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4037
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THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS
& ertnre
BY
DR. HERMANN BONITZ
TRANSLATED FROM THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION
BY LEWIS R. PACKARD
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
Fn.VNKI.IN SQUARE
1880
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
STACK
ANNEX
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4037
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
THE following lecture was delivered in 1860 in
Yienna, and has passed through four editions in
Germany. It has been recognized by many schol-
ars as presenting in brief space and with fairness
the points involved in the discussion, and the prog-
ress which has been made towards a solution of
the problem. I have been led to translate it main-
ly by the fact, as I suppose it to be, that there is no
work in English w r hich gives any just idea of the
difficulties in the way of accepting the Homeric
poems as the production of one poet, unless it be
the large and expensive work of Mure, which de-
fends the unity of authorship. It seemed desira-
ble that there should be accessible in English a
partial statement of the reasons which have led so
many German scholars to doubt the unity of au-
thorship of the poems. Besides, the notes contain
a very valuable, though not of course a complete,
4 INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
bibliography of the subject, which would be of
great service to one taking up the study of the
Homeric question.
I have translated the lecture in full ; but in the
notes I have taken the liberty of omitting and con-
densing, so far as could be done without detracting
from their value. The references I have verified so
far as was within my power.
LEWIS R. PACKARD.
ON the threshold of Greek literature, as its ear-
liest known work, not to us only, but to the Greeks
themselves at the height of their historical devel-
opment, 1 stand two majestic poems, to which few
other works of profane literature can be compared,
either for manifold influence on the intellectual
life of their own nation, or for admiring recogni-
tion among all peoples of high culture, even after
the lapse of twenty-five centuries the Iliad and
Odyssey of Homer. It seemed even to the ancients
that the imperishable works of Greek literature,
especially in poetry, were but the variously unfold-
ed flowers of a tree whose root and trunk were the
Homeric poems. 2 The Greek epic poetry was at
first an echo, in later times a conscious imitation,
of Homer. The founder of Greek tragedy in its
classic grandeur, the mighty Aeschylus, declared
himself that his poems were but fragments fallen
6 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
from the rich table of Homer; 3 and the choicest
praise of Sophokles that master-poet whose dra-
mas, even in modern times, in feeble reproductions,
without the glory of festive representation, without
the rhythmic dance of the chorus, without the in-
imitable flavor of the original language, yet fasci-
nate their hearers was that his tragedies eminently
displayed a Homeric character. 4 The Greek his-
torians based their work on Homer, at first in
unquestioning reception of his legends and invol-
untary imitation of his narrative style, afterwards
in critical explanation of the subject-matter of his
poems. 5 The Greek philosophy, although, in its ef-
fort to solve by the intellect the highest problems
of humanity, it gradually came into most decided
conflict with the popular faith and with the Ho-
meric poems, the most sacred representative of that
faith, 6 yet, at the same time, sought eagerly to find
in those poems the foundation of its convictions. 7
From Homer, from certain particular verses of
the Iliad, Pheidias, in the highest bloom of Greek
sculpture, derived the idea of the Zeus which he
set forth at Olympia for the veneration of the peo-
ple. 8 At Athens, the intellectual centre of Greece,
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 7
tlie systematic reading of the Homeric poems was
made, by an institution of Solon's, an important
part of the greatest national festival from the be-
ginning of the sixth century before Christ. 9 From
the time that reading and writing were introduced
as a constant element into the education of the
Athenian youth, the poems of Homer, especially
the Iliad, formed the primary and necessary ma-
terial for training in these matters, as well as in
memorizing and in reading aloud; 10 and when, in
the fifth century B.C., a young Athenian of noble
family boasts in company that he still knows by
heart the whole Iliad and Odyssey, no one finds
anything incredible in the statement. 11 Whatever
Greek classic, in poetry or prose, we read, 12 what-
ever branch of Greek culture we study, an intimate
acquaintance with Homer is an indispensable con-
dition of a thorough understanding of it, for the
literature and all the intellectual life of the Hel-
lenic people are bound by a thousand threads to
the poems of Homer.
To this universality of influence among his own
people, 13 of which the instances above given are only
hints, corresponds the range of extension abroad of
8 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
these poems. They have gone far beyond the lim-
its which are ordinarily set for the greatest works of
genius by the lapse of time, the divergencies of na-
tional character, and the growth of new civilizations.
Since the leading modern nations have definitely
recognized the connection of their own culture
O
with that of the classical nations of antiquity, and
have found for this conviction an expression, nec-
essarily varying in different times, in the form they
have given to the higher education, the Homeric
poems have taken a prominent place in the train-
ing of all whose early years give them an oppor-
tunity to study Greek. Although the learning of
that language is in some cases made much too la-
borious, so that in after-years one looks back upon
the time spent in it as so much fruitless waste, yet
commonly the reading of Homer forms a bright
spot on the dark background. For so soon as the
first struggle with the discouraging abundance of
forms and words is over, the fresh immortal youth
in the poetry affects the student with a resistless
charm. And though the delicate bloom of the
original is destroyed by the loss of the sounds
themselves in a translation, yet there remains a
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 9
vigorous material of true poetry so indestructible
that all the cultivated peoples of modern times re-
gard a successful translation of Homer as a real
gain to their own national literature. 14 Thus, the
effect upon our own German literature of the ap-
pearance of Yoss's translation is still manifest from
the letters and memories of that most active period
of our literary history ; and it will continue to be
marked in its influence upon our poetry when those
recollections shall have long lost their freshness.
The poetry of Homer in the version of Yoss be-
came a common inheritance of all cultivated per-
sons, in which every one felt it his duty to claim a
share. It cannot, indeed, be compared with the
original in exquisite effects of language, in the nat-
ural flow of the rhythm, in life-like richness of sig-
nificance, in picturesqueness of epithets; but its
true and faithful reproduction of many character-
istics of the poems widened the circle of those
who could advance from vague admiration to dis-
tinct knowledge of the name and poetry of Homer.
The sharp clearness of sensual perceptions and the
poet's self-abandonment to them, the power of nat-
ural passion, the vividness of presentation of out-
10 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
ward events or inward emotion, and all this con-
trolled by a judicious moderation which seems
to have been the happy endowment of the Greek
intellect these characteristics of Homer became,
as it were, a standard of truth to nature, to which
every descriptive poem must conform. 15 For, to
use Goethe's words, " Homer presents realities, w r e
mostly effects ; he paints the terrible, we the terror;
he the charming, we the charm." 16 When Les-
sing compares poetry, as to the power of represen-
tation, with the plastic arts, and draws with con-
clusive criticism the fixed boundaries of the two
fields, it is in Homer especially, whose truth to nat-
ure he trusts as if it were Nature herself, that lie
finds the norm for poetry. No poet of onr time
and of our people approaches so nearly to Homer's
objectiveness as Goethe himself, who so sharply
contrasted him with modern poets in the words
above quoted, and it was Goethe who gave up Nau-
sikaa as a theme after it had fascinated him and
lie had already sketched a plan of treatment, on
the ground that no one could safely venture into
such rivalry with Homer. 17
When we consider thus the power of these
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 11
poems, we understand how their author was thought
worthy by his own people of heroic, almost of di-
vine, honors, 18 and was referred to by them as " the
poet," without further definition. What the admi-
ration of his people expressed in this way has been
confirmed in its true significance by the testimony
of succeeding generations.
But the almost divine honor of this hero-poet in
his own nation, and the undisputed recognition he
obtained through more than two thousand years,
could not protect him from the sudden uprising of
doubts, one may say, as to his very existence, and
of a theory of the most opposite character as to the
origin of the Iliad and Odyssey. We may state
the new views somewhat as follows :
The Iliad and Odyssey, which we call the poems
of Homer, are not the work of a single poet ; but
each of them certainly, at least, of the older of
the two, the Iliad, this may be confidently said is
made up of the separate songs of different poets.
For hundreds of years there were in circulation
among the Greek tribes heroic songs about the in-
cidents of the Trojan legend, each one of moderate
length, each containing only a single transaction,
12 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMEKIC POEMS.
designed to be sung with the accompaniment of
the lyre, and to be heard by a -company who, after
a banquet at any festival occasion, would enjoy re-
calling the achievements of their ancestors. In
course of time these separate songs were combined
according to the order of the story, at first into
large groups and then into the complete wholes,
pretty much as we now have them, and were then,
at last, made permanent in written form by the
orders of Peisistratos, in the sixth century before
Christ. It is, then, not the work of a single man,
but the poetic product of a long period, which we
find incorporated into the Iliad.
These are some of the principal ideas which F.
A. Wolf, the founder of philological science as now
understood, set forth near the close of the last cen-
tury in his Prolegomena to the Homeric poems. 19
As the veneration for the name of Homer, then
freshly intensified by the recent publication of
Voss's translation, had not been confined to the
narrow circle of professional Greek scholars, so
the excitement produced by Wolf's book extended
far beyond that limited range. 20 The philosopher
Fichte declared, out of lively sympathy, that he
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 13
himself had reached, on a priori grounds, the same
result that Wolf had attained through historical re-
search, an expression of approval to which Wolf re-
plied with humorous irony. Of more weight was
the entire assent to his views of the acute scholar
W. von Humboldt. On the other hand, Schiller, who
maintained with Humboldt a lively and fruitful
exchange of thought on aesthetic questions, declared
it absolutely barbarous to think of dismembering
the Iliad or of its having ever been put together
from originally separate songs. 21 Lest we should
suppose this the unanimous verdict of true poets
on the theories of philologists, let us hear at once
Goethe's enthusiastic assent to Wolfs views 22
"Erst die Gesundheit des Marines, der, endlich voin Na-
men Horneros
Kiihn uns befreiend, uns auch ruft in die vollere
Bahn !
Denn wer wagte mit GSttern den Kampf, und wer mit
dem Einen ?
Doch Homeride zu sein, auch nur als letzter, ist
schon."
Still the same Goethe, in his old age, withdrew his
assent to Wolfs revolutionary view, and preferred
14 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
to believo in, and gladly open his mind to. Homer
as an individual, his poems as a whole. 23
"We cannot here trace out further the sketch of
these various and varying impressions made by
Wolf's views. It must be enough to have given
the principal facts in connection with the leading
names, which may serve as a type of what went on
in the educated world at large. The waves of dis-
cussion would soon have subsided, and peaceful ac-
quiescence in the traditional views have returned,
had nothing but a troublesome paradox been thrown
out to the world in Wolf's book. The merit of the
book, that which makes it a notable and fruitful
event in the field of historical science, is not the
boldness of its attack upon a generally received
opinion, but the conscientiousness of its method.
For nearly twenty years Wolf silently entertained
and examined the ideas which are unfolded in his
Prolegomena. 24 All that could be detected by an
eye steadily fixed on the subject in the laboriously
gathered traditions of antiquity, in the poems them-
selves, in the general progress of culture all this lie
considered with the strictest conscientiousness be-
fore he finally, with unmistakable reluctance, 25 re-
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 15
solved to break loose from a belief which had been
no less warmly cherished by him than by others, and
which only the pitiless force of reasoning compel-
led the earnest investigator to abandon. This merit
of his book no one has remarked more justly than
F. Schlegel, a man to whom certainly cannot be
ascribed any pleasure in the overthrow or weaken-
ing of an old and settled state of things. " Wolf's
book," says lie, " by the thirst for knowledge and
love of truth which inspire it, and by its firm grasp
and close linking-together of so long a series of
thoughts and observations in such a field, is a
thorough model of the investigation of a point
in ancient history, and yet its defenders compre-
hended it almost as little, to say nothing of using
it, as its assailants did." The want which Schle-
gel saw in Wolf's contemporaries was made good
in time ; the following generation, no longer be-
wildered by the novelty of his theory, gave his in-
vestigations their true value by developing fully
the various lines of research first opened by him.
The thorough study of the poems in regard to their
internal consistency and their linguistic and met-
rical form, the examination of all the statements
16 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
of ancient writers bearing upon Homer and the
Homeric poems, the combination of these research-
es with a study of the general course of culture
among the Greeks, and the comparison of their re-
sults with kindred phenomena in other nations all
these points must be separately and fully weighed
before a settled conclusion can be attained. To
one scholar, K. Lachmann, 26 the acute investigator
in the field of the early German poetry, belongs in-
disputably the special merit of having given, in his
minute and exhaustive study of one single point
the self-consistency of the Iliad a model for such
examinations, and an important contribution to the
solving of the problem. He does not, however,
stand alone ; for in this field, as in the others, each
of which must be separately worked, other scholars
have brought further support to the view proposed
by Wolf. And, at the same time, with no less
acuteness and zeal for the truth, has everything
been used which could support the traditional be-
lief in the original unity of each poem, and in Ho-
mer as their author. 27 The great importance of the
Homeric poems, not only in relation to Greek his-
tory and literature, but also to all epic poetry, has
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 17
brought it about that the " Homeric question," to
use the common phrase, in all the course of the
discussion as well as at its beginning, has secured
the attention of learned men even outside of the
circle of specialists. But for such lookers-on it is
difficult, almost impossible, to find their way through
the labyrinth of separate investigations of all kinds,
which form by this time an extensive literature in
themselves. 28 The fatigue of this confused discus-
sion is producing now an effect somewhat similar
to that which the novelty of the theory at first pro-
duced. Sj'inpathies and antipathies, convictions
which, however well-founded, have nothing to do
with the question, have more weight than real
study of the subject. Opprobrious epithets occa-
sionally take the place of arguments. A foolish
timidity suspects in this attack upon the traditions
of two thousand years for that seems, at first, the
tendency of Wolfs ideas a connection with other
tendencies of the time, tendencies with which pure
historical research has nothing to do. An aesthetic
dogmatism which, as we have seen, can shelter it-
self behind the names of Schiller and Goethe de-
spises the barbarous pedantry which cuts up great
18 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
poetic creations into fragments ; and a frivolity
which is not ashamed to put on airs of scientific
omniscience looks with pity on the long-since re-
futed paradoxes of Wolf. It is impossible, in a
single lecture of popular character, to go through
such an involved discussion, and it would be un-
seemly to urge in such a form one's personal views
on disputed points. But it may be possible to
show on what grounds the whole question as to
the origin of the Homeric poems is justified what
are the means for its solution, and within what
narrow limits the matters still in dispute between
the opposed parties have been restricted. These
are the questions which will now occupy us.
" He who doubts that the Iliad and Odyssey, es-
sentially in their present form, are the work of one
poet, and that poet Homer, each originally a single
mental product, is in conflict with the unanimous
conviction of all antiquity. How can any one,
separated by thousands of j-ears from the period of
the poems, possessing only scanty remains of so
abundant a literature, be so foolish or so daring as
to contradict the unanimous testimony of Homer's
own nation ?"
T1IE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 19
This idea, expressed in manifold forms, excludes
from the start all question as to the origin of the
Homeric poems as unwarranted and inadmissible.
It would have great weight if only it were quite
true. Such a Homer, however, the author of these
two poems, belonging, as any actual person must,
to a definite time and a definite place, though he
has gradually won a position in manuals of history,
yet is not directly attested by any real historic doc-
ument. Let us see what is the real content of tra-
dition as to the principal points in regard to Homer
and the Homeric poems. 29
The ancient Greeks possessed, besides the Iliad
and Odyssey, a number of other epic poems of some
extent connected with the Trojan myths, 30 which
were concerned with parts of the legend preceding
and following these two poems. The existence of
this body of epic poetry can be traced back to a con-
siderable distance beyond the beginning of the Greek
national life. 31 Of it all we possess now but a few
fragments, with some summaries of the narratives
and other notices ; yet there are enough data not
only to bring before us the great extent of the epic
poetry on the Trojan theme, but also to enable us
20 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
to recognize the fact that these other poems, though
related to the Iliad and Odyssey, are distinguished
from them by characteristic differences. 32 In regard
to every one of these outlying Trojan epics, there
exists a tradition uniform as to the place of origi-
nation, and uniform, or in some cases varying be-
tween two names, as to the name of the author. 33
Moreover, the time of composition belongs to a
period not far removed from the light of historic
knowledge. In spite of all this, these poems, to-
gether with the Iliad and Odyssey, are sometimes
ascribed to Homer. Homer is regarded as the au-
thor not only of the Iliad and Odyssey, but, besides,
of the other Trojan epics, either of most of them
or of all ; or even of all these and of the so-called
Homeric hymns to the gods besides. This com-
prehensive meaning is given to the name of Homer
not only by those who were little in sympathy with
the intellectual spirit and literature of the Greek
people, but also by men whose statement is to us
unquestioned authority. 34 The idea of limiting Ho-
mer's authorship to the Iliad and Odyssey alone is
held by only an individual here and there in the
classical time; it does not become an established
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 21
belief until, in the third century before Christ, Al-
exandria becomes the centre of Greek learning
and culture. 35 This belief is therefore the result of
study, which did not reach definite conclusion un-
til some five hundred years had passed since the
Iliad was a completed work. On the other hand,
the direct historical testimony of the classical pe-
riod ascribes to Homer works of such extent and
such widely differing character that even the bold-
est fancy might well hesitate to attribute them to
a single man.
When, then, and where did this incomparable
genius live? It is a well-known story, embalmed
in several Greek epigrams, 36 that seven cities con-
tended for the honor of having been Homer's birth-
place. Another Greek epigram gives the happy
poetical solution of the puzzle, that no spot on
earth, but heaven itself, is his true fatherland; 37
but the historical solution of the difficulty is not
at all furthered by this ingenious suggestion. For
the numerous birthplaces of Homer are not mere-
ly poetic fancy, but in sober prose we find a still
greater number of claimants ; among them Smyr-
na, Kolophon, and Miletus on the coast of Asia
22 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
.Minor; Athens in Greece proper; los, Chios, Ky-
pros, and Krete among the islands. And always, no
matter how late in time the statement is made, 38
some unexceptionable ancient authority is given
for it, so that we have absolutely no right to rank
the claim of one place clearly above that of anoth-
er. Moreover, as to most of the places which
claimed to be his birthplace, we find the further
statement that there was a school there for the cul-
tivation of epic poetry, associated by the tradition
of art from generation to generation into a sort of
family. 39 The tradition of such schools of poets
exists, also, in the case of other places, as to which
the statement that Homer was born or resided there
may perhaps be only accidentally lost to us. 40 And
when did Homer live ? We should not be sur-
prised to find in so unhistorical a period an uncer-
tainty of some fifty or a hundred years ; but when
the statements as to the time of his life ransre from
O
the period of the Greek migrations to Asia Minor
that is, about the middle of the eleventh century
down to the last third of the seventh century before
Christ, and when all the statements fixing different
points in this long period go back to authorities
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 23
among which we cannot give any decided prefer-
ence to one over another, 41 then we recognize that
we have to do with something more than the mere
chronological inaccuracy of an early age. Accord-
ing to these accounts, Homer's life falls anywhere
within a period of more than four hundred years,
and that during a time marked by the most exten-
sive changes in the social condition of the Greeks
on both sides of the Aegean Sea. For this variation
in regard to the place and the time of Homer's life, 42
the real historical significance has been determined
by a recent investigation, in which one can hardly
tell whether to admire most the self-evident sim-
plicity of the main idea, or the merciless rigor of
the historical argument. 43 It is this : Every state-
ment as to time belongs to the tradition of a particu-
lar locality. Thus the birth of Homer, according
to the tradition of Smyrna, falls in the middle of the
eleventh century ; according to that of Chios, about
two generations later, or the beginning of the tenth
century ; according to that of Samos, in the ninth
century ; and so on. Also to the ninth century be-
longed, according to Samian tradition and to He-
rodotus, 44 the residence of Homer at Samos and the
24: THE OEIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
founding of the school of poets there ; whereas the
latter event at Chios, according to Chian tradition,
fell at the beginning of the tenth century. If, now,
the name Homer, as has been shown, is made to
bear all the epic poetry of the Trojan circle of
myths; if this Homer is reported as born at differ-
ent points in the Greek world during a period of
more than four centuries ; if in each instance there
is connected with his birth or residence in a given
locality the story of the rise of a school of epic
poetry in the same locality, then for any one who
does not allow himself to accept or to reject any
of these facts by itself the conclusion is irresistible.
