Chapter I: Part 1

STUDIES ON HOMER
AND
THE HOMERIC AGE.

BY THE
RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L.
M. P. FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.

Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore.--HORACE.

OXFORD:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
M.DCCC.LVIII.

[_The right of Translation is reserved._]

STUDIES ON HOMER
AND
THE HOMERIC AGE.

I. AGORÈ:
POLITIES OF THE HOMERIC AGE.

II. ILIOS:
TROJANS AND GREEKS COMPARED.

III. THALASSA:
THE OUTER GEOGRAPHY.

IV. AOIDOS:
SOME POINTS OF THE POETRY OF HOMER.

BY THE
RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L.
M.P. FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore.--HORACE.

OXFORD:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
M.DCCC.LVIII.

[_The right of Translation is reserved._]

ADVERTISEMENT.

Since the Sections which relate to Ethnology passed through the Press, the First Volume of Mr. Rawlinson’s Herodotus has appeared. Earlier possession of this important Publication would have emboldened me to proceed a step further in the attempt to specify the probable or possible form of the original Ethnic relation between the Pelasgians and the Hellenes of the Greek Peninsula, but designating the latter as pure Arian, and the former as Arian, with a residue or mixture of Turanian elements.

It has also been since the ‘Olympus’ was printed, that I have become acquainted with Welcker’s recent and unfinished ‘_Griechische Götterlehre_,’ (Göttingen, 1857.) I could have wished to refer to it at various points, and especially to avail myself of the clearer view, which the learned Author has given, of the position of Κρόνος.

Founding himself in part on the exclusive appropriation by Homer of the term Κρονίδης to Jupiter, he enables us to see how Jupiter may have inherited the sole use of the title as being ‘the Ancient of days;’ and how Κρόνος was a formation in the Mythology wholly secondary and posterior to his reputed son. (Welcker, sectt. 27, 8. pp. 140-7.)

Another recent book, M. Alfred Maury’s _Histoire des Religions de la Grèce Antique_, undertakes the useful task of unfolding largely the relations of the Greek religion to the East. But the division of it which deals with Homer specifically is neither complete nor accurate, and affords a new illustration of the proposition which I chiefly desire to establish, namely, that Homer ought to be treated as a separate and independent centre of study.

11, CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE, LONDON,
March 15, 1858.

THE CONTENTS.

I. AGORÈ:
OR
THE POLITIES OF THE HOMERIC AGE.

Political ideas of later Greece Page 1
Their strong development in Heroic Greece 2
Germ of the Law of Nations 4
Grote’s account of the Heroic Polities 5
Their peculiar features, Publicity and Persuasion 6
Functions of the king in the Heroic Polities 8
Nature of the Pelopid Empire 9
Degrees in Kingship and in Lordship 10
Four forms of Sovereignty 12
First tokens of change in the Heroic Polities 12
Shown by analysis of the Catalogue 14
Extended signs in the Odyssey 17
Altered sense of Βασιλεὺς or King 18
New name of Queen 20
Disorganization caused by the War 21
Arrival of a new race at manhood 22
Increased weight of the nobles 24
Altered idea of the kingly office 25
The first instance of a bad King 27
Further change in the time of Hesiod 28
Veneration long adhering to the name 31
Five distinctive notes of Βασιλῆες in the Iliad 32
The nine Greek Βασιλῆες of the Iliad 35
The case of Meges 36
Of Phœnix 37
Of Patroclus and Eurypylus 38
Conditions of Kingship in the Iliad 39
The personal beauty of the Kings 40
Custom of resignation in old age 40
Force of the term αἴζηος 41
Gymnastic superiority of the Kings 44
Their pursuit of Music and Song 45
Ulysses as artificer and husbandman 46
The Kings as Gentlemen 47
Achilles in particular 48
Tenderness and tears of the Greek chiefs 49
Right of hereditary succession 50
Right of primogeniture 52
The Homeric King (1) as Priest 55
(2) as Judge 56
(3) as General 57
(4) as Proprietor: the τέμενος 58
His revenues, from four sources in all 59
Burdens upon them 61
The political position of Agamemnon 62
The governing motives of the War 64
Position of Agamemnon in the army 66
His personal character 67
The relation of sovereign and subject a free one 67
The personal attendants of the King 69
The Aristocracy or chief proprietors 69
The Trades and Professions 70
The Slaves of the Homeric age 72
The θῆτες or hired servants 74
Supply of military service 75
Whether there was a peasant-proprietary 77
Political Economy of the Homeric age 78
The precious metals not a measure of value 81
Oxen in some degree a measure of value 82
Relative scarcity of certain metals 84
Mode of government of the Army 85
Its military composition 88
Chief descriptions of fighting men 91
The Battle and the Ambuscade 92
The Βουλὴ or Council of the Greeks 94
It subsisted in peace and in war 97
Opposition in the Βουλὴ 98
Agamemnon’s proposals of Return 99
The influence of Speech in the Heroic age 102
It was a subject of regular training 103
Varied descriptions of oratory in Homer 104
Achilles the paramount Orator 105
The orations of the poems 106
The power of repartee 108
The power of sarcasm 109
The faculty of debate in Homer 111
The discussion of the Ninth Iliad 111
Function of the Assembly in the Heroic age 114
The formal use of majorities unknown 116
The great decisions of the War taken there 117
It was not summoned exclusively by Agamemnon 118
Opposition in the Agorè by the chiefs 119
Opposition by Thersites 120
Grote’s judgment on the case of Thersites 123
How that case bears witness to the popular principle 126
As does the Agorè on the Shield 126
Mode of addressing the Assembly 129
Its decisions in the Seventh and Ninth Iliads 129
Division in the Drunken Assembly 130
Appeal of Telemachus to the Ithacan Assembly 132
Phæacian Assembly of the Eighth Odyssey 134
Ithacan Assembly of the Twenty-fourth 136
Councils or Assemblies of Olympus 137
Judicial functions of the Assembly 139
Assembly the central point of the Polity 140
The common soul or Τὶς in Homer 141
Imperfect organization of Heroic Polities 143

