Chapter XXI: Grecian Epic.—homeric Poems (2)

These rhapsodes, the successors of the primitive aœdi, or bards, seem to have been distinguished from them by the discontinuance of all musical accompaniment. Originally, the bard sung, enlivening the song with occasional touches of the simple four-stringed harp: his successor, the rhapsode, recited, holding in his hand nothing but a branch of laurel and depending for effect upon voice and manner,—a species of musical and rhythmical declamation,[247] which gradually increased in vehement emphasis and gesticulation until it approached to that of the dramatic actor. At what time this change took place, or whether the two different modes of enunciating the ancient epic may for a certain period have gone on simultaneously, we have no means of determining. Hesiod receives from the Muse a branch of laurel, as a token of his ordination into their service, which marks him for a rhapsode; while the ancient bard with his harp is still recognized in the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo, as efficient and popular at the Panionic festivals in the island of Delos.[248] Perhaps the improvements made in the harp, to which three strings, in addition to the original four, were attached by Terpander (B. C. 660), and the growing complication of instrumental music generally, may have contributed to discredit the primitive accompaniment, and thus to promote the practice of recital: the story, that Terpander himself composed music, not only for hexameter poems of his own, but also for those of Homer, seems to indicate that the music which preceded him was ceasing to find favor.[249] By whatever steps the change from the bard to the rhapsode took place, certain it is that before the time of Solôn, the latter was the recognized and exclusive organ of the old Epic; sometimes in short fragments before private companies, by single rhapsodes,—sometimes several rhapsodes in continuous succession at a public festival.

[247] Aristotel. Poetic. c. 47; Welcker, Der Episch. Kyklos;
Ueber den Vortrag der Homerischen Gedichte, pp. 340-406, which
collects all the facts respecting the aœdi and the rhapsodes.
Unfortunately, the ascertained points are very few.

The laurel branch in the hand of the singer or reciter (for the
two expressions are often confounded) seems to have been peculiar
to the recitation of Homer and Hesiod (Hesiod, Theog. 30: Schol.
ad Aristophan. Nub. 1367. Pausan. x. 7, 2). “Poemata omne genus
(says Apuleius, Florid. p. 122, Bipont.) apta _virgæ_, lyræ,
socco, cothurno.”

Not only Homer and Hesiod, but also Archilochus, were recited
by rhapsodes (Athenæ, xii. 620; also Plato, Legg. ii. p. 658).
Consult, besides, Nitzsch, De Historiâ Homeri, Fascic. 2, p. 114,
_seq._, respecting the rhapsodes; and O. Müller, History of the
Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. iv. s. 3.

The ideas of singing and speech are, however, often confounded,
in reference to any verse solemnly and emphatically delivered
(Thucydid. ii. 53)—φάσκοντες οἱ πρεσβύτεροι πάλαι ~ᾄδεσθαι~,
Ἥξει Δωριακὸς πόλεμος καὶ λοιμὸς ἅμ᾽ αὐτῷ. And the rhapsodes
are said to _sing_ Homer (Plato, Eryxias, c. 13; Hesych. v.
Βραυρωνίοις); Strabo (i. p. 18) has a good passage upon song and
speech.

William Grimm (Deutsche Heldensage, p. 373) supposes the ancient
German heroic romances to have been recited or declaimed in a
similar manner with a simple accompaniment of the harp, as the
Servian heroic lays are even at this time delivered.

Fauriel also tells us, respecting the French Carlovingian Epic
(Romans de Chevalerie, Revue des Deux Mondes, xiii. p. 559):
“The romances of the 12th and 13th centuries were really sung:
the _jongleur_ invited his audience to hear a _belle chanson
d’histoire_,—‘le mot chanter ne manque jamais dans la formule
initiale,’—and it is to be understood literally: the music was
simple and intermittent, more like a recitative; the jongleur
carried a rebek, or violin with three strings, an Arabic
instrument; when he wished to rest his voice, he played an air or
ritournelle upon this; he went thus about from place to place,
and the romances had no existence among the people, except
through the aid and recitation of these jongleurs.”

It appears that there had once been rhapsodic exhibitions at the
festivals of Dionysus, but they were discontinued (Klearchus ap.
Athenæ. vii. p. 275)—probably superseded by the dithyramb and the
tragedy.

The etymology of ῥαψῳδὸς is a disputed point: Welcker traces it
to ῥάβδος, most critics derive it from ῥάπτειν ἀοιδὴν, which
O. Müller explains “to denote the coupling together of verses
without any considerable divisions or pauses,—the even, unbroken,
continuous flow of the epic poem,” as contrasted with the
strophic or choric periods (_l. c._).

[248] Homer, Hymn to Apoll. 170. The κίθαρις, ἀοιδὴ, ὀρχηθμὸς,
are constantly put together in that hymn: evidently, the
instrumental accompaniment was essential to the hymns at the
Ionic festival. Compare also the Hymn to Hermês (430), where
the function ascribed to the Muses can hardly be understood to
include non-musical recitation. The Hymn to Hermês is more recent
than Terpander, inasmuch as it mentions the seven strings of the
lyre, v. 50.

[249] Terpander,—see Plutarch, de Musicâ, c. 3-4; the facts
respecting him are collected in Plehn’s Lesbiaca, pp. 140-160;
but very little can be authenticated.

Stesander at the Pythian festivals sang the Homeric battles, with
a harp accompaniment of his own composition (Athenæ. xiv. p. 638).

The principal testimonies respecting the rhapsodizing of the
Homeric poems at Athens, chiefly at the Panathenaic festival, are
Isokratês, Panegyric. p. 74; Lycurgus contra Leocrat. p. 161;
Plato, Hipparch. p. 228; Diogen. Laërt. Vit. Solon. i. 57.

Inscriptions attest that rhapsodizing continued in great esteem,
down to a late period of the historical age, both at Chios and
Teôs, especially the former: it was the subject of competition
by trained youth, and of prizes for the victor, at periodical
religious solemnities: see Corp. Inscript. Boeckh, No. 2214-3088.

