Introduction.
Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of
scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the
most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very
gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and
emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set
aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be
daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and
anxiety to acquire.
And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which
progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which
persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu
of their conventional value. The same principles which have swept away
traditional abuses, and which are making rapid havoc among the revenues
of sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from attractive
superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in society. The
credulity of one writer, or the partiality of another, finds as
powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the healthy
scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams of
conservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the Church.
History and tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively recent
times, are subjected to very different handling from that which the
indulgence or credulity of former ages could allow. Mere statements are
jealously watched, and the motives of the writer form as important an
ingredient in the analysis of his history, as the facts he records.
Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this
troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is
sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting in its
demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than mere
facts. Human nature, viewed under an induction of extended experience,
is the best help to the criticism of human history. Historical
characters can only be estimated by the standard which human
experience, whether actual or traditionary, has furnished. To form
correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a
great whole—we must measure them by their relation to the mass of
beings by whom they are surrounded, and, in contemplating the incidents
in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, we
must rather consider the general bearing of the whole narrative, than
the respective probability of its details.
It is unfortunate for us, that, of some of the greatest men, we know
least, and talk most. Homer, Socrates, and Shakespere[1] have, perhaps, contributed more to the
intellectual enlightenment of mankind than any other three writers who
could be named, and yet the history of all three has given rise to a
boundless ocean of discussion, which has left us little save the option
of choosing which theory or theories we will follow. The personality of
Shakespere is, perhaps, the only thing in which critics will allow us
to believe without controversy; but upon everything else, even down to
the authorship of plays, there is more or less of doubt and
uncertainty. Of Socrates we know as little as the contradictions of
Plato and Xenophon will allow us to know. He was one of the dramatis
personae in two dramas as unlike in principles as in style. He
appears as the enunciator of opinions as different in their tone as
those of the writers who have handed them down. When we have read Plato
or Xenophon, we think we know something of Socrates; when we
have fairly read and examined both, we feel convinced that we are
something worse than ignorant.
It has been an easy, and a popular expedient, of late years, to deny
the personal or real existence of men and things whose life and
condition were too much for our belief. This system—which has often
comforted the religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of
Strauss for those of the New Testament—has been of incalculable value
to the historical theorists of the last and present centuries. To
question the existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more
excusable act, than to believe in that of Romulus. To deny a fact
related in Herodotus, because it is inconsistent with a theory
developed from an Assyrian inscription which no two scholars read in
the same way, is more pardonable, than to believe in the good-natured
old king whom the elegant pen of Florian has idealized—Numa
Pompilius.
Scepticism has attained its culminating point with respect to Homer,
and the state of our Homeric knowledge may be described as a free
permission to believe any theory, provided we throw overboard all
written tradition, concerning the author or authors of the Iliad and
Odyssey. What few authorities exist on the subject, are summarily
dismissed, although the arguments appear to run in a circle. This
cannot be true, because it is not true; and, that is not true, because
it cannot be true.
Such seems to be the style, in which testimony upon
testimony, statement upon statement, is consigned to denial and
oblivion.
It is, however, unfortunate that the professed biographies of Homer are
partly forgeries, partly freaks of ingenuity and imagination, in which
truth is the requisite most wanting. Before taking a brief review of
the Homeric theory in its present conditions, some notice must be taken
of the treatise on the Life of Homer which has been attributed to
Herodotus.
According to this document, the city of Cumae in AEolia, was, at an
early period, the seat of frequent immigrations from various parts of
Greece. Among the immigrants was Menapolus, the son of Ithagenes.
Although poor, he married, and the result of the union was a girl named
Critheis. The girl was left an orphan at an early age, under the
guardianship of Cleanax, of Argos. It is to the indiscretion of this
maiden that we are indebted for so much happiness.
Homer was the
first fruit of her juvenile frailty, and received the name of
Melesigenes, from having been born near the river Meles, in Boeotia,
whither Critheis had been transported in order to save her reputation.
At this time,
continues our narrative, there lived at Smyrna a man
named Phemius, a teacher of literature and music, who, not being
married, engaged Critheis to manage his household, and spin the flax he
received as the price of his scholastic labours. So satisfactory was
her performance of this task, and so modest her conduct, that he made
proposals of marriage, declaring himself, as a further inducement,
willing to adopt her son, who, he asserted, would become a clever man,
if he were carefully brought up.
They were married; careful cultivation ripened the talents which nature
had bestowed, and Melesigenes soon surpassed his schoolfellows in every
attainment, and, when older, rivalled his preceptor in wisdom. Phemius
died, leaving him sole heir to his property, and his mother soon
followed. Melesigenes carried on his adopted father's school with great
success, exciting the admiration not only of the inhabitants of Smyrna,
but also of the strangers whom the trade carried on there, especially
in the exportation of corn, attracted to that city. Among these
visitors, one Mentes, from Leucadia, the modern Santa Maura, who
evinced a knowledge and intelligence rarely found in those times,
persuaded Melesigenes to close his school, and accompany him on his
travels. He promised not only to pay his expenses, but to furnish him
with a further stipend, urging, that, While he was yet young, it was
fitting that he should see with his own eyes the countries and cities
which might hereafter be the subjects of his discourses.
Melesigenes
consented, and set out with his patron, examining all the curiosities
of the countries they visited, and informing himself of everything by
interrogating those whom he met.
We may also suppose, that he wrote
memoirs of all that he deemed worthy of preservation[2] Having set sail from Tyrrhenia and Iberia, they reached
Ithaca. Here Melesigenes, who had already suffered in his eyes, became
much worse, and Mentes, who was about to leave for Leucadia, left him
to the medical superintendence of a friend of his, named Mentor, the
son of Alcinor. Under his hospitable and intelligent host, Melesigenes
rapidly became acquainted with the legends respecting Ulysses, which
afterwards formed the subject of the Odyssey. The inhabitants of Ithaca
assert, that it was here that Melesigenes became blind, but the
Colophomans make their city the seat of that misfortune. He then
returned to Smyrna, where he applied himself to the study of poetry.
