Chapter XXI: Grecian Epic.—homeric Poems (1)

At the head of the once abundant epical compositions of Greece, most of them unfortunately lost, stand the Iliad and Odyssey, with the immortal name of Homer attached to each of them, embracing separate portions of the comprehensive legend of Troy. They form the type of what may be called the heroic epic of the Greeks, as distinguished from the genealogical, in which latter species some of the Hesiodic poems—the Catalogue of Women, the Eoiai, and the Naupaktia—stood conspicuous. Poems of the Homeric character (if so it may be called, though the expression is very indefinite,)—being confined to one of the great events, or great personages of Grecian legendary antiquity, and comprising a limited number of characters, all contemporaneous, made some approach, more or less successful, to a certain poetical unity; while the Hesiodic poems, tamer in their spirit, and unconfined both as to time and as to persons, strung together distinct events without any obvious view to concentration of interest,—without legitimate beginning or end.[213] Between these two extremes there were many gradations: biographical poems, such as the Herakleia, or Theseïs, recounting all the principal exploits performed by one single hero, present a character intermediate between the two, but bordering more closely on the Hesiodic. Even the hymns to the gods, which pass under the name of Homer, are epical fragments, narrating particular exploits or adventures of the god commemorated.

[213] Aristot. Poet. c. 17-37. He points out and explains the
superior structure of the Iliad and Odyssey, as compared with the
semi Homeric and biographical poems: but he takes no notice of
the Hesiodic, or genealogical.

Both the didactic and the mystico-religious poetry of Greece began in Hexameter verse,—the characteristic and consecrated measure of the epic:[214] but they belong to a different species, and burst out from a different vein in the Grecian mind. It seems to have been the more common belief among the historical Greeks, that such mystic effusions were more ancient than their narrative poems, and that Orpheus, Musæus, Linus, Olên, Pamphus, and even Hesiod, etc., etc., the reputed composers of the former, were of earlier date than Homer. But there is no evidence to sustain this opinion, and the presumptions are all against it. Those compositions, which in the sixth century before the Christian era passed under the name of Orpheus and Musæus, seem to have been unquestionably post-Homeric, nor can we even admit the modified conclusion of Hermann, Ulrici, and others, that the mystic poetry as a genus (putting aside the particular compositions falsely ascribed to Orpheus and others) preceded in order of time the narrative.[215]

[214] Aristot. Poetic. c. 41. He considers the Hexameter to be
the _natural_ measure of narrative poetry: any other would be
unseemly.

[215] Ulrici, Geschichte des Griechischen Epos, 5te Vorlesung,
pp. 96-108; G. Hermann, Ueber Homer und Sappho, in his Opuscula,
tom. vi. p. 89.

The superior antiquity of Orpheus as compared with Homer passed
as a received position to the classical Romans (Horat. Art. Poet.
392).

Besides the Iliad and Odyssey, we make out the titles of about thirty lost epic poems, sometimes with a brief hint of their contents.

Concerning the legend of Troy there were five: the Cyprian Verses, the Æthiopis, and the Capture of Troy, both ascribed to Arktinus; the lesser Iliad, ascribed to Leschês; the Returns (of the Heroes from Troy), to which the name of Hagias of Trœzên is attached; and the Telegonia, by Eugammôn, a continuation of the Odyssey. Two poems,—the Thebaïs and the Epigoni (perhaps two parts of one and the same poem) were devoted to the legend of Thebês,—the two sieges of that city by the Argeians. Another poem, called Œdipodia, had for its subject the tragical destiny of Œdipus and his family; and perhaps that which is cited as Eurôpia, or verses on Eurôpa, may have comprehended the tale of her brother Kadmus, the mythical founder of Thebês.[216]

[216] Respecting these lost epics, see Düntzer, Collection of the
Fragmenta Epicor. Græcorum; Wüllner, De Cyclo Epico, pp. 43-66;
and Mr. Fynes Clinton’s Chronology, vol. iii. pp. 349-359.

The exploits of Hêraklês were celebrated in two compositions, each called Hêrakleia, by Kinæthôn and Pisander,—probably also in many others, of which the memory has not been preserved. The capture of Œchalia, by Hêraklês, formed the subject of a separate epic. Two other poems, the Ægimius and the Minyas, are supposed to have been founded on other achievements of this hero,—the effective aid which he lent to the Dorian king Ægimius against the Lapithæ, his descent to the under-world for the purpose of rescuing the imprisoned Thêseus, and his conquest of the city of the Minyæ, the powerful Orchomenus.[217]

[217] Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, pp. 256-266; Apollodôr. ii. 7,
7; Diodôr. iv. 37; O. Müller, Dorians, i. 28.

Other epic poems—the Phorônis, the Danaïs, the Alkmæônis, the Atthis, the Amazonia—we know only by name, and can just guess obscurely at their contents so far as the name indicates.[218] The Titanomachia, the Gigantomachia, and the Corinthiaca, three compositions all ascribed to Eumêlus, afford by means of their titles an idea somewhat clearer of the matter which they comprised. The Theogony ascribed to Hesiod still exists, though partially corrupt and mutilated: but there seem to have been other poems, now lost, of the like import and title.

[218] Welcker (Der Epische Kyklus, p. 209) considers the
Alkmæônis as the same with the Epigoni, and the Atthis of
Hegesinous the same with the Amazonia: in Suidas (v. Ὅμηρος) the
latter is among the poems ascribed to Homer.

Leutsch (Thebaidos Cyclicæ Reliquiæ, pp. 12-14) views the Thebaïs
and the Epigoni as different parts of the same poem.

Of the poems composed in the Hesiodic style, diffusive and full of genealogical detail, the principal were, the Catalogue of Women and the Great Eoiai; the latter of which, indeed, seems to have been a continuation of the former. A large number of the celebrated women of heroic Greece were commemorated in these poems, one after the other, without any other than an arbitrary bond of connection. The Marriage of Kêyx,—the Melampodia,—and a string of fables called Astronomia, are farther ascribed to Hesiod: and the poem above mentioned, called Ægimius, is also sometimes connected with his name, sometimes with that of Kerkops. The Naupaktian Verses (so called, probably, from the birthplace of their author), and the genealogies of Kinæthôn and Asius, were compositions of the same rambling character, as far as we can judge from the scanty fragments remaining.[219] The Orchomenian epic poet Chersias, of whom two lines only are preserved to us by Pausanias, may reasonably be referred to the same category.[220]

[219] See the Fragments of Hesiod, Eumêlus, Kinæthôn, and Asius,
in the collections of Marktscheffel, Düntzer, Göttling, and
Gaisford.

