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THE WORLD OF HOMER
by
ANDREW LANG
With Illustrations
Longmans, Green, and Co.
39 Paternoster Row, London
New York, Bombay, and Calcutta
1910
[Illustration: Moulded Pithos from Sparta. Illustrates 7th-6th Century
Armour, with Thigh-Piece From _British School at Athens_, vol. xii.
(_Macmillan Co. Ltd_.)]
PREFACE
In 1895 I published _Homer and the Epic_ (pp. 424), containing a
criticism of Wolf's theory, if theory it can be called, which is
the mother of modern Homeric criticism. I analysed, book by book,
the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, observing on the modern ideas of
interpolation and the modern objections to many scores of passages
which, as a rule, I defended from charges of "lateness" and
inconsistency.
I added chapters on the Lost Epics of Greece, on Archeology, and on the
early Epic poetry of other ages and peoples which offers analogies,
more or less imperfect, with Homer.
On the whole my conclusions were identical with those of Signor
Comparetti, in his preface to his learned book on the Finnish
_Kalewala_. He says:
"The anatomical and conjectural analysis which has been applied so
often and so long ... to the Homeric poems and other national epics,
proceeds from an universal abstract principle, which is correct, and
from a concrete application of that principle, which is imaginary and
groundless."
The true principle, recognised since the end of the eighteenth century,
separates the "personal" and learned Art Epics, like the _Æneid_ and
the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, from those which belong to the period of
spontaneous epic production, "when Folk-singers fashioned many epic
lays of small or moderate compass." (Perhaps Folk-singers is hardly the
right term. Such songs of exploits as the Borderers "made themselves,"
as Bishop Lesley said in 1578, were not "epic lays," but ballads like
"Jock o' the Side," and "Archie o' Cafield," and "Johnie Cock," despite
its name the most romantic of all.)
"These epic lays were called 'national' or 'popular,' not only by
virtue of their contents, sentiment, and audience, but mainly because
the poetry which takes this form is natural, collective, popular, and
hence 'national' in its origin and development." (By "collective"
I understand the author to mean, not that a whole country-side
automatically and collectively bellows out a new ballad, but that the
original author uses traditional formulae in verse wherever he can,
and that his ballad is altered in the course of recitation by others,
so that any version which has been obtained from recitation is, in
fact, one of many variants which have arisen in course of time and
recitation.)
"The baseless application of this principle is to regard the national
poems not as creations of a single poet, but as put together out of
shorter pre-existing lays (either by a single person at one time, or
by several in succession), until the final fashioning of the poem. And
this process is conceived of as a mere stringing together, without any
sort of fusion, so that a critical philologist, thanks to his special
sharpness and by aid of certain criteria, would be in a position to
recognise the joinings, and to recover the lays out of which the poem
has been made up.
"With this preconceived idea people have gone on anatomising the Epics;
from Lachmann to the present day they have not desisted, although so
far no positive satisfactory and harmonious results have been won. This
restless business of analysis, which has lasted so long, impatient of
its own fruitlessness, yet unconvinced of it, builds up and pulls down,
and builds again, while its shifting foundations, its insufficient and
falsely applied criteria, condemn it to remain fruitless, tedious, and
repulsive. The observer marks with amazement the degree of intellectual
shortsightedness produced by excessive and exclusive analysis. The
investigator becomes a sort of man-microscope, who can see atoms but
not bodies; motes, and these magnified, but not beams."
Comparetti proceeds: "No doubt before the epic there existed the
shorter lays; but what is the relation of the lays to the epic? Is the
epic a mere material synthesis of lays, or does it stand to them as
a thing higher in the scale of poetic organisms,--does it move on a
loftier plane, attaining higher, broader conceptions, and a new style
appropriate to these?" Notoriously the epic infinitely transcends in
scale, breadth of conception, and grandeur of style any brief popular
lays of which we have knowledge. It never was made by stringing _them_
together.
