'^ AT LOS ANGELES THE TRUTH ABOUT HOMER. WITH SOME REMARKS ON PROFESSOR JEBB'S " IXTRODUCTIOX TO HOMER." T))v yap doiSi)v juaWov fTTKcXfioud' (tvPpojiroi ^Tig UKovoVTtaaL NEQTATH dfi(pnTi\i]Tai. Od. i. 351. BY F. A. PALEY, M.A., LL.D., EDITOR OF THE '' ILIAD," HESIOD, THE GREEK TRAGEDIES, &C., &C. LONDON : F. NOROATE, 7, KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN, AND THE "CAMBRIDGE CHRONICLE" OFFICE, 9, MARKET HILL. Price, Is. 1887. '.\''.':' : '''':'': ''' ■•' '■ • • • • •« • • ' • • • . • 05 CD THE TRUTH ABOUT HOMER. a: ^ Professor Jobb, with the applause of admiring Reviewers, has CC come forward, not for the first time, in his " Introduction to Homer," J as an advocate of that view respecting the very early date of our tAvo great Epics which appears to bo accepted genBrally in this country, as well as by a numerous school in Germany. They agree in believing that the Iliad and the Odyssey have come down to us (more or less nearly in their integrity) from B.C. SOO or S 50, if not even from yet 1^ earlier times. Of com'se they rely, generally, (1) on the archaic ^ character of the poems, (2) the ancient forms of the inflexions, (3) '~ the notices of domestic life 7i'iiif/li/ (tnd (Uliheruthj took their thonie.<; from later, inferior, and supplementary epics (i.e. believed by themselves to be such), because they hesitated to trespass on tho genuine works of the "Divine Hoiiier." 1 am afraid therefore thnt he is maintaining a popuhu-, but untenable, jiosilion by a anpjirmaio Vcri, siniiJy because the plain ytutement of tlio truth about " Uomef 2.'54(i9() and the Cyclic Poets" is at variance with the theory which he advocates. Of course, I am not charging a distinguished scholar, and one Avho for very many years has been my friend, with deliberate unfuiruess, but with a literary one-sidedness which is reluctant to put forward what is to be said on the opposite side, or an obliquity of vision which sees things only under one aspect. Without doubt, this is a kind of unfairness ; yet people easily persuade themselves that they are not bound to notice the arguments of opponents, or to weaken a cause by showing what has been pleaded against it. Would it not have been fair and reasonable to point out, accom- panjdng it with any explanation in his power, the fact (to take one typical example), that Aeschylus composed that noble play the Ayamemnon from an ejii/re/?/ different "Homer," and that the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the joyful reception of Helen at Troy, the reluctance of Odysseus to join the expedition, the burning of Ilium, the storm which dispersed the fleet on its return, are all "Cyclic" (so-called) and " non-Homeric" ? Is any plausible explanation to be found for his ignoring the " Iliad," if Aeschylus had and knew the very poems which Mr. Jebb assigns to B.C., 850 y Or shall we rest content to be told, that the story of the murder of Agamemnon proves that he must at least have had the Odyssey? Compare then Ag. 11(J0, 1417, with Pind., Pyth. xi., 20 — 3. There are good grounds for concluding that the reference to " Scylla" (1233) like that to Phineus (Eum. 50) pei-tained to the Argonautics. The fact remains, conspicuous and unanswerable, and Prof. Jebb either knows it or ought to know it, that it is utterly impcssible, from Pindar or any of the very numerous dramas or their titles (not less than 100) liriirin;/ on tlie Troica, to prove the existence of the Iliad or the Odyssey till the time of Pluto, who first systematically quotes them. The Tragics followed the older and more authentic epics which were known to them from oral recitation. Plato used a literary written epitome or " rednction " of the two poems, constructed each round a central figure, a diamatic Protagonistes, in an age of rhetoric, high culture, sophistic teachings of the rights and duties of humanity. Homer thus became, instead of a repertory of savagery and revenge, a code of ethical teaching worthy of Socrates and of advanced philo- sophy. We know so very little about the transition from oral to written poetry that we have no means of discovering how, or by whom, the final "redaction" of the Platonic Homer was effected. "^iMiat share in it was taken by Antimaclius or some other able poet or "editor" who could cany out his version of the Troics on a uniform plan, we cannot say, and our opponents, the advocates of the B.C. 850 theory, have no right to call on us for explicit information. Aristotle followed Plato in his ac- ceptance of these poems in their new and highly elaborated form, as the genuine "Homer." They contained amply enough of the old stories about Nestor, Agamemnon, Diomede, Hector, Achilles and Patroclus. &c., tfcc, to be readily identified with the general descrip- tions of a barbarous fighting age, and to continue in their altered aspect, and divested of much of their savagery, io be regarded and accepted as " Homer." What else could they have been called ? This being so, the immense influence of Aiistotle's authority led the Alexuiidritie sc/iohrrs to exclude and reject all that vast series of ejdscdes tvJn'ch had formed the "Horner^' of their predecessors, and to devise a theoiy which, baseless as it appears to have been, gained wide acceptance, and is still duly put forward as the undoubted tiaith, about the poems of the "Cyclus," their titles, subjects, and the supposed names of theu* authors. Aristotle himself, as it seems to me, in the " Poetic," writes in a half-hearted way in his eulogy of the unity of "Homer," and his attempt to show why tragedies were not taken from that source, but rather from a (non-Homeric) " Little Iliad." He talks about " eight di-amas" whei-e I have counted 100 as borrowed from the Trvica. Probably, as the "Cyclus" had not been compiled in his time, he had no special knowledge of the themes and the episodes of the older Homer, which had no place in his Hiad. To him all that was not Hiad or Odyssey was not "Homeric," and all that was not " Homeric " was assumed to be the work of imitators, who had taken upon themselves the task of composing siqyjilemrrds to the genuine, original, and faithfully preserved "Homer" of B.C. 850. All that was not due to the genius of the "divine Homer" Avaa less than divine. I say, and I have said in vain for some twenty years, that all this is nonseiinf. The inoposition is an imi)Ossible one in every way. If we want to know what tlie genuine old " Ilomeries" are, we vnist appeal to