HOMER AND "THE SAGA"
Every reader of the _Iliad_ perceives that the poet knows an immense
mass of legend and tradition. Thus, like Shakespeare, and our great
masters of fiction, Fielding, Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, he rarely
introduces a minor character without marking the individuality in some
memorable way. Often he does this by some line or two on the ancestry
of the personage, and we are for a moment brought into touch with "old
unhappy far-off things," or meet some notable trait of character. Thus
Theano, daughter of Kisseus of Thrace, priestess of Athene in Troy, and
wife of Antenor, is only introduced to utter the prayer of the women to
the relentless goddess (_Iliad_, vi. 302-310). Yet we know her when we
meet her, for (_Iliad_, v. 69-71) we have already heard of her goodness
of heart. She reared Meges, a bastard of Antenor, "kindly, like her own
children, to please her lord." Here we have probably no more than a
touch of Homer's genial and discriminating art; it is not probable that
the poet took this trait from any traditional "saga."
On the other hand, when in a digression he makes Nestor speak of
old heroes, Epeians and Lapithae; or when Glaucus tells the tale of
Bellerophon and the wife of Proetus; or Phoenix touches on the tragedy
of fair-haired Meleager of Aetolia; or Agamemnon speaks of the birth
of Heracles, or, in several other references to Theban wars, to the
Amazons, and so forth, Homer is clearly drawing from the great
legendary store of Achaeans or Pelasgians (to use that term for the
earlier people).
All this matter is called "the saga" by the critics. As Homer comes at
the crowning period of epic poetry, as his instrument, the hexameter,
is delicately tempered by long processes, it seems probable that his
mind was full of ancient lays on legendary themes as well, probably,
as of _Märchen_ and traditions told orally in prose. These things are
to him what ballads and oral traditions were to Scott. Though he only
once, in a suspected passage, touches on the Choice of Paris (_Iliad_,
xxiv, 25-30), he must have known some tale which accounted for the
enmity of Hera to Ilios, and the hatred of Athene to the Asian city
of which she was patroness. Zeus himself (_Iliad_, iv. 31-33) seems
puzzled by the fury of Hera against Troy. _Quo numine laeso_? The cause
of wrath is, in fact, _spretae injuria formae_, the spite of neglected
beauty. No other reason (setting aside the favour of Ganymede, to whom
Homer only refers in the most casual way) has ever been given.
As to the Trojan affairs, Homer knows many things on which he only
touches briefly. It is clear that he knew a great saga about Trojan
legendary history; for example, about the wall built by the Trojans
and Pallas Athene to shelter Heracles when he fought a monster that
ravaged the land (_Iliad_, xx. 146). He also knows that Apollo was made
thrall to Laomedon, and built the city wall of Troy, but was defrauded
of his reward (xxi. 441-455). That Apollo and Poseidon therefore sent
the monster to which Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, was exposed, Homer
does not say; he commonly ignores the _märchenhaft_, the fairy-tale
points in a legend, but he knows that Heracles was also defrauded, and
avenged himself by sacking Ilios (v. 638641). Manifestly there was a
rich growth of _Märchen_ and legends clustered round Troy, and known to
the Achaeans; Homer merely alludes to it, and to events posterior to
the death of Hector.
He knows how Achilles fell in the Scaean gate, slain by Paris and
Apollo; he knows the Sack of Troy, the wooden horse; the Returns,
prosperous, troubled, or fatal, of the heroes; he knows Memnon's part
in the war, and the end of Aias; he knows that Philoctetes is to be
needed, and that Eurypylus fought and fell, and so forth. Concerning
some of these things he may have heard lays; others he may have learned
merely through oral tradition in prose.
Now it is at this point, namely, Homer's peculiar treatment of the
legendary material which reached him, whether in verse or in prose
_Märchen_, that his art stands especially apart from the art of poets
who followed him, whether the authors of the "Cyclic" Ionian Epics,
or the Athenian tragedians, or the dim genealogisers in verse of the
eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Homer deliberately _selects_ from
the "saga," or folk-tale, or bardic tradition, what is noble, heroic,
possible, and human. He also, in the _Iliad_, deliberately rejects
what is _märchenhaft_; the situations which belong to the datelessly
old popular _Märchen_, or "fairy tale." Later poets put these things
prominently forward; Homer ignores them. This is to be proved later in
detail: meanwhile here is another mark of the aloofness of Homer, of
his high aristocratic genius.
It seems certain that the Trojan legend, with the legends of the Theban
wars and tragedies, of the voyage of Argo, and of the hunt of the
Calydonian boar, existed in some consecutive form, and was supposed to
be record of historical facts before our Homeric poems were composed.
Actual history it was not, any more than the _Chansons de Geste_, the
poem of _Beowulf_, the two Irish cycles of Cuchullin and of Fian, or
the _Volsunga Saga_, or the romances of Arthur, are records of actual
history.
In some of these cycles of western Europe we know that historical
personages are involved,--about Charlemagne, of course, there is no
doubt; and there really were wars of the Cymri of Strathclyde against
the English invaders; and the romances appear to contain fanciful
accounts of actual battles of Arthur fought in Cumberland, Lothian,
Ettrick Forest, and the Lennox. But when King Loth of Lothian, whose
house plays so great a part in the romances, appears, we see that he
is only an "eponymous hero," his name being derived by legend from the
name of his realm, Lothian. About any real characters whose fame may
echo in the ancient Irish bardic traditions nothing can be known.
Homer's heroes are in the same case. There may have been a very early
Achaean attempt against the northern Asiatic shore of the Aegean.
There may have been wars of several States against Thebes. The voyage
of the Argo, on the other hand, is nothing but a tissue of diverse
_Märchen_, adroitly fitted into each other, as most formulae can glide
into any other _Märchen_ formula and be prolonged almost infinitely.
The Argo saga, as currently told, begins apparently with the tale
of the man who weds a fairy bride or a swan nymph, and later loses
her, like the Eskimo Bird Bride, the Sanskrit Urvasi and Pururavas.
In the saga the man is Athamas, king of the Minyae of Orchomenos,
or of Halos in Thessalian Phthiotis, or of Phthia. The bride is
Nephele the Cloud-maiden. The pair have two children, Phrixus and
Helle. The king takes another wife, and has another child by her. We
now have the stepmother formula. Ino ill-treats Phrixus and Helle.
