Chapter XXI: Grecian Epic.—homeric Poems (3)

The whole tenor of the poems themselves confirms what is here remarked. There is nothing either in the Iliad or Odyssey which savors of _modernism_, applying that term to the age of Peisistratus; nothing which brings to our view the alterations, brought about by two centuries, in the Greek language, the coined money, the habits of writing and reading, the despotisms and republican governments, the close military array, the improved construction of ships, the Amphiktyonic convocations, the mutual frequentation of religious festivals, the Oriental and Egyptian veins of religion, etc., familiar to the latter epoch. These alterations Onomakritus and the other literary friends of Peisistratus, could hardly have failed to notice even without design, had they then for the first time undertaken the task of piecing together many self-existent epics into one large aggregate.[270] Everything in the two great Homeric poems, both in substance and in language, belongs to an age two or three centuries earlier than Peisistratus. Indeed, even the interpolations (or those passages which on the best grounds are pronounced to be such) betray no trace of the sixth century before Christ, and may well have been heard by Archilochus and Kallinus,—in some cases even by Arktinus and Hesiod,—as genuine Homeric matter. As far as the evidences on the case, as well internal as external, enable us to judge, we seem warranted in believing that the Iliad and Odyssey were recited substantially as they now stand, (always allowing for partial divergences of text, and interpolations,) in 776 B. C., our first trustworthy mark of Grecian time. And this ancient date,—let it be added,—as it is the best-authenticated fact, so it is also the most important attribute of the Homeric poems, considered in reference to Grecian history. For they thus afford us an insight into the ante-historical character of the Greeks,—enabling us to trace the subsequent forward march of the nation, and to seize instructive contrasts between their former and their later condition.

[270] Wolf allows both the uniformity of coloring, and the
antiquity of coloring, which pervade the Homeric poems; also,
the strong line by which they stand distinguished from the other
Greek poets: “Immo congruunt in iis omnia ferme in idem ingenium,
in eosdem mores, in eandem formam sentiendi et loquendi.”
(Prolegom. p. cclxv; compare p. cxxxviii.)

He thinks, indeed, that this harmony was _restored_ by the
ability and care of Aristarchus, (“mirificum illum concentum
revocatum Aristarcho imprimis debemus.”) This is a very
exaggerated estimate of the interference of Aristarchus: but
at any rate the _concentus_ itself was ancient and original,
and Aristarchus only _restored_ it, when it had been spoiled
by intervening accidents; at least, if we are to construe
_revocatum_ strictly, which, perhaps, is hardly consistent with
Wolf’s main theory.

Rejecting, therefore, the idea of compilation by Peisistratus, and referring the present state of the Iliad and Odyssey to a period more than two centuries earlier, the question still remains, by what process, or through whose agency, they reached that state? Is each poem the work of one author, or of several? If the latter, do all the parts belong to the same age? What ground is there for believing, that any or all of these parts existed before, as separate poems, and have been accommodated to the place in which they now appear, by more or less systematic alteration?

The acute and valuable Prolegomena of Wolf, half a century ago, powerfully turned the attention of scholars to the necessity of considering the Iliad and Odyssey with reference to the age and society in which they arose, and to the material differences in this respect between Homer and more recent epic poets.[271] Since that time, an elaborate study has been bestowed upon the early manifestations of poetry (Sagen-poesie) among other nations; and the German critics especially, among whom this description of literatures has been most cultivated, have selected it as the only appropriate analogy for the Homeric poems. Such poetry, consisting for the most part of short, artless effusions, with little of deliberate or far-sighted combination, has been assumed by many critics as a fit standard to apply for measuring the capacities of the Homeric age; an age exclusively of speakers, singers, and hearers, not of readers or writers. In place of the unbounded admiration which was felt for Homer, not merely as a poet of detail, but as constructor of a long epic, at the time when Wolf wrote his Prolegomena, the tone of criticism passed to the opposite extreme, and attention was fixed entirely upon the defects in the arrangement of the Iliad and Odyssey. Whatever was to be found in them of symmetry or pervading system, was pronounced to be decidedly post-Homeric. Under such preconceived anticipations, Homer seems to have been generally studied in Germany, during the generation succeeding Wolf, the negative portion of whose theory was usually admitted, though as to the positive substitute,—what explanation was to be given of the history and present constitution of the Homeric poems,—there was by no means the like agreement. During the last ten years, however, a contrary tendency has manifested itself; the Wolfian theory has been reëxamined and shaken by Nitzsch, who, as well as O. Müller, Welcker, and other scholars, have revived the idea of original Homeric unity, under certain modifications. The change in Goethe’s opinion, coincident with this new direction, is recorded in one of his latest works.[272] On the other hand, the original opinion of Wolf has also been reproduced within the last five years, and fortified with several new observations on the text of the Iliad, by Lachmann.

[271] See Wolf, Prolegg. c. xii. p. xliii. “Nondum enim prorsus
ejecta et explosa est eorum ratio, qui Homerum et Callimachum
et Virgilium et Nonnum et Miltonum eodem animo legunt, nec
quid uniuscujusque ætas ferat, expendere legendo et computare
laborant,” etc.

A similar and earlier attempt to construe the Homeric poems with
reference to their age, is to be seen in the treatise called _Il
Vero Omero_ of Vico,—marked with a good deal of original thought,
but not strong in erudition (Opere di Vico, ed. Milan, vol. v.
pp. 437-497).

[272] In the forty-sixth volume of his collected works, in the
little treatise “_Homer, noch einmal_:” compare G. Lange, Ueber
die Kyklischen Dichter (Mainz, 1837), Preface, p. vi.