I have already, in going over the ground of Grecian legend,
referred to all these lost poems, in their proper places.

[220] Pausan. ix. 38, 6; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conv. p. 156.

The oldest of the epic poets, to whom any date, carrying with it the semblance of authority, is assigned, is Arktinus of Milêtus, who is placed by Eusebius in the first Olympiad, and by Suidas in the ninth. Eugammôn, the author of the Telegonia, and the latest of the catalogue, is placed in the fifty-third Olympiad, B. C. 566. Between these two we find Asius and Leschês, about the thirtieth Olympiad,—a time when the vein of the ancient epic was drying up, and when other forms of poetry—elegiac, iambic, lyric, and choric—had either already arisen, or were on the point of arising, to compete with it.[221]

[221] See Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, about the date of
Arktinus, vol i. p. 350.

It has already been stated in a former chapter, that in the early commencements of prose-writing, Hekatæus, Pherekydês, and other logographers, made it their business to extract from the ancient fables something like a continuous narrative, chronologically arranged. It was upon a principle somewhat analogous that the Alexandrine literati, about the second century before the Christian era,[222] arranged the multitude of old epic poets into a series founded on the supposed order of time in the events narrated,—beginning with the intermarriage of Uranus and Gæa, and the Theogony,—and concluding with the death of Odysseus by the hands of his son Telegonus. This collection passed by the name of the Epic Cycle, and the poets, whose compositions were embodied in it, were termed Cyclic poets. Doubtless, the epical treasures of the Alexandrine library were larger than had ever before been brought together and submitted to men both of learning and leisure: so that multiplication of such compositions in the same museum rendered it advisable to establish some fixed order of perusal, and to copy them in one corrected and uniform edition.[223] It pleased the critics to determine precedence, neither by antiquity nor by excellence of the compositions themselves, but by the supposed sequence of narrative, so that the whole taken together constituted a readable aggregate of epical antiquity.

[222] Perhaps Zenodotus, the superintendent of the Alexandrine
library under Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the third century B.
C.: there is a Scholion on Plautus, published not many years
ago by Osann, and since more fully by Ritschl,—“Cæcius in
commento Comœdiarum Aristophanis in Pluto,—Alexander Ætolus, et
Lycophron Chalcidensis, et Zenodotus Ephesius, impulsu regis
Ptolemæi, Philadelphi cognomento, artis poetices libros in unum
collegerunt et in ordinem redegerunt. Alexander tragœdias,
Lycophron comœdias, Zenodotus vero Homeri poemata et reliquorum
illustrium poetarum.” See Lange, Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter, p.
56 (Mainz. 1837); Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, p. 8; Ritschl, Die
Alexandrinischen Bibliotheken, p. 3 (Breslau, 1838).

Lange disputes the sufficiency of this passage as proof that
Zenodotus was the framer of the Epic Cycle: his grounds are,
however, unsatisfactory to me.

[223] That there existed a cyclic copy or edition of the Odyssey
(ἡ κυκλικὴ) is proved by two passages in the Scholia (xvi. 195;
xvii. 25), with Boeckh’s remark in Buttmann’s edition: this was
the Odyssey copied or edited along with the other poems of the
cycle.

Our word to _edit_—or _edition_—suggests ideas not exactly suited
to the proceedings of the Alexandrine library, in which we cannot
expect to find anything like what is now called _publication_.
That magnificent establishment, possessing a large collection of
epical manuscripts, and ample means of every kind at command,
would naturally desire to have these compositions put in order
and corrected by skilful hands, and then carefully copied for the
use of the library. Such copy constitutes the cyclic _edition_:
they might perhaps cause or permit duplicates to be made, but the
ἔκδοσις or edition was complete without them.

Much obscurity[224] exists, and many different opinions have been expressed, respecting this Epic Cycle: I view it, not as an exclusive canon, but simply as an all-comprehensive classification, with a new edition founded thereupon. It would include all the epic poems in the library older than the Telegonia, and apt for continuous narrative; it would exclude only two classes,—first, the recent epic poets, such as Panyasis and Antimachus; next, the genealogical and desultory poems, such as the Catalogue of Women, the Eoiai, and others, which could not be made to fit in to any chronological sequence of events.[225] Both the Iliad and the Odyssey were comprised in the Cycle, so that the denomination of cyclic poet did not originally or designedly carry with it any association of contempt. But as the great and capital poems were chiefly spoken of by themselves, or by the title of their own separate authors, so the general name of _poets of the Cycle_ came gradually to be applied only to the worst, and thus to imply vulgarity or common-place; the more so, as many of the inferior compositions included in the collection seem to have been anonymous, and their authors in consequence describable only under some such common designation as that of the cyclic poets. It is in this manner that we are to explain the disparaging sentiment connected by Horace and others with the idea of a cyclic writer, though no such sentiment was implied in the original meaning of the Epic Cycle.

[224] Respecting the great confusion in which the Epic Cycle
is involved, see the striking declaration of Buttmann, Addenda
ad Scholia in Odysseum, p. 575: compare the opinions of the
different critics, as enumerated at the end of Welcker’s
treatise, Episch. Kyk. pp. 420-453.

[225] Our information respecting the Epic Cycle is derived from
Eutychius Proclus, a literary man of Sicca during the second
century of the Christian era, and tutor of Marcus Antoninus (Jul.
Capitolin. Vit. Marc. c. 2),—not from Proclus, called Diadochus,
the new-Platonic philosopher of the fifth century, as Heyne,
Mr. Clinton, and others have imagined. The fragments from his
work called Chrestomathia, give arguments of several of the lost
cyclic poems connected with the Siege of Troy, communicating the
important fact that the Iliad and Odyssey were included in the
cycle, and giving the following description of the principle upon
which it was arranged: Διαλαμβάνει δὲ περὶ τοῦ λεγομένου ἐπικοῦ
κύκλου, ὃς ἄρχεται μὲν ἐκ τῆς Οὐράνου καὶ Γῆς ὁμολογουμένης
μίξεως ... καὶ περατοῦται ὁ ἐπικὸς κύκλος, ἐκ διαφόρων ποιητῶν
συμπληρούμενος, μέχρι τῆς ἀποβάσεως Ὀδυσσέως.... Λέγει δὲ ὡς
τοῦ ἐπικοῦ κύκλου τὰ ποιήματα διασώζεται καὶ σπουδάζεται τοῖς
πολλοῖς, οὐχ οὕτω διὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν, ὡς διὰ τὴν ~ἀκολουθίαν τῶν ἐν
αὐτῇ πραγμάτων~ (ap. Photium, cod. 239).