Nephele returns to the house disguised as an old nurse (_East Lynne_
formula). She deceives Ino into slaying her own children in place of
her step-children (_Hop o' my thumb_ formula; but this is not the most
current version). Ino roasts the seed corn; there is no harvest, she
sends messengers to the Delphic oracle to bring back the false answer
that Phrixus must be sacrificed. When Athamas is about to sacrifice
him, or both him and Helle, Nephele produces as substitute the golden
(or white, or purple) ram, a gift of Hermes. On his back Phrixus, or
both Helle and Phrixus, escape.
This is merely the formula of the two children flying from cannibal
parents by the aid of a friendly animal, often a sheep; in Samoyed a
beaver which can speak.[1] In many variants of _Cinderella_ the helpful
sheep is the dead mother in that form. In _Asterinos and Pulja_, a tale
from Epirus,[2] a dog is the helpful animal; but the boy is turned into
a sheep, is slain by the girl's jealous mother-in-law, and from his
bones grows a wonderful apple-tree. The girl is thrown into the deep
water, but revives. In the Greek saga, Helle falls into the Hellespont
off the ram's back: her name is eponymous, derived from the Hellespont.
In some variants she does not escape on the ram. The later fortunes of
Athamas and Ino are variously told.
But the Argo saga is continued by making the heroes of all Hellas join
in "the classical Quest of the Grail," the search for the fleece of
the Golden Ram. Where it was, Homer, we shall see, clearly did not
know: the place was still in fairyland, unlocalised. Jason, as in a
very common _Märchen_ formula, collects companions with marvellous
gifts, Keen Eye (Lynceus), the Strong Man (Heracles), the prophet
(Orpheus), the winged men, sons of the North Wind, and so on. There
is nothing historic here; even thus, in Celtic saga, the miraculously
gifted heroes hunted the Twrch Trywyth, the boar. Even thus the
miraculously gifted Finnish heroes seek for the mystic Sampo in the
Kalewala. The Achaean heroes find the fleece in the hands of King
Aietes, who represents the giant of fairy tale, and has a fair daughter
(Medea) that aids the young adventurer, and enables him to plough the
perilous field with the untamable bulls, like Ilmarinen in the Finnish
_Kalewala_ (Rune 19), like the hero of Kilwch and Olwen in the Welsh
_Mabinogion_. She flees, as usual, with her lover from her father. Here
this formula ends; the return voyage and the later adventures of the
pair were fantastically told as geographical knowledge increased, after
the home of Medea had been located at Aia in Colchis, at the east of
the Euxine. Other formulae of _Märchen_ were introduced, the venomed
robe that burned up Glauce, the magic cauldron of youth that, in the
wrong hands, is deadly. Medea is taken here and there, to Corinth, to
Athens, mixed with the Theseus set of _Märchen_, made the eponymous
heroine of the Medes.
The Hunt of the Calydonian Boar, again, is of the same character as
the mythic boar hunt that ended in upper Ettrick; as the boar hunt of
Diarmaid, in Irish; and the hunt of the Welsh Mabinogion, where Keen
Eye and the rest reappear, in the Twrch Trywyth.
The growth of "Saga," or bardic tradition, is the same in all
countries. First we have the _Märchen,_ told in prose, as they still
exist among European peasants and in many "non-Aryan" peoples, from
the Samoyeds of the frozen north to the Red Indians, the Huarochiri
of Southern America, the Samoans, the Bechuanas, the Kanekas of New
Caledonia, the Santhals, and so forth. In the _Märchen_ the characters
are usually anonymous, a boy, a girl, a witch, a king, and the rest;
real characters, as Charlemagne, may appear. The events are not
localised. The situations are efforts of the primal romantic fancy;
like the fragments of coloured glass in the kaleidoscope, they fall
into any number of patterns.
As civilisation advances and a class of professional sennachies
appears, they give names to the characters; the anonymous young
adventurer becomes Jason or Theseus; the cunning man who plays
tricks on Death becomes Sisyphus; the monster, giant or beast, who
sets impossible tasks to the adventurer, becomes Minos or Aietes; his
wife or fair daughter, who baffles him and helps the hero, becomes
Ariadne or Medea. In place of the helpful old woman of fairy tale
comes Hera, whom Jason carries across the ford; or it is Athene, who
gives Bellerophon the golden bit that tames the magical horse; here he
is Pegasus. The rescuer of the girl exposed to a ravening monster is
now _named_ Perseus or Heracles. The brother and sister who flee from
cannibal parents, with the aid of a friendly animal, are named Phrixus
and Helle. In place of throwing behind them combs or stones which
baffle the pursuer by changing into forests or mountains, Medea and
Jason leave the mangled limbs of Medea's brother Absyrtus.
