HOMER AND THE CYCLIC POEMS
Few subjects are more recalcitrant to lucidity of treatment than the
so-called "Cyclic poems." On the various meanings of the word "Cyclic"
as applied to poetry by the ancients, very much has been written.[1]
Into that question we need not enter, as we here call "Cyclic" all
these old epics on the Trojan theme (outside of the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_) of which we have only fragments, in quotations by later
Greek writers, and in fragmentary epitomes. Though these remains,
including the prose of the Greek authors who cite and comment on them,
occupy but forty-five pages of a book in small octavo,[2] the fragments
suffice to prove that the lost epics are far apart as the poles from
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ in taste, tone, narrative art, descriptions
of religious rites, customs, usages, and treatment of the heroic
characters. This was plain to Greek commentators, and is even more
obvious to modern criticism.
The questions, therefore, arise, were these Cyclic epics older in
_matter_ (as representing a more archaic tradition) than our Homer;
are they older, or more recent, in _composition_, or are they and our
Homer coeval? Mr. Monro expresses decisively the general opinion on
these points. The Cyclic poems are by "the poets who carried on the
traditions of Homeric art in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C."[3]
He collects from them many incidents, beliefs, usages, and proofs of
geographical knowledge "of a post-Homeric type."[4] Of these, from one
poem, the _Cypria_, he selects five sets of examples. These represent
(i) human sacrifice; (2) geographical knowledge much beyond that
exhibited in _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_; (3) interest in magic, which is
un-Homeric; (4) the introduction of a non-Homeric hero, Palamedes, of
the first rank, of essential importance, and the "Cause of Wrath" of
Zeus against the Achaeans; (5) hero-worship; (6) I add, introduction
of a goddess unknown to Homer, but "a concrete figure of ancient
Attic religion;"[5] (7) introduction of the puerile fairy element in
_Märchen_ or folk-tales. Of this trait, and of magical incidents, there
are several examples. (8) loves of gods and goddesses, who take the
forms of various animals. From other Cyclic poems he selects other
instances of these non-Homeric types, and also un-Homeric apparitions
of men who have been duly burned and buried; and cases of the
purification of homicides by blood of pigs, wholly unknown to Homer.
All these traits of the Cyclic poems, with others, such as the
invention of pseudo-historic genealogies, as of Thersites, are
non-Homeric. Some, such as the genealogy of Thersites, due to the
_manie cyclique_, with the extended geographical outlook, are
_post_-Homeric. But the others, the religious and magical notions--
hero-worship, the ghost belief, blood-purification,--though later in
record than our Homer (we assume), are even earlier in development, and
are beliefs and rites of the pre-Homeric population. (See "Who were the
Ionians?" and Appendix, On "Expurgation.")
Now much confusion is caused by the term "old." The poems earlier _in
composition_ may represent Achaean ideas then new to Greece; the poems
later in composition may, and do, contain ideas old in Greece, but
alien to Homer's Achaeans. Meanwhile, Mr. Monro, as we saw, regards
the actual Cyclic poems as works of poets of the eighth to seventh
centuries B.C., who carried "on the traditions of Homeric art" in
Ionia. This means that they take up Achaean themes and traditions and
heroic characters, and use them in new poems "composed with direct
reference to the _Iliad_."[6] They lead up to the _Iliad_ by a long
chronicle of previous events in the _Cypria_, and continue the Homeric
narrative in their other epics. But they interlard the narrative with
their own rites, beliefs, their own Attic goddess (Nemesis of Rhamnus),
and their own non-Achaean heroes, such as the Attic sons of Theseus,
and the great Nauplian, Palamedes. They also add silly elements of
_Märchen_, and pseudo-historic genealogies. They carve and cook the
great Achaean joint, and serve up with Attic and Ionian sauce and
trimmings.
This is natural, for the Attic people, of the pre-Achaean population,
had not, as far as I know, any epic tradition of their own. They knew
that they were not engaged in any one of the alleged great collective
efforts and expeditions with which the Achaeans credited themselves.