This much-commented passage, while it clearly marks out the
cardinal principle of the Epic Cycle (ἀκολουθία πραγμάτων),
neither affirms nor denies anything respecting the excellence of
the constituent poems. Proclus speaks of the taste common in his
own time (σπουδάζεται τοῖς πολλοῖς): there was not much relish in
his time for these poems as such, but people were much interested
in the sequence of epical events. The abstracts which he himself
drew up in the form of arguments of several poems, show that he
adapted himself to this taste. We cannot collect from his words
that he intended to express any opinion of his own respecting the
goodness or badness of the cyclic poems.

The poems of the Cycle were thus mentioned in contrast and antithesis with Homer,[226] though originally the Iliad and Odyssey had both been included among them: and this alteration of the meaning of the word has given birth to a mistake as to the primary purpose of the classification, as if it had been designed especially to part off the inferior epic productions from Homer. But while some critics are disposed to distinguish the cyclic poets too pointedly from Homer, I conceive that Welcker goes too much into the other extreme, and identifies the Cycle too closely with that poet. He construes it as a classification deliberately framed to comprise all the various productions of the Homeric epic, with its unity of action and comparative paucity, both of persons and adventures,—as opposed to the Hesiodic epic, crowded with separate persons and pedigrees, and destitute of central action as well as of closing catastrophe. This opinion does, indeed, coincide to a great degree with the fact, inasmuch as few of the Hesiodic epics appear to have been included in the Cycle: to say that _none_ were included, would be too much, for we cannot venture to set aside either the Theogony or the Ægimius; but we may account for their absence perfectly well without supposing any design to exclude them, for it is obvious that their rambling character (like that of the Metamorphoses of Ovid) forbade the possibility of interweaving them in any continuous series. Continuity in the series of narrated events, coupled with a certain degree of antiquity in the poems, being the principle on which the arrangement called the Epic Cycle was based, the Hesiodic poems generally were excluded, not from any preconceived intention, but because they could not be brought into harmony with such orderly reading.

[226] The gradual growth of a contemptuous feeling towards the
_scriptor cyclicus_ (Horat. Ars. Poetic. 136), which was not
originally implied in the name, is well set forth by Lange (Ueber
die Kyklisch. Dicht. pp. 53-56).

Both Lange (pp. 36-41), however, and Ulrici (Geschichte des
Griech. Epos, 9te Vorles. p. 418) adopt another opinion
with respect to the cycle, which I think unsupported and
inadmissible,—that the several constituent poems were not
received into it entire (_i. e._ with only such changes as were
requisite for a corrected text), but cut down and abridged in
such manner as to produce an _exact_ continuity of narrative.
Lange even imagines that the cyclic Odyssey was thus dealt
with. But there seems no evidence to countenance this theory,
which would convert the Alexandrine literati from critics into
logographers. That the cyclic Iliad and Odyssey were the same in
the main (allowing for corrections of text) as the common Iliad
and Odyssey, is shown by the fact, that Proclus merely names them
in the series without giving any abstract of their contents: they
were too well known to render such a process necessary. Nor does
either the language of Proclus, or that of Cæcius as applied to
Zenodotus, indicate any transformation applied to the poets whose
works are described to have been brought together and put into a
certain order.

The hypothesis of Lange is founded upon the idea that the
(ἀκολουθία πραγμάτων) continuity of narrated events must
necessarily have been exact and without break, as if the
whole constituted one work. But this would not be possible,
let the framers do what they might: moreover, in the attempt,
the individuality of all the constituent poets must have been
sacrificed, in such manner that it would be absurd to discuss
their separate merits.

The continuity of narrative in the Epic Cycle could not have been
more than approximate,—as complete as the poems composing it
would admit: nevertheless, it would be correct to say that the
poems were arranged in series upon this principle and upon no
other. The librarians might have arranged in like manner the vast
mass of tragedies in their possession (if they had chosen to do
so) upon the principle of sequence in the subjects: had they done
so, the series would have formed a _Tragic Cycle_.

What were the particular poems which it comprised, we cannot now determine with exactness. Welcker arranges them as follows: Titanomachia, Danaïs, Amazonia (or Atthis), Œdipodia, Thebaïs (or Expedition of Amphiaräus), Epigoni (or Alkmæônis), Minyas (or Phokaïs), Capture of Œchalia, Cyprian Verses, Iliad, Æthiopis, Lesser Iliad, Iliupersis or the Taking of Troy, Returns of the Heroes, Odyssey, and Telegonia. Wuellner, Lange, and Mr. Fynes Clinton enlarge the list of cyclic poems still farther.[227] But all such reconstructions of the Cycle are conjectural and destitute of authority: the only poems which we can affirm on positive grounds to have been comprehended in it, are, first, the series respecting the heroes of Troy, from the Cypria to the Telegonia, of which Proclus has preserved the arguments, and which includes the Iliad and Odyssey,—next, the old Thebaïs, which is expressly termed cyclic,[228] in order to distinguish it from the poem of the same name composed by Antimachus. In regard to other particular compositions, we have no evidence to guide us, either for admission or exclusion, except our general views as to the scheme upon which the Cycle was framed. If my idea of that scheme be correct, the Alexandrine critics arranged therein _all_ their old epical treasures, down to the Telegonia,—the good as well as the bad; gold, silver, and iron,—provided only they could be pieced in with the narrative series. But I cannot venture to include, as Mr. Clinton does, the Eurôpia, the Phorônis, and other poems of which we know only the names, because it is uncertain whether their contents were such as to fulfil their primary condition: nor can I concur with him in thinking that, where there were two or more poems of the same title and subject, one of them must necessarily have been adopted into the Cycle to the exclusion of the others. There may have been two Theogonies, or two Herakleias, both comprehended in the Cycle; the purpose being (as I before remarked), not to sift the better from the worse, but to determine some fixed order, convenient for reading and reference, amidst a multiplicity of scattered compositions, as the basis of a new, entire, and corrected edition.