So much for the little lay theory. "But there remains the nucleus
theory" (the theory of "the kernel"), "for example of an original
Achilleis" (the _Menis_) expanded by self-denying poets into an
_Iliad_. Comparetti does not believe that a poet would fashion lays "to
be inserted in a greater work already constructed by others, nor that
he would have done this with so much regard for other men's work, and
with such strict limitation of his own, that the modern erudite can
recognise the joinings, and distinguish the original kernel and each of
the later additions."
Here Wolf anticipated Comparetti, he did not believe that the additions
could be detected.
But Comparetti does not reckon with his host. The astute critics tell
us that the later poets did _not_ compose "with so much respect for
other men's work"; far from that, the poet of _Iliad_ ix. calmly turned
the work of the poet of _Iliad_ xvi. into nonsense, we are told (see
_infra_, "The Great Discrepancies"). Again, the critics will say that a
later poet did not "fashion lays to be inserted in another man's work."
He merely fashioned lays. Much later other men, the Pisistratean, or
Solonian, or Hipparchian Committee of Recension, took his lays and
foisted them into the middle of another man's work, making every kind
of blunder and discrepancy in the process of making everything smooth
and neat.
Comparetti goes on: "The difficulty is increased when we have to do
with epics which seem in all their parts to be composed on a definite
plan, which exists in the final poem, not in the supposed kernel. The
organic unity, the harmony, the relation of all the portions, which
are arranged so as to lead up to the final catastrophe, are such as to
imply the agreement and homogeneity of the poetic creation in a common
idea, and, moreover, resting on that idea--a limitation of the creative
processes."
Comparetti, I fear, forgets that his "man-microscopes" see none of
these things; "they see the mote, not the beam." Finally, granting
the pre-existence of a mass of poetic material, "He who could extract
from this mass the epics which we possess, and not a kind of Greek
_Mahabharata_, would have produced, at all events, such a work of
genius that in fairness he must be called not merely the redactor, but
the author and poet."
How true is all that Comparetti says of "this restless business of
analysis, which has lasted so long, impatient of its own fruitlessness,
yet unconvinced of it! It builds up, and pulls down, and builds again,
while its insufficient and falsely applied criteria condemn it to
remain fruitless, tedious, and repulsive."
"Our little systems have their day." "They have their day, and cease
to be." The little system which explained the _Iliad_ as a mass, or
rather a concatenation of short lays, "has had its day." The system
of a primal "kernel" (Books i., xi., xvi., and so forth)--a kernel
more archaic in language than Books ix., x., xxiii., xxiv.--is also
perishing, "stricken through with doubt." The linguistic analysis
of Miss Stawell (_Homer and the Iliad_, 1909) and, in America, of
Professor Scott, has fatally damaged the linguistic tests of books for
earliness and lateness.
The most advanced German critics find that Book i. of the _Iliad_ is
no longer that genuine kernel which, with certain other passages,
represents the primal _Menis_, or "wrath of Achilles," as opposed to
the later accretions of three or four centuries. _Das ist ausgespielt!_
The "kernel" hypothesis is doomed. Its cornerstone--Book i. of the
_Iliad_, is, by the builders of new theories, rejected; it is now
one of the latest additions to the _Iliad_.[1] Only to one point is
criticism steadfast. The _Iliad must_ be a thing of rags and tatters;
and it is torn up by the process of misstating its statements and
finding "discrepancies" in the statements misstated.
Again, as even Comparetti's "man-microscopes" could not well help
seeing that the epics, though not good enough as compositions for them,
still _are_ compositions; have, in a way, organic unity, harmony,
adjusted relations of all the portions, some critics tried to account
for the facts as the result of the labours of the Pisistratean, or
Solonian, or Hipparchian Committee of Recension at Athens, in the sixth
century B.C. But so many critics of all shades of opinion have rejected
this hypothesis, even with scorn, as "a worthless fable," "an absurd
legend," part of Homeric mythology (Blass, Meyer, Mr. T. W. Alien, D.
B. Monro, Nutzhorn, Grote, and many others), that it can scarcely be
restored even by the learned ingenuity of Mr. Verrall.[2]
In defect of the late Recension, which is wholly destitute of historic
evidence, a poet, a _Dichter_, has to be sought somewhere, and at some
period of the supposed "evolution" of the _Iliad_. He may lawfully
be sought, it seems, at any period of the history of the poem, except
at the point where, in fact, the poet is always found, namely at the
beginning. The search for the poet will never find him anywhere else.