Respecting the mode in which the Homeric poems were preserved, during the two centuries (or as some think, longer interval) between their original composition and the period shortly preceding Solôn,—and respecting their original composition and subsequent changes,—there are wide differences of opinion among able critics. Were they preserved with or without being written? Was the Iliad originally composed as one poem, and the Odyssey in like manner, or is each of them an aggregation of parts originally self-existent and unconnected? Was the authorship of each poem single-headed or many-headed?

Either tacitly or explicitly, these questions have been generally coupled together and discussed with reference to each other, by inquiries into the Homeric poems; though Mr. Payne Knight’s Prolegomena have the merit of keeping them distinct. Half a century ago, the acute and valuable Prolegomena of F. A. Wolf, turning to account the Venetian Scholia which had then been recently published, first opened philosophical discussion as to the history of the Homeric text. A considerable part of that dissertation (though by no means the whole) is employed in vindicating the position, previously announced by Bentley, among others, that the separate constituent portions of the Iliad and Odyssey had not been cemented together into any compact body and unchangeable order until the days of Peisistratus, in the sixth century before Christ. As a step towards that conclusion, Wolf maintained that no written copies of either poem could be shown to have existed during the earlier times to which their composition is referred,—and that without writing, neither the perfect symmetry of so complicated a work could have been originally conceived by any poet, nor, if realized by him, transmitted with assurance to posterity. The absence of easy and convenient writing, such as must be indispensably supposed for long manuscripts, among the early Greeks, was thus one of the points in Wolf’s case against the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey. By Nitzsch and other leading opponents of Wolf, the connection of the one with the other seems to have been accepted as he originally put it; and it has been considered incumbent on those, who defended the ancient aggregate character of the Iliad and Odyssey, to maintain that they were written poems from the beginning.

To me it appears that the architectonic functions ascribed by Wolf to Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the Homeric poems, are nowise admissible. But much would undoubtedly be gained towards that view of the question, if it could be shown that, in order to controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting long written poems in the ninth century before the Christian era. Few things, in my opinion, can be more improbable: and Mr. Payne Knight, opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no less than Wolf himself.[250] The traces of writing in Greece, even in the seventh century before the Christian era, are exceedingly trifling. We have no remaining inscription earlier than the 40th Olympiad, and the early inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed: nor can we even assure ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonidês of Amorgus, Kallinus, Tyrtæus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric poets, committed their compositions to writing, or at what time the practice of doing so became familiar. The first positive ground, which authorizes us to presume the existence of a manuscript of Homer, is in the famous ordinance of Solôn with regard to the rhapsodes at the Panathenæa; but for what length of time, previously, manuscripts had existed, we are unable to say.

[250] Knight, Prolegom. Hom. c. xxxviii-xl. “Haud tamen ullum
Homericorum carminum exemplar Pisistrati seculo antiquius
extitisse, aut sexcentesimo prius anno ante C. N. scriptum
fuisse, facile credam: rara enim et perdifficilis erat iis
temporibus scriptura ob penuriam materiæ scribendo idoneæ, quum
literas aut lapidibus exarare, aut tabulis ligneis aut laminis
metalli alicujus insculpere oporteret.... Atque ideo memoriter
retenta sunt, et hæc et alia veterum poetarum carmina, et per
urbes et vicos et in principum virorum ædibus, decantata a
rhapsodis. Neque mirandum est, ea per tot sæcula sic integra
conservata esse, quoniam—per eos tradita erant, qui ab omnibus
Græciæ et coloniarum regibus et civitatibus mercede satis amplâ
conducti, omnia sua studia in iis ediscendis, retinendis, et rite
recitandis, conferebant.” Compare Wolf, Prolegom. xxiv-xxv.

The evidences of early writing among the Greeks, and of written
poems even anterior to Homer, may be seen collected in Kreuser
(Vorfragen ueber Homeros, pp. 127-159, Frankfort, 1828). His
proofs appear to me altogether inconclusive. Nitzsch maintains
the same opinion (Histor. Homeri, Fasc. i. sect. xi. xvii.
xviii.),—in my opinion, not more successfully: nor does Franz
(Epigraphicê Græc. Introd. s. iv.) produce any new arguments.

I do not quite subscribe to Mr. Knight’s language, when he says
that _there is nothing wonderful_ in the long preservation of
the Homeric poems _unwritten_. It is enough to maintain that the
existence, and practical use of long manuscripts, by all the
rhapsodes, under the condition and circumstances of the 8th and
9th centuries among the Greeks, would be a greater wonder.

Those who maintain the Homeric poems to have been written from the beginning, rest their case, not upon positive proofs,—nor yet upon the existing habits of society with regard to poetry, for they admit generally that the Iliad and Odyssey were not read, but recited and heard,—but upon the supposed necessity that there must have been manuscripts,[251] to insure the preservation of the poems,—the unassisted memory of reciters being neither sufficient nor trustworthy. But here we only escape a smaller difficulty by running into a greater; for the existence of trained bards, gifted with extraordinary memory, is far less astonishing than that of long manuscripts in an age essentially non-reading and non-writing, and when even suitable instruments and materials for the process are not obvious. Moreover, there is a strong positive reason for believing that the bard was under no necessity for refreshing his memory by consulting a manuscript. For if such had been the fact, blindness would have been a disqualification for the profession, which we know that it was not; as well from the example of Demodokus in the Odyssey, as from that of the blind bard of Chios, in the hymn to the Delian Apollo, whom Thucydidês, as well as the general tenor of Grecian legend, identifies with Homer himself.[252] The author of that Hymn, be he who he may, could never have described a blind man as attaining the utmost perfection in his art, if he had been conscious that the memory of the bard was only maintained by constant reference to the manuscript in his chest.

[251] See this argument strongly put by Nitzsch, in the prefatory
remarks at the beginning of his second volume of Commentaries on
the Odyssey (pp. x-xxix). He takes great pains to discard all
idea that the poems were written in order to be read. To the same
purpose, Franz (Epigraphicê Græc. Introd. p. 32), who adopts
Nitzsch’s positions,—“Audituris enim, non lecturis, carmina
parabant.”

[252] Odyss. viii. 65; Hymn. ad Apoll. 172: Pseudo-Herodot. Vit.
Homer. c. 3; Thucyd. iii. 104.