The lad who effects wonders by knowing the language of beasts, is
in Greece named Melampus; the giant, whose life-token is a lock
of his hair, becomes Nisus of Megara; his daughter, who loves the
adventurer, and cuts the giant's lock, purple or golden, so that he
is defeated, becomes Scylla; and Minos, who answers to the giant of
fairy tale in the Theseus Attic legend, in the Megarian fable is
himself the adventurer aided by the giant's daughter.[3] He does not
marry the treacherous daughter, but puts her to death; as Achilles,
in the Lesbian story, does not marry Pisidice, who for love of him
has betrayed her city, but has her slain. The man who, to fulfil
a prophecy, unwittingly weds his mother (a favourite character in
_Märchen_, as Comparetti has shown), becomes Oedipous: he is also the
answerer of riddles, a character of _Märchen_ found everywhere.[4]
Out of these originally anonymous and unlocalised personages and
romantic situations of _Märchen_, the Greek States made the heroes
and events of their legendary history. That history, as of Theseus,
Heracles, Perseus, Jason, Sisyphus, even Odysseus, Pelops, Oenomaus,
Athamas, Laomedon, is but a series of _Märchen_ localised; while, in
place of fairy godmothers, or anonymous benefactors, the old man or old
woman of _Märchen_, the Olympian gods are introduced, with their fairy
gifts, the cap of darkness, the winged shoon, the sword of sharpness
(Perseus), the power of taking all animal disguises. Homer knows the
attack of Heracles on the father and brothers of Nestor. Hesiod knew
the cause of the feud, Neleus refused to purify Heracles who had slain
his host under the hospitable roof. Hesiod knows that Poseidon had
given to Periclymenus, brother of Nestor, the power to appear in any
animal shape, eagle, ant, snake, or bee; and that while Periclymenus
lived, Heracles failed in the fight, and could not take Pylos. But when
Periclymenus, as a bee, settled on the chariot of Heracles, Athene shot
that bee with an arrow (see fragment of the _Eoiai_ 14 (33), with the
scholia).[5] Other examples of the wildest absurdities of _Märchen_,
retained and rejoiced in by the Ionic epic poets, are given later
("Homer and the Ionian Cyclic Poets"). But Homer, in the _Iliad_, takes
his heroes forth from the prison of _Märchen_: whether the fairy tales
had not yet become attached to Bellerophon, Achilles, and Meleager
in his time, or whether his genius ignored such fanciful elements of
tradition, Homer does not speak of the invulnerability of Achilles,
save on his heel; or tell the wooing by his father, Peleus, of Thetis
as she takes a variety of bestial forms. Either these situations had
not yet become attached to the story of Achilles, or Homer chooses to
ignore them. Such things do not come into the natural objective world
of the _Iliad_. In the digression of Bellerophon he recurs to the
human natural side of _Märchen_, the story of the woman who, vainly
attacking a man's virtue, accuses him falsely; the message or letter of
death,[6] his three strange adventures to achieve, that of the Chimaera
and others, and his winning of the king's daughter. This _Märchen_,
localised, is in a digression; but Homer usually keeps his _Märchen_
for the _Odyssey,_ and the incidents occur beyond the bounds of the
world he knows.
Now, even when Homer touches on the tale of Meleager, he says nothing
of that fairy property the "soul-box" or "life-token," the brand
snatched from the burning; or of the visit of the Spaewives, the Fates,
and their prophecy. He actually does not seem to know that incident.
Althaea, mother of Meleager, in Homer (_Iliad_, ix. 565-572), prays to
the Erinnyes and they hear her. She has not her son's "soul-box" or
"life-token" in her hands to burn it, and slay him. In Pausanias (x.
31. 3), Meleager is killed by Apollo, who is fighting for the Curetes
against the Aetolians. Meleager died, like Achilles, by Apollo's hand,
though Paris was an accomplice of the God in the case of Achilles.
Pausanias follows the Hesiodic _Eoiai_, which Kuhnert supposes to have
known the same story as Homer.[7]
As Kuhnert justly observes, the poetry of Homer is _knightly_. "An
der Hofen wurden die homerische Gedichte versungen ... the hero must
find his death at a divine hand in glorious warfare." The Athenian
tragedians are our oldest source for the Moirae and the fatal
life-token: a property very common in _Märchen_; but when the incident
first attached itself to Meleager we cannot know. This avoidance of the
folk-element, the _Märchen_, in the _Iliad_ is one of the things that
distinguishes Homer from the Ionian Cyclic poets, the Hesiodic school,
and the Athenian tragedians.
Homer, again, in another way, stands apart from the genealogising poets
of the eighth to seventh century (such as the school of "Hesiod," and
"Eumelus" of Corinth) by his method of handling tradition or saga.
These genealogising poets aimed at constructing history, and preluded
to the "logographers" in prose of the sixth century. Both they and
the logographers have the same simple method, that of the would-be
historic early mediaeval writers on Scotland and Ireland. Their plan
is to invent for each town or people an eponymous hero, whose name is
simply the name of the city or people (as, in Scotland, Fib for Fife,
Loth for Lothian, Scota for the Scoti). The hero, or heroine, founds
the city, or is first ancestor of the people. Next follow the legends
about heroic characters, as Perseus, Athamas, Pelops, Theseus, Aietes,
Phrixus, which are mere _Märchen_ of world-wide diffusion, localised,
with named persons for the characters.
The region of legend expands with the expansion of geographical
knowledge. Cities hasten, like Athens and Corinth, to attach themselves
to sagas, as that of Argo, in which they had no original part. Hesiod
extends the old saga, and carries descendants of the old characters,
as of Odysseus, to Italy, to Latium and Etruria. "Eumelus" drags
Corinth into the cycle of the Argonautic expedition: Athens, we have
said, brings Medea to Athens, and into her Theseus fable. Later the
logographers, in prose, continue the process and alter the genealogies
to suit their historical theories.
From all these processes Homer stands apart. He has not any historical
theory to prove. He seldom mentions an eponymous founder of a city,
or ancestor of a people. Nausithous founds Phaeacia, his city is not
called Nausithoa. Homer names Mykene (_Odyssey_, ii. 120), but does not
say that she founded Mycenae, as "Eumelus" says that Ephyre founded
the town of Ephyre (Corinth). You would not gather from Homer that the
Achaeans were descendants of Achaeus, or the Danaans of Danaus.
All these things are obvious and undeniable. Homer is a poet: the
genealogising writers in verse are aiming at constructing history
(_some_ history may be present), and at explaining the origins of
peoples and cities.
But, according to some of the modern learned, our Homer contains
borrowings from the Eumelian verses on Corinth. Thus Mr. Murray says
that the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ "not only refer to other legends as
already existing and treated by other poets; that every one admits; but
they often in their digressions tell stories in a form which clearly
suggests recapitulation or allusion. They imply the existence elsewhere
of a completer poetical treatment of the same subject," as in the tale
of Bellerophon, told to Diomede by Glaucus in _Iliad_, vi. "Is it not
plain that the poet of _Iliad_, vi., is in the first place referring to
an existing legend, and, secondly, one may almost say, quoting from an
existing poem?"[8]
Certainly Homer is referring to an existing legend, and not improbably
to a lay which in his time existed. But Mr. Murray goes on to suggest
that the existing poem referred to is the _Corinthiaca_ of "Eumelus,"
whom he takes to be a mythical name for the author of Corinthian
traditional poetry; von Christ thinks Eumelus of the seventh century.