The statements as to Homer's birth at different
places and at different times are really statements
as to the beginning of epic poetry in the several
localities. The sequence of dates and places yields
a history of the spread of such poetry over the
western coast of Asia Minor and among the islands.
The order in which Smyrna, Chios, Kolophon, and
so on to the remote Kypros and Krete, arrange
themselves according to the succession of the re-
spective traditions of time, corresponds to the geo-
graphical position or the political relations of the
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMEJRIC POEMS. 25
several places, and so furnishes an unsought con-
firmation of this theory. 45
To these historical data in regard to the person
of Homer let us now add the facts which are es-
tablished as to the poems, without reference to the
name of their author.
The Iliad and Odyssey were not originally com-
mitted to writing, but orally delivered. All the
attacks made upon this proposition since Wolf
first proved it have only served to establish its
truth more firmly. 46 The poems themselves, by
their form and contents, make it probable. No-
where do we find in the narrative of the poems or
in the numerous similes the slightest hint of the
existence of the art of writing, not even where
there was natural occasion for mention of it. 47 The
language also, in its power of adapting itself to the
metre by lengthening and shortening, separating
and contracting, the vowels, shows a flexibility that
is incomparably more natural for the spoken word
than for the word fixed in a given form by writ-
ing. 48 But the supposition that is thus made high-
ly probable becomes certain from other considera-
tions. In the eighth century before Christ, the Hi-
26 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
ad was already a completed work, as appears from
the fact that other epics composed at that time by
the limitations of their own subject-matter recog-
nize the limits of that of the Iliad as already set-
tled. 49 It is not until a full century later that we
find the first beginnings of the use among the
Greeks of the art of writing, and then it is for the
recording of laws. 50 But from the use of writing
to record the brief formulas of ancient laws to the
use of it for long poems is a progress involving so
many indispensable steps as to require a very long
time. Poems so long as the Iliad and the Odyssey
one 16,000, the other 12,000 lines are not writ-
ten down, so long as the habit of hearing them re-
cited is universal and there is no hope of their
finding readers. The preservation of these poems,
by oral tradition only, for a couple of centuries,
which in itself is not without a parallel in the his-
tory of epic poetry, 51 is in this case the less surpris-
ing by reason of the historical fact that there were
schools of poets who made it their business to cul-
tivate epic poetry, and to recite and transmit the
heroic songs of their ancestors.
The earliest well-authenticated case of the com-
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 27
mission of the Iliad and Odyssey to writing oc-
curred at Athens in the latter half of the sixth
century before Christ, when the work was done by
a committee organized by Peisistratos. 62 That this
was the first time that the whole of the poems was
written down may be clearly inferred from the
form and character of the numerous statements in
regard to it. If it had been only a combination
and connection of written copies previously exist-
ing, it would never have been, as it now is, cele-
brated as an important event, as the accomplish-
ment of a difficult task. And surely the ordinance
of Solon, before the time of Peisistratos, directing
the succession in the delivery of the Homeric songs
at the great Panathenaic festival at Athens would
have taken a different form if he could have re-
ferred to existing written copies.
After Peisistratos, and more especially after the
end of the fifth century before Christ, when the
love of reading became more general, copies of the
Iliad were multiplied. 53 Certain cities had their
own copies, which were probably the local test of
the accuracy of the festival declamations. Alex-
ander the Great held his copy in great honor, and
28 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
set apart a jewelled casket from his Persian booty
to keep it in. The form given to the poems under
Peisistratos, when corrected of some errors that had
subsequently crept in, was what the Alexandrian
scholars of the third century before Christ aimed
to restore, 54 and our modern editions strive to re-
produce, as nearly as possible, the text as they de-
termined it. 55
Now let us take together in one view the points
thus historically settled. The Iliad and Odyssey
were orally circulated for two centuries before they
were put into written form. The prevalent opin-
ion among the Greeks in the classical time made
Homer the author not only of the Iliad and Odys-
sey, but the originator of all their epic poetry, or
at least all that pertained to the Trojan circle of
myths. The traditions in regard to his life give
no story of an individual existence connected with
a definite time and place, but assume the shape
of items as to the gradual spread of epic poetry
among those Greek cities and tribes which chiefly
cultivated it. The question whether the Iliad and
Odyssey proceeded from the spontaneous concep-
tion of a single poet, or were formed by putting
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 29
together the separate songs of one or of several
poets, is not touched at all by these traditions, for
either supposition is reconcilable with the histor-
ical facts yielded by them. There is, however,
one result gained by examining them, and that is,
that the answer to this question is shown to be en-
tirely apart from any supposed historical evidence.
If any one is constrained, by arguments of another
kind, to hold that the Homeric poems are not orig-
inal units, but combinations of separate songs or
enlargements of simpler poems, no one can charge
him with defying the testimony of a sure and well-
defined tradition. The answer to the question be-
tween original unity and subsequent combination
can be sought only in the poems themselves.
In the poems themselves. , 56 That sounds very
well as a theoiy, but in practical application it may
be very likely to amount to leaving the decision to
personal temperament and subjective inclination.
We have just seen how men of the most cultivated
judgment in the sphere of poetry, who undoubt-
edly formed their opinion solely from the poems
themselves, came to the most opposite conclusions.
And, indeed, may it not be impossible to determine,
30 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
in regard to poems of so remote an age, what degree
of self -consistency the} 7 ought to have in order to
prove their original unity? 57 Such considerations
must certainly inspire us with caution, but the fact
of differences of opinion ought not to make us de-
spair of reaching a satisfactory conclusion by going
to the bottom of the subject ; and, on the other
hand, in the case of poems as long as the Iliad and
Odyssey, a comparison of their several parts as to
subject and form furnishes a standard of consist-
ency which restricts very narrowly the caprices of
individual judgments. It will be my endeavor to
show that, in virtue of these things, a tenable opin-
ion can be formed, and has been in part already
settled. Let us look first at the Iliad.
The series of transactions and incidents which
the Iliad presents to our imagination is so con-
nected together as to be easily embraced in one
view. It is the tenth year of the siege, and the
Achaean army is still striving to overthrow Troy
in revenge for the outrage committed by Paris.
Then it happens that their bravest hero, Achilles,
is wounded in his honor by Agamemnon, the lead-
er of the host, and resolves to avenge himself for
THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMEKIC POEMS. 31
the insult by keeping aloof from the battle-field.
His goddess-mother, Thetis, asks and obtains from
Zeus the promise that the Achaean, army shall have
disasters until Agamemnon repents and atones for
the wrong he has done. For a time the valor of
the other Achaean chiefs maintains the balance
against the Trojans, but presently they are at such
a disadvantage that Agamemnon sends an embas-
sy of the noblest chiefs to beg forgiveness of Achil-
les and offer him full compensation. But his thirst
for revenge is not yet satisfied ; the woes of the
Greeks must be yet greater; the Trojans must
force their way into the camp, begin to burn the
ships, and thus threaten them with complete de-
struction, ere he will lay aside his wrath and come
forth from his retirement. The very next day
brings matters to this extremity. The bravest of
the Achaean leaders are wounded and forced to
leave the field. Hektor breaks through the wall
of the Greek camp, and the resistance of the mighty
Ajax cannot prevent his setting fire to one of the
ships. Then Patroklos, the trusty companion-in-
arms of Achilles, beseeches him in this crisis of
need, if he will not go out himself, at least to allow
32 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
him and the host of the Myrmidons to take part in
the battle. This only he consents to do. By the
successes that attend his unexpected appearance on
the field, Patroklos is so carried away that he for-
gets the strict command of Achilles, and lets him-
self be drawn on from defence of the camp to an
attack upon the Trojan army. In pressing the at-
tack he is slain, and it is only with great effort that
his body, stripped of its armor, is rescued from the
eager foe. At the dreadful news of his friend's
death, Achilles, late on that day, comes forth, and
by his mere presence checks the renewed onset of
the Trojans. The next morning Agamemnon gives
Achilles a full compensation for the wrong done
him, and Achilles, burning with desire to avenge
the death of his beloved friend, dismisses his anger
at Agamemnon. In the now renewed conflict he
takes his revenge. Many Trojans fall before him,
and, last of all, Hektor, who alone dared to meet his
attack, and who alone was the hope of the Trojan
cause. The burial of Patroklos, the funeral games
in his honor, the return of the body of Hektor to
his aged father, and the lament of the Trojans over
it, bring the poem to a close.
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 33
This hasty sketch will suffice to recall to any one
acquainted with the Iliad the main outline of the
poem. One cannot thus bring it up to mind with-
out being impressed with the manifest interlink-
ing of the parts, the restriction of the story with-
in well-chosen limits, the grouping of the whole
around a common centre. But in recent times
the admiration of this poem has gone a step far-
ther, and made the discovery that the whole Iliad is
guided and controlled by one fundamental thought,
one leading idea, 58 which is thus stated :
"The wrath of Achilles is fully justified and
right, and the supreme Governor of the world
himself assures to it its satisfaction ; but then the
man's passion pushes his wrath, right as it is in
itself, to an undue excess. When he rejects the
offered reconciliation, Achilles makes himself lia-
ble to punishment, and by the death of his dearest
friend pays the penalty of his excessive wrath."
Who would deny that the succession of actions
and events presented in the Iliad is perfect!}' adapt-
ed to convey this sound ethical doctrine ? Who
could fail to recognize that a sort of national in-
stinct made due moderation a necessary condition,
3
34: THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
in the view of the Greeks in all ages, of the high-
est moral goodness and nobleness ? But the ques-
tion is a very different one, whether in the Iliad
as we have it and the ancients had it, be it one
poem or a combination of originally diverse ele-
ments whether in this Iliad we find this idea set
forth as the controlling idea, or anything to justify
us in reading it between the lines ? To this ques-
tion we must certainly answer, No. It is not from
the consideration of justice that Zeus promises the
fullest satisfaction to the wrath of Achilles, but he
owes gratitude to Thetis for previous benefits, and
Thetis makes these benefits tell so as to secure the
assent of Zeus to her request. 59 The rejection by
Achilles of the offers of friendship does not con-
stitute a turning-point in the action of the poem.
There is no subsequent reference to it, even where
there is the strongest reason for one; 60 and Zeus,
without the slightest hint of disapproval of the
implacability of Achilles, maintains unaltered his
promise to avenge him by the increasing woes of
the Greeks. 61 In the death of Patroklos, no one of
gods or men detects a penalty for the excessive
wrath of Achilles. He falls by the attack of a deity
THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 35
friendly to the Trojans, and because he transgressed
the strict command of Achilles as to the limits of
his taking part in the contest. Thus we see that
at every important point of the action not only do
we fail to find that motive suggested which we
ought to find on this theory, but another motive,
essentially different and irreconcilable with that, is
employed. In truth, one has to get away from the
Iliad, and strive to forget what is really contained
in it, before he can venture to impose upon the
poem as it is a thought which might be the ruling
thought of the whole.
But, again, the most serious difficulties arise as
to the mere continuity of connection in the narra-
tive so soon as we descend from general outlines to
particular details. So far as these depend on va-
riation of tone and style, it is useless to try to give
an idea of them. 62 They do not appear in the Ger-
man translation, which, excellent as it is, spreads a
uniform tone over the whole. So, also, of other
grounds of suspicion, although as depending on
the subject-matter they must appear in any ver-
sion, yet one can hardly give an idea of their num-
ber and the way they are inwrought in the whole
36 THE OEIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
structure of the poem without going minutely
through the whole. Still, perhaps, in some exam-
ples the kind of doubt they raise may be so far in-
dicated as to show whether they are such as to jus-
tify positive inferences. Such cases as this, that
the same warrior is killed on different days by dif-
ferent foes, may be regarded as of little conse-
quence. 63 They occur only in regard to inferior
persons, and such contradictions in a long poem
may be explained by failure of memory, even on
the supposition of single authorship. But other
things go deeper into the course of the main inci-
dents. The larger part of the Iliad is taken up
with the particular narrative of the events of three
days of conflict. The first, favorable throughout
to the Greek army without the help of Achilles,
extends from the second book nearly to the end of
the seventh ; the second da t y, which contains the
extreme peril of the Greeks, the exploits and death
of Patroklos, and finally the sudden appearance of
Achilles on the field, begins in the eleventh and
ends in the eighteenth book ; the third, containing
the vengeance of Achilles and the death of Hek-
tor, covers books xx, xxi, and xxii. If now we
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 37
undertake to make clear to ourselves the incidents
of the second and most important day, we stumble
at every step against the greatest difficulties. The
narrative goes quickly over the beginning of the
conflict. After only eighty lines we are told that
so long as the sun was ascending the fortune of
the battle was undeckled, but that from mid-day
on the scale was turned. And then, after we have
followed through five books the most varied shift-
ings of the contest, and have been told of incidents
requiring considerable time the battle about the
wall of the Greek camp, and the storming of its
gate against vigorous defence ; the help given by
Poseidon to the Greeks ; Hera's preparations for a
trick upon Zens, and her success in beguiling him
to sleep, in order that Poseidon may work on unin-
terrupted; the awakening of Zeus, and the help he
sends to the Trojans ; the turning of their retreat
into an attack; the struggle around the ship of
Ajax ; the appeal of Patroklos to Achilles for leave
to rescue the Greeks ; the arming of Patroklos and
the Myrmidons, and a large part of the exploits of
Patroklos after all this has been told, in more
than 4000 lines, then we hear again that it is
38 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
mid-day and the sun standing high in heaven. 6 *
We may, if we please, cut out ever so much of
what lies between these two statements, as being a
subsequent enlargement of a skilfully constructed
original narrative. But we gain nothing by that;
for, in any case, the development of the struggle
which causes the appearance of Patroklos, and a
great part of his achievements, have no time allowed
for them, for they occur between two distinct indi-
cations of the same hour. In another point of
view, there is a difficulty as to the appearance of
Patroklos on the field. When the battle is turning
against the Greeks in the eleventh book, Patro-
klos is sent out by Achilles to learn the name of
a wounded man whom they see Nestor carrying
away in his chariot. Patroklos is in such a hurry
to perform the command of his impatient chief
that lie refuses to sit down in Nestor's tent. But
this haste is forgotten ; for while the Greek wall is
stormed by Hektor, and while the fortunes of war
are chano-ino- back and forth through four lonsr
O O O O
books, Patroklos remains seated in quiet conversa-
tion in the tent of a Greek chieftain. 65 Nay, more
than this, when he finally, in the sixteenth book, re-
TUP: OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 39
turns to Achilles, not a word is said of an answer to
the question of Achilles, nor, indeed, of his having
been sent on the errand. 66 Similar discrepancies
we find in the course of the whole narrative, lively
and vivid as it is in the details. In closely con-
nected passages we find different representations of
the condition of the battle, of its form, of its local-
ity. 67 The entrance of the same person, Poseidon,
at the same time into the conflict is twice described,
and in ways irreconcilable with each other. 68 Zens
utters on the same day two incompatible prophe-
cies of the immediate future. 69 As to the death of
one hero, Patroklos, we receive two inconsistent
accounts in close connection. 70 As we read, we are
carried along by the naturalness and vigor of the
successive pictures, but the effort to hold one con-
tinuous thread through them, to grasp a unity in
the narrative, such as it must have even if only re-
cited, so that the hearers should understand and
see the incidents in imagination this effort fails
utterly. We find ourselves in a mighty concourse
of tumultuous waves, where it is impossible to stand
firmly. 71
Very different is the impression made by the
40 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
story of the first day of conflict in books ii-vii.
There, with very slight exceptions, we enjoy the
clear light of a transparent narrative. What read-
er of the Iliad would not recall with lively admi-
ration the charming passage of the view from the
walls of Troy, with its happy delineations of Hel-
en, Priam, and the Greek heroes; the exquisite de-
scription of the shooting of the arrow of Panda-
ros, the beauty of which Lessing has so clearly
analyzed ; 72 the splendid story of the exploits of
Diomedes, and then the peaceful episode between
him and Glaukos, who meet as foes, but recognize
each other as connected by hereditary ties of hos-
pitality, and separate with mutual gifts ; finally,
the parting of Hektor and Andromache, a scene
often imitated, but not easily surpassed in the
touching power of its simple naturalness ? But
the beauty of these separate scenes, which makes
it hard to tell which one is the most delightful, is
quite equalled by the difficulty of combining them
into one story. 73 The mass of the incidents threat-
ens at the very outset to overwhelm us, when we
recollect that they are to be supposed to occur
within a single day; and then we find it, in almost
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 41
every case, impossible to discover the internal link
between any two of them. We have a stately pict-
ure of the arming of the Greek host, and then a
roster of the whole Greek force down to the minor
chiefs, occupying some 400 lines. Everything indi-
cates the beginning of a grand general conflict, and
then follows a truce, and a single combat between
Paris and Menelaos. 74 The agreement, sanctioned
by a sacrifice and solemnly sealed by oaths, that if
Menalaos is victor in this duel, Helen and the treas-
ure taken with her shall be given up, is wantonly
broken by the Trojans ; and on the same day, with
the slightest possible reference to that former duel,
Hektor challenges any of the Greek chiefs to a
second one, without proposing that it shall decide
so much. Still the Greeks accept his challenge,
and utter no reproaches over the former breach
of faith. Moreover, on the very day on which the
previous duel has resulted in favor of their cham-
pion, and on which, too, the general contest has
brought the Trojans into extreme distress, the
bravest Greek chiefs dread to enter this single
combat, and have to be aroused from their conster-
nation by Nestor's reproaches. 75 Even Diomedes,
42 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
who on that very day lias undertaken and trium-
phantly carried on a combat with Ares himself, is
now among the terror-stricken. It is true, his cour-
age has already before this, in some unexplained
way, abandoned him. Immediately after he has,
with valor inspired by Athene, vanquished and driv-
en from the field Aphrodite and Ares, we find him
meeting Glaukos, whom he does not know, and ask-
ing with pious anxiety whether it may not be a god
who confronts him, for with gods a mortal must
not venture to contend. 76
But I will not go on with the list of such contra-
dictions, tempting as is the abundance of material.
