THE STORY OF PALAMEDES
There is one hero of the Cyclic Ionian poems, at least of the _Cypria_,
whose story illustrates the depth and width of the gulf which severs
Ionia from the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. The _Cypria_, like the Attic
traditions used by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and the Sophists,
such as Gorgias, displays a strange hatred of Homer's favourite hero,
the taker of the city, Odysseus. He, in most of the plays where he
appears, is a peculiarly mean character: in the _Iliad_ he is as noble
and resolute as he is sagacious: in the _Odyssey_ he is _ruse_, because
his desperate situation, alone in a throng of foes, requires cunning.
Only Agamemnon once, in one of his tempers, accused Odysseus of "evil
wiles" _(Iliad_, iv. 339). Professor Mahaffy has offered an explanation
of "the degradation of Odysseus" (and of other Homeric heroes) "in
Greek literature" very different from that which I shall venture to
suggest.[1] Mr. Mahaffy thinks that "the Attic standard of morality,
the standard of Aeschylus and Euripides ... was higher and not lower
than that of the Ionic court poets, and that the degradation of the
Homeric heroes was partly owing to a moral advance, and not a moral
decay, in the Greek nation." But what has Homer to do with the morality
of Ionic court poets, about whom we have no information, unless the
Cyclic poets were court poets? In Mr. Mahaffy's opinion, the Sicilian
Epicharmus began the attacks on "Odysseus the Knave." "At all epochs
and among all Greeks, lying and dishonesty were prominent vices."
Certainly they were in historic times. Traitors were too well known
to historic Greece, but Homer seems never to have heard of treachery.
Odysseus has his ruses in the _Odyssey_, and therefore, Mr. Mahaffy
thinks, the Greeks, knowing their own weak point, falseness, attacked
it through Odysseus. Epicharmus began the assault, Pindar followed
Epicharmus, and, in the Nemean Odes, vii. viii., belittled Odysseus
(all in the interests of honesty), while Sophocles in the _Philoctetes_
carries on the crusade.
It did not occur to Mr. Mahaffy that the crusade began, long before
Epicharmus and Pindar, in the Ionian _Cypria_. In the Nemean Odes, vii.
viii., Pindar naturally belittled Odysseus, to whom were awarded the
arms of Achilles, which the hero, Aias, desired to win. Athens always
claimed Aias as a friend and ally, wherefore, and in pursuance, as we
shall see, of the feud of Palamedes, Attic poets favoured Aias and
maligned his successful rival. They also backed Philoctetes against
these "tyrants," the Atridae; they had no grudge against Achilles,
though they could not represent his chivalry. Mr. Mahaffy does not
mention Palamedes at all, does not see that the Athenians take up
the Ionian grudge, and is "somewhat impatient of all the fashionable
enthusiasm about Homer's grace, and refinement, and delicacy of
feeling."
It is to Ionia, and not, primarily, to the advanced morality of
republican Athens, morality certainly not Homeric, that we must trace
the degradation of Odysseus in the literature of later Greece and of
Rome. Ionia followed the example of the base-born Thersites (_Iliad,_
ii. 220). The true cause of this degradation is that Ionia possessed,
in Palamedes, a hero infinitely wiser, braver, and more learned and
inventive than Odysseus, and that the death of this very perfect
knight, of whom Homer never says a word, is attributed to the jealousy
and cruelty of the Ithacan, and of his chosen companion-in-arms,
Diomede. All this appeared in the _Cypria,_ and, later, Attic wits
perhaps improved on the story, and implicated the Atridae and the whole
Achaean host, as well as Odysseus, in the guilt of maligning, falsely
accusing, condemning, and stoning Palamedes. It was to punish this
collective guilt, we shall see, that Zeus, in the _Cypria_, detached
Achilles from the Achaean cause.
Manifestly all this tale, known to us first in the _Cypria_, is
un-Achaean and un-Homeric, and the question arises, did Homer know
the story? If he did, and if he believed it, he deliberately chose
to ignore it, and to represent Odysseus and Diomede in the most
favourable light. But did Homer know about Palamedes; when Homer sang
had Palamedes his place in the Trojan "saga"? I think not, for reasons
to be given. To understand the subject, we must examine what remains
of the tale of Palamedes as found in the fragments and epitome of the
_Cypria_, and then consider the later expansions and additions.