Mr. Murray's argument seems to be, Homer knew a legend, probably
knew a poem, about Bellerophon, son of Glaucus, son of Sisyphus, who
dwelt in Ephyre (Corinth). "Eumelus" wrote a poem about Corinthian
affairs. Therefore the poet who introduced the tale told by Glaucus
into _Iliad_, vi., took it (textually, it seems to be suggested)
from "Eumelus."[9] In the same way the author of _Iliad_, v. 395-400,
and Panyassis, the uncle of Herodotus, presumably adapt from the same
source. Mr. Leaf, on the other hand, supposes the poet-uncle to give an
"echo" from the passage in the fifth book of the _Iliad._ There may be
an echo, in Homer on Heracles, from an older poem on Heracles, but that
poem is likely to be long anterior to the end of the sixth century.[10]
In any case the "Eumelus" known to us in Greek literary tradition was
a _tendenz_ poet, a poet with a purpose, with a pseudo-historical
theory to prove; he used the method of the genealogisers, who turned
into heroes and heroines men and women who were constructed out of
place-names; and he, in certain places, did not borrow from Homer, nor
Homer from him, for he and Homer flatly contradict each other. If all
this be not post-Homeric, what is?
Pausanias, in discussing Eumelus's peculiar version of the relations of
Medea to Corinth, quotes a "History of Corinth," in prose, by Eumelus,
"if he is really the author of it."[11] "Eumelus is also said to have
been a poet," and Pausanias avers that the only poem recognised as
genuine of Eumelus is a processional ode to Delian Apollo.[12] There
_was_ a prose version of his other work, and Clemens Alexandrinus
regarded Eumelus as a logographer like Acusilaus, who "turned the poems
of Hesiod into prose."[13]
But, genuine or not, an "Eumelian" _poem_ on a forged part of
Corinthian legendary history did at some time exist, for the scholiast
on Pindar (_Ol._ xiii.) cited eight lines of it; and these lines are
manifestly complementary to the part of the prose history by "Eumelus"
which Pausanias quotes. Taking the Eumelian verse and prose together,
we find that "Eumelus" in his _Corinthiaca_ appears in Greek literary
tradition as a chronicler in verse, a genealogist, a maker of patriotic
pseudo-history, and a narrator of a late version of the Argo story.
Now, as "Eumelus" began (as the Ram in the fairy story is requested
to do) "at the beginning," at the founding of Ephyre, or Corinth; and
as he told the Argonautic tale in full, including the aprocryphal
adventures of Medea in what he chose to call her rightful kingdom in
Corinth; and as the tale is a very long one, we may infer that this,
and not the entire mass of Corinthian legend, was the topic of his
book. If so, Bellerophon, though a Corinthian, was "out of the story";
for, by the Eumelian genealogies, he was four generations later than
Medea's tenure of the Corinthian throne. She was succeeded by Sisyphus,
whose exploits would fill a book; Sisyphus by Glaucus, and Glaucus
by Bellerophon. But the aim of "Eumelus" was to glorify Corinth by
attributing to her a share in the tale of Argo; its heroine, Medea,
must therefore be of the Corinthian Royal House; and, after proving
this, and telling the Argo saga, "Eumelus" must give her adventures,
after Argo's return to Greece, in Corinth; and these were many and
tragical.
Wishing, then, to attach Corinth to the Argonautic story, the
genealogiser manages matters thus. Helios, the Sun, he says, had two
sons _by Antiope_ (daughter of the river god Asopus); the sons were
Aloeus and Aietes. Homer does not borrow those facts from "Eumelus";
Homer tells a different story, but the historical effort of "Eumelus"
constrains him to make his local nymph, Antiope, mother of Aietes. That
is the basis of his forgery. Meanwhile Homer tells a contradictory
story about this Antiope (_Od_. xi. 260). Her lover was not Helios,
but Zeus. Her sons were not Aietes and Aloeus, but Amphion and Zethus.
Homer is not borrowing from _this_ genealogiser! The heroine Ephyre
founded Ephyre. (She was daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and wife of
Epimetheus, or daughter of Epimetheus, an un-Homeric kind of person.)
The river Asopus, father of Antiope (who was mother, says "Eumelus,"
by the Sun of Aloeus and Aietes), gave his name as "Asopia" to what
was later Sicyon. The Sun gave to _his_ son, Aloeus, "the land held by
Asopus, to his son Aietes he gave Ephyre" (Corinth). Aietes goes to
Colchis (a place necessarily unnamed by Homer, for it is at the extreme
east of the Euxine); but previously had arranged that Bounos is to be
regent of Ephyre till Aietes, _or a descendant of his,_ returns and
claims it.[14] Medea is to be that descendant.
So far we have Eumelian _verse_. How the story went on we learn from
the _prose_ version cited by Pausanias. Bounos died as king of Ephyre,
and was succeeded by the nephew of Aietes (a son of his brother
Aloeus), named Epopeus.[15] Epopeus was harsh to _his_ son Marathon,
and Marathon fled to Attica and founded the famous deme of Marathon. He
had two sons, Sicyon, to whom, on the death of his own father, Epopeus,
he gave Sicyon; while Ephyre he gave to his son Corinthus; hence
Ephyre came to be called Corinth. When Corinthus died childless, the
Corinthians sent to Colchis for Medea, in accordance with the entail
made by Aietes (as "Eumelus" has told us in verse), when he left
Ephyre for Colchis.[16] Nothing can be less Homeric.
The "Eumelus" of whom we have reports wrote pseudo-history in verse,
for he has to make Medea survive Aietes, Bounos, Epopeus, Marathon,
and Corinthus, and then, in the prime of beauty, succeed to the realm
of Corinthus as Queen of Corinth. Leaving Corinth for Athens under a
cloud, Medea gives Corinth to Sisyphus.[17]
"Eumelus," as Seeliger observes,[18] knows the Argo story in the common
late expanded form, Colchis and all; but chooses to make Aietes,
contrary to all other authorities, a king of Corinth. Attica, too,
must needs attach herself to the story of Argo, by making Medea seduce
King Aegeus, the father of Theseus, and try to poison Theseus himself:
she also made Aegeus send him on the desperate adventure of fighting
the Bull of Marathon.[19] This Bull of Marathon _donne à penser_. In
one legend Aegeus, father of Theseus, sent Androgeos, son of Minos, to
fight the bull, which killed him. It was therefore but tit-for-tat when
Minos sent Athenian tributary boys and girls to fight _his_ bull, the
bullheaded Minotaur.[20]
"Eumelus," as far as our evidence goes, stands for the school who,
for every town, supposed an eponymous person as founder, for Ephyre
(Corinth) he gives the nymphe Ephyre. Now Homer does not work on these
lines. When "Eumelus" had got his pseudo-history and false genealogies
to his taste, he must have told at full length the tale of Argo, for we
have five lines of his describing the terror caused in Aietes and the
Colchians by the throwing of the weight by Jason among the armed brood
born of the plain, which Jason ploughed with fire-breathing bulls.