[227] Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, pp. 37-41; Wuellner, De Cyclo
Epico, p. 43, _seq._; Lange, Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter, p. 47;
Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. p. 349.

[228] Schol. Pindar. Olymp. vi. 26; Athenæ. xi. p. 465.

Whatever may have been the principle on which the cyclic poems were originally strung together, they are all now lost, except those two unrivalled diamonds, whose brightness, dimming all the rest, has alone sufficed to confer imperishable glory even upon the earliest phase of Grecian life. It has been the natural privilege of the Iliad and Odyssey, from the rise of Grecian philology down to the present day, to provoke an intense curiosity, which, even in the historical and literary days of Greece, there were no assured facts to satisfy. These compositions are the monuments of an age essentially religious and poetical, but essentially also unphilosophical, unreflecting, and unrecording: the nature of the case forbids our having any authentic transmitted knowledge respecting such a period; and the lesson must be learned, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach of critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy from reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of evidence. After the numberless comments and acrimonious controversies[229] to which the Homeric poems have given rise, it can hardly be said that any of the points originally doubtful have obtained a solution such as to command universal acquiescence. To glance at all these controversies, however briefly, would far transcend the limits of the present work; but the most abridged Grecian history would be incomplete without some inquiry respecting _the Poet_ (so the Greek critics in their veneration denominated Homer), and the productions which pass now, or have heretofore passed, under his name.

[229] It is a memorable illustration of that bitterness which has
so much disgraced the controversies of literary men in _all_ ages
(I fear, we can make no exception), when we find Pausanias saying
that he had examined into the ages of Hesiod and Homer with the
most laborious scrutiny, but that he knew too well the calumnious
dispositions of contemporary critics and poets, to declare what
conclusion he had come to (Paus. ix. 30, 2): Περὶ δὲ Ἡσιόδου τε
ἡλικίας καὶ Ὁμήρου, πολυπραγμονήσαντι ἐς τὸ ἀκριβέστατον οὔ μοι
γράφειν ἡδὺ ἦν, ἐπισταμένῳ τὸ φιλαίτιον ἄλλων τε καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα
ὅσοι κατ᾽ ἐμὲ ἐπὶ ποιήσει τῶν ἐπῶν καθεστήκεσαν.

Who or what was Homer? What date is to be assigned to him? What were his compositions?

A person, putting these questions to Greeks of different towns and ages, would have obtained answers widely discrepant and contradictory. Since the invaluable labors of Aristarchus and the other Alexandrine critics on the text of the Iliad and Odyssey, it has, indeed, been customary to regard those two (putting aside the Hymns, and a few other minor poems) as being the only genuine Homeric compositions: and the literary men called Chorizontes, or the Separators, at the head of whom were Xenôn and Hellanikus, endeavored still farther to reduce the number by disconnecting the Iliad and Odyssey, and pointing out that both could not be the work of the same author. Throughout the whole course of Grecian antiquity, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the Hymns, have been received as Homeric: but if we go back to the time of Herodotus, or still earlier, we find that several other epics also were ascribed to Homer,—and there were not wanting[230] critics, earlier than the Alexandrine age, who regarded the whole Epic Cycle, together with the satirical poem called Margitês, the Batrachomyomachia, and other smaller pieces, as Homeric works. The cyclic Thebaïs and the Epigoni (whether they be two separate poems, or the latter a second part of the former) were in early days currently ascribed to Homer: the same was the case with the Cyprian Verses: some even attributed to him several other poems,[231] the Capture of Œchalia, the Lesser Iliad, the Phokaïs, and the Amazonia. The title of the poem called Thebaïs to be styled Homeric, depends upon evidence more ancient than any which can be produced to authenticate the Iliad and Odyssey: for Kallinus, the ancient elegiac poet (B. C. 640), mentioned Homer as the author of it,—and his opinion was shared by many other competent judges.[232] From the remarkable description given by Herodotus, of the expulsion of the rhapsodes from Sikyôn, by the despot Kleisthenês, in the time of Solôn (about B. C. 580), we may form a probable judgment that the Thebaïs and the Epigoni were then rhapsodized at Sikyôn as Homeric productions.[233] And it is clear from the language of Herodotus, that in his time the general opinion ascribed to Homer both the Cyprian Verses and the Epigoni, though he himself dissents.[234] In spite of such dissent, however, that historian must have conceived the names of Homer and Hesiod to be nearly coextensive with the whole of the ancient epic; otherwise, he would hardly have delivered his memorable judgment, that they two were the framers of Grecian theogony.

[230] See the extract of Proclus, in Photius Cod. 239.

[231] Suidas, v. Ὅμηρος; Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. p. 330.

[232] Pausan. ix. 9, 3. The name of Kallinus in that passage
seems certainly correct: Τὰ δὲ ἔπη ταῦτα (the Thebaïs) Καλλῖνος,
ἀφικόμενος αὐτῶν ἐς μνήμην, ἔφησεν Ὅμηρον τὸν ποιήσαντα εἶναι·
Καλλίνῳ δὲ πολλοί τε καὶ ἄξιοι λόγου κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔγνωσαν. Ἐγὼ δὲ
τὴν ποίησιν ταύτην μετά γε Ἰλιάδα καὶ Ὀδύσσειαν ἐπαινῶ μάλιστα.

To the same purpose the author of the Certamen of Hesiod and
Homer, and the pseudo-Herodotus (Vit. Homer, c. 9). The Ἀμφιαρέω
ἐξελασία, alluded to in Suidas as the production of Homer, may be
reasonably identified with the Thebaïs (Suidas, v. Ὅμηρος).

The cyclographer Dionysius, who affirmed that Homer had lived
both in the Theban and the Trojan wars, must have recognized that
poet as author of the Thebaïs as well as of the Iliad (ap. Procl.
ad Hesiod. p. 3).

