Chapter XXI: Grecian Epic.—homeric Poems (5)

[310] Subsequent poets, seemingly thinking that the naked story,
(of Diomêdês slaughtering Rhêsus and his companions in their
sleep,) as it now stands in the Iliad, was too displeasing,
adopted different ways of dressing it up. Thus, according to
Pindar (ap. Schol. Iliad. x. 435), Rhêsus fought one day as the
ally of Troy, and did such terrific damage, that the Greeks
had no other means of averting total destruction from his hand
on the next day, except by killing him during the night. And
the Euripidean drama, called _Rhêsus_, though representing the
latter as a new-comer, yet puts into the mouth of Athênê the like
overwhelming predictions of what he would do on the coming day,
if suffered to live; so that to kill him in the night is the only
way of saving the Greeks (Eurip. Rhês. 602): moreover, Rhêsus
himself is there brought forward as talking with such overweening
insolence, that the sympathies of man, and the envy of the gods,
are turned against him (_ib._ 458).

But the story is best known in the form and with the addition
(equally unknown to the Iliad) which Virgil has adopted. It was
decreed by fate that, if the splendid horses of Rhêsus were
permitted once either to taste the Trojan provender, or to drink
of the river Xanthus, nothing could preserve the Greeks from ruin
(Æneid, i. 468, with Servius, _ad loc._):—

“Nec procul hinc Rhesi niveis tentoria velis
Agnoscit lacrymans: primo quæ prodita somno
Tydides multâ vastabat cæde cruentus:
Ardentesque avertit equos in castra, priusquam
Pabula gustassent Trojæ, Xanthumque bibissent.”

All these versions are certainly improvements upon the story as
it stands in the Iliad.

While intimating these views respecting the authorship of the Iliad, as being in my judgment the most probable, I must repeat that, though the study of the poem carries to my mind a sufficient conviction respecting its structure, the question between unity and plurality of authors is essentially less determinable. The poem consists of a part original, and other parts superadded; yet it is certainly not impossible that the author of the former may himself have composed the latter; and such would be my belief if I regarded plurality of composers as an inadmissible idea. On this supposition, we must conclude that the poet, while anxious for the addition of new, and for the most part, highly interesting matter, has not thought fit to recast the parts and events in such manner as to impart to the whole a pervading thread of _consensus_ and organization, such as we see in the Odyssey.

That the Odyssey is of later date than the Iliad, and by a different author, seems to be now the opinion of most critics, especially of Payne Knight[311] and Nitzsch; though O. Müller leans to a contrary conclusion, at the same time adding that he thinks the arguments either way not very decisive. There are considerable differences of statement in the two poems in regard to some of the gods: Iris is messenger of the gods in the Iliad, and Hermês in the Odyssey: Æolus, the dispenser of the winds in the Odyssey, is not noticed in the twenty-third book of the Iliad, but, on the contrary, Iris invites the winds, as independent gods, to come and kindle the funeral pile of Patroclus; and, unless we are to expunge the song of Demodokus in the eighth book of the Odyssey as spurious, Aphroditê there appears as the wife of Hêphæstus,—a relationship not known to the Iliad. There are also some other points of difference enumerated by Mr. Knight and others, which tend to justify the presumption that the author of the Odyssey is not identical either with the author of the Achillêis or his enlargers, which G. Hermann considers to be a point unquestionable.[312] Indeed, the difficulty of supposing a long coherent poem to have been conceived, composed, and retained, without any aid of writing, appears to many critics even now, insurmountable, though the evidences on the other side, are, in my view, sufficient to outweigh any negative presumption thus suggested. But it is improbable that the same person should have powers of memorial combination sufficient for composing two such poems, nor is there any proof to force upon us such a supposition.

[311] Mr. Knight places the Iliad about two centuries, and the
Odyssey one century, anterior to Hesiod: a century between the
two poems (Prolegg. c. lxi.)

[312] Hermann, Præfat. ad Odyss. p. vii.