These things, then, are what Greek literary tradition reports about
a pseudo-historical genealogist, and teller of the tale of Argo with
a purpose. That he ever mentioned Bellerophon we have no proof:
Pausanias does not cite Eumelus for Bellerophon. Homer, as usual, omits
the _Märchen_ of the winged horse Pegasus, whereby, in later poems,
Bellerophon accomplishes his feats. Pindar is copious about Pegasus:
that noble animal. The peculiarly gifted horse, hard to bridle, is
common property of "fairy tales." Usually some friendly person tells
the adventurous lad to use a peculiar bridle without which the steed is
untamable. The boy can always sell the horse, but keep the bridle; the
purchaser returns the nag, and the hero keeps the money. In Pindar's
Fourth Pythian Ode, Athene is the benevolent person of the _Märchen_.
Bellerophon, wanting to break in Pegasus, sleeps in her temple; she
presents him with the magical golden bit and head-stall. Dropping
Pegasus, magical bridle and all, Homer only says that the gods "gave
Bellerophon friendly convoy to Lycia."[21] Mr. Murray asks, "What
blameless guiding of the gods led Bellerophon to Lycia?" Clearly he
flew thither through upper air on Pegasus, like Commodore Trunnion
leaping a sunken way on the road to the hymeneal altar, "to the
unspeakable terror and amazement" of a waggoner below, says Smollett.
But Homer is not Smollett, and does not send Bellerophon flying through
air on a horse. Pindar saw no objections to the incident.[22]
Here we must try to explain a point on which Mr. Murray remarks, "There
has been an extraordinary reluctance among scholars to ... admit the
possibility of 'Homer,' as the phrase is, borrowing from the supposed
later author 'Eumelus,' or even from 'Hesiod.'" The reluctance is
natural and justifiable; because when we say "Eumelus" or "Hesiod," we
mean just what we have received from antiquity under the names of these
men. Their work, as it reaches us, is un-Homeric, is later, we say,
than the _Iliad_. But if "Eumelus" be a mythical name for a supposed
author of a body of Corinthian heroic poetry: if the Eumelian matter
which we have received was not that, then we know nothing about that,
and cannot say whether our Homer borrowed from some other Eumelian
_epê_ or not. Mr. Murray, as to Homer's debt to "Eumelus," writes: "If
anything were needed to make it clearer still, it would be that the
Verses of Eumelus are quoted as the earliest authority for the story
of the Argo and Medea, and the composer of our _Odyssey_ speaks of
the Argo as a subject of which 'all minds are full'"[23] The reader
naturally gathers that our Homer took his information about Argo from
"Eumelus." We can only say, "not from the Eumelus known to us in Greek
literary tradition." Thus Hesiod[24] tells of the birth of Circe and
Aietes her brother (the father of Medea) in precisely the same terms as
Homer does, and as Eumelus does not.[25] Both poets say that Helios, by
_Perses_ (Homer), or _Perseis_ (Hesiod), a daughter of Oceanus, was the
father of Circe and Aietes. Homer does not mention Medea, but Hesiod
says that she was the daughter of Aietes. Now Eumelus, in what we have
of him, says nothing of Circe, but makes Aietes the son of Helios and
Antiope, _not_ of Perses as in Homer. Manifestly, then, Homer did not
take his version from _this_ Eumelus; while, when Homer and Hesiod
precisely agree, if either borrowed from the other, it were quite
arbitrary to say that Homer borrowed from Hesiod, who knows Latium and
Etruria.
Homer certainly did not borrow here from our Eumelus, for he differs
from Eumelus; nor is Eumelus quoted, as far as I am aware, "as the
earliest authority for" the story of Argo. The scholiast on Pindar,
as I, for one, understand him, quotes Eumelus for something quite
different, namely, for his peculiar account (adopted by Pindar when
praising a Corinthian athlete) of Medea as rightful Queen of Corinth;
a point on which no Greeks agreed with the patriotic chronicler, the
Corinthian Eumelus, as Pausanias observes.
Homer knows about the ship Argo, and her escape from the clash of the
Rocks Wandering, through the favour of Hera.[26] The dangers of these
rocks are described by Circe to Odysseus, for he must pass by that
perilous path of the sea; and Circe ought to know, for she is sister of
King Aietes, from whose land Argo was sailing when she met the rocks.
But where did Aietes dwell? On that point Homer says nothing and knew
nothing.
It is manifest that Homer neither knows where Aiaie, the isle of
Circe, is, nor where the home of King Aietes is. To him Aiaie is "an
unsubstantial fairy place." In the _Odyssey_ (xii. 3, 4), Circe's
isle is "near the home and dancing-places of the Dawn, and the land
of sunrising." You cannot go farther east in a black ship. But in
Hesiod,[27] Circe's Aia must be in the west, for her sons by Odysseus
(unheard of by Homer) rule over Latins and Tyrsenians. Later poets
placed the Aia of Circe's brother, Aietes, in the east, in Colchis, at
the eastern limit of the Euxine; and Circe's Aia they located in the
west, at the promontory of Circeei in Italy. Homer himself shows no
knowledge of Italy, on one side, or of the extremity of the Euxine on
the other.[28] Even Mimnermus places the city of Aietes vaguely "at the
limit of Oceanus."[29] By way of finding reason where there is none,
Apollonius Rhodius explains that Circe originally lived in the Aia of
the east, as in the _Odyssey_, but was transported by Helios to the Aia
in the west.[30] Homer being so vague, we do not say he is borrowing
from our Eumelus, who locates Aietes in Colchis, under Caucasus, which
Homer, if pre-Ionian, never knew. Had Homer, or any of the supposed
late contributors to the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, lived in the eighth to
seventh centuries, and studied our Eumelus, or even our Hesiod, the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ would have had much more extensive geographical
knowledge than they possess. No one will say that our Homer borrows
from a genealogiser like our Eumelus, when Eumelus does not even agree
with Homer about the mother of Aietes.