He cannot be made to fit into the eighth or seventh or sixth century;
it is useless to look for him at the Court of Croesus! A poem purely
Achaean had an Achaean author.
None of the many critical keys fits the lock. The linguistic key breaks
itself, it cannot break the wards.
Archaeology is used as a test of passages very early and very late;
and the archaeology is also wrong, demonstrably fallacious. The
archaeologists themselves, Mr. Arthur Evans and Mr. Ridgeway, will
have none of Reichel's key. Whatever archaeology may prove, it does
not prove what Reichel and his followers believed it to demonstrate.
If I succeed in convincing any separatist critics that the costume and
armour in the _Iliad_ are much less like the costume and armour of
Ionia in the seventh century B.C. than like those of Athens at the end
of the sixth and beginning of the fifth centuries, these critics will
probably be grateful. Here, they may perhaps say, is proof of our late
Athenian recension, by which the actual Athenian dress and armour of
540-480 were written into the ancient poems.
I would agree with them if the members of the Committee of Recension
had excised the huge Homeric shields, introduced cavalry in place of
chariotry, iron instead of bronze weapons; excised the bride-price
in marriage law, introduced the rite of purification of homicides by
pigs' blood, and generally, in a score of other ways, for example by
introducing hero-worship, had brought the _Iliad_ "up to date." But as
I cannot easily conceive that _only_ armour and costume were brought
up to date, I suppose that the whirligig of time and fashion had
reverted in Athens to hauberks of scales in place of the uniform use
of back-plate and breast-plate, and had also deserted the Ionian and
early Hellenic _cypassis,_ the Aegean loin-cloth or bathing-drawers for
the longer and loose Homeric chiton.
If each critic would publish his own polychrome _Iliad_, with
"primitive" passages printed in gold, "secondary" in red, "tertiary" in
blue, "very late" in green, with orange for "the Pisistratean editor,"
purple for the "diaskeuast," and mauve for "fragments of older epics"
stuck in the context, and so on, the differences that prevail among the
professors of the Higher Criticism would be amazingly apparent.
One writer of a book on Homer has accused me of neglecting "science" in
favour of mere literary appreciation, and of "trying to set back the
hands on the clock of criticism." Really I want to clean and regulate
that timepiece, which reminds one of
"The crazy old church-clock
And the bewildered chimes,"
in Wordsworth's poem.
Never were chimes more bewildered, verdicts more various, and
contradictions in terms more innocently combined than in the higher
criticism of Homer. It is necessary and right that men's opinions
should alter, in consequence of reflection, and of the increase of
our knowledge of prehistoric Greece, through the revelations of
excavators on the ancient sites of a rediscovered world. It is natural
that Homeric critics should sometimes contradict themselves and each
other. But they contradict each other so constantly and confidently
that, clearly, their conclusions are not to be called conclusions of
_science_.
That in one book a critic should reject, let us say, the hypothesis
of the "Pisistratean recension" of the epics, and, in his next book,
accept it, is nothing. Reflection has caused him to change his opinion.
But when, in one book, in one chapter, perhaps in one page, a critic,
without perceiving it, bases his argument on contradictions in
terms, then his house is founded on the sand, and needs no tempest to
overthrow its pinnacles and towers.
Through indulgence in fantastic theory-making, and through disregard of
logical consistency, Homeric criticism has become, as Blass vigorously
put the case in his latest work, "a swamp haunted by wandering fires,
will-o'-the-wisps."
In 1906, in _Homer and his Age_, I again studied the Homeric Question,
with particular reference to fresh archaeological discoveries, and
to the contradictory methods, as I reckon them, which critics have
employed in the effort to prove that the Homeric epics are mosaics,
composed in, and confusing the manners and usages of, four or five
prehistoric and proto-historic ages.
