HOMERIC POLITY. THE OVER LORD
As Homer conceives the period of his heroes, they live in a perfectly
well known stage of society, illustrated in later northern Europe by
the French _Chansons de Geste_; by the most ancient Irish stories
in prose mixed with verse; and even to some extent by the Arthurian
romances. Every prince has his castle and town or towns, his lands,
pasturage, tilth, and orchards; he is, in the Irish phrase, a _righ_.
He is surrounded by the γέροντες,--in Irish the _flaith_, the gentry
or squires, who held "rich lands remote from towns," and possessed
war-chariots.[1] The princes and gentry with war-chariots alone take
notable individual parts in the fighting, whether they fight mounted
or dismounted. It is the gentry who offer a rich demesne, vineland
and tilth, to Meleager, imploring him to take part in their war.[2]
It appears to me that the gentry themselves held land in severalty,
perhaps contrary to the old letter of the law, and in possession rather
than in property.
The question of Homeric land tenure, as of all early land tenure
before written records, is very obscure. There existed "common
fields" certainly; but were they common property, each freeman having
no more than his strip; separated, we know, from that of others by a
longitudinal "balk" or boundary? We hear of men wrangling across the
balk, "with measures in their hands, in _a common field_, striving
for their right within scanty space."[3] Such quarrels were common in
the Scotland of the eighteenth century, under the "run-rig" system
of common fields; but then the men were tenants. They may have been
free-holders in Homer's time, each with his assured "lot" (κλὴρος)[4]
The Irish tribal free man had a right to one of these lots, which were
redistributed by rotation, but many lots came gradually into the hands
of each of the _flaith_, squires, (γέροντες), who were rich in cattle,
and let out the cattle to poor lease-holders, for returns of rent in
kind. A mail in Homer might have no lot,[5] and yet employ hinds, and
be a cultivator. He must have been a tenant farmer.
In the _Iliad_, apart from the demesnes allotted to great men by the
γέροντες, we only hear of personal property, gold, iron, cattle, and
so on. In the _Odyssey_ (xiv. 211) we read of men in Crete who each
possessed several lots; and in so old a civilisation nothing is more
probable. One is inclined to suppose that the majority of freemen held
each his lot, while some had lost their lots; that many who had been
land-holders came to hold as tenants merely, under rent in kind paid
for stock to the γέροντες, who were rich in ploughing cattle; and that
some γέροντες, and all princes held demesnes and a large share of
the unfenced pasturage, worked by slaves and hinds. This is quite a
practicable condition of affairs; there were all grades of wealth, some
men were, as Odysseus feigned to be, wandering tramps. By the time of
Hesiod lots of land were purchaseable,[6] but we do not hear in Homer
that lots could be bought and sold.
It does not seem that these variations of conditions, in a society
where the rich and the very poor certainly coexisted, are proofs that
ideas and practices of various later ages have been brought into the
Epics by the insertion of lays of various dates. In savage and barbaric
societies on a very low level, even in Australia, we find the most
various social rules coexisting, and tribes with maternal and with
paternal reckoning of descent live side by side. In Melanesia the
conditions of native land-tenure vary greatly, some are "primitive"
others not so.[7] When we reflect on facts so certain, it seems strange
that the hints of varieties in the condition of land-tenure in Homer
are regarded as a proof that the poems are a patchwork of the usages of
four changing centuries.
We do not, of course, know anything about land-tenure in the early
Ionian settlements in Asia, where, if anywhere, novelties would be
interpolated. Probably, as was usual and natural in the foundation of
a colony, each freeman was assigned his lot. But as the cities became
full of seafaring traders and sailors, some men thus occupied would
part with the lots which they could not cultivate, and these would be
bought by capitalists. Now Homer never mentions the purchase of lots.
Athenian tradition held that their colonists were led by the Codrids,
descendants of kings not Athenians, descendants of the sons of Neleus
of Pylos, Nestor's family. This legend was probably invented for the
purpose of introducing Attica into the Achaean cycle of history, in
which Attica, as far as Achaean traditions inform us, had no part.
Indeed we cannot know whether or not princes like these of Homer long
ruled the Ionian cities. Colonists are usually impatient of monarchy.
Returning to the Homeric Over Lord, the princes do not hold land from
the Crown, so to speak. The Over Lord is _primus inter pares_ by right
divine, not by election. In late forms of the Trojan tale, Agamemnon
is only an _elected_ general; this idea may be derived from the Ionic
poem, the _Cypria_. In Homer, Agamemnon is commander-in-chief _by
birth_; but the princes, in formal council, or on the field, deliver
their advice, which may or may not be accepted. Agamemnon usually gives
way to it. The Over Lord's rights are not strictly defined, except by
traditionary custom. Like Charlemagne in the later _Chansons de Geste_,
like Fion MacCumhail in his cycle, even like Arthur, the Achaean
Over Lord is not the favourite of the poets and romancers. They much
prefer, in Homer's case, the princes; in the mediaeval romances they
prefer Diarmaid, Cuchullain, Oscar, Lancelot, and the rest, to the
Over Lord. Except in the case of Arthur, who himself tends to become a
_fainéant_, the Over Lords are always capricious, arbitrary, unjust,
always encroaching, and are apt to be rebuked or even reviled, by
their more energetic subordinates. Agamemnon is in a position between
that of the Charlemagne of the _Chanson de Roland_, and the dotard
of the later _chansons_. His divine right is always recognised; his
bursts of insolent temper are easily checked; his nervousness as a
commander-in-chief brings on him rebukes to which he instantly yields,
and is partly redeemed by his personal prowess and skill with the
spear. When the Over Lord's insolence and injustice are beyond bearing,
the injured prince may blamelessly "renounce his allegiance," return
home or remain without taking part in battle or council. Nobody blames
Achilles for his mutiny, least of all does Athene, till he, in turn,
exceeds his rights by refusing atonement and apology.[8] It seems that
Achilles would actually have lost consideration had he returned to
action without receiving gifts of atonement,[9] as Meleager did in his
day. This is the chief point of the long exhortation of Phoenix.[10]
When reconciliation did occur, it was regulated by minute etiquette
(as in _Iliad_, xix. 171-183); there is an oath, a banquet, the gifts
of atonement are publicly brought into the midst of the Assembly, ἐς
μεσσην ἀγορήν, and exhibited: none of these points may be omitted in
the customary mode of giving satisfaction, ἵνα μή τι δίκης ἐπιδευὲς
ἔχηισθα.