The _Iliad_ does know that Jason, in the isle of Lemnos, had a son by
Hypsipyle;[31] and the adventures of the Argonauts in Lemnos are part
of the story of Argo. But Lemnos is well within Homer's geographical
knowledge, while the homes of Aietes and Circe are far beyond its
limits.
The confusion of early mythical geography is inextricable. In the
_Odyssey_ the ship Argo met the Rocks Wandering on her way home from
Aietes. Odysseus meets the rocks on his way home from Circe. She dwells
in the farthest east; so then, it seems, did Aietes. In Pindar,[32]
Argo encounters the rocks on her outward and eastward way, before she
enters the Euxine. Homer knows that Jason loved Hypsipyle in Lemnos,
whether on his way to or his return from Aietes. Pindar says on his
return westward to Greece, after he has visited Oceanus, the Red Sea,
and Africa. The common story, as in Apollonius Rhodius, makes Jason
love Hypsipyle in Lemnos as he sails eastwards and outward bound to
Colchis. If he wooed her thus, on his way home, _with Medea,_ as
Pindar tells, one can only say that he was a brave man.
Let us next, before going deeper into the "Saga," examine the case
of Thersites, the impudent demagogue of _Iliad_, ii., never again
mentioned by Homer. Mr. Murray is rather surprised "to find that
Thersites is really an independent saga-figure with a life of his own,
and very distinguished relations. He was a son of Agrios, the savage
Aetolian king, and first cousin once removed of the great Diomedes.
His mother was Dia, a palpable goddess." He was killed by Achilles for
jeering at his grief over the slain Amazon, Penthesilea. Achilles was
purified by Odysseus, but Diomede took up his feud.[33]
In Pherecydes (fr. 82), Thersites is an Aetolian, thrown over a rock by
Meleager for his cowardice in the boar hunt, but not killed.[34]
All this about Thersites is really "saga" stuff,--invented about the
date of the _Aethiopis_. But Thersites was no hero of "saga" in the
time of Homer. Had he been the son of a goddess (otherwise unknown)
and of "a savage Aetolian king" (Homer's Aetolians are as civilised as
his other peoples), the poet would have said so. He is most careful,
we saw, to tell us who his heroes are (except the Athenians), even
when they only appear for the purpose of being slain. But he says not
a word about the genealogy and antecedents of Thersites, who is only
a man of the λαός or host, food for bronze. "The savage king of the
Aetolians," Agrios, has been picked out by some one suffering from
la manie cyclique, who was anxious to tell "what became of them all,"
from _Iliad_, xiv. 114-125: "no doubt an interpolation," says Mr. Leaf,
"like many others, of the genealogical school connected with the name
of Hesiod."
Here, at all events, whether the genealogy be late and Hesiodic or not,
Diomede gives to Agamemnon his genealogy, in Aetolia.
Portheus
_______|__________________
| | |
Agrios Melas Oeneus
|
Tydeus
|
Diomede
The _manie cyclique_ inserted
Agrios
|
Thersites, for it was desired to tell what became of Thersites;
and--not to lose sight of a person so notable as Thersites--the poet
made Achilles kill him, a much older man than Achilles, for his
mockery. Then Diomede (who does not remonstrate when Odysseus calls him
the basest, socially, of the host, and beats him) takes up his feud
when he is slain.[35]
Homer has plainly no idea that Thersites is of royal and divine
lineage, all that is a later invention of "the cyclic mania," and
is as old, at least, as the age of the Ionian cyclic poet of the
_Aethiopis_.[36] The very scholiasts said that Homer marked the base
birth of Thersites by saying nothing about his parentage and home.
In Homer, as in the earliest _Chansons de Geste_, there is the knightly
poetic legend; and in the Cyclics, at least in the case of Thersites,
there are the later expansions and continuations made under the
influence of _la manie cyclique_. The _dénouement_ of the _Telegonia_,
the last of the Cyclics, is purely absurd. Telegonus marries his aged
stepmother, Penelope, and Telemachus marries his father's mistress,
Circe!
To explore the relations of Homer and of "saga" to _Märchen_, or
popular tales, attached to real or fabulous heroes and heroines of the
past, would require a volume.[37] Almost all Greek pseudo-historical
tradition consists of a string of _Märchen_, known all over the world:
any student of folk-lore who reads the Achaean legends in Grote can
identify the masterless _Märchen_ which have been attached to the
heroic figures. In exactly the same way, _Märchen_ are attached to
Charlemagne in the _Chansons de Geste_; to Arthur in the romances;
and we might as well look to them for political and personal history
as to Homer. Naimes, Ganelon, Olivier, the expedition of Charlemagne
to Constantinople, his wars with the Saracens, and other persons and
events in the _Chansons de Geste_, yield no material to the historian;
nor do Lancelot, Galahad, Palamedes, and Tristram, and Arthur's foreign
conquests in the romances. What history there is rests obscure.
On the other hand, an attempt has recently been made to extract some
grains of "tribal" history, before and after the Achaean migration to
Asia, from the names of the heroes in the _Iliad_, and from the places
where, in post-Homeric Greece, they received worship. This effort is
made by Dr. Erich Bethe, in his _Homer und die Heldensage_, and Mr.