[233] Herodot. v. 67. Κλεισθένης γὰρ Ἀργείοισι πολεμήσας—τοῦτο
μὲν, ῥαψῳδοὺς ἔπαυσε ἐν Σικυῶνι ἀγωνίζεσθαι, τῶν Ὁμηρείων ἐπέων
εἵνεκα, ὅτι Ἀργεῖοί τε καὶ Ἄργος τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ὑμνέαται—τοῦτο
δὲ, ἡρῴον γὰρ ἦν καὶ ἔστι ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ἀγορᾷ τῶν Σικυωνίων
Ἀδρήστου τοῦ Ταλαοῦ, τοῦτον ἐπεθύμησε ὁ Κλεισθένης, ἐόντα
Ἀργεῖον, ἐκβαλεῖν ἐκ τῆς χώρης. Herodotus then goes on to relate
how Kleisthenês carried into effect his purpose of banishing
the hero Adrastus: first, he applied to the Delphian Apollo,
for permission to do so directly, and avowedly; next, on that
permission being refused, he made application to the Thebans,
to allow him to introduce into Sikyôn their hero Melanippus,
the bitter enemy of Adrastus in the old Theban legend; by their
consent, he consecrated a chapel to Melanippus in the most
commanding part of the Sikyonian agora, and then transferred to
the newly-imported hero the rites and festivals which had before
been given to Adrastus.

Taking in conjunction all the points of this very curious tale, I
venture to think that the rhapsodes incurred the displeasure of
Kleisthenês by reciting, not the Homeric Iliad, but the _Homeric
Thebaïs and Epigoni_. The former does not answer the conditions
of the narrative: the latter fulfils them accurately.

1. It cannot be said, even by the utmost latitude of speech,
that, in the Iliad, “Little else is sung except Argos and the
Argeians,”—(“in illis ubique fere nonnisi Argos et Argivi
celebrantur,”)—is the translation of Schweighäuser: Argos is
rarely mentioned in it, and never exalted into any primary
importance: the Argeians, as inhabitants of Argos separately,
are never noticed at all: that name is applied in the Iliad, in
common with the _Achæans_ and _Danaans_, only to the general body
of Greeks,—and even applied to them much less frequently than the
name of _Achæans_.

2. Adrastus is twice, and only twice, mentioned in the Iliad,
as master of the wonderful horse Areion, and as father-in-law
of Tydeus; but he makes no figure in the poem, and attracts no
interest.

Wherefore, though Kleisthenês might have been ever so much
incensed against Argos and Adrastus, there seems no reason why he
should have interdicted the rhapsodes from reciting the Iliad. On
the other hand, the Thebaïs and Epigoni could not fail to provoke
him especially. For,

1. Argos and its inhabitants were the grand subject of the poem,
and the proclaimed assailants in the expedition against Thêbes.
Though the poem itself is lost, the first line of it has been
preserved (Leutsch, Theb. Cycl. Reliq. p. 5; compare Sophoclês,
Œd. Col. 380 with Scholia),—

Ἄργος ἄειδε, θεὰ, πολυδίψιον, ἔνθεν ἄνακτες, etc.

2. Adrastus was king of Argos, and the chief of the expedition.
It is therefore literally true, that Argos and the Argeians were
“the burden of the song” in these two poems.

To this we may add—

1. The rhapsodes would have the strongest motive to recite the
Thebaïs and Epigoni at Sikyôn, where Adrastus was worshipped and
enjoyed so vast a popularity, and where he even attracted to
himself the choric solemnities which in other towns were given to
Dionysus.

2. The means which Kleisthenês took to get rid of Adrastus
indicates a special reference to the Thebaïs: he invited from
Thêbes the hero Melanippus, the _Hector_ of Thêbes, in that very
poem.

For these reasons, I think we may conclude that the Ὁμήρεια ἔπη,
alluded to in this very illustrative story of Herodotus, are the
Thebaïs and the Epigoni, not the Iliad.

[234] Herodot. ii. 117; iv. 32. The words in which Herodotus
intimates his own dissent from the reigning opinion, are treated
as spurious by F. A. Wolf, and vindicated by Schweighäuser:
whether they be admitted or not, the general currency of the
opinion adverted to is equally evident.

The many different cities which laid claim to the birth of Homer (seven is rather below the truth, and Smyrna and Chios are the most prominent among them,) is well known, and most of them had legends to tell respecting his romantic parentage, his alleged blindness, and his life of an itinerant bard, acquainted with poverty and sorrow.[235] The discrepancies of statement respecting the date of his reputed existence are no less worthy of remark; for out of the eight different epochs assigned to him, the oldest differs from the most recent by a period of four hundred and sixty years.

[235] The Life of Homer, which passes falsely under the name of
Herodotus, contains a collection of these different stories: it
is supposed to have been written about the second century after
the Christian era, but the statements which it furnishes are
probably several of them as old as Ephorus (compare also Proclus
ap. Photium, c. 239).

The belief in the blindness of Homer is doubtless of far more
ancient date, since the circumstance appears mentioned in the
Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo where the bard of Chios, in
some very touching lines, recommends himself and his strains
to the favor of the Delian maidens employed in the worship of
Apollo. This hymn is cited by Thucydidês as unquestionably
authentic, and he doubtless accepted the lines as a description
of the personal condition and relations of the author of the
Iliad and Odyssey (Thucyd. iii. 104): Simonidês of Keôs also
calls Homer a Chian (Frag. 69, Schneidewin).

There were also tales which represented Homer as the
contemporary, the cousin, and the rival in recited composition,
of Hesiod, who (it was pretended) had vanquished him. See the
Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, annexed to the works of the latter
(p. 314, ed. Göttling; and Plutarch, Conviv. Sept. Sapient. c.
10), in which also various stories respecting the Life of Homer
are scattered. The emperor Hadrian consulted the Delphian oracle
to know who Homer was: the answer of the priestess reported him
to be a native of Ithaca, the son of Telemachus and Epikastê,
daughter of Nestôr (Certamen Hom. et Hes. p. 314). The author of
this Certamen tells us that the authority of the Delphian oracle
deserves implicit confidence.

Hellanikus, Damastes, and Pherekydês traced both Homer and
Hesiod up to Orpheus, through a pedigree of ten generations
(see Sturz, Fragment. Hellanic. fr. 75-144; compare also
Lobeck’s remarks—_Aglaophamus_, p. 322—on the subject of these
genealogies). The computations of these authors earlier than
Herodotus are of value, because they illustrate the habits of
mind in which Grecian chronology began: the genealogy might be
easily continued backward to any length in the past. To trace
Homer up to Orpheus, however, would not have been consonant to
the belief of the Homêrids.