II. ILIOS.
THE TROJANS COMPARED AND CONTRASTED WITH THE GREEKS.
Relationship of Troy and Greece twofold 145
Greek names of deities found also in Troas 147
Include nearly all the greater deities 150
Worship of Vulcan in Troas 151
Worship of Juno and Gaia in Troas 153
Worship of Mercury in Troas 154
Worship of Scamander 155
Different view of Rivers in Troas 158
Essential character of Trojan River-worship 160
Trojan impersonations from Nature rare 162
Poverty of Mythology among the Trojans 165
Their jejune doctrine of a Future State 166
Redundance of life in the Greek system 168
Worship from hills 169
The nations compared as to external development of religion.--
1. Temples 170
2. As to endowments in land, or τεμένεα 172
3. As to Groves’ ἄλσεα 173
4. As to Statues of the Gods 174
5. As to Seers or Diviners 177
6. As to the Priesthood: Priesthood in Greece 179
Priesthood in later Greece 183
Priesthood among the Trojans 184
Comparative observance of sacrifice 187
The Trojans more given to religious observances 189
Homer’s different modes of handling for Greece and Troy 190
Moral superiority of his Greeks on the whole 192
Homer’s account of the abduction of Helen 193
The Greek estimate of Paris 197
Its relation to prevailing views of Marriage 200
And to Greek views of Homicide 202
The Trojan estimate of Paris 205
Public opinion less developed in Troy 206
The Trojans more sensual and false 207
Trojan ideas and usages of Marriage 210
The family of Priam 211
Stricter ideas among the Greeks 215
Trojan Polity less highly organized 216
Rule of Succession in Troy 217
Succession to the throne of Priam 219
Paris, most probably, was his eldest son 221
Position of Priam and his dynasty in Troas 223
Meaning of Τροίη and of Ἴλιος 224
Evidence from the Trojan Catalogue 225
Extent of his sovereignty and supremacy 228
Polity of Ilios: the Βασιλεύς 232
The Assembly 232
The greater weight of Age in Troy 234
The absence of a Βουλὴ in Troy 236
The greater weight of oratory in Greece 239
Trojans less gifted with self-command 242
And with intelligence generally 244
Difference in the pursuits of high-born youth 245
Difference as to αἰδὼς 246
Summary of differences 247

III. THALASSA.
THE OUTER GEOGRAPHY OF THE ODYSSEY.
Why it deserves investigation 249
Principal heads of the inquiry 251
The two Spheres of Inner and Outer Geography 252
Limits of the Inner Geography 255
The intermediate or doubtful zone 257
The Sphere of the Outer Geography 260
The two Keys of the Outer Geography 261
The traditional interpretations valueless 262
Manifest dislocations of actual nature 263
Postulates for examining the Outer Geography 264
The Winds of Homer 265
Special notices of Eurus and Notus 267
Of Zephyr and Boreas 268
Points of the Compass for the two last 270
For the two first 272
Scheme of the four Winds 273
Signification of Eurus 273
Homeric distances and rates of speed 275
Particulars of evidence on speed 277
The northward sea-route to the Euxine 280
Evidence from Il. xiii. 1-6 281
From Od. vii. 319-26 282
From Od. v. 44-57 283
From Od. xxiv. 11-13 285
Amalgamated reports of the Ocean-mouth 287
Open-sea passage to the Ocean-mouth 289
Homeward passage by the Straits, why preferred 290
Three maritime routes to the Ocean-mouth 291
Its two possible originals in nature 292
Straits of Yenikalè as Ocean-mouth 294
Summary of facts from Phœnician reports 295
Two sets of reports are blended into one 296
The site of Ææa; North-western hypothesis 298
North-eastern hypothesis 300
Argument from the Πλαγκταὶ 302
From the Island Thrinacie 302
Local notes of Ææa 303
Site of Ogygia 304
Argument from the flight of Mercury 305
From the floatage of Ulysses 306
From his homeward passage 308
Site of Scylla relatively to the Dardanelles 309
Why Ææa cannot lie North-westward 311
Construction of Od. xii. 3, 4 312
Construction of Od. v. 276, 7 315
Genuineness of the passage questionable 316
Its real meaning 317
Homer’s indications of geographical misgivings 318
Stages of the tour of Ulysses to Ææa (i-vi.) 320
Ææa and the Euxine (vi-viii.) 325
Remaining stages (viii-xi.) 327
Directions and distances from Ææa onwards 329
Tours of Menelaus and Ulysses compared 331
The earth of Homer probably oval 334
Points of contact with Oceanus 337
The Caspian and Persian Gulf belong to Oceanus 338
Contraction and compression of the Homeric East 340
Outline of Homer’s terrestrial system 342
Map of Earth according to Homer 343

EXCURSUS I.
_Parentage and Extraction of Minos._
On the genuineness of Il. xiv. 317-27 344
On the sense of the line Il. xiv. 321 346
Collateral testimony to the extraction of Minos 347

EXCURSUS II.
_On the line Odyss. v. 277._
Points of the question stated 349
Senses of δεξιὸς and ἀριστερὸς 350
Illustrated from Il. xiii 352
On the force of the Homeric ἐπὶ 354
Force of ἐπὶ with ἀριστερὰ 356
Illustrated from Il. ii. 353. Od. xxi. 141 358
From Il. i. 597. vii. 238. xii. 239, 249 359
From Il. xxiii. 335-7 360
From Il. ii. 526 362
Application to Od. v. 277 364
Another sense prevailed in later Greek 365

IV. AOIDOS.
SECT. I.
_On the Plot of the Iliad._
The Theory of Grote on the structure of the poem 366
Offer related in the Ninth Book and its rejection 369
Restitution and gifts not the object of Achilles 371
The offer was radically defective 373
Apology needed in particular 375
Consistency maintained in and after Il. ix 377
Skilful adjustment of conflicting aims 379
Glory given to Achilles 380
Glory given to Greece 380
Trojan inferiority mainly in the Chiefs 382
But it pervades the poem 384
In the Chiefs it is glaring 385
Conflicting exigencies of the plan 387
Greeks superior even without Achilles 388
Harmony in relative prominence of the Chiefs 389
Retributive justice in the two poems 392
The sufferings of Achilles 394
Double conquest over his will 395

