Chapter IX: Part 9

[490] P. 585.

The partial inclusion of the Dardanians within the name of Troes is further shown by the verse[491],

[491] Il. xiii. 463.

Αἰνεία, Τρώων βουληφόρε·

and by the appeal of Helenus to Æneas and Hector jointly, as the persons chiefly responsible for the safety of the Troes and Lycians: the name Lycians being taken here, as in some other places[492], to denote most probably a race akin to and locally interspersed with the Trojans.

[492] See Il. iv. 197, 207. xv. 485.

But the Dardanians have more commonly their proper designation separately given them. It never includes the Troes. And we never find the two appellations, Troes and Dardans, covering the entire force. Whenever the Dardans are named with the Troes, there is also another word, either ἐπίκουροι, or Λύκιοι.

The word Troes, it is right to add, is sometimes confined strictly to the inhabitants of the city: but the occasions are rare, and perhaps always with contextual indications that such is the sense.

Another sign that Priam exercised a direct sovereignty over the territory which yielded the five contingents may perhaps be found in the fact, that we do not find any of his nephews in command of them. They were led by their local officers, while the brothers of Priam constituted a part of the community of Troy, and chiefly influenced the Assembly: and their sons, though apparently more considerable persons than most of those local officers in general, simply appear as acting under Hector without special command. The brothers of Priam are Lampus, Clytius, and Hiketaon. His nephews and other relatives are Dolops the son of Lampus; Melanippus the son of Hiketaon; Polydamas, Hyperenor, and Euphorbus, the sons of Panthous and his wife Phrontis.

Had the senior members of the family held local sovereignties, we should have found their sons in local commands. But we find only two sons of Antenor in command, as either colleagues or lieutenants of Æneas, over the Dardans, whom we have no reason to suppose they had any share in ruling.

Strabo, indeed, contends, that there are nine separate δυναστεῖαι immediately connected with Troy[493], besides the ἐπίκουροι. Of these states one he thinks was Lelegian, and was ruled over by Altes, father of Laothoe, one of Priam’s wives. Another by Munes, husband of Briseis. Another, Thebe, by Eetion, father of Andromache. Others he considers to be represented by Anchises and Pandarus: but this does not well agree with the structure of the Catalogue. He refers also to Lyrnessus and Pedasus; which are nowhere mentioned by Homer as furnishing contingents, but they had apparently been destroyed, as well as taken, by Achilles. He places several of the dynasties in cities thus destroyed: and they all, according to him, lay beyond the limits marked out in the Twenty-fourth Iliad.

[493] Strabo xiii. 7. p. 584.

This assemblage of facts appears to point to a very great diversity of relations subsisting between Priam, with his capital, and the states, cities, and races, of which we hear as arrayed on his side in the war. There are first the cities of Troas, or Troja proper, furnishing the five, or if we except Dardania four out of the five, first contingents of the Catalogue. Over these Priam was sovereign.

There are next the cities, so far as they can be traced, under the δυναστεῖαι mentioned by Strabo, such as Thebe, and the cities of Altes and Munes. These were probably in the same sort of relation to the sceptre of Priam, as the Greek states in general to that of Agamemnon.

Thirdly, there are the independent nations. Of these eleven named in the Catalogue; others are added as newly arrived in the Tenth Book[494], and further additions were subsequently made, such as the force under Memnon, and the Keteians under Eurypylus[495]. Nothing perhaps tends so much, as the powerful assistance lent to Priam by numerous and distant allies, to show how justly in substance Horace has described the Trojan war as the conflict between the Eastern and the Western world. The two confederacies, which then came into collision, between them absorbed the whole known world of Homer; and foreshadowed the great conflicts of later epochs.

[494] Il. x. 428-30.

[495] Od. xi. 519-22.

~_Political institutions of Troy._~

We may now proceed to consider the political institutions of the kingdom of Priam, which has thus loosely been defined.

The Βασιλεὺς of the Trojans is less clearly marked, than he is among the Greeks: for (as we shall find) they had no Βουλὴ, and therefore we have not the same opportunities of seeing the members of the highest class collected for separate action in the conduct of the war. Still, however, the name is distinctly given to the following persons on the Trojan side, and to no others.

1. Priam, Il. v. 464, xxiv. 630.
2. Paris, iv. 96.
3. Rhesus, x. 435.
4. Sarpedon, xii. 319. xvi. 660.
5. Glaucus, xii. 319.

Among the Trojans, as among the Greeks, it was the custom for the kings, as they descended into the vale of years, to devolve the more active duties of kingship on their children, and to retain, perhaps only for a time, those of a sedentary character. Hence Hector at least shares with Priam the management of Assemblies, as it is he[496] who dissolves that of the Second Book, and calls the military one of the Eighth. Hence, too, he speaks of himself as the person responsible for the burdens entailed by the war upon the Trojans. ‘I did not,’ he says to the allies, ‘bring you from your cities to multiply our numbers, but that you might defend for me the wives and children of Trojans; with this object in view, I exhaust the people for your pay and provisions[497].’ Hence we have Æneas leading the Dardanians, while his father Anchises nowhere appears, and, as it must be presumed, remains in his capital. Hence, while ten or twelve sons of Antenor bear arms for Troy, and two of them are the colleagues of Æneas in the command of the Dardanian contingent, their father appears among the δημογέροντες, who were chief speakers in the Assembly within the city. We do not know that Antenor was a king; more probably he held a lordship subordinate to Priam, in a relation somewhat more strict than that between Agamemnon and the Greek chieftains, and rather resembling that between Peleus and Menœtius; but the same custom of partial retirement seems to have prevailed in the case of subaltern rulers, as indeed it would be dictated by the same reasons of prudence and necessity.