I do not now reprint either of my earlier books on Homer. Further
study appears to have made many points more clear than they were. It
is especially clear that "the Ionian father of the rest," as Tennyson
calls Homer, is _not_ Ionian; that the early Ionian settlers in Asia
respected Homer's matter, which is Achaean, and did not intermingle
with it any traits of their own very different beliefs, rites, tastes,
morals, usages, armour and costume.
By the term "Ionian" I here mean to speak of the works composed in the
Ionian settlements in Asia, probably in the eighth to seventh centuries
B.C., and of the non-Homeric beliefs, rites, usages, costume and armour
of the same people and period. Most of these beliefs, usages, and rites
also mark historic Hellas, and very probably existed in the early
populations of Greece before the dominance of Homer's Achaeans.
On the chronological period, as determined by archaeology, in which
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ were composed, I am fortunate in having the
support of Mr. Arthur Evans, the chief authority in this matter; while
Mr. T. W. Allen, our leading textual critic, is persuaded of the fact
of Homeric unity. Where language is concerned (as has been said),
the linguistic Appendices to Miss Stawell's _Homer and the Iliad_
(1909), with the minute and elaborate studies of Professor Scott of
the North-Western University, Illinois,[3] seem to me to overthrow
the separatist conclusions as to the presence of an earlier stage of
language and metre in some books; a later, or "Odyssean" stage in other
books of the _Iliad_. I have seen scarcely any public criticism in
reply to Miss Stawell and Professor Scott on these essential points, in
which I have not scholarship enough to pretend to be a judge.
Meanwhile my friend, Mr. Shewan, has in preparation a comprehensive
criticism of the separatist arguments, especially those drawn from
language and metre; a work which, I venture to think, it will not be
easy, and will not be fair, to ignore.
All my writings on the Homeric question are, necessarily,
controversial. The reaction against the suggestion of Wolf, against
a critical tradition of a century's standing, has begun in earnest.
But the friends of that tradition are eminently learned, and occupy
the highest places in scholarship and education. Scholars as eminent,
who differ from them, as a rule, are content to keep their own
opinions, and remain silent. If the views of the reaction, of the
believers in Homeric unity, in the epics as the wonderful legacy
of the brief prehistoric Achaean age, are to prevail, the opposing
ideas must be assailed, and if possible confuted. In all controversy
the constant danger is the tendency to misunderstand opponents. As a
rule, A. supposes B. to be holding this or that position. A. assails
and captures it, but B. was holding quite another position. A. has
misunderstood his case. Critics of works of mine, on other subjects,
have often missed my meaning, and I am therefore constrained to
suppose that I may have, in like manner, misconstrued some of the
opinions of others, which, as I understand them, I am obliged to
contest. I have done my best to understand, and will deeply regret any
failures of interpretation on my part.
Mr. Gilbert Murray, whose opinions I am obliged to oppose in the
course of "the struggle for existence," has, with very great kindness
and courtesy, read my proof sheets, and enabled me to give a less
inaccurate statement of his position. On one point where I had
misapprehended it, I have added an Appendix, "The Lost Epics and the
Homeric Epics."
I owe more than I can easily express to the kindness of my friend, Mr.
A. Shewan, of St. Andrews, who read and corrected my first proofs (any
surviving errors are due to my own want of care), and who has lent me
books and papers from his Homeric collection.
Mr. R. M. Dawkins, Head of the British School of Athens, has had the
goodness to read my chapters on Homeric, Ionian, and historic armour
and costume, and I have quoted the gist of his letters on points
where he differs from my conclusions. The topic of female costume is
peculiarly difficult and disputable.
A. LANG.
_September_ 9, 1910.
[1] Vinzler, _Homer_, p. 597 ff.
[2] See Appendix B, "The Supposed Athenian Recension."
[3] "Odyssean Words found in but One Book of the _Iliad_" _(Classical
Philology_, vol. v. p. 41 ff.). "The Relative Antiquity of the _Iliad_
and _Odyssey_ tested by Abstract Nouns" (_Classical Review_, vol.
xxiv., p. 8 ff.).