SECT. II.
_The Sense of Beauty in Homer: human, animal, and inanimate._
His sense of Beauty alike pure and strong 397
Degeneracy of the popular idea had begun 398
Illustrated by the series of Dardanid traditions, (1) Ganymede 398
(2) Tithonus, (3) Anchises 400
(4) Paris and Venus 401
Homer’s sense of Beauty in the human form 402
His treatment of the Beauty of Paris 402
Beauty among the Greek chieftains 404
Ascribed also to the nation 405
Beauty of Nireus 406
Of Nastes and of Euphorbus 407
Beauty placed among the prime gifts of man 408
Homer’s sense of Beauty in animals 409
Especially in horses 410
As to their movements 411
As to their form and colour 413
Homer’s sense of Beauty in inanimate nature 416
The instance of Ithaca 417
Germ of feeling for the picturesque in Homer 419
Close relation of Order and Beauty 420
Causes adverse to the development of the germ 421
Beauty of material objects absorbed in their Life 423

SECT. III.
_Homer’s perception and use of Number._
The traditional character of aptitudes 425
Conceptions of Number not always definite in childhood 427
Nor even in manhood 428
No calculations in Homer 430
Greek estimate of the discovery of Number 431
Enumerative addition in Od. iv. 412, 451 432
Highest numerals of the poems 432
The three hundred and sixty fat hogs 434
The Homeric ἑκατομβὴ 435
The numerals expressive of value 436
His silence as to the numbers of the armies 439
Especially in the Greek Catalogue 440
Case of the Trojan bivouac 442
Case of the herds and flocks in Od. xiv. 443
Hesiod’s age of the Nymphs 444
Case of the cities of Crete 445
No scheme of chronology in Homer 446
Case of the three Decades of years 448
Meaning of the γενεὴ of Homer 449
Homer reckons time by generations 451
Some difficulties of the Decades taken literally 452
Uses of the proposed interpretation 455

SECT. IV.
_Homer’s Perceptions and Use of Colour._
Modern perceptions of colour usually definite 457
Signs of immature perception in Homer 458
His chief adjectives of colour 459
His quasi-adjectives of colour 460
Applications of ξανθὸς, ἐρυθρὸς, πορφύρεος 460
Of κύανος and κυάνεος 462
Of φοίνιξ 465
Of πόλιος 466
The quasi-adjectives of colour; χλωρὸς 467
The αἰθαλόεις of Homer 468
The ῥοδόεις and ῥοδοδάκτυλος 469
The ἰόεις, ἰοειδὴς, ἰοδνεφὴς 470
The οἴνοψ and μιλτοπάρηος 472
Αἴθων and its cognates; also ἀργὸς, αἴολος 473
Γλαυκὸς, γλαυκῶπις, γλαυκιόων 474
Χάροπος, σιγαλόεις, μαρμάρεος, ἠεροειδὴς 475
Conflict of the colours assigned to the same object 475
Great predominance of white and black 476
Remarkable omissions to specify colour 477
In the case of the horse among others 479
In the case of human beauty, and of Iris 482
In the case of the heavens 483
Causes of this peculiar treatment of colour 483
License of poetry in the matter of colour 484
Illustrated from Shakespeare 485
Homer’s contracted means of training in colour 487
His system one of light and dark 488
Colour in the later Greek language 491
Greek philosophy of colour 493
Nature of our advantage over Homer 495

_Note on κύανος and χαλκός._
Meanings for κύανος heretofore suggested 496
Probably a native blue carbonate of copper 497
Χαλκὸς to be understood as hardened copper 499

SECT. V.
_Homer and some of his successors in Epic Poetry; particularly
Virgil and Tasso._
Milton’s place among Epic poets 500
Difficulty of comparing him with Homer 501
The same as to Dante 501
Æneid and Iliad; their resemblances and contrasts 502
Contrast between form and spirit in the Æneid 503
Catalogue in the Iliad and in the Æneid 504
Character of Æneas in the Æneid 505
Character of Æneas in the Iliad 507
The fine character of Turnus 508
The false position of Virgil before Augustus 509
Difficulty of learning the poet from the poem 510
His false position as to religion, liberty, and nationality 511
Untruthfulness hence resulting 512
Homer is misapprehended through Virgil 513
In minor matters, e. g. Simois and Scamander 513
Νεκυΐα of Homer and of Virgil 515
Ethnological and genealogical dislocations 516
Action of the Twelfth Æneid 520
Unfaithful imitations of details 521
Maltreatment of the Homeric characters 522
And of the Homeric Mythology and Ethics 523
Æneas and Dido in the Shades beneath 525
The woman characters of Homer and Virgil 527
Virgil’s insufficient care of minor proprieties 528
And of the order of natural phenomena 529
Use of exaggeration in Homer and in Virgil 530
Contrast of principal aims respectively 531
Character of the Bard; not found in Virgil 532
Post-Homeric change in the idea of the Poet’s office 533
Virgil’s poetical disadvantages 534
Comparison of the Trojan War with the Crusades 535
Rinaldo and Achilles 535
Exaggerations of bulk in Homer and in Tasso 536
Mr. Hallam’s judgment on the Jerusalem 537
Tasso’s poetical disadvantages 538
The man Achilles in relation to the Iliad 539
Liberation of the Sepulchre in relation to the _Gerusalemme_ 540
Intrusion of incongruous elements 542
Relative prominence of Tancredi and Rinaldo 543
The Woman-characters of Tasso 544
The Armida of Tasso 545
Her resemblances and inferiority to Dido 546
Her passion ill-sustained 546
Obtrusiveness of the amatory element 548
The Affront of Gernando 549
Difference in modes of describing personages 551
Battles and Similes of Tasso 552
Inferiority of the Return in the _Gerusalemme_ 553
Tasso’s greatness except as compared with Homer 554