Some legends were dynastic adaptations of _Märchen_, with kings and
princesses changed into birds; or accounts of their relations with
Thrace, or explanations of the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries.
They had, too, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, an adventure of
an individual hero of _Märchen_; but that ran contrary to all Achaean
and Cretan traditions, as we have seen. The Cyclic poets were mere
imitators of the Achaean epic: _epic_ tradition of their own, the
people of Attica and their Ionian colonists (confessedly mixed with a
mongrel multitude) had none.
Mr. Leaf takes the same view. He speaks of the Cyclic epics as "the
imitative poems which dealt with the old Tale of Troy, and essayed to
complete Homer."[7]
But a contradictory opinion seems to be held by von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, and, as I understand, by Mr. Murray. The
celebrated German scholar argued thus: Before criticism arose in
Greece, almost all ancient Epic poetry, and the Hymns, were attributed
to "Homer." As early as Herodotus, however, we find that historian
regarding the _Cypria_ (a chronicle of the whole events before the
opening of the _Iliad_) as not by the author of the _Iliad_.
As time went on, and criticism advanced, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_
alone were assigned to Homer, while the Cyclic poems were attributed
to various authors, such as Arctinus, Stasinus, and Lesches. The
attributions are late, various, perhaps never "evidential"; but
criticism came to recognise our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ as alone Homeric.
The other epics, the Cyclics, were thought to be of a later age, and by
inferior hands.
This view was evolved by Greek critics from Herodotus to Aristotle and
Aristarchus.
On the other hand, according to Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Homer and
the Cyclic poems were all qualitatively equivalent, and more or less
contemporaneous. A statement of this hypothesis, which deliberately
rejects the views of Greek criticism, shall be quoted from von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.[8]
"The epos" (the whole mass of early epic poetry) "is by Homer," so says
tradition. "The criticism of the subsequent centuries broke off from
the mass of epos one portion after another: one after another must go,
because it is inconsistent with the conception which has been framed of
Homer. At last the _Iliad_ alone abides. The only step that remained to
be taken was to reject (_athetiren_) the _Iliad_ also: this step the
ancients refused to take, for fear of falling into the abyss. But the
step has been taken long ago. The _Iliad_, as it stands, is not the
work of one man, or of one century: it is not _one_ work at all. The
_Iliad_ is nothing but a _κυκλικὸν ποίημα_. But we are in no abyss, no
bottomless pit. On the other hand, we regain firm ground, which ancient
criticism had in childish rashness abandoned. The _Iliad_ is just as
much and as little Homeric as the _Cypria_. There is no qualitative
difference between _ὁμηρικόν_ and _κυκλικόν_."
Now that careless child, Aristotle, was of a different opinion. He
saw that the _Iliad_ varies absolutely in nature from some of the
Cyclics, and the fact is conspicuous. The _Iliad_ also varies, as the
scholiasts observed, from the Cyclics historically; varies in manners,
rites, religion, taste, and geographical knowledge. All these facts are
absolutely demonstrable. So great a critic as Aristotle, and, we may
add, so unprejudiced a critic, for he lived long before Wolf, could
not but remark the essential differences between the _Iliad_, on the
one hand, and some of the Ionian Cyclic poems on the other, as far as
_quality_ is concerned. Into the differences which archaeology and
anthropology detect, Aristotle did not enter, for he was writing on
the Art of Poetry. Unity in a poem, he said, is not obtained merely by
the selection of a single hero (the _Cypria_ is so far like _Vanity
Fair_ that it is a chronicle "without a hero," unless the hero be Paris
or Palamedes). _Unity of action_ is, says Aristotle, essential to an
Epic, and Homer observes this unity, grouping all the events round one
_motif_, the Wrath of Achilles, or the Return of Odysseus. The _Cypria_
has no such unity; it simply ends where the _Iliad_ begins.
Unity, concentration, "with beginning, middle, and end," is as
necessary, Aristotle holds, to epic as to dramatic poetry. The Trojan
war, to be sure, has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but the whole
could not be treated in an Epic under poetic conditions of space. One
_motif_ is therefore selected by Homer, with diversifying episodes.