[3]
But poverty soon drove him to Cumae. Having passed over the Hermaean
plain, he arrived at Neon Teichos, the New Wall, a colony of Cumae.
Here his misfortunes and poetical talent gained him the friendship of
one Tychias, an armourer. And up to my time,
continued the author,
the inhabitants showed the place where he used to sit when giving a
recitation of his verses, and they greatly honoured the spot. Here also
a poplar grew, which they said had sprung up ever since Melesigenes
arrived
.[4]
But poverty still drove him on, and he went by way of Larissa, as being
the most convenient road. Here, the Cumans say, he composed an epitaph
on Gordius, king of Phrygia, which has however, and with greater
probability, been attributed to Cleobulus of Lindus.[5]
Arrived at Cumae, he frequented the converzationes[6] of the old men, and delighted all by the charms of his
poetry. Encouraged by this favourable reception, he declared that, if
they would allow him a public maintenance, he would render their city
most gloriously renowned. They avowed their willingness to support him
in the measure he proposed, and procured him an audience in the
council. Having made the speech, with the purport of which our author
has forgotten to acquaint us, he retired, and left them to debate
respecting the answer to be given to his proposal.
The greater part of the assembly seemed favourable to the poet's
demand, but one man observed that if they were to feed Homers,
they would be encumbered with a multitude of useless people.
From
this circumstance,
says the writer, Melesigenes acquired the name of
Homer, for the Cumans call blind men Homers.
[7] With a love of economy, which shows how similar the
world has always been in its treatment of literary men, the pension was
denied, and the poet vented his disappointment in a wish that Cumoea
might never produce a poet capable of giving it renown and glory.
At Phocoea, Homer was destined to experience another literary distress.
One Thestorides, who aimed at the reputation of poetical genius, kept
Homer in his own house, and allowed him a pittance, on condition of the
verses of the poet passing in his name. Having collected sufficient
poetry to be profitable, Thestorides, like some would-be-literary
publishers, neglected the man whose brains he had sucked, and left him.
At his departure, Homer is said to have observed: O Thestorides, of
the many things hidden from the knowledge of man, nothing is more
unintelligible than the human heart.
[8]
Homer continued his career of difficulty and distress, until some Chian
merchants, struck by the similarity of the verses they heard him
recite, acquainted him with the fact that Thestorides was pursuing a
profitable livelihood by the recital of the very same poems. This at
once determined him to set out for Chios. No vessel happened then to be
setting sail thither, but he found one ready to Start for Erythrae, a
town of Ionia, which faces that island, and he prevailed upon the
seamen to allow him to accompany them. Having embarked, he invoked a
favourable wind, and prayed that he might be able to expose the
imposture of Thestorides, who, by his breach of hospitality, had drawn
down the wrath of Jove the Hospitable.
At Erythrae, Homer fortunately met with a person who had known him in
Phocoea, by whose assistance he at length, after some difficulty,
reached the little hamlet of Pithys. Here he met with an adventure,
which we will continue in the words of our author. Having set out from
Pithys, Homer went on, attracted by the cries of some goats that were
pasturing. The dogs barked on his approach, and he cried out. Glaucus
(for that was the name of the goat-herd) heard his voice, ran up
quickly, called off his dogs, and drove them away from Homer. For or
some time he stood wondering how a blind man should have reached such a
place alone, and what could be his design in coming. He then went up to
him, and inquired who he was, and how he had come to desolate places
and untrodden spots, and of what he stood in need. Homer, by recounting
to him the whole history of his misfortunes, moved him with compassion;
and he took him, and led him to his cot, and having lit a fire, bade
him sup.
[9]
The dogs, instead of eating, kept barking at the stranger, according
to their usual habit. Whereupon Homer addressed Glaucus thus: O
Glaucus, my friend, prythee attend to my behest. First give the dogs
their supper at the doors of the hut: for so it is better, since,
whilst they watch, nor thief nor wild beast will approach the fold.
Glaucus was pleased with the advice, and marvelled at its author.
Having finished supper, they banqueted[10] afresh on
conversation, Homer narrating his wanderings, and telling of the cities
he had visited.
At length they retired to rest; but on the following morning, Glaucus
resolved to go to his master, and acquaint him with his meeting with
Homer. Having left the goats in charge of a fellow-servant, he left
Homer at home, promising to return quickly. Having arrived at Bolissus,
a place near the farm, and finding his mate, he told him the whole
story respecting Homer and his journey. He paid little attention to
what he said, and blamed Glaucus for his stupidity in taking in and
feeding maimed and enfeebled persons. However, he bade him bring the
stranger to him.
Glaucus told Homer what had taken place, and bade him follow him,
assuring him that good fortune would be the result. Conversation soon
showed that the stranger was a man of much cleverness and general
knowledge, and the Chian persuaded him to remain, and to undertake the
charge of his children.[11]
Besides the satisfaction of driving the impostor Thestorides from the
island, Homer enjoyed considerable success as a teacher. In the town of
Chios he established a school where he taught the precepts of poetry.
To this day,
says Chandler,[12] the
most curious remain is that which has been named, without reason, the
School of Homer. It is on the coast, at some distance from the city,
northward, and appears to have been an open temple of Cybele, formed on
the top of a rock. The shape is oval, and in the centre is the image of
the goddess, the head and an arm wanting. She is represented, as usual,
sitting. The chair has a lion carved on each side, and on the back. The
area is bounded by a low rim, or seat, and about five yards over. The
whole is hewn out of the mountain, is rude, indistinct, and probably of
the most remote antiquity.
So successful was this school, that Homer realised a considerable
fortune. He married, and had two daughters, one of whom died single,
the other married a Chian.
The following passage betrays the same tendency to connect the
personages of the poems with the history of the poet, which has already
been mentioned:—
In his poetical compositions Homer displays great gratitude towards
Mentor of Ithaca, in the Odyssey, whose name he has inserted in his
poem as the companion of Ulysses,[13] in return for the care taken of him
when afflicted with blindness. He also testifies his gratitude to
Phemius, who had given him both sustenance and instruction.