It is impossible to fairly present here the number
of difficulties which arise in the two parts of the
Iliad of which I have spoken, which make up about
a half of the whole poem. My only purpose has
been to bring to your view, by some easily pre-
sented examples, the character and importance of
them. Whoever wishes a confirmation from with-
out of the gravity of these inconsistencies should
seek it, not in the writings of those who have con-
vincingly set them forth, 77 but rather in those of
their adversaries, who, in order to maintain the
TIIE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 43
miity of the Iliad, labor to invalidate the grounds
of suspicion. 78 The devices of interpretation and
involved hypotheses by which they seek to seem to
reconcile irreconcilable contradictions, 79 form the
strongest proof of the reasonableness of the doubts
as to the original unity of the poem, and justify
the simple inference drawn from them. When a
poem like the Iliad presents, sometimes through
two hundred lines, and sometimes through nearly
a thousand, one scene and set of characters with
strict consistency, even in the minutest details of
the vivid delineations, and then in the very next
lines passes on to the assumption of a different
scene and a different disposition in the actors
when this kind of inconsistency, varying in degree,
runs through the whole poem, and everywhere
shows itself, not within single narrations, but only
in the combination of these into one whole; 80 in
such a case we find ourselves compelled to con-
clude that those single narratives were originally
separate, and that the combining of them was a
subsequent process. The narrative of Diomedec'
conversation with Glaukos is, in its way, as admira-
ble as that of his exploits in war, but as a conthm-
44 THE ORIGIN OF TIIE HOMERIC POEMS.
ation of these it cannot Lave belonged to the orig-
inal conception and composition of the poem.
Hektor's challenge to a single combat, the dread
of the Greek chiefs to engage with him, the bravest
of the Trojans, Nestor's reproaches and exhorta-
tions all this is very well told ; but as a scene of
the same day on which the Greeks had been cheat-
ed out of the stakes of another single combat (a
day, too, in which they are everywhere successful
in battle), such a representation is impossible.
Facts of this kind speak so plainly that we can-
not be deaf to them, and attention to them has al-
ready brought about agreement on certain points
between the two parties to this discussion. No
one who really understands the questions at issue
believes any longer in the original independent ex-
istence of a poet, called Homer, if you please, who
wrought up the myths of his people into the Iliad. 81
It is admitted by the most decided and most prom-
inent champions of the theory of single authorship
that the composer of the Iliad had before him sep-
arate songs of earlier origin, that he took them up
into liis comprehensive poem without material al-
terations, and that the contradictions or, to use a
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 45
milder term, inequalities which we discover pro-
ceed from this adoption and combination of earlier
songs. 82 The difference of opinion is limited now
substantially to these points : that the defenders of
the unity of the Iliad assert the impossibility of sep-
arating it into the originally independent parts; 83
that they restrict as much as they can the amount
of such incorporations in proportion to the rest of
the Iliad ; and that they find the true value of the
Iliad to lie, not in the poetic beauty of single lays,
but in the majestic composition of the whole poem.
As to the first point, there is hardly room for much
dispute ; for the real question is not whether it is
possible in all, or even in a few, cases to mark off
the originally separate songs, but whether the pres-
ent form of the poem has grown out of such ele-
ments without essential alteration of them ; and on
this point there is agreement within certain limits.
As to the relative extent of the incorporated ele-
ments and of the new independently composed
Iliad, the field of controversy will be narrowed by
the further investigation of particular cases. The
third question, whether the T 'alue and significance
of the Iliad is to be seen in the poetry of single
46 TIIE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
scenes or in the grand composition of the whole,
miffht be left untouched so far as it is not answered
o
in what has already been said. But it may be al-
lowable, without undue influence from one's per-
sonal opinions, to suggest two considerations which
may prepare the way for a decision. The compo-
sition of extended and elaborately constructed epic
poems, in contrast with single songs containing
each the story of a single adventure, marks un-
questionably a great progress in poetic literature. 84
If, now, the Iliad was, as seems most probable, the
earliest composition of such extent in the Greek
epic poetry, then, even if it is almost wholly a mere
patchwork of previously existing separate materi-
als, still a high position in the development of the
Greek epic is due to such a work of compilation.
But it is a very different question whether in this
poem, as we now have it, the chief value lies in the
original elements or in the architectural skill which
has made them into one whole. On this question
let one simple fact be considered. The contradic-
tions in the Iliad are so manifest and so absolute
that when once pointed out they cannot be ignored,
however one may strive to make them appear tri-
THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC TOEMS. 47
fling. But if thousands of readers, from antiquity
to the present time, have felt the elevating and in-
spiring influence of the Homeric poems without
noticing the contradictions, it would surely be a
great mistake to ascribe this surprising fact to a
universal carelessness in reading. "We should rath-
er explain it by the overpowering charm of the
separate pictures, which draw off the attention
from their connection with one another. Goethe's
praises of Homer, Lessing's luminous deductions
from him, all have reference to the separate nar-
ratives, and remain true yes, even gain in truth,
when we believe that we have not one continuous
narrative, but some eighteen or twenty separate
epic songs arranged together according to the gen-
eral course of the incidents.
We have thus far turned our attention exclu-
sively to the Iliad ; let us now in brief space con-
sider the Odyssey. We might grant that the
Odyssey must be recognized as originating in a
single poetic conception, excluding altogether the
supposition that it was made up of originally sep-
arate materials, without thereby casting a doubt
upon what has been more or less certainly deter-
48 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
mined with regard to the origin of the Iliad. It
is quite possible that the two poems which now
are inseparably united in our eyes, and which all
antiquity, too, referred to the one all-including
name of Homer, may have differed essentially in
their real origin. Whether this is really the case
is a question on which the conflict of opinion is
not at present narrowed down to so small a field
as in regard to the Iliad. The examination of the
Odyssey from this point of view began later than
that of the Iliad, 85 and so we find within the last
few decades scholars who decidedly rejected the
belief in the single authorship of the Iliad and yet
as decidedly maintained a belief in that of the
Odyssey. 86 The investigations which questioned or
disproved the original unity of the Odyssey were
mainly confined for a long time to single parts of
the poem, and were conducted on the silent as-
sumption that the process of construction in the
two poems was essentially the same. 87 Under these
circumstances, it is easy to see that one cannot, in
the case of the Odyssey, mark out with the same
prospect of assent the limits within which opin-
ions are now agreed, and I may be excused if I
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 4:9
confine myself to a statement of a few principal
points of view.
The arguments for original unity of authorship
in the Odyssey are not only the well-judged lim-
itation of the material and the grouping of its
manifold incidents about a single central point,
but also the skilful complication of the story. The
abundance and variety of the stories of Odysseus'
adventures on the return from Troy, and in con-
flict with the foes in his own home, are constantly
focused upon one thing the character of the hero.
His courage and his cautious judgment are not to
be broken down by the dangers of the long voyage,
nor yet by the terrors of conflicts with giants and
with supernatural powers. Xeither the allure-
ments of comfort, nor the charms of beautiful god-
desses, nor the loveliness of the maiden who saves
his life, can overpower his longing for home and
faithful affection for his wife. And a like spirit
in that wife, joined with courage and cunning, has
meanwhile, in conflict with hardly less dangerous
enemies, kept safe the home into which, after all
his toils and struggles, he is to enter for a new
lease of happiness. The copious details which fill
50 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
up this outline are not recited in simple chrono-
logical order ; but the opening of the poem shows
us the wanderings of Odysseus nearly at their end,
while the previous incidents, instead of being told
by the poet, are, far more effectively, put into the
mouth of the hero himself at the time when he,
welcomed and entertained by the Phaeakians, is
thereby assured of a return to his home. Two, or
rather three, threads of narrative the occurrences
in the house of Odysseus, the journey of Telema-
chos to visit his father's companions-in-arms, and
the wanderings of Odysseus are carried on at first
independently side by side, and then are united
when the father and son, almost at the same mo-
ment, return to Ithaka, and win their victory over
the enemy at home. That this skilful arrange-
ment is the result of matured reflection, and marks
by its complication a higher stage of art in con-
struction than the straightforward course of 'the
Iliad, must be admitted without hesitation ; but
this by no means decides does not, in fact, even
touch the question whether the Odyssey, in its
present form, was originally conceived as a single
poem, or is either a careful combination of ele-
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMEEIC POEMS. 51
ments not originally designed for such union, or
the expansion of a nucleus originally much sim-
pler. But against the supposition of original uni-
ty of conception in the Odyssey as we have it, in-
superable objections arise. In the first place, in
order to find in the particulars above mentioned a
proof of the original unity of the poem, it is nec-
essary to apply them in the most general and ab-
stract way to the actual details of our Odyssey. 88
The alleged connection of all the numerous inci-
dents with the one person Odysseus cannot, surely,
be held strictly true of those in the third and
fourth books ; for the real subject of those books is
the adventures of other heroes on the return from
Troy, which have no natural connection with his. 89
The character of Odysseus certainly might be so
presented throughout the whole poem as it has
been sketched above ; but, in fact, we find this true
only in the first half of the poem, while in the
second half it is exasperated on both sides almost
oo
to the point of caricature. On the one hand, the
wise self-control of the hero degenerates, when he
appears in his own house cunningly disguised as a
beggar, almost to vulgar buffoonery; 90 and, on the
52 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
other, such valor as enables him alone to engage
with more than a hundred able-bodied men, skilled
in war, without even the help of a deity to make
it credible, oversteps the limit of moderation which
is observed in the earlier part of the narrative. 91
An artful complication of different threads of nar-
rative is certainly characteristic of the Odyssey;
but not less characteristic is it that just this pecu-
liarity of construction involves us in unexplained,
indeed for the most part inexplicable, difficulties.
The incidents of the return of Odysseus are, indeed,
interwoven with those of the vovas-e of Telema-
*/ o
chos ; but, on closer study, admiration of this plot
is more than shaken. For the journey of Telema-
chos is not only altogether without influence on the
main action, but is undertaken in the beginning
without motive and prolonged without reason. 92
One cannot avoid the thought that it is introduced
only in order to attach to the adventures of Odys-
seus a sketch of those of some other heroes. And,
more than all, the very points of contact of the
combined narratives, those places on which the de-
fence of original unity must lay special stress,
bring us every time into undeniable inconsisten-
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 53
cies. In passing from the Telemachos story to the
Odysseus story, at the beginning of the fifth book,
\ve find a council of the gods which is irreconcila-
ble in the subject of its dealing with that of the
first book ; and the lines in which it is described
are plainly a clumsy patchwork, made up from
other passages of the poem. 93 Again, when we re-
turn, in the fifteenth book, from the story of Odys-
seus' arrival in Ithaka to that of Telemachos, the
goddess Athene comes in to help out the transi-
tion. Athene has been aiding Odysseus by word
and deed since his arrival on the island, and she
goes to Lakedaemon to stir up Telemachos to
return home. But she leaves Odysseus long af-
ter daybreak, and arrives in Lakedaemon on the
same day before dawn ! Both marks of time are
clearly given, and each is essential to the whole
course of the narrative in which it stands, so that
the contradiction is plain and admitted. 94 Such
an inconsistency is not conceivable in an original
creation ; but we understand it when we recognize
here an artificial union of poems which, as already
familiar and cherished, were brought into their
new relation with the least possible change.
54: THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
The supposition of original unity in the poem is
upset, in the second place, by the consideration
that there is want of harmony between different
parts of the Odyssey as to certain fundamental
matters which must have been fully present to the
consciousness of the poet. For example, as to the
deity to whose wrath the extraordinary woes of
Odysseus are to be ascribed; 95 as to the proximate
number of the suitors of Penelope 96 and the time
during which their wild doings had gone on ; 97 as
to their offer ills' or not offering the customary
O O */
marriage presents; 98 as to the personal appearance
of the hero himself; 99 as to the age of Tele in a-
chos; 100 as to the design against his life formed
by the suitors ; 101 as to the name of a person in the
household of Odysseus who was of no little conse-
quence to the action of the story 102 in these and
other points we find unmistakable contradictions
which cannot be smoothed over or eliminated.
Thirdly and finally, we observe in the tone and
poetic quality of the narrative a variation which
cannot escape notice even in the disguise of a
translation. Let one read in immediate sequence
the sixth book, for example (the meeting with
THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 55
Xansikaa), and the twentieth (the incidents pre-
ceding the fatal catastrophe), and he may safely
offer a reward for any person who shall be able to
attribute to the same poet the transparent clear-
ness of the former and the helpless confusion of
the latter. 103 There is, moreover, one peculiarity of
the Odyssey which makes it very difficult to decide
how far the poem is made up of originally inde-
pendent constituents, and how far it has merely
been expanded by additions to an original whole,
and that peculiarity is the repetition of essential-
ly the same mythical matter in various forms, or
what may be called twin narratives a peculiarity
which can hardly be paralleled from the Iliad, but
is a characteristic feature of the last two thirds of
the Odyssey. Thus we find in the adventures of
Odysseus the two solitary divinities, Kirke and Ka-
lypso ; the two mysterious helpers of his voyage,
Aiolos and Alkinoos ; the two similar prophecies
from Kirke and Teiresias ; the fatal sleep of Odys-
seus twice repeated. 104 And so it is constantly after
the arrival of Odysseus in Ithaka. The story of his
coming into his own house unrecognized, in the
disguise of a beggar, and having a bone or a foot-
56 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
stool thrown at him by the revellers who are eating
up his substance, striking enough once, is repeated
three times with slight variations ; 105 four times the
sagacity of the dogs is impressed upon us; 106 four
times we have fictitious accounts of himself and
his history given by Odysseus, similar to one an-
other, and yet not the same even in the principal
features, although some of the same persons are
present to hear them. 107 The quiet slumbers of
Penelope in the upper room at all times in the
day, 108 the inexhaustible capacity of Odyssens for
eating and begging, 109 the accumulation of similar
omens, 110 as if all Olympos were incessantly busy
about the house of Odysseus in a word, the mul-
titude of difficulties, no single one of which can be
satisfactorily cleared up unless all are, is so great
as to discourage even an indefatigable student. 111
To have undertaken the investigation in its full
scope, and to have carried it on with a keenness
of judgment and a rigorous acceptance of truth
which enabled him to reach as positive results for
an understanding of the formation of the Odyssey
as Lachmann did for the Iliad this is the undis-
puted honor of A. KirchhofiV 12 It would perhaps
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 57
be premature to indicate now, in regard to the
Odyssey as in regard to the Iliad, within what
limits the traditional assumption of original unity
must confine its opposition to these views; but
still one may be allowed to point out some things
which seem to be settled with entire certainty by
Kirchhoffs investigations. The idea of original
o o
unity of construction in the Odyssey as we have it
is not merely disturbed, but so completely set aside
that scarcely the shadow of it can maintain itself.
On the contrary, the poem has been systematically
worked over by an editor with intelligent design
and some degree of poetic power, who incorpo-
rated into the originally more simple nucleus bor-
rowed matter of kindred mythical tenor and addi-
tions of his composition. And even that original
nucleus which we must assume, the earliest nar-
rative of the adventures and return of Odysseus,
is not a simple song like those which we assume
as making up the Iliad, but belongs to the period
in which the epic poem as a form of art was being
developed. But the expanded edition of its pres-
ent form belongs to the time when the decay of
the Greek epic had already begun, when mean-
58 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
ingless breadth of narration, conveyed in the tra-
ditional forms of language and metre, served as a
substitute for the freshness and vivid reality of
true poetry. If, indeed, we lose anything of real
value when we are obliged to give up the fond
belief in a divine singer who gave forth the Iliad
in his youth and the Odyssey in his old age, still
we have gained something of much more impor-
tance in its stead ; for these two poems have be-
come for us, without suffering thereby harm or
loss in their intrinsic value, reliable witnesses to
the progressive growth of Greek epic poetry. The
comparison to the rising and setting sun with
which antiquity glorified the individual Homer as
author of these two poems, we may adopt in an
altered sense and apply to the poems themselves
as representatives of the stages of that poetic de-
velopment.
I have now endeavored to fulfil the task which
I proposed to myself in the beginning, to set forth
the reasonableness of raising the question as to the
origin of the Homeric poems, to suggest the means
for its solution, and to indicate the limits within
which the points in dispute are by this time re-
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 59
stricted. It may justly be demanded that I should
bring together the positive conclusions, less mani-
fest in themselves, which result from these nega-
tive considerations, and thereby present a view in
outline of the history of the formation of these
two poems. To such an attempt a few words may
be devoted in closing. 113
As in the case of all peoples where it is possible
to trace the course of poetic development up to its
beginnings, 114 so in the Greek tribes, epic song ap-
pears as the earliest form of poetry. Its subject-
matter is the legendary lore of the tribe and the
people. Legend differs from history, not merely
in being less certain and trustworthy because it
depends solely on oral tradition, but also in that it
gives a prominence to particular events and per-
sonages as the most perfect expression of the char-
acter of the people and shining types of what it
wishes to be and to do. 115 Even written history does
not exclude the growing-up of legend concerning
the very same time e. <?., as to Charlemagne, as to
the Crusades if certain characters and events
take hold of and inspire a whole people in its in-
most being. Such a subject of uplifting and glo-
60 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
rions remembrance the Greek tribes had in the
long contest which they carried on against kindred
tribes on the coast of Asia Minor, the Trojan war.