These transactions Odysseus forces on the reluctant Achilles, as one
who "knows better" than he.[11]
There is nothing superstitious in the manly and constitutional attitude
of the princes towards the king. He is not a god of vegetation, who
is slain or sacrificed yearly or at longer intervals; if ever such a
mortal king god of vegetation existed anywhere. In the _Odyssey_ (xix.
107-114) we hear that, under a godfearing king, who reigns over strong
men and a large population, and maintains just dealings, the crops,
whether of grain or fruit-trees, and the flocks are fertile, while the
sea yields fish abundantly, "through the king's good government." Here
is a trace of belief in the prosperity of a good king, the gods reward
him, and his people prosper. But there is no hint that the king, as the
embodiment of a god, controls the weather.
The Achaean attitude towards the Over Lord is stated by Nestor,--"Think
not, son of Peleus, to strive with a king, might against might,
seeing that no common honour pertaineth to a sceptred king to whom
Zeus apportioneth glory." "I have beside me," says Agamemnon, "others
that shall do me honour, and above all Zeus, lord of counsel." He
inherits his sceptre "that over many islands and all Argos he should
be lord." He rules by right divine, but there are recognised limits
to his authority. This is a well-known form of polity in early
civilisations, and, so far, Homer, from first to last, thoroughly
understands his world. He never lets his Over Lord fall into the
decadence of Charlemagne in the _Chansons de Geste_. It may be a later,
it was certainly a more hostile spirit, as regards the Over Lord, that
reached the Cyclic poets (_circ_. 760-660), who dwell on the tyranny
suffered by Palamedes and Philoctetes, Palamedes being the inventor
of alphabetic writing. Pindar and the Greek tragedians followed, and
exaggerated such traditions.[12]
Homer retains the true sense of the position of the Over Lord, no
tincture of the ideas of later ages appears in the Epics. Now, is it
not a point worth considering that the Epics, though the critics take
them to have been open to interpolation even in their oldest passages,
down to 540 B.C. or thereabouts, never contain the word τύραννος or any
of its compounds? The τύραννος, the "Tyrant," was originally the person
who unconstitutionally seized power in one of the republics, usually
oligarchic, that succeeded to the Homeric kingships. We place the early
"tyrants" in the eighth century and onwards. To the Athenian tragedians
a Homeric king was a "tyrant." Yet despite the assumed facility of
interpolation into the Epics, even at a much later date than the eighth
century, no late poet foisted into our Epics the word τύραννος, nor
the ideas which it denotes. This abstinence is irreconcilable with the
supposed freedom of late interpolating poets in uncritical ages. The
Epics are perfectly consistent in their view of the divine right,
but limited power, of the Over Lord. He may display illegal arrogance
(ὕβρις), but he is never a τύραννος. The word, and the ideas connected
with the word,--usurpation by an individual of despotic power over
members of a free commonwealth,--were familiar to Greeks on both sides
of the sea in the eighth century. Interpolators of that period could
hardly have kept the word τύραννος out of their additions of new
matter, but it appears to occur for the first time in the Hymn to Ares:
"tyranny" (τύραννίς) is familiar to Archilochus.[13]
Thus, in the important matter of polity, we see that the Homeric
picture of society is coherent, represents a well-known social
and political state of affairs, is drawn with minute knowledge
of the rights and duties of all concerned, and bears no trace of
interpolations made under the later conditions known to Ionian poets
in Asia. But some epics of these poets display a grudge against the
Over Lord and his House, which is un-Homeric, and is exaggerated by the
Athenian tragedians.
[1] _Iliad_, xxiii. 832. All this passage, the conclusion of the
funeral games, is regarded as a late addition. It may be, but the poet
preserves the distinction between the uses of iron for implements, and
of bronze for weapons, which pervades both Epics. When a warrior like
Achilles offers a mass of iron for a prize, "we rather expect from
him," says Helbig, "an allusion to the military uses of the metal"
(_Das Homerische Epos_, pp. 330, 331, 1887). But Homer does not regard
iron as a military metal.
[2] _Iliad_, ix. 574-580.
[3] _Iliad_, xii. 421-423.
[4] xv. 498.
[5] Odyssey, xi. 490.
[6] Opp. 341.
[7] Codrington, _The Melanesians_.
[8] _Iliad_, ix. "When Achilles is justly angered with Agamemnon at
first none can blame him (ix. 523); but if he persists after Agamemnon
has sued for forgiveness, then there will be nemesis; people will be
indignant. He will know he is doing wrong." So Mr. Murray writes (Rise
of the Greek Epic, p. 81).
[9] _Iliad_, ix. 605.
[10] ix. 434 _et seqq_.
[11] They weary the critics, who are not at the Homeric point of view.
"It is quite conceivable that the whole idea of the Reconciliation
is an afterthought ... it is not only consistent with the character
of Achilles, but materially adds to the movement of the story, if we
suppose that on hearing of the death of Patroklos he set out to avenge
it without more ado" (Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 317).
[12] See _infra_, "The Story of Palamedes."
[13] 25 Bergk.