CONTENTS
I. HOMER'S WORLD. THE FOUR AGES
II. HOMERIC LANDS AND PEOPLES
III. HOMERIC POLITY. THE OVER LORD
IV. HOMER'S WORLD IN PEACE
V. MEN AND WOMEN
VI. THE HOMERIC WORLD IN WAR
VII. HOMERIC TACTICS
VIII. MEN'S DRESS IN HOMER. ARMOUR
IX. WOMEN'S COSTUME
X. BRONZE AND IRON. WEAPONS AND TOOLS
XI. BURIAL AND THE FUTURE LIFE
XII. RELIGION IN GREECE: PRE-HISTORIC,
HOMERIC, AND HISTORICAL
XIII. TEMPLES. ALTARS. RITUAL. PURIFICATION
XIV. HOMER AND IONIA
XV. ATTIC _VERSUS_ ACHAEAN TRADITIONS
XVI. HOMER AND "THE SAGA"
XVII. THE STORY OF PALAMEDES
XVIII. HOMER AND THE CYCLIC POEMS
XIX. THE GREAT DISCREPANCIES
XX. CONCLUSIONS
_APPENDIXES_
THE CATALOGUE
THE SUPPOSED EXPURGATION OF HOMER
THE ALLEGED ATHENIAN RECENSION OF HOMER
THE LOST EPICS AND THE HOMERIC EPICS (_WIEDERHOLUNGEN_)
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MOULDED PITHOS FROM SPARTA _Frontispiece_
SACRIFICE TO ATHENE
DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS
TIRYNTHIAN VASE: MAN IN HAUBERK
CRETAN SEAL-IMPRESSION, MINOAN ARMOUR
MENELAUS AND HECTOR FIGHTING OVER EUPHORBUS
WARRIORS ARMING
LADY POURING OUT WINE FOR WARRIOR
PRINCESS FROCK: TIRYNS
COSTUME OF WOMEN: TIRYNTHIAN VASE
METOPE OF ATHENE, OLYMPIA
THE FATES ON THE FRANÇOIS VASE
ARIADNE, THESEUS, AND MINOTAUR
HISTORIC GREEK COSTUME
THE WORLD OF HOMER
CHAPTER I
HOMER'S WORLD. THE FOUR AGES
"Homer's world," "the world that Homer knew," these are familiar
phrases; and criticism is apt to tell us that they are empty phrases.
Nevertheless when we use them we think of that enchanted land, so
clearly seen in the light of "the Sun of Greece"; in the light of
Homer. It is a realm of splendid wars, of gleaming gold and bronze,
of noble men and of the most beautiful of women, which shines through
a rift in the mists that hide the years before it and the years that
followed. Can what appears so brilliant, so living, so solid, have
been unreal, the baseless fabric of a vision; of a dream, too, that
Homer never dreamed, for there was no Homer? The Homeric picture of
life, the critics tell us, displays no actual scene of past human
existence, and is not even the creation of one man's fantasy. It
is but a bright medley and mosaic of coloured particles that came
together fortuitously, or were pieced together clumsily, like some
church window made up of fragments of stained mediaeval glass. "Homeric
civilisation," says a critic, "is like Homeric language; as the one was
never spoken, so the other was never lived by any one society."[1]
It is the object of this book to prove, on the other hand, that Homeric
civilisation, in all its details, was lived at a brief given period;
that it was real. This could never be demonstrated till of recent
years; till search with the spade on ancient sites that were ruinous or
were built over anew in the historic times of Greece, revealed to us
the ages that were before Homer, and that succeeded his day. By dint of
excavations in the soil we now know much of the great Aegean or Minoan
culture that was behind Homer; and know not a little of the Dark Ages
that followed the disruption of his Achaean society.
In studying Homer, and the predecessors and successors of the men
of his Achaean time, we find ourselves obliged to take into account
Four distinct Ages, and the culture of two or perhaps three distinct
peoples; the pre-Homeric population of the Aegean coasts and isles; the
Homeric Achaeans: and the historic Greeks, who appear to descend from,
and to hold of both the pre-Homeric and the Homeric strains of blood
and civilisation.