The contentions of the different cities which disputed for
the birth of Homer, and, indeed, all the legendary anecdotes
circulated in antiquity respecting the poet, are copiously
discussed in Welcker, Der Epische Kyklos (pp. 194-199).

Thus conflicting would have been the answers returned in different portions of the Grecian world to any questions respecting the person of Homer. But there were a poetical gens (fraternity or guild) in the Ionic island of Chios, who, if the question had been put to them, would have answered in another manner. To them, Homer was not a mere antecedent man, of kindred nature with themselves, but a divine or semi-divine eponymus and progenitor, whom they worshipped in their gentile sacrifices, and in whose ascendent name and glory the individuality of every member of the gens was merged. The compositions of each separate Homêrid, or the combined efforts of many of them in conjunction, were the works of Homer: the name of the individual bard perishes and his authorship is forgotten, but the common gentile father lives and grows in renown, from generation to generation, by the genius of his self-renewing sons.

Such was the conception entertained of Homer by the poetical gens called Homêridæ, or Homêrids; and in the general obscurity of the whole case, I lean towards it as the most plausible conception. Homer is not only the reputed author of the various compositions emanating from the gentile members, but also the recipient of the many different legends and of the divine genealogy, which it pleases their imagination to confer upon him. Such manufacture of fictitious personality, and such perfect incorporation of the entities of religion and fancy with the real world, is a process familiar, and even habitual, in the retrospective vision of the Greeks.[236]

[236] Even Aristotle ascribed to Homer a divine parentage: a
damsel of the isle of Ios, pregnant by some god, was carried
off by pirates to Smyrna, at the time of the Ionic emigration,
and there gave birth to the poet (Aristotel. ap. Plutarch. Vit.
Homer. p. 1059).

Plato seems to have considered Homer as having been an itinerant
rhapsode, poor and almost friendless (Republ. p. 600).

It is to be remarked, that the poetical gens here brought to view, the Homêrids, are of indisputable authenticity. Their existence and their considerations were maintained down to the historical times in the island of Chios.[237] If the Homêrids were still conspicuous, even in the days of Akusilaus, Pindar, Hellanikus, and Plato, when their productive invention had ceased, and when they had become only guardians and distributors, in common with others, of the treasures bequeathed by their predecessors,—far more exalted must their position have been three centuries before, while they were still the inspired creators of epic novelty, and when the absence of writing assured to them the undisputed monopoly of their own compositions.[238]

[237] Pindar, Nem. ii. 1, and Scholia; Akusilaus, Fragm. 31,
Didot; Harpokration, v. Ὁμήριδαι; Hellanic. Fr. 55, Didot;
Strabo, xiv. p. 645.

It seems by a passage of Plato (Phædrus, p. 252), that the
Homêridæ professed to possess unpublished verses of their
ancestral poet—ἔπη ἀποθέτα. Compare Plato, Republic, p. 599, and
Isocrat. Helen, p. 218.

[238] Nitzsch (De Historiâ Homeri, Fascic. 1, p. 128, Fascic.
2, p. 71), and Ulrici (Geschichte der Episch. Poesie, vol. i.
pp. 240-381) question the antiquity of the Homêrid gens, and
limit their functions to simple reciters, denying that they ever
composed songs or poems of their own. Yet these _gentes_, such
as the Euneidæ, the Lykomidæ, the Butadæ, the Talthybiadæ, the
descendants of Cheirôn at Peliôn, etc., the Hesychidæ (Schol.
Sophocl. Œdip. Col. 489), (the acknowledged parallels of the
Homêridæ), may be surely all considered as belonging to the
earliest known elements of Grecian history: rarely, at least,
if ever, can such gens, with its tripartite character of civil,
religious, and professional, be shown to have commenced at any
recent period. And in the early times, composer and singer were
one person: often at least, though probably not always, the
bard combined both functions. The Homeric ἀοιδὸς sings his own
compositions; and it is reasonable to imagine that many of the
early Homêrids did the same.

See Niebuhr, Römisch. Gesch. vol. i. p. 324; and the treatise,
Ueber die Sikeler in der Odyssee,—in the Rheinisches Museum,
1828, p. 257; and Boeckh, in the Index of Contents to his
Lectures of 1834.

“The sage Vyasa (observes Professor Wilson, System of Hindu
Mythology, Int. p. lxii.) is represented, not as the author, but
as the arranger and compiler of the Vedas and the Puránás. His
name denotes his character, meaning _the arranger or distributor_
(Welcker gives the same meaning to the name _Homer_); and the
recurrence of many Vyasas,—many individuals who new-modelled the
Hindu scriptures,—has nothing in it that is improbable, except
the fabulous intervals by which their labors are separated.”
Individual authorship and the thirst of personal distinction, are
in this case also buried under one great and common name, as in
the case of Homer.

Homer, then, is no individual man, but the divine or heroic father (the ideas of worship and ancestry coalescing, as they constantly did in the Grecian mind) of the gentile Homêrids, and he is the author of the Thebaïs, the Epigoni, the Cyprian Verses, the Proœms, or Hymns, and other poems, in the same sense in which he is the author of the Iliad and Odyssey,—assuming that these various compositions emanate, as perhaps they may, from different individuals numbered among the Homêrids. But this disallowance of the historical personality of Homer is quite distinct from the question, with which it has been often confounded, whether the Iliad and Odyssey are originally entire poems, and whether by one author or otherwise. To us, the name of Homer means these two poems, and little else: we desire to know as much as can be learned respecting their date, their original composition, their preservation, and their mode of communication to the public. All these questions are more or less complicated one with the other.