The heroic deeds of that conflict, the adventures
of the heroes on their return, every one would
wish to have recalled to memory on festival oc-
casions in the happy enjoyment of quiet days. 116
Therefore the palace of a prince in the heroic
time could not do without the bard to recite in
verse, accompanied by the simple chords of the
lyre, the fame of those heroes. High in honor at
home and abroad was the man on whom the gods
had bestowed the gift of song. 117 Mneme, Melete,
Aoide that is, Memory, Meditation, Song are the
characteristic names, dating from the earliest time,
of the muses from whom this gift came. 118 For the
singer's merit did not consist in his creative orig-
inality, but people wanted to hear from him that
which they already knew, and they wanted to hear
it because they knew it and delighted in it. "The
individual poet," to use the happy language of an
honored scholar of our own time, 119 " influences the
natural growth of legend in much the same way
as a skilful gardener regulates and guides the nat-
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 61
nral growth of his plants." The bard brings the
legendary heroes clearly before our perception, and
that in rhythmical form, which is grateful to the
hearers and at the same time aids his own memo-
ry. There is no marked difference between de-
livering songs which he himself has first put into
shape and repeating those of other poets which
have Avon the applause of their hearers. The song
contains a single event which is limited within
o
moderate compass and so can be taken in at one
view. Such is the representation which the Ho-
meric poems themselves give us of the bard in the
period to which their story refers. The lay of
Ares and Aphrodite, which is put in the Odyssey
into the mouth of the Phaeakian bard, takes up no
more than a hundred lines. It would be rash to
seek to determine the average length of the earli-
est epic lays from this example, 1 ' 20 which, by the
way, is beyond question an interpolation, but that
each song covered but one single incident e. g.,
the building of the wooden horse and was of
limited extent, is proved by the other instances of
heroic songs and by the manner of their use ; for
the listening to the bard is only one of several
62 THE OEIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
social pleasures during or after a feast, and is al-
ternated with other amusements. The bard had
no need of long introductions to make the spe-
cial narrative intelligible to his audience ; they
were already familiar with the legend at every
point.
The period of the emigration of the Aeolic and
Ionic tribes to Asia Minor was especially fitted to
stimulate recollection of the heroic deeds of the
Trojan war, for then a similar conflict had to be
carried on in the same or neighboring localities,
o o *
and so the remembrance of the past acted as an
encouragement for the present. It is therefore
significant that the earliest date m assigned for the
O O
lifetime of Homer makes him contemporary with
the Ionic migration. In the Ionian colonies, which
soon succeeded in establishing themselves, poetry
was cultivated by schools of bards, and, as a prob-
able consequence of the rise of these schools at in-
tervals during the next four centuries, we find dif-
ferent dates given for the birth of Homer in dif-
ferent cities. The existence of these schools of
poetry explains the preservation of heroic songs
when once composed, and it also furnished the
THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 63
natural transition to the next stage in the develop-
ment of epic poetry.
The prosperous growth of individual Greek cit-
ies of Asia Minor and their active intercourse with
one another gave opportunity for regularly recur-
ring festivals, at which great assemblies of people
gave themselves up for considerable time to re-
fined enjoyments at their leisure. One important
element of the festivities was the delivery of epic
songs, and that no longer by a single poet or rhap-
sode, but by several in succession in mutual rival-
ry. 122 What, then, could be more natural than that,
when longer time was given for the recital, and
the demands of the audiences gradually became
more exacting, the single songs should be arranged
together in the order which their subjects indi-
cated ? Such combination would be facilitated by
the fact that the legends naturally grew up around
certain fixed central points of myth, and the al-
ready settled popularity of the old songs would
insure their being taken up into the new connec-
tion with as little change as possible. That the
change of a few lines and the addition of a few
would be enough to combine these originally inde-
64: THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
pendent elements, the separate hero-songs, into a
long epic, seems proved by the successful attempt
of a modern German poet to unite into such a
form a part of the detached folk-songs of the Ser-
vians, 123 as well as by the combination into a single
epic of the Finnish folk-songs, which still exist
separately, side by side with the epic, and number
more than 22,000 lines. It is evident, too, that in
the historical development of epic poetry this
process has actually occurred several times, for,
even if the method of formation of the German
national epic, the Nibelungenlied, is still an open
question, there is an undoubted instance in the old
French poem of the battle of Eoncesvalles. 124 Now,
in what progressive steps this combination, by re-
writing some lines and adding others, took place
in the case of the Greek heroic songs of the wrath
of Achilles and the return of Odysseus, can hardly
be ascertained with complete definiteness ; but the
poems themselves, as we have them, show us not
only that some such process took place, but also
that there is a marked difference between the two
poems in the elements which may be recognized
in them, in the method of their development, and
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMEKIC POEMS. 65
in the time when they were completed. The Il-
iad, in most of its extent, enables us to recognize
the separate lays, sometimes united by mere juxta-
position, sometimes more skilfully dovetailed into
one another, and then it brings its subject to a
close with poetry of a later date which already
shows signs of decay in freshness and vigor. 125 In
the Odyssey, the simplest element, recognizable as
such by the style itself, belongs to an age in which
epic poetry was entering upon more comprehen-
sive composition ; the continuation of it and the
editor's work which expands, dilutes, and rounds
off the story, belong to the time of the decline of
epic poetry. It is not necessary to suppose that
the earlier songs disappeared at once when this
combining or final editing work was done; fur-
thermore, it is quite probable, in the nature of
things, that frequently single passages of the com-
posite epic were separately recited, for only in ex-
traordinary festivals would there be time for the
delivery of the whole. 126 When Solon fixed by law
the order of the recitation of the Homeric poems
for the great Athenian festival, 127 he took the first
step in the preservation of the completed form.
66 THE OEIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
The arran Cements of Peisistratos for committing
o o
them to writing were the second step, and to that
we owe their preservation to our time.
This which I have given is but an outline of
the history of the origin of the Homeric poems, a
mere sketch which needs to be filled out at numer-
ous points. Some points must always remain not
filled out; others the progress of investigation will
supply, and so gradually circumscribe the region
of the unknown, provided the same principles be
observed which prevail in the philological science
of to-day. These principles are, first, a conscien-
tious upholding of the real tradition of antiquity
for the Homeric investigations since Wolf's day
have not abandoned the traditions of antiquity,
but rather have at last re-established a consistent
connection with them ; second, an indefatigable in-
vestigation of the most isolated and minute par-
ticulars, for it is just as true of philology as it
is of physical science,that no matter of investiga-
tion can be called trifling, but everything may be
important in its relations ; third, an extension of
one's view over the entire literature of the nation
immediately concerned, and over kindred phenom-
THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. G7
ena in other nations. 188 These are the means by
which the philology of to-day endeavors to present
to our mental view classical antiquity in its true
form, and in the Homeric investigations we may
clearly recognize the application of these means.
Whatever near approach to historic truth lias been
attained in the field of the Homeric question has
been due, not to the accident of happy suggestions,
but to rigorous method, to unwearied investiga-
tion, to absolute devotion to the subject.
~? If,
V / -I-
s^Ask-o-i
NOTES.
1 Herod. II. 53. Further instances in Bernhardy, Grie-
chische Literatur-GescMchte, 2d ed. I. p. 251 ; Sengebusch,
Homerica dissertatio I. p. 91.
2 Numerous comparisons of this kind in Lauer, Gesch.
der Horn. Poesie, p. 59.
3 Athen. VIII. 39.
4 Sengebusch, Horn. diss. I. p. 171.
5 Sengebusch, I. pp. 139-166. For the principles on
which Thucydides used the Homeric poems for inferences
as to the historical facts of the earliest times, see Roscher,
Leben, Werk u. Zeitalter des Thukydides, p. 132 sqq.
6 So Xenophanes in Sext. Emp. adv. Math. IX. 193; I.
289; Plat. Rep. II. 377 D sqq.
7 E. g., Plat. Theaet. 180 D ; Arist. de an. HI. 427 a, 25,
with Trendelenburg's note, p. 449.
8 Val. Max. 3, 7. Cf. Lessing's Laokoon, XXH.
9 Lycurg. adv. Leocr. 102; Diog. Laert. I. 57. On the
latter passage, Sengebusch, Horn. diss. II. p. 107 sq.; Lehrs,
Rhein. Mus. N; F. XVII. p. 491 sqq.
10 Plat. Protag. 325 E ; Isoc. Paneg. 159 ; Hermann,
Griech. Antiq. III. 35, 6 sq.
11 Xen. Conv. 3, 5.
12 As to Plato, for example, see the proof in Sengebusch,
I. p. 121 sqq. The long list of Homeric lines quoted or re-
70 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
ferred to in the writings of Aristotle and those attributed
to him is given in the Index Aristotelians under "O/ij/poe.
Those of the Odyssey are not half so numerous as those
of the Iliad. It would be interesting to determine in the
whole range of Greek literature the number of references
to the Iliad and to the Odyssey respectively.
13 On this whole subject of the influence of Homer on
the Greeks, see Lehrs, De Arist. stud. Horn. pp. 200-229 ;
Lauer, Gesch. der Horn. Poesie, pp. 5-58 ; the greater part
of Sengebusch, Horn. diss. I. ; Bergk, Griech. Lit. I. pp. 874-
882.
14 Information as to the principal translations into Latin,
French, Italian, English, and German, is given in Bernhar-
dy, Griech. Lit. 2d ed. II. 1, p. 175 sq.
15 Scarcely any book has done so much to further a real
insight into the character and special excellence of the
Homeric poetry as Lessing's Laokoon. A large part of
the numerous subsequent treatises on the subject is based
on his clear and simple remarks. One among these, W.
Wackernagel's "Die Epische Poesie" (Schweiz. Museum fur
histor. Wissenschaften, vol. i. and ii.), deserves special men-
tion for breadth of view, thoughtful- penetration, and mas-
terly clearness.
16 Italienische Reise, II. [I am so doubtful of the transla-
tion here that I subjoin the original. TR.] : " Homer stellt
die Existenz dar, wir gewohnlich den Effect: er schildert
das Fiirchterliche, wir furchterlich, er das Angenehme, wir
angenehm."
17 Brieftvechsel mit Schiller, No. 424.
18 Instances in Lauer, Gesch. der Horn. Poesie, p. 59 sq.
19 Prolegomena ad Homerum, sive de operum Homeri-
corum prisca et genuina forma variisquc mutationibus et
NOTES 13-20. 71
probabili ratione emendandi Scripsit Fried. Aug. Wolfius,
vol. i. (no second volume was published), 1795. New edi-
tion, 1859. For earlier suggestions of the idea which
"NVolf was the first to establish by proof, see Bernhardy,
Griech. Lit. II. p. 98 sq. ; Volkmann, Gesch. und Kritik der
Wolf schen Prolegomena zu Homer, pp. 1-35.
20 For the influence of Wolfs Prolegomena beyond the
circle of scholars, see Friedlander, Die Homerische Kritik
von Wolf bis Grote (1853), pp. 1-6; Bernhardy, Griech. Lit.
II. 1, pp. 99-103, and especially the section on this topic in
Volkmann's book just cited, pp. 71-181.
21 Briefwechsel init Goethe, No. 459.
22 Hermann und Dorothea. [The short poem in elegiac
metre, not the well-known long one in hexameters. TR.]
"Here's to the health of the man who has opened us all a iiew field
Where we may roam, by breaking down Homer's great name 1
For who to the gods, or who to 'the poet,' refnses to yield?
But to be ranked as a Homerid, even as youngest, is fame."
23 Goethe, Works, oct. ed. of 1827, vol. iii. p. 156. A sim-
ilar utterance of his from a much earlier time, scarcely
eighteen months after the expression of the liveliest as-
sent to Wolfs views, in a letter to Schiller of May 16th,
1798, is given below in note 57. Compare Volkmann as
above, p. 75.
24 Korte, Leben Wolfs, pp. 64 sq., 73 sq., 265 ; Volkmann,
pp. 35-48.
25 Preface to edition of the Iliad, Leipzig, 1804, pp. xxi.-
xxiv.
26 Lachmann, Betrachtungen uber die Ilias, mit Zusatzen
von Moritz Haupt (Berlin, 1847). Earlier than the first part
(1837) of Lachmann's Betrachtungen appeared the valua-
ble treatise of G. Hermann, " De interpolationibus Homeri "
72 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
(1832) ; Opuscula, vol. v. pp. 52-77. How decidedly Lach-
maun's work made an epoch in the discussion is clear from
the fact that the whole of the extensive literature upon the
unity of the Iliad (the most important works of which are
mentioned below in notes 58-82) consists of assent to, op-
position to, or modification of, his researches.
27 As a comprehensive statement of the arguments on
this side, G. W. Nitzsch's work, Die Sagenpoesie der
Griechen kritisch dargestellt (1852), deserves prominent
mention (see also Schomann's searching criticism of it in
Jahn's Jahrbiicher, vol. Ixix., and in his treatise " De reticen-
tia Horneri" (1853), Opusc. vol. iii.). That Nitzsch, how-
ever, in spite of his absolutely rejecting and indefatiga-
bly assailing Lachmann's investigations, in some essential
points comes very nearly to the same results, is shown be-
low in note 82. Both tendencies, the opposition to Lach-
mann and the substantial agreement with his results, ap-
pear in his posthumous work, Beitriige zur Geschichte der
Epischen Poesie der Griechen (1862): it was criticised by
J. La Roche in the Zeitschrift fur das osterreichischc Gym-
nasialwesen, 1863. On the same side with Nitzsch are sev-
eral thorough essays by W. Bauuilein : Kritik der Lach-
mann'schen Schrift in the Zeitschrift f. d. A. W., 1848 and
1850; Commentatio de compositione II. et Odysseae (Maul-
bronn, 1847) ; Preface to the Tauchnitz edition of the Iliad ;
in Philologus, vols. vii. and xi.; and in Jahn's Jahrb., vol.
Ixxv. Two essays in Diintzer's Homerische Abhandlun-
gen (1872), pp. 28 and 101, oppose Lachmann's views in al-
most every particular. Diintzer's own view as to the unity
of the two poems is mentioned below in note 82. Fried-
lander's essay in defence of Grote's theory of the Iliad,
Die Homerische Kritik von Wolf bis Grote (1853), may
NOTE 27. 73
also be regarded as a polemic against the main points of
Lachmann's theory. It was attacked by W. Ribbeck, in
Philologus, vol. viii. ; " Priifung neuerer Ansichten iiber die
Ilias." Opposed to both these parties at once to the
party of Lachmann as well as to that of Nitzsch is the
" new hypothesis " advanced by J. Minckwitz in his Vor-
schule zum Homer (1863). As to its relation to the two
parties, see note 82. A recent addition to the list of books
in defence of the theory of original unity is F. Nutzhorn's
Die Entstehungsweise der Homerischen Gedichte Unter-
suchungen iiber die Berechtigung der auflosenden Homer-
Kritik, with a preface by J. N. Madvig. In his preface
Madvig denies to the agency of Peisistratos that impor-
tance in the work of compiling the Homeric poems which
Wolf and Lachmanu have ascribed to it ; and supposes
very nearly as Nitzsch does (see note 82) that unity of
conception and the appropriation of earlier songs were
combined in the production of the poems : " But he who
conceived the grand poetic thought could easily, in a time
when the ideas of literary reputation and property did not
yet exist, take up into his poem with little alteration pas-
sages which others had composed in the same metre, or
his shaping of one passage or another might be so far de-
termined by the influence of earlier lays that certain char-
acteristic traits and even turns of expression might be re-
produced in his poem. The Homeric poems are not a
patchwork of songs, but were composed as independent
wholes under the stimulus and control of earlier songs"
(p. xi.). Xutzhorn, in the first part of his book (" The His-
torical Evidence," pp. 1-98), strives to set aside as untrust-
worthy the statements which are used to disprove the
original unity of the poems. In the second part (" The
74: THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
Internal Evidence," pp. 100-268) lie discusses some of the
contradictions which have been pointed out in the Iliad,
and explains them away or ascribes little importance to
them, in the hope of thus establishing the original unity
of conception of the poems against attack from any quar-
ter. We may recognize the fervor of enthusiasm for the
poet, for which Madvig praises the author (p. xi.), but the
work itself can hardly be thought to contribute much to
the Homeric discussion, since it touches no point connect-
ed with the real question which had not been more calmly
and more thoroughly treated in previous works.
Bergk, in the first volume of his Griechische Litera-
tur-Geschichte (Berlin, 1872) which is mainly occupied
with the subject of Homer takes a position in defence of
the original unity of the Iliad against Lachmann, but in a
very different sense from the writers hitherto named. In or-
der to avoid possible inaccuracies, I will confine myself, in
attempting to state Bergk'a view of the origin of the Iliad,
so far as possible to his own words, even where the usual
quotation marks do not appear. The Iliad, as well as the
Odyssey, was originally " a single poem, composed on a
definite plan," and written down by the poet himself, to
whom we may reasonably assign the name Homer. In the
present form of the Iliad " we detect three essentially dif-
ferent elements : the original poem, additions in the form
of continuations, and the work of a final reviser. The
primitive Iliad was a poem of moderate length, though it
is impossible now, since parts of it are lost, to tell exactly
how long it was ; of the present poem the greater part
consists of later additions. It' was also simple in struct-
ure." " The genuine portions of the Iliad have an incom-
parable beauty and dignity. If it were possible to detacli
NOTE 27. 75
them wholly from the later additions and modifications,
our enjoyment and admiration of them would be greatly
intensified." Still we must not " set up too high a stand-
ard for the work of a poet who made the first attempt to
construct an epic poem ; such a work could be brought to
perfection only by slow degrees." " This gradual build-
ing-up of the poem is the sufficient explanation of many
contradictions and many variations in the poetic style."
' Still the difference of the various parts [of what we actu-
ally have], the amount of the disturbing element, is too
great to allow the opinion that the Iliad in its present
form proceeded from a single hand." This " suggests the
agency of several persons in the expansion of the orig-
inal poem. The work of the great master was at once
carried on by younger poets, whom we must suppose to
have lived in close connection with him, and whom we
may call Homeridae. But others, too, who were not born
into this family circle, took part in the work, as one addi-
tion gave rise to another." The " self-restraint and mod-
eration which distinguished those poets were unfortunate-
ly lacking in the editor who undertook to combine these
later songs with the primitive Iliad, and, at the same time,
to continue the work of the younger poets. Thus he not
only worked over the original nucleus and its outgrowths,
but added longer or shorter passages of his own produc-
tion. These additions of the reviser exceed in length and
audacity all that his predecessors had done in this direc-
tion. But the chief injury done by him to the poems
consists in his having wholly suppressed important parts
of them, substituting his own work in their place, or so
modified them that it is hardly possible to recognize the
original any more, and that not only where his additions
76 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
involved such changes, but also arbitrarily and needlessly.
It has been the principal task of the present critical anal-
ysis of the Iliad to indicate the work of this audacious re-
viser, for, although he impressed a distinct character on all
that passed through his hands, the real facts of the matter
have never, up to this time, been suspected by scholars."