His celebrity continued to increase, and many persons advised him to
visit Greece, whither his reputation had now extended. Having, it is
said, made some additions to his poems calculated to please the vanity
of the Athenians, of whose city he had hitherto made no
mention,[14] he sent out for Samos. Here
being recognized by a Samian, who had met with him in Chios, he was
handsomely received, and invited to join in celebrating the Apaturian
festival. He recited some verses, which gave great satisfaction, and by
singing the Eiresione at the New Moon festivals, he earned a
subsistence, visiting the houses of the rich, with whose children he
was very popular.
In the spring he sailed for Athens, and arrived at the island of Ios,
now Ino, where he fell extremely ill, and died. It is said that his
death arose from vexation, at not having been able to unravel an enigma
proposed by some fishermen's children.[15]
Such is, in brief, the substance of the earliest life of Homer we
possess, and so broad are the evidences of its historical
worthlessness, that it is scarcely necessary to point them out in
detail. Let us now consider some of the opinions to which a
persevering, patient, and learned—but by no means consistent—series
of investigations has led. In doing so, I profess to bring forward
statements, not to vouch for their reasonableness or probability.
Homer appeared. The history of this poet and his works is lost in
doubtful obscurity, as is the history of many of the first minds who
have done honour to humanity, because they rose amidst darkness. The
majestic stream of his song, blessing and fertilizing, flows like the
Nile, through many lands and nations; and, like the sources of the
Nile, its fountains will ever remain concealed.
Such are the words in which one of the most judicious German critics
has eloquently described the uncertainty in which the whole of the
Homeric question is involved. With no less truth and feeling he
proceeds:—
It seems here of chief importance to expect no more than the nature of
things makes possible. If the period of tradition in history is the
region of twilight, we should not expect in it perfect light. The
creations of genius always seem like miracles, because they are, for
the most part, created far out of the reach of observation. If we were
in possession of all the historical testimonies, we never could wholly
explain the origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey; for their origin, in
all essential points, must have remained the secret of the poet.
[16]
From this criticism, which shows as much insight into the depths of
human nature as into the minute wire-drawings of scholastic
investigation, let us pass on to the main question at issue. Was Homer
an individual?[17] or were the Iliad and Odyssey the result of an ingenious
arrangement of fragments by earlier poets?
Well has Landor remarked: Some tell us there were twenty Homers; some
deny that there was ever one. It were idle and foolish to shake the
contents of a vase, in order to let them settle at last. We are
perpetually labouring to destroy our delights, our composure, our
devotion to superior power. Of all the animals on earth we least know
what is good for us. My opinion is, that what is best for us is our
admiration of good. No man living venerates Homer more than I do.
[18]
But, greatly as we admire the generous enthusiasm which rests contented
with the poetry on which its best impulses had been nurtured and
fostered, without seeking to destroy the vividness of first impressions
by minute analysis—our editorial office compels us to give some
attention to the doubts and difficulties with which the Homeric
question is beset, and to entreat our reader, for a brief period, to
prefer his judgment to his imagination, and to condescend to dry
details.
Before, however, entering into particulars respecting the question of
this unity of the Homeric poems, (at least of the Iliad,) I must
express my sympathy with the sentiments expressed in the following
remarks:—
We cannot but think the universal admiration of its unity by the
better, the poetic age of Greece, almost conclusive testimony to its
original composition. It was not till the age of the grammarians that
its primitive integrity was called in question; nor is it injustice to
assert, that the minute and analytical spirit of a grammarian is not
the best qualification for the profound feeling, the comprehensive
conception of an harmonious whole. The most exquisite anatomist may be
no judge of the symmetry of the human frame: and we would take the
opinion of Chantrey or Westmacott on the proportions and general beauty
of a form, rather than that of Mr. Brodie or Sir Astley Cooper.
There is some truth, though some malicious exaggeration, in the lines
of Pope.—
'The critic eye—that microscope of wit
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit,
How parts relate to parts, or they to whole
The body's harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse, shall see,
When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.'
[19]
Long was the time which elapsed before any one dreamt of questioning
the unity of the authorship of the Homeric poems. The grave and
cautious Thucydides quoted without hesitation the Hymn to Apollo,
[20] the authenticity of which has been already
disclaimed by modern critics. Longinus, in an oft quoted passage,
merely expressed an opinion touching the comparative inferiority of the
Odyssey to the Iliad,[21] and, among a mass of
ancient authors, whose very names[22] it would be tedious
to detail, no suspicion of the personal non-existence of Homer ever
arose. So far, the voice of antiquity seems to be in favour of our
early ideas on the subject; let us now see what are the discoveries to
which more modern investigations lay claim.
At the end of the seventeenth century, doubts had begun to awaken on
the subject, and we find Bentley remarking that Homer wrote a sequel
of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself, for small comings and
good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment. These loose songs
were not collected together, in the form of an epic poem, till about
Peisistratus' time, about five hundred years after.
[23]
Two French writers—Hedelin and Perrault—avowed a similar scepticism
on the subject; but it is in the Scienza Nuova
of Battista Vico, that
we first meet with the germ of the theory, subsequently defended by
Wolf with so much learning and acuteness. Indeed, it is with the
Wolfian theory that we have chiefly to deal, and with the following
bold hypothesis, which we will detail in the words of Grote[24]—
Half a century ago, the acute and valuable Prolegomena of F. A. Wolf,
turning to account the Venetian Scholia, which had then been recently
published, first opened philosophical discussion as to the history of
the Homeric text. A considerable part of that dissertation (though by
no means the whole) is employed in vindicating the position, previously
announced by Bentley, amongst others, that the separate constituent
portions of the Iliad and Odyssey had not been cemented together into
any compact body and unchangeable order, until the days of
Peisistratus, in the sixth century before Christ. As a step towards
that conclusion, Wolf maintained that no written copies of either poem
could be shown to have existed during the earlier times, to which their
composition is referred; and that without writing, neither the perfect
symmetry of so complicated a work could have been originally conceived
by any poet, nor, if realized by him, transmitted with assurance to
posterity. The absence of easy and convenient writing, such as must be
indispensably supposed for long manuscripts, among the early Greeks,
was thus one of the points in Wolf's case against the primitive
integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey. By Nitzsch, and other leading
opponents of Wolf, the connection of the one with the other seems to
have been accepted as he originally put it; and it has been considered
incumbent on those who defended the ancient aggregate character of the
Iliad and Odyssey, to maintain that they were written poems from the
beginning.