The point is thus still under controversy among able scholars, and is probably destined to remain so. For, in truth, our means of knowledge are so limited, that no man can produce arguments sufficiently cogent to contend against opposing preconceptions; and it creates a painful sentiment of diffidence when we read the expressions of equal and absolute persuasion with which the two opposite conclusions have both been advanced.[273] We have nothing to teach us the history of these poems except the poems themselves. Not only do we possess no collateral information respecting them or their authors, but we have no one to describe to us the people or the age in which they originated; our knowledge respecting contemporary Homeric society, is collected exclusively from the Homeric compositions themselves. We are ignorant whether any other, or what other, poems preceded them, or divided with them the public favor; nor have we anything better than conjecture to determine either the circumstances under which they were brought before the hearers, or the conditions which a bard of that day was required to satisfy. On all these points, moreover, the age of Thucydidês[274] and Plato seems to have been no better informed than we are, except in so far as they could profit by the analogies of the cyclic and other epic poems, which would doubtless in many cases have afforded valuable aid.

[273] “Non esse totam Iliadem aut Odysseam unius poetæ opus,
ita extra dubitationem positam puto, ut qui secus sentiat, eum
non satis lectitasse illa carmina contendam.” (Godf. Hermann,
Præfat. ad Odysseam, Lips. 1825, p. iv.) See the language of the
same eminent critic in his treatise “Ueber Homer und Sappho,”
Opuscula, vol. v. p. 74.

Lachmann, after having dissected the two thousand two hundred
lines in the Iliad, between the beginning of the eleventh book,
and line five hundred and ninety of the fifteenth, into four
songs, “in the highest degree different in their spirit,” (“ihrem
Geiste nach höchst verschiedene Lieder,”) tells us that whosoever
thinks this difference of spirit inconsiderable,—whosoever does
not feel it at once when pointed out,—whosoever can believe
that the parts as they stand now belong to one artistically
constructed Epos,—“will do well not to trouble himself any more
either with my criticisms or with epic poetry, because he is
too weak to understand anything about it,” (“weil er zu schwach
ist etwas darin zu verstehen:”) Fernere Betrachtungen Ueber die
Ilias: Abhandl. Berlin. Acad. 1841, p. 18, § xxiii.

On the contrary, Ulrici, after having shown (or tried to show)
that the composition of Homer satisfies perfectly, in the main,
all the exigencies of an artistic epic,—adds, that this will
make itself at once evident to all those who have any sense of
artistical symmetry; but that, for those to whom that sense is
wanting, no conclusive demonstration can be given. He warns the
latter, however, that they are not to deny the existence of
that which their shortsighted vision cannot distinguish, for
everything cannot be made clear to children, which the mature man
sees through at a glance (Ulrici, Geschichte des Griechischen
Epos, Part i. ch. vii. pp. 260-261). Read also Payne Knight,
Proleg. c. xxvii, about the insanity of the Wolfian school,
obvious even to the “homunculus e trivio.”

I have the misfortune to dissent from both Lachmann and Ulrici;
for it appears to me a mistake to put the Iliad and Odyssey on
the same footing, as Ulrici does, and as is too frequently done
by others.

[274] Plato, Aristotle, and their contemporaries generally, read
the most suspicious portions of the Homeric poems as genuine
(Nitzsch, Plan und Gang der Odyssee, in the Preface to his second
vol. of Comments on the Odyssey, pp. lx-lxiv).

Thucydidês accepts the Hymn to Apollo as a composition by the
author of the Iliad.

Nevertheless, no classical scholar can be easy without _some_ opinion respecting the authorship of these immortal poems. And the more defective the evidence we possess, the more essential is it that all that evidence should be marshalled in the clearest order, and its bearing upon the points in controversy distinctly understood beforehand. Both these conditions seem to have been often neglected, throughout the long-continued Homeric discussion.

To illustrate the first point: Since two poems are comprehended in the problem to be solved, the natural process would be, first, to study the easier of the two, and then to apply the conclusions thence deduced as a means of explaining the other. Now, the Odyssey, looking at its aggregate character, is incomparably more easy to comprehend than the Iliad. Yet most Homeric critics apply the microscope at once, and in the first instance, to the Iliad.

To illustrate the second point: What evidence is sufficient to negative the supposition that the Iliad or the Odyssey is a poem originally and intentionally one? Not simply particular gaps and contradictions, though they be even gross and numerous; but the preponderance of these proofs of mere unprepared coalescence over the other proofs of designed adaptation scattered throughout the whole poem. For the poet (or the coöperating poets, if more than one) may have intended to compose an harmonious whole, but may have realized their intention incompletely, and left partial faults; or, perhaps, the contradictory lines may have crept in through a corrupt text. A survey of the whole poem is necessary to determine the question; and this necessity, too, has not always been attended to.

If it had happened that the Odyssey had been preserved to us alone, without the Iliad, I think the dispute respecting Homeric unity would never have been raised. For the former is, in my judgment, pervaded almost from beginning to end by marks of designed adaptation; and the special faults which Wolf, W. Müller, and B. Thiersch,[275] have singled out for the purpose of disproving such unity of intention, are so few, and of so little importance, that they would have been universally regarded as mere instances of haste or unskilfulness on the part of the poet, had they not been seconded by the far more powerful battery opened against the Iliad. These critics, having laid down their general presumptions against the antiquity of the long epopee, illustrate their principles by exposing the many flaws and fissures in the Iliad, and then think it sufficient if they can show a few similar defects in the Odyssey,—as if the breaking up of Homeric unity in the former naturally entailed a similar necessity with regard to the latter; and their method of proceeding, contrary to the rule above laid down, puts the more difficult problem in the foreground, as a means of solution for the easier. We can hardly wonder, however, that they have applied their observations in the first instance to the Iliad, because it is in every man’s esteem the more marked, striking, and impressive poem of the two,—and the character of Homer is more intimately identified with it than with the Odyssey. This may serve as an explanation of the course pursued; but be the case as it may in respect to comparative poetical merit, it is not the less true, that, as an aggregate, the Odyssey is more simple and easily understood, and, therefore, ought to come first in the order of analysis.

[275] Bernhard Thiersch, Ueber das Zeitalter und Vaterland des
Homer (Halberstadt, 1832), Einleitung, pp. 4-18.