Pindar, the Tragics, and the vase-painters. We hhall then find conclusively tliat they IkhI md tlio Platonic Homer, and we shall and must thence dniw tlie conchision that the "iirchaisms " of the traditional epic huiguage are no pruof of a remote anti(iuity in themselves. All Greek epics, of whatever date, arc {sscntially and con- spicuously " arcliaistic." A considerable portion ol' the early legends of Ilium, and others (Achaean) of the house of the Atridae, current in the fifth century B.C., are known to us 2)artly from hints and "sur- vivals " in the tragedies, partly from later ijrose mythographcrs. The " Iliad " as we have it is but a di'op in the vast ocean of " Homeric " lore ; and it is an extraordinary delusion to believe that a mere scrap, so to call it, of the siege of Priam's city ever Avas the central and primary exponent of the Greek expedition against Troy I Tantalus, Pelops, Pleisthenes, Tliyestes, and their belongings, were as familiar as the myths about the capture of Ilium by Ht rcules and Telamon, the advent of the Amazons (II. iii., 189), the fraud of Laomcdon, the birth of Paris, the love of Helen, the stories about Tros and Gany- mede, Pcleus and Thetis, Achilles in Chiron's cave and at Scp-os, &c. How could all this evtr Lave been tvritft'ti matter ? And if it was not, why forsooth, should the Iliad and the Odyssey have been written either ? This theorj' of " non-Homeric " poetry, — a theory which is not earlier than the Alexandrine critics — is the rock on which all sound and reasonable views about Homer have been wrecked.* Thus writes Mr. Leaf (Introduction to the Iliad, p xxiv) ; " The Iliad and Odyssey were the only great poetical creations of the prehistoric and precyclic age of Greece*" Now " Iliad " merely means a collection of poems about Ilium, as the "Thebaid" included those about Thebes. The "Little Iliad" referred to by Aristotle presupposes a " Great Iliad" already usurping the throne and the sceptre. Herodotus once (ii., 116) mentions " Iliad " by name ; and the title, utteiiy inappropriate as it is to our poem, which turns on the pivot of the quarrel of Achilles, carried with it the "glamour of antiquity." The old Troica (since a siege must have a cause, as well as a beginning and an end) appear to have been arranged in a kind of chronological series, which was recited by the rhapsodists tS vTcofioXfjg, i.e. in a certain law of sequence or succession. t * Certain parts were, no doubt, as we know from Herodotus and Plato, re- jected by earlier critics as 'a7ro0£ra Itttj. But that circumstance does not affect the main question, what was the Homer of the age of Pericles ? t The term is rightly so interpreted by M. Scngebnsch. Sote. Dissert. Pos- terior, p. 108, but wrongly explained by Prof. Jebb (after Grote), either '-from an authorized text," or, " with prompting" (p. 77, note^ This shows how a mind can be influenced by a preconceived idea about early MSS. of Homer. There is no piouf at all that the ancient solar niytli of Athillos, and his gloritioatiou at the pi-ayer of Thetis (Piud. 01. ii., 71*) formed a primitive " Aehilleid." which is the surmise of Mr. Grote, and one that has found favour with many recent scholars. Pindar mentions Axi^fi;, no less than eleven times, but only as a fighting man. He lends no support whatever to this theory of " a primitivo Aehilleid." No doubt, we shall be reminded that " tin' Iliad '" was many centuries older than Pindar. It is worthy of notice, that the more popular parts of the "Talc of Ti-oy," as far as we can judge from tlie tragedies, were those sub- sequent to the fall of Troy and the death of Achilles, and connecltMl Avith the return of the heroes. The murder of Neoptolemus at Deljdii, through the intrigues of Orestes (the subject of the Andromache and of tlio reference in Pind. Xem. vai.), the fate of Electra and Orestes after the miu-der of Agamemnon, the sacrifice of Polyxeiui and the doings and sayings of Ajax, Menelaus, and Odysseus, — such were sj^ecially favourite topics of the drama. This would not have been the case if the ei)ic authority for the stories had been then, as in the Alexandi-ine times, regarded as secondary and inferior. I think this is a consideration of weight; yet no writer on " Homer" ever even alludes to it. The legends of the house of Atreus seem to have been mainly cuiTent in Attica ; a later compilation in the new Ionic natiu-ally embodied a larger proportitm of the Asiatic legends. It is no pleasure to me, and assuredly I have not hitherto had the least encouragement, to parade my own private convictions about the comparatively recent date of " our Homer," against the over- whelming and combined weight of popular opinion, strong educa- tional prejudice, absolute ignorance on the part of general readers as to the ix'al facts of the case, and above all, against that clinging to Orthdduxy which makes change of conviction, even in reasonable men, almost impossible I Nevertheless, I feel impelled l)y a natural hive of truth, to scatter some seeds which may some day bear fruit in slirewd, impartial, independent, and inquiring minds. For I beli(;V(.' tliis is u really great and important liti'raiy (piesfi(jn, anil lliat I am doing good service by again caUing attention to it. It so happens that, having edited repeateilly "// the extant tragedies and the Iliad, as well as translated lindai-, and liavii'g made a special study for many years of the subject matter of thcHU poems. :is well us of the painlings on tlie aneieul vases (which arn acknowledged to be " nun-Humeric "), and of thai ivperlory of Tnnjio 8 subjects, the " Post-TTomerica" of Qmntus Bmyrnaeus, I am fairly well qualified to give an opinion as to which was and which was not the " Homei" " of antiquity. It is in this respect that I greatly miss either the candour or the knowledge of those who continue to advocate the more popiilar views. I cannot find that they possess any special acquaintance with the themes of the Tragics ; and I feel quite sure that Mr. Grote did not, whose course of reading and thought had evidently never been turned in that direction. With regard to the Odyssey, I am satisfied that it is largely made tip from myths and legends, vrigiiiaUy sola?', associated with the ad- ventures of Odysseus in his return to his western home, and from the Argonautics which we know that Pindar and the Tragics possessed ! indeed, they are distinctly quoted and referred to in Od. xii, 70. From a common source, it