The _Cypria_ takes Menelaus to Crete before Helen's abduction; and in
the legend as arranged in a late age in the prose of Dictys Cretensis
(made in the first or second century A.D.), Agamemnon also is in Crete,
with Palamedes, son of Clymene and Nauplius of Nauplia, on business
connected with the inheritance of Atreus. How far Dictys follows the
_Cypria_, how far he works here on other legends, and how far he
invents, it is not easy to be certain. The _Cypria_ certainly yielded
the fact that, when Helen eloped, Menelaus was not at home, but in
Crete. Probably the _Cypria_ explained why he went thither.[2] The
real hero of Dictys and, I suggest, of the _Cypria_ is Palamedes, a
character unknown to or ignored by Homer, but of high importance in
post-Homeric Ionian and Athenian poetry. In all of these Palamedes is
the best man in council and in the field, and is the victim of Odysseus
(a very base scoundrel) and of the Atridae. It is clear that Palamedes
occupied a prominent place in the _Cypria_, for a "part or rhapsody" in
it "appears to have borne the special title of _Palamedeia_."[3]
This rhapsody must have contained much information which is not
preserved in the summary of the _Cypria_. About Palamedes we learn no
more from the brief epitome and scanty fragments of the _Cypria_ than
that (1) he detected and unmasked the feigned madness of Odysseus, when
he tried to shirk the summons to the Trojan war; (2) that Palamedes was
treacherously drowned, when angling, by the Homeric companions-in-arms,
Odysseus and Diomede. (3) According to the _Cypria_, the Achaean host,
once landed in Asia, was perishing for lack of supplies, but Palamedes
brought to the camp the three fairy daughters of the Delian priest
of Apollo, who magically produced corn, wine, and oil.[4] This silly
_Märchen_ about the fairy gifts of the three girls could never have
been introduced into an Epic by Homer, but it is quite in the manner of
the Cyclics.
According to the account of Trojan matters in prose, by the Greek
rhetorician, the pseudo-Dictys Cretensis, who rationalises everything,
Palamedes was successful as head of the Commissariat, and obtained
supplies when Odysseus failed. This is merely Dictys' way of narrating
the _Märchen_ of the girls with fairy gifts, and it was in jealousy
of Palamedes' success that Odysseus, aided by Diomede, slew the hero,
according to Dictys, treacherously, in the manner of the _Märchen_ of
Jean de l'Ours. According to Dictys, Odysseus and Diomede persuaded
the guileless Palamedes that there was a hoard of gold at the bottom of
a pit, induced him to descend thither, and then threw down stones and
slew him. This is not, as we shall see, the Attic tradition, though in
that, also, there is a fatal hoard of gold, and Palamedes is slain by
stoning.
The Athenian tragedians either improved on the story in the _Cypria_,
or found another legend, according to which Palamedes was treacherously
accused of treachery, was tried, condemned, and stoned by the Achaean
host: Odysseus being the contriver of the conspiracy. Thus Socrates, in
the _Apologia_, is made by Plato to say that in the next world he hopes
to meet Palamedes, and the Telamonian Aias, and others who died by an
unjust judgment.[5]
Each of the three great Attic tragedians wrote a play on Palamedes; and
Virgil makes Sinon speak of his unjust betrayal and death.[6] Aias, in
Quintus Smyrnaeus, brands Odysseus with his guilt in the matter: "Thou
didst destroy the divine Palamedes, far thy superior in strength and in
counsel."[7] The current Athenian story was that Odysseus contrived to
have an arrow, with a letter attached to it, shot towards Palamedes;
that Odysseus got possession of the letter, forged by himself but
purporting to be addressed by Priam, to Palamedes. Priam thanked him
for his services as a spy, and promised a gift of gold. This gold was
then hidden by Odysseus in the hut of Palamedes, and then discovered by
him who hid it.[8] Agamemnon was implicated in the job.