[496] Il. ii. 808. viii. 489.

[497] Il. xvii. 223-6.

The βασιλήϊς τιμὴ of Troy was not, any more than those of Greece, an absolute despotism. In Troy, as in Greece, the public affairs were discussed and settled in the Assemblies, though with differences, which will be noticed, from the Greek manner of procedure. It was in the Assembly that Iris, disguised as Polites, addressed Priam and Hector to advise a review of the army[498]. And it was again in an Assembly that Antenor proposed, and that Paris refused, to give up Helen: whereupon Priam proposed the mission of Idæus to ask for a truce with a view to the burial of the dead, and the people assented to the proposal[499];

[498] Il. ii. 795.

[499] Il. vii. 379.

οἱ δ’ ἄρα τοῦ μάλα μὲν κλύον ἠδ’ ἐπίθοντο.

It was in the Assembly, too, that those earlier proposals had been made, of which the same personage procured the defeat by corruption.

Lastly, in the Eighth Book, Hector[500], as we have seen, holds a military ἀγορὴ of the army by the banks of the Scamander. At this he invites them to bivouac outside the Greek rampart, and they accept his proposal by acclamation. This Assembly on the field of battle is an argument _a fortiori_ to show, that ordinary affairs were referred among the Trojans to such meetings. We have, indeed, no detail of any Trojan Assembly except these three. But we have references to them, which give a similar view of their nature and functions. Idæus, on his return, announces to the Assembly that the truce is granted[501]. It is plain that the restoration of Helen was debated before, as well as during the war, in the Assembly of the people; because Agamemnon slays the two sons of Antimachus on the special ground that the father had there proposed that Menelaus, if not Ulysses, should be murdered[502], when they came as Envoys to Troy, for the purpose of demanding her restoration. This Antimachus was bribed by Paris, as the Poet tells us, to oppose the measure[503]. Again, Polydamas, in one of his speeches, charges Hector with having used him roughly, when he had ventured to differ from him in the Assemblies, upon the ground that he ought not, as a stranger to the Trojan δῆμος, to promote dissension among them[504].

[500] Il. viii. 489, 542.

[501] Il. vii. 414-7.

[502] Il. xi. 138.

[503] Ibid. 123.

[504] Il. xii. 211-14.

Trojan institutions do not, then, present to our view a greater elevation of the royal office. On the contrary, it is remarkable, that the title of δημογέρων, which Homer applies to the chief speakers of the Trojan Assembly, not being kings, is also used by him to describe Ilus the founder of the city[505]. It is, however, possible, perhaps even likely, that this title may be applied to Ilus as a younger son, if his brother Assaracus was the eldest and the heir[506].

[505] Il. xi. 37.

[506] Il. xx. 232.

But although it thus appears that monarchy was limited in Troy, as it was in Greece, and that public affairs were conducted in the assemblies of the people, the method and organization of these Assemblies was different in the two cases.

1. The guiding element in the Trojan government seems to have been age combined with rank; while among the Greeks, wisdom and valour were qualifications, not less available than age and rank.

2. The Greeks had the institution of a βουλὴ, which preceded and prepared matter for their Assemblies. The Trojans had not.

3. The Greeks, as we have seen, employed oratory as a main instrument of government; the Trojans did not.

4. The aged members of the Trojan royal family rendered their aid to the state, not as counsellors of Priam in private meetings, but only in the Assembly of the people.

A few words on each of these heads.

~_The greater weight of Age in Troy._~

1. The old men who appear on the wall with Priam, in the Third Book, are really old, and not merely titular or official γέροντες; they are[507],

[507] Il. iii. 150.

γήραϊ δὴ πολέμοιο πεπαυμένοι.

There are no less than seven of them, besides Priam. Three are his brothers, Lampus, Clytius, Hiketaon; the others probably relatives, we know not in what precise degree: Panthous, Thymœtes, Ucalegon, Antenor. They are called collectively the Τρώων ἡγήτορες, as well as the ἀγορηταὶ ἐσθλοί; and they were manifestly habitual speakers in the Assembly.

There is nothing in the Greek life of the Homeric poems that comes near this aggregation of aged men. Now we have no evidence, that their being thus collected was in any degree owing to the war. Theano, wife of Antenor, was priestess of Minerva in Troy; which makes it most probable that he resided there habitually, and not only on account of the war.

The only group at all approaching this is, where we see Menœtius and Phœnix at the Court of Peleus; but we cannot say whether this was a permanent arrangement. Phœnix, as we know, was lord of the Dolopians, and if so, could not have been a standing assistant at the court of Peleus; we do not know that the Trojan elders held any such local position apart from Troy, even in any single case; and on the other hand, we have no knowledge whether Phœnix and Menœtius, even when at the court of Peleus, took any share in the government of his immediate dominions. The name γέροντες, as usually employed among the Greeks to describe a class, had no necessary relation to age whatever.

Of the respect paid to age in Greece, we have abundant evidence; but we find nothing like this gathering together of a body of old men to be the ordinary guides of popular deliberation in the Assemblies.

It is true that we hear by implication of both Hector and Polydamas, who were not old, as taking part in affairs: but all the indications in the Iliad go to show that Hector’s share in the government of Troy, though not limited to the mere conduct of the forces in the field, yet arose out of his military office, and probably touched only such matters as were connected with the management of the war. Polydamas evidently was treated as more or less an interloper.