is evident, and not by any process of direct plagiarism, the names and stories about Alcinous and his queen Arete, Scylla, and her mother Krataeis, Charybdis, the sun-cows, Circe (called Xlaii), moon-goddess). Calypso, the clashing rocks [irXayKTal), JEolus, King Echetus, &c., occur both in the Odyssey and in the Argonautics of AppoUonius. The Odyssey therefore is a composite poem, and though its component parts are doubtless old, there are abundant reasons for concluding that it cannot, in its present form, claim anything like the antiquity attributed to it by Professor Jebb, still less, be regarded as an original poem. Still there seems a desperate effort not to give up the ' ' Bible of the Greeks," and not to surrender its "historic" character as in- dicating the manners and customs, the arts, the armoui-, and the military ojaerations in the remote period of B.C. 850. On this subject I think much misconception prevails, due in part to the natural pre- judice on the side of a great antiquity. I am quite content with the excellence of the poems as we have them, and the indications of a cultured and civilised age which they present, without caring for mere sentiment of this land. But I think I have reason to complain of the absolute indifference and incredulity (to say nothing of the ridicule) with which my conclusions have been received. The least that one who has long given his mind to laborious re- search can expect, is a fair hearing. It appears however that of the comparatively few who in this country profess interest in classical researches, there are some who are showing a tendency or even a de- termination to combine as a literary clique, and to stand together as the associated advocates of narrow and incomplete views. They can roly, it scorns, on a favourable notice from the writers and critics of certain periodicals, so that whatever one of them puts forward ia secure of praise from a friendly pen. This is bad ; but yet worse is the marked unfairness with which the researches of others not in the same, or it may be in an opposite, direction, are ignored, or I might say, "boycotted." Such a subject as solar lore, vast as is its im- portance and direct its bearing on the true interpretation of mytho- logy, and indeed, of nmch that passes as history, is treated with un- disguised contempt. Thus Prof. Jebb (p. 147) calls the treatment of the siege of Troy as merely a solar myth, " fantastic." The bearing of this party towards the "Homeric question" is completely one- sided. They will not listen to (apparently, they will not even read) any evidence that makes against the particular view which they have taken into their patronage. I know nothing more discreditable in the conduct of a leading Review than the making it the organ of any particular set of opinions on archaeological matters, and. I have felt bound to speak plainly on the subject. Exclusiveness of this kind may bi-ing a transient reputation to a certain school of writers ; but it has to pay the penalty of being considered by all impartial scholars a deficiency in the knowledge of the age, and a lack of truthfulness unworthy of the sacred cause of learning. An impartial student of Homer must be struck (although this strong point again is persistently ignored) with ^e fact, that our poems are constructed throughout on the principle of aUiisions to older stories, which had become more or less hackneyed, and so were super- seded by newer combinations. Merely by way of example, let any one just turn to H. ii. 690, 702, 722, or to Od. iv. 187, v. 310, xi. 520; or let any one reflect on the casual and secondary mention in the Odyssey of the famous episode of the "Wooden Horse" (on which Euripides wrote a fine choral ode, Tro. 511), or on the abrupt manner with which the Odyssey opens, implying a perfect knowledge on the part of the reader (or hearer) of all the details of the coming narrative, and he will feel convinced that our poems arc nothing but reproductions of stories which had their day, and passed into new forms and phases. It was in a very late age, and when the use of the F had become very lax, that the poet wrote in opening his Odyssey, rdv afioOtv yt, 6td, Uvyartp ^log, unk Kai iifiiv. If it be urged, that the stories which are hinted at in our Homer were really " pre-homeric, i.e. older tlian even 850 B.C., the answer is complete ; they were stories of which the fullest and most circum- stantial accounts were current in the Pcriclean age, and of which the lO details for the most part have actually been preserved by Q. Siuyrnaeus. It is really preposterous to argue, that the brief hints and allusions were all that the genuine " Homer" contained, and that the circum- stantial accounts were post-homcric and merely supplementary, " ex- pansions of hints," as it were . The power and the practice of reproducing the precis(3 details, as well as the general theme, of the early legends by late poets, is a sub- ject that has not obtained the attention it deserves. Quiutus Smyrniuus writes in the epic language and versification of about A.l). 300 ; but he embodies in his 14 Books of the mis-called " Post-Hou)erica " all the fuller details of the Tale of Troy which were known to Pindar and the Tragics. Apollonius of Rhodes wrote circ, 200 e.g., but he gives lis the precise story treated by Pindar three centuries before him, and in an epic " Minyad " earlier than that. The language, remaining strictly epic in its character, and artificial from the enlarged voca- bulary of imitative forms, which he uses with admirable skill, illus- trates the changes produced by Evolution in everything, moral, mental, and physical. But the outlines of the story remain, as it were, inde- lible. Even when the consciousness of the true import of (say) a solar myth has been lost, and when ffidipus, Philoctetes, Theseus, and Hercules, have come to be regarded as real persons of an " heroic " age, even then, as in the dramas of Sophocles, the main incidents of the solar story are strictly retained. It seems to me fallacious to argue, as Mr. Gladstone and Prof. Jebb do, from the subject-matter of Homer, (independently of the language and versification which is so largely imitative and archaistic), that " as a general picture of that age " (viz. the supposed B.C. 800) ' ' the Homeric poetry has the value of history. It is manifestly in- spired by real life."