In the _Palamedes_ of Euripides the hero is not unavenged. His brother
Oiax writes the shameful story of the Achaean treachery and cruelty,
which ruined and destroyed Palamedes, on a number of _pinakes,_ or
tablets, like that which contained the fatal letter of Proetus in the
_Iliad_. These tablets Oiax threw into the sea; some of them drifted to
Nauplia, and the friends of Palamedes, by altering the guiding beacons
on the Greek coast, caused the shipwreck and death of many Achaeans on
their homeward way.[9]
Manifestly the whole scope of this Ionian and Attic favourite, the
story of Palamedes, is non-Achaean, and was not likely to be known to
Homer.
In Dictys, Palamedes is the true hero, and on every occasion takes
the lead; while Odysseus, the scoundrel, is an inveterate forger of
letters. By forged letters he induced Clytaemnestra to send Iphigeneia
to marry Achilles at Aulis, his real purpose being to have her
sacrificed to Artemis. In the _Cypria_, Iphigeneia is sent, on a false
and foolish pretence of marriage, to Aulis; whether or not, in the
_Cypria_, Odysseus managed the plot by forged letters, as in Dictys, we
do not know.
Through Dictys and through Virgil the Palamedes legend reached the
poets and romancers of the Middle Ages: there is even a Palamedes, a
paynim knight, at Arthur's court. Thus in Roman times, and much more in
the long mediaeval period of Homer's eclipse, Odysseus, Diomede, and
the Atridae were under a cloud, Ionian in origin, and Athenian. The
Ionians being "Pelasgians of the seacoast" (at least in the opinion of
Herodotean Greece), and Palamedes being a man of Nauplia, on the sea,
while the town was leagued with Athens, in the amphictyony of Calauria,
he was naturally a favourite of Ionian and Athenian poets. In him they
had a hero, the wisest and best, who perished from Achaean envy of his
greatness.
Now, did Homer know anything of Nauplia and of Palamedes? Was this
legend current in his time? If so, he ignored it, as Achaean poetry
ignores all things Ionian. It was necessary for the Ionian poets to
kill Palamedes just before the opening of the _Iliad_, for into that
epic they could neither foist him nor anything that was theirs. In
Shakespeare's _Troilus and Cressida_, Palamedes is fighting hard in
what answers to the Iliadic battle of Book xi.
I am inclined under correction to suppose that Palamedes was originally
no warrior under Ilios, but a Culture Hero of the "Pelasgians of the
seacoasts," the Culture Hero of a fairly advanced civilisation. He was
credited with the discovery of written characters,[10] or, at least,
of a syllabary; or he taught the Greeks to use Phoenician characters
in the Ionian alphabet. He also discovered arithmetic, Weights and
Measures; Astronomy; the reckoning of Time; military discipline,--with
post-Homeric centurions;--sentinels, fire-signals; a number of games,
such as draughts, and so forth. Homer knows nothing of such Culture
Heroes in the Achaean camp, where they are manifestly out of place.
It has been suggested that Palamedes is Palamaon, an ancient understudy
of Hephaestus; παλάμημα being _τέχνη_, art, or handicraft, and
_πάλαμις_ the Salaminian equivalent of τεχνίτης. Palamedes is properly
"the Inventor." I suggest that, in the mixed multitude of Ionia, poets
were found who simply inserted the old Culture Hero among the Achaean
heroes, and asserted his supremacy in counsel and in war; while, as
has been said, it was impossible to bring him into the _Iliad,_ so
he was made the martyr of the jealousy of Homer's bravest and wisest
Achaeans at the moment just before the _Iliad_ begins. In the opinion
of Socrates, Aias, no less than Palamedes, was the victim of an unjust
verdict, a belief which he never found in Homer. But Aias was claimed
as an ally and neighbour of Athens; Palamedes was of a seacoast city
allied with Athens; both heroes, therefore, were useful links between
the Ionians and Attica and the Trojan affair, in which, as in the
legendary affairs of Thebes and Calydon, the Ionians had no part,
except what they invented for themselves.