Turning then to what we shall style the Four Ages, we observe first,
that which is called the "Late Minoan," namely the bloom, in Crete and
on the mainland, of a civilisation even then very ancient, having its
focus, and chief manifestation, in the isle of the Hundred Cities. Here
the art is most graphic, a revelation of the life; the palaces are
most numerous and most magnificent; the towns are most tranquil, being
unwalled, as the palaces are unfortified; while the arrangements, as
for sanitation; and the costume of the women at some periods, are quite
modern in character. Separate bodices and skirts, heavily flounced,
were worn; through all varieties of fashion the dresses were sewn and
shaped. Men did not, as a rule, wear the Homeric smock or chiton, but
loin-cloths or bathing-drawers. Brooches or fibulae, like safety pins,
were not in use.
This culture had also in a less remarkable degree affected the mainland
of Greece. It was an Age of bronze, for weapons and implements,
with this peculiarity, that, while arrow tips were often of stone,
beautifully chipped flint, or of keen black glass-like obsidian, iron
was known, a few large finger-rings of iron occur in graves; the metal
being rare and strange. It was an Age of linear writing, on clay
tablets, or in ink with pen or reed. The dead, perhaps occasionally
embalmed, were buried in shaft tombs hewn deep in the rock; or in
"beehive"-shaped sepulchres with chambers, often sunk in the side of a
hill. With the dead were laid their arms of bronze, golden ornaments,
crystal and ivory, and silver, and cups and vases of peculiar fashion,
fabric, and decoration.
Concerning the language or languages of the people of this First
Age, nothing is known with certainty, as their writing has not been
deciphered. We know that they were and had long been in touch with
Egypt, and the highly civilised Egyptian society. Egyptian objects are
found in the ruins of Cretan palaces; Cretan pottery is abundant in the
soil of Egypt; and their envoys, in Egyptian wall-pictures, bear ingots
and golden cups of their fashioning, as presents or as tribute to
Egyptian kings. Their palaces, about 1450-1400 B.C. (?) were sacked and
consumed by fire, but their culture, and even their writing, continued
to exist with dwindling vitality. Of the religion we speak later.
Then comes the Second Age, the period represented in the Homeric poems.
Greek is their language, whether the people of the Cretan culture
on the mainland of Greece had previously spoken Greek, or a cognate
language, or not. Iron had ceased to be a rare metal used only for
rings; it was now employed for tools and implements, occasionally for
arrow-heads, and was an article of commerce; but bronze was the metal
for swords, spears, and body armour; and stone was no longer used for
arrow points; leather no longer, as previously, sufficed for shield
coverings, bronze plating was needed. The dead were not now buried
merely, they were cremated, as often in ancient central and northern
Europe, and as in these regions the bones were placed in urns of gold,
bronze, or pottery, wrapped in linen, and bestowed in a stone-built
chamber, beneath a mound or cairn of earth, on which was set a memorial
pillar.[2]
Treasures do not appear to have been buried with the dead, as a rule.
A new costume, a northern costume, had come in, not sewn and shaped,
as in the previous age, but fastened with pins and _fibulae_, "safety
pins," such as were in use in northern regions, in the basin of the
Danube, Bosnia, and North Italy. This is the costume and these are the
pins and brooches described by Homer.
The Third Age, subsequent to the Homeric, is a dark period; illustrated
by the vases and other objects found at ancient "Tiryns of the mighty
walls"; and by the contents of the cemetery outside of the Dipylon
gate at Athens; in Cretan sites and elsewhere. The nature of the
civilisation (called "the Dipylon") will be described later. It is
the fully developed age of iron for weapons and implements; riding
of horses is superseding the war-chariots, common to both preceding
periods; art is represented by both decadent Minoan work, and rude
vase-paintings of human existence. The dead, with humbler treasures,
are more frequently buried than burned; cairns are not raised over
them; the costume of women appears to have been, occasionally at least,
a survival from or revival of that of the First Age, the separate skirt
and bodice.
The Fourth Age is the archaic or "proto-historic" period of Greece. It
is represented by objects found in the soil of Sparta of the ninth to
seventh centuries; by objects of the eighth to seventh century used
by Ionian settlers in Asia, as at Ephesus; and by "proto-Athenian"
"post-Dipylon" vases and other archaic remains in art; while, later,
come the Black Figure vases of the early sixth century, to which
succeed the more accomplished painters of the Red Figure vases (late
sixth and early fifth centuries). In this period male costume was often
more of the first or Aegean, than of the second or Homeric Age.
