the continent, we should find, could we
recover the local annals of every country, such an accumulation
of petty rapine and tumult, as would almost alienate us from the
liberty which served to engender it.... Highway robbery was from
the earliest times a sort of national crime.... We know how long
the outlaws of Sherwood lived in tradition; men who, like some of
their betters, have been permitted to redeem, by a few acts of
generosity, the just ignominy of extensive crimes. These, indeed,
were the heroes of vulgar applause; but when such a judge as Sir
John Fortescue could exult, that more Englishmen were hanged
for robbery in one year than French in seven,—and that, _if an
Englishman be poor, and see another having riches, which may be
taken from him by might, he will not spare to do so_,—it may be
perceived how thoroughly these sentiments had pervaded the public
mind.”

The robberies habitually committed by the noblesse of France
and Germany during the Middle Ages, so much worse than anything
in England,—and those of the highland chiefs even in later
times,—are too well known to need any references: as to France,
an ample catalogue is set forth in Dulaure’s Histoire de la
Noblesse (Paris, 1792). The confederations of the German cities
chiefly originated in the necessity of keeping the roads and
rivers open for the transit of men and goods against the nobles
who infested the high roads. Scaliger might have found a parallel
to the λῃσταὶ of the heroic ages in the noblesse of la Rouergue,
as it stood even in the 16th century, which he thus describes:
“In Comitatu Rodez pessimi sunt; nobilitas ibi latrocinatur: nec
possunt reprimi.” (ap. Dulaure, c. 9.)

Aggressions of the sort here described were of course most numerous in those earliest times when the Ægean was not yet an Hellenic sea, and when many of the Cyclades were occupied, not by Greeks, but by Karians,—perhaps by Phœnicians: the number of Karian sepulchres discovered in the sacred island of Delus seems to attest such occupation as an historical fact.[199] According to the legendary account, espoused both by Herodotus and by Thucydidês, it was the Kretan Minôs who subdued these islands and established his sons as rulers in them; either expelling the Karians, or reducing them to servitude and tribute.[200] Thucydidês presumes that he must of course have put down piracy, in order to enable his tribute to be remitted in safety, like the Athenians during the time of their hegemony.[201] Upon the legendary thalassocraty of Minôs, I have already remarked in another place:[202] it is sufficient here to repeat, that, in the Homeric poems (long subsequent to Minôs in the current chronology), we find piracy both frequent and held in honorable estimation, as Thucydidês himself emphatically tells us,—remarking, moreover, that the vessels of those early days were only half-decked, built and equipped after the piratical fashion,[203] in a manner upon which the nautical men of his time looked back with disdain. Improved and enlarged ship-building, and the trireme, or ship with three banks of oars, common for warlike purposes during the Persian invasion, began only with the growing skill, activity, and importance of the Corinthians, three quarters of a century after the first Olympiad.[204] Corinth, even in the Homeric poems, is distinguished by the epithet of wealthy, which it acquired principally from its remarkable situation on the Isthmus, and from its two harbors of Lechæum and Kenchreæ, the one on the Corinthian, the other on the Sarônic gulf. It thus supplied a convenient connection between Epirus and Italy on the one side, and the Ægean sea on the other, without imposing upon the unskilful and timid navigator of those days the necessity of circumnavigating Peloponnêsus.

[199] Thucyd. i. 4-8. τῆς νῦν Ἑλληνικῆς θαλάσσης.

[200] Herodot. i. 171; Thucyd. i. 4-8. Isokratês (Panathenaic.
p. 241) takes credit to Athens for having finally expelled the
Karians out of these islands at the time of the Ionic emigration.

[201] Thucyd. i. 4. τό τε λῃστικὸν, ~ὡς εἰκὸς~, καθῄρει ἐκ τῆς
θαλάσσης ἐφ᾽ ὅσον ἠδύνατο, τοῦ τὰς προσόδους μᾶλλον ἰέναι αὐτῷ.

[202] See the preceding volume of this History, Chap. xii. p. 227.

[203] Thucyd. i. 10. τῷ παλαιῷ τρόπῳ λῃστικώτερον παρεσκευασμένα.

[204] Thucyd. i. 13.

The extension of Grecian traffic and shipping is manifested by a comparison of the Homeric with the Hesiodic poems; in respect to knowledge of places and countries,—the latter being probably referable to dates between B. C. 740 and B. C. 640. In Homer, acquaintance is shown (the accuracy of such acquaintance, however, being exaggerated by Strabo and other friendly critics) with continental Greece and its neighboring islands, with Krête and the principal islands of the Ægean, and with Thrace, the Troad, the Hellespont, and Asia Minor between Paphlagonia northward and Lykia southward. The Sikels are mentioned in the Odyssey, and Sikania in the last book of that poem, but nothing is said to evince a knowledge of Italy or the realities of the western world. Libya, Egypt, and Phœnike, are known by name and by vague hearsay, but the Nile is only mentioned as “the river Egypt:” while the Euxine sea is not mentioned at all.[205] In the Hesiodic poems, on the other hand, the Nile, the Ister, the Phasis, and the Eridanus, are all specified by name;[206] Mount Ætna, and the island of Ortygia near to Syracuse, the Tyrrhenians and Ligurians in the west, and the Scythians in the north, were also noticed.[207] Indeed, within forty years after the first Olympiad, the cities of Korkyra and Syracuse were founded from Corinth,—the first of a numerous and powerful series of colonies, destined to impart a new character both to the south of Italy and to Sicily.