To me it appears, that the architectonic functions ascribed by Wolf to
Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the Homeric poems, are
nowise admissible. But much would undoubtedly be gained towards that
view of the question, if it could be shown, that, in order to
controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting long
written poems, in the ninth century before the Christian aera. Few
things, in my opinion, can be more improbable; and Mr. Payne Knight,
opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no less than
Wolf himself. The traces of writing in Greece, even in the seventh
century before the Christian aera, are exceedingly trifling. We have no
remaining inscription earlier than the fortieth Olympiad, and the early
inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed; nor can we even assure
ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonides of Amorgus, Kallinus,
Tyrtaeus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric poets,
committed their compositions to writing, or at what time the practice
of doing so became familiar. The first positive ground which authorizes
us to presume the existence of a manuscript of Homer, is in the famous
ordinance of Solon, with regard to the rhapsodies at the Panathenaea:
but for what length of time previously manuscripts had existed, we are
unable to say.
Those who maintain the Homeric poems to have been written from the
beginning, rest their case, not upon positive proofs, nor yet upon the
existing habits of society with regard to poetry—for they admit
generally that the Iliad and Odyssey were not read, but recited and
heard,—but upon the supposed necessity that there must have been
manuscripts to ensure the preservation of the poems—the unassisted
memory of reciters being neither sufficient nor trustworthy. But here
we only escape a smaller difficulty by running into a greater; for the
existence of trained bards, gifted with extraordinary memory,
[25] is far less astonishing than that of
long manuscripts, in an age essentially non-reading and non-writing,
and when even suitable instruments and materials for the process are
not obvious. Moreover, there is a strong positive reason for believing
that the bard was under no necessity of refreshing his memory by
consulting a manuscript; for if such had been the fact, blindness would
have been a disqualification for the profession, which we know that it
was not, as well from the example of Demodokus, in the Odyssey, as from
that of the blind bard of Chios, in the Hymn to the Delian Apollo, whom
Thucydides, as well as the general tenor of Grecian legend, identifies
with Homer himself. The author of that hymn, be he who he may, could
never have described a blind man as attaining the utmost perfection in
his art, if he had been conscious that the memory of the bard was only
maintained by constant reference to the manuscript in his chest."
The loss of the digamma, that crux of critics, that quicksand
upon which even the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked, seems to prove
beyond a doubt, that the pronunciation of the Greek language had
undergone a considerable change. Now it is certainly difficult to
suppose that the Homeric poems could have suffered by this change, had
written copies been preserved. If Chaucer's poetry, for instance, had
not been written, it could only have come down to us in a softened
form, more like the effeminate version of Dryden, than the rough,
quaint, noble original.
At what period,
continues Grote, these poems, or indeed any other
Greek poems, first began to be written, must be matter of conjecture,
though there is ground for assurance that it was before the time of
Solon. If, in the absence of evidence, we may venture upon naming any
more determinate period, the question a once suggests itself, What were
the purposes which, in that state of society, a manuscript at its first
commencement must have been intended to answer? For whom was a written
Iliad necessary? Not for the rhapsodes; for with them it was not only
planted in the memory, but also interwoven with the feelings, and
conceived in conjunction with all those flexions and intonations of
voice, pauses, and other oral artifices which were required for
emphatic delivery, and which the naked manuscript could never
reproduce. Not for the general public—they were accustomed to receive
it with its rhapsodic delivery, and with its accompaniments of a solemn
and crowded festival. The only persons for whom the written Iliad would
be suitable would be a select few; studious and curious men; a class of
readers capable of analyzing the complicated emotions which they had
experienced as hearers in the crowd, and who would, on perusing the
written words, realize in their imaginations a sensible portion of the
impression communicated by the reciter. Incredible as the statement may
seem in an age like the present, there is in all early societies, and
there was in early Greece, a time when no such reading class existed.
If we could discover at what time such a class first began to be
formed, we should be able to make a guess at the time when the old epic
poems were first committed to writing. Now the period which may with
the greatest probability be fixed upon as having first witnessed the
formation even of the narrowest reading class in Greece, is the middle
of the seventh century before the Christian aera (B.C. 660 to B.C.
630), the age of Terpander, Kallinus, Archilochus, Simonides of
Amorgus, &c. I ground this supposition on the change then operated in
the character and tendencies of Grecian poetry and music—the elegiac
and the iambic measures having been introduced as rivals to the
primitive hexameter, and poetical compositions having been transferred
from the epical past to the affairs of present and real life. Such a
change was important at a time when poetry was the only known mode of
publication (to use a modern phrase not altogether suitable, yet the
nearest approaching to the sense). It argued a new way of looking at
the old epical treasures of the people as well as a thirst for new
poetical effect; and the men who stood forward in it, may well be
considered as desirous to study, and competent to criticize, from their
own individual point of view, the written words of the Homeric
rhapsodies, just as we are told that Kallinus both noticed and
eulogized the Thebais as the production of Homer. There seems,
therefore, ground for conjecturing that (for the use of this newly-
formed and important, but very narrow class), manuscripts of the
Homeric poems and other old epics,—the Thebais and the Cypria, as well
as the Iliad and the Odyssey,—began to be compiled towards the middle
of the seventh century (B.C. 1); and the opening of Egypt to Grecian
commerce, which took place about the same period, would furnish
increased facilities for obtaining the requisite papyrus to write upon.