Now, looking at the Odyssey by itself, the proofs of an unity of design seem unequivocal and everywhere to be found. A premeditated structure, and a concentration of interest upon one prime hero, under well-defined circumstances, may be traced from the first book to the twenty-third. Odysseus is always either directly or indirectly kept before the reader, as a warrior returning from the fulness of glory at Troy, exposed to manifold and protracted calamities during his return home, on which his whole soul is so bent that he refuses even the immortality offered by Calypsô;—a victim, moreover, even after his return, to mingled injury and insult from the suitors, who have long been plundering his property, and dishonoring his house; but at length obtaining, by valor and cunning united, a signal revenge, which restores him to all that he had lost. All the persons and all the events in the poem are subsidiary to this main plot: and the divine agency, necessary to satisfy the feeling of the Homeric man, is put forth by Poseidôn and Athênê, in both cases from dispositions directly bearing upon Odysseus. To appreciate the unity of the Odyssey, we have only to read the objections taken against that of the Iliad,—especially in regard to the long withdrawal of Achilles, not only from the scene, but from the memory,—together with the independent prominence of Ajax, Diomêdês, and other heroes. How far we are entitled from hence to infer the want of premeditated unity in the Iliad, will be presently considered; but it is certain that the constitution of the Odyssey, in this respect, everywhere demonstrates the presence of such unity. Whatever may be the interest attached to Penelopê, Telemachus, or Eumæus, we never disconnect them from their association with Odysseus. The present is not the place for collecting the many marks of artistical structure dispersed throughout this poem; but it may be worth while to remark, that the final catastrophe realized in the twenty-second book,—the slaughter of the suitors in the very house which they were profaning,—is distinctly and prominently marked out in the first and second books, promised by Teiresias in the eleventh, by Athênê in the thirteenth, and by Helen in the fifteenth, and gradually matured by a series of suitable preliminaries, throughout the eight books preceding its occurrence.[276] Indeed, what is principally evident, and what has been often noticed, in the Odyssey, is, the equable flow both of the narrative and the events; the absence of that rise and fall of interest which is sufficiently conspicuous in the Iliad.

[276] Compare i, 295; ii. 145 (νήποινοί κεν ἔπειτα δόμων ἔντοσθεν
ὄλοισθε); xi. 118; xiii. 395; xv. 178; also xiv. 162.

To set against these evidences of unity, there ought, at least, to be some strong cases produced of occasional incoherence or contradiction. But it is remarkable how little of such counter-evidence is to be found, although the arguments of Wolf, W. Müller, and B. Thiersch stand so much in need of it. They have discovered only one instance of undeniable inconsistency in the parts,—the number of days occupied by the absence of Telemachus at Pylus and Sparta. That young prince, though represented as in great haste to depart, and refusing pressing invitations to prolong his stay, must, nevertheless, be supposed to have continued for thirty days the guest of Menelaus, in order to bring his proceedings into chronological harmony with those of Odysseus, and to explain the first meeting of father and son in the swine-fold of Eumæus. Here is undoubtedly an inaccuracy, (so Nitzsch[277] treats it, and I think justly) on the part of the poet, who did not anticipate, and did not experience in ancient times, so strict a scrutiny; an inaccuracy certainly not at all wonderful; the matter of real wonder is, that it stands almost alone, and that there are no others in the poem.

[277] Nitzsch, Plan und Gang der Odyssee, p. xliii, prefixed to
the second vol. of his Commentary on the Odysseis.

“At carminum primi auditores non adeo curiosi erant (observes
Mr. Payne Knight, Proleg. c. xxiii.), ut ejusmodi rerum
rationes aut exquirerent aut expenderent; neque eorum fides e
subtilioribus congruentiis omnino pendebat. Monendi enim sunt
etiam atque etiam Homericorum studiosi, veteres illos ἀοιδοὺς
non linguâ professoriâ inter viros criticos et grammaticos, aut
alios quoscunque argutiarum captatores, carmina cantitasse,
sed inter eos qui sensibus animorum libere, incaute, et effuse
indulgerent,” etc. Chap. xxii-xxvii. of Mr. Knight’s Prolegomena,
are valuable to the same purpose, showing the “homines rudes et
agrestes,” of that day, as excellent judges of what fell under
their senses and observation, but careless, credulous, and
unobservant of contradiction, in matters which came only under
the mind’s eye.

Now, this is one of the main points on which W. Müller and B. Thiersch rest their theory,—explaining the chronological confusion by supposing that the journey of Telemachus to Pylus and Sparta, constituted the subject of an epic originally separate (comprising the first four books and a portion of the fifteenth), and incorporated at second-hand with the remaining poem. And they conceive this view to be farther confirmed by the double assembly of the gods, (at the beginning of the first book as well as of the fifth,) which they treat as an awkward repetition, such as could not have formed part of the primary scheme of any epic poet. But here they only escape a small difficulty by running into another and a greater. For it is impossible to comprehend how the first four books and part of the fifteenth can ever have constituted a distinct epic; since the adventures of Telemachus have no satisfactory termination, except at the point of confluence with those of his father, when the unexpected meeting and recognition takes place under the roof of Eumæus,—nor can any epic poem ever have described that meeting and recognition without giving some account how Odysseus came thither. Moreover, the first two books of the Odyssey distinctly lay the ground, and carry expectation forward, to the final catastrophe of the poem,—treating Telemachus as a subordinate person, and his expedition as merely provisional towards an ulterior result. Nor can I agree with W. Müller, that the real Odyssey might well be supposed to begin with the fifth book. On the contrary, the exhibition of the suitors and the Ithakesian agora, presented to us in the second book, is absolutely essential to the full comprehension of the books subsequent to the thirteenth. The suitors are far too important personages in the poem to allow of their being first introduced in so informal a manner as we read in the sixteenth book: indeed, the passing allusions of Athênê (xiii. 310, 375) and Eumæus (xiv. 41, 81) to the suitors, presuppose cognizance of them on the part of the hearer.