Presuming a difference of authorship between the two poems, I feel less convinced about the supposed juniority of the Odyssey. The discrepancies in manners and language in the one and the other, are so little important, that two different persons, in the same age and society, might well be imagined to exhibit as great or even greater. It is to be recollected that the subjects of the two are heterogeneous, so as to conduct the poet, even were he the same man, into totally different veins of imagination and illustration. The pictures of the Odyssey seem to delineate the same heroic life as the Iliad, though looked at from a distinct point of view: and the circumstances surrounding the residence of Odysseus, in Ithaka, are just such as we may suppose him to have left in order to attack Troy. If the scenes presented to us are for the most part pacific, as contrasted with the incessant fighting of the Iliad, this is not to be ascribed to any greater sociality or civilization in the real hearers of the Odyssey, but to the circumstances of the hero whom the poet undertakes to adorn: nor can we doubt that the poems of Arktinus and Leschês, of a later date than the Odyssey, would have given us as much combat and bloodshed as the Iliad. I am not struck by those proofs of improved civilization which some critics affirm the Odyssey to present: Mr. Knight, who is of this opinion, nevertheless admits that the mutilation of Melanthius, and the hanging up of the female slaves by Odysseus, in that poem, indicate greater barbarity than any incidents in the fights before Troy.[313] The more skilful and compact structure of the Odyssey, has been often considered as a proof of its juniority in age: and in the case of two poems by the same author, we might plausibly contend that practice would bring with it improvement in the combining faculty. But in reference to the poems before us, we must recollect, first, that in all probability the Iliad (with which the comparison is taken) is not a primitive but an enlarged poem, and that the primitive Achillêis might well have been quite as coherent as the Odyssey; secondly, that between different authors, superiority in structure is not a proof of subsequent composition, inasmuch as, on that hypothesis, we should be compelled to admit that the later poem of Arktinus would be an improvement upon the Odyssey; thirdly, that, even if it were so, we could only infer that the author of the Odyssey had _heard_ the Achillêis or the Iliad; we could not infer that he lived one or two generations afterwards.[314]

[313] Knight, Prolegg. 1, c. Odyss. xxii. 465-478.

[314] The arguments, upon the faith of which Payne Knight and
other critics have maintained the Odyssey to be younger than the
Iliad, are well stated and examined in Bernard Thiersch,—Quæstio
de Diversâ Iliadis et Odysseæ Ætate,—in the Anhang (p. 306) to
his work Ueber das Zeitalter und Vaterland des Homer.

He shows all such arguments to be very inconclusive; though the
grounds upon which he himself maintains identity of age between
the two appear to me not at all more satisfactory (p. 327): we
can infer nothing to the point from the mention of Telemachus in
the Iliad.

Welcker thinks that there is a great difference of age, and an
evident difference of authorship, between the two poems (Der
Episch. Cyclus, p. 295).

O. Müller admits the more recent date of the Odyssey, but
considers it “difficult and hazardous to raise upon this
foundation any definite conclusions as to the person and age of
the poet.” (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. v.
s. 13.)

On the whole, the balance of probabilities seems in favor of distinct authorship for the two poems, but the same age,—and that age a very early one, anterior to the first Olympiad. And they may thus be used as evidences, and contemporary evidences, for the phenomena of primitive Greek civilization; while they also show that the power of constructing long premeditated epics, without the aid of writing, is to be taken as a characteristic of the earliest known Greek mind. This was the point controverted by Wolf, which a full review of the case (in my judgment) decides against him: it is, moreover, a valuable result for the historian of the Greeks, inasmuch as it marks out to him the ground from which he is to start in appreciating their ulterior progress.[315]

[315] Dr. Thirlwall has added to the second edition of his
History of Greece a valuable Appendix, on the early history
of the Homeric poems (vol. i. pp. 500-516); which contains
copious information respecting the discrepant opinions of German
critics, with a brief comparative examination of their reasons.
I could have wished that so excellent a judge had superadded,
to his enumeration of the views of others, an ampler exposition
of his own. Dr. Thirlwall seems decidedly convinced upon that
which appears to me the most important point in the Homeric
controversy: “That before the appearance of the earliest of the
poems of the Epic Cycle, the Iliad and Odyssey, even if they did
not exist precisely in their present form, had at least reached
their present compass, and were regarded each as a complete and
well-defined whole, not as a fluctuating aggregate of fugitive
pieces.” (p. 509.)