Various commentators on Homer imagined that, under the misfortune
of Demodokus, the poet in reality described his own (Schol. ad
Odyss. 1. 1; Maxim. Tyr. xxxviii. 1).

Nor will it be found, after all, that the effort of memory required, either from bards or rhapsodes, even for the longest of these old Epic poems,—though doubtless great, was at all superhuman. Taking the case with reference to the entire Iliad and Odyssey, we know that there were educated gentlemen at Athens who could repeat both poems by heart:[253] but in the professional recitations, we are not to imagine that the same person did go through the whole: the recitation was essentially a joint undertaking, and the rhapsodes who visited a festival would naturally understand among themselves which part of the poem should devolve upon each particular individual. Under such circumstances, and with such means of preparation beforehand, the quantity of verse which a rhapsode could deliver would be measured, not so much by the exhaustion of his memory, as by the physical sufficiency of his voice, having reference to the sonorous, emphatic, and rhythmical pronunciation required from him.[254]

[253] Xenoph. Sympos. iii. 5. Compare, respecting the laborious
discipline of the Gallic Druids, and the number of unwritten
verses which they retained in their memories, Cæsar, B. G. vi.
14; Mela. iii. 2; also Wolf, Prolegg. s. xxiv. and Herod. ii. 77,
about the prodigious memory of the Egyptian priests at Heliopolis.

I transcribe, from the interesting Discours of M. Fauriel
(prefixed to his Chants Populaires de la Grèce Moderne, Paris
1824), a few particulars respecting the number, the mnemonic
power, and the popularity of those itinerant singers or rhapsodes
who frequent the festivals or _paneghyris_ of modern Greece: it
is curious to learn that this profession is habitually exercised
by _blind_ men (p. xc. _seq._).

“Les aveugles exercent en Grèce une profession qui les rend
non seulement agréables, mais nécessaires; le caractère,
l’imagination, et la condition du peuple, étant ce qu’ils sont:
c’est la profession de chanteurs ambulans.... Ils sont dans
l’usage, tant sur le continent que dans les îles, de la Grèce,
d’apprendre par cœur le plus grand nombre qu’ils peuvent de
chansons populaires de tout genre et de toute époque. Quelques
uns finissent par en savoir une quantité prodigieuse, et tous
en savent beaucoup. Avec ce trésor dans leur mémoire, ils sont
toujours en marche, traversent la Grèce en tout sens; ils s’en
vont de ville en ville, de village en village, chantant à
l’auditoire qui se forme aussitôt autour d’eux, partout où ils
se montrent, celles de leurs chansons qu’ils jugent convenir le
mieux, soit à la localité, soit à la circonstance, et reçoivent
une petite rétribution qui fait tout leur revenu. Ils ont l’air
de chercher de préférence, en tout lieu, la partie la plus
inculte de la population, qui en est toujours la plus curieuse,
la plus avide d’impressions, et la moins difficile dans le
choix de ceux qui leur sont offertes. Les Turcs seuls ne les
écoutent pas. C’est aux réunions nombreuses, aux fêtes de village
connues sous le nom de _Paneghyris_, que ces chanteurs ambulans
accourent le plus volontiers. Ils chantent en s’accompagnant d’un
instrument à cordes que l’on touche avec un archet, et qui est
exactement l’ancienne lyre des Grecs, dont il a conservé le nom
comme la forme.

“Cette lyre, pour être entière, doit avoir cinq cordes: mais
souvent elle n’en a que deux ou trois, dont les sons, comme
il est aisé de présumer, n’ont rien de bien harmonieux. Les
chanteurs aveugles vont ordinairement isolés, et chacun d’eux
chante à part des autres: mais quelquefois aussi ils se
réunissent par groupes de deux ou de trois, pour dire ensemble
les mêmes chansons.... Ces modernes rhapsodes doivent être
divisés en deux classes. Les uns (et ce sont, selon toute
apparence, les plus nombreux) se bornent à la function de
recueillir, d’apprendre par cœur, et de mettre en circulation,
des pièces qu’ils n’ont point composées. Les autres (et ce sont
ceux qui forment l’ordre le plus distingué de leur corps), à
cette fonction de répétiteurs et de colporteurs des poésies
d’autrui, joignent celle de poëtes, et ajoutent à la masse des
chansons apprises d’autres chants de leur façon.... Ces rhapsodes
aveugles sont les nouvellistes et les historiens, en même temps
que les poëtes du peuple, en cela parfaitement semblables aux
rhapsodes anciens de la Grèce.”

To pass to another country—Persia, once the great rival of
Greece: “The Kurroglian rhapsodes are called _Kurroglou-Khans_,
from _khaunden_, to sing. Their duty is, to know by heart all the
_mejjlisses_ (meetings) of Kurroglou, narrate them, or sing them
with the accompaniment of the favorite instrument of Kurroglou,
the chungur, or sitar, a three-stringed guitar. Ferdausi has
also his _Shah-nama-Khans_, and the prophet Mohammed his _Koran
Khans_. The memory of those singers is truly astonishing. At
every request, they recite in one breath for some hours, without
stammering, beginning the tale at the passage or verse pointed
out by the hearers.” (Specimens of the Popular Poetry of Persia,
as found in the Adventures and Improvisations of Kurroglou, the
Bandit Minstrel of Northern Persia, by Alexander Chodzko: London
1842, Introd. p. 13)

“One of the songs of the Calmuck national bards sometimes lasts a
whole day.” (_Ibid._ p. 372.)

[254] There are just remarks of Mr. Mitford on the possibility
that the Homeric poems might have been preserved without writing
(History of Greece, vol. i. pp. 135-137).

But what guarantee have we for the exact transmission of the text for a space of two centuries by simply oral means? It may be replied, that oral transmission would hand down the text as exactly as in point of fact it was handed down. The great lines of each poem,—the order of parts,—the vein of Homeric feeling, and the general style of locution, and, for the most part, the true words,—would be maintained: for the professional training of the rhapsode, over and above the precision of his actual memory, would tend to Homerize his mind (if the expression may be permitted), and to restrain him within this magic circle. On the other hand, in respect to the details of the text, we should expect that there would be wide differences and numerous inaccuracies: and so there really were, as the records contained in the Scholia, together with the passages cited in ancient authors, but not found in our Homeric text, abundantly testify.[255]

[255] Villoison, Prolegomen. pp. xxxiv-lvi; Wolf, Prolegomen.
p. 37. Düntzer, in the Epicor. Græc. Fragm. pp. 27-29, gives
a considerable list of the Homeric passages cited by ancient
authors, but not found either in the Iliad or Odyssey. It is
hardly to be doubted, however, that many of these passages
belonged to other epic poems which passed under the name of
Homer. Welcker (Der Episch. Kyklus, pp. 20-133) enforces this
opinion very justly, and it harmonizes with his view of the name
of Homer as coextensive with the whole Epic cycle.