Now, according to the majority of critics of Homer, the life, with
all its details, which he describes, is not that of a single age,
our second, but is a mosaic of all Four Ages. "The first rhapsodies
were born in the bronze age, in the day of the ponderous Mykenaean
shield--the last in the iron age, when men armed themselves with
breastplate and light round buckler. The whole view of life and death,
of divine and human polity had changed."[3]
If this be true, the Homeric world as depicted in the poems existed
only in fancy; it is a medley of four periods extending over some six
centuries or more, and the Homeric picture must be a mere chaos as
regards costume, manners, rites, armour, tactics, laws, geographical
knowledge, domestic life, and everything. Is it such a chaos? The
critics say that it is, and seek for proof in the poems. They find
anachronisms and inconsistencies as to armour (but not costume), as to
rites, as to marriage laws, as to houses, as to tactics, as to land
tenure; but the inconsistencies and anachronisms at most are petty,
and, we are to argue, at most represent such minute variations from the
norm as occur in all societies, savage or civilised.
For the Homeric period, except in the case of the _fibulae_ marking
the change of costume in the Second Age, we have little evidence
except in the Homeric poems themselves. No Homeric cairns with their
characteristic contents have been discovered by modern scientific
experts, a point to be discussed later. But for our Fourth Age we have
literary evidence, that of the remains and epitomes of the Cyclic
poems, composed in Ionia, about the eighth to seventh centuries, by
the poets of the Ionian settlers in Asia, who were dominated by Attic,
not Achaean traditions. These poems, we are to show (see "The Cyclic
Poems") differ immensely, in descriptions of rites and of religion,
and in the characters of heroes, in their pseudo-historic legends,
and in geographical knowledge, from the pictures given by Homer. The
Ionian armour, too, and round or oval blazoned bucklers worn on the
left arm, as displayed in archaic and early Black Figure vases, are
widely different from Homeric armour, and from the huge Homeric shield,
unblazoned, suspended by a belt or baldric.
The Fourth Age, in fact, is represented by its own epic poetry, and
by its own art; and its representations of armour, religion, rites,
personages, and traditions, are never intruded into our Homeric epics.
The two ages stand apart. The Homeric world is not that of the Fourth
Age. There is no mosaic, except in the epic poetry of the Fourth
Age, which imitated the Homeric poetry, but is full of conspicuous
anachronisms in essential points.
Though the details of life in the Second and Fourth periods,--the
Homeric or Achaean and the Ionian, stand conspicuously apart, modern
criticism, we have said, represents them as inextricably mingled in our
Homer, and naturally thus confused, for what is most ancient in our
Homer is said to have been worked over and recomposed by the poets of
Ionia; in Ionia, we are told, Homer had a second birth, and our Homer
is half-Ionian.