A reading class, when once formed, would doubtless slowly increase, and
the number of manuscripts along with it; so that before the time of
Solon, fifty years afterwards, both readers and manuscripts, though
still comparatively few, might have attained a certain recognized
authority, and formed a tribunal of reference against the carelessness
of individual rhapsodes.
[26]
But even Peisistratus has not been suffered to remain in possession of
the credit, and we cannot help feeling the force of the following
observations—
"There are several incidental circumstances which, in our opinion,
throw some suspicion over the whole history of the Peisistratid
compilation, at least over the theory, that the Iliad was cast into its
present stately and harmonious form by the directions of the Athenian
ruler. If the great poets, who flourished at the bright period of
Grecian song, of which, alas! we have inherited little more than the
fame, and the faint echo, if Stesichorus, Anacreon, and Simonides were
employed in the noble task of compiling the Iliad and Odyssey, so much
must have been done to arrange, to connect, to harmonize, that it is
almost incredible, that stronger marks of Athenian manufacture should
not remain. Whatever occasional anomalies may be detected, anomalies
which no doubt arise out of our own ignorance of the language of the
Homeric age, however the irregular use of the digamma may have
perplexed our Bentleys, to whom the name of Helen is said to have
caused as much disquiet and distress as the fair one herself among the
heroes of her age, however Mr. Knight may have failed in reducing the
Homeric language to its primitive form; however, finally, the Attic
dialect may not have assumed all its more marked and distinguishing
characteristics—still it is difficult to suppose that the language,
particularly in the joinings and transitions, and connecting parts,
should not more clearly betray the incongruity between the more ancient
and modern forms of expression. It is not quite in character with such
a period to imitate an antique style, in order to piece out an
imperfect poem in the character of the original, as Sir Walter Scott
has done in his continuation of Sir Tristram.
"If, however, not even such faint and indistinct traces of Athenian
compilation are discoverable in the language of the poems, the total
absence of Athenian national feeling is perhaps no less worthy of
observation. In later, and it may fairly be suspected in earlier times,
the Athenians were more than ordinarily jealous of the fame of their
ancestors. But, amid all the traditions of the glories of early Greece
embodied in the Iliad, the Athenians play a most subordinate and
insignificant part. Even the few passages which relate to their
ancestors, Mr. Knight suspects to be interpolations. It is possible,
indeed, that in its leading outline, the Iliad may be true to historic
fact, that in the great maritime expedition of western Greece against
the rival and half-kindred empire of the Laomedontiadae, the chieftain
of Thessaly, from his valour and the number of his forces, may have
been the most important ally of the Peloponnesian sovereign; the pre-
eminent value of the ancient poetry on the Trojan war may thus have
forced the national feeling of the Athenians to yield to their taste.
The songs which spoke of their own great ancestor were, no doubt, of
far inferior sublimity and popularity, or, at first sight, a Theseid
would have been much more likely to have emanated from an Athenian
synod of compilers of ancient song, than an Achilleid or an Olysseid.
Could France have given birth to a Tasso, Tancred would have been the
hero of the Jerusalem. If, however, the Homeric ballads, as they are
sometimes called, which related the wrath of Achilles, with all its
direful consequences, were so far superior to the rest of the poetic
cycle, as to admit no rivalry,—it is still surprising, that throughout
the whole poem the callida junctura should never betray the
workmanship of an Athenian hand, and that the national spirit of a
race, who have at a later period not inaptly been compared to our self
admiring neighbours, the French, should submit with lofty self denial
to the almost total exclusion of their own ancestors—or, at least, to
the questionable dignity of only having produced a leader tolerably
skilled in the military tactics of his age."[27]
To return to the Wolfian theory. While it is to be confessed, that
Wolf's objections to the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey
have never been wholly got over, we cannot help discovering that they
have failed to enlighten us as to any substantial point, and that the
difficulties with which the whole subject is beset, are rather
augmented than otherwise, if we admit his hypothesis. Nor is Lachmann's
[28] modification of his theory
any better. He divides the first twenty-two books of the Iliad into
sixteen different songs, and treats as ridiculous the belief that their
amalgamation into one regular poem belongs to a period earlier than the
age of Peisistratus. This, as Grote observes, "explains the gaps and
contradictions in the narrative, but it explains nothing else."
Moreover, we find no contradictions warranting this belief, and the so-
called sixteen poets concur in getting rid of the following leading men
in the first battle after the secession of Achilles: Elphenor, chief of
the Euboeans; Tlepolemus, of the Rhodians; Pandarus, of the Lycians;
Odius, of the Halizonians; Pirous and Acamas, of the Thracians. None of
these heroes again make their appearance, and we can but agree with
Colonel Mure, that "it seems strange that any number of independent
poets should have so harmoniously dispensed with the services of all
six in the sequel." The discrepancy, by which Pylaemenes, who is
represented as dead in the fifth book, weeps at his son's funeral in
the thirteenth, can only be regarded as the result of an interpolation.
Grote, although not very distinct in stating his own opinions on the
subject, has done much to clearly show the incongruity of the Wolfian
theory, and of Lachmann's modifications with the character of
Peisistratus. But he has also shown, and we think with equal success,
that the two questions relative to the primitive unity of these poems,
or, supposing that impossible, the unison of these parts by
Peisistratus, and not before his time, are essentially distinct. In
short, "a man may believe the Iliad to have been put together out of
pre-existing songs, without recognising the age of Peisistratus as the
period of its first compilation." The friends or literary
employes of Peisistratus must have found an Iliad that was
already ancient, and the silence of the Alexandrine critics respecting
the Peisistratic "recension," goes far to prove, that, among the
numerous manuscripts they examined, this was either wanting, or thought
unworthy of attention.