" This reviser gave to the Iliad essentially the form it now
has. After him but few considerable additions such as
the Catalogue of the Ships and the last two books were
made. Even these additions were made before the be-
ginning of the Olympiads, so that Arktinos and the oth-
er cyclic poets had the poem before them in completed
form." [Here follows Bergk's analysis of the Iliad, which
is omitted on account of its length. TR.] When I try to
estimate so far as Bergk's language makes it possible
the amount of the several elements of our present Iliad on
the basis of his analysis, I find that of the (about) 16,000
lines of the poem he recognizes some 1400 as genuine,
that is, as belonging to the original Iliad, and some 5800
as half genuine, that is, as original lines, but so modified
by the reviser that it is no longer possible to distinguish
clearly the original element from the modification. The
probability of such a thorough change of form, consist-
ing not merely in additions and expansions, but also in
omissions, substitutions, etc., seems greatly embarrassed
by Bergk's supposition that the Iliad was originally com-
mitted to writing by its author. Bergk anticipates this
objection, and says : " It is precisely oral tradition that
best preserves the details. A poem that passes from
mouth to mouth is handed down more nearly as it is
received, or, if changed at all, is completely changed ;
whereas putting it in writing brings with it its own evils.
NOTE 27. 77
Every rhapsode who wrote down the poem for himself
could easily change the text at his pleasure, and the
longer poems gave opportunity for partial changes, arbi-
trary additions, and new combinations of parts. The ear-
lier epic poetry was in the highest degree fluid in sub-
stance, and the use of writing put no check upon its va-
riation; indeed, we may say that writing facilitated the
production of a corrupt and defective text." For answer
to this, if any answer is needed, one may see the remarks
of W. Hartel in his review of Bergk's Literatur-Geschichte
in the Zeitschrift fiir d. 6'sterr. Gym., 1873, p. 357. To esti-
mate the reality of these changes, and judge as to the as-
signment of particular passages to these different hands,
would require more room than Bergk's analysis itself oc-
cupies, and is made more difficult by special peculiarities.
In spite of no lack of confidence on his part, w r e find so
frequently expressions implying uncertainty " probably,"
" may be," " would seem," etc. that it is hardly less dif-
ficult to draw a clear line between what he considers
proved and what he indicates as mere opinion, than be-
tween the genuine and the ungenuine in the Iliad. And
for what he puts forward as certain there is either no rea-
son given, or the reason is either a presupposition as to
the contents of the original mythical matter (e. g. that ev-
ery mention of Idomeneus is due to the reviser), which
implies knowledge which is not and perhaps never can be
attained, or an aesthetic judgment (as in his high opinion
of the river-battle in XXI.) which will hardly command
general assent. Bergk says indignantly of Lachnaann :
" It goes beyond all reasonable credibility when the mod-
ern criticism expects us to recognize a mere compilation
of loosely connected songs in those two poems, which not
78 T11E ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
only the simple, natural, popular feeling, but the unani-
mous verdict of acknowledged masters in poetry and
philosophy has for centuries regarded as an indivisible
whole." That this " unanimous verdict," imposing as it
sounds, is no reality, I have endeavored above (p. 18 sqq.)
to show ; but when Bergk invokes it against Lachmann, it
is hard to see how he can deny that it bears with just the
same force against himself. Aeschylos and Sophoklcs,
Plato and Aristotle, we know had the Iliad in the same
form apart from inconsiderable variations of the text
in which we read it ; and what they admired was the
Iliad as a whole and as the work of one poet; of the rav-
ages of the audacious reviser they had as little suspicion
as had modern criticism before Bergk. What really sur-
passes "all reasonable credibility" is that Bergk expects
us to recognize, of the poem which he himself describes
as above, only one tenth as the untouched work of that
creator of the epic, a much larger part as the off-hand
production of the light-minded reviser, and more than
half of the whole as a confused mixture of successive de-
posits of poetry.
28 Even for professional scholars there have appeared in
recent times several statements of the present condition
of the Homeric question, e. g. by K. A. J. Hoffmann, "Der
gegenwartige Stand der Untersuchungen liber die Einheit
der Ilias" (Allg. Monatsschrift fur "Wissensch. und Literatur,
1852) ; G. Curtius, " Andeutungen liber den gegenw. Stand
der Homerischen Frage" (Zeitschr. fur d. 6'sterr. Gym.,
1854) ; Hiecke, Der gegenw. Stand der Horn. Frage
(Stralsund, 1856). An article by J. La Roche (" Ueber
die Entstehung der Horn. Gedichte " in the last -men-
tioned journal for 1863) is an attempt to determine with
NOTES 28-33. 79
the aid of the labors of previous scholars the definite
marks of interpolations and points of juncture through
the whole of the two poems. It contains also a brief
statement of the author's opinions as to the general proc-
ess of growth of the Iliad and Odyssey, and an attempt
to indicate the several original lays which can still be
recognized in it.
29 In this section I have endeavored to present briefly
some of the principal results of the pregnant discussions
by M. Sengebusch (Homerica dissertatio prior et posterior)
referred to above in the early notes.
30 The Hesiodic epic and the cyclic poems not con-
nected with the Trojan myths have been purposely left
unmentioned to simplify the discussion, inasmuch as they
do not throw light directly upon the point of view under
which the question is here discussed.
31 A sketch of the several epics belonging to the Trojan
myth, made up by combination of scattered notices and
scanty fragments, is given by Welcker in Der Epische Cy-
clus oder die Homerischen Dichter. This book, like all
his similar works, has great value from his profound
knowledge of all the remains of ancient Greek literature
and art ; but it oversteps the limits that are set to our
knowledge by the fragmentary condition of its sources.
The section on the post-Homeric epic poets in Nitzsch's
Beitrage zur Geschichte der Epischcn Poesie goes still
further in this direction.
32 "Welcker, as above, pp. 1-82. A modification of
Welcker's view is implied in KirchhofTs investigations
on the composition of the Odyssey, sec p. 56 sqq. of the
lecture and the accompanying notes.
33 Sengebusch, Diss. II. pp. 23-25.
80 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
34 Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 14, gives a view of the
amount of the epic poetry which is assigned to Homer
by Pindar, Simonides, Aeschylos, Sophokles, Aristophanes,
and Thucydides ; the proof of his statements is given in
the corresponding passage of Diss. I.
35 Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 15.
36 Brought together in Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 13.
37 Anthol. Pal. II. pp. 715, 295 sq. (in Jacob's Delectus
Epigramui. Graecorum, IV. 6).
38 As to the time of composition of the lives of Homer
that have come down to us, see Sengebusch, Diss. I. pp. 1-13,
and the authorities quoted in them, p. 19 sq. The whole of
diss. I. treats of their value.
39 Sengebusch, Diss. II. pp. 47-69.
40 Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 70.
41 A view of the several dates, with the authorities for
them, is given by Sengebusch in Jahn's Jahrbiicher, 67,
p. 611 sqq., and Diss. II. p. 78. Roth (Geschichte der
abendl. Philosophic, II. p. 38), with noteworthy naivete"
quotes the date given by Herodotus as if it were the only
one ever suggested. By such a method it is certainly
easy to triumph over the whole Homeric discussion set
on foot by Wolf as "a long since exploded paradox,"
which "proceeded from half -knowledge of history." I
mention this because such lofty language actually imposes
upon readers who are not in a position to investigate the
matter themselves ; and also because recently (Literar.
Centralblatt, 1860, No. 7) philology was reproached with
having kept a significant silence about Roth's book. The
groundlessness of this reproach can be seen by a glance at
the second edition of Zeller's Philosophic der Griechen.
But such a method as that just mentioned in regard to
NOTES 34-43. 81
the period of Homer needs no criticism but to be left to
bring on its own judgment.
42 Those statements are excluded, in both cases, which
depend not on actual tradition, but merely on the conject-
ures and computations of learned men. Sengebusch, Jahn's
Jahrb. 67, p. 609 sqq. ; Diss. II. p. 69.
43 Sengebusch, first in his review of Lauer's Gesch. der
Horn. Poesie, Jahn's Jahrb. 67 ; then in Diss. II. The
chronological principles followed in these discussions are
attacked by J. Brandis, De temporum antiquiss. Graeco-
rum rationibus, Index lect. (Bonna, 1857-58). Compare the
review of this essay by A. von Gutschmid, Jahn's Jahrb.
83. An unqualified condemnation of Sengebusch's in-
vestigations is expressed by Bergk (Griech. Literatur-
Gesch. I. p. 463) : " This hypothesis has been praised as
not only ingenious but well-supported; yet any one who
takes the pains to examine it thoroughly will find it hol-
low and worm-eaten all through." This thorough exam-
ination Bergk does not offer us directly nor enable us to
gain indirectly from his own treatment of the subject.
For, among the statements as to the place of Homer, he
accepts one and condemns all the rest without reason
given; and, as to the time of Homer, he rejects all tradi-
tions as pure fiction, and puts his confidence solely in
general combinations. Such a proceeding is, in truth,
very simple and convenient, but it wholly neglects to ex-
plain the real and unique multiplicity of statements, and
gives one no right to condemn at a blow every attempt to
explain it. See Hartel, Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym.. 1873 ;
and, as to the pseudo-Herodotean life of Homer, which
Bergk adopts, J. Schmidt, De Herodotea quae fertur vita
Homeri (Halle, 1875).
6
82 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
44 Herod. II. 53 ; Sengebusch, Jahn's Jahrb. 67, p. 373
sqq.
45 Sengebusch, Jahn's Jahrb. 67, p. 614. Against this,
Volkniann, Gesch. und Kritik der Wolf schen Prolego-
mena, p. 358 (cf. p. 275 sqq.) : " We have no tradition
of the work or of the existence of Homeridae or of any
school of epic poetry outside of Chios. The assumption
of their existence is a purely arbitrary assumption."
46 Wolf, Prolegomena, pp. 40-94 ; Sengebusch, Diss. II.
p. 41 sqq. I have left the statement in the lecture un-
changed, although Bergk (Griech. Lit. I. pp. 185-214), and
after him Volkmanu (Gesch. etc., pp. 181-232), have en-
deavored to prove that even before the Trojan War the
art of writing was in use among the Greeks. The earliest
instance of writing yet discovered, of determinable date, is
the cutting of their names by Greek mercenaries on the
Nubian colossus (Kirchhoff, Gricch. Alphabet, 2d ed. p. 31
sqq.). If we assume as probable the earlier of the possi-
ble dates for this inscription, it proves that the art of
writing was widely diffused among the Greeks about
620 B.C. ; and, of course, this wide diffusion implies the
existence and practice of it for a considerable time before
that date. These facts agree fully with the development
of Greek literature in prose and poetry. But to carry
back the use of writing more than five hundred years be-
fore that date is in no way justified by the existence of
this inscription. Bergk himself frankly admits this as
applying to Homer, whose period he puts fully two cen-
turies after the Trojan War: "It is impossible to decide,
on historical evidence, whether these poems w r ere, in the
first instance, committed to writing. . . . We are, therefore,
left to depend upon combinations.'' As to the value of
NOTES 44-47. 83
the most important of these combinations, see Hartel,
Zeitschr. fur d. ostcrr. Gym., 1873, p. 350 sqq., 1874, p. 822
sqq. While I express, at the beginning of my discussion
of the origin of the poems, the conviction that they were
not originally committed to writing, and therein follow
the historical course of the investigation, I feel myself
obliged, in opposition to Bergk and especially to Volk-
mann, to deny that this conviction includes the central
point, or even a clearly decisive element of the answer to
the question as to the origin of the poems. On the con-
trary, this question is to be decided only by arguments
drawn from the poems themselves. If the study of the
poems constrains us to the conclusions stated on p. 59
sqq., we must hold fast those conclusions whether an orig-
inal use of writing in this case is proved on other grounds
or not, although it cannot be overlooked that they agree
best with the latter supposition.
47 Roth, it is true, says (Abendl. Philos. II. p. 41) : " Ho-
mer himself mentions the art of writing, and that, too, as
practised in the heroic age ;" and, certainly, in his transla-
tion of II. 6 : 169 there is mention of it. But that there is
no such mention of it in the words of Homer is so familiar
a fact that it is hardly necessary to refer a reader of Homer
to Lehrs, De Aristarcho, p. 103; Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 42
sqq. Bergk says on this passage : " The well-known pas-
sage in the Iliad, where Proteus intrusts to Bellerophon
the fateful missive, is explained, not necessarily, but very
probably, as referring to a system of secret writing.
This, however, by no means excludes, but rather pre-
supposes the knowledge and use of the ordinary writ-
ing." The reason given by Bergk for the absence in Ho-
mer of any mention of the arts of reading and writing,
84: THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
though they were known before the Trojan War, viz., " be-
cause they seemed inconsistent with his ideal picture of a
primitive state of society," is one that I cannot criticise, be-
cause I do not understand it. Homer finds it consistent
witli his "picture of primitive society" to mention a high
degree of art in weaving, in the working of metal, ivory,
wood, not as produced by gods only, but by men also, on
whom Athene and Hephaestos have bestowed such gifts.
How would the art of writing, if in use before the heroic
age of the Iliad, as a gift of Hermes perhaps, differ from
these so as to disturb the picture of primitive society?
But, possibly, for it is not easy to follow out his analysis of
the poem, all those references to other arts of civilization
are inventions of the "audacious reviser."
48 Bekker, Horn. Blatter, I. p. 136 : " This [Homeric]
language, developed in the course of a great migration,
under the unceasing influences of the meetings, the fric-
tions, the interminglings of kindred tribes, and controlled
only by song and the lyre, attained indeed to a great wealth
of euphonious forms, but seems to have gone through the
stage of "trying all possible combinations, and to have had
no fixed, unchanging, exclusive system of forms, such as
came in later by the general spread of writing. Litera
scripta manet." On the other hand, Bergk, Griech. Lit. I.
p. 200: "As the peculiar orthography of the poems is a
conclusive proof of their great age, so the remarkably
regular and transparent form of the language shows the
wide diffusion in early times of the art of writing. The
rare purity in which the Greek language was preserved is
scarcely credible without constant use of that art, which
is not only the foundation of all higher cultivation, but
gives to language its settled form and its power to pro-
NOTES 48-55. 85
tect itself against corrupting influences." Compare on
this Hartel, Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gyui., 1873, p. 352.
49 The AiQioirig and 'I\iov iripme of the Milesian Arkti-
nos, Welcker,Epische Cycl. II. For the settling of the date
775 B.C. as the cmpi] of Arktinos, see Sengebusch, Jahn's
Jahrb. 67. KirchhofF in his essay, Quaestionum Horn,
particula (Berlin, 1845), proves that the TLv-n-pia of Stasi-
nos, written about 660 B.C., recognized several books of the
Iliad in the form and connection in which we have them.
50 The laws of Zaleukos, about 664 B.C. Cf. Wolf, Proleg.
p. 66 sqq.
51 Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 45.
52 The authorities for this important fact are given in
Sengebusch, Diss. II. pp. 27^41 ; Diintzer, Hoinerische Ab-
handlungen, pp. 1-27. The historic credibility of the state-
ments about Peisistratos is criticised by Nutzhorn (u. 27),
pp. 16-66, and Volkmann.
53 Sengebusch, Diss. I. pp. 193-197.
54 Sengebusch, Diss. I. pp. 71 sq., 186, 200 sqq.
55 The principles of text-criticism in regard to the Ho-
meric poems which have been accepted since Wolf's time
are concisely stated by L. Friedlander, Jahn ? s Jahrb. 79.
The relation of Wolf's text to those of previous editions
and to Villoison's edition of the MS. Ven. 454 is stated by
Bekker, Horn. Blatter, pp. 232, 296. A material part of the
principles on which Bekker's text-edition of 1843 is based
will be found in his criticism of Wolf 's edition, Horn. Blat-
ter, p. 29. Bekker's text (1843) is the foundation of the
editions which have since appeared, with the exception of
Dindorf 's in the Teubner series, as to which cf. J. La Roche,
Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1863. How far Bekker's princi-
ples were modified in his second edition of 1858 is stated
86 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
in the preface to that edition, and further explanations are
to be found in the Horn. Blatter. This second edition was
reviewed by W. C. Kayser, Philologus, vols. xvii. and xviii.;
Fricdlander, Jahn's Jahrb. 79; Rumpf, Jahn's Jahrb. 81; J.
La Roche, Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1860. As to the most
recent text-editions with critical apparatus of the Odyssey
by J. La Roche, Leipzig, 1867, and A. Nauck, Berlin, 1874,
see A. Ludwich, Wissensch. Monatsblatter, 1878 ; Jahn's
Jahrb. 109 ; and Eickholt, Zeitschrift fur d. Gymnasialwesen,
1868.
86 These words mark the limits within which all the fol-
lowing discussion is confined; it contains no conclusions
to which the two Homeric poems, as they now lie before
us, do not lead by reasonable inference. It is, for instance,
possible that one might be led, by comparison of the de-
velopment of epic poetry in other nations or by general
reasonings, to hold that, before the existence of epic lays of
moderate compass and limited to single incidents of the
myth, such as the Iliad implies, there must be assumed as
existing epic poems of equally moderate extent but cover-
ing the main substance of the whole myth with less detail.
The reasonableness of such or similar assumptions is not
here discussed, because that would involve abandonment
of the ground on which all our conclusions are based, viz.,
the facts presented to us in Greek literature.
57 Goethe, correspondence with Schiller, No. 472 : " I am
more than ever convinced of the unity and indivisibility of
the poem, and there is no man living, nor will there ever
be, who can settle the question. I, at least, find myself
every moment coming back to a mere subjective opinion ;
so has it been with others before us, and so will it be with
others after us."
NOTES 5C-GO. 87
58 Nitzsch, Sagenpoesie, p. 89, and this idea is carried out
at length in pp. 184-273. Cf. Baumlein, Commentatio de
Homero ejusque carminibus (prefixed to the Iliad in the
Tauchnitz series), pp. xx. -xxvii., particularly p. xxiii. :
11 Xor will any one doubt that a single, and, as Nitzsch has
shown, a tragical idea runs through the whole Iliad," and
again in Philol. II. p. 417. Against such a single funda-
mental idea in the Iliad, see Diintzer, Jahn's Jahrb. 83, and
Supplernentband 2 (Hom. Abhandlungen, pp. 236, 410).
59 Schomann, De reticentia Homeri, Opusc. HI. p. 12 sq.,
and Jahn's Jahrb. 69.
60 Grote, History of Greece, Am. ed. II. p. 179 sqq. As to
the method in which Nitzsch tries to bring the important
passages II. 11 : 609 sq. ; 16 : 72 sqq. into harmony with the
ninth book, see Schouiann, Jahn's Jahrb. 69, and De reticen-
tia Horn., Opusc. III. p. 15. Franke's revision of Faesi's Ili-
ad, in the note on the former passage and at the beginning
of the ninth book, frankly acknowledges the inconsistency.