The author of the _Cypria_ did not adopt the true method of epic: in
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are subjects but for one or two tragedies;
whereas the _Cypria_, extending over many years and dealing with many
regions, yields subjects for many, and the _Little Iliad_ for eight or
more plays, which are enumerated.[9]
We would not now state the case precisely in the terms of Aristotle:
and the Attic tragedians possibly chose so many topics from the
Cyclics, so few from the _Iliad_, partly because the Athenians, as
chiefs of the Ionian name, preferred Ionian versions of the legends;
while, as Republicans, they used the Ionian term for Agamemnon and
Menelaus as "tyrants"; and kept up the singular Ionian feud against
Odysseus, preferring to him Aias, a neighbour of Athens; Philoctetes,
oppressed by the "tyrants"; and Palamedes, the victim of the tyrants
and of their minion Odysseus.
Such were the tastes of the Athenians; but we see that Aristotle
observes the essential difference in poetic _quality_ between the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, which are Epics, while some of the Cyclic poems
are mere metrical chronicles.
The difference between epic and versified chronicle is, I think,
that which divides Barbour's _The Brus_ and the _Wallace_ of Blind
Harry (poetical chronicles like the _Heracleis_, the late poem on the
history of Heracles), from epics like the _Chanson de Roland_ with
its one motive, "The Wrath of Ganelon," its origins and consequences.
Our _Iliad_, in Aristotle's opinion, then, is an epic; the _Cypria_,
the _Heracleis_, and so on, are _not_ epics, but rather are versified
chronicles. In Mr. Murray's opinion, too, the _Iliad_ is an epic, the
_Cypria_ is "an old chronicle poem." But this only proves, to his mind,
that the _Iliad_ is the further developed.[10] "They grew together
side by side" or centuries; but the _Iliad_, as we have it, is, he
thinks, of later and more accomplished art. Mr. Murray writes: "In its
actual working up, however, our _Iliad_ has reached a further stage of
development than the ordinary run of poetic chronicles, if I may use
the term."[11]
Now, as far as analogy serves our turn, the "poetic chronicle" is in a
_later_ stage of development than the epic. Thus Barbour's _The Brus_,
or the Argonautic poem of the very late Apollonius, is in a much later
stage of development than the old Germanic epics, or _Beowulf_, which
selects two main events from the career of the hero. Again, versified
chronicles in France are much later in development than the epic, the
_Chanson de Roland_, "The Wrath of Ganelon."
However, as analogies are never satisfactory, let us be content to note
that the _Iliad_ confessedly differs in character from the _Cypria_, as
the epic differs from the verse-chronicle. On this point von Wilamowitz
Moellendorff appears to agree, as does Mr. Murray, who studies the
subject in the spirit of the learned German. To repeat his statement,
he writes, "These various books or masses of tradition in verse form
were growing up side by side for centuries."[12]
Now, "masses of tradition" certainly grew up through many centuries,
before and after Homer's time; but the _Iliad_ is not merely "a mass
of tradition." It is a splendid work of art, fashioned, in our view,
by a great poet, out of masses of tradition, while what we know of
the _Cypria_ is a compilation, partly from hints in the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_, with popular tales or _Märchen_ thrown in; and is animated
by a distinct _tendenz_, a partisan desire to debase the favourite
heroes of Homer, and to exalt a hero, Palamedes, who, to myself, seems
intended to represent the Ionian share in the Trojan war, neglected as
it is by Homer. To justify these criticisms as most probable on the
evidence, it is necessary to offer an analysis of the _Cypria_, as far
as its contents are known to us from fragments and epitomes.
The _Cypria_ opened thus: Zeus takes counsel on the problem of
over-population. He "resolves to relieve of her burden Earth that
nourishes all, by raising the great strife of the Ilian war, that death
may lighten the weight: the heroes were slain in Troyland, _but the
Will of Zeus was accomplished._"[13]
The following account of the early part of the _Cypria_ is given by
the Scholiast in the famous "Venice A" manuscript of the _Iliad_. He
enters here into more details than Proclus in his epitome of the work.