SECT. VI.
_Some principal Homeric Characters in Troy.
Hector: Helen: Paris._
Homer’s character-drawing power 555
Corruption of the later tradition 556
Why specially destructive in his case 557
Mure’s treatment of the Homeric characters 558
The character of Hector set off with generalities 558
It became the basis for that of Orlando 559
The martial heroism of Hector second-rate 559
His boastfulness his only moral fault 561
Hectoring and Rodomontading 562
Hector’s sense of the guilt and shame of Paris 563
His responsibilities beyond his strength 565
Brightness of his character as to the affections 567
His piety, gentleness, and equity 568
Inequality of his character as a whole 569
Apparent reason for it 569
Opposite views of the character of Helen 571
Homer’s intention with respect to it 572
Two adverse mentions of her only 574
Homer’s epithets and simile for Helen 575
The case of Bathsheba 576
As to the free agency of Helen 577
Picture of Helen in Il. iii. 572
In Il. vi., Il. xxiv., Od. iv. 581
The marriage with Deiphobus 583
General estimate of the Homeric Helen 584
The character of Paris 585
His apathy, levity, and selfishness 586
His place in the War 587
Relation of his intellect to his morality 588

SECT. VII.
_The declension of the great Homeric Characters
in the later Tradition._
Physical conditions of the Greek Theatre 590
Absolute dependence on the popular taste 592
General obliteration of the finer distinctions 593
Mutilation of the Helen of Homer 593
The Helen of Euripides 595
Of Isocrates and of Virgil 597
Characters of Achilles and Ulysses in Homer 598
Mutilation of the Ulysses of Homer 601
Of the Achilles of Homer 602
The Achilles of Statius 604
Homeric characters in Seneca 605
New relative position of Trojans and Greeks 606
Trojanism in England 608
Imitations of Homeric characters by Tasso 609
The Troilus and Cressida 610
Shirley’s Ajax and Ulysses 612
Racine’s Iphigénie 613
Racine’s Andromaque 614
CONCLUSION 615

I. AGORÈ.

THE POLITIES OF THE HOMERIC AGE.

It is complained, and perhaps not without foundation, that the study of the ancient historians does not supply the youth of England with good political models: that, if we adjust our sympathies and antipathies according to the division of parties and classes offered to our view in Rome, Athens, or Sparta, they will not be cast in an English mould, but will come out in the cruder forms of oligarchic or democratic prejudice. Now I do not wait to inquire how far these defects may be supplied by the political philosophers, and in particular by the admirable treatise of Aristotle. And it certainly is true, that in general they present to us a state of political ideas and morals greatly deranged: the choice lies between evil on this side in one form, and on that side in another form: the characters, who can be recommended as examples, are commonly in a minority or in exile. Nor do I ask how far we ought to be content, having an admirable range, so to speak, of anatomical models in our hands, to lay aside the idea of attaching our sympathies to what we see. I would rather incite the objector to examine and judge whether we may not find an admirable school of polity, and see its fundamental ideas exhibited under the truest and largest forms, in a quarter where perhaps it would be the least expected, namely, in the writings of Homer.

As respects religion, arts, and manners, the Greeks of the heroic age may be compared with other societies in the infancy of man. But as respects political science in its essential rudiments, and as respects the application of those principles by way of art to the government of mankind, we may say with almost literal truth that they are the fathers of it; and Homer invites those who study him to come and view it in its cradle, where the infant carries every lineament in miniature, that we can reasonably desire to see developed in manhood.

~_Strong development of political ideas._~

I cannot but deprecate the association established, perhaps unintentionally, by Grote, where, throwing Homer as he does into hotch-pot, so to speak, with the ‘legendary age,’ he expresses himself in his Preface[1], as follows. ‘It must be confessed that the sentimental attributes of the Greek mind--its religious and poetical vein--here appear in disproportionate relief, as compared with its more vigorous and masculine capacities--with those powers of acting, organizing, judging, and speculating, which will be revealed in the forthcoming volumes.’ If the sentimental attribute is to be contra-distinguished from the powers, I will not say of speculating, but of acting, organizing, and judging, then I know of nothing less sentimental in the after-history of Greece than the characters of Achilles and Ulysses, than the relations of the Greek chiefs to one another and to their people, than the strength and simplicity which laid in those early times the foundation-stones of the Greek national character and institutions, and made them in the social order the just counterparts of the material structures that are now ascribed to the Pelasgians; simple indeed in their elements, but so durable and massive in their combination, as to be the marvel of all time. The influences derived from these sources were of such vitality and depth, that they secured to an insignificant country a predominating power for centuries, made one little point of the West an effective bulwark against the East, and caused Greece to throw out, to the right and left, so many branches each greater than the trunk. Even when the sun of her glory had set, there was yet left behind an immortal spark of the ancient vitality, which, enduring through all vicissitudes, kindled into a blaze after two thousand years; and we of this day have seen a Greek nation, founded anew by its own energies, become a centre of desire and hope at least to Eastern Christendom. The English are not ashamed to own their political forefathers in the forests of the Northward European Continent; and the later statesmen with the lawgivers of Greece were in their day glad, and with reason glad, to trace the bold outline and solid rudiments of their own and their country’s greatness in the poems of Homer. Nothing in those poems offers itself, to me at least, as more remarkable, than the deep carving of the political characters; and what is still more, the intense political spirit which pervades them. I will venture one step farther, and say that, of all the countries of the civilized world, there is no one of which the inhabitants ought to find that spirit so intelligible and accessible as the English: because it is a spirit, that still largely lives and breathes in our own institutions, and, if I mistake not, even in the peculiarities of those institutions. There we find the great cardinal ideas, which lie at the very foundation of all enlightened government: and then we find, too, the men formed under the influence of such ideas; as one among ourselves, who has drunk into their spirit, tells us;

[1] Page xvii.

Sagacious, men of iron, watchful, firm,
Against surprise and sudden panic proof.

And again,

The sombre aspect of majestic care,
Of solitary thought, unshared resolve[2].

[2] Merope; by Matthew Arnold, pp. 94, 135.

It was surely a healthful sign of the working of freedom, that in that early age, despite the prevalence of piracy, even that idea of political justice and public right, which is the germ of the law of nations, was not unknown to the Greeks. It would appear that war could not be made without an appropriate cause, and that the offer of redress made it the duty of the injured to come to terms. Hence the offer of Paris in the Third Iliad is at once readily accepted: and hence, even after the breach of the Pact, arises Agamemnon’s fear, at the moment when he anticipates the death of Menelaus, that by that event the claim to the restoration of Helen will be practically disposed of, and the Greeks will have to return home without reparation for a wrong, of which the _corpus_, as it were, will have disappeared[3].