Moreover, the state of the Iliad and Odyssey, in respect to the letter called the Digamma, affords a proof that they were recited for a considerable period before they were committed to writing, insomuch that the oral pronunciation underwent during the interval a sensible change.[256] At the time when these poems were composed, the Digamma was an effective consonant, and figured as such in the structure of the verse: at the time when they were committed to writing, it had ceased to be pronounced, and therefore never found a place in any of the manuscripts,—insomuch that the Alexandrine critics, though they knew of its existence in the much later poems of Alkæus and Sapphô, never recognized it in Homer. The hiatus, and the various perplexities of metre, occasioned by the loss of the Digamma, were corrected by different grammatical stratagems. But the whole history of this lost letter is very curious, and is rendered intelligible only by the supposition that the Iliad and Odyssey belonged for a wide space of time to the memory, the voice, and the ear, exclusively.

[256] See this argument strongly maintained in Giese (Ueber
den Æolischen Dialekt, sect. 14. p. 160, _seqq._). He notices
several other particulars in the Homeric language,—the
plenitude and variety of interchangeable grammatical forms,—the
numerous metrical licenses, set right by appropriate oral
intonations,—which indicate a language as yet not constrained by
the fixity of written authority.

The same line of argument is taken by O. Müller (History of the
Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. iv. s. 5).

Giese has shown also, in the same chapter, that all the
manuscripts of Homer mentioned in the Scholia, were written in
the Ionic alphabet (with Η and Ω as marks for the long vowels,
and no special mark for the rough breathing), in so far as the
special citations out of them enable us to verify.

At what period these poems, or, indeed, any other Greek poems, first began to be written, must be matter of conjecture, though there is ground for assurance that it was before the time of Solôn. If, in the absence of evidence, we may venture upon naming any more determinate period, the question at once suggests itself, what were the purposes which, in that stage of society, a manuscript at its first commencement must have been intended to answer? For whom was a written Iliad necessary? Not for the rhapsodes; for with them it was not only planted in the memory, but also interwoven with the feelings, and conceived in conjunction with all those flexions and intonations of voice, pauses, and other oral artifices, which were required for emphatic delivery, and which the naked manuscript could never reproduce. Not for the general public,—_they_ were accustomed to receive it with its rhapsodic delivery, and with its accompaniments of a solemn and crowded festival. The only persons for whom the written Iliad would be suitable, would be a select few; studious and curious men,—a class of readers, capable of analyzing the complicated emotions which they had experienced as hearers in the crowd, and who would, on perusing the written words, realize in their imaginations a sensible portion of the impression communicated by the reciter.[257]

[257] Nitzsch and Welcker argue, that because the Homeric poems
were _heard_ with great delight and interest, therefore the
first rudiments of the art of writing, even while beset by a
thousand mechanical difficulties, would be employed to record
them. I cannot adopt this opinion, which appears to me to derive
all its plausibility from our present familiarity with reading
and writing. The first step from the recited to the written
poem is really one of great violence, as well as useless for
any want then actually felt. I much more agree with Wolf when
he says: “Diu enim illorum hominum vita et simplicitas nihil
admodum habuit, quod scripturâ dignum videretur: in aliis omnibus
occupati agunt illi, quæ posteri scribunt, vel (ut de quibusdam
populis accepimus) etiam monstratam operam hanc spernunt tanquam
indecori otii: carmina autem quæ pangunt, longo usu sic ore
fundere et excipere consueverunt, ut cantu et recitatione cum
maxime vigentia deducere ad mutas notas, ex illius ætatis sensu
nihil aliud esset, quam perimere ea et vitali vi ac spiritu
privare.” (Prolegom. s. xv. p. 59.)

Some good remarks on this subject are to be found in William
Humboldt’s Introduction to his elaborate treatise _Ueber die
Kawi-Sprache_, in reference to the oral tales current among the
Basques. He, too, observes how great and repulsive a proceeding
it is, to pass at first from verse sung, or recited, to verse
written; implying that the words are conceived detached from
the _Vortrag_, the accompanying music, and the surrounding
and sympathizing assembly. The Basque tales have no charm for
the people themselves, when put in Spanish words and read
(Introduction, sect. xx. p. 258-259).

Unwritten prose tales, preserved in the memory, and said to be
repeated nearly in the same words from age to age, are mentioned
by Mariner, in the Tonga Islands (Mariner’s Account, vol. ii. p.
377).

The Druidical poems were kept unwritten by design, after writing
was in established use for other purposes (Cæsar, B. G. vi. 13).

Incredible as the statement may seem in an age like the present, there is in all early societies, and there was in early Greece, a time when no such reading class existed. If we could discover at what time such a class first began to be formed, we should be able to make a guess at the time when the old Epic poems were first committed to writing. Now the period which may with the greatest probability be fixed upon as having first witnessed the formation even of the narrowest reading class in Greece, is the middle of the seventh century before the Christian era (B. C. 660 to B. C. 630),—the age of Terpander, Kallinus, Archilochus, Simonidês of Amorgus, etc. I ground this supposition on the change then operated in the character and tendencies of Grecian poetry and music,—the elegiac and iambic measures having been introduced as rivals to the primitive hexameter, and poetical compositions having been transferred from the epical past to the affairs of present and real life. Such a change was important at a time when poetry was the only known mode of publication (to use a modern phrase not altogether suitable, yet the nearest approaching to the sense). It argued a new way of looking at the old epical treasures of the people, as well as a thirst for new poetical effect; and the men who stood forward in it may well be considered as desirous to study, and competent to criticize, from their own individual point of view, the written words of the Homeric rhapsodes, just as we are told that Kallinus both noticed and eulogized the Thebaïs as the production of Homer. There seems, therefore, ground for conjecturing, that (for the use of this newly-formed and important, but very narrow class) manuscripts of the Homeric poems and other old epics—the Thebaïs and the Cypria as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey—began to be compiled towards the middle of the seventh century B. C.:[258] and the opening of Egypt to Grecian commerce, which took place about the same period, would furnish increased facilities for obtaining the requisite papyrus to write upon. A reading class, when once formed, would doubtless slowly increase, and the number of manuscripts along with it; so that before the time of Solôn, fifty years afterwards, both readers and manuscripts, though still comparatively few, might have attained a certain recognized authority, and formed a tribunal of reference, against the carelessness of individual rhapsodes.