"Moreover," he continues, "the whole tenor of the poems themselves
confirms what is here remarked. There is nothing, either in the Iliad
or Odyssey, which savours of modernism, applying that term to the age
of Peisistratus—nothing which brings to our view the alterations
brought about by two centuries, in the Greek language, the coined
money, the habits of writing and reading, the despotisms and republican
governments, the close military array, the improved construction of
ships, the Amphiktyonic convocations, the mutual frequentation of
religious festivals, the Oriental and Egyptian veins of religion, &c.,
familiar to the latter epoch. These alterations Onomakritus, and the
other literary friends of Peisistratus, could hardly have failed to
notice, even without design, had they then, for the first time,
undertaken the task of piecing together many self existent epics into
one large aggregate. Everything in the two great Homeric poems, both in
substance and in language, belongs to an age two or three centuries
earlier than Peisistratus. Indeed, even the interpolations (or those
passages which, on the best grounds, are pronounced to be such) betray
no trace of the sixth century before Christ, and may well have been
heard by Archilochus and Kallinus—in some cases even by Arktinus and
Hesiod—as genuine Homeric matter[29] As far as the evidences on the case, as well internal as
external, enable us to judge, we seem warranted in believing that the
Iliad and Odyssey were recited substantially as they now stand (always
allowing for paitial divergences of text and interpolations) in 776
B.C., our first trustworthy mark of Grecian time; and this ancient
date, let it be added, as it is the best-authenticated fact, so it is
also the most important attribute of the Homeric poems, considered in
reference to Grecian history; for they thus afford us an insight into
the anti-historical character of the Greeks, enabling us to trace the
subsequent forward march of the nation, and to seize instructive
contrasts between their former and their later condition."[30]
On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that the labours of
Peisistratus were wholly of an editorial character, although, I must
confess, that I can lay down nothing respecting the extent of his
labours. At the same time, so far from believing that the composition
or primary arrangement of these poems, in their present form, was the
work of Peisistratus, I am rather persuaded that the fine taste and
elegant mind of that Athenian[31] would
lead him to preserve an ancient and traditional order of the poems,
rather than to patch and re-construct them according to a fanciful
hypothesis. I will not repeat the many discussions respecting whether
the poems were written or not, or whether the art of writing was known
in the time of their reputed author. Suffice it to say, that the more
we read, the less satisfied we are upon either subject.
I cannot, however, help thinking, that the story which attributes the
preservation of these poems to Lycurgus, is little else than a version
of the same story as that of Peisistratus, while its historical
probability must be measured by that of many others relating to the
Spartan Confucius.
I will conclude this sketch of the Homeric theories, with an attempt,
made by an ingenious friend, to unite them into something like
consistency. It is as follows:—
"No doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like the common sailors
of some fifty years ago, some one qualified to 'discourse in excellent
music' among them. Many of these, like those of the negroes in the
United States, were extemporaneous, and allusive to events passing
around them. But what was passing around them? The grand events of a
spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to impress themselves, as the
mystical legends of former times had done, upon their memory; besides
which, a retentive memory was deemed a virtue of the first water, and
was cultivated accordingly in those ancient times. Ballads at first,
and down to the beginning of the war with Troy, were merely
recitations, with an intonation. Then followed a species of recitative,
probably with an intoned burden. Tune next followed, as it aided the
memory considerably.
"It was at this period, about four hundred years after the war, that a
poet flourished of the name of Melesigenes, or Moeonides, but most
probably the former. He saw that these ballads might be made of great
utility to his purpose of writing a poem on the social position of
Hellas, and, as a collection, he published these lays, connecting them
by a tale of his own. This poem now exists, under the title of the
'Odyssea.' The author, however, did not affix his own name to the poem,
which, in fact, was, great part of it, remodelled from the archaic
dialect of Crete, in which tongue the ballads were found by him. He
therefore called it the poem of Homeros, or the Collector; but this is
rather a proof of his modesty and talent, than of his mere drudging
arrangement of other people's ideas; for, as Grote has finely observed,
arguing for the unity of authorship, 'a great poet might have re-cast
pre-existing separate songs into one comprehensive whole; but no mere
arrangers or compilers would be competent to do so.'
"While employed on the wild legend of Odysseus, he met with a ballad,
recording the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon. His noble mind seized
the hint that there presented itself, and the Achilleis[32] grew
under his hand. Unity of design, however, caused him to publish the
poem under the same pseudonyme as his former work: and the disjointed
lays of the ancient bards were joined together, like those relating to
the Cid, into a chronicle history, named the Iliad. Melesigenes knew
that the poem was destined to be a lasting one, and so it has proved;
but, first, the poems were destined to undergo many vicissitudes and
corruptions, by the people who took to singing them in the streets,
assemblies, and agoras. However, Solon first, and then Peisistratus,
and afterwards Aristoteles and others, revised the poems, and restored
the works of Melesigenes Homeros to their original integrity in a great
measure."[33]
Having thus given some general notion of the strange theories which
have developed themselves respecting this most interesting subject, I
must still express my conviction as to the unity of the authorship of
the Homeric poems. To deny that many corruptions and interpolations
disfigure them, and that the intrusive hand of the poetasters may here
and there have inflicted a wound more serious than the negligence of
the copyist, would be an absurd and captious assumption, but it is to a
higher criticism that we must appeal, if we would either understand or
enjoy these poems. In maintaining the authenticity and personality of
their one author, be he Homer or Melesigenes, quocunque nomine
vocari eum jus fasque sit, I feel conscious that, while the whole
weight of historical evidence is against the hypothesis which would
assign these great works to a plurality of authors, the most powerful
internal evidence, and that which springs from the deepest and most
immediate impulse of the soul, also speaks eloquently to the contrary.
The minutiae of verbal criticism I am far from seeking to despise.
Indeed, considering the character of some of my own books, such an
attempt would be gross inconsistency. But, while I appreciate its
importance in a philological view, I am inclined to set little store on
its aesthetic value, especially in poetry. Three parts of the
emendations made upon poets are mere alterations, some of which, had
they been suggested to the author by his Maecenas or Africanus, he
would probably have adopted. Moreover, those who are most exact in
laying down rules of verbal criticism and interpretation, are often
least competent to carry out their own precepts. Grammarians are not
poets by profession, but may be so per accidens. I do not at
this moment remember two emendations on Homer, calculated to
substantially improve the poetry of a passage, although a mass of
remarks, from Herodotus down to Loewe, have given us the history of a
thousand minute points, without which our Greek knowledge would be
gloomy and jejune.