Murray follows Bethe in _The Rise of the Greek Epic_. We may take a
notable example of the method in the case of Hector. "Hector seems to
belong to Boeotia." It may be worth while to examine the reasoning
on which this most unexpected opinion is based. The idea was first
propounded by Ferdinand Dümmler in a short _Anhang_ to Studniczka's
_Cyrene._ "Hector was worshipped as a hero in Boeotian Thebes," says
Mr. Murray, quoting Dümmler, and Dümmler's source is apparently
Pausanias.[38] If the Boeotians in the time of Pausanias regarded
Hector as of Boeotian birth, the fact would be curious. But they did
nothing of the kind. "The Thebans show the tomb of Hector near the
Well of Oedipous. They say that Hector's remains were brought here
from Ilium in accordance with the following oracle: "Ye Thebans, if
you wish your country to be wealthy, bring to your city from Asia the
bones of Hector the son of Priam, and respect the hero at the bidding
of Zeus."[39]
This was a real or an _imaginary_ case of the body-snatching of which
Herodotus speaks frequently. The relics of St. Hector would be valuable
to Thebes. The Thebans, in fact, may have wished to propitiate a hero
who had slain, according to Homer, many Boeotians in battle, and who
might still be hostile, and even fight against them in battle, as
dead heroes were apt to do. Pausanias (ix. 4. 3, ix. 39. 3) mentions
also the graves of certain Boeotian heroes, one of them wounded, the
other slain by Hector, as still honoured in Boeotia. Hector slew, or
wounded, or fought Homeric heroes from Phocis and from Boeotia; and
Epeigeus, a suppliant of Peleus (_Iliad_, xvi. 570 _et seqq_.), and
an Aetolian hero, an Athenian, a Mycenaean, an Elian, and so on.
What follows? These names of heroes slain by Hector, Thessalians,
Aetolians, Phocians, and Boeotians, are thought to suggest that, as
Mr. Murray translates Dr. Bethe, "Hector, or rather the tribe which
honoured Hector as their hero, migrated by this road,"--by the road on
which these Aetolians, Thessalians, Phocians, and Boeotians--or the
tribes which honoured them as heroes--used to live. "More accurately,
the tribe gradually, in how many centuries none can tell, moved in
a south-easterly direction, driven by a pressure which was no doubt
exerted by the Aeolic tribe represented in the Epos by Achilles."
"These are no pictures of phantasy that I let loose to play about
here," says Dr. Bethe (p. 16).
What else but phantasies can we possibly call them? That Hector's tomb
was shown in Thebes, does by no means prove that he, or a tribe which
was the Hector tribe, once lived in Boeotia. Heroes, like saints,
had tombs and chapels in many regions where they were not born, and
which they never visited. The grave of St. James was shown--in Spain!
Ariadne's ashes had been shown in Argos. Hector, in the _Iliad_, killed
the men in his way. In addition to the victims chosen out by Dr. Bethe,
he slew Stichios, an Athenian; Amphimachus, an Elian, and Periphetes of
Mycenae.[40]
This does no more prove that Hector was a Boeotian than that he was an
Athenian. He slew Schedios, a Phocian, yet he was no more a Phocian
than an Athenian, he merely killed the men whom he met. If we are
to argue, that he or the tribe which honoured him was driven out of
Aetolia and Thessaly down to Boeotia, Phocis, and Attica, we must,
by parity of reasoning, argue that the Hector tribe (in Gaelic, the
MacEachans), were driven into Peloponnesus, to Mycenae and Elis, for
Hector slew Periphetes of Mycenae, and Amphimachus, of Elis.[41] The
Mycenaean, Elian, and Athenian are not mentioned by Dr. Bethe. Nor can
Hector be converted into a Boeotian by the circumstance that he fought
a kind of courteous duel with Aias, while Aias was really the Locrian
Aias, we are told, and so a neighbour of the Boeotian Hector.[42]
Hector's relations with Aias[43] are far from neighbourly and friendly.
This instance of Hector is one of many in which the names of heroes are
taken to represent "tribes" which had a cult of these heroes, though
Homer knows nothing about this cult as practised in heroic Greece,
except in Athens. We learn nothing from Homer about "tribes" or clans
with a sacred eponymous hero, or with any "hero" in the sense of the
word as used in the Greece of history. We cannot assume that the
_Iliad_ introduces, in the combats of heroes, memories of tribal wars
in Greece in the pre-Homeric age, and transfers them, in the shape of
single combats, to the plain of Troy!
Heroic relationships were claimed long after Homer by peoples like
the Dorians and Romans and English and many others, merely to connect
themselves with the great legend of Troy; and the Greek cults of
heroes, a religion unknown to Homer, were carried into regions with
which Homer's men had no connection. We might as well look for Cymric
tribal wars in the feuds and names of the knights in the Arthurian
romances, or for Irish tribal feuds in the names of Ferdiad and
Cuchullain, as for prehistoric migrations in the names of Hector,
Leltus, Stichios of Attica, Periphetes of Mycenae, and Amphimachus of
Elis.
"Hector," we are told, "was a great 'slayer of men,' and his victims
in the _Iliad_ make a sort of road from Thebes upward to the bounds of
Achilles' region."[44] They also "make a sort of road" to Mycenae and
Elis by way of Athens: that is the history of the tribe, preserved
in the names of his victims,--names which, it appears, "are short"
for defeated tribes. As for the evidence of a Helen tribe at Sparta,
because Helen had a shrine and worship there, we have no evidence that
the Achaeans had any heroic shrines or hero-worship,--the evidence
is that they had none,--but the assumption is that Homer represents
"another stream of history," and, apparently, that his people turned
tribal names and tribal gods of an unknown past, into heroic men and
women. The opposite theory is that the hero-worshipping people of
historic Greece devoted themselves to such patron saints as they knew
through Homer, as the Arabs have saints whom they know about through
the Hebrew Scriptures.
I am not aware that in the bardic history, or "saga" of any people,
tribes are spoken of under the names of their tribal heroes in such a
way as to cause confusion. None is caused by Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim,
and so on in the Old Testament, but in other Biblical cases there may
be trouble. Local _tribes_, as far as I am aware, are nowhere named
by patronymics; certainly they are not in Australia, India, America,
and Africa, except, among the Zulus, by the name of a man plus Ama,
AmaFinn, and so forth. Thus the theory that Hector is the name of a
prehistoric Boeotian local tribe seems to me fantastic. We might as
well look for remnants of tribal history in Kay, Gawaine, Naimes, and
Ganelon.
Surely it is an error in historical method to reason as if pre-Homeric
Greeks were as addicted to divinising men, building their shrines, and
sacrificing to them, as the post-Homeric Greeks were in the seventh
and all later centuries. We might as well argue that the apostolic
Christians practised mediaeval saint-worship, and adored and built
innumerable chapels to dead Saints, because this was the custom of
mediaeval Christianity.