Lastly, the twofold discussion of the gods, at the beginning of the first and fifth books, and the double interference of Athênê, far from being a needless repetition, may be shown to suit perfectly both the genuine epical conditions and the unity of the poem.[278] For although the final consummation, and the organization of measures against the suitors, was to be accomplished by Odysseus and Telemachus jointly, yet the march and adventures of the two, until the moment of their meeting in the dwelling of Eumæus, were essentially distinct. But, according to the religious ideas of the old epic, the presiding direction of Athênê was necessary for the safety and success of both of them. Her first interference arouses and inspires the son, her second produces the liberation of the father,—constituting a point of union and common origination for two lines of adventures, in both of which she takes earnest interest, but which are necessarily for a time kept apart in order to coincide at the proper moment.

[278] W. Müller is not correct in saying that, in the first
assembly of the gods, Zeus promises something which he does not
perform: Zeus does not _promise_ to send Hermes as messenger to
Kalypsô, in the first book, though Athênê urges him to do so.
Zeus, indeed, requires to be urged twice before he dictates to
Kalypsô the release of Odysseus, but he had already intimated, in
the first book, that he felt great difficulty in protecting the
hero, because of the wrath manifested against him by Poseidôn.

It will thus appear that the twice-repeated agora of the gods in the Odyssey, bringing home, as it does to one and the same divine agent, that double start which is essential to the scheme of the poem, consists better with the supposition of premeditated unity than with that of distinct self-existent parts. And, assuredly, the manner in which Telemachus and Odysseus, both by different roads, are brought into meeting and conjunction at the dwelling of Eumæus, is something not only contrived, but very skilfully contrived. It is needless to advert to the highly interesting character of Eumæus, rendered available as a rallying-point, though in different ways, both to the father and the son, over and above the sympathy which he himself inspires.

If the Odyssey be not an original unity, of what self-existent parts can we imagine it to have consisted? To this question it is difficult to imagine a satisfactory reply: for the supposition that Telemachus and his adventures may once have formed the subject of a separate epos, apart from Odysseus, appears inconsistent with the whole character of that youth as it stands in the poem, and with the events in which he is made to take part. We could better imagine the distribution of the adventures of Odysseus himself into two parts,—one containing his wanderings and return, the other handling his ill-treatment by the suitors, and his final triumph. But though either of these two subjects might have been adequate to furnish out a separate poem, it is nevertheless certain that, as they are presented in the Odyssey, the former cannot be divorced from the latter. The simple return of Odysseus, as it now stands in the poem, could satisfy no one as a final close, so long as the suitors remain in possession of his house, and forbid his reunion with his wife. Any poem which treated his wanderings and return separately, must have represented his reunion with Penelopê and restoration to his house, as following naturally upon his arrival in Ithaka,—thus taking little or no notice of the suitors. But this would be a capital mutilation of the actual epical narrative, which considers the suitors at home as an essential portion of the destiny of the much-suffering hero, not less than his shipwrecks and trials at sea. His return (separately taken) is foredoomed, according to the curse of Polyphemus, executed by Poseidôn, to be long deferred, miserable, solitary, and ending with destruction in his house to greet him;[279] and the ground is thus laid, in the very recital of his wanderings, for a new series of events which are to happen to him after his arrival in Ithaka. There is no tenable halting-place between the departure of Odysseus from Troy, and the final restoration to his house and his wife. The distance between these two events may, indeed, be widened, by accumulating new distresses and impediments, but any separate portion of it cannot be otherwise treated than as a fraction of the whole. The beginning and the end are here the data in respect to epical genesis, though the intermediate events admit of being conceived as variables, more or less numerous: so that the conception of the whole may be said without impropriety both to precede and to govern that of the constituent parts.

[279] Odyss. ix. 534.—

Ὀψὲ κακῶς ἔλθοι, ὀλέσας ἀπὸ πάντας ἑταίρους,
Νηὸς ἐπ᾽ ἀλλοτρίης, εὕροι δ᾽ ἐν πήματα οἴκῳ—
Ὣς ἔφατ᾽ εὐχόμενος· (the Cyclops to Poseidôn) τοῦ δ᾽ ἔκλυε Κυανοχαίτης.

The general result of a study of the Odyssey may be set down as follows: 1. The poem, as it now stands, exhibits unequivocally adaptation of parts and continuity of structure, whether by one or by several consentient hands: it may, perhaps, be a secondary formation, out of a preëxisting Odyssey of smaller dimensions; but, if so, the parts of the smaller whole must have been so far recast as to make them suitable members of the larger, and are noway recognizable by us. 2. The subject-matter of the poem not only does not favor, but goes far to exclude, the possibility of the Wolfian hypothesis. Its events cannot be so arranged as to have composed several antecedent substantive epics, afterwards put together into the present aggregate. Its authors cannot have been mere compilers of preëxisting materials, such as Peisistratus and his friends: they must have been poets, competent to work such matter as they found, into a new and enlarged design of their own. Nor can the age in which this long poem, of so many thousand lines, was turned out as a continuous aggregate, be separated from the ancient, productive, inspired age of Grecian epic.

Arriving at such conclusions from the internal evidence of the Odyssey,[280] we can apply them by analogy to the Iliad. We learn something respecting the character and capacities of that early age which has left no other mementos except these two poems. Long continuous epics (it is observed by those who support the views of Wolf), with an artistical structure, are inconsistent with the capacities of a rude and non-writing age. Such epics (we may reply) are _not inconsistent_ with the early age of the Greeks, and the Odyssey is a proof of it; for in that poem the integration of the whole, and the composition of the parts, must have been simultaneous. The analogy of the Odyssey enables us to rebut that preconception under which many ingenious critics sit down to the study of the Iliad, and which induces them to explain all the incoherences of the latter by breaking it up into smaller unities, as if short epics were the only manifestation of poetical power which the age admitted. There ought to be no reluctance in admitting a presiding scheme and premeditated unity of parts, in so far as the parts themselves point to such a conclusion.