* It is obvious that the argument would apply equally to any and every Greek epic treating of the heroic ages. The concepti jn of such ages, the palaces, social custom, works of art, &c., on which Prof. Jebb founds his argument in Chapter ii., were essentially poetic. War- chariots, though not in use, are aiminonly depicted on vases of the Periclean age, and later than that.f as in many passages of Q. Smyr- naeus. But, allowing for poetic exaggerations, and for local varia- tions, the Homeric armour is clearly that of the Periclean hoplite ; and Prof. Jebb allows that " the general plan of the Homeric house * Jebb, Introduction to Homer, p. 73. t " The war-chariot — imi3ortant in Homeric fights — had gone out of Greek use before 700 B.C." \ih}d., p. GO.) II is essentially that of the Gi'eek house in historical times "* The truth is, features which existed in the age of a poet may be, and undoubtedly were, so dressed up and covered with imaginary heroic life, and the figments of mythology, that their comparative modernism is easily concealed under the garb of a remote antiquity. Prof. Jebb appeals to the Shield of Achilles, in II xviii. , as " the most elaborate work of art in Homer" (p. G7). He does not seem aware, that it appeai-s to have been wliolly unknoirn in antiquity, as far as we can judge from there being no reference to it, — not even in Plato, — -in all the literature of the best period. Like the " Scutmn " attributed to Hesiod, which ha^ many similar details, ^md like other extant '• shields" in Quintus Smyrnteus, this was probably arranged for the written Iliad at a late period from older epics. The theme wa.s extremely popular, as were graphic descriptions of embroidery, ApoU. i. 722, Eur. Ion 1150, and of artistic designs such as Od. xi. (510, xix. 226. I have elsewhere shown that the shield which Achilles inherited from Peleus, alluded to 'in Eur. El. 443, sc. 97, and Iph. Aul. 1070, involved quite a different story and came from the very different " Homer" that was known to the Tragics. I really cannot go with Prof. Jebb in the opinion that "the Homeric notices of art belong mainly to the interval between 1100 and 800 B.C.," nor can I see any ground whatever for such a conclusion. To my mind, there are evi- dent n\odernisms to be detected under an archaic dissruise. Thus in H. xviii. 495, /3o»)v txov, "kept up a noise" (said of flutes) is a later us(>, (Iph. A. 438) (ioi) meaning " a call for aid," ' • a cry to the rescue," as in l3o>)v dyaBoc, " good at need." In 508 ^itciir fiVt?!', "to pronounce judgment," (Ike, the imperfect of a secondary present tiKtjj=toiKu, in 520, oivov without the digamma, 545, seem to indicate the imitative composition of a later hand. The reference to the song Liims (570) perhaps indicates an eastern source. The rare words Tiipia, " stars " (485) and rkXiJov (544) came from Sanscrit. These traditional features of the heroic age were perpetuated to the latest times. They are just as conspicuous in Quintus SmyrnjTeus as in the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the Argonautics, all the prominent facts in the older narrative; of Pindarf are r(;produced without material change. So interesting and so beautiful, as we have them, are tho Telemachus, the Penelope, the Xausicaa of the Odyssey, and so " sensational " are the doings and sayings of the Suitors, that it is * p. 00. t Tyth. iv. 12 impossible to conceive tliat the tragics, if they had known them under the same form would so completely have ignored them. Aeschylus indeed wrote a " Penelope " and Sophocles a "Nausicaa," in which he described her as playing at ball with her maidens ; and Pausanias (v. 19, 9) says she " was thought to be represented " on the chest of Cyijselus, and she was also painted in the Pro^jylaea at Athens by Polygnotus (i, 22. 6), while the "suitors" of Penelope were painted by Polygnotus at Plataea (ix. 4. 2). But what has all this to do with the dating of the Odyssey B.C. 800 or 850 ? If, with Mr. Wilkhis,* we are content to believe that the Iliad and the Odyssey were " fully finished (I) before the first Olympiad," how are we to account for the solitary mention in Tragedy of Telemachus,t and that in a passage when the reference to him is so comj)letely illogical that it is most probably an interpolation ? These characters were known, but not prominerdlt) cehbrutcd till the present Odyssey had attained its full poijularity. That, I have no doubt, is why Odysseus is described twice in the Iliad (ii. 260 and iv. 3o4) as " the Father of Telemachus," an attribute due to the re- lations in the Odyssey, and from it interpolated or worked into the lUad. The principle of reproduction by redupUcation had a great deal to do with the change (as I may call it) of the old Homer into the new Homer. The hackneyed stories of the old Troica were becoming worn out. Helen and her suitors (Aesch. Ag. 62, Thuc. i., 9, Eur. Iph, Aul. 52), the ap-aayt] and the "Voirj/ffif, the " Judgment of Paris," the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, were j)retty well played out, and the public began to look for new combinations. The " suitors " were transferred from Helen to Penelope, the transforma- tions of Thetis into those of Proteus in Od. iv., Telegonus (a true solar name) was changed into the metrically equivalent Telemachus, each being a type of that fiovoytin)i; v\bQ which is so characteristic of solar pedigree. The beggar's guise in Avhich Odysseus appeared at Troy (Od. iv. 224, Eur. Hec. 240, Rhes. 712) became the ragged dress of the beggar of the Odyssey ; the /i»ji'«g of Achilles and Agamemnon became that of Achilles and Odysseus (Od. viii. 75), the carrying of the body of Memnon through the air was transferred to Sarpedon, and so on, with more than one narrative about invulnerable heroes who could only be slain by an injury to the ankle (again a solar myth). It was thus, that in an age when women had begun to take their just part * Growth of thu Homeric Pooms, p. 1(53. t Orest. 