The silence of La Roche as to the difficulty in both the pas-
sages quoted is a neglect of the function of an explanatory
edition. Faesi's note on the passage in the sixteenth book,
wfiere Achilles, when Patroklos begs his permission to go
into the battle, answers that the Trojans would be in dis-
graceful flight instead of triumphant, il fioi Kptiwv 'Aya/te/tvwv
j/n-ta ('cii}, " if Agamemnon were well disposed to me," is as
follows : " The haughty Achilles is not yet willing to con-
fess that the chief blame for the calamity lies on him, and
refuses to remember that Agamemnon, in the ninth book,
has done all in his power to appease him. He will not be
put in the wrong." The fact, that is, that the here inevita-
ble reference to the ninth book is lacking, is twisted into
a delicate touch of psychological portraiture, but Faesi
88 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
could hardly deny that for such a purpose the poet ought
to use and would have used other means. This interpreta-
tion really substitutes something else for the text. The ap-
proving reference in Franke's Faesi to the exclusion by the
early critics of 11 : 767-785 seems hardly justified. The es-
sential reason on the part of the early critics (see Schol.
Ven.) for the exclusion of these lines was their want of har-
mony with the ninth book, a point of view which this ed-
itor cannot adopt; and the assumption of an interpolation
is reasonable only when some occasion for the insertion of
it can be shown.
61 II. 15 : 63, 593. Schomann, Jalm's Jahrb. 69.
62 Lachmann has warned us (Friedlander, Die Horn. Kri-
tik, p. vii.) how uncertain the result is if such considera-
tions are allowed much weight. Rash conclusions from the
t'iiraZ tlprinkva and from the differences of vocabulary be-
tween the Iliad and Odyssey are discouraged by the statis-
tics of L. Friedlander, Die kritische Benutzung der aVa
tlprjusva, Philol. 6, and Dissertatio de vocabulis Horn., quae
in alterutro carmine non inveniuntur I.-III. (Universitats-
Schriften, Konigsberg, 1858-59). This, however, diminishes
in no degree the value of careful and thorough investiga-
tions in this direction, such as C. A. J. Hoffmann's Quaestio-
nes Homericae (Clausthal, 1848) ; J. La Roche's Homerische
Studien (Wien, 1861), especially p. vii. sq. ; L. Friedliinder's
Die Garten des Alkinous und der Gebrauch des Prasens bei
Homer, Philol. 6 ; or of special observations, like those of
Liesegang, Zwei Eigentlmmlichkeiten des 16. und 17. Buches
der Ilias, Philol. 6 (against which see Nitzsch, Die Apostro-
phe in Ilias und Odyssee, Philol. 16) ; and Koch, Ueber das
Vorkommen gewisser Formeln in manchen Thcilen der Ili-
as, auderer fur dieselbe Sache in anderen Theilen, Philol. 7.
NOTES 61-65. 89
"We may confidently expect that the thorough investiga-
tion of the Homeric poems in regard to matters of syntax
and vocabulary which is now just started will contribute
to the correction or confirmation of the conclusions which
have been reached hitherto mainly on other lines of evi-
dence. A recent example of most comprehensive, keen-
sighted, and conscientious investigation of this kind is W.
Hartel's Beitrage zur Homerischen Prosodie und Metrik,
in his Homerische Studien, Sitzungsberichte der Phil.-Hist.
Classe der Wiener Akademie, I. vol. 68 (second edition, Ber-
lin, 1873), II. vol. 76, III. vol. 78.
63 A number of these little points are brought together
in Faesi's Iliad, Introd. p. vii., with references to the notes,
where the attempt is made to reduce the contradictions as
much as possible ; in Franke's revision (Introd. p. v.) the
notes are free from the endeavor to disguise and explain
away the extent of the contradictions.
M Cf. II. 16 : 777 with 11 : 86. Schomann, Jahn's Jahrb.
69, p. 18, considers Kltzsch's attempt to reconcile the pas-
sages. Faesi's attempt to diminish the inconsistency does
violence to the language, and is in conflict with his own
note on 8 : 66. Franke (Introd. p. xxxii. and note on
11 : 86) and La Roche (notes on the two passages) rec-
ognize the contradiction without trying to smooth it
away. The essay by A. Kiner, Die Chronologic der Ilias,
Jahn's Jahrb. 83, constructs a complete table of the days in
the action of the Iliad, without paying any attention to
such little matters as these.
65 Schomann, Jahn's Jahrb. 69, p. 19. On this point,
which every discussion of the subject touches, I refer to
Schomann's article, because it includes a consideration of
Nitzsch's argument in defence of the unity.
90 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
66 Faesi himself admits, at the beginning of the sixteenth
book, that this and the following book contain few points
of connection with the four that precede them, and that
they were originally planned as an independent poem.
Yet his translation, in the note on 1G : 2, of Trapiararo, unsup-
ported by any other case in the Iliad, and impossible here,
by reason of rbv Si ISuv, in 16 : 5, and his supposition that
the first meeting of Achilles and Patroklos is already passed
without mention, can have no other object than to explain
away the omission of the information which Patroklos
was to bring. La Roche's silence does not solve the dif-
ficulty.
67 Different positions of the battle, in immediately con-
nected narratives, may be seen by comparison of 1 1 : 824 with
12 : 35-39. See Lachmann, Betrachtungen, p. 45. Franke's
Faesi states here the simple fact that " the twelfth book
brings at length the battle which has been in prospect since
the end of the seventh book." For the cases of variation in
locality, see Schomann, Jahn's Jahrb. 69, De retipentia
Horn., Opusc. III. p. 21 sq., notes 8, 9.
68 II. 13 : 345-360, compared with 13 : 10-39. See A. Jacob,
Ueber die Entstehung der Ilias und Odyssee, p. 270 sq.
Faesi (on 13 : 352) strives to hide the inconsistency in the
narrative by an impossible translation of XaQpy inrtZavaSue,
which he retains in his third edition, although he has added
to the note on 345 the admission (from Nitzsch, Sagenpoe-
sie, p. 264) that perhaps lines 345-360 may not have origi-
nally belonged in this place. La Roche, contrary to his cus-
tom, touches on this difficulty, and seems to try to solve it
KUTO. TO cua-rrM^vov (see note 79), for he remarks, on 352,
" that Poseidon had in the meantime returned into the sea
is left unmcntioned by the poet ; in 239 it is said UVTIQ ?/3j
NOTES G6-71. 91
&oe ufi irovov dvcpiZv." Bergk (Gr. Lit. I. p. 607) denies the
existence of any inconsistency.
69 See the instances in full in A. Jacob, as above, p. 284
sqq. ; Lachmann, Betrachtungen, p. 35. On the attempts
to minimize the contradictions by interpretation, or to re-
move them by exclusion of lines, as by Faesi on 11 : 193,
see Friedlander, Die Horn. Kritik, p. 35 sq. Franke's Faesi,
on 11 : 193, openly states the difficulty and the different
possible solutions. La Roche says nothing about it.
70 II. 16 : 793-815, compared with 17 : 13, 16, 125, 187, 205.
Faesi's note on 17 : 13 misses the real point of the matter.
It is true that " the poet could not assume that Apollo had
taken the arms of the slain hero away with him ;" but the
difficulty is, that after Patroklos was fvpvog (16 : 815), and
the gods had taken his annor from his shoulders (16 : 846),
there is no propriety in the statements that others stripped
him of them (17 : 125, 187, 205). As to the combination of
different narratives in this part of the poem, see Schiitz,
De Patrocleae compositione (Anclam, 1845).
71 On the general character of the narrative in books XI.-
XVIII. of the Iliad, see the frank statement of Schomann,
Jahn's Jahrb. 69. For the methods of bringing order out of
this confusion, see Nitzsch, Sagenpoesie, pp. 240 sqq., 274
sqq. Among these methods is the discovery that certain
sections of the poem are to be regarded as containing inci-
dents concurrent in time, w r here, however, the poet has un-
fortunately neglected to indicate the concurrence. This
very useful theory of narratives parallel in time is accepted
by Bergk in another connection, Gr. Lit. I. p. 657, 704. Cf.
W. Hartel, Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1873. As to the
contradictions in this portion of the poem, there is general
agreement in the discussions by G. Hermann (work cited
92 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
in note 26), Lachraann (same note), E. Cauer (Ueber die Ur-
form einiger Rhapsodien der Ilias, Berlin, 1850), W. Rib-
beck (Philol. 8), A. Jacob (note 68) ; but the hypotheses as
to the parts of which it is probably composed differ consid-
erably.
72 Lessing, Laokoon, XVI.
73 By the combination of separate narratives as an occa-
sion of difficulty, I refer, in the examples in the text, always
to connection in subject-matter, not to the words which
form the transition from one narrative to another. The
difference between the two is plainly seen in the case of
the first and second books, where both come into consider-
ation, but in different ways. The case itself is interesting,
on account of the devices employed to solve the difficulty.
That the second book cannot be regarded as a proper con-
tinuation of the first in subject-matter was convincingly
shown by G. Hermann (Opusc. v. p. 57). Since he pointed
out the difficulties, no one has been able to pass them over
in silence. To meet his arguments, Nitzsch (Sagenpoesie)
takes refuge in " the condition of the myth," thus tacitly
admitting the impossibility of an explanation. Nagelsbach
(Anmerk. zur II. 2. Aufl.) declares the second book neces-
sary for the purpose of the poet, " to bring before us the
feeling in the army, the attitude of the chiefs towards Ag-
amemnon;" and that the dream does not turn out destruc-
tive (ouXoe), " does not," says he, " disturb us in the least ;
the decision of Zeus, to give victory to the Trojans, finds a
serious obstacle in the valor of the Greeks, which hinders
its execution." But, however true it is that the feeling of
the army is vividly brought before us in the second book,
still this ought not, if the second book is a continuation of
the first in the original composition, to be done under cir-
NOTES 72-73. 93
cumstances whicli do not agree with the first book. This
point, which is the only one really in question, is not touched
by that explanation of the poet's purpose. And if the fulfil-
ment of the decree of Zeus was hindered by the valor of
the Greeks, would not, and ought not, a poem conceived by
a single mind to have given us a hint that vvip alaav 'Axaioi
Qeprfpoi f/ffav ? Baumlein (Philol. 7), instead of proving the
unity of the two books in subject, offers only the assertion
that there is such a unity, quoting as proof certain lines in
the second book which refer to the first. These lines, which
no one has overlooked in the discussion of the inner connec-
tion of the two books, prove nothing but the intention to
adapt one to the other. Baumlein further describes the
conduct of Agamemnon, in the council and the assembly
of the second book, as " intelligible on psychological princi-
ples from the events of the first book ;" and therein sug-
gests an idea, whicli is expanded with all confidence in an
essay by A. Gobel (Mutzell's G. Z., 1854). In that essay we
have the gap between the two narratives completely filled
by imagination, so as to make the connection seem all right.
These capricious fancies (of which an example is given in
note 79) Faesi regards as well-founded reasoning, and bases
on them his unhesitating statement at the beginning of the
second book, that it " stands in close connection with the
first book, and assumes precisely the same situation of affairs'
and state of feeling that we see at its end." This untena-
ble assertion Franke displaces by the more moderate re-
mark, "the second book narrates the first step taken by
Zeus towards the fulfilment of his promise to Thetis." A
very different question is the one as to the words which
form the connecting link between the first and second
books. Lachmann, in the introduction to his Betrachtun-
94: THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
gen, mentions, as a striking illustration of the fact that be-
tween two successive sections of the Iliad it seems often to
be implied in the language that one song ends and another
begins, the lines 1 : 609 sqq. and 2 : 1, sq. " Neither is the
antithesis complete, as if it were ' All went to bed and slept,
but Zeus slept not,' instead of which we have ' The gods
went to bed, and also Zeus slept. The other gods and men
slept, but Zeus did not ;' nor, on the other hand, if the ,
statement was to follow at once, ' Zeus slept not, but sum-
moned the dream-god,' was there any object in first men-
tioning that by him lay golden-throned Hera, who, how-
ever, was not to know of the sending of the dream." This
puts a very awkward obstacle in the way of interpretation,
and to remove it one of two means must be employed;
either KaOtvSe (1 : 611) does not mean " he slept," or OVK ?%
vtidvpoQ VTTVOG (2 : 2) does not mean " he slept not." Both
means have actually been employed. KaOwSe is translated
" lie lay down to sleep " by Gross (Vindiciae Horn. I.), with
quotation of Od. 4: 304; 6:1; 7:344; 8:313; 20:141; "he
went to sleep," by Dodcrlein (on II. 1 : 611), who quotes the
same passages; "he lay in bed," by Ameis (on Od. 15 : 5).
The passages in Od. 8 : 313, 337, 342 are out of the ques-
tion, for there wdeiv is a mere euphemism for ^iXortjn /.ityfjvai.
The other quoted passages, where it is indifferent which
sense, " to sleep " or " to fall asleep," is given to the word,
or where the latter is admissible, can prove nothing for a
passage where a positive preference for one meaning is es-
sential to the interpretation. Moreover, this view ignores
the weight which the secondary meaning of the word ought
to have in determining its original sense. These consid-
erations, perhaps, influenced Nagclsbach,in the second edi-
tion of his commentary, to speak of this translation as " a
NOTES 74-77. 95
wide-spread error." He tries the other method, explaining
A/a c 1 OVK x vqtivpoQ virvof, " Zeus was not chained in sleep
the whole night, but after a time he awoke, and meditated
how to fulfil his promise to Thetis." So also La Roche.
But this is not in the words, for OVK t\ and o y ptpfiripiZe
are put together as coincident in time, and it is not said
that he awoke from sleep, as it is in Od. 15 : 8, though Na-
gelsbach quotes that passage as sustaining his view. The
other passage which he quotes, II. 9 : 713 and 10 : 1-4, is
simply another instance of inconsistency between the end
of one lay and the beginning of another. Both of these
means are combined by Doderlein (on II. 5 : 2), and by
Faesi in his notes ; but Franke, in his edition of Faesi,
rejects all such artifices (Introd. p. v., note, and on 2 : 2).
This instance illustrates the difference between difficulties
in the phrases of transition and those in the continuity of
the subject-matter, to which latter class all our examples
belong. It may also show how, in almost every case, the
conflict of the conservatives and radicals has had a long
history.
74 Instead of the expositions of the startling want of se-
quence here (e. g. G. Hermann, De interpol. Horn., Opusc.
v.), it may be well to read the enthusiastic praise of the
passage by Xitzsch (Sagenpoesie). Faesi's remarks, in the
Introduction, p. xxi., and in the note on II. 3 : 15, can hardly
be reconciled. Franke substitutes for the former the sim-
ple statement that "the often announced and anticipated
battle of the two armies is still postponed."
75 Lachmann, Betrachtungen, p. 22 ; A. Jacob, Ueber die
Entstehung, etc., p. 215.
76 A. Jacob, as above, p. 209.
77 Of these works perhaps the best for the unprofessional
96 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
reader is that by A. Jacob, which states the inconsistencies
minutely and gives the principal passages in German.
78 See this point developed in A. Kochly's De Iliadis car-
minibus diss. III. p. 6 sqq.
79 Among these harmonizing devices, the most prominent
is the supposition that the poet omits to mention, and leaves
the reader to supply, some particular which is essential to
the understanding of the narrative. To what an extreme
Nitzsch carries the use of this device, Kara rb auairuinvov, is
shown by Schomann (De ret. Horn.) and Kochly (De II. carm.
diss. III.). It is used also by Faesi, for instance, in the notes
on II. 3 : 249, 259 (where also Ameis, La Roche, and Franke
do the same), on II. 5 : 510 (where Franke recognizes its in-
adequacy), and elsewhere. The use of it by Ameis and La
Roche on II. 5 : 133 surely needs no refutation (see Franke's
note on the passage). What may be done by a free use of
this time-honored device may be seen from an instance in
A. Gobel's treatise, mentioned in note 73. The line II. 1 :
487 is usually supposed to contain nothing more than the
simple fact of a dispersion of the men to their tents and
ships, as in other similar lines (e. g. II. 19 : 277 ; 23 : 3 ; 24 : 2).
But Gobel finds in it " they scattered themselves hurriedly
among the ships and tents, as if a guilty conscience hunted
them away, or, rather, as if a mysterious storm-cloud was
hovering over the Greek camp." On such fancies, which
any sound principles of interpretation condemn, is built up
the psychological explanation of the connection between the
first two books of the Iliad. A very successful contrivance
for removing contradictions is the assumption of an inter-
polation. That many such would creep into an epic poem
which was long preserved only by oral tradition is certain ;
but there is no just ground for holding that a given passage
NOTES 78-80. 97
is interpolated in the fact that it disturbs the continuity of
the poeui as a whole. Nitzsch's effort by this means to
bring the speech of Achilles, II. 18 : 49-91, into harmony
with the ninth book (Sagenpoesie, p. 180 sqq.) is especially
characteristic in this respect, and is thoroughly examined by
Schomann, Jalm's Jahrb. 69, De ret. Horn. pp. 13-15. The
only conditions under which the assumption of an interpola-
tion is justifiable are laid down distinctly and decisively by
Kirchhoff, Die Composition der Odyssee, p. 201 (Philol. 19).
Friedlander's idea (Die Horn. Kritik), that these discrepan-
cies are, in most cases, to be regarded as " lingering traces
of a long separation " of the parts of a poem originally one,
is applied far too freely in interpretation.
80 The fact that these contradictions run through the
whole extent of the poem is a serious objection to Grote's in-
termediate hypothesis (History of Greece, Am. ed. II. p. 175
sqq.), that our Iliad is made up of two long poems, an Achil-
leid, consisting of books I., VIII., XL-XXII., and an Iliad,
consisting of books II.-VII., with perhaps IX. and X. This
theory Friedlander (Die Horn. Kritik, etc.) endeavors to es-
tablish with additional arguments. It is attacked, as pre-
serving the unity of the poems too much, by W. Ribbeck
(Philol. 8), and as sacrificing the unity, by Baumlein (Philol.
11). [See, also, Transactions of the Am. Philological Asso-
ciation, 1876. A new form of Grote's theory, advanced by
W. D. Geddes, Problem of the Homeric Poems (London,
1878), is open to the objection mentioned above. The chief
novelty of this theory is, that it tries to show by internal
arguments that the portion of the Iliad regarded by Grote
as an addition to the original Achilleid (with a few scat-
tered passages) was composed by the author of the Odys-
sey, and that to him, an Asiatic Greek, belong the name
7
98 THE ORIGIN OF TTIE HOMERIC POEMS.
Homer and the traditions connected with that name. TR.]
Essentially the same position was taken, before the publi-
cation of Grote's theory, by Diintzer, Jahn's Jahrb., Suppl.