They imposed their version on Rome and on the Middle Ages, but we
repeat, they could not get a reference to Palamedes into the _Iliad_.
Among all its alleged borrowings from the Cyclics, the _Iliad_ never
borrowed a hint of Palamedes.[11]
After thus examining what is known about Palamedes, we ask, is it more
probable that the _Cypria_ is older than the _Iliad_, and based on a
totally different Achaean tradition about events and heroes; or is
the _Cypria_ later than the _Iliad_, and even intended as a kind of
antidote to that epic? One thing is clear, the _Cypria_ is Ionian, not
Achaean, if human sacrifice is Ionian rather than Achaean. Students who
think the _Cypria_ the older poem might perhaps argue thus: Many of
the mixed peoples who made up the Ionians had ancestors at the Trojan
war. Among these were Minyans, Boeotians, and Cretans. Their legends
may have had an _Achaean_ version of events which was not Homer's
version, but was hostile to Odysseus, Diomede, and the Atridae. This
version, Ionised, is given in the _Cypria._ Probably this version was
continued (though we have no such continuation) from the resolve of
Zeus to punish the host for the death of Palamedes: and the subsequent
account, in this version of the war, would take no notice of the Wrath
of Achilles about Briseis. Or, if that were assumed as the cause of the
Wrath, Zeus embroiled Achilles and Agamemnon without any prayer from
Thetis. Probably in this version, as in Dictys, Achilles was in love
with Polyxena, and was treacherously slain while wooing her. This is
the statement of the scholiast on Lycophron, and of Dictys, though it
is contrary to the Cyclic _Aethiopis,_ which follows the _Iliad_; Paris
and Apollo slew Achilles, as Hector prophesied, in the Scaean gate.
On this theory Polyxena was sacrificed to the dead Achilles precisely
because they loved each other.
Thus the theory might go on, explaining that _this_ Achaean version
(wholly unknown to us), with Palamedes and all, was crushed by the
supreme popularity of a later poem, the _Iliad_, but lived in an
underground way till it revived, very late, in Lycophron, Dictys, and
the rest. The details of ghosts, human sacrifices, hero-worship, and
purification by blood (all un-Homeric), will be genuinely old Achaean,
merely suppressed by some persons of taste who, later, "edited" the
_Iliad_. In this case these details of religion were common to the
Achaeans and the earlier populations, _not_ peculiar to "the conquered
races." They are Achaean, but were expurgated by the makers of _our_
Homer, why, and when, and how, I do not conjecture.
I have here invented as coherent a hypothesis as I can imagine to
account for Palamedes consistently with the theory that the _Cypria_ is
older than the _Iliad_. But the fact that Palamedes, "the inventor," is
clearly, in origin, a Culture Hero, like Prometheus and Daedalus, does
to me seem fatal to the hypothesis which I have sketched. If he had
been, originally, just another such warrior as Achilles or Idomeneus,
popular fancy would never have converted him into a being who won men
from savagery and invented arts and sciences.
[1] _Hermathena_, vol. i. p. 265 _et seqq_.
[2] Kinkel, p. 17.
[3] Mure, _History of Greek Literature_, vol. ii. p. 281, citing
Düntzer, p. 15. Welcker, _Ep. Cycl._, pt. i. p. 459.
[4] Schol. ad _Lycophr_, 570 _sqq_.; cf. Sophocles's _Palamedes_, Fr.
438. N2. _Cypria_, Kinkel, pp. 20, 30.
[5] Plato, _Apologia_, 41 B. Compare Scholion to Euripides, _Orestes,_
432.
[6] _Aeneid_, ii. 81.
[7] _Post-Homerica_, v. 198.
[8] Servius on _Aeneid_, ii. 81. Hyginus fr. _Fab_. 105.
[9] Scholiast, _Aristoph. Thesmophor_. 768.
[10] Stesichorus, Fr. 4 B. Schol. Eurip., _Orestes_, 432. Euripides,
_Palamedes_, Fr. 578, N.
[11] For the learning about Palamedes, see Roscher's _Lexikon_, _s.v.
Palamedes_.