[280] Wolf admits, in most unequivocal language, the compact
and artful structure of the Odyssey. Against this positive
internal evidence, he sets the general presumption, that no such
constructive art can possibly have belonged to a poet of the age
of Homer: “De Odysseâ maxime, cujus admirabilis summa et compages
pro præclarissimo monumento Græci ingenii habenda est.... Unde
fit ut Odysseam nemo, cui omnino priscus vates placeat, nisi
perlectam e manu deponere queat. At illa ars id ipsum est, quod
_vix ac ne vix quidem cadere_ videtur in vatem, singulas tantum
rhapsodias decantantem,” etc. (Prolegomen. pp. cxviii-cxx;
compare cxii.)

That the Iliad is not so essentially one piece as the Odyssey, every man agrees. It includes a much greater multiplicity of events, and what is yet more important, a greater multiplicity of prominent personages: the very indefinite title which it bears, as contrasted with the speciality of the name, _Odyssey_, marks the difference at once. The parts stand out more conspicuously from the whole, and admit more readily of being felt and appreciated in detached recitation. We may also add, that it is of more unequal execution than the Odyssey,—often rising to a far higher pitch of grandeur, but also, occasionally, tamer: the story does not move on continuously; incidents occur without plausible motive, nor can we shut our eyes to evidences of incoherence and contradiction.

To a certain extent, the Iliad is open to all these remarks, though Wolf and William Müller, and above all Lachmann, exaggerate the case in degree. And from hence has been deduced the hypothesis which treats the parts in their original state as separate integers, independent of, and unconnected with, each other, and forced into unity only by the afterthought of a subsequent age; or sometimes, not even themselves as integers, but as aggregates grouped together out of fragments still smaller,—short epics formed by the coalescence of still shorter songs. Now there is some plausibility in these reasonings, so long as the discrepancies are looked upon as the whole of the case. But in point of fact they are not the whole of the case: for it is not less true, that there are large portions of the Iliad which present positive and undeniable evidences of coherence as antecedent and consequent, though we are occasionally perplexed by inconsistencies of detail. To deal with these latter, is a portion of the duties of the critic. But he is not to treat the Iliad as if inconsistency prevailed everywhere throughout its parts; for coherence of parts—symmetrical antecedence and consequence—is discernible throughout the larger half of the poem.

Now the Wolfian theory explains the gaps and contradictions throughout the narrative, but it explains nothing else. If (as Lachmann thinks) the Iliad originally consisted of sixteen songs, or little substantive epics, (Lachmann’s sixteen songs cover the space only as far as the 22d book, or the death of Hector, and two more songs would have to be admitted for the 23d and 24th books),—not only composed by different authors, but by each[281] without any view to conjunction with the rest,—we have then no right to expect any intrinsic continuity between them; and all that continuity which we now find must be of extraneous origin. Where are we to look for the origin? Lachmann follows Wolf, in ascribing the whole constructive process to Peisistratus and his associates, at a period when the creative epical faculty is admitted to have died out. But upon this supposition, Peisistratus (or his associates) must have done much more than omit, transpose, and interpolate, here and there; he must have gone far to rewrite the whole poem. A great poet might have recast preëxisting separate songs into one comprehensive whole, but no mere arrangers or compilers would be competent to do so: and we are thus left without any means of accounting for that degree of continuity and consistence which runs through so large a portion of the Iliad, though not through the whole. The idea that the poem, as we read it, grew out of atoms not originally designed for the places which they now occupy, involves us in new and inextricable difficulties, when we seek to elucidate either the mode of coalescence or the degree of existing unity.[282]

[281] Lachmann seems to admit one case in which the composer of
one song manifests cognizance of another song, and a disposition
to give what will form a sequel to it. His fifteenth song (the
Patrokleia) lasts from xv. 592 down to the end of the 17th book:
the sixteenth song (including the four next books, from eighteen
to twenty-two inclusive) is a continuation of the fifteenth,
but by a different poet. (Fernere Betrachtungen über die Ilias,
Abhandl. Berlin. Acad. 1841, sect. xxvi. xxviii. xxix. pp. 24,
34, 42.)

This admission of premeditated adaptation to a certain extent
breaks up the integrity of the Wolfian hypothesis.

[282] The advocates of the Wolfian theory, appear to feel the
difficulties which beset it; for their language is wavering in
respect to these supposed primary constituent atoms. Sometimes
Lachmann tells us, that the original pieces were much finer
poetry than the Iliad as we now read it; at another time, that
it cannot be now discovered what they originally were: nay, he
farther admits, (as remarked in the preceding note,) that the
poet of the sixteenth song had cognizance of the fifteenth.

But if it be granted that the original constituent songs were
so composed, though by different poets, as that the more recent
were adapted to the earlier with more or less dexterity and
success, this brings us into totally different conditions of the
problem. It is a virtual surrender of the Wolfian hypothesis,
which, however, Lachmann both means to defend, and does defend
with ability; though his vindication of it has, to my mind, only
the effect of exposing its inherent weakness by carrying it out
into something detailed and positive. I will add, in respect to
his Dissertations, so instructive as a microscopic examination
of the poem,—1. That I find myself constantly dissenting from
that critical feeling, on the strength of which he cuts out
parts as interpolations, and discovers traces of the hand of
distinct poets; 2. That his objections against the continuity
of the narrative are often founded upon lines which the ancient
scholiasts and Mr. Payne Knight had already pronounced to be
interpolations; 3. That such of his objections as are founded
upon lines undisputed, admit in many cases of a complete and
satisfactory reply.

Admitting then premeditated adaptation of parts to a certain extent as essential to the Iliad, we may yet inquire, whether it was produced all at once, or gradually enlarged,—whether by one author, or by several; and, if the parts be of different age, which is the primitive kernel, and which are the additions.