But even if it were otherwise, and if the middle-aged men of high station and ability took a prominent part in affairs, the existence of this grey-headed company, with apparently the principal statesmanship of Troy in their hands, forms a marked difference from Greek manners. For in Greece at peace we have nothing akin to it; while in Greece at war upon the plain of Troy, we see the young Diomed as well as the old Nestor, and the rather young Achilles and Ajax, as well as the elderly Idomeneus, associated with the middle-aged men in the government of the army and its operations.

~_The absence of a Βουλὴ in Troy._~

First then, I think it plain that the Trojans had no βουλὴ, for the following reasons:

1. That although we often hear of deliberations and decisions taken on the part of the Trojans, and we have instances enough of their holding assemblies of the people, yet we never find mention of a βουλὴ, or Council, in connection with them.

2. In the Second Book, Homer describes the Trojan ἀγορὴ thus (Il. ii. 788, 9):

οἱ δ’ ἀγορὰς ἀγόρευον ἐπὶ Πριάμοιο θύρῃσιν
πάντες ὁμηγερέες, ἠμὲν νέοι ἠδὲ γέροντες.

This latter line is only to be accounted for by the supposition, that Homer meant to describe a difference between the usages of the Trojans, and those of the Greeks; whose γέροντες were recognised as members of the βουλὴ, even when in the Assemblies.

Of the separate place of the Greek γέροντες in the Assemblies, we have conclusive proof from the Shield of Achilles (xviii. 497, 503):

λαοὶ δ’ εἰν ἀγορῇ ἔσαν ἄθροοι·

and afterwards,

οἱ δὲ γέροντες
εἵατ’ ἐπὶ ξεστοῖσι λίθοις, ἱερῷ ἐνὶ κύκλῳ.

And again, where the Ithacan γέροντες make way for Telemachus, as he passes to the chair of his father.

But in Troy the γέροντες (such is probably the meaning of Il. ii. 789.) have no separate function: the young and the old meet together: while in Greece, besides distinct places in the Assembly, the γέροντες had an exclusive function in the βουλὴ, at which they met separately from the young.

3. It would appear that the ἀγορὴ was with the Trojans not occasional, as with the Greeks, for great questions, but habitual. And this agrees with the description in Il. ii. 788. For when Jupiter sends Iris to Troy, she finds the people in Assembly, but apparently for no special purpose, as she immediately, in the likeness of Polites, begins to address Priam, and we do not hear of any other business. So, when Idæus came back from the Greeks, he found the Trojan Assembly still sitting. All this looks as if the entire business of administering the government rested with that body only.

I draw a similar inference from the remarkable expression in Il. ii. 788, ἀγορὰς ἀγόρευον. This seems to express that there was a standing, probably a daily, assembly of the Trojans, not formally summoned, and open to all comers, which acted as the governing body for the state. The line would then mean, not simply ‘the Trojans were holding an assembly,’ but ‘the Trojans were holding their assembly as usual.’

The names βουλευτὴς and ἀγορητὴς appear to have been merely descriptive, and not titular. Both are applied to the Trojan elders.

And so βουλαὶ, βουλεύειν, βουληφόροι, are constantly used without any, so to speak, official meaning. In Il. x. 147, the expression βουλὰς βουλεύειν can hardly mean ‘to attend the βουλὴ,’ for the singular number would be the proper term for the βουλὴ specially convoked: and I interpret it as meaning, to attend at or to hold the usual council. This is among the Greeks. Among the Trojans, in Il. x. 415-17, Dolon says,

Ἕκτωρ μὲν μετὰ τοῖσιν, ὅσοι βουληφόροι εἰσὶν,
βουλὰς βουλεύει θείου παρὰ σήματι Ἴλου,
νόσφιν ἀπὸ φλοίσβου.

Now the word βουληφόρος is applied, Il. xii. 414, to Sarpedon, as well as in xiii. 463 and elsewhere to Æneas. Neither were among the γέροντες βουλευταί. But further, it is applied, Od. ix. 112, to the ἀγορὴ itself:

τοῖσιν δ’ οὔτ’ ἀγοραὶ βουληφόροι, οὔτε θέμιστες

And therefore the word, though it means councillor in a general sense, does not mean officially member of a βουλὴ, as opposed to an ἀγορὴ or Assembly.

The phrase βουλὰς βουλεύει, in the passage Il. x. 415-17, does not oppose, but supports what has now been said. It is quite plain that this of Hector’s was a small military meeting, or council of war, just as in viii. 489 he held an ἀγορὴ, or assembly of the army, both Trojans and allies; it was not a meeting of a βουλὴ of Troy, because it was held in the field, far from the city, and without any of the Elders, who were the great ἀγορηταὶ and βουλευταὶ of Troy; for Hector had already arranged (Il. viii. 517-19) that the old men should remain in the city, to defend the walls from any night attack: most of all however because, as we hear of no βουλὴ before the military Assembly in the Eighth Book, so we hear of no Assembly following the meeting for deliberation in the Tenth. Generals in modern times hold councils of war: but no parallel can be drawn between them, and Councils for dispatching the affairs of a State.

As we never have occasion to become acquainted with Trojan politics in peace, we can only argue the case as to the nonexistence of a council from the state of war. But in Greece, it will be remembered, both war and peace present their cases of the use of this institution, as one regularly established, and apparently invested with both a deliberative and an executive character.

~_The greater weight of oratory in Greece._~

It is next to be inquired, whether the Trojans, like the Greeks, employed eloquence, detailed argument as furnishing, and the other parts of oratory, a main instrument of government.

I think it is plain, that the decisions of their Assemblies were governed rather by simple authority; by the ἀναποδεικταὶ φάσεις, the simple declarations, of persons of weight.