2 (also in his Horn. Abhandlungen).
81 Roth, indeed (Abendl. Philos. II.), regards Homer as the
poet who wrote the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Thebaid, and
several other great epics, each by a single effort of inde-
pendent creative power ; but he, with all his other learn-
ing, has not grasped the real point of the Homeric ques-
tion, as was shown in note 41.
82 That the composer of the Iliad as a single poem took
up into his work earlier songs, largely or entirely unaltered,
is repeatedly affirmed by Nitzsch (Sagenpoesie, pp. 109,
123, 126, etc.) and Baunilein (essay prefixed to the Tauch-
nitz edition, p. xx. etc.). How slightly the view here adopt-
ed by Nitzsch differs from that which he opposes is shown
by Schomann (De ret. Horn.) and Kochly (De II. carui. diss.
III.). Bergk (Gr. Lit. I. p. 523) remarks against this view :
" The style of those earlier lays would not fit into the new
form of art ; therefore they cannot have been incorporated
bodily into the new poems, but can only have served, like
rough sketches of a picture, to stimulate and inspire the
creative genius who laid the foundation of Greek epic po-
etry." Diintzer disposes of a portion of those passages in
which Lachniann found his evidence of inconsistency as
arbitrary insertions by the rhapsodes (on which see note
112). As to the remaining genuine body of the poems, he
says (Horn. Abhandl. p. xii.) : " That each of the two great
poems was originally a single whole we dare not assume ;
for neither does the action, in its main features, constitute
a single unity, nor does the same poetic spirit animate the
whole." In this place may be mentioned the " new hypoth-
NOTES 81-83. 99
esis " of J. Minckwitz (see note 27), according to which a
bard of the people, by name Horner, living at the time of
the Trojan war, having acquired unwonted facility of ex-
" pression by long practice from early youth in the produc-
tion of lyric and short epic poems, composed a number of
detached lays upon the heroic deeds of the Trojan war and
the fortunes of the Greek chiefs on their return home, which
were received with great applause by those who heard them.
These detached lays, connected only in subject-matter, and
varying in style from the very beginning, were handed
down orally for centuries by the rhapsodes, until, in a
somewhat mutilated and time-worn shape, they were col-
lected together by Peisistratos. The apparent unity of the
Iliad and Odyssey is due to editorial revision, which pieced
them together, as well as might be, with all possible fidelity
to the existing form of each portion. The one important
feature of this " new hypothesis," that which puts it in op-
position to Lachmann on one side and to Kitzsch on the
other, the supposition of a single poet for many separate
lays, may be found in the Blatter fur literarische Unterhal-
tung, 1844, N. 126-129 (cf. Curtius, Zeitschr. fur d. osterr.
Gym., 1854). This theory does not touch the most essen-
tial points, the original existence of independent lays, not
designed to form one story, and the combination of them
as a subsequent stage of their history. The impossibilities
it contains, along with much that is true and generally ad-
mitted, cannot be discussed here.
83 Nitzsch, Sagenpoesie, p. 281 sq. A conjectural analy-
sis of the Iliad into its original songs is offered by Kochly,
Iliadis carmina XVI. (Leipzig, 1866). The reasons for his
analysis are given in a series of monographs (" De Iliadis
cat-minibus dissertationes" in the Zurich University pro-
100 THE ORIGIN OF THE IIOMEKIC POEMS.
grammes from 1850 on, and " Hektor's Losung," in the
Gratulations-Schrift der Ziir. Univ. an Welcker, 1858). His
views are assailed or modified in many particulars by W.
Eibbeck, Jahn's Jahrb. 85, and by J. La Roche, Zeitschr. fur
d. osterr. Gym., 1862.
84 See the admirable development of this point by W.
"Wackernagel, in the essay mentioned in note 15 (II. p. ?G
sqq.).
85 The only exception to this remark is, that the close of
the Odyssey, from 23 : 297 on, which Aristarchus long ago
rejected, was subjected, not long after the appearance of
Wolf's Prolegomena, to thorough examination by F. A. W.
Spohn, Conimentatio de extrema Odysseae parte, etc. (1816).
86 This opinion is expressed not only by Nitzsch, Bauui-
lein, Grote (II. p. 164 sqq., Am. edition), Friedlander (Die
Horn. Kritik), but also by Schomanu, in the often-mentioned
review, Jahn's Jahrb. 69. " To regard the Odyssey as a
patchwork of originally independent lays seems to me rank
absurdity, although it is certain that it contains interpola-
tions, some of them of considerable extent, which, however.
can be positively recognized as such. But the poem as a
whole is the noble conception of a lofty genius, who had in
this kind of poetry no model, and, so far as we can judge,
no -worthy imitator." On this Sengebusch (Horn. diss. II.)
remarks that he fears Schoniann will some day seem to him-
self to have decided with more force than truth. Bernhar-
dy (Gr. Lit. 2d ed. II. p. 119) says of the Odyssey : " Here we
find the epic conception to have advanced not only to the
having one person as a moral centre, but also to unity of
artistic construction ; the action proceeds in strictly nat-
ural sequence, the plot is far more compact than that of the
Iliad, and all its parts work together to one end. With a
NOTES 84-87. 101
fully developed art, the poet of the Odyssey groups the ele-
ments of his scheme, and makes them easily co-operate in
a sphere of sober thought combined with serene wisdom.
His poem, which is the earliest example of the organized
artistic epic style, constitutes a chief part of the present
Odyssey, and to his original shaping of the plot is due the
precise interaction of the incidents, and the regular pro-
gressive advance through them to the catastrophe." On
the other hand, Bekker, at the close of his criticism of the
opening lines of the Odyssey (Horn. Blatter, p. 107), says :
"It would not be much to the credit of the Greek intellect
if Wolf's statement (Proleg. p. cxviii.) were true, that the
admirable plan and structure of the Odyssey is to be re-
garded as the noblest monument of Greek genius." [To
the same effect Steinthal, Zeitschr. fur Volkerpsychologie
und Sprachwissenschaft, 7, 1871. TR.]
87 Apart from the unimportant book by Heerklotz, Be-
trachtungen liber die Odyssee, Trier, 1854 (see Friedlander,
Jahn's Jahrb. 79), and the valuable remarks in A. Jacob's
work mentioned in note 68, most of the discussions bear-
ing on the origin of the Odyssey have been confined to sep-
arate parts of the poem, e. g. on the opening lines by Bek-
ker (Horn. Blatter); on the Telemachie by Hennings (1858 ;
cf. Friedlander, Jahn's Jahrb. 79 ; Baumlein, Jahn's Jahrb.
81) ; on the opening lines of the fifth book by Schmitt (De
secundo in Od. deorum concilio, Friburg, 1852) ; on the
gardens of Alkinous by L. Friedlander (Philol. 6) ; on the
eleventh book by Lauer (De Od. libri XI. forma genuina et
patria, Berlin, 1843) ; on the first thirteen books by Kochly
(Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1862 ; reprinted, with notes and
a statement as to the separate lays in the latter half of the
poem, in the Verhandlungen der 21. Versammlung deut-
102 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
scher Philologen, etc., Leipzig, 1863) ; on the XIII.-XIX.
books by R. Volkmann (Quaestiones epicae, Leipzig, 1854) ;
Rhode (Schulprogramme, Dresden, 1848, Brandenburg,
1858; cf. Friedlander, Jahn's Jahrb. 79); Meister (Philol.
8) ; on the twentieth book by Bekker (Horn. Blatter) ; on
the portion from 23 : 297 through by Liesegang (De extre-
ma Od. parte, Bielefeld, 1855).
88 This point in regard to the Odyssey is stated -with
praiseworthy frankness, and proved by conclusive instan-
ces, in Faesi's introduction to his Odyssey, 4th ed. pp. 37-
44.
89 Kirchhoff, Die Horn. Odyssee, p. viii.
90 A. Jacob, as above (note 68), p. 475 sq. See also note
109.
91 A. Jacob, pp. 508-514.
92 A. Jacob, p. 363 sqq.; Faesi, p. 39. As to the confused
advice which Athene gives Telemachos in the first book, see
Kirchhoff, Die Composition der Odyssee, I. ; Friedlander,
Analecta Homerica, Jahn's Jahrb. Suppl. 3 ; Kammer, Die
Einheit der Odyssee. Friedlander (Horn. Kritik, and so after
hiniNitzsch,Epische Poesie) seeks to remove the difficulty
as to the unexplained prolongation of the stay of Telema-
chos at Sparta as follows: "This delay is undeniably in
conflict with his original design. But the freedom which
the poet here allows himself is the less surprising, because
he might reasonably assume that no one of his hearers
would notice it. The really wonderful thing is, that this is
the only instance worth mention of such poetic license in
the whole poem ; for the few other inconsistencies are much
more probably to be ascribed to defective preservation than
to careless composition of the poem." The examples given
in the text may perhaps show that this is not the " only
NOTES 88-103. 103
instance worth mention of such license," and also that the
inconsistencies run too deep into the structure of the poem
to be ascribed to " defective preservation."
93 Schmitt, in the work mentioned in note 87 ; Faesi,
p. 37 ; A. Jacob, p. 387. Nitzsch gets over this difficulty
easily by the very convenient phrase, "parallel narratives"
(Philol. 17, pp. 1-28) ; cf. note 71.
94 Faesi on Od. 15 : 1. Still, even in this case, it is possi-
ble to find an apparent solution. One is given in detail by
Nitzsch (Epische Poesie, p. 128 sq.), which it is worth while
to read through, and then ask yourself if it is intelligible.
95 A. Jacob, p. 421. Most of the passages in which the
woes of Odysseus are said to be caused by Poseidon's wrath,
Dlintzer (Horn. Abh. p. 409) regards as interpolations.
96 Faesi, p. 41 ; A. Jacob, p. 369, 481 ; Kern, Bernerkun-
gen iiber die Freier in der Odyssee, Progr. des Gym. zu Ulm,
1861 ; Hartel, Zeitschr. fur d.'osterr. Gym., 1871.
97 Faesi, p. 40 sq. Cf. the attempt of Ameis (on 11 : 116)
to explain away the present nartSovffiv.
98 A. Jacob, p. 481.
99 Od. 13 : 399 ; 16 : 176. Faesi, in this case, contrary to
his usual practice in regard to the Odyssey, tries to estab-
lish harmony by the meaning he gives to icvdveog. Ameis
(Anhang on 16 : 176) avails himself of physiological science.
See, on the other hand, the plain statements of A. Jacob,
p. 463 ; Kirchhoff, Composition der Od., VI.
100 Faesi, p. 41.
101 A. Jacob, pp. 462, 471 sq., 507.
102 Eurykleia and Eurynome ; Faesi, p. 41 ; A. Jacob, p.
477. Faesi gives several other instances of this kind.
103 See Bekker's pregnant essay on the twentieth book
(Horn. Bliitter).
104 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
104 A. Jacob, pp. 430, 433 sq.
105 Od. 17 : 360-491 ; 18 : 346-428 ; 20 : 284-344. See Meis-
tcr (Philol. 8).
106 Od. 14 : 29 sqq. ; 16 : 4 sq., 162 ; 17 : 291 sqq.
10T Od. 13 : 257-286 ; 14 : 199-359 ; 17 : 419-444 ; 19 : 172-
248. There is still another in 24 : 303-314. Cf. A. Jacob,
p. 453 sqq. ; Faesi, p. 43.
108 Od. 4:793; 16:450; 18:188; 20:54; 21:357-
23 : 5. A. Jacob, p. 480.
109 Od. 7: 215; 17:503; 18 : 118, and cf. 15 : 344; 17:286;
18 : 53. That the Xaijuapyi'a and yaaTpinapyia of Odysseus
were astounding to readers in ancient times appears from
the combinations and comments in Athcnaeos X. 412 b.
110 Od. 15 : 160-165, 525-528 ; 17 : 160, 541 ; 19 : 535 sqq. ;
20 : 103, 345 sqq. ; 21 : 411-413 ; 22 : 240.
111 The cases given in the text by no means exhaust the
list of strange repetitions and accumulations, e. g. the two-
fold direction given to Odysseus as to the way to the pal-
ace of Alkinous, Od. 6 : 300 ; 7 : 20 (A. Jacob, p. 348) ; the
repeated presentation of gifts to him by the Phaeakians,
Od. 8 : 385 ; 11 : 335 ; 13 : 10 ; the references by Penelope, Od.
19 : 518 sqq. ; 20 : 65 sqq., to the myth of Pandareos, with
different conceptions of the myth (Bekker, Horn. Blatter,
p. 125) ; Odysseus complains ad nauseam of the ruinous
effect of his stomach's resistless demands, Od. 7 : 216; 15 :
344: 17:286-289; 18:53; he tests repeatedly the faithful-
ness of his servants, Od. 14 : 459 ; 15 : 304 ; 16 : 305 (A. Ja-
cob, p. 465), etc. As to the poetic value of the second half
of the Odyssey, see especially Kirchhoff, Composition der
Odyssee, p. 209.
112 Kirchhoff, in his book Die Homerische Odyssee und
ihre Entstchung (1859). has given the result of several years
NOTES 104-112. 105
of study in such form as to show to the eye his theory,
printing separately the several successive layers of which
the poem consists. He is very far from thinking that he
can draw an exact line between the original and tlie added
portions, but chooses the above as the simplest way of giv-
ing his conclusions definitely. The prefixed explanations
do not undertake to give the reasons for his analysis, but
simply to supplement the unavoidable deficiencies of this
method of stating it. " The Odyssey, as we have it, is
neither the single creation of one poet, only disfigured by
interpolations here and there, nor a collection of indepen-
dent poems from diiFerent authors and dates, strung together
in the order of events, but a systematic enlargement and re-
modelling in a later age of an originally simpler nucleus.
This nucleus, which I call 'the earlier revision,' in which
form the poem was known until about 660 B.C., is not it-
self simple, but consists of an earlier and a later part, which
belong to different times, different authors, and different
points on the coast of Asia Minor. The first and earliest
part of the whole poem, ' the Return of Odysseus,' is an
original unit which cannot be further analyzed. It formed,
without the addition of the second part, a complete inde-
pendent whole. It is not, however, a popular epic in the
usual sense of the term, but belongs to the period when the
artistic epic was being developed." This " Return of Odys-
seus'' consisted of Od. 1 : 1-87; 5 : 43-7 : 17; 7 : 84-102,
132-184, 233-242 ; then followed so much of the narrative of
the adventures of Odysseus as remains in a tolerable state
of preservation in Od. 9 : 16-564; then (according to essay
IV. in his other book, to be presently mentioned) the origi-
nal part of the vima in Od. 11; then Od. 7 : 251-297; 11 :
333-353 ; 13 : 7-9, 13-184. The second part of "the earlier
106 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMEKIC POEMS.
revision" consisted of nearly the whole of Od. 13 : 185-23 :
296, excluding all passages which in any way directly or
indirectly presuppose the Telemachia, and a few others for
other reasons. This part was added before the first Olym-
piad, with special knowledge of and reference to the former,
apart from which it never existed, and to which it is de-
cidedly inferior in poetic quality. " Between G60 and 580
B.C. this 'earlier revision' was subjected to a thorough re-
working by some person unknown, whereby the length of
the poem was increased by more than one half, the text
much changed, and here and there gaps left in it. This
reworking was occasioned by the desire, on the one hand,
to complete the Odyssey by incorporating into it the con-
tents of certain earlier poems of the same circle of myths,
and, on the other, to give to the whole a conclusion more
in accordance with the taste of the time." This later re-
vision became then the foundation of the work of the edi-
torial commission of Peisistratos, and had a few interpola-
tions made in it by them. The reasonings on which a
part of these conclusions were based are stated in seven
essays, which appeared first in different periodicals and
afterwards without change in Die Composition der Odys-
see, gesammelte Aufsatze von Kirchhoff (Berlin, 1869).
(Essay I. will be found in Rhein. Mus. 15 ; II. in Philol. 15 ;
III. in Monatsberichte der Kon. Akad. der Wissenschaften,
Berlin, 1861 ; IV. in Philol. 15; V. in Rhein. Mus. 15 ; VI.
in Jahn's Jahrb. 1865 ; VII. in Philol. 19.) The first essay
shows, with a conclusiveness rare in such matters, that the
part of the first book from line 88 on is a distorted and
clumsy reproduction of the corresponding passage in the
second book. The establishment of this point not only
shuts out the possibility of maintaining original unity of
NOTE 112. 107
conception for the Odyssey, but also settles that " the pas-
sage referred to of the second book, with all that can be
shown to stand in original and organic connection with it,
proceeds from a different and an earlier poet than the cor-
responding part of the first book with its belongings ; the
poet of the latter knew the passage in the second book and
used it (in part in its precise words) in his own way and to
his own ends." His object plainly was to connect the nar-
rative of the journey of Telemachos with that of the return
of Odysseus. In the fifth essay Kirchhoff undertakes to
show, starting out from a remark of Aristarchus in refer-
ence to Od. 12 : 374-390, that the passage in the narrative
of Odysseus extending from 9 : 565 to 12 : 446 (with the ex-
ception of the original part of the vkxvia. see essay fourth)
was originally composed in the third person as told by the
poet, and then rewritten in the first person as told by Odys-
seus himself. Thus we have in the present narrative an
original nucleus and a subsequent addition. The vinvia in-
corporated into this addition is shown in the fourth essay
to belong to the original nucleus. In the latter part of the
third essay it is shown that several features borrowed from
the myth of the Argonauts have been taken up into this
subsequent addition. In the first part of the third essay
he points out in Od. 7 : 240-259 the place at which came
originally the simpler, not yet enlarged, narrative of the
wanderings of Odysseus, in answer to the question ad-
dressed to him on his entrance into the palace of the Phae-
akian king. The sixth essay brings out the fact that the
incident in the story which is minutely detailed in the
thirteenth and elaborately made use of in the sixteenth
book, the transformation of Odysseus by the wand of Athene,
is not referred to at the critical point of his recognition by
108 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
Penelope, where it could not but have been remembered,
yet where only such change in his appearance is assumed as
time and trials would bring about. This serious incon-
sistency in the twenty-third book is disguised by an inter-
polation, the occasion of which is easily explained and its
disturbing influence on the context manifest. The seventh
essay begins with a discussion of the two passages, Od. 16 :
281-298 and 19 : 3-52, concerning the concealment of the
arms, and shows that, contrary to the hitherto universal
opinion that the former is an interpolation, the latter is
really an awkward imitation of the former, and was intro-
duced, together with the line Od. 22 : 141, in order to con-
nect the topic of 16 : 281-298 with the narrative of the kill-
ing of the suitors which otherwise docs not recognize it.