Welcker, Lange, and Nitzsch[283] treat the Homeric poems as representing a second step in advance, in the progress of popular poetry. First, comes the age of short narrative songs; next, when these have become numerous, there arise constructive minds, who recast and blend together many of them into a larger aggregate, conceived upon some scheme of their own. The age of the epos is followed by that of the epopee,—short, spontaneous effusions preparing the way, and furnishing materials, for the architectonic genius of the poet. It is farther presumed by the above-mentioned authors, that the pre-Homeric epic included a great abundance of such smaller songs,—a fact which admits of no proof, but which seems countenanced by some passages in Homer, and is in itself no way improbable. But the transition from such songs, assuming them to be ever so numerous, to a combined and continuous poem, forms an epoch in the intellectual history of the nation, implying mental qualities of a higher order than those upon which the songs themselves depend. Nor is it to be imagined that the materials pass unaltered from their first state of isolation into their second state of combination. They must of necessity be recast, and undergo an adapting process, in which the genius of the organizing poet consists; nor can we hope, by simply knowing them as they exist in the second stage, ever to divine how they stood in the first. Such, in my judgment, is the right conception of the Homeric epoch,—an organizing poetical mind, still preserving that freshness of observation and vivacity of details which constitutes the charm of the ballad.

[283] Lange, in his Letter to Goethe, Ueber die Einheit der
Iliade, p. 33 (1826); Nitzsch, Historia Homeri, Fasciculus 2,
Præfat. p. x.

Nothing is gained by studying the Iliad as a congeries of fragments once independent of each other: no portion of the poem can be shown to have ever been so, and the supposition introduces difficulties greater than those which it removes. But it is not necessary to affirm that the whole poem as we now read it, belonged to the original and preconceived plan.[284] In this respect, the Iliad produces, upon my mind, an impression totally different from the Odyssey. In the latter poem, the characters and incidents are fewer, and the whole plot appears of one projection, from the beginning down to the death of the suitors: none of the parts look as if they had been composed separately, and inserted by way of addition into a preëxisting smaller poem. But the Iliad, on the contrary, presents the appearance of a house built upon a plan comparatively narrow, and subsequently enlarged by successive additions. The first book, together with the eighth, and the books from the eleventh to the twenty-second, inclusive, seem to form the primary organization of the poem, then properly an Achillêis: the twenty-third and twenty-fourth books are, perhaps, additions at the tail of this primitive poem, which still leave it nothing more than an enlarged Achillêis. But the books from the second to the seventh, inclusive, together with the tenth, are of a wider and more comprehensive character, and convert the poem from an Achillêis into an Iliad.[285] The primitive frontispiece, inscribed with the anger of Achilles, and its direct consequences, yet remains, after it has ceased to be coextensive with the poem. The parts added, however, are not necessarily inferior in merit to the original poem: so far is this from being the case, that amongst them are comprehended some of the noblest efforts of the Grecian epic. Nor are they more recent in date than the original; strictly speaking, they must be a little more recent, but they belong to the same generation and state of society as the primitive Achillêis. These qualifications are necessary to keep apart different questions, which, in discussions of Homeric criticism, are but too often confounded.

[284] Even Aristotle, the great builder-up of the celebrity of
Homer as to epical aggregation, found some occasions (it appears)
on which he was obliged to be content with simply excusing,
without admiring, the poet (Poet. 44 τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀγαθοῖς ὁ
ποιητὴς ἡδύνων ἀφανίζει τὸ ἄτοπον.)

And Hermann observes justly, in his acute treatise De
Interpolationibus Homeri (Opuscula, tom. v. p. 53),—“Nisi
admirabilis illa Homericorum carminum suavitas lectorum animos
quasi incantationibus quibusdam captos teneret, non tam facile
delitescerent, quæ accuratius considerata, et multo minus apte
quam quis jure postulet composita esse apparere necesse est.”

This treatise contains many criticisms on the structure of the
Iliad, some of them very well founded, though there are many from
which I dissent.

[285] In reference to the books from the second to the seventh,
inclusive, I agree with the observations of William Müller,
Homerische Vorschule, Abschnitt viii. pp. 116-118.

If we take those portions of the poem which I imagine to have constituted the original Achillêis, it will be found that the sequence of events contained in them is more rapid, more unbroken, and more intimately knit together in the way of cause and effect, than in the other books. Heyne and Lachmann, indeed, with other objecting critics, complains of the action in them as being too much crowded and hurried, since one day lasts from the beginning of the eleventh book to the middle of the eighteenth, without any sensible halt in the march throughout so large a portion of the journey. Lachmann, likewise, admits that those separate songs, into which he imagines that the whole Iliad may be dissected, cannot be severed with the same sharpness, in the books subsequent to the eleventh, as in those before it.[286] There is only one real halting-place from the eleventh book to the twenty-second,—the death of Patroclus; and this can never be conceived as the end of a separate poem,[287] though it is a capital step in the development of the Achillêis, and brings about that entire revolution in the temper of Achilles which was essential for the purpose of the poet. It would be a mistake to imagine that there ever could have existed a separate poem called Patrocleia, though a part of the Iliad was designated by that name. For Patroclus has no substantive position: he is the attached friend and second of Achilles, but nothing else,—standing to the latter in a relation of dependence resembling that of Telemachus to Odysseus. And the way in which Patroclus is dealt with in the Iliad, is, (in my judgment,) the most dexterous and artistical contrivance in the poem,—that which approaches nearest to the neat tissue of the Odyssey.[288]

[286] Lachmann, Fernere Betrachtungen über die Ilias,
Abhandlungen Berlin. Acad. 1841, p. 4.