But it is not on words only that grammarians, mere grammarians, will
exercise their elaborate and often tiresome ingenuity. Binding down an
heroic or dramatic poet to the block upon which they have previously
dissected his words and sentences, they proceed to use the axe and the
pruning knife by wholesale, and inconsistent in everything but their
wish to make out a case of unlawful affiliation, they cut out book
after book, passage after passage, till the author is reduced to a
collection of fragments, or till those, who fancied they possessed the
works of some great man, find that they have been put off with a vile
counterfeit got up at second hand. If we compare the theories of
Knight, Wolf, Lachmann, and others, we shall feel better satisfied of
the utter uncertainty of criticism than of the apocryphal position of
Homer. One rejects what another considers the turning-point of his
theory. One cuts a supposed knot by expunging what another would
explain by omitting something else.
Nor is this morbid species of sagacity by any means to be looked upon
as a literary novelty. Justus Lipsius, a scholar of no ordinary skill,
seems to revel in the imaginary discovery, that the tragedies
attributed to Seneca are by four different authors.[34] Now, I will venture to assert, that these tragedies are so
uniform, not only in their borrowed phraseology—a phraseology with
which writers like Boethius and Saxo Grammaticus were more charmed than
ourselves—in their freedom from real poetry, and last, but not least,
in an ultra-refined and consistent abandonment of good taste, that few
writers of the present day would question the capabilities of the same
gentleman, be he Seneca or not, to produce not only these, but a great
many more equally bad. With equal sagacity, Father Hardouin astonished
the world with the startling announcement that the AEneid of Virgil,
and the satires of Horace, were literary deceptions. Now, without
wishing to say one word of disrespect against the industry and
learning—nay, the refined acuteness—which scholars, like Wolf, have
bestowed upon this subject, I must express my fears, that many of our
modern Homeric theories will become matter for the surprise and
entertainment, rather than the instruction, of posterity. Nor can I
help thinking, that the literary history of more recent times will
account for many points of difficulty in the transmission of the Iliad
and Odyssey to a period so remote from that of their first creation.
I have already expressed my belief that the labours of Peisistratus
were of a purely editorial character; and there seems no more reason
why corrupt and imperfect editions of Homer may not have been abroad in
his day, than that the poems of Valerius Flaccus and Tibullus should
have given so much trouble to Poggio, Scaliger, and others. But, after
all, the main fault in all the Homeric theories is, that they demand
too great a sacrifice of those feelings to which poetry most powerfully
appeals, and which are its most fitting judges. The ingenuity which has
sought to rob us of the name and existence of Homer, does too much
violence to that inward emotion, which makes our whole soul yearn with
love and admiration for the blind bard of Chios. To believe the author
of the Iliad a mere compiler, is to degrade the powers of human
invention; to elevate analytical judgment at the expense of the most
ennobling impulses of the soul; and to forget the ocean in the
contemplation of a polypus. There is a catholicity, so to speak, in the
very name of Homer. Our faith in the author of the Iliad may be a
mistaken one, but as yet nobody has taught us a better.
While, however, I look upon the belief in Homer as one that has nature
herself for its mainspring; while I can join with old Ennius in
believing in Homer as the ghost, who, like some patron saint, hovers
round the bed of the poet, and even bestows rare gifts from that wealth
of imagination which a host of imitators could not exhaust,—still I am
far from wishing to deny that the author of these great poems found a
rich fund of tradition, a well-stocked mythical storehouse from whence
he might derive both subject and embellishment. But it is one thing to
use existing romances in the embellishment of a poem, another to
patch up the poem itself from such materials. What consistency of style
and execution can be hoped for from such an attempt? or, rather, what
bad taste and tedium will not be the infallible result?
A blending of popular legends, and a free use of the songs of other
bards, are features perfectly consistent with poetical originality. In
fact, the most original writer is still drawing upon outward
impressions—nay, even his own thoughts are a kind of secondary agents
which support and feed the impulses of imagination. But unless there be
some grand pervading principle—some invisible, yet most distinctly
stamped archetypus of the great whole, a poem like the Iliad can never
come to the birth. Traditions the most picturesque, episodes the most
pathetic, local associations teeming with the thoughts of gods and
great men, may crowd in one mighty vision, or reveal themselves in more
substantial forms to the mind of the poet; but, except the power to
create a grand whole, to which these shall be but as details and
embellishments, be present, we shall have nought but a scrap-book, a
parterre filled with flowers and weeds strangling each other in their
wild redundancy: we shall have a cento of rags and tatters, which will
require little acuteness to detect.
Sensible as I am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware
as I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my belief,
it still seems to me that the Homeric question is one that is reserved
for a higher criticism than it has often obtained. We are not by nature
intended to know all things; still less, to compass the powers by which
the greatest blessings of life have been placed at our disposal. Were
faith no virtue, then we might indeed wonder why God willed our
ignorance on any matter. But we are too well taught the contrary
lesson; and it seems as though our faith should be especially tried
touching the men and the events which have wrought most influence upon
the condition of humanity. And there is a kind of sacredness attached
to the memory of the great and the good, which seems to bid us repulse
the scepticism which would allegorize their existence into a pleasing
apologue, and measure the giants of intellect by an homeopathic
dynameter.
Long and habitual reading of Homer appears to familiarize our thoughts
even to his incongruities; or rather, if we read in a right spirit and
with a heartfelt appreciation, we are too much dazzled, too deeply
wrapped in admiration of the whole, to dwell upon the minute spots
which mere analysis can discover. In reading an heroic poem we must
transform ourselves into heroes of the time being, we in imagination
must fight over the same battles, woo the same loves, burn with the
same sense of injury, as an Achilles or a Hector. And if we can but
attain this degree of enthusiasm (and less enthusiasm will scarcely
suffice for the reading of Homer), we shall feel that the poems of
Homer are not only the work of one writer, but of the greatest writer
that ever touched the hearts of men by the power of song.