The critical case is well stated thus: "There is, on the whole, a
striking resemblance between the life of Homer's heroes in its material
aspects and the [Aegean] remains" [of our First Age] "which have been
discovered at Tiryns, Mykene, and elsewhere. The two cultures are not
identical, but, beyond doubt, the Homeric resembles in the main the
Mykenaean rather than that of the "Dipylon" (so far as we know it),
or the archaic Greek. _The ancient tradition is on the whole truly
kept in the Epos. Yet in many points we can see traces of apparent
anachronisms,_" whether the departure from the "Mykenaean" be "due to
a later development of that culture itself, _or to an unintentional
introduction of elements from the very different conditions of later
Greece_."[4] In the Epics carried to Asia, says our author, "much
of the old was faithfully preserved, though adapted to new hearers,
much being new added." "We meet with so many inconsistencies so
closely interwoven that the tangle may well seem beyond our powers to
unravel."[5]
When novelties were intentionally added the purpose was to please
listeners later by many centuries than those for whom the original
poets sang; to please the active commercial citizens of Ionia, who
had not the polity, nor the armour, nor the war-chariots, nor the
weapons, nor the costume, nor the beliefs, nor the burial rites, nor
the marriage customs, nor the houses, nor the tactics, nor the domestic
life, and had more than the geographical knowledge of the people who
listened to the original minstrel. Each of the novelties supposed to
have been introduced to gratify new hearers, each novelty in armour,
weapons, tactics, would only produce in the _Iliad_ an unintelligible
and chaotic blend, such as, the critics tell us, actually was
produced--a tangle which we cannot unravel. The fighting scenes, in
particular, thanks to the retention of old armour and tactics, and the
simultaneous introduction of novelties to please practical readers,
must have passed all understanding, and, as we are told, they make
nonsense. No practical hearers in that case could have endured the
confusion, a point to be demonstrated in detail.[6]
Let us remember, too, that the novelties said to have been introduced
were of the pettiest kind. The _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ retain a
non-Ionian polity: non-Ionian burial rites; non-Ionian marriage customs
(in which a change is detected in one case); non-Ionian houses;
non-Ionian shields, non-Ionian armour, non-Ionian military tactics;
while truly and specially Ionian rites and beliefs and geographical
knowledge are all absent. Why should poets who were innovating have
left the whole Homeric picture standing except in certain minute
details of corslets, greaves, bride-price, and upper storeys and
separate sleeping chambers in houses?
It is our opinion, therefore, that the details of life in the poems
are all old and all congruous; while we find the "much new" abundantly
present, _not_ in Homer, but in the fragments and summaries of the
contents of the "Cyclic" Ionian Epics, dating from the age (770-650
B.C.) when the novelties are supposed to have been most copiously
foisted into the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_--in which, as a matter of fact,
they never appear. Far from altering the old epics, I hope to show that
the Ionians laboured at constructing new epics, the "Cyclics"; partly
for the purpose of connecting their ancestors with ancient heroic
events in which, according to Homeric tradition, their ancestors played
no part; partly to tell the whole tale of Troy.
The task of these Ionian poets was later taken up by the Athenian
tragedians, and a non-Homeric, we may say almost an anti-Homeric
tradition was established, was accepted by Virgil and by the late Greek
compiler, Dictys of Crete; and finally reached and was elaborated by
the romancers of the Christian Middle Ages.
It is not easy to do justice to this theory except in a perpetual
running fight with the believers in the Ionian moulders of the Homeric
poems into their actual form with its contents. Now few things are
more unpleasant than a running fight of controversial argument, the
reader is lost in the jangle and clash of opinions and replies,
often concerned with details at once insignificant and obscure. Into
such minutiae I would not enter, if they were not the main stock of
separatist critics.
On the whole, then, it seems best to describe, first, as far as we
may, the age preceding that of Homer, and then the Homeric world, just
as the poet paints it, without alluding to differences of critical
opinion. These are discussed later, and separately.
[1] _Church Quarterly Review_, vol. xi. p. 414. It is easy to recognise
the anonymous writer.
[2] It does not follow, in my opinion, that the change in burial
customs necessarily implies the advent of a new and strange "race" on
the scene. Mr. Ridgeway writes that the discovery in the Roman Forum of
"graves exhibiting two different ways of disposing of the dead--the one
class inhumation, the other cremation, of itself" is "a proof of the
existence of two races with very different views respecting the soul."
("Who were the Romans?" _Proceedings of the British Academy_, vol.
iii. p. 7. (_Tiré à part_.) The word "race" has the vaguest meaning,
but the Tasmanians are usually supposed to have been a fairly unmixed
"race." Yet they buried, as do the Australian tribes, in a variety of
ways, cremation, inhumation, tree burial, and in other fashions, and
all sorts of beliefs about the soul co-existed. (See Ling Roth, _The
Tasmanians_, pp. 128-134.) Methods of burial do not afford proof of
varieties of "race."
[3] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii., 1902, p. x.
[4] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. xiv, xv.
[5] _Ibid._, vol. ii. p. x. Much of the "new," we must remark, was
added, on this theory, not "unintentionally," but consciously and
purposefully.
[6] See "Homeric Arms and Costume," and "Homeric Tactics," _infra_.