The report of the re-assembled ἀγορὴ of the Greeks in the Second Book begins with the 211th line, and ends with the 398th: occupying 188 lines. But the Trojan ἀγορὴ of the same Book is despatched in twenty-one lines (788-808).

A more remarkable example is afforded by the second Trojan Assembly (Il. vii. 345-379). For this ἀγορὴ is described as δεινὴ, τετρηχυῖα; and well it might be, in circumstances so arduous. The Elders in the Third Book were of opinion that, beautiful as Helen was, it was better to restore her, than to continue the sufferings and dangers of the war. Accordingly, Antenor urged in this Assembly that she should be restored, together with the plundered property. He referred also to the recent breach of a sworn covenant on the Trojan side, and said no good could come of it. This he effects in a speech of six lines; the first of which is the mere vocative address to the Assembly, and the last is marked as surplusage with the _obelos_ (348-53).

Paris, the person mainly concerned, replies. He does not address himself to the Assembly at all, but to Antenor: and he disposes of the subject of debate in eight lines (357-64). Four of them are given to the announcement of his intentions, and four to abuse of Antenor.

It was impossible to conceive a subject more likely to cause debate; and excitement we see there was, but after the speech of Paris, nothing more was said about Helen, either for or against the restoration. Priam then arose, and in a speech of eleven lines (368-78) laid down another plan of proceeding, namely, by a message to the Greeks for a truce with a view to funeral obsequies, which was at once accepted.

~_Oratory of greater weight in Greece._~

Nowhere, in short, among the Trojans have we any example, I do not say of multiplied or lengthened speeches, but of real reasoning and deliberation in the conduct of business: though Glaucus tells his story at great length to Diomed on the field of battle (Il. vi. 145-211), and Æneas to Achilles (Il. xx. 199-258) nearly equals him. Indeed, it may almost be said, the Trojans are long speakers when in battle, and short when in debate: the Greeks copious in debate, but very succinct in battle.

Again, we may observe the different descriptions which the Poet has given of the elocution of Nestor, and of that of the Trojan δημογέροντες in their respective ἀγοραί. To Nestor (Il. i. 248, 9) he seems to assign a soft continuous flow indefinitely prolonged. Theirs he describes as resembling the ὄπα λειριόεσσαν of grasshoppers (Il. iii. 151, 2), a clear trill or thread of voice, not only without any particular idea of length attached to it, but apparently meant to recall a sharp intermittent chirp. Yet there is an odd proof that to Priam at least, as one of these old men, there was attached, by the younger ones, the imputation of favouring either too many or else too long orations. For, in the ἀγορὴ of the Second Book, Iris in the character of Polites, though there is no account of what had preceded her arrival, objurgates Priam as both then encouraging what may be called indiscriminate speaking, and as having formally, before the war, been addicted to the same practice[508];

[508] Il. ii. 796.

ὦ γέρον, αἰεί τοι μῦθοι φίλοι ἄκριτοί εἰσιν,
ὥς ποτ’ ἐπ’ εἰρήνης.

Upon the whole, I think it must have been Homer’s intention, while representing both Trojans and Greeks as carrying on public affairs in their public Assemblies, to draw a very marked distinction between them in regard to the use of that powerful engine of oratory, which played so conspicuous a part in the former, as well as in the later stages of the Greek history.

And it is important, that nowhere does a sentiment escape the lips of a Trojan chieftain, which indicates a consciousness of the political value of oratory. Ulysses, in a state of peace, describes before the Phæacians beauty and eloquence as the noblest gifts of the gods to man[509]: and employs ἔπεα and νόος, eloquence and intelligence, as convertible terms. Polydamas, when rebuking Hector in the Thirteenth Iliad, delivers a passage in many respects strikingly analogous. He speaks, however, of νόος and βουλὴ, mind and counsel[510]; he does not drop a word relating to public speech or to eloquence as instruments of government, though he describes the mental quality and the habit which he names as of priceless value for the benefit of States.

[509] Od. viii. 170, 5, 7.

[510] Il. xiii. 726-34.

The phrases applied to the Trojan elders appear to indicate, that they derived their political character from taking a prominent part in the Assembly, and from that alone. For the word δημογέρων indicates an elder acting in and among the δῆμος, or people. And this name the Poet uses but twice: once in Il. iii. 149, where he enumerates the eight persons, who bore that character in Troy; and once with reference to Ilus (Il. ii. 372). Homer nowhere employs this term for any of the Greeks.

The want of the βουλὴ shows us, that there was no balance of forces in the Trojan polity, less security against precipitate action, more liability to high-handed insolence and oppression of the people, and, on the other hand, unless the danger had been neutralized by mildness or lethargy of character, likewise in all likelihood to revolutionary change.

~_Trojans less gifted with self-command._~

Again, on the Trojan side we do not find the silence and self-possession of the Greeks. After the enumeration in the Third Book, at its opening, we find that the Trojans marched with din and buzz:

Τρῶες μὲν κλαγγῇ τ’ ἐνοπῇ τ’ ἴσαν, ὄρνιθες ὥς·

but as to the Greeks, we are told that they marched in profound silence: and the Poet skilfully heightens the contrast by mentioning that they breathed forth what they did not articulate, and that they were steeled with firm resolution to stand by one another[511]:

[511] Il. iii. 2, 8.

οἱ δ’ ἄρ’ ἴσαν σιγῇ μένεα πνείοντες Ἀχαιοὶ,
ἐν θυμῷ μεμαῶτες ἀλεξέμεν ἀλλήλοισιν.

We are finally told that each leader indeed gave the word to his men, while all beside were mute[512]:

[512] Il. iv. 429.

οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι ἀκὴν ἴσαν, οὐδέ κε φαίης
τόσσον λαὸν ἕπεσθαι ἔχοντ’ ἐν στήθεσιν αὐδὴν,
σιγῇ δειδιότες σημάντορας·

but from the Trojans there arose a sound, like that of sheep bleating for their lambs[513]:

[513] Ibid. 436.

ὣς Τρώων ἀλαλητὸς ἀνὰ στρατὸν εὐρὺν ὀρώρει.

And, again, we find the relation of the burning of the dead given with the usual consistency of the Poet. The men of the two armies met: and on both sides they shed tears as they lifted their lifeless comrades on the wagons: but, he adds, there was silence among the Trojans,

οὐδ’ εἴα κλαίειν Πρίαμος μέγας·

and it was because the king had felt that there would be indecency in a noisy show of sorrow: while the Greeks needed not the injunction (Il. vii. 426-32), from their spontaneous self-command.

When the Poet speaks of the Trojan Assembly in the Seventh Book as δεινὴ τετρηχυῖα, he evidently means to describe an excitement tending to disorder: and one contrasted in a remarkable manner with the discipline of the Greeks, who were summoned to meet silently in the night, that they might not, in gathering, arouse the enemy outside the ramparts. Even in their respective modes of expressing approbation, Homer makes a shade of difference. When the Greeks applaud, it is ἐπίαχον υἷες Ἀχαιῶν, or what we call loud or vehement cheering: but when the Trojans, it is ἐπὶ δὲ Τρῶες κελάδησαν, which signifies a more miscellaneous and tumultuous noise.

In short, it would appear to be the intention of Homer to represent the Greeks as possessed of a higher intelligence throughout. In the Odyssey, we find that Ulysses made his way into Troy disguised as a beggar, communicated with Helen, duly informed himself (κατὰ δὲ φρόνιν ἤγαγε πολλήν[514]), and contrived to despatch certain of the Trojans before he departed. In the Iliad we are supplied with abundant instances of the superior management of the Greeks, and likewise of their auxiliary gods, in comparison with those of the Trojans. Juno outwits Venus in obtaining from her the cestus, and then proceeds to outwit Jupiter in the use of it. Minerva, on observing that the Greeks are losing, (Il. vii. 17) betakes herself to Troy, where Apollo proposes just what she wants, namely, a cessation of the general engagement, with a view to a personal encounter between Hector and some chosen chieftain: she immediately adopts the plan; and he causes it to be executed through Helenus. It both stops the general havoc among the Greeks, and redounds greatly to the honour of their champion Ajax. At the end of the day, however, Nestor suggests to the Greek chiefs, on account of their heavy losses (Il. vii. 328), that they should, on the occasion of raising a mound over their dead, likewise dig and fortify a trench, which might serve to defend the ships and camp. In the mean time the Trojans are made to meet; and they send to propose the very measure, namely, an armistice for funeral rites, which the Greeks desire, in order, under cover of it, to fortify themselves (Il. vii. 368-97). And this accordingly Agamemnon is enabled to grant as a sort of favour to the Trojans (Il. vii. 408):

[514] Od. iv. 258.

ἀμφὶ δὲ νεκροῖσιν κατακαιέμεν οὔτι μεγαίρω.

This superior intelligence is probably meant to be figured by the exchange of arms between Glaucus and Diomed. And, again, when Hector attempts anything in the nature of a stratagem, as the mission of Dolon by night, it is only that he may fall into the hands of Diomed and Ulysses. But there does not appear to be in any of these cases a violation of oath, compact, or any absolute rule of equity by the Greeks.

Of all these traits, however, it may be said, that they are of no value as evidence, if taken by themselves. They are means which would obviously occur to the Poet, zealous for his own nation. It is their accordance with other indications, apparently undesigned, which warrants our relying upon them as real testimonies, available for an historic purpose.

~_Difference in pursuits of high-born youth._~

Although, on the whole, we seem to have the signs of greater wealth among the Trojans than the Greeks, yet in certain points also their usages were more primitive and simple. Thus we find the youths of the house of Nestor immediately about his person; and Patroclus, as well as Achilles, was apparently brought up at the court of Peleus. Again, the youthful Nestor travels into Thessaly for a campaign: Ulysses goes to hunt at the Court of his grandfather Autolycus. The Ithacan Suitors employ themselves in manly games. But we frequently come upon passages where we are incidentally informed, that the princes of the house of Dardanus were occupied in rustic employments. Thus Melanippus, son of Hiketaon, and cousin of Hector, who was residing in Priam’s palace, and treated as one of his children, had before the war tended oxen in Percote[515]. Æneas, the only son and heir of Anchises, had been similarly occupied among or near the hills, at the time when he had a narrow escape from capture by Achilles[516]. Lycaon, son of Priam, was cutting the branches of the wild fig for the fellies of chariot-wheels when Achilles took him for the second time: on the first occasion, he had been at work in a vineyard[517]. Antiphos and Isos, sons of Priam, had been captured by Achilles whilst they were acting as shepherds[518]. Anchises was acting as a herdsman, when he formed his connection with Venus[519]. The name of Boucolion, an illegitimate son of Laomedon, seems to indicate that he was bred for the like occupation[520].

[515] Il. xv. 546-51.

[516] Il. xx. 188.

[517] Il. xxi. 37. 77.

[518] Il. xi. 105.

[519] Il. ii. 821. v. 313.

[520] Il. vi. 25.