To sum up, we have proved that our Homer, in his treatment of old
tradition, is a noble poet, that he stands aloof from all the others of
Greece in his refusal (save in the _Odyssey_, a romance) to introduce
the wild elements of _Märchen_, the childish miracles; while he is
equally remote from the methods of the pseudo-historians like Eumelus
as known to us, and all the Hesiodic genealogisers and inventors of
eponymous heroes; and from the _manie cyclique_ of the Ionian Cyclic
poets. Really no fact can be more certain; and this fact, even if it
were not corroborated by all the others, would prove our Homer to be
"alone, aloof, sublime."
[1] Castren, _Ethnol. Vorlesungen_, pp. 164-169.
[2] Von Hahn, _Griechische Märchen_, 1.
[3] Pausanias, i. 19, ii. 34.
[4] Child, _English and Scottish Ballads_, vol. i., "Riddles wisely
Answered."
[5] Yen. A., _Iliad_, ii. 336. Rzach, _Hesiod_, p. 326.
[6] For many cases in _Märchen_, see Mr. Crookes' _Folk-Lore_, vol.
xix. p. 156.
[7] Roscher's _Lexikon_, vol ii. p. 2594.
[8] _R. G. E._ pp. 161, 162.
[9] Textually, for, in _Iliad_, vi. 200, 'Ἀλλ' ὄτε δὴ καὶ κεῑνος
ἀπήχθετο πᾱσι θεοῑσιν (referring to Bellerophon), Mr. Murray renders,
"But when he also was hated of all the gods," and asks, "Why the
phrase, 'when he also'?" Homer is, "one may almost say, quoting from
an existing poem." Now I understand Glaucus in this "he also" to refer
to the remark of Diomede (vi. 140) on Lycurgus's being "hated of all
the gods." He repeats the very words of Diomede. "Here is another man
who, like Lycurgus in _your_ story, was _hated of all the gods_."
Consulting Mr. Leaf's note (vi. 200), I find that this is also the
opinion of Ameis: Mr. Leaf thinks it "too far-fetched." The distance
is sixty lines (vi. 140-200). In his translation of the passage in
Leaf, Lang, and Myers, Mr. Leaf translates, with Monro, "even he," even
Bellerophon, whom the gods had loved. Surely no textual quotations by
Homer from the so-called "Eumelus" need be imagined.
[10] _R. G. E._ pp. 164, 165.
[11] Pausanias, I. I.
[12] _Ibid._ iv. 4. 1.
[13] Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. iii. p. 2, citing Clemens, _Strom_. i.
398, ed. Potter.
[14] Eumelus in Kinkel, p. 188.
[15] Pausanias, ii. 3. 10.
[16] Pausanias, ii. i. i.
[17] _Ibid_. ii. 3. 10, 11.
[18] "Medea," Reseller's _Lexikon_, ii. 2. 2492.
[19] Seeliger, Roscher's _Lexikon_, ii. 2. 2496.
[20] Roscher, _Lexikon_, vol. i. 342.
[21] _Iliad_, vi. 171.
[22] "Pegasus is omitted by Homer as a monster," Mr. Murray justly
observes (_R. G. E_. p. 162, note I). No other poet omitted "monsters";
not Pindar for one, or Hesiod.
[23] _R. G. E_. p. 163.
[24] _Theogony_, 956-962.
[25] _Odyssey_, x. 137.
[26] _Odyssey_, xii. 57-62.
[27] _Theogony_, 1011-1015.
[28] Roscher, _Lexikon_, vol. i. pp. 108, 109.
[29] Mimnermus, Fragment 11. Bergk.
[30] _Argonautica_, iii. 309 ff.
[31] _Iliad_, vii. 468, 469, xxi. 41, xxiii. 747.
[32] _Pythian Odes_, iv.
[33] _R. G. E._ pp. 185, 186. All this comes from the _Aethiopis_,
or _Sack of Ilios_, followed by Chairemon in his tragedy, _Achilles
Thersitoctonos_, with scholia on the Philoctetes (445), Quintus
Smyrnaeus (of the fourth century a.d.). Dictys Cretensis, the prose
compiler of the second century a.d., does not mention Thersites.
[34] do not enter into the theory of his relations (1) to the
_pharmakos_, driven out of Athens as a human scape-goat, and whipped,
perhaps sacrificed; or (2) with Theritas, a name of Ares in Laconia,
according to Pausanias. Homer in his Achaean way never alludes to the
cruel and lewd, or magical affair of the _pharmakos_.
[35] _Iliad_, ii. 246-248. "I deem that no baser-born man (χερειότερον)
came with Agamemnon." χερειότερον "virtually = χερείονα, see Iliad, i.
80" (Leaf), where a king is contrasted with ἀνδρὶ χέρηῑ, "a meaner man"
(Leaf, in Leaf, Lang, Myers, _The Iliad_, p. 3).
[36] The Cyclic story also demonstrates its un-Homeric origin by
dragging in "the hocus-pocus of purification" (_R. G. E._ p. 134). But
Usener, seeing, in Sir Walter Scott's words, "further into a millstone
than the nature of the millstone permits," makes Thersites = Theritas =
Enyalios (Hesychius), and suggests that two sacrifices by Spartan lads
to Enyalius and Achilles, after a fight with fisticuffs, and ducking of
the vanquished, may be "the ritual form of the old battle of Achilles
and Thersites" =(?) "the common annual rites of the slaying of Winter
by Summer, or of one vegetation god by another" (_R. G. E_. pp. 186,
187). There was not much of a "battle" between Thersites and Achilles!
The millstone, really, has a hole through it. To Homer, Thersites is a
nobody. His rank, relationships, and fate are due to the later "Cyclic
mania," and to "poetic justice."
[37] Will nobody write it?
[38] _R. G. E._ p. 196.
[39] Pausanias, ix. 18
[40] _Iliad_, xiii. 185, xv. 329, 638.
[41] xv. 636-644.
[42] Bethe, p. 15.
[43] _Iliad_, xiii. 801-832 and _passim_.
[44] _R. G. E_. p. 197.