And it was this supposed unity of authorship which gave these poems
their powerful influence over the minds of the men of old. Heeren, who
is evidently little disposed in favour of modern theories, finely
observes:—
"It was Homer who formed the character of the Greek nation. No poet has
ever, as a poet, exercised a similar influence over his countrymen.
Prophets, lawgivers, and sages have formed the character of other
nations; it was reserved to a poet to form that of the Greeks. This is
a feature in their character which was not wholly erased even in the
period of their degeneracy. When lawgivers and sages appeared in
Greece, the work of the poet had already been accomplished; and they
paid homage to his superior genius. He held up before his nation the
mirror, in which they were to behold the world of gods and heroes no
less than of feeble mortals, and to behold them reflected with purity
and truth. His poems are founded on the first feeling of human nature;
on the love of children, wife, and country; on that passion which
outweighs all others, the love of glory. His songs were poured forth
from a breast which sympathized with all the feelings of man; and
therefore they enter, and will continue to enter, every breast which
cherishes the same sympathies. If it is granted to his immortal spirit,
from another heaven than any of which he dreamed on earth, to look down
on his race, to see the nations from the fields of Asia to the forests
of Hercynia, performing pilgrimages to the fountain which his magic
wand caused to flow; if it is permitted to him to view the vast
assemblage of grand, of elevated, of glorious productions, which had
been called into being by means of his songs; wherever his immortal
spirit may reside, this alone would suffice to complete his happiness."
[35]
Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the "Apotheosis of
Homer"[36] is depictured,
and not feel how much of pleasing association, how much that appeals
most forcibly and most distinctly to our minds, is lost by the
admittance of any theory but our old tradition? The more we read, and
the more we think—think as becomes the readers of Homer,—the more
rooted becomes the conviction that the Father of Poetry gave us this
rich inheritance, whole and entire. Whatever were the means of its
preservation, let us rather be thankful for the treasury of taste and
eloquence thus laid open to our use, than seek to make it a mere centre
around which to drive a series of theories, whose wildness is only
equalled by their inconsistency with each other.
As the hymns, and some other poems usually ascribed to Homer, are not
included in Pope's translation, I will content myself with a brief
account of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, from the pen of a writer
who has done it full justice[37]:—
"This poem," says Coleridge, "is a short mock-heroic of ancient date.
The text varies in different editions, and is obviously disturbed and
corrupt to a great degree; it is commonly said to have been a juvenile
essay of Homer's genius; others have attributed it to the same Pigrees,
mentioned above, and whose reputation for humour seems to have invited
the appropriation of any piece of ancient wit, the author of which was
uncertain; so little did the Greeks, before the age of the Ptolemies,
know or care about that department of criticism employed in determining
the genuineness of ancient writings. As to this little poem being a
youthful prolusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the
beginning to the end it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of the
general spirit, but of the numerous passages of the Iliad itself; and
even, if no such intention to parody were discernible in it, the
objection would still remain, that to suppose a work of mere burlesque
to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse
that order in the development of national taste, which the history of
every other people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost
ascertained to be a law of the human mind; it is in a state of society
much more refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that
any popularity would attend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is
contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed three
other poems of the same kind attributed, for aught we can see, with as
much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of
them were of the Homeric age. Knight infers from the usage of the word
deltos, "writing tablet," instead of diphthera, "skin," which,
according to Herod. 5, 58, was the material employed by the Asiatic
Greeks for that purpose, that this poem was another offspring of Attic
ingenuity; and generally that the familiar mention of the cock (v. 191)
is a strong argument against so ancient a date for its composition."
Having thus given a brief account of the poems comprised in Pope's
design, I will now proceed to make a few remarks on his translation,
and on my own purpose in the present edition.
Pope was not a Grecian. His whole education had been irregular, and his
earliest acquaintance with the poet was through the version of Ogilby.
It is not too much to say that his whole work bears the impress of a
disposition to be satisfied with the general sense, rather than to dive
deeply into the minute and delicate features of language. Hence his
whole work is to be looked upon rather as an elegant paraphrase than a
translation. There are, to be sure, certain conventional anecdotes,
which prove that Pope consulted various friends, whose classical
attainments were sounder than his own, during the undertaking; but it
is probable that these examinations were the result rather of the
contradictory versions already existing, than of a desire to make a
perfect transcript of the original. And in those days, what is called
literal translation was less cultivated than at present. If something
like the general sense could be decorated with the easy gracefulness of
a practised poet; if the charms of metrical cadence and a pleasing
fluency could be made consistent with a fair interpretation of the
poet's meaning, his words were less jealously sought for, and those
who could read so good a poem as Pope's Iliad had fair reason to be
satisfied.
It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope's translation by our own
advancing knowledge of the original text. We must be content to look at
it as a most delightful work in itself,—a work which is as much a part
of English literature as Homer himself is of Greek. We must not be torn
from our kindly associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most
cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because
Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to
amphikupellon being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from
us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman's
fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from, us to hold up his
translation as what a translation of Homer might be. But we can
still dismiss Pope's Iliad to the hands of our readers, with the
consciousness that they must have read a very great number of books
before they have read its fellow.
As to the Notes accompanying the present volume, they are drawn up
without pretension, and mainly with the view of helping the general
reader. Having some little time since translated all the works of Homer
for another publisher, I might have brought a large amount of
accumulated matter, sometimes of a critical character, to bear upon the
text. But Pope's version was no field for such a display; and my
purpose was to touch briefly on antiquarian or mythological allusions,
to notice occasionally some departures from the original, and to
give a few parallel passages from our English Homer, Milton. In the
latter task I cannot pretend to novelty, but I trust that my other
annotations, while utterly disclaiming high scholastic views, will be
found to convey as much as is wanted; at least, as far as the necessary
limits of these volumes could be expected to admit. To write a
commentary on Homer is not my present aim; but if I have made Pope's
translation a little more entertaining and instructive to a mass of
miscellaneous readers, I shall consider my wishes satisfactorily
accomplished.
THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.
Christ Church.