"They say that Earth, burdened by the abundance of men, all impious as
they were, prayed to Zeus to be relieved. Zeus then caused the Theban
war, whereby he destroyed many. Later again he called Momus (Mockery)
into council, 'the counsel of Zeus,' Homer styles it, though he might
have destroyed the human race altogether by deluges and thunderbolts.
But Momus prevented this, and suggested to Zeus the marriage of Thetis
with a mortal, and the begetting of a beautiful daughter from these two
causes arose war involving both Hellenes and barbarians, from which
time Earth was lightened of her burden, so many men were slain. The
narrative is by Stasinus, the author of the _Cypria_..."[14]
In this version Themis is not mentioned as the adviser of Zeus; perhaps
she suggested the Theban, and Momus the Trojan war.
In the epitome of Proclus, Eris (Strife) comes among the Gods at the
bridal feast of Peleus and Thetis. Of this feast one detail remains
in a fragment of the _Cypria,_ which the Scholiast gives in prose.
Cheiron the Centaur cut an ash-tree for a spear, as a wedding present
to Peleus. Athene polished it, and Hephaestus forged the point. This
spear, which Achilles alone could wield, is mentioned as the gift of
Cheiron to Achilles in the _Iliad_ (xvi. 143, 144, and xix. 389-90).
If, then, we find in the _Cypria_ decisive proof that there it is later
than the _Iliad_, we may suppose the author to borrow here from our
Homer, and to add the previous division of labour in the spear-making.
As a bronze-smith Hephaestus only makes the metal point of the weapon.
At the bridal feast, Eris rouses a dispute between Aphrodite, Athene,
and Hera as to superiority in beauty.
To return to the Epitome of Proclus. The three contending goddesses
are led by Hermes to Mount Ida, and Paris pronounces Aphrodite to be
the most beautiful; he has been won by her promise of Helen as his
wife. This is suggested by _Iliad_, xxiv. 29, 30, where the passage,
according to some, suggests that all three goddesses _wooed_ Paris, and
that he preferred Aphrodite. But this is wholly out of keeping with the
Greek conception of Hera and Athene; and the lines in _Iliad_, xxiv.,
must refer to the cause of the ferocity with which these two slighted
goddesses persecute Troy, though Athene was its patron. No other cause
has been adduced.
The counsel of Zeus could not have caused the Trojan war merely by
making the goddesses quarrel. It was necessary to beget "the beautiful
daughter," whom Aphrodite was to offer as a bride to Paris. According
to the Cypria, this fairest of women, Helen, wife of Menelaus, was
not the daughter of Zeus and Leda, but of Zeus and Nemesis; in Homer,
Nemesis is little more than the emotion of virtuous indignation, she
is not, as in the Cypria, a chaste and pretty nymph, "fair-tressed
Nemesis." Her does Zeus pursue and, says the inept author of the
Cypria, "the feelings of Nemesis were torn by shame and nemesis"
(indignation). Mr. Murray devotes eight pages to the ethical meaning
of Αὶδώς (shame) and of Νέμεσις (righteous indignation).[15] Surely
we must recognise a great difference in manner between Homer, to whom
nemesis means "righteous indignation," and the author of the _Cypria_,
to whom Nemesis is a fair-tressed nymph? Homer, it is true, knows
_themis_ as customary law, and _Themis_, a goddess. But _she_ is not
a fair-tressed being who flees from her lover in a series of animal
disguises.