From the force, variety, and extreme delicacy of his uses of the word, it is evident that Homer set very great store by the sentiment which is generally expressed through the word αἰδώς, and which ranges through all the varieties of shame, honour, modesty, and reverence. Though a minute, it is a remarkable circumstance, that he confines the application of this term to the Greeks; except, I think, in one passage, where he bestows it upon his particular favourites the Lycians[521], and a single other one, where Æneas[522] employs it under the immediate inspiration of Apollo, with another sense, in an appeal to Hector and his brother chiefs, not to the soldiery at large.

[521] Il. xvi. 422.

[522] Il. xvii. 336.

With the Greeks it supplies the staple of military exhortation[523] from the chiefs to the army; Αἰδὼς, Ἀργεῖοι.

[523] Il. v. 787. viii. 228. _et alibi_.

But quite a different form of speech is uniformly addressed to the Trojans proper: it is

ἀνέρες ἔστε, φίλοι, μνήσασθε δὲ θουρίδος ἀλκῆς,

which is below the other, and appeals to a less peculiar and refined frame of intelligence and of sentiment.

~_Summary of differences._~

Whatever may be thought of the degree of detail into which (guided as I think by the text) I have ventured to carry this discussion, and of the particularity of some of the inferences that have been drawn, I venture to hope few will quit the subject without the conviction that Homer has worked with the purpose and precision which are his wont, in the diversities which mark the general outline of his Greeks and his Trojans, and of the institutions of each respectively; and that he has not altogether withheld from his national portraits the care, which he is admitted to have applied to his individual characters on both sides with such extraordinary success. If we look to the institutions of the two countries, although the comparison is diversified, we must upon the whole concede to the Greeks, that they had laid more firmly than their adversaries those great corner stones of human society, which are named in their language, θέμις, ὅρκος, and γάμος. In the polity of Troy we find more scope for impulse, less for deliberation and persuasion; more weight given to those elements of authority which do not depend on our free will and intelligence, less to those which do; less of organization and of diversity, less firmness and tenacity of tissue, in the structure of the community. We are told of no φῦλα and no φρῆτραι, no intermediate ranks of officers in the army; no order of nobles or proprietors, such as that which furnished the Suitors of Ithaca. There are, in short, fewer secondary eminences; it is a state of things, more resembling the dead level of the present Oriental communities subject to a despotic throne, though such was not the throne of Priam. Among the people themselves, there is more of religious observance and apparatus, but not more of morality: less tendency indeed to crimes of violence and turbulence, but also less of truth, of honour, above all of personal self-mastery and self-command. The Greeks never would have produced the Paris of the Iliad; for on behalf of no such dastard would they have been induced to bleed. But if they had engendered such a creature, they would not have paid the penalty: for man in the Trojan type would not have had the energy to recover it from the warrior-statesmen of the Achæan race, and under no circumstances could the really extravagant sentiment put by Virgil into the mouth of Diomed[524] have been fulfilled:

[524] Æn. xi. 286.

ultro Inachias venisset ad urbes
Dardanus, et versis lugeret Græcia fatis.

III. THALASSA.

THE OUTER GEOGRAPHY OF THE ODYSSEY.

The legendary Geography of the Odyssey may in one sense be compared with that of Ariosto, and that of Bojardo. I should be the first, indeed, to admit that a disquisition, having for its object to establish the delimitation of the Geography of either of those poets, and to fix its relation to the actual surface of the earth, was but labour thrown away. For two thousand years, however, perhaps for more, the Geography of the Odyssey has been a subject of interest and of controversy. In entering upon that field I ask myself, why the case of Homer is in this respect so different from that of the great Italian romancers? It is not only that, great as they were, we are dealing with one before whom their greatness dwindles into comparative littleness. Nor is it only, though it seems to be in part, because the adventures of Ulysses are, or appear to be, much more strictly bound up with place, than those of Orlando, Rinaldo, or Ruggiero. The difference, I think, mainly lies in this, that an intense earnestness accompanies Homer every where, even through his wild and noble romance. Cooped up as he was within a narrow and local circle--for such it was, though it was for so many centuries the centre of the whole greatness of the world--here is his effort to pass the horizon ‘by strength of thought;’ to pierce the mist; to shape the dim, confused, and conflicting reports he could pick up, according to the best of his knowledge and belief, into land and sea; to people its habitable spots with the scanty material he could command, every where enlarged, made good, and adorned out of the wealth of his vigorous imagination; and to form, by effort of the brain, for the first time as far as we know in the history of our race, an idea of a certain configuration for the surface of the Earth.

Hence, perhaps, may have flowed the potency of the charm, which has attended the subject of Homer’s Outer Geography. The subject has, however, in my belief, its utility too. It is rarely otherwise than well worth while to trace even the erroneous thoughts of powerful minds. But, moreover, in the present instance, I apprehend we can learn, through the Outer Geography of Homer, important and interesting matter of history, which is not to be learned from any other source. For the Poet has embedded into his imaginative scheme a multitude of real geographical and physical traditions; and by means of these, upon comparing them with their proper originals, we can judge with tolerable accuracy what were the limits of human enterprise on the face of earth in the heroic age.

The question before us is, what map of the earth did Homer shape in his own mind, that he might adjust to it the voyages and tours of his heroes Menelaus and Ulysses, particularly the latter? And in order to a legitimate inquiry the first step to be taken is negative. Do not let us engage in the vain attempt to construct the Geography of the Odyssey upon the basis of the actual distribution of the earth’s surface. Such a process can lead to no satisfactory result. Whatever materials Homer may have obtained to assist him, we must consider as so many atoms; I speak of course, as to all that lay beyond the narrow sphere of his Greek knowledge and experience. He had no adequate means of placing the different parts of the accounts which reached him in their true geographical relations to one another. The outer world was for him broken up into fragments, and these fragments were rearranged at his pleasure, with the aid of such lights only, as his limited physical knowledge could afford him.