[3] Il. iv. 160-82.

Before proceeding to sketch the Greek institutions as they are exhibited in Homer, I will give a sketch of the interesting account of them which is supplied by Grote. I cite it more for contrast than for concurrence; but it will assist materially in bringing out into clear relief the points which are of the greatest moment.

~_Grote’s account of the Heroic Polities._~

The Greek States of the historic ages, says Grote, always present to us something in the nature of a constitution, as the condition of popular respect towards the government, and of the sense of an obligation to obey it[4]. The man who broke down this constitution, however wisely he might exercise his ill gotten power, was branded by the name of τύραννος, or despot, “as an object of mingled fear and dislike.” But in the heroic age there is no system, still less any responsibility[5]: obedience depends on personal reverence towards the king or chief. Into those ‘great individual personalities, the race or nation is absorbed[6].’ Publicity indeed, through the means of the council and assembly, essentially pervades the whole system[7]; but it is a publicity without consequences; for the people, when they have heard, simply obey the orders of the king[8]. Either resistance or criticism is generally exhibited as odious, and is never heard of at all except from those who are at the least subaltern chiefs: though the council and assembly would in practice come to be restraints upon the king, they are not so exhibited in Homer[9], but are simple _media_ for supplying him with information, and for promulgating his resolves[10]. The people may listen and sympathize, but no more. In the assembly of the Second Iliad, a ‘repulsive picture’ is presented to us of ‘the degradation of the mass of the people before the chiefs[11].’ For because the common soldiery, in conformity with the ‘unaccountable fancy’ which Agamemnon had propounded, made ready to go home, Ulysses belabours them with blows and covers them with scornful reproofs[12]; and the unpopularity of a presumptuous critic, even when he is in substance right, is shown, partly by the strokes that Ulysses inflicts upon Thersites, but still more by the hideous deformities with which Homer has loaded him.

[4] Grote’s Hist. Greece, vol. ii. p. 83.

[5] Ibid. p. 84.

[6] Ibid. p. 102.

[7] Ibid. p. 101.

[8] Ibid. p. 86.

[9] Ibid. pp. 90, 102.

[10] Ibid. p. 92.

[11] Ibid. p. 95.

[12] Grote’s Hist. Greece, vol. ii. pp. 94, 96.

It is, I think, in happy inconsistency with these representations, that the historian proceeds to say, that by means of the Βουλὴ and Ἀγορὴ we are enabled to trace the employment of public speaking, as the standing engine of government and the proximate cause of obedience, ‘up to the social infancy of the nation[13].’ But if, in order to make this sentence harmonize with what precedes and follows it, we are to understand that the Homeric poems present to us no more than the dry fact that public speaking was in use, and are to infer that it did not acquire its practical meaning and power until a later date, then I must include it in the general protest which I beg leave to record against the greater part of the foregoing propositions, in their letter and in their spirit, as being neither warranted in the way of inference from Homer, nor in any manner consistent with the undeniable facts of the poems.

[13] Ibid. p. 105.

~_Their use of Publicity and Persuasion._~

Personal reverence from the people to the sovereign, associated with the duties he discharges, with the high attributes he does or should possess, and with the divine favour, or with a reputed relationship to the gods, attaching to him, constitutes the primitive form in which the relation of the prince and the subject is very commonly cast in the early stages of society elsewhere than among the Greeks. What is sentimental, romantic, archaic, or patriarchal in the Homeric polities is common to them with many other patriarchal or highland governments. But that which is beyond every thing distinctive not of Greece only, but of Homeric Greece, is, that along with an outline of sovereignty and public institutions highly patriarchal, we find the full, constant, and effective use, of two great instruments of government, since and still so extensively in abeyance among mankind; namely, publicity and persuasion. I name these two great features of the politics and institutions of the heroic age, in order to concentrate upon them the marked attention which I think they deserve. And I venture to give to this paper the name of the Ἀγορὴ, because it was the Greek Assembly of those days, which mainly imparted to the existing polities their specific spirit as well as features. Amid undeveloped ideas, rude methods, imperfect organization, and liability to the frequent intrusion of the strong hand, there lies in them the essence of a popular principle of government, which cannot, I believe, plead on its behalf any other precedent so ancient and so venerable.

As is the boy, so is the man. As is the seed, so is the plant. The dove neither begets, nor yet grows into the eagle. How came it that the prime philosophers of full-grown Greece gave to the science of Politics the very highest place in the scale of human knowledge? That they, kings in the region of abstract thought, for the first and perhaps the only time in the history of the world, came to think they discerned in the turbid eddies of state affairs the image of the noblest thing for man, the noblest that speculation as well as action could provide for him? Aristotle says that, of all sciences, Πολιτικὴ is ἡ κυριωτάτη καὶ μάλιστα ἀρχιτεκτονική[14]; and that ethical science constitutes but a branch of it, πολιτική τις οὖσα. Whence, I ask, did this Greek idea come? It is not the Greece, but it is the Rome of history, which the judgment and experience of the world has taken as its great teacher in the mere business of law and political organization. For so lofty a theory (a theory without doubt exaggerated) from so practical a person as Aristotle, we must assume a corresponding elevation of source. I cannot help believing that the source is to be found rather in the infancy, than in the maturity, of Greek society. As I read Homer, the real first foundations of political science were laid in the heroic age, with a depth and breadth exceeding in their proportions any fabric, however imposing, that the after-time of Greece was able to rear upon them. That after-time was in truth infected with a spirit of political exaggeration, from which the heroic age was free.

[14] Ar. Eth. Nic. i. 2.

We shall have to examine the political picture presented by the heroic age with reference to the various classes into which society was distinguished in its normal state of peace: to the organization of the army in war, and its mixture of civil with military relations: to the institutions which embodied the machinery of government, and to the powers by which that machinery was kept in motion.

~_Functions of the King._~

Let us begin with the King; who constituted at once the highest class in society, and the centre of its institutions.