This marks out the Homeric poems as ancient both in the items
and in the total, and includes negation of the theory of Wolf
and Lachmann, who contend that, as a total, they only date from
the age of Peisistratus. It is then safe to treat the poems as
unquestionable evidences of Grecian antiquity (meaning thereby
776 B. C.), which we could not do if we regarded all congruity
of parts in the poems as brought about through alterations of
Peisistratus and his friends.

There is also a very just admonition of Dr. Thirlwall (p. 516)
as to the difficulty of measuring what degree of discrepancy or
inaccuracy might or might not have escaped the poet’s attention,
in an age so imperfectly known to us.

Whatever there may be of truth in the different conjectures of critics respecting the authorship and structure of these unrivalled poems, we are not to imagine that it is the perfection of their epical symmetry which has given them their indissoluble hold upon the human mind, as well modern as ancient. There is some tendency in critics, from Aristotle downwards,[316] to invert the order of attributes in respect to the Homeric poems, so as to dwell most on recondite excellences which escape the unaided reader, and which are even to a great degree disputable. But it is given to few minds (as Goethe has remarked[317]) to appreciate fully the mechanism of a long poem; and many feel the beauty of the separate parts, who have no sentiment for the aggregate perfection of the whole.

[316] There are just remarks on this point in Heyne’s Excursus,
ii. sect. 2 and 4, ad Il. xxiv. vol. viii. pp. 771-800.

[317] “Wenig Deutsche, und vielleicht nur wenige Menschen aller
_neuern_ Nationen, haben Gefühl für ein æsthetisches Ganzes:
sie loben und tadeln nur stellenweise, sie entzücken sich nur
stellenweise.” (Goethe, Wilhelm Meister: I transcribe this from
Welcker’s Æschyl. Trilogie, p. 306.)

What ground there is for restricting this proposition to _modern_
as contrasted with _ancient_ nations, I am unable to conceive.

Nor were the Homeric poems originally addressed to minds of the rarer stamp. They are intended for those feelings which the critic has in common with the unlettered mass, not for that enlarged range of vision and peculiar standard which he has acquired to himself. They are of all poems the most absolutely and unreservedly popular: had they been otherwise, they could not have lived so long in the mouth of the rhapsodes, and the ear and memory of the people: and it was _then_ that their influence was first acquired, never afterwards to be shaken. Their beauties belong to the parts taken separately, which revealed themselves spontaneously to the listening crowd at the festival,—far more than to the whole poem taken together, which could hardly be appreciated unless the parts were dwelt upon and suffered to expand in the mind. The most unlettered hearer of those times could readily seize, while the most instructed reader can still recognize, the characteristic excellence of Homeric narrative,—its straightforward, unconscious, unstudied simplicity,—its concrete forms of speech [318] and happy alternation of action with dialogue,—its vivid pictures of living agents, always clearly and sharply individualized, whether in the commanding proportions of Achilles and Odysseus, in the graceful presence of Helen and Penelope, or in the more humble contrast of Eumæus and Melanthius; and always, moreover, animated by the frankness with which his heroes give utterance to all their transient emotions and even all their infirmities,—its constant reference to those coarser veins of feeling and palpable motives which belong to all men in common,—its fulness of graphic details, freshly drawn from the visible and audible world, and though often homely, never tame, nor trenching upon that limit of satiety to which the Greek mind was so keenly alive,—lastly, its perpetual junction of gods and men in the same picture, and familiar appeal to ever-present divine agency, in harmony with the interpretation of nature at that time universal.