Concerning the date of the poems, we have no other information except the various affirmations respecting the age of Homer, which differ among themselves (as I have before observed) by an interval of four hundred and sixty years, and which for the most part determine the date of Homer by reference to some other event, itself fabulous and unauthenticated,—such as the Trojan war, the Return of the Hêrakleids, or the Ionic migration. Kratês placed Homer earlier than the Return of the Hêrakleids, and less than eighty years after the Trojan war: Eratosthenês put him one hundred years after the Trojan war: Aristotle, Aristarchus, and Castor made his birth contemporary with the Ionic migration, while Apollodôrus brings him down to one hundred years after that event, or two hundred and forty years after the taking of Troy. Thucydidês assigns to him a date much subsequent to the Trojan war.[239] On the other hand, Theopompus and Euphoriôn refer his age to the far more recent period of the Lydian king, Gyges, (Ol. 18-23, B. C. 708-688,) and put him five hundred years after the Trojan epoch.[240] What were the grounds of these various conjectures, we do not know; though in the statements of Kratês and Eratosthenês, we may pretty well divine. But the oldest dictum preserved to us respecting the date of Homer,—meaning thereby the date of the Iliad and Odyssey,—appears to me at the same time the most credible, and the most consistent with the general history of the ancient epic. Herodotus places Homer four hundred years before himself; taking his departure, not from any fabulous event, but from a point of real and authentic time.[241] Four centuries anterior to Herodotus would be a period commencing with 880 B. C. so that the composition of the Homeric poems would thus fall in a space between 850 and 800 B. C. We may gather from the language of Herodotus that this was his own judgment, opposed to a current opinion, which assigned the poet to an earlier epoch.

[239] Thucyd. i. 3.

[240] See the statements and citations respecting the age of
Homer, collected in Mr. Clinton’s Chronology, vol. i. p. 146. He
prefers the view of Aristotle, and places the Iliad and Odyssey a
century earlier than I am inclined to do,—940-927 B. C.

Kratês, probably placed the poet anterior to the Return of the
Hêrakleids, because the Iliad makes no mention of Dorians in
Peloponnêsus: Eratosthenês may be supposed to have grounded
his date on the passage of the Iliad, which mentions the three
generations descended from Æneas. We should have been glad to
know the grounds of the very low date assigned by Theopompus and
Euphoriôn.

The pseudo-Herodotus, in his life of Homer, puts the birth of the
poet one hundred and sixty-eight years after the Trojan war.

[241] Herodot. ii. 53. Hêrakleides Ponticus affirmed that
Lykurgus had brought into Peloponnêsus the Homeric poems, which
had before been unknown out of Ionia. The supposed epoch of
Lykurgus has sometimes been employed to sustain the date here
assigned to the Homeric poems; but everything respecting Lykurgus
is too doubtful to serve as evidence in other inquiries.

To place the Iliad and Odyssey at some periods between 850 B. C. and 776 B. C., appears to me more probable than any other date, anterior or posterior,—more probable than the latter, because we are justified in believing these two poems to be older than Arktinus, who comes shortly after the first Olympiad;—more probable than the former, because, the farther we push the poems back, the more do we enhance the wonder of their preservation, already sufficiently great, down from such an age and society to the historical times.

The mode in which these poems, and indeed all poems, epic as well as lyric, down to the age (probably) of Peisistratus, were circulated and brought to bear upon the public, deserves particular attention. They were not read by individuals alone and apart, but sung or recited at festivals or to assembled companies. This seems to be one of the few undisputed facts with regard to the great poet: for even those who maintain that the Iliad and Odyssey were preserved by means of writing, seldom contend that they were read.

In appreciating the effect of the poems, we must always take account of this great difference between early Greece and our own times,—between the congregation mustered at a solemn festival, stimulated by community of sympathy, listening to a measured and musical recital from the lips of trained bards or rhapsodes, whose matter was supposed to have been inspired by the Muse,—and the solitary reader, with a manuscript before him; such manuscript being, down to a very late period in Greek literature, indifferently written, without division into parts, and without marks of punctuation. As in the case of dramatic performances, in all ages, so in that of the early Grecian epic,—a very large proportion of its impressive effect was derived from the talent of the reciter and the force of the general accompaniments, and would have disappeared altogether in solitary reading. Originally, the bard sung his own epical narrative, commencing with a proœmium or hymn to one of the gods:[242] his profession was separate and special, like that of the carpenter, the leech, or the prophet: his manner and enunciation must have required particular training no less than his imaginative faculty. His character presents itself in the Odyssey as one highly esteemed; and in the Iliad, even Achilles does not disdain to touch the lyre with his own hands, and to sing heroic deeds.[243] Not only did the Iliad and Odyssey, and the poems embodied in the Epic Cycle, produce all their impression and gain all their renown by this process of oral delivery, but even the lyric and choric poets who succeeded them were known and felt in the same way by the general public, even after the full establishment of habits of reading among lettered men. While in the case of the epic, the recitation or singing had been extremely simple, and the measure comparatively little diversified, with no other accompaniment than that of the four-stringed harp,—all the variations superinduced upon the original hexameter, beginning with the pentameter and iambus, and proceeding step by step to the complicated strophês of Pindar and the tragic writers, still left the general effect of the poetry greatly dependent upon voice and accompaniments, and pointedly distinguished from mere solitary reading of the words. And in the dramatic poetry, the last in order of time, the declamation and gesture of the speaking actor alternated with the song and dance of the chorus, and with the instruments of musicians, the whole being set off by imposing visible decorations. Now both dramatic effect and song are familiar in modern times, so that every man knows the difference between reading the words and hearing them under the appropriate circumstances: but poetry, as such, is, and has now long been, so exclusively enjoyed by reading, that it requires an especial memento to bring us back to the time when the Iliad and Odyssey were addressed only to the ear and feelings of a promiscuous and sympathizing multitude. Readers there were none, at least until the century preceding Solôn and Peisistratus: from that time forward, they gradually increased both in number and influence; though doubtless small, even in the most literary period of Greece, as compared with modern European society. So far as the production of beautiful epic poetry was concerned, however, the select body of instructed readers, furnished a less potent stimulus than the unlettered and listening crowd of the earlier periods. The poems of Chœrilus and Antimachus, towards the close of the Peloponnesian war, though admired by erudite men, never acquired popularity; and the emperor Hadrian failed in his attempt to bring the latter poet into fashion at the expense of Homer.[244]

[242] The Homeric hymns are proœms of this sort, some very short,
consisting only of a few lines,—others of considerable length.
The Hymn (or, rather, one of the two hymns) to Apollo is cited by
Thucydidês as the Proœm of Apollo.