After having pointed out certain discrepancies which he maintains
to prove different composing hands, he adds: “Nevertheless, we
must be careful not to regard the single constituent songs in
this part of the poem as being distinct and separable in a degree
equal to those in the first half; for they all with one accord
harmonize in one particular circumstance, which, with reference
to the story of the Iliad, is not less important even than the
anger of Achilles, viz. that the three most distinguished heroes,
Agamemnôn, Odysseus, and Diomêdês, all become disabled throughout
the whole duration of the battles.”

Important for the story of the _Achillêis_, I should say, not
for that of the _Iliad_. This remark of Lachmann is highly
illustrative for the distinction between the original and the
enlarged poem.

[287] I confess my astonishment that a man of so much genius and
power of thought as M. Benjamin Constant, should have imagined
the original Iliad to have concluded with the death of Patroclus,
on the ground that Achilles then becomes reconciled with
Agamemnôn. See the review of B. Constant’s work, De la Religion,
etc., by O. Müller, in the Kleine Schriften of the latter, vol.
ii. p. 74.

[288] He appears as the mediator between the insulted Achilles
and the Greeks, manifesting kindly sympathies for the latter
without renouncing his fidelity to the former. The wounded
Machaon, an object of interest to the whole camp, being carried
off the field by Nestor,—Achilles, looking on from his distant
ship, sends Patroclus to inquire whether it be really Machaon;
which enables Nestor to lay before Patroclus the deplorable state
of the Grecian host, as a motive to induce him and Achilles again
to take arms. The compassionate feelings of Patroclus being
powerfully touched, he is hastening to enforce upon Achilles the
urgent necessity of giving help, when he meets Eurypylus crawling
out of the field, helpless with a severe wound, and imploring
his succor. He supports the wounded warrior to his tent, and
ministers to his suffering; but before this operation is fully
completed, the Grecian host has been totally driven back, and the
Trojans are on the point of setting fire to the ships: Patroclus
then hurries to Achilles to proclaim the desperate peril which
hangs over them all, and succeeds in obtaining his permission
to take the field at the head of the Myrmidons. The way in
which Patroclus is kept present to the hearer, as a prelude to
his brilliant but short-lived display, when he comes forth in
arms,—the contrast between his characteristic gentleness and the
ferocity of Achilles,—and the natural train of circumstances
whereby he is made the vehicle of reconciliation on the part of
his offended friend, and rescue to his imperiled countrymen,—all
these exhibit a degree of epical skill, in the author of the
primitive Achillêis, to which nothing is found parallel in the
added books of the Iliad.

The great and capital misfortune which prostrates the strength of the Greeks, and renders them incapable of defending themselves without Achilles, is the disablement, by wounds, of Agamemnôn, Diomêdês, and Odysseus; so that the defence of the wall and of the ships is left only to heroes of the second magnitude (Ajax alone excepted), such as Idomeneus, Leonteus, Polypœtês, Merionês, Menelaus, etc. Now, it is remarkable that all these three first-rate chiefs are in full force at the beginning of the eleventh book: all three are wounded in the battle which that book describes, and at the commencement of which Agamemnôn is full of spirits and courage.

Nothing can be more striking than the manner in which Homer concentrates our attention in the first book upon Achilles as the hero, his quarrel with Agamemnôn, and the calamities to the Greeks which are held out as about to ensue from it, through the intercession of Thetis with Zeus. But the incidents dwelt upon from the beginning of the second book down to the combat between Hector and Ajax in the seventh, animated and interesting as they are, do nothing to realize this promise. They are a splendid picture of the Trojan war generally, and eminently suitable to that larger title under which the poem has been immortalized,—but the consequences of the anger of Achilles do not appear until the eighth book. The tenth book, or Doloneia, is also a portion of the Iliad, but not of the Achillêis: while the ninth book appears to me a subsequent addition, nowise harmonizing with that main stream of the Achillêis which flows from the eleventh book to the twenty-second. The eighth book ought to be read in immediate connection with the eleventh, in order to see the structure of what seems the primitive Achillêis; for there are several passages in the eleventh and the following books, which prove that the poet who composed them could not have had present to his mind the main event of the ninth book,—the outpouring of profound humiliation by the Greeks, and from Agamemnôn, especially, before Achilles, coupled with formal offers to restore Brisêis, and pay the amplest compensation for past wrong.[289] The words of Achilles (not less than those of Patroclus and Nestor) in the eleventh and in the following books, plainly imply that the humiliation of the Greeks before him, for which he thirsts, is as yet future and contingent; that no plenary apology has yet been tendered, nor any offer made of restoring Brisêis; while both Nestor and Patroclus, with all their wish to induce him to take arms, never take notice of the offered atonement and restitution, but view him as one whose ground for quarrel stands still the same as it did at the beginning. Moreover, if we look at the first book,—the opening of the Achillêis,—we shall see that this prostration of Agamemnôn and the chief Grecian heroes before Achilles, would really be the termination of the whole poem; for Achilles asks nothing more from Thetis, nor Thetis anything more from Zeus, than that Agamemnôn and the Greeks may be brought to know the wrong they have done to their capital warrior, and humbled in the dust in expiation of it. We may add, that the abject terror in which Agamemnôn appears in the ninth book, when he sends the supplicatory message to Achilles, as it is not adequately accounted for by the degree of calamity which the Greeks have experienced in the preceding (eighth) book, so it is inconsistent with the gallantry and high spirit with which he shines at the beginning of the eleventh.[290] The situation of the Greeks only becomes desperate when the three great chiefs, Agamemnôn, Odysseus, and Diomêdês, are disabled by wounds;[291] this is the irreparable calamity which works upon Patroclus, and through him upon Achilles. The ninth book, as it now stands, seems to me an addition, by a different hand, to the original Achillêis, framed so as both to forestall and to spoil the nineteenth book, which is the real reconciliation of the two inimical heroes: I will venture to add, that it carries the pride and egotism of Achilles beyond even the largest exigences of insulted honor, and is shocking to that sentiment of Nemesis which was so deeply seated in the Grecian mind. We forgive any excess of fury against the Trojans and Hector, after the death of Patroclus; but that he should remain unmoved by restitution, by abject supplications, and by the richest atoning presents, tendered from the Greeks, indicates an implacability such as neither the first book, nor the books between the eleventh and seventeenth, convey.