~_Principal heads of the inquiry._~

Assuming for the present that the Phœnicianism of the Outer Geography has been on the whole sufficiently proved, I proceed to a more exact examination of the subject itself; and I propose to inquire into the following questions.

1. Has Homer two modes of dealing with the subject of locality, considered at large? if so, can it be shown that he applies them to two distinct geographical regions; one the circumscribed central tract of land and sea within which he lived, the other a wider and larger zone, which lay beyond it in all directions; and can a line be drawn with reasonable confidence and precision between these geographical regions accordingly?

2. If it be established that Homer has a system of Outer Geography, severed by a sufficiently-defined barrier from his Inner Geography, then are there any, and if so what, keys, or leading ideas of local arrangement for the former scheme, which, themselves derived from the evidence of his text, should be used for the adjustment of its details?

3. Under the system thus ascertained, what was the route of Menelaus, and more especially of Ulysses, as these presented themselves to the mind of Homer?

I set out from the proposition, which, as I conceive, rests upon universal consent, that within a certain sphere the poems may be considered as a record of experimental geography; and one sometimes carried down into detail with so much of accuracy, that it embraces even the miniature of that branch of knowledge, to which we usually give the name of topography.

By way of example for the former, I should say that when Homer describes the Bœotian towns, when he measures the distance over the Ægean, nay, when he makes Ulysses represent that he floated in ten days from some point near Crete to the Thesprotian coast, he is a geographer. Again, in his variously estimated account of the interior of Ithaca, he is a topographer. He is the same on the whole, though probably with greater license, when he is dealing with the Plain of Troy.

~_The two spheres of Geography._~

In speaking of the experimental geography of Homer, of course I do not intend to imply that he had, even within his narrow sphere, the means that later science has afforded of establishing situations and distances with absolute precision. He could only proceed by the far ruder testimony of the senses, trained in the school of experience. Neither do I mean that the experience was in every case his own, though to a great extent his geographical information was probably original, and acquired by him principally in the exercise of his profession as an itinerating Bard. But by the experimental and real geography of Homer, I mean these two things; first, that the Poet believed himself to be describing _pro tanto_ points upon the earth’s surface as they actually were; secondly, that his means of information were for practical purposes adequate. The evidence of the passage containing the simile of the Thought (Il. xv. 580) would suffice, were there none other, to show that he was himself a traveller; he also lived among a people already accustomed to travel, and familiar with the navigation of a certain portion of the earth’s surface. In a former part of this work I have given several instances to illustrate the disposition of the early Greeks with respect to travel[525]. A people of habits like theirs was well qualified to supply a practical system of geography for the whole sphere with which it was habitually conversant.

[525] Achæis, or Ethnology; sect. vii. p. 336.

But the boldness and maturity of navigation may be measured pretty nearly by the length of its voyages. The geographical particulars of the Wanderings, however dislocated and distorted, show us that the people who had supplied them had acquired a considerable acquaintance with all the waters within, and probably also, nay, I should be disposed to say certainly, some that were without, the Straits of Gibraltar. But in all the poems of Homer we find the traces of Greek knowledge and resort become fainter and fainter, as we pass beyond certain points. On the Greek Peninsula, to the south of the Ambracian gulf on the west and of Mount Olympus on the east, we have the signs of a constant intercourse to and fro. The same tokens extend to the islands immediately surrounding it, and reaching at least as far as Crete. Indeed, apart from particular signs, we may say that, without familiar and frequent intercourse among the members that composed it, the empire of Agamemnon could not have subsisted.

But, at certain distances, the mode of geographical handling becomes faint, mistrustful, and indistinct. Distances are misstated, or cease to be stated at all. The names of countries are massed together in such a way as to show that the Poet had no idea of a particular mode of juxtaposition for them. Topographical or local features, of a character such as to identify a description with some particular place or region as its prototype in nature, are erroneously transposed to some situation which, from general indications, we can see must be upon a different and perhaps distant part of the surface of the globe. Again, by ceasing to define distances and directions, he shows from time to time that he has lost confidence in his own collocation, that he is not willing to challenge a comparison with actual nature, and that, from want of accurate knowledge, he feels he must seek some degree of shelter in generalities.

It is obvious that, under the circumstances as they have thus far been delineated, the geography of the poems, with a centre fixed for it somewhere in Greece, say at Olympus or Mycenæ, might be first of all divided into three zones, ranging around that centre. The first and innermost would be that of the familiar knowledge and experience of his countrymen. The second would be that of their rare and occasional resort. The third would be a region wholly unknown to them, and with respect to which they were wholly dependent on foreign, that is on Phœnician, report; much as a Roman, five hundred years ago, would practically depend upon the reports of Venetians and Genoese mariners for all or nearly all his ultra-marine knowledge.

Now, though we may not be able to mark positively at every point of the compass the particular spot at which we step from the first zone to the second, and from the second to the third, yet there is enough of the second zone discernible to make it serve for an effectual delimitation between the first and the third; between the region of experience and that of marvel; of foreign, arbitrary, unchecked, and semifabulous report. Just as we are unable to fix the moment at which night passes into dawn, and dawn into day; but yet the dawn of morning, and the twilight of evening are themselves the lines which broadly separate between the day and the night, lying respectively at the extremities of each. So with the poems of Homer, it may be a question whether a given place, say Phœnicia, is in the first or the second zone; or whether some other, such as Scheria, or as the Bosphorus, is in the second or the third; but it will never be difficult to affirm of any important place named in the poems _either_ that it is not in the zone of common experience, or else that it is not in the zone of foreign fable.