588 ^B.f. 408), 13 in social life, ii Helen and a Penelope were invested with new attributes, and Helen ceased to be the " she-devil," the Erinys of the tragedies, and became a kindly and hospitable matron. In the same way the Odysseus and the Menelaus of our Homer are by no means the treacherous villains that they are uniformly made to appear in tragedy. It is a jjerverso view, that the bad character shows " decadence " from the good, as represented by Homer. Why shoidd the poets of the most cultiu-ed age in Attica have systemati- cally preferred the bad 'f Bather, we. have to contemplate the evolution from savagery to Sociiitic teaching. No man of sense now holds that early man was good and moral, just and chaste, and that later man became depi-aved. When Sophocles in the Ajax represents Hector as being killed by being dragged at the car by Achilles, and tied to it by the belt with Avliich he had been presented by Ajax; when he takes the subject of his drama from a " Cyclic " theme, the luadness of the h(!ro from dis- appointment at not having the armour of Achilles awarded to him ; when we find too an allusion to a trick played in voting with ballots, * and considerable discrepancies about the firing of the Grecian fleet, — we feel certain that the Iliad had not then received its final redaction as a written literaiy poem. Mr. Leaf, in his edition of the Iliad, gives as a frontispiece to Vol. i., an "Homeric" scene, with three names, from an inscribed vase, not of very early date. In his engraving only one name is legible, and that is •t'oTrt?. I think he is mistaken in supposing a wi'ong nanxe was written through the carelessness of the artist. This is merely an instance of the fluctuating and unsettled stories before a written Iliad had become the " textus receptus " of Homer. The"On-X(ui' /epiTtf, the contest for the arms of Achilles, and the consequent madness of Ajax, was one of the most famous episodes in the old Troics. Aeschylus wi-ote a drama with that titl.; ; the incident is narrated at length in Q. Smyrnaeus, Bk. V., and alluded to in Od. xi. 545, as one of the many "stale stories" kno/m to everybody and no longer in their high repute. It is also given by Pindar, Nem. vii., 25. Isthm. iii. 53. Prof. Jebb, by taking from us the proi)Osition, that ' ' ps'udo- ejiic" or " arcliaistic " imitations, involving a misconception of the * See Aj. 1029 and 1 1'i.j. Tlic account in II. xxii. 'Sdb givca (juitc a diltorcut version of the uf£air. 14 original moanino; and formation, must be characteristics of a post- epic period, deprives us ot our best hope of solving the problem. We are called upon to believe that such an absurdity as ox apiuTog coexisted with the genuine phr.ase t^o^a ("piarog, "The possibility of false archaisms," he says (p. 138), " began as soon as there were genuine archaisms. False archaisms might have been made in 800 or 900 B.C., as easily as in 450 B.C., by an Ionian poet who found in the traditional epic diction certain forms or phrases which no longer existed in the living idiom of his day." It is hard to reason cogently on these obscure subjects, or to go much beyond the convenient and comprehensive "might have been," in an age when there was no written literature. It is a fact, and a wonderful fact, that the epic remained a perfectly distinct poetic dialect, we might even say, a language of its own, for moi-e than a thousand years. If we open the pages of an epic poem very raanj^ centuries later than the date assigned to Homer, and take for examination, Avithout any special selection, a few consecutive verses to illustrate the style of the time, — call it "pedantic," "affected," "learned," "pseudo-archaic," or any other name in contrast Avith the divine Homer, — we shall fully feel how'michaugod in effect, that is, in all its leading characteristics, this " epic language " continued to be. If Apollonius of Ehodes could write the following verses, I know not why a nameless rhapsode or literary editor should not have put together an Iliad in B.C., 400. ApoU. Ehod. i. 774—781 :— jQj) S' Ifiivai vpori darv (pativto aarkpi laoq, ov pa Tt VTjyariymv hpyo^uvai KaXv^hjcnv vvfifai 6tii'i(Tai>To Cofiwv vntp avrkWovTa, Kcd aipKTi KvafEoio di i^'fpoq ofifiara GkXyei KaXbi' iptvOofitvoc;, yavvrai St re i]iBioio rrapGb'og ifiiipovaa /itr' dXXoSanoiaiv tuvroQ dvSpdffLV, "5 icai fiiv jivjjarfiv Ko^kovai roKiieQ' Tw iKeXoQ irpo TToXyjoQ dvd ari^ov i'jisv ?}pwf. Q. SmjTnaeus, vi. 159 — 165 : — dfiSxQ 5' avTt Opovovg Soiw Oeuav iyyvg dvdaaijq, al4/a §' 'AXk^avSpoQ Kar' dp' liltTO, nap S' dpa TTi, and meet with these spurioup modernisms also in the Iliad (iii. 10) ^eoio being thinly disguised under a reading t/Joc, ''brave"), I feel sure that late patch-work is indicated. In every one of tlie following passages £070, tui, is shown by the context to be the reading intended, viz., A. '6'Jii, 0. 138, T. ;jl-2, £2.422,550. i6 Olio fiiUiicy that soonia to iiio to vitiate the reasoning of so many is the proposition that the rlato of a poem must be tested, not by its language, but by the manners and the social state which it describes. Thus the Quarterly Eeviewer of Schliemann's " Tiryns" insists* that "Homer reflects the prehistoric ago of Greece as faithfully as docs Herodotus the Greece of the Persian Wars, or Pausanias the Greece of the age of the Antonuies." What Homer, what aU epic poets re- flect is, not the actual life and customs of a past age, but their poetic and highly coloured conceptions of it. Instead therefore of calling the Homeric house of the Odyssey " the prototj^ie of the later Greek house of the historical age " i Jebb, p. 186), I should have said, " the later Greek house suggested to the later poet the idea of what a house might have been in the heroic ages." As for Priam's palace and its fifty chambers of cut and squared stone (II. vi. 242), it seems to nxe impossible to regard it as anything but a poetical fiction based on traditional ideas, like the solar palace in Orph. Arg. 900 seqq. Archaic descriptions may be fallacious and so may archaic forms of words. But neoterisms, and the occurrence of a large class of words evidently pertaining to the New Ionic and to the Middle Attic, afford evidence that it is impossible to set aside. Widely different in their subjects as well as in their nationality, were the various lays out of which the Iliad was compiled. There were Achaean stories about the house of Atreus, Peleus, Thetis, Achilles, many of them clearly solar in their origin ; Aetolian stories, including the speeches of old Nestor and the legends of Elis ; Asiatic, as those of Phrygia and Mysia about Priam, Paris, Tithonus, Laomcdon, Aeneas, &c., and others again Lycian, which perhaps came through Cyprvis (whence the so-called iirt] Kvirpia) from Euphratean sources, viz., stories about Pandarus, Glaucus, Sarpedon, Bellerophon. As we know that the ancient geographers connected the Nile with the Eujjhrates, and Aethiopia with India and the far east, it is most probable that the once famous and very beautiful legend of Memnon, son of Eos, came from the same sun-worshipping countries. It was perfectly competent for any "Editor" who had this vast mass of material to work upon, or for any rhapsode of sufficient genius, to epitomise and combine in a narrative maintaining through- out a thread, — not always an unbroken one, — of unity, all the various and heterogeneous legends about the heroes at Troy, and to express * Q. R. Jan. 188G, p. 118. 