The Hymns to Aphroditê, Apollo, Hermês, Dêmêtêr, and Dionysus,
are genuine epical narratives. Hermann (Præf. ad Hymn. p.
lxxxix.) pronounces the Hymn to Aphroditê to be the oldest and
most genuine: portions of the Hymn to Apollo (Herm. p. xx.) are
also very old, but both that hymn and the others are largely
interpolated. His opinion respecting these interpolations,
however, is disputed by Franke (Præfat. ad Hymn. Homeric. p.
ix-xix.); and the distinction between what is genuine and what is
spurious, depends upon criteria not very distinctly assignable.
Compare Ulrici, Gesch. der Ep. Poes. pp. 385-391.

[243] Phemius, Demodokus, and the nameless bard who guarded the
fidelity of Klytæmnêstra, bear out this position (Odyss. i. 155;
iii. 267; viii. 490; xxi. 330; Achilles in Iliad, ix. 190).

A degree of inviolability seems attached to the person of the
bard as well as to that of the herald (Odyss. xxii. 355-357).

[244] Spartian. Vit. Hadrian. p. 8; Dio Cass. lxix. 4: Plut. Tim.
c. 36.

There are some good observations on this point in Näke’s comments
on Chœrilus, ch. viii. p. 59:—

“Habet hoc epica poesis, vera illa, cujus perfectissimam normam
agnoscimus Homericam—habet hoc proprium, ut non in possessione
virorum eruditorum, sed quasi viva sit et coram populo recitanda:
ut cum populo crescat, et si populus Deorum et antiquorum heroum
facinora, quod præcipium est epicæ poeseos argumentum, audire
et secum repetere dedidicerit, obmutescat. Id vero tum factum
est in Græciâ, quum populus eâ ætate, quam pueritiam dicere
possis, peractâ, partim ad res serias tristesque, politicas
maxime—easque multo, quam antea, impeditiores—abstrahebatur:
partim epicæ poeseos pertæsus, ex aliis poeseos generibus, quæ
tum nascebantur, novum et diversum oblectamenti genus primo
præsagire, sibi, deinde haurire, cœpit.”

Näke remarks, too, that the “splendidissima et propria Homericæ
poeseos ætas, ea quæ sponte quasi suâ inter populum et quasi cum
populo viveret,” did not reach below Peisistratus. It did not, I
think, reach even so low as that period.

It will be seen by what has been here stated, that that class of men, who formed the medium of communication between the verse and the ear, were of the highest importance in the ancient world, and especially in the earlier periods of its career,—the bards and rhapsodes for the epic, the singers for the lyric, the actors and singers jointly with the dancers for the chorus and drama. The lyric and dramatic poets taught with their own lips the delivery of their compositions, and so prominently did this business of teaching present itself to the view of the public, that the name Didaskalia, by which the dramatic exhibition was commonly designated, derived from thence its origin.

Among the number of rhapsodes who frequented the festivals at a time when Grecian cities were multiplied and easy of access, for the recitation of the ancient epic, there must have been of course great differences of excellence; but that the more considerable individuals of the class were elaborately trained and highly accomplished in the exercise of their profession, we may assume as certain. But it happens that Socrates, with his two pupils Plato and Xenophon, speak contemptuously of their merits; and many persons have been disposed, somewhat too readily, to admit this sentence of condemnation as conclusive, without taking account of the point of view from which it was delivered.[245] These philosophers considered Homer and other poets with a view to instruction, ethical doctrine, and virtuous practice: they analyzed the characters whom the poet described, sifted the value of the lessons conveyed, and often struggled to discover a hidden meaning, where they disapproved that which was apparent. When they found a man like the rhapsode, who professed to impress the Homeric narrative upon an audience, and yet either never meddled at all, or meddled unsuccessfully, with the business of exposition, they treated him with contempt; indeed, Socrates depreciates the poets themselves, much upon the same principle, as dealing with matters of which they could render no rational account.[246] It was also the habit of Plato and Xenophôn to disparage generally professional exertion of talent for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, contrasting it often in an indelicate manner with the gratuitous teaching and ostentatious poverty of their master. But we are not warranted in judging the rhapsodes by such a standard. Though they were not philosophers or moralists, it was their province—and it had been so, long before the philosophical point of view was opened—to bring their poet home to the bosoms and emotions of an assembled crowd, and to penetrate themselves with his meaning so far as was suitable for that purpose, adapting to it the appropriate graces of action and intonation. In this their genuine task they were valuable members of the Grecian community, and seem to have possessed all the qualities necessary for success.

[245] Xenoph. Memorab. iv. 2, 10; and Sympos. iii. 6. Οἶσθά τι
οὖν ἔθνος ἠλιθιώτερον ῥαψῴδων; ... Δῆλον γὰρ ὅτι τὰς ὑπονοίας
οὐκ ἐπίστανται. Σὺ δὲ Στησιμβρότῳ τε καὶ Ἀναξιμάνδρῳ καὶ ἄλλοις
πολλοῖς πολὺ δέδωκας ἀργύριον, ὥστε οὐδέν σε τῶν πολλοῦ ἀξίων
λέληθε.

These ὑπονοῖαι are the hidden meanings, or allegories, which a
certain set of philosophers undertook to discover in Homer, and
which the rhapsodes were no way called upon to study.

The Platonic dialogue, called Iôn, ascribes to Iôn the double
function of a rhapsode, or impressive reciter, and a critical
expositor of the poet (Isokratês also indicates the same double
character, in the rhapsodes of his time,—Panathenaic, p. 240);
but it conveys no solid grounds for a mean estimate of the class
of rhapsodes, while it attests remarkably the striking effect
produced by their recitation (c. 6, p. 535). That this class of
men came to combine the habit of expository comment on the poet
with their original profession of reciting, proves the tendencies
of the age; probably, it also brought them into rivalry with the
philosophers.

The grounds taken by Aristotle (Problem. xxx. 10; compare Aul.
Gellius, xx. 14) against the actors, singers, musicians, etc. of
his time, are more serious, and have more the air of truth.

If it be correct in Lehrs (de Studiis Aristarchi, Diss. ii.
p. 46) to identify those early glossographers of Homer, whose
explanations the Alexandrine critics so severely condemned, with
the rhapsodes, this only proves that the rhapsodes had come to
undertake a double duty, of which their predecessors before Solôn
would never have dreamed.

[246] Plato, Apolog. Socrat. p. 22, c. 7.