~_Limits of the Inner Geography._~

Let me now endeavour to draw the lines, which thus far have been laid down only in principle.

1. And first it seems plain, that the experimental knowledge of Homer extended over the whole of the continental territory embraced within the Greek Catalogue, including, along with the continent, those islands which he has classed with his mainland, and not in his separate insular group[526].

[526] Il. ii. 645-80.

2. It may be slightly doubtful whether he had a similar knowledge of the islands forming the base of the Ægean. There is a peculiarity in the Cretan description (Il. ii. 645-52), namely, that after enumerating certain cities he closes with general words (649),

ἄλλοι θ’, οἳ Κρήτην ἑκατόμπολιν ἀμφενέμοντο.

Still he uses characteristic epithets: and in another place (Od. xiv. 257), he defines (of course by time) the distance from Crete to Egypt. So again in Rhodes (656), Camirus has the characteristic epithet of ἀργινόεις. On the whole we may place this division within the first zone of Homeric geography.

3. Homer would appear to have had an accurate knowledge of the positions of the islands of Lemnos, Samothrace, Imbros, Lesbos, Samos, and Chios[527]. These we may consider, without further detail, as answering practically for the whole Ægean sea.

[527] Il. xiv. 225-30. xiii. 10-16, 33. xiv. 281. xxiv. 78, 753, 434. Od. iii. 169-72.

4. Homer knew the positions of Emathia and Pieria, relatively to one another and to Greece; and the general course of the southern ranges of the Thracian mountains[528]. The Trojan Catalogue appears to show that he also knew the coast-line westward from the Dardanelles, as far as to the river Axius. There we may consider that his Pieria begins, with Greece upon its southern and western border.

[528] Il. xiv. 225-30. Od. v. 50.

5. It would appear that Homer had a pretty full knowledge of the southern coast-line of the Propontis. He seems to place the Thracians of the Trojan Catalogue on the northern side of that sea, but his language is quite general with respect to this part of it. On the south side, however, and in the whole north-western corner of Asia Minor, we appear to find him at home[529]. Thus much we may safely conclude from the detail of the Trojan Catalogue; from the particular account of the Idæan rivers in the Twelfth Iliad[530]; from the latter part of the journey of Juno in the Fourteenth[531]; and from the speech of Achilles in the Twenty-fourth[532], which fixes the position of Phrygia relatively to Troy.

[529] Forbiger thinks he knew the southern coast of the Black sea to a certain extent. Handbuch der Alten Geographie, sect. 4. p. 10.

[530] Il. xii. 17-24.

[531] Il. xiv. 280-4.

[532] Il. xxiv. 543-6.

6. From the point of Lectum to the southward, Homer shows a knowledge of the coast-line as far as Lycia in the south-western quarter of Asia Minor. But here we must close his inner sphere. The Solyman mountains supply the only local notice in the poems which can be said to belong to the interior country, and of these his conceptions are evidently as far as possible from geographical. In the Sixth Iliad[533] he appears to conceive of the Solyman people as bordering upon Lycia. Although the name has suggested to some a connection with Jerusalem, we ought to consider it as representing that for which it stands in geography, a part of the grand inland mass of Asiatic mountains. But from the proximity of the Solymi to Lycia, Homer would appear to have moved them greatly westward. Again, when Neptune in the Fifth Odyssey sees Ulysses from the Solyman mountains on his way from Ogygia, we must suppose that Homer conceived them to command some point of a neighbouring and continuous line of sea, which would allow of such a prospect. He would hardly have made Neptune see Ulysses from Lycia, or from a point across the mountains of Thrace, or from one on the other side of the actual Mount Taurus.

[533] Il. vi. 184.

We have now, I think, made the circuit of the whole zone, and it is a small one, of the real or experimental geography of Homer.

~_The intermediate or doubtful Zone._~

Let us take next the intermediate zone, which marks the extreme and infrequent points of Greek resort.

Beginning in the west and north-west, we have found Sicania (now Upper Calabria), Epirus, and the country of the Thesprotians[534], marking the points of this intermediate region. To the northward, we may fix it at Emathia. In the north-east, it seems to be bounded by the northern shore of the Sea of Marmora. The Thracians of Homer inhabit a country which he calls ἐριβώλαξ, Il. xx. 485, and which the Hellespont enclosed (ἐέργει), that is to say, washes on two sides at least. The Hellespont, as in this place it is termed ἀγάῤῥοος, signifies to the Eastern part of its waters in particular; and the name probably includes the Propontis (which he might well suppose to have a strong current throughout, like the Straits of Gallipoli), together with the northern Ægean between Chalcidice and the Thracian Chersonese. He has described these Thracians in very vague terms[535], and without any local circumstance, in the Catalogue: but the form of the coast-line apparently implied in the word ἐέργει, and the epithet of fertility, appear to indicate the plain of Adrianople and the Maritz. But this inclosure on two sides terminates when the northern shore begins to trend directly to the eastward: and the Πλαγκταὶ, or Bosphorus, which no man but Jason ever succeeded in passing, are to be considered as in the zone of a semifabulous or exterior chorography.

[534] Achæis, or Ethnology, sect. iv. p. 235.

[535] Il. ii. 844, 5.

When we pass into the south-east, we find that Cyprus, Phœnicia, and Egypt may perhaps most properly be placed in the doubtful zone. We have seen that Cyprus was known as a stage on the passage to the East, and as within the possible military reach of Agamemnon. But its lord did not join in the war: and Homer has no details about the island, beyond the specification of Paphos as the seat of the residence, and of the principal worship, of Venus.