[258] Mr. Fynes Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. pp. 368-373)
treats it as a matter of _certainty_ that Archilochus and
Alkman _wrote_ their poems. I am not aware of any evidence for
announcing this as positively known,—except, indeed, an admission
of Wolf, which is, doubtless, good as an _argumentum ad hominem_,
but is not to be received as proof (Wolf, Proleg. p. 50). The
evidences mentioned by Mr. Clinton (p. 368) certainly cannot be
regarded as proving anything to the point.

Giese (Ueber den Æolischen Dialekt, p. 172) places the first
writing of the separate rhapsodies composing the Iliad in the
seventh century B. C.

We may, I think, consider the Iliad and Odyssey to have been preserved without the aid of writing, for a period near upon two centuries.[259] But is it true, as Wolf imagined, and as other able critics have imagined, also, that the separate portions of which these two poems are composed were originally distinct epical ballads, each constituting a separate whole and intended for separate recitation? Is it true, that they had not only no common author, but originally, neither common purpose nor fixed order, and that their first permanent arrangement and integration was delayed for three centuries, and accomplished at last only by the taste of Peisistratus conjoined with various lettered friends?[260]

[259] The songs of the Icelandic Skalds were preserved orally for
a period longer than two centuries,—P. A. Müller thinks very much
longer,—before they were collected, or embodied in written story
by Snorro and Sæmund (Lange, Untersuchungen über die Gesch. der
Nördischen Heldensage. p. 98; also, Introduct. pp. xx-xxviii).
He confounds, however, often, the preservation of the songs from
old time,—with the question, whether they have or have not an
historical basis.

And there were, doubtless, many old bards and rhapsodes in
ancient Greece, of whom the same might be said which Saxo
Grammaticus affirms of an Englishman named Lucas, that he was
“literis quidem tenuiter instructus, sed historiarum scientiâ
apprime eruditus.” (Dahlmann, Historische Forschungen, vol. ii.
p. 176.)

[260] “Homer wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung
by himself for small earnings and good cheer, at festivals and
other days of merriment; the Iliad he made for the men, the
Odysseus for the other sex. These loose songs were not collected
together into the form of an epic poem until 500 years after.”

Such is the naked language in which Wolf’s main hypothesis had
been previously set forth by Bentley, in his “Remarks on a
late Discourse of Freethinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,”
published in 1713: the passage remained unaltered in the seventh
edition of that treatise published in 1737. See Wolf’s Proleg.
xxvii. p. 115.

The same hypothesis may be seen more amply developed, partly in
the work of Wolfs pupil and admirer, William Müller, _Homerische
Vorschule_ (the second edition of which was published at
Leipsic, 1836, with an excellent introduction and notes by
Baumgarten-Crusius, adding greatly to the value of the original
work by its dispassionate review of the whole controversy),
partly in two valuable Dissertations of Lachmann, published in
the Philological Transactions of the Berlin Academy for 1837 and
1841.

This hypothesis—to which the genius of Wolf first gave celebrity, but which has been since enforced more in detail by others, especially by William Müller and Lachmann—appears to me not only unsupported by any sufficient testimony, but also opposed to other testimony as well as to a strong force of internal probability. The authorities quoted by Wolf are Josephus, Cicero, and Pausanias:[261] Josephus mentions nothing about Peisistratus, but merely states (what we may accept as the probable fact) that the Homeric poems were originally unwritten, and preserved only in songs or recitations, from which they were at a subsequent period put into writing: hence many of the discrepancies in the text. On the other hand, Cicero and Pausanias go farther, and affirm that Peisistratus both collected, and arranged in the existing order, the rhapsodies of the Iliad and Odyssey, (implied as poems originally entire, and subsequently broken into pieces,) which he found partly confused and partly isolated from each other,—each part being then remembered only in its own portion of the Grecian world. Respecting Hipparchus the son of Peisistratus, too, we are told in the Pseudo-Platonic dialogue which bears his name, that he was the first to introduce into Attica, the poetry of Homer, and that he prescribed to the rhapsodes to recite the parts of the Panathenaic festival in regular sequence.[262]

[261] Joseph, cont. Apion. i. 2; Cicero de Orator, iii. 34;
Pausan. vii. 26, 6: compare the Scholion on Plautus in Ritschl,
Die Alexandrin. Bibliothek, p. 4. Ælian (V. II. xiii. 14),
who mentions both the introduction of the Homeric poems into
Peloponnesus by Lykurgus, and the compilation by Peisistratus,
can hardly be considered as adding to the value of the testimony:
still less, Libanius and Suidas. What we learn is, that some
literary and critical men of the Alexandrine age (more or fewer,
as the case may be; but Wolf exaggerates when he talks of an
_unanimous_ conviction) spoke of Peisistratus as having first
put together the fractional parts of the Iliad and Odyssey into
entire poems.

[262] Plato, Hipparch. p. 228.