The political regimen of Greece, at the period immediately preceding the Trojan war, appears to have been that described by Thucydides, when he says that the tyrannies, which had come in with the increase of wealth, were preceded by hereditary monarchies with limited prerogatives[15]: πρότερον δὲ ἦσαν ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς γέρασι πατρικαὶ βασιλεῖαι. And again by Aristotle; βασιλεία ... ἡ περὶ τοὺς ἡρωικοὺς χρόνους ... ἦν ἑκόντων μὲν, ἐπὶ τισὶ δὲ ὡρισμένοις· στρατηγὸς γὰρ ἦν καὶ δικαστὴς ὁ βασιλεὺς, καὶ τῶν περὶ τοὺς θεοὺς κύριος. The threefold function of the King was to command the army, to administer justice chiefly, though not exclusively, between man and man, and to conduct the rites of religion[16].

[15] Thuc. i. 13.

[16] Ar. Pol. III. xiv. xv. V. x.

Independently of sovereignties purely local, we find in Homer traces of a maritime Cretan empire, which had recently passed away: and we find a subsisting Pelopid empire, which appears to have been the first of its kind, at least on the Greek mainland. For the Pelopid sceptre was not one taken over from the Perseids: it was obtained through Mercury, that is, probably through contrivance, from Jupiter: and the difference probably consisted in one or both of these two particulars. It comprehended the whole range of continental Greece, πᾶν Ἄργος, to which are added, either at once or in its progressive extension, the πολλαὶ νῆσοι (Il. ii. 108) of the Minoan empire. Besides this, it consisted of a double sovereignty: one, a suzerainty or supremacy over a number of chiefs, each of whom conducted the ordinary government of his own dominions; the other, a direct, though perhaps not always an effective control, not only over an hereditary territory, but over the unclaimed residue of minor settlements and principalities in the country. This inference may, I think, be gathered from the fact that we find the force of Agamemnon before Troy drawn exclusively from his Mycenian dominions, while he had claims of tribute from towns in the south-west of Peloponnesus, which lay at some distance from his centre of power, and which apparently furnished no aid in the war of Troy.

The Pheræ of Diocles lay on the way from Pylos to Sparta: and Pheræ is one of the towns which Agamemnon promised to Achilles. It should, however, be borne in mind that, as the family of names to which Pheræ belonged was one so largely dispersed, we must not positively assume the identity of the two towns.

~_Degrees in Kingship and in Lordship._~

Kingship in Homer is susceptible of degree; it is one thing for the local sovereignties, such as those of Nestor or Ulysses, and another for the great supremacy of Agamemnon, which overrode them. Still the Greek βασιλῆες in the Iliad constitute a class by themselves; a class that comprises the greater leaders and warriors, who immediately surround Agamemnon, the head of the army.

Of by much the greater part even of chiefs and leaders of contingents, it is plain from the poem that though they were lords (ἄνακτες) of a certain tribe or territory, they were not βασιλῆες or kings.

These chiefs and lords again divide themselves into two classes: one is composed of those who had immediate local heads, such as Phœnix, lord of the Dolopes, under Peleus at Phthia, probably Sthenelus under Diomed, and perhaps also Meriones under Idomeneus: the other is the class of chieftains, to which order the great majority belong, owning no subordination to any prince except to Agamemnon. Among these, again, there is probably a distinction between those sub-chiefs who owned him as a local sovereign, and those who were only subject to him as the head of the great Greek confederation.

It is probable that the subordination of the sub-chief to his local sovereign was a closer tie than that of the local sovereign to the head of Greece. For, according to the evidence supplied by the promises of Agamemnon to Achilles[17], tribute was payable by the lords of towns to their immediate political superior: not a tribute in coined money, which did not exist, nor one fixed in quantity; but a benevolence (δωτίνη), which must have consisted in commodities. Metals, including the precious metals, would, however, very commonly be the medium of acquittance. Again, we find these sub-chiefs invested with dominion by the local sovereign, residing at his court, holding a subaltern command in his army. All these points are combined in the case of Phœnix. On the other hand, as to positive duty or service, we know of none that a sovereign like Nestor owed to Agamemnon, except it were to take a part in enterprises of national concern under his guidance. But the distinction of rank between them is clear. Evidently on account of his relation to Agamemnon, Menelaus is βασιλεύτερος, higher in mere kingship, or more a king, than the other chiefs: Agamemnon boasts[18] that he is greatly the superior of Achilles, or of any one else in the army; and in the Ninth Book Achilles seems to refer with stinging, nay, rather with slaying irony, to this claim of greater kingliness for the Pelopids, when he rejects the offer of the hand of any one among Agamemnon’s daughters; No! let him choose another son-in-law, who may be worthy of him, and who is more a king than I[19];

[17] Il. ix. 297.

[18] Il. i. 186.

[19] Il. ix. 392.

ὅστις οἷ τ’ ἐπέοικε, καὶ ὃς βασιλεύτερός ἐστιν.

But although one βασιλεὺς might thus be higher than another, the rank of the whole body of Βασιλῆες is, on the whole, well and clearly marked off, by the consistent language of the Iliad, from all inferior ranks: and this combination may remind us in some degree of the British peerage, which has its own internal distinctions of grade, but which is founded essentially upon parity, and is sharply severed from all the other orders of the community. We shall presently see how this proposition is made good.

It thus far appears, that we find substantially, though not very determinately, distinguished, the following forms of larger and lesser Greek sovereignty:

I. That held by Agamemnon, as the head of Greece.

II. The local kings, some of them considerable enough to have other lords or princes (ἄνακτες) under them.

III. The minor chiefs of contingents; who, though not kings, were princes or lords (ἄνακτες), and governed separate states of their own: such as Thoas for Ætolia, and Menestheus for Athens.

IV. The petty and scattered chiefs, of whom we can hardly tell how far any account is taken in the Catalogue, but who belonged, in some sense, to Agamemnon, by belonging to no one else.

~_First tokens of change in the Heroic Polities._~

There are signs, contained in the Iliad itself, that the primitive monarchies, the nature and spirit of which will presently be examined, were beginning to give way even at the time of the expedition to Troy. The growth of the Pelopid empire was probably unfavourable to their continuance. In any case, the notes of commencing change will be found clear enough.