In all these discussions of the inner structure of the Odys-
sey it is characteristic of the writer's method that he doeo
not content himself with pointing out contradictions and
irreconcilable assumptions in the different parts of the
poem, but rather demonstrates in every case the earlier and
later strata of the work, and the intelligible purpose of the
reviser in his changes. To determine approximately the
time of these strata can be possible only by combination
with other dates in the history of the growth of the Greek
epic, and such combinations are made in the second, third,
and fourth essays. The cyclic "Nostoi" (essay IV.), which
belong to about 700 B.C., show knowledge of the third and
fourth books of the Odyssey and of the original " Return
of Odysseus " in the ninth book (including as above part
of the VBKVIO), but decidedly none of the enlarged version
of his adventures contained in books X.-XII. From this
it is certain that at that date the poem on the journey of
Telemachos and the original "Return of Odysseus" were
NOTE 112. 109
in existence, and also that the later additions to the latter
had not yet been incorporated with it ; it is also probable
that these additions did not yet exist even as an indepen-
dent poem. This latter point is raised from probability to
certainty by a consideration from another source (essay III.).
The later additions show a connection in the localities
mentioned with a form of the Argonaut myth which can-
not be earlier than the colonization of Kyzikos ; it follows
that " the origin of the poem which forms the basis of
books X.-XII. of the Odyssey falls at the earliest towards
the end of the period 750-680 B.C., and its revision in the
present form that is, the final shaping of the first half of
our Odyssey not much before 660 B.C." On the other
hand (essay II.), the Eoai, which belong between 620 and
580 B.C., recognize the contents of the Odyssey as we have
it in such a way as to warrant the inference that the final
revision of the poem was somewhat generally known by
580 B.C.
But little has been done as yet in the way of thorough and
unprejudiced examination of this closely connected chain
of reasoning. The notices of the earlier work (Die Horn.
Odyssee, etc.), by "W. Ribbeck and L. Friedlander, in Jahn's
Jahrb. 79, may be left out of account, since they were written
before the essays were published. Friedlander's review, in
Jahn's Jahrb. 83, of the four earlier essays, expresses agree-
ment in most points with Kirchhoff 's views, though as to
the origin of the confusion in the first book of the Odyssey
he still maintains his own idea (Anal. Horn. p. 476) of a
threefold revision; an idea which, by its unnecessary arti-
ficialness, rather helps to make Kirchhoff's simpler theory
more acceptable. W. Hartel's " Untersuchungen uber die.
Entstehung der Odyssee'' (Zeitschr.fiir d. 6'sterr.Gym., 1864,
110 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
1865) ranks before all others for logical and keen-sighted
penetration into Kirchhoff 's course of thought. This leads
him to supply omissions in some of the essays, and to oppose
some of the statements and reasonings, especially as to the
recognition by the cyclic " Nostoi " of the Telemachia and
the original " Return of Odysseus;" as to the shifting of the
later additions from the third into the first person (against
which see Nitzsch, Jahn's Jahrb. 81); and as to the point
in the poem at which the original brief narrative of the
wanderings of Odysseus is supposed to have stood. As
to Steinthal's criticism of Kirchhoff 's views (in the article
mentioned in note 86), see the remarks of W. Hartel in a re-
view of Miillenhoff ' s Deutsche Alterthumskunde (Zeitschrift
fur d. 6'sterr. Gym., 1871). A criticism of this whole theory
of Kirchhoff 's, hostile in all particulars, is to be found in
Duntzer's Kirchhoff, Kochly, und die Odyssee (Koln, 1872).
The method of refutation is essentially the same throughout,
that those passages on which Kirchhoff bases his conclu-
sions are set aside as interpolations, to which he adds that
Other passages, to the connection of which Kirchhoff makes
no objection, contain as much material for such criticism as
those in which he finds evidence of growth by successive
modifications. As to the former point, Kirchhoff lays down
the principle (Compos, der Od. p. 201) : " To declare a pas-
sage in any text an interpolation, without being able to as-
sign an occasion for or design in its being inserted, is a
thoroughly unscientific proceeding, by which investigations
such as that into the origin of the Homeric poems cannot
be furthered, but only hindered." This principle Duntzer
repeatedly and emphatically rejects, e. g. p. 19 : "Kirchhoff
plainly carries much too far his principle that the assertion
of an interpolation cannot be scientifically justified unless
NOTE 112. Ill
the reason for it can be pointed out. Since no manifest in-
congruity, breaking the pure, smooth flow of the poem, can
have proceeded from the poet, any such blemish must be
set aside as a clumsy addition, which we shall continue to
ascribe to some improvising rhapsode until we get evi-
dence of the existence in the flesh of Kirchhoff 's later re-
viser. For most interpolations one can imagine a reason,
which, however, has nothing more than a greater or less
degree of probability in its favor ; but the interpolation is
an objective fact, and when we consider the arbitrary ca-
price, obeying only the sudden and often strange sugges-
tion of the moment, manifest in the additions of the rhap-
sodes, we see the unreasonableness of requiring an expla-
nation of them in every case." It is plain from these and
similar expressions, that only those can agree with Diint-
zer's criticisms who can be satisfied with " arbitrary ca-
price" and " strange suggestions of the moment." He finds
the safeguard for right decision, in case of interpolations
for which an occasion or motive cannot be found, in a full
entrance into the spirit of the poet, such as results from a
loving but critical following in his steps from sentence to
sentence, from speech to speech, from incident to incident;
when this is done, the spurious element excludes itself.
This describes quite rightly the origin of the tact and feel-
ing for inequality of character by which the spurious may
be detected, but in order to lift this feeling above the
dangers which belong to its subjective nature, and to be
able to convince others of the truth of its decisions, it
is necessary to support it by definite arguments. Diintzer
himself has only to recall his own variations in the pas-
sages he has proposed to exclude to see the justice of
this demand. (Duntzer's answer to these criticisms may
112 TIIE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
be found in his last book, Die Homerische Fragc, Leip-
zig, 1874.)
With Hai'tel's essay, mentioned above (Untersuchungen,
etc.), we may associate Heimreich's " Die Telemachie und
der jiingere Nostos" (Progr. des Gym. zu Flensburg, 1871),
inasmuch as it likewise accepts Kirchhoff 's principles, but
is led by them to somewhat different results, and so to a
modification of his theory. The principal points of diver-
gence are as follows : To remove all obscurity and confusion
from the first book, Heimreich would exclude the supposed
interpolations, leaving thus lines 89 sq., 96, 102-269, 295-324
(with probably 421-427 as a transition passage), which form
an unobjectionable introduction to the journey of Telema-
chos, and are the work of the same poet who composed the
next three books. The Telemachia never existed as a sep-
arate poem, but the same poet who composed it inserted it
(or the greater part of it) between Od. 1 : 87 and 5 : 29 in the
process of enlarging the Odyssey from its simpler original.
As to the peculiarities of the Kirke-Episode, Heimreich
makes some valuable remarks. His theory, in brief, is as
follows : " There was originally a shorter poem on the re-
turn of Odysseus (in substance the same with KirchhofTs
original ' Return,' but with the addition of the myths of
Aeolos and of the Laestrygoni) ; this was expanded before
the time of the 'Nostoi' of Agias (that is, probably before
700 B.C.), by a second poet, to the compass of our Odyssey,
with the exception, of course, of a few late interpolations."
These criticisms of Heiinreich's touch in part the points
for which Kirchhoff has not yet published a statement of
his reasons ; such as the discrimination of the " later addi-
tions" from the original "Return of Odysseus," and the in-
dependence of the Telemachia.
XOTE 112. 113
An indirect attack upon KirchhofPs investigations is
contained in the section on the Odyssey in Bergk's Griecli.
Literatur-Geschichte, I. pp. 654-726, in which, though there
is, as usual, no mention of the labors of other scholars, the ref-
erence is plain to those who know the literature of the sub-
ject. The development of the present form of the poem
out of the original Odyssey, which he ascribes to a different
poet from that of the original Iliad, is explained by Bergk
in essentially the same way as in the case of the Iliad (see
note 27). But in this case he admits that the intruded mat-
ter is not so extensive as to suppress, so completely as in
the Iliad, the original, nor to disturb the structure so thor-
oughly. While some books, as the sixth, are almost free
from interpolations, in others, as the eighth, only a moder-
ate portion of the original poem remains, and in general
the first half of the poem has suffered less at the hands of
the reviser than the second. (On Bergk's treatment of the
Odyssey, see "\V. Hartel's review, mentioned in note 27.)
Bergk's attitude towards Kirchhoff's investigations may
be most clearly seen in the case of the first book of the
Odyssey. He regards the conversation of Athene with Te-
leniachos as an essential pre-condition of the narrative of
the three following books, but as so confused and blind
that it cannot be ascribed to the original poet. "It is
probable that the speech of Athene was lost in careless
transmission ; then he who gave the Odyssey its present
form endeavored, to fill up as best he could the serious
gap, using, with no great skill, the hints to be found in the
second book." The introduction of the name of Mentcs,
also, is an addition, so that " but little of the original poem
is to be found in the first book.'' Here the result of Kirch-
hoff's investigation is reproduced ; but whereas that invcs-
114: THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
tigation confined, itself to reasonable inferences from the
actual form of the Odyssey, here we have added the hypoth-
esis, unproved and hardly capable of proof, that the poor
work of the reviser replaces the accidentally lost good
work of the original poet.
A minute criticism of Kirchhoff's whole theory will be
found in Ed. Kauimer's Die Einheit der Odyssee, nach
Widerlegung der Ansichten von Lachmann-Steinthal, Koch-
ly, Hennings, und Kirchhoff, dargestellt von Dr. Ed. Kam-
mer in Kouigsberg. Anhang: Homerische Blatter von K.
Lehrs (Leipzig, 1873). The first part of the book is occu-
pied with the refutation announced in the title; in the sec-
ond part the author goes through the Odyssey, throwing
out the lines he regards as interpolated, and presenting thus
the poem in its pristine unity. But the criticism of those
essays of Kirchhoff 's which have to do with passages in
the latter half of the Odyssey is to be found in this second
part in connection with the author's statement of his own
views. He conceives the poet of the Iliad and of the
Odyssey as developing a profound ethical theme in a series
of scenes or situations, in each of which, in turn, his fancy
is actively at work, and his effort is to enchain his hearers
by holding and busily occupying their imaginative vision.
As he advanced in his work, we may suppose that his path
teemed with ideas more richly, and so it came about that
of the fresh details that flowed in upon his mind some were
in conflict with what had gone before, a fact which neither
poet nor hearers could be expected to observe, as neither
had the whole before the mind at once. Even when the
theme was fully worked out, the poem did not assume a
fixed form, but remained in a certain fluid state, ever re-
newed by the remarkable faculty of improvisation which
NOTES 112, 113. 115
constant practice developed. Then it passed through the
hands of a host of lesser poets, who amplified and varied it
greatly. Kainmer distinguishes (pp. 758-761) five different
groups of such additions and changes. His refutation of
Kirchhoff is naturally facilitated by the fact that he, even
more decidedly than Diintzer, rejects Kirchhoff 's principle
as to the cases in -which one may assume the existence of
an interpolation. Two brief notices (Schaclc's Wissensch.
Monatsbliitter, 1874 ; Altpreussische Monatsschrift, 1873)
by Lehrs, whose disciple on this question Kammer avows
himself to be, warmly commend this book, and another, by
H. Weil (Revue Critique, 1874), expresses agreement with
its principles. The reviewer in the Gottinger Gelehrtcr An-
zeiger (1874) indicates by judicious extracts the treatment
of the question in it, and shows by examples that the con-
tents do not justify the assumption of infallibility on the
part of the author. Similarly A. Bischoff, in Philol. An-
zeiger (1875), and in Philologus, 34. Hennings replies, in
Jahn's Jahrb. (1874), to the criticism of his views, so far as
applies to the first three books of the Odyssey. A care-
ful account of Kammer's critical treatment of the first
twelve books of the Odyssey is given by Dr. Lange, in
the Zeitschrift fur d. Gym., 1875, Philol. Jahresbericht.
113 In Lobell's AVeltgcschichte in Umrissen (1846), I. p.
GOO sqq., is a statement of the order and relation in which
Ritschl placed the incidents of the growth of the Iliad and
Odyssey : " I. Period. Existence of certain heroic lays, cel-
ebrating the Trojan war, immediately after its occurrence,
at first among the Achaeans in Greece, and then among the
colonies of Asia Minor. II. Period, perhaps 900-800 B.C.
The unadulterated poetry of Homer and the Homeridae,
still unwritten, with the digamma pronounced. Out of a
11C THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
rich abundance of epic lays the pre-eminent genius of Ho-
mer selects a number, and combines them, fused together
with his own productions, into an artistic unity, having for
its central point, to which all parts have reference, a moral
truth. This process is something far higher than mere
compilation; it is the first creation of a great organized
whole. Thus fully developed, the genuine Iliad and Odyssey
are transmitted by the members of close guilds or schools
of poets, while at the same time the detached songs, out of
which they sprang, still survive. III. Period, 800-700 B.C.
Circulation of the Homeric poems, still unwritten, but with
gradual disappearance of the digamma and separation of
the lays from one another by the rhapsodes, whose art is
no longer in the hands of the Homeridae exclusively. The
poems are also expanded by insertions. IV. Period, 700-
COO B.C., in two divisions. (1) First commission of the
poems to writing, without the digamma (for the Alexan-
drian scholars found no trace of it remaining); continued
separation of the lays by the rhapsodes, but no further ad-
ditions to the poems, as may be inferred from the fact that
Peisistratos finds them in existence as if handed down from
antiquity. (2) The collection of separate parts to form
larger units. Oral tradition continues, and arbitrary separa-
tion and combination of the lays ; but, also, care is taken
(e. g. by Solon) to prevent falsification of the traditional
text by having standard written copies of single lays. V.
Period, 600-200 B.C. Peisistratos, by having a copy of
the poems written out in the original order, so far as it
could be recovered, puts an end at once to the corruption
of the text, and to the separation and arbitrary linking to-
gether of individual lays. The ordinance of Hipparchos
secures for a long time the practice of connected dcclama-
NOTES 114- I 1G. 117
tion of the poems. At the same time copies are mul-
tiplied of the entire poems, they begin to be the subject
of learned discussion among their admirers ( tTraivercu),
and are transcribed into the new alphabet. VI. Period.
That of the Alexandrian critics." A considerable part
of the statements here made as to the first four periods
lies beyond the region of proof; and another part of them
may fairly be called untenable, in view of the foregoing
exposition of the subject, and the investigations on which
it is based.
114 See "W. Wackernagel's essay (I. p. 341 sqq.), mentioned
in note 15.
115 As to the relation between legend and history, see
Lauer, Geschichte der Horn. Poesie, p. 163.
116 1 have let these two sentences, which recognize a nu-
cleus of historical fact in the Trojan myths, stand as they
were originally delivered, although I am far from being
willing to maintain that view now. On the history of the
development of epic poems on these myths, so far as it is
sketched in the succeeding pages, no direct influence is ex-
erted by one's opinion as to the origin of the myths them-
selves; and I do not find myself in a position to reach a
decision, by independent examination, upon the ingenious
combinations by which a solution of the latter question is
sought. See Curtius, Griech. Geschichte, I. p. 113 sqq. (Am.
edition, I. p. 145 sqq.), and the comprehensive and minute
investigations of Miillenhoff, Deutsche Alterthumskunde, I.
pp. 5-73. The admirable summary of these investigations
in a review by W. Hartel (Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1871)
shows incidentally, in regard to the Odyssey, how Miillen-
lioff's investigations confirm, from a totally different point
of view, Kirchhoff 's ideas.
118 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.
117 On the bards, see Welcker, Ep. Cycl. I. p. 340.
118 This inference from the names is in Wackernagel's
essay, above referred to, I. p. 343.
119 Welcker, Ep. Cycl. II. p. 11.
120 The opposite inference from this same case, namely,
that the songs of Demodokos "contain evident traces of a
great connected epic poem," is made by Welcker, Ep. Cycl.
I. p. 348 ; Biiumlein, Jahn's Jahrb. 75 and 81 ; and Nitzsch,
Ep. Poesie, p. 197 sqq.
121 Of course, in this statement only those dates are in-
cluded which are positively or probably based on actual
tradition. Of those based only on combinations, at least
one carries Homer back to the time of the Trojan \var (see
note 42).
122 For the authorities as to competitive chanting of epic
songs, see Bernhardy, Griech. Lit. I. p. 252 (3d. eel.). For
the difference between bards and rhapsodes, see Welcker,
Ep. Cycl. I. pp. 358-406. The distinction is ignored in the
text, not because it is questioned at all, but only because it
is comparatively unimportant in this connection.
123 Lazar der Serbencar, nach serbischen Sagen und Hel-
dengesangen, von Siegf. Kapper, 1851. This example and
the following one are cited by Miklosich, Verhandlungen
der achtzehnten Versammlung deutscher Philologen, p. 3.
124 Wackernagel, as "above, II. p. 81. A recent study
of this subject by C. d'He'ricault, Essai sur 1'Origine de
Tfipope'e Franchise (Paris, 1859), I know only by quota-
tions.
125 Compare the poetic style of books I.-X. with that of
XI.-XVIIL, and then with that of XIX.-XXIV.
126 It is interesting to note the opinion on this point indi-
rectly expressed by Aristotle, when, in speaking of the prop-
KOTES 117-128. 119
er length of an epic, he does not mention the Homeric po-
ems as a model, as he does in all other respects, but, instead,
lays down the rule that, in order that the whole may admit
of being taken in at one view, it should be shorter than the
Homeric poems, and not exceed in length the (three or four)
tragedies adapted to be performed together. Aiist. Poet.
24, 1459 b 17. Cf. Vahlen, Beitrage zu Arist. Poetik, III.
pp. 287 sq., 334 sq. (Sitzungsber. der Wiener Akad. vol. 56).
JST u -phe object of the Athenian statesman in this meas-
ure was the only one intelligible and natural in his time, to
encourage competition. He aimed to introduce the most
difficult form of contest, in which only the ablest rhapsodes
would succeed. To introduce the memorizing of the whole
poems, as a novelty, into the system of the rhapsode's art,
was surely a matter having no kind of connection with his
domain." Lehrs, Zur Horn. Interpolation, Rhein. Mus. N.
F. 17, p. 491.
128 On this last point Mor. Haupt speaks with convincing
arguments and well-earned authority in his " Festrede iiber
den Gewinn den die deutsche Philologie der classischeu
Philologie gewahrt," Ber. iiber die Verhandlungen der Kon.-
sachsisch. Gesellsch. der Wissenschaften, 2d vol., 1848, pp. 80
sqq., 100.
THE EXD.
,*
A 000134979 4