Wolf and William Müller occasionally speak as if they admitted something like an Iliad and Odyssey as established aggregates prior to Peisistratus; but for the most part they represent him or his associates as having been the first to put together Homeric poems which were before distinct and self-existent compositions. And Lachmann, the recent expositor of the same theory, ascribes to Peisistratus still more unequivocally this original integration of parts in reference to the Iliad,—distributing the first twenty-two books of the poem into sixteen separate songs, and treating it as ridiculous to imagine that the fusion of these songs, into an order such as we now read, belongs to any date earlier than Peisistratus.[263]

[263] “Doch ich komme mir bald lächerlich vor, wenn ich noch
immer die Möglichkeit gelten lasse, dass unsere Ilias in dem
gegenwärtigen Zusammenhange der bedeutenden Theile, und nicht
blos der wenigen bedeutendsten, jemals vor der Arbeit des
Pisistratus gedacht worden sey.” (Lachmann, Fernere Betrachtungen
über die Ilias, sect. xxviii. p. 32; Abhandlungen Berlin. Academ.
1841.) How far this admission—that for the _few most important_
portions of the Iliad, there _did_ exist an established order
of succession prior to Peisistratus—is intended to reach, I do
not know; but the language of Lachmann goes farther than either
Wolf or William Müller. (See Wolf, Prolegomen. pp. cxli-cxlii,
and W. Müller, Homerische Vorschule, Abschnitt vii. pp. 96, 98,
100, 102.) The latter admits that neither Peisistratus nor the
Diaskeuasts could have made any considerable changes in the Iliad
and Odyssey, either in the way of addition or of transposition;
the poems as aggregates being too well known, and the Homeric
vein of invention too completely extinct, to admit of such
novelties.

I confess, I do not see how these last-mentioned admissions
can be reconciled with the main doctrine of Wolf, in so far as
regards Peisistratus.

Upon this theory we may remark, first, that it stands opposed to the testimony existing respecting the regulations of Solôn; who, before the time of Peisistratus, had enforced a fixed order of recitation on the rhapsodes of the Iliad at the Panathenaic festival; not only directing that they should go through the rhapsodies _seriatim_, and without omission or corruption, but also establishing a prompter or censorial authority to insure obedience,[264]—which implies the existence (at the same time that it proclaims the occasional infringement) of an orderly aggregate, as well as of manuscripts professedly complete. Next, the theory ascribes to Peisistratus a character not only materially different from what is indicated by Cicero and Pausanias,—who represent him, not as having put together atoms originally distinct, but as the renovator of an ancient order subsequently lost,—but also in itself unintelligible, and inconsistent with Grecian habit and feeling. That Peisistratus should take pains to repress the license, or make up for the unfaithful memory, of individual rhapsodes, and to ennoble the Panathenaic festival by the most correct recital of a great and venerable poem, according to the standard received among the best judges in Greece,—this is a task both suitable to his position, and requiring nothing more than an improved recension, together with exact adherence to it on the part of the rhapsodes. But what motive had he to string together several poems, previously known only as separate, into one new whole? What feeling could he gratify by introducing the extensive changes and transpositions surmised by Lachmann, for the purpose of binding together sixteen songs, which the rhapsodes are assumed to have been accustomed to recite, and the people to hear, each by itself apart? Peisistratus was not a poet, seeking to interest the public mind by new creations and combinations, but a ruler, desirous to impart solemnity to a great religious festival in his native city. Now such a purpose would be answered by selecting, amidst the divergences of rhapsodes in different parts of Greece, that order of text which intelligent men could approve as a return to the pure and pristine Iliad; but it would be defeated if he attempted large innovations of his own, and brought out for the first time a new Iliad by blending together, altering, and transposing, many old and well-known songs. A novelty so bold would have been more likely to offend than to please both the critics and the multitude. And if it were even enforced, by authority, at Athens, no probable reason can be given why all the other towns, and all the rhapsodes throughout Greece, should abnegate their previous habits in favor of it, since Athens at that time enjoyed no political ascendency such as she acquired during the following century. On the whole, it will appear that the character and position of Peisistratus himself go far to negative the function which Wolf and Lachmann put upon him. His interference presupposes a certain foreknown and ancient aggregate, the main lineaments of which were familiar to the Grecian public, although many of the rhapsodes in their practice may have deviated from it both by omission and interpolation. In correcting the Athenian recitations conformably with such understood general type, he might hope both to procure respect for Athens, and to constitute a fashion for the rest of Greece. But this step of “collecting the torn body of sacred Homer,” is something generically different from the composition of a new Iliad out of preëxisting songs the former is as easy, suitable, and promising, as the latter is violent and gratuitous.[265]

[264] Diogen. Laërt. i. 57.—Τὰ τε Ὁμήρου ~ἐξ ὑποβολῆς~ γέγραφε
(Σόλων) ῥαψῳδεῖσθαι, οἷον ὅπου ὁ πρῶτος ἔληξεν, ἔκειθεν ἄρχεσθαι
τὸν ἀρχόμενον, ὥς φησι Διευχίδας ἐν τοῖς Μεγαρικοῖς.

Respecting Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus, the Pseudo-Plato
tells us (in the dialogue so called, p. 228),—καὶ τὰ Ὁμήρου ἔπη
πρῶτος ἐκόμισεν εἰς τὴν γῆν ταυτηνὶ, καὶ ἠνάγκασε τοὺς ῥαψῳδοὺς
Παναθηναίοις ~ἐξ ὑπολήψεως~ ἐφεξῆς αὐτὰ διϊέναι, ~ὥσπερ νῦν ἔτι~
οἵδε ποιοῦσι.

These words have provoked multiplied criticisms from all the
learned men who have touched upon the theory of the Homeric
poems,—to determine what was the practice which Solon found
existing, and what was the change which he introduced. Our
information is too scanty to pretend to certainty, but I think
the explanation of Hermann the most satisfactory (“Quid sit
~ὑποβολὴ~ et ~ὑποβλήδεν~.”—_Opuscula_, tom. v. p. 300, tom. vii.
p. 162).

Ὑποβολεὺς is the technical term for the prompter at a theatrical
representation (Plutarch, Præcept. gerend. Reip. p. 813);
ὑποβολὴ and ὑποβάλλειν have corresponding meanings, of aiding
the memory of a speaker and keeping him in accordance with a
certain standard, in possession of the prompter: see the words
ἐξ ὑποβολῆς, Xenophon. Cyropæd. iii. 3, 37. Ὑποβολὴ, therefore,
has no necessary connection with a series of rhapsodes, but would
apply just as much to one alone; although it happens in this
case to be brought to bear upon several in succession. Ὑπόληψις,
again, means “the taking up in succession of one rhapsode by
another:” though the two words, therefore, have not the same
meaning, yet the proceeding described in the two passages,
in reference both to Solôn and Hipparchus, appears to be in
substance the same,—_i. e._ to insure, by compulsory supervision,
a correct and orderly recitation by the successive rhapsodes who
went through the different parts of the poem.