17 them in the modified (pseudo-archaic or " archaistic ") epic hmguage of his time. Here I agree ^\^th Mr. Wilkins ; * " We are naturally led to the conclusion that those single narratives are the original elements, and that their union was an afterthought." Not long, I think, before B.C. -100 the time had arrived when, with increased facilities of transcription, which hitherto seems to have had no better appliances than lettovs 2>ui>tted on wooden StXroi or nivaKeg.^ a want was felt for a more convenient and handy and generally ac- cessible and uniform literary version of the Troica, wliich had hitherto existed in a detached, fluctuating and desultory form in the schools of the rhapsodists, who, no doubt, were to a great extent "speci- alists," and had their own parts adapted to their genius for ndOoe or iKTrXij^iQ. From the titles of these very numerous "parts" came, in the Alexandi-ine schools, the headings of the different Books, or pa^pqiSiai of their Homer, as well as the titles they assigned to the minor poems of their Cyclus. A written Iliad or Odyssey was a very different thing, — that is, when transcribed and circulated in its entirety, and not held in * Growth of the Homeric Poems, x>. 57. f Even in the time of Demosthenes (De Coron.§ 958) ink was not a fiuid, but a pigment, prepared, as our paints are, bj' rubbing on a slab [rpifitiv to /iiXav). To the wiping o^with a sponge any words to be obliterated, Aeschylus probalily refers hi the well-known verse, Ag. 1329, jSoXaig vypataffaiv airoyyo^ u)\taiv ypiKpifv. The art of writing (that of cutting inscriptions is quite another matter) must have had a very long and very gradual period of evolution. I have shown, in " Bibliographia Graeca," that written books, 3i/3\ia, i.e., the transcription and sale of copies, cannot be traced much earlier than B.C. 400. The celebrated verse in II. vi. 109, ypdil/ag iv irivaKi vrvKT^o 6vno(j>96pa TroXXa, is capable of an easy and satisfactory explanation, if only we apply the right koyi the lateness of the compilation of the poem in its present form. The aiipura \),ypd were, in the original Lycian story, some kind of symbolical or "hierogl}'- phic " writing; but when such a form as tTrtixlivuTo (ICO) had found its way into the epic vocabulary, ordinary writing on folded strips of wood had become qtdte common, and the -nrvxai or lianTuxnl were the leaves or overlappings of the missive. The word noWa is altogether absurd as ap])lied to more symbols ; the eimplo meaning is, that Proetus wrote many, things about liellcrophon in a letter, calculated to destroy the good feelings or natural impulses {Qryfibv fOeipiiv) of a host towards hii guest. Doederleln here is quite right, " scribeiido quae eoceri animurn corrumperent ad suspicionom ct odium et porfidiam urga liospilom.' But it must be conceded that the nivu^ ittuktoq will not stand the orthodox date of B.C. 800. 18 isolated portions (wliicli uiay be conceded as a probability) as the private possessions of rhapsodes. All other theories about a "written Homer " are the purest guess-work, mere guess too is Mr. Wilkms' assumption* that " the poems" (Iliad and Odyssey) " were no doubt handed down iu the schools of the rhapsodists with as much jealous care as that which guarded religious learning among the Jews." Speaking generally we may say, that until Humer was transcribed and circulated, and a certain recension had taken precedence over all others, it was not probable that any real fixity of text coidd have existed. Mr. Jebb (Homer p. 114) rightly says that " a purely oral trans- mission is hardly conceivable ; " but then he thinks the rhapsodes may have " possessed written copies." I think he is right, with two import- ant limitations, — that each may have had his tablets {SiXroi or nivaKt^) of his particular part, and that this could hardly have been commonly the case before 450 B.C. Even at that time the clumsiness and mal- formation of the letters of the alphabet were something extraordinary I Can we conceive cursive writiiiy with a pen, or a written Iliad at a period when inscriptions were either from right to left, or ^ovarpo- ^r]Uv ? Why is there not a single tenu, till comparatively late times, to express any materials for writing beyond the ^t\roQ ? It is very easy to conjecture, with Mr. Grote and Mr. \Vilkins,t that "j)apyruswa3 obtained in large quantities in the 7th century B.C." Why then is pvjiXoQ and ^v(3\iov never mentioned except as a scrap of material for a short missive 'r There is no proof that papyrus was used for books by the Greeks till the Alexandrine age. The Tragics, it is evident, continued to follow the old traditional Homerics of the rhapsodes tip to the latest times of the Attic stage in its palmy days. The latest play of Euripides, the Iphigenia at AuJis, is constructed entirely out of the Cypria.X It seems to me improbable that they ever worked on a written Homer. * Growth of the Homeric Poems poems, p. 25. t " Growth of the Homeric Poems," p. 22. X Proclus, Chrest. A, iv., IS.akxa-VTOQ Si uttovtoq rfiv r^g Giov fiiji'tv Kal 'Ifiyhtiav Ki\ivi uvtI tFjq KopriQ Trapiarriai T(« fiwfiw. Herodotus ^\\. 117; doubted if this poem (which was clearly of primary authority in Attica in the Periclean age), was rightly ascribed to^Homer. 