Minos had ruled over all Crete as king; but Idomeneus, his grandson, is nowhere mentioned as the king of that country, of which he appears to have governed a part only. Among obvious tokens of this fact are the following. The cities which furnish the Cretan contingent are all contained in a limited portion of that island. Now, although general words are employed (Il. ii. 649.) to signify that the force was not drawn from these cities exclusively, yet Homer would probably have been more particular, had other places made any considerable contribution, than to omit the names of them all. Again, Crete, though so large and rich, furnishes a smaller contingent than Pylos. And, once more, if it had been united in itself, it is very doubtful whether any ruler of so considerable a country would have been content that it should stand only as a province of the empire of Agamemnon. In the many passages of either poem which mention Idomeneus, he is never decorated with a title implying, like that of Minos (Κρήτῃ ἐπίουρος), that he was ruler of the whole island. Indeed, one passage at least appears to bear pretty certain evidence to the contrary. For Ulysses, in his fabulous but of course self-consistent narration to Minerva, shows us that even the Cretan force in Troy was not thoroughly united in allegiance to a single head. ‘The son of Idomeneus,’ he says, ‘endeavoured to deprive me of my share of the spoil, because I did not obey his father in Troas, but led a band of my own:’

οὕνεκ’ ἄρ’ οὐχ ᾧ πατρὶ χαριζόμενος θεράπευον
δήμῳ ἔνι Τρώων, ἀλλ’ ἄλλων ἦρχον ἑταίρων[20].

[20] Od. xiii. 265.

So likewise in the youth of Nestor, two generations back, Augeias appears as the sole king of the Epeans; but, in the Catalogue, his grandson Polyxeinus only commands one out of the four Epean divisions of ten ships each, without any sign of superiority: of the other three, two are commanded by generals of the Actorid family, which in the earlier legend appears as part of the court or following of Augeias[21]. And wherever we find in the case of any considerable Greek contingent the chief command divided among persons other than brothers, we may probably infer that there had been a breaking up of the old monarchical and patriarchal system. This point deserves more particular inquiry.

[21] Il. xi. 709, 39, 50.

~_Shown by analysis of the Catalogue._~

In the Greek armament, there are twenty-nine contingents in all.

Of these, twenty-three are under a single head; with or without assistants who, where they appear, are described as having been secondary.

1. Locrians with 40 ships.
2. Eubœans 40
3. Athenians 50
4. Salaminians 12
5. Argives 80
6. Mycenians 100
7. Lacedæmonians 60
8. Pylians 90
9. Arcadians 60
10. Dulichians &c. 40
11. Cephallenians 12
12. Ætolians 40
13. Cretans 80
14. Rhodians 9
15. Symeans 3
16. Myrmidons 50
17. Phthians of Phylace 40
18. Phereans, &c. 11
19. Phthians of Methone &c. 7
20. Ormenians &c. 40
21. Argissans &c. 40
22. Cyphians &c. 22
23. Magnesians 40
-----
966 ships.

Under brothers united in command, there were four more contingents:

1. Of Aspledon and Orchomenus, with 30 ships.
2. Of Phocians 40
3. Of Nisuros, Cos &c. 30
4. Of Tricce &c. 30
-----
130 ships.

In all these cases, comprising the whole armament except from two states, the old form of government seems to have continued. The two exceptions are:

1. Bœotians; with 50 ships, under five leaders.
2. Elians; with 40 ships, under four leaders.

It is quite clear that these two divisions were acephalous. As to the Elians, because the Catalogue expressly divides the 40 ships into four squadrons, and places one under each leader, two of these being of the Actorid house, and a third descended from Augeias. As to the Bœotians, the Catalogue indicates the equality of the leaders by placing the five names in a series under the same category.

An indirect but rather strong confirmation is afforded by the passage in the Thirteenth Book[22], where five Greek races or divisions are engaged in the endeavour to repel Hector from the rampart. They are,

[22] Il. xiii. 685-700.

1. Bœotians.

2. Athenians (or Ionians), under Menestheus, seconded by Pheidas, Stichios, and Bias.

3. Locrians.

4. Epeans (of Dulichium &c.) under Meges, son of Phyleus, with Amphion, and Drakios. The addition of the patronymic to Meges seems in this place to mark his position; which is distinctly defined as the chief one in the Catalogue, by his being mentioned there alone.

5. Phthians, under Medon and Podarces. These supplied two contingents, numbered 17 and 19 respectively in the list just given; and they constituted separate commands, though of the same race.

It will be remarked that the Poet enumerates the commanders of the Athenians, Epeans, and Phthians; but not of the Locrians and Bœotians. Obviously, in the case of the Locrians, the reason is, that Oilean Ajax, a king and chief of the first rank, and a person familiar to us in every page, was their leader. Such a person he never mixes on equal terms with secondary commanders, or puts to secondary duties; and the text immediately proceeds to tell us he was with the Telamonian Ajax[23]. But why does it not name the Bœotian leader? Probably, we may conjecture, because that force had no one commander in chief, but were an aggregation of independent bodies, whom ties of blood or neighbourhood drew together in the armament and in action.

[23] Il. xiii. 701-8.

Having thus endeavoured to mark the partial and small beginnings of disorganization in the ancient form of government, let us now observe the character of the particular spots where they are found. These districts by no means represent, in their physical characteristics, the average character of Greece. In the first place, they are both on the highway of the movement between North and South. In the second, they both are open and fertile countries; a distinction which, in certain local positions, at certain stages of society, not only does not favour the attainment of political power, but almost precludes its possession. The Elis of Homer is marked by two epithets having a direct reference to fertility of soil; it is ἱππόβοτος, horse-feeding, and it is also εὐρύχορος, wide-spaced or open. Again, the twenty-nine towns assigned in the Catalogue to the Bœotians far exceed in number those which are named for any other division of Greece. We have other parallel indications; such as the wealth of Orchomenos[24]; and of Orestius with the variegated girdle. He dwelt in Hyle, one of the twenty-nine, amidst other Bœotians who held a district of extreme fertility[25], μάλα πίονα δῆμον ἔχοντες. Now when we find signs like these in Homer, that Elis and Bœotia had been first subjected to revolution, not in the shape of mere change of dynasty, but in the decomposition, so to speak, of their ancient forms of monarchy, we must again call to mind that Thucydides[26], when he tells us that the best lands underwent the most frequent social changes by the successions of new inhabitants, names Bœotia, and ‘most of Peloponnesus’ as examples of the kind of district to which his remark applied.