There is good reason to conclude from this passage that the
rhapsodes before Solôn were guilty both of negligence and of
omission in their recital of Homer, but no reason to imagine
either that they transposed the books, or that the legitimate
order was not previously recognized.

The appointment of a systematic ὑποβολεὺς, or prompter, plainly
indicates the existence of complete manuscripts.

The direction of Solôn, that Homer should be rhapsodized under
the security of a prompter with his manuscript, appears just the
same as that of the orator Lykurgus in reference to Æschylus,
Sophoklês, and Euripidês (Pseudo-Plutarch. Vit. x. Rhetor.
Lycurgi Vit.)—εἰσήνεγκε δὲ καὶ νόμους—ὡς χαλκᾶς εἰκόνας ἀναθεῖναι
τῶν ποιητῶν Αἰσχύλου, Σοφοκλέους, Εὐριπίδου, καὶ τὰς τραγῳδίας
αὐτῶν ἐν κοινῷ γραψαμένους φυλάττειν, καὶ τὸν τῆς πόλεως
γραμματέα παραναγιγνώσκειν τοῖς ὑποκρινομένοις· οὐ γὰρ ἐξῆν αὐτὰς
(ἄλλως) ὑποκρίνεσθαι. The word ἄλλως, which occurs last but one,
is introduced by the conjecture of Grysar, who has cited and
explained the above passage of the Pseudo-Plutarch in a valuable
dissertation—_De Græcorum Tragœdiâ, qualis fuit circa tempora
Demosthenis_ (Cologne, 1830). All the critics admit the text
as it now stands to be unintelligible, and various corrections
have been proposed, among which that of Grysar seems the best.
From his Dissertation, I transcribe the following passage, which
illustrates the rhapsodizing of Homer ἐξ ὑποβολῆς:—

“Quum histriones fabulis interpolandis ægre abstinerent, Lycurgus
legem supra indicatam eo tulit consilio, ut recitationes
histrionum cum publico illo exemplo omnino congruas redderet.
Quod ut assequeretur, constituit, ut dum fabulæ in scenâ
recitarentur, scriba publicus simul exemplum civitatis
inspiceret, juxta sive in theatro sive in postscenio sedens. Hæc
enim verbi παραναγιγνώσκειν est significatio, posita præcipue
in præpositione παρὰ, ut idem sit, quod _contra_ sive _juxta_
legere; id quod faciunt ii, _qui lecta ab altero vel recitata cum
suis conferre cupiunt_.” (Grysar, p. 7.)

[265] That the Iliad or Odyssey were ever recited with all the
parts entire, at any time anterior to Solôn, is a point which
Ritschl denies (Die Alexandrin. Bibliothek, pp. 67-70). He thinks
that before Solôn, they were always recited in parts, and without
any fixed order among the parts. Nor did Solôn determine (as he
thinks) the order of the parts: he only checked the license of
the rhapsodes as to the recitation of the separate books: it
was Pesistratus, who, with the help of Onomakritus and others,
first settled the order of the parts and bound each poem into a
whole, with some corrections and interpolations. Nevertheless,
he admits that the parts were originally composed by the same
poet, and adapted to form a whole amongst each other: but this
primitive entireness (he asserts) was only maintained as a sort
of traditional belief, never realized in recitation, and never
reduced to an obvious, unequivocal, and permanent fact,—until the
time of Peisistratus.

There is no sufficient ground, I think, for denying all entire
recitation previous to Solôn, and we only interpose a new
difficulty, both grave and gratuitous, by doing so.

To sustain the inference, that Peisistratus was the first architect of the Iliad and Odyssey, it ought at least to be shown that no other long and continuous poems existed during the earlier centuries. But the contrary of this is known to be the fact. The Æthiopis of Arktinus, which contained nine thousand one hundred verses, dates from a period more than two centuries earlier than Peisistratus: several other of the lost cyclic epics, some among them of considerable length, appear during the century succeeding Arktinus; and it is important to notice that three or four at least of these poems passed currently under the name of Homer.[266] There is no greater intrinsic difficulty in supposing long epics to have begun with the Iliad and Odyssey than with the Æthiopis: the ascendency of the name of Homer and the subordinate position of Arktinus, in the history of early Grecian poetry, tend to prove the former in preference to the latter.

[266] The Æthiopis of Arktinus contained nine thousand one
hundred verses, as we learn from the Tabula Iliaca: yet Proklus
assigns to it only four books. The Ilias Minor had _four_ books,
the Cyprian Verses _eleven_, though we do not know the number of
lines in either.

Nitzsch states it as a certain matter of fact, that Arktinus
recited his own poem _alone_, though it was too long to admit of
his doing so without interruption. (See his Vorrede to the second
vol. of the Odyssey, p. xxiv.) There is no evidence for this
assertion, and it appears to me highly improbable.

In reference to the Romances of the Middle Ages, belonging to the
Cycle of the Round Table, M. Fauriel tells us that the German
_Perceval_ has nearly twenty-five thousand verses (more than
half as long again as the Iliad); the _Perceval_ of Christian
of Troyes, probably more; the German _Tristan_, of Godfrey of
Strasburg, has more than twenty-three thousand; sometimes, the
poem is begun by one author, and continued by another. (Fauriel,
Romans de Chevalerie, Revue des Deux Mondes, t. xiii. pp.
695-697.)

The ancient unwritten poems of the Icelandic Skalds are as
much lyric as epic: the longest of them does not exceed eight
hundred lines, and they are for the most part much shorter
(Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der Nördischen Heldensage,
aus P. A. Müller’s Sagabibliothek von G. Lange, Frankf. 1832,
Introduct. p. xlii.).