[205] See Voelcker, Homerische Geographie, ch. iii. sect. 55-63.
He has brought to bear much learning and ingenuity to identify
the places visited by Odysseus with real lands, but the attempt
is not successful. Compare also Ukert, Hom. Geog. vol. i. p.
14, and the valuable treatises of J. H. Voss, _Alte Weltkunde_,
annexed to the second volume of his Kritische Blätter (Stuttgart,
1828), pp. 245-413. Voss is the father of just views respecting
Homeric geography.

[206] Hesiod. Theog. 338-340.

[207] Hesiod. Theogon. 1016; Hesiod. Fragm. 190-194, ed.
Göttling; Strabo, i. p. 16; vii. p. 300. Compare Ukert,
Geographie der Griechen und Römer, i. p. 37.

In reference to the astronomy and physics of the Homeric Greek, it has already been remarked that he connected together the sensible phenomena which form the subject matter of these sciences by threads of religious and personifying fancy, to which the real analogies among them were made subordinate; and that these analogies did not begin to be studied by themselves, apart from the religious element by which they had been at first overlaid, until the age of Thales,—coinciding as that period did with the increased opportunities for visiting Egypt and the interior of Asia. The Greeks obtained access in both of these countries to an enlarged stock of astronomical observations, to the use of the gnomon, or sundial,[208] and to a more exact determination of the length of the solar year,[209] than that which served as the basis of their various lunar periods. It is pretended that Thales was the first who predicted an eclipse of the sun,—not, indeed, accurately, but with large limits of error as to the time of its occurrence,—and that he also possessed so profound an acquaintance with meteorological phenomena and probabilities, as to be able to foretell an abundant crop of olives for the coming year, and to realize a large sum of money by an olive speculation.[210]

[208] The Greeks learned from the Babylonians, πόλον μὲν γὰρ καὶ
γνώμονα καὶ τὰ δυωκαίδεκα μέρεα τῆς ἡμέρης (Herodot. ii. 109). In
my first edition, I had interpreted the word πόλον in Herodotus
erroneously. I now believe it to mean the same as _horologium_,
the circular plate upon which the vertical gnomon projected its
shadow, marked so as to indicate the hour of the day,—twelve
hours between sunrise and sunset: see Ideler, Handbuch der
Chronologie, vol. i. p. 233. Respecting the opinions of Thales,
see the same work, part ii. pp. 18-57; Plutarch. de Placit.
Philosophor. ii. c. 12; Aristot. de Cœlo, ii. 13. Costard, Rise
and Progress of Astronomy among the Ancients, p. 99.

[209] We have very little information respecting the early
Grecian mode of computing time, and we know that though all the
different states computed by lunar periods, yet most, if not
all, of them had different names of months as well as different
days of beginning and ending their months. All their immediate
computations, however, were made by months: the lunar period
was their immediate standard of reference for determining their
festivals, and for other purposes, the solar period being
resorted to only as a corrective, to bring the same months
constantly into the same seasons of the year. Their original
month had thirty days, and was divided into three decades,
as it continued to be during the times of historical Athens
(Hesiod. Opp. Di. 766). In order to bring this lunar period more
nearly into harmony with the sun, they intercalated every year
an additional month: so that their years included alternately
twelve months and thirteen months, each month of thirty days.
This period was called a Dieteris,—sometimes a Trieteris. Solon
is said to have first introduced the fashion of months differing
in length, varying alternately from thirty to twenty-nine days.
It appears, however, that Herodotus had present to his mind the
Dieteric cycle, or years alternating between thirteen months and
twelve months (each month of thirty days), and no other (Herodot.
i. 32; compare ii. 104). As astronomical knowledge improved,
longer and more elaborate periods were calculated, exhibiting a
nearer correspondence between an integral number of lunations and
an integral number of solar years. First, we find a period of
four years; next, the Octaëteris, or period of eight years, or
seventy-nine lunar months; lastly, the Metonic period of nineteen
years, or 235 lunar months. How far any of these larger periods
were ever legally authorized, or brought into civil usage,
even at Athens, is matter of much doubt. See Ideler, Uber die
Astronomischen Beobachtungen der Alten, pp. 175-195; Macrobius,
Saturnal. i. 13.