19 I t'c'fl iiliuosf in (li'Spiiir in convincing anyone of tliiit "adaptatiun " ov " repiodiiction " theory which ahjne satisfactorily accounts for such long and complete poems, who falls back on the suggestion that, after all, our Iliad and our Odyssey may have been written down from the first : Ihis is Mr. Grote's talk about " collating M8S. of the Iliad in the time of Solon." Thus writes Prof. Jebb (p. 110) ; " If the Greek writing on the earliest extant max'bles is clumsy, this does not neces- sarily prove that the Greeks were then (i.e. Tthcent.) unfamiliar with the art of writing, but only that they had not yet acquired facility in carving characters on stone. Long before that time they may have attained to ease in writing on softer and more perishable materials such as leaves, prepared skins, wood or wax." Truly, this is a ilvus ex madiwa to explain what is self-evidently an impossibility, the " Homer " of Plato being the "Homer" of B.C. 8j0 ! Fancy the twenty four Books of the Iliad written out (/Souorpo- (pil'oi') with a pen, ctiduries before the smallest allusion to writing a^ an art, or to wi'iting and reading as a piactice, can be found I All theories of a written literature of anything like such antiquity are based on a total misconception of the social habits and education of the Greeks. When we discover a fossil man in the chalk, then we may hope to discover a jjainting ou a Greek vase representing some one with pen, ink, and paper engjiged in writing, as seen in Egyptian tombs. What is the use of asserting (p. Ill), " It is certain that writing was used by Archilochus and other poets of the early 7th century." Where are the proofs, in the absence of all nomenclature of the details of the art ? The Abu-Simbcl inscription, I suppose ! I must say, the following sentence seems intended to balance one impossibility against another; to " mystify " i-ather than to point the true way out of a difficulty. " The general conclusion then is as follows. It cannot be proved that the Homeric poems [i.e. Iliad and Odyssey] were not committed to writing either when originally composed (U' soon afterwards. For centuries they were known to llie Greek world at huge cliieHy tJjiough tin; mouths of rhapsodes. But that fact is not inconsistent with the supposition that thi; rhapsodes possessed written copiers. On the other hand, a purely oral transmission is hardly conceivable" (p. 114). If the rhapsodes possessed from tlui first written copies of (ho Iliad and the Odyssey, how comes it that Pindar and tlie Tragics liad a totally different " Hom(>r," and that we can make out so long a list of di-amas composed from " non-Homeric " Troica ? 20 But how is it possible, people ask, that an older Homer should have become obsolete and a new Homer have quietly, and without any record of the fact, taken its place ? The answer to this difficulty, which is a real, but by no means an insurmountable one, is to be found partly in the verses quoted on the title-page, and partly in the very nature of a gradual transition from oral to written epopee. There woidd be "survivals" of recitation (as we know the practice of " spouting " continued in the age of Plato and Xenoi>hon), and consequently a vagueness as to what " Homer " really was, till the written form, from its superior convenience and merits, had made its way slowly but surely to the undisputed claim of being " Homer." There was progress, but not revolution. Prof. Jebb says (p. 157), " there is no doubt (?) that the first book of the existing Iliad formed the beginning of the primaiy Iliad," i.e. dates some 800 or more B.C. I believe not a single allusion to any of the incidents in Book i. is to bo found in any of the Attic dramas ; and if it be said that Pind. 01. ii. 79, clearly refers to II. i. 504, where Thetis makes her prayer to Zeus, ro^t fjioi Kpriiji'ov itXSiop, TilXtJffOV fioi v'lov, I reply, Take up your Pindar and rrad on ; and then read Proclus, Chrest. A., for the epitome of the " Cyin-ia." Pindar has, 'A\'(\Xfa r' ti'iiK, tns'i Zfjj'og i/rop \LTcnQ iTTfifTf, finrtjp oe'E/crop' tfT0aXt, 'TpwaQ "ua\of (i(Trpaj3?i Ktova, KIikvov ri Qavari^ iropiv, ' XovQ rt iralS' AtOioTra. Had he here before him " our Iliad " ? We learn from Proclus that the nmng 'A xiX^f '■'C was an incident of the " Cypria," Kai 'A^iXXn^c vttepoq KXrjOeti: (i.e. invited late to join the Ti-ojan expedition) SiapspETai -n-poQ 'Aya/xf/xi'oj/a. It was after this that Chryssis and Bri^eis the captives were allotted, and the quarrel ahoat them is the later account : ical Ik rihv Xacpirpiov 'AxiXXti'C fiiv Bpiatpa yipae Xa^ilMvei, Xpvo7)iSa St 'Aya/xe/ii'Wi', (Compare Aesch. Ag. 1439). The raids in the Troad, and the taking of numerous captives (often alluded to in the Iliad), were a very important feature, in the older Troica, of the early condict of the siege. From the " Cypria" 21 were boiTowed the sacliiiig of Lyniossus and Pedasus,* the capture of Lycaon, the slaj-ing of Troihis, the " judgment of Paris," tho "rape of Helen," the portent of the snake and the sparrows at Aidis, &o. What Pindar's "Homer " had sung about tho shipng of Memnon, the Alexandrines relegated to a separate poem to which they give the title of Ai'9(07ri'c, from which we have the fine narrative in Book ii of Q. Smyrnaeus, together with the incident described in Pylh. vi. ."JO, Q. S. ii. 257, and aUndrd f<> in Od. iv. 187, Soph. Phil. 425. lu Pindar's time, unquestionably, the story was simply a portion of the Troica, a 'Mifivovo^ aptortir] or by whatever title it was then known. The following Lines, from the fourteenth Book of the Post- homerica (125 — 142) give a good epitome of the deeds of Acliilles according to the Troica known to Pindar, Isthm. vii. (a.c. 480). (Tho scene is immediately after the fall of Troy.) ' ' Then sang the bards how first the assembled host At holy Aulis met ; Peleides' boast Of spear unconquered and unwearied might In deeds of prowess, and his grim delight To sack twelve cities on the course to Troy, Eleven more on mainland to destroy ; Then Telei^hus, Eetion tho strong, Cycnus that champion bold, and in the throng Memnon, Penthesilea, he sternly slew ; How hard fared all, while he his aid withdrew ; How Hector round his native walls he sped, How Glaucus by the hand of Ajax bled, Eurypylus by PjTrhus was laid low, And Paris fell by Philoctetes' bow ; How many chiefs the Wooden Horse contained To seize by fraud the fort where Priam reigned ; How feasted all in peace, when Ilium fell ; And each bard sang, and each a different tale did tell."t * See Proclu3, Chrest., tirtira rrfv xiopav tTri^tXQovTfq TropOovcri Kai Tag TTipiotKovQ TToXtig. This is plainly referred to in Time, i. 11, where he »ays that the army expected to maintain itself in the Troad by plunder. tThat the subject-matter of Pindar and the tragics is preserved, not in our Homer but in the mis-called " Post-honierica," (au epitoinj of tho ci/cUi-s by Q. Smyrnaeus). I showed conclusively in " (^uintus Smyrnajus and the Homer of the Tragic Poets," 1872. 