[318] The κινούμενα ὀνόματα of Homer were extolled by Aristotle;
see Schol. ad Iliad. i. 481; compare Dionys. Halicarn. De Compos.
Verbor. c. 20. ὥστε μηδὲν ἡμῖν διαφέρειν γινόμενα τὰ πράγματα ἢ
λεγόμενα ὁρᾶν. Respecting the undisguised bursts of feeling by
the heroes, the Scholiast ad Iliad, i. 349 tells us,—ἕτοιμον τὸ
ἡπωϊκον πρὸς δάκρυα,—compare Euripid. Helen. 959, and the severe
censures of Plato, Republ. ii. p. 388.

The Homeric poems were the best understood, and the most widely
popular of all Grecian composition, even among the least
instructed persons, such (for example) as the semibarbarians who
had acquired the Greek language in addition to their own mother
tongue. (Dio Chrysost. Or. xviii. vol. i. p. 478; Or. liii. vol.
ii. p. 277, Reisk.) Respecting the simplicity and perspicuity
of the narrative style, implied in this extensive popularity,
Porphyry made a singular remark: he said, that the sentences
of Homer _really_ presented much difficulty and obscurity, but
that ordinary readers fancied they understood him, “because
of the general clearness _which appeared_ to run through the
poems.” (See the Prolegomena of Villoison’s edition of the
Iliad, p. xli.) This remark affords the key to a good deal of
the Homeric criticism. There doubtless were real obscurities in
the poems, arising from altered associations, customs, religion,
language, etc., as well as from corrupt text; but while the
critics did good service in elucidating these difficulties,
they also introduced artificially many others, altogether of
their own creating. Refusing to be satisfied with the plain and
obvious meaning, they sought in Homer hidden purposes, elaborate
innuendo, recondite motives even with regard to petty details,
deep-laid rhetorical artifices (see a specimen in Dionys. Hal.
Ars Rhetor. c. 15, p. 316, Reiske; nor is even Aristotle exempt
from similar tendencies, Schol. ad Iliad. iii. 441, x. 198), or
a substratum of philosophy allegorized. No wonder that passages,
quite perspicuous to the vulgar reader, seemed difficult to them.

There could not be so sure a way of missing the real Homer as by
searching for him in these devious recesses. He is essentially
the poet of the broad highway and the market-place, touching
the common sympathies and satisfying the mental appetencies of
his countrymen with unrivalled effect; but exempt from ulterior
views, either selfish or didactic, and immersed in the same
medium of practical life and experience, religiously construed,
as his auditors. No nation has ever yet had so perfect and
touching an exposition of its early social mind as the Iliad and
Odyssey exhibit.

In the verbal criticism of Homer, the Alexandrine literati
seem to have made a very great advance, as compared with the
glossographers who preceded them. (See Lehrs, De Studiis
Aristarchi, Dissert. ii. p. 42.)

It is undoubtedly easier to feel than to describe the impressive influence of Homeric narrative: but the time and circumstances under which that influence was first, and most powerfully felt, preclude the possibility of explaining it by comprehensive and elaborate comparisons, such as are implied in Aristotle’s remarks upon the structure of the poems. The critic who seeks the explanation in the right place will not depart widely from the point of view of those rude auditors to whom the poems were originally addressed, or from the susceptibilities and capacities common to the human bosom in every stage of progressive culture. And though the refinements and delicacies of the poems, as well as their general structure, are a subject of highly interesting criticism,—yet it is not to these that Homer owes his wide-spread and imperishable popularity. Still less is it true, as the well-known observations of Horace would lead us to believe, that Homer is a teacher of ethical wisdom akin and superior to Chrysippus or Crantor.[319] No didactic purpose is to be found in the Iliad and Odyssey; a philosopher may doubtless extract, from the incidents and strongly marked characters which it contains, much illustrative matter for his exhortations,—but the ethical doctrine which he applies must emanate from his own reflection. The Homeric hero manifests virtues or infirmities, fierceness or compassion, with the same straightforward and simple-minded vivacity, unconscious of any ideal standard by which his conduct is to be tried;[320] nor can we trace in the poet any ulterior function beyond that of the inspired organ of the Muse, and the nameless, but eloquent, herald of lost adventures out of the darkness of the past.