Moreover, we find particular portions of the Iliad, which expressly pronounce themselves, by their own internal evidence, as belonging to a large whole, and not as separate integers. We can hardly conceive the Catalogue in the second book, except as a fractional composition, and with reference to a series of approaching exploits; for, taken apart by itself, such a barren enumeration of names could have stimulated neither the fancy of the poet, nor the attention of the listeners. But the Homeric Catalogue had acquired a sort of canonical authority even in the time of Solôn, insomuch that he interpolated a line into it, or was accused of doing so, for the purpose of gaining a disputed point against the Megarians, who, on their side, set forth another version.[267] No such established reverence could have been felt for this document, unless there had existed for a long time prior to Peisistratus, the habit of regarding and listening to the Iliad as a continuous poem. And when the philosopher Xenophanês, contemporary with Peisistratus, noticed Homer as the universal teacher, and denounced him as an unworthy describer of the gods, he must have connected this great mental sway, not with a number of unconnected rhapsodies, but with an aggregate Iliad and Odyssey; probably with other poems, also, ascribed to the same author, such as the Cypria, Epigoni, and Thebaïs.

[267] Plutarch, Solôn, 10.

We find, it is true, references in various authors to portions of the Iliad, each by its own separate name, such as the Teichomachy, the Aristeia (preëminent exploits) of Diomedês, or Agamemnôn, the Doloneia, or Night-expedition (of Dolon as well as of Odysseus and Diomedês), etc., and hence, it has been concluded, that these portions originally existed as separate poems, before they were cemented together into an Iliad. But such references prove nothing to the point; for until the Iliad was divided by Aristarchus and his colleagues into a given number of books, or rhapsodies, designated by the series of letters in the alphabet, there was no method of calling attention to any particular portion of the poem except by special indication of its subject-matter.[268] Authors subsequent to Peisistratus, such as Herodotus and Plato, who unquestionably conceived the Iliad as a whole, cite the separate fractions of it by designations of this sort.

[268] The Homeric Scholiast refers to Quintus Calaber ἐν τῇ
Ἀμαζονομαχίᾳ, which was only one portion of his long poem (Schol.
ad Iliad. ii. 220).

The foregoing remarks on the Wolfian hypothesis respecting the text of the Iliad, tend to separate two points which are by no means necessarily connected, though that hypothesis, as set forth by Wolf himself, by W. Müller, and by Lachmann, presents the two in conjunction. First, was the Iliad originally projected and composed by one author, and as one poem, or were the different parts composed separately and by unconnected authors, and subsequently strung together into an aggregate? Secondly, assuming that the internal evidences of the poem negative the former supposition, and drive us upon the latter, was the construction of the whole poem deferred, and did the parts exist only in their separate state, until a period so late as the reign of Peisistratus? It is obvious that these two questions are essentially separate, and that a man may believe the Iliad to have been put together out of preëxisting songs, without recognizing the age of Peisistratus as the period of its first compilation. Now, whatever may be the steps through which the poem passed to its ultimate integrity, there is sufficient reason for believing that they had been accomplished long before that period: the friends of Peisistratus found an Iliad already existing and already ancient in their time, even granting that the poem had not been originally born in a state of unity. Moreover, the Alexandrine critics, whose remarks are preserved in the Scholia, do not even notice the Peisistratic recension among the many manuscripts which they had before them: and Mr. Payne Knight justly infers from their silence that either they did not possess it, or it was in their eyes of no great authority;[269] which could never have been the case if it had been the prime originator of Homeric unity.

[269] Knight, Prolegg. Homer, xxxii. xxxvi. xxxvii. That
Peisistratus caused a corrected MS. of the Iliad to be prepared,
there seems good reason to believe, and the Scholion on Plautus
edited by Ritschl (see Die Alexandrinische Bibliothek, p. 4)
specifies the four persons (Onomakritus was one) employed on the
task. Ritschl fancies that it served as a sort of Vulgate for the
text of the Alexandrine critics, who named specially other MSS.
(of Chios, Sinôpê, Massalia, etc.) only when they diverged from
this Vulgate: he thinks, also, that it formed the original from
whence those other MSS. were first drawn, which are called in the
Homeric Scholia αἱ κοιναὶ, κοινότεραι (pp. 59-60).

Welcker supposes the Peisistratic MS. to have been either lost
or carried away when Xerxês took Athens (Der Epische Kyklus, pp.
382-388).

Compare Nitzsch, Histor. Homer. Fasc. i. pp. 165-167; also his
commentary on Odyss. xi. 604, the alleged interpolation of
Onomakritus; and Ulrici, Geschichte der Hellen. Poes. Part i. s.
vii. pp. 252-255.

The main facts respecting the Peisistratic recension are
collected and discussed by Gräfenhan, Geschichte der Philologie,
sect. 54-64, vol. i. pp. 266-311. Unfortunately, we cannot get
beyond mere conjecture and possibility.

The line of argument, by which the advocates of Wolf’s hypothesis negative the primitive unity of the poem, consists in exposing gaps, incongruities, contradictions, etc., between the separate parts. Now, if in spite of all these incoherences, standing mementos of an antecedent state of separation, the component poems were made to coalesce so intimately as to appear as if they had been one from the beginning, we can better understand the complete success of the proceeding and the universal prevalence of the illusion, by supposing such coalescence to have taken place at a very early period, during the productive days of epical genius, and before the growth of reading and criticism. The longer the aggregation of the separate poems was deferred, the harder it would be to obliterate in men’s minds the previous state of separation, and to make them accept the new aggregate as an original unity. The bards or rhapsodes might have found comparatively little difficulty in thus piecing together distinct songs, during the ninth or eighth century before Christ; but it we suppose the process to be deferred until the latter half of the sixth century,—if we imagine that Solôn, with all his contemporaries and predecessors, knew nothing about any aggregate Iliad, but was accustomed to read and hear only those sixteen distinct epical pieces into which Lachmann would dissect the Iliad, each of the sixteen bearing a separate name of its own,—no compilation then for the first time made by the friends of Peisistratus could have effaced the established habit, and planted itself in the general convictions of Greece as the primitive Homeric production. Had the sixteen pieces remained disunited and individualized down to the time of Peisistratus, they would in all probability have continued so ever afterwards; nor could the extensive changes and transpositions which (according to Lachmann’s theory) were required to melt them down into our present Iliad, have obtained at that late period universal acceptance. Assuming it to be true that such changes and transpositions did really take place, they must at least be referred to a period greatly earlier than Peisistratus or Solôn.