[289] Observe, for example, the following passages:—

1. Achilles, standing on the prow of his ship, sees the general
army of Greeks undergoing defeat by the Trojans, and also sees
Nestor conveying in his chariot a wounded warrior from the field.
He sends Patroclus to find out who the wounded man is: in calling
forth Patroclus, he says (xi. 607),—

Δῖε Μενοιτιάδη τῷ ᾽μῷ κεχαρισμένε θυμῷ,
Νῦν οἴω περὶ γούνατ᾽ ἐμὰ στήσεσθαι Ἀχαιοὺς
Λισσομένους· χρείω γὰρ ἱκάνεται οὔκετ᾽ ἀνεκτός.

Heyne, in his comment, asks the question, not unnaturally,
“Pœnituerat igitur asperitatis erga priorem legationem, an homo
arrogans expectaverat alteram ad se missam iri?” I answer,
neither one nor the other: the words imply that he had received
_no embassy_ at all. He is still the same Achilles who in the
first book paced alone by the seashore, devouring his own soul
under a sense of bitter affront, and praying to Thetis to aid
his revenge: this revenge is now about to be realized, and he
hails its approach with delight. But if we admit the embassy
of the ninth book to intervene, the passage becomes a glaring
inconsistency for that which Achilles anticipates as future,
and even yet as contingent, _had actually occurred_ on the
previous evening; the Greeks _had_ supplicated at his feet,—they
_had proclaimed_ their intolerable need,—and he had spurned
them. The Scholiast, in his explanation of these lines, after
giving the plain meaning, that “Achilles shows what he has long
been desiring, to see the Greeks in a state of supplication
to him,”—seems to recollect that this is in contradiction to
the ninth book, and tries to remove the contradiction, by
saying “that he had been previously mollified by conversation
with Phœnix,”—ἤδη δὲ προμαλαχθεὶς ἦν ἐκ τῶν Φοίνικος λόγων,—a
supposition neither countenanced by anything in the poet, nor
sufficient to remove the difficulty.

2. The speech of Poseidôn (xiii. 115) to encourage the dispirited
Grecian heroes, in which, after having admitted the injury done
to Achilles by Agamemnôn, he recommends an effort to heal the
sore, and intimates “that the minds of good men admit of this
healing process,” (Ἀλλ᾽ ἀκεώμεθα θᾶσσον· ἀκεσταί τε φρένες
ἐσθλῶν,) is certainly not very consistent with the supposition
that this attempt to heal _had been made_ in the best possible
way, and that Achilles had manifested a mind implacable in the
extreme on the evening before,—while the mind of Agamemnôn was
already brought to proclaimed humiliation, and needed no farther
healing.

3. And what shall we say to the language of Achilles and
Patroclus, at the beginning of the sixteenth book, just at the
moment when the danger has reached its maximum, and when Achilles
is about to send forth his friend?

Neither Nestor, when he invokes and instructs Patroclus as
intercessor with Achilles (xi. 654-790), nor Patroclus himself,
though in the extreme of anxiety to work upon the mind of
Achilles, and reproaching him with hardness of heart,—ever bring
to remembrance the ample atonement which had been tendered
to him; while Achilles himself repeats the original ground
of quarrel, the wrong offered to him in taking away Brisêis,
continuing the language of the first book; then, without the
least allusion to the atonement and restitution since tendered,
he yields to his friend’s proposition, just like a man whose
wrong remained unredressed, but who was, nevertheless, forced to
take arms by necessity (xvi. 60-63):—

Ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν προτετύχθαι ἐάσομεν, οὔδ᾽ ἄρα πως ἦν
Ἀσπερχὲς κεχολῶσθαι ἐνὶ φρεσίν· ἤτοι ἔφην γε
Οὐ πρὶν μηνιθμὸν καταπαύσεμεν, ἀλλ᾽ ὁπόταν δὴ
Νῆας ἐμὰς ἀφίκηται ἀϋτή τε πτόλεμός τε.

I agree with the Scholiast and Heyne in interpreting ἔφην γε
as equivalent to διενοήθην,—not as referring to any express
antecedent declaration.

Again, farther on in the same speech, “The Trojans (Achilles
says) now press boldly forward upon the ships, for they no longer
see the blaze of my helmet: but if Agamemnôn _were favorably
disposed towards me_, they would presently run away and fill the
ditches with their dead bodies” (71):—

... τάχα κεν φεύγοντες ἐναύλους
Πλήσειαν νεκύων, εἴ μοι κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων
Ἤπια εἰδείη· νῦν δὲ στράτον ἀμφιμάχονται.

Now here again, if we take our start from the first book,
omitting the ninth, the sentiment is perfectly just. But assume
the ninth book, and it becomes false and misplaced; for Agamemnôn
is then a prostrate and repentant man, not merely “favorably
disposed” towards Achilles, but offering to pay any price for the
purpose of appeasing him.

4. Again, a few lines farther, in the same speech, Achilles
permits Patroclus to go forth, in consideration of the extreme
peril of the fleet, but restricts him simply to avert this peril
and do nothing more: “Obey my words, so that you may procure _for
me honor_ and glory from _the body of Greeks_, and that they may
send back to me the damsel, giving me ample presents besides:
when you have driven the Trojans from the ships, come back
again”:—

Ὡς ἄν μοι τιμὴν μεγάλην καὶ κῦδος ἄροιο
Πρὸς πάντων Δαναῶν· ἀτὰρ οἳ περικαλλέα κούρην
Ἄψ ἀπονάσσωσι, προτὶ δ᾽ ἀγλαὰ δῶρα πόρωσιν·
Ἐκ νηῶν ἐλάσας, ἰέναι πάλιν (84-87).