[319] Horat. Epist. i. 2, v. 1-26:—

“Sirenum voces, et Circes pocula nosti:
Quæ si cum sociis stultus cupidusque bibisset,
Vixisset canis immundus, vel amica luto sus.”

Horace contrasts the folly and greediness of the companions of
Ulysses, in accepting the refreshments tendered to them by Circe,
with the self-command of Ulysses himself in refusing them. But
in the incident as described in the original poem, neither the
praise nor the blame, here implied, finds any countenance. The
companions of Ulysses follow the universal practice in accepting
hospitality tendered to strangers, the fatal consequences of
which, in their particular case, they could have no ground for
suspecting; while Ulysses is preserved from a similar fate, not
by any self-command of his own, but by a previous divine warning
and a special antidote, which had not been vouchsafed to the rest
(see Odyss. x. 285). And the incident of the Sirens, if it is to
be taken as evidence of anything, indicates rather the absence,
than the presence, of self-command on the part of Ulysses.

Of the violent mutations of text, whereby the _Grammatici_ or
critics tried to efface from Homer bad ethical tendencies (we
must remember that many of these men were lecturers to youth),
a remarkable specimen is afforded by Venet. Schol. ad Iliad.
ix. 453; compare Plutarch, de Audiendis Poetis, p. 95. Phœnix
describes the calamitous family tragedy in which he himself had
been partly the agent, partly the victim. Now that an Homeric
hero should confess guilty proceedings, and still more guilty
designs, without any expression of shame or contrition, was
insupportable to the feelings of the critics. One of them,
Aristodemus, thrust two negative particles into one of the
lines; and though he thereby ruined not only the sense but the
metre, his emendation procured for him universal applause,
because he had maintained the innocence of the hero (καὶ οὐ μόνον
ηὐδοκίμησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐτιμήθη, ὡς εὐσεβῆ τηρήσας τὸν ἥρωα). And
Aristarchus thought the case so alarming, that he struck out
from the text four lines, which have only been preserved to us
by Plutarch (Ὁ μὲν Ἀρίσταρχος ἔξειλε τὰ ἔπη ταῦτα, ~φοβηθείς~).
See the Fragment of Dioscorides (περὶ τῶν παρ᾽ Ὁμήρῳ Νόμων) in
Didot’s Fragmenta Historicor. Græcor. vol. ii. p. 193.

[320] “C’est un tableau idéal, à coup sûr, que celui de la
société Grecque dans les chants qui portent le nom d’Homère: et
pourtant cette société y est toute entière reproduite, avec la
rusticité, la férocité de ses mœurs, ses bonnes et ses mauvaises
passions, sans dessein de faire particulièrement ressortir, de
célébrer tel ou tel de ses mérites, de ses avantages, ou de
laisser dans l’ombre ses vices et ses maux. Ce mélange du bien
et du mal, du fort et du faible,—cette simultanéité d’idées
et de sentimens en apparence contraires,—cette variété, cette
incohérence, ce développement inégal de la nature et de la
destinée humaine,—c’est précisément là ce qu’il y a de plus
poétique, car c’est le fond même des choses, c’est la vérité sur
l’homme et le monde: et dans les peintures idéales qu’en veulent
faire la poésie, le roman et même l’histoire, cet ensemble, si
divers et pourtant si harmonieux, doit se retrouver: sans quoi
l’idéal véritable y manque aussi bien que la réalité.” (Guizot,
Cours d’Histoire Moderne; Leçon 7me, vol. i. p. 285.)

HISTORY OF GREECE.