[210] Herodot. i. 74; Aristot. Polit. i. 4, 5.

From Thales downward we trace a succession of astronomical and physical theories, more or less successful, into which I do not intend here to enter: it is sufficient at present to contrast the father of the Ionic philosophy with the times preceding him, and to mark the first commencement of scientific prediction among the Greeks, however imperfect at the outset, as distinguished from the inspired dicta of prophets or oracles, and from those special signs of the purposes of the gods, which formed the habitual reliance of the Homeric man.[211] We shall see these two modes of anticipating the future,—one based upon the philosophical, the other upon the religious appreciation of nature,—running simultaneously on throughout Grecian history, and sharing between them in unequal portions the empire of the Greek mind; the former acquiring both greater predominance and wider application among the intellectual men, and partially restricting, but never abolishing, the spontaneous employment of the latter among the vulgar.

[211] Odyss. iii. 173.—

Ἠτέομεν δὲ θεὸν φαίνειν τέρας· αὐτὰρ ὅγ᾽ ἡμῖν
Δεῖξε, καὶ ἠνώγει πέλαγος μέσον εἰς Εὔβοιαν
Τέμνειν, etc.

Compare Odyss. xx. 100; Iliad, i. 62; Eurip. Suppl. 216-230.

Neither coined money, nor the art of writing,[212] nor painting, nor sculpture, nor imaginative architecture, belong to the Homeric and Hesiodic times. Such rudiments of arts, destined ultimately to acquire so great a development in Greece, as may have existed in these early days, served only as a sort of nucleus to the fancy of the poet, to shape out for himself the fabulous creations ascribed to Hephæstus or Dædalus. No statues of the gods, not even of wood, are mentioned in the Homeric poems. All the many varieties, in Grecian music, poetry, and dancing,—the former chiefly borrowed from Lydia and Phrygia,—date from a period considerably later than the first Olympiad: Terpander, the earliest musician whose date is assigned, and the inventor of the harp with seven strings instead of that with four strings, does not come until the 26th Olympiad, or 676 B. C.: the poet Archilochus is nearly of the same date. The iambic and elegiac metres—the first deviations from the primitive epic strain and subject—do not reach up to the year 700 B. C.

[212] The σήματα λυγρὰ mentioned in the Iliad, vi. 168, if they
prove anything, are rather an evidence against, than for, the
existence of alphabetical writing at the times when the Iliad was
composed.

It is this epic poetry which forms at once both the undoubted prerogative and the solitary jewel of the earliest era of Greece. Of the many epic poems which existed in Greece during the eight century before the Christian era, none have been preserved except the Iliad and Odyssey: the Æthiopis of Arktinus, the Ilias Minor of Lesches, the Cyprian Verses, the Capture of Œchalia, the Returns of the Heroes from Troy, the Thêbaïs and the Epigoni,—several of them passing in antiquity under the name of Homer,—have all been lost. But the two which remain are quite sufficient to demonstrate in the primitive Greeks, a mental organization unparalleled in any other people, and powers of invention and expression which prepared, as well as foreboded, the future eminence of the nation in all the various departments to which thought and language can be applied. Great as the power of thought afterwards became among the Greeks, their power of expression was still greater: in the former, other nations have built upon their foundations and surpassed them,—in the latter, they still remained unrivalled. It is not too much to say that this flexible, emphatic, and transparent character of the language as an instrument of communication,—its perfect aptitude for narrative and discussion, as well as for stirring all the veins of human emotion without ever forfeiting that character of simplicity which adapts it to all men and all times,—may be traced mainly to the existence and the wide-spread influence of the Iliad and Odyssey. To us, these compositions are interesting as beautiful poems, depicting life and manners, and unfolding certain types of character with the utmost vivacity and artlessness: to their original hearer, they possessed all these sources of attraction, together with others more powerful still, to which we are now strangers. Upon him, they bore with the full weight and solemnity of history and religion combined, while the charm of the poetry was only secondary and instrumental. The poet was then the teacher and preacher of the community, not simply the amuser of their leisure hours: they looked to him for revelations of the unknown past and for expositions of the attributes and dispensations of the gods, just as they consulted the prophet for his privileged insight into the future. The ancient epic comprised many different poets and poetical compositions, which fulfilled this purpose with more or less completeness: but it is the exclusive prerogative of the Iliad and Odyssey, that, after the minds of men had ceased to be in full harmony with their original design, they yet retained their empire by the mere force of secondary excellences: while the remaining epics—though serving as food for the curious, and as storehouses for logographers, tragedians, and artists—never seem to have acquired very wide popularity even among intellectual Greeks.

I shall, in the succeeding chapter, give some account of the epic cycle, of its relation to the Homeric poems, and of the general evidences respecting the latter, both as to antiquity and authorship.