22 I read \vitli a feeling of sonietliing like astoiiisliment tlic iciuitrk of Mr. Loaf (Iiiirod. to Iliad, p. xvi , tliat *' there is no reason wliy we shonld desi)air of I'eproducing the Homer of Thucydides or even of Pindar." Does he then really believe that Pin lar had the very same Iliad that is quoted by Plato ? As for Thucydides, though he had the KardXo/of , he i'ead in li is Homer the making of the camp- wall the first year of the landing (i. 11.) With regard to the " petition of Thetis," there is not a doubt that Pindar and the Iliad give (liJfWtnt versions from the ohhr svlur story. Achilles, f'.f. the sun, who seems to rise out of the sea and ascend in glory to the sky, partook of both the earthly and the heavenly, and so was said to have been born of a mortal and an immortal. In Homer, the " honour " asked for AchiUes is merely the military honour of the historical and later ti'eatment of the story, viz. that his aid may prove necessary to the Greeks ; in Pindar, the making of the hero a demigod, and nothing less than his ajiotheosis, is demanded. So much for Iliad i and B.C. 850. In my opinion, such words as aVi/i'>))(Toi.iai ouS' ovoiit^viii (488, cf. Od. xi. 328), or on such jjlain violations of the digamma as iv hSotiq l(pi fidx«ydai (720), the use of oUia and ipya without the F in 750 — 1, and uvuKrog in 672, — it is difficidt not to suspect " Keproduction " in the story of Thersites (212 — 277). We may concede that the name, from Oepaog = Odpoog, may indicate an Aeolic original; but the story, partaking as 23 it did of a comic tone, was ovidontly a popular and riithcv liiickncyod one, and had many diil'erout aspects. In the Art/iinpis, Protdus tolls us, Thersites was killed by Achilles himself in a quarrel about the death of Penthesilea. The same is narrated in Q. Smyrnaeus, i. 122 — 774, and the man is mentioned, as an impudent chatterbox, in Soph. Phil. 442, where the allusion to his being still alive either ignores the quarrel, or takes the less savage view with the Iliad, that the blow given was not a fatal one. As it stands in the Iliad, the narrative cannot be genuine. Not only is it rej)lete with airaK ^tyojitva of a very marked and peculiar kind, but (twox^ukoti (218) from avv'ix'^^ is a-n impossible form, — the figment of some ingenious rhapsodist. It is very significant, that in Q. Smyi'n. vii. 502, rdxtoi; wf j/^// auvox'^KOToq ev Koviymv, the word is assumed to be an intransive participle of avyxo^'^'^ " lying in a confused heap in the dust." Perhaps in xiv. 517, awoxi^itaSdv is the true reading for avi'wxa^ov. No I The TliersiU'S crept into our Book ii., as did other details already enumerated, from older epics which we persist in disparaging as "cyclic." Popular and sensational stories, like the "wooden horse," des- cribed by the chorus in Eur. Tro. 520, the burning of Ilium, ib. 1260, the descriptions of " shields" and their divine workmanship, with the long lists of the names of the slayers and the slain, — these " Homeric " ejjisodes had no fixity till they found a place in an authoiised and generally accepted written Iliad. Who can estimate the influence of Aristotle in this authorization P I do not think that what is called "the Homeric controversy," once so famous, interests very many persons at the present day. Perhaps indeed the subject is pretty well worked out and ex- hausted. But as Professor Jebb has put forth a Manual on the subject, reasserting all the doctrines of Mr. Grote, which I regard as pure assumptions, incapable of proof, and for the most part improbable in tliemselves ; as moreover he has either not read, or not duly considered, or at least, as he has ignoi-ed the ehiborato arguments which I have ]>ublished from time to time against those views ; as he docs not seem to see, what I have so clearly shown, that the Homer of Pericles could vot have been the Homer of Plato and AristarchuH ; I have thought it worth while once more, and finally, to explain at some lenglli <]ie grf)unds of my "late comjiosition " tbeory. That poems first definitely quoted by Plato after B.C. 400, should 234GIK> 24 Iiave existed fur at least four centuries in the same or nearly the same form, uiunixcd ivitli the other numerous and more popular epics wliicli we find that Pindar and the tragics persistently made use of ; that written copies of these very long poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, shoidd have been available even in Solon's time and before it, when writing, if it existed at all, must have been a slow, painful, and laborious process; or that univritttn poems of such a length could have been preserved by the conscientious care of the rhapsodists in their genuineness and integrity, (supposing such men to have had "consciences" at all) — -all these propositions soein to my mind so extravagantly improbable, so completely opposed to all the evidences we possess, that in thus stating why I cannot agree with my friend the Professor, I must plead in excuse that, at all events, lihtruvi animam meam. If the Iliad and the Odyssey existed B.C. 800, and a set of imitators (in late times classed as "Cyclic") arose "dating from circ. 776, presupposing the Iliad, being planned to introduce or to continue it" (Jebb, p. 134), we may well ask, what possibility was there of these very early "imitators," in an utterly uncritical age, being kept apart? And what probability is there that long stories built on a single allusion to a name (Meuiaon, Antilochus, Eurypylus, Cycnus, Telephus, Protesilaus, the Amazons, &c.) — stories so much re- ferred toby Pindar and Q. SmjTnaeus, all came from " the imitators ?" I say there is not the remotest probability, and this Prof. Jebb must himself know. I think his passing over in silence my arguments de- rived from Periclean literature and art, which demonstrate that Pindar and the Tragics could not have known our Homer, has the look of a SKpjjressio veri in the interests of a literary clique, and therefore s«ems disingenuous. If it is not that, it is a short-coming in the knowledge of the most recent Homeric criticism, or else it is a real indifference or disregard for any opinions I may have formed and may hold on this subject. CAMBRIDGE : S. r. NATLOR, TRIKTER AND PCBLISHER, " CHRONICLE" OFFICE. — ._ I — , UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below AOS2 % ^-''Ri- DEC g 19 RECEIVED 1 2 1965 RECEi -OLD y ^k AM 7-4 k : J 2 4.al MARl 196 Form L-9-15m-3,'34 61968 BBTB iJp-M KG % US l;i'-" PM i'- 10 6 '? UNIVERSITY OF CAL.FOgNIA AT LOS ANGELE^ LIBRARY University Of California. Los Angeles L 007 594 280 5 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 444 453 5