^^^MM^H^^^^^^H STACK ANNEX PA 4037 Z5B6 1880 HH^Hn y/ // KfUi+y / < 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 PR 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.