[24] Il. ix. 381.

[25] Il. v. 707-10.

[26] Thuc. i. 2.

Upon the whole, the organization of the armament for Troy shows us the ancient monarchical system intact in by far the greater part of Greece. But when we come to the Odyssey, we find increasing signs of serious changes; which doubtless were then preparing the way, by the overthrow of old dynasties, for the great Dorian invasion. And it is here worth while to remark a great difference. The mere supervention of one race upon another, the change from a Pelasgian to an Hellenic character, does not appear to have entailed alterations nearly so substantial in the character and stability of Hellenic government, as did the Trojan expedition; which, by depriving societies of their natural heads, and of the fighting men of the population, left an open field to the operation of disorganizing causes.

Strabo has a remarkable passage, though one in which he makes no particular reference to Homer, on the subject of the invasions and displacements of one race by another. These, he says[27], had indeed been known before the Trojan war: but it was immediately upon the close of the war, and then after that period, that they gained head: μάλιστα μὲν οὖν κατὰ τὰ Τρωικὰ, καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα, τὰς ἐφόδους γένεσθαι καὶ τὰς μεταναστάσεις συνέβη, τῶν τε βαρβάρων ἅμα καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὁρμῇ τινὶ χρησαμένων πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἀλλοτρίων κατάκτησιν. Of this the Odyssey affords some curious indications.

[27] B. xii. 8, 4. p. 572.

~_Extended signs in the Odyssey._~

Among many alleged and some real shades of difference between the poems, we may note two of a considerable political significance: the word _King_ in the Odyssey has acquired a more lax signification, and the word _Queen_, quite unknown to the Iliad, has come into free use.

~_Altered meaning of ‘King.’_~

It will be shown how strictly, in the Iliad, the term βασιλεὺς, with its appropriate epithets, is limited to the very first persons of the Greek armament. Now in the Odyssey there are but two States, with the organization of which we have occasion to become in any degree acquainted: one of them Scheria, the other Ithaca. Of the first we do not see a great deal, and the force of the example is diminished by the avowedly mythical or romantic character of the delineation: but the fact is worthy of note, that in Scheria we find there are twelve kings of the country, with Alcinous[28], the thirteenth, as their superior and head. It is far more important and historically significant that, in the limited and comparatively poor dominions of Ulysses, there are now many kings. For Telemachus says[29],

[28] Od. viii. 391. vi. 54.

[29] Od. i. 394.

ἀλλ’ ἤτοι βασιλῆες Ἀχαιῶν εἰσὶ καὶ ἄλλοι
πολλοὶ ἐν ἀμφιάλῳ Ἰθάκῃ, νέοι ἠδὲ παλαιοί.

His meaning must be to refer to the number of nobles who were now collected, from Cephallonia and the other dominions of Ulysses, into that island. The observation is made by him in reply to the Suitor Antinous, who had complained of his bold language, and hoped he never would be king in Ithaca[30]:

[30] Ibid. 386.

μὴ σέ γ’ ἐν ἀμφιάλῳ Ἰθάκῃ βασιλῆα Κρονίων
ποιήσειεν, ὅ τοι γενεῇ πατρώϊόν ἐστιν.

It is, I think, clear, that in this place Antinous does not mean merely, ‘I hope you will not become one of us,’ which might be said in reference merely to the contingency of his assuming the controul of his paternal estates, but that he refers to the sovereignty properly so called: for Telemachus, after having said there are many βασιλῆες in Ithaca, proceeds to say, ‘Let one of them be chosen’, or ‘one of these may be chosen, to succeed Ulysses;’

τῶν κέν τις τόδ’ ἔχῃσιν, ἐπεὶ θάνε δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς.

‘but let me,’ he continues, ‘be master of my own house and property.’ Thus we have βασιλεὺς bearing two senses in the very same passage. First, it means the noble, of whom there are many in the country, and it is here evidently used in an improper sense; secondly, it means the person who rules the whole of them, and it is here as evidently employed in its original and proper signification. It seems very doubtful, however, whether, even in the Odyssey, the relaxed sense ever appears as a simple title in the singular number. The only signs of it are these; Antinous is told that he is _like_ a king[31] in appearance; and he is also expressly called βασιλεὺς in the strongly and generally suspected νεκυΐα of the Twenty-fourth Book[32]. So again, the kingly epithet Διοτρεφὴς is not used in the singular for any one below the rank of a βασιλεὺς of the Iliad, except once, where, in addressing Agelaus the Suitor, it is employed by Melanthius, the goatherd, one of the subordinate adherents and parasites of that party[33].

[31] Od. xvii. 416.

[32] Od. xxiv. 179.

[33] Od. xxii. 136.

This relaxation in the sense of βασιλεὺς, definite and limited as is its application in the Iliad, is no inconsiderable note of change.

~_New name of Queen._~

Equally, or more remarkable, is the introduction in the Odyssey of the words δέσποινα and βασίλεια, and the altered use of ἄνασσα.

1. δέσποινα is applied, Od. iii. 403, to the wife of Pisistratus, son of Nestor; to Arete, queen of the Phæacians, Od. vii. 53, 347; to Penelope, Od. xiv. 9, 127, 451; xv. 374, 7; xvii. 83; xxiii. 2.

2. ἄνασσα is applied in the Iliad, xiv. 326, to Ceres only; but in the Odyssey, besides Minerva, in Od. iii. 380, Ulysses applies it twice to Nausicaa, in Od. vi. 149, 175; apparently in some doubt whether she is a divinity or a mortal. I would not however dwell strongly on this distinction between the poems; for we seem to find substantially the human use of the word ἄνασσα in the name of Agamemnon’s daughter, Ἰφιάνασσα, which is used in Il. ix. 145.

3. Βασίλεια is used many times in the Odyssey; and is applied to