Later Greeks, puzzled by the contending versions of our Homer and
of the _Cypria_, declared that Nemesis was, indeed, the mother of
Helen, but that Leda, wife of Tyndareus, was her foster-mother and
brought her up.[16] Meanwhile Nemesis, in the _Cypria_, is not a mere
personification of the sentiment of nemesis, or righteous indignation,
but is, as we know, "a concrete figure of ancient Attic tradition," "a
primitive goddess of Rhamnus," in Attica, associated with, or a local
form of, "the wild Artemis" of pre-Achaean religion, "with deep roots
in local worship." Nemesis had a famous statue at Rhamnus, attributed
by Pausanias to Pheidias; a fragment of the face, in the British
Museum, proves that it was at least of the school of Pheidias. She
held in her hand a spray of the apple-tree, an attribute of Aphrodite,
and the stag of Artemis was an ornament of her crown. She was also "a
queen over death and the dead," a chthonic characteristic.[17] The
Nemesis of Rhamnus was thus like the very primitive Artemis of Brauron
in Attica. At Smyrna, where the population was very mixed, Pausanias
mentions two Nemeses.[18]
We see that all this of Nemesis, in the _Cypria_, is at once apart as
the poles from the Nemesis of Homer, virtuous indignation personified,
and is also an Ionian celebration of an Attic goddess of the
pre-Achaean faith.
In the _Cypria_, Aphrodite, mother of Aeneas (in Homer), sends him with
Paris. Landing in Lacedaemon, Paris is welcomed by the brothers of
Helen, and in Sparta by Menelaus, who then sails to Crete. (Different
reasons for this voyage are given by later writers.) Paris then seduces
Helen, _who is brought to him by Aphrodite_ (as in _Iliad_, iii.);
_they take away property of Menelaus_ (as in _Iliad_, vii.). (The
_italics_ mark probable hints from the _Iliad_.)
The pair are wedded in Troy, where the story leaves them, and very
needlessly goes back to Lacedaemon. Here are Helen's brothers, Castor
and Polydeuces, who fall into a feud about cattle with Idas and
Lynceus, the keen-eyed. Lynceus is merely the Keen-Eye, who can see
through everything, a common personage in _Märchen._ The brothers of
Helen hide themselves in a hollow tree, but Lynceus climbs to the
crest of Mount Taygetus and "looks over all the isle of Pelops," that
is, Peloponnesus. Homer never speaks of the country as a geographical
unity, nor uses the word "Peloponnesus"; this is manifestly a
post-Homeric term.[19] Idas slays Castor; Polydeuces slays both
Lynceus and Idas, and Zeus assigns to Castor and Polydeuces immortality
on alternate days. This is wholly unknown to the _Iliad_, both heroes
are dead and buried in _Iliad_, iii. 243, 244. Their alternate
immortality with their divine honours, mentioned in _Odyssey_, xi.
298-304, may be an interpolation (a kind of footnote in verse); it
is, at all events, non-Iliadic. Homer knows the deaths of the two
brothers, at home in Lacedaemon: we cannot tell whether he knew about
the Keen-Eye of _Märchen_, Lynceus.
In the _Cypria_, Menelaus is now informed, in Crete, about the flight
of Helen: he returns to the isle of Pelops and consults Agamemnon about
collecting an army. Nestor, called to council, abounds in anecdotic
digressions (whether the author borrows this trait from the _Iliad_
or the _Iliad_ from him, it is not hard to guess!). Among Nestor's
themes--for he simply poured out stories--are Epopeus and his seduction
of the daughter of Lycus; Oedipous; the madness of Heracles; and the
tale of Theseus (whom Homer steadily avoids), and Ariadne. Theseus, as
an Athenian, is dear to the Ionian poet: Homer ignores him.
The Atridae go through Greece collecting the heroes. Odysseus feigns
madness with a view to shirking the war; he ploughs the sand, and
Palamedes detects his sanity by placing the child Telemachus in the
way of the plough. Here we have a hero, Palamedes, unknown to Homer,
and an equally unknown Odysseus who is a coward, but is baffled by
the superior wisdom of Palamedes. It is obvious that the poet of the
_Cypria_ is here introducing an un-Homeric character to serve his
private ends: his methods are unveiled in Chapter XVII., "The Story of
Palamedes."
The _Cypria_ now relates _the First gathering of the Greek forces
at Aulis_, with the story from the _Iliad_ of the serpent and the
sparrows, and the prophecy of Calchas. The ships, says the _Iliad_,
"had been gathering but a day or two at Aulis," and the host was at
a sacrifice, when a wonderful serpent came forth from the altar and
killed eight nestlings of a sparrow, with their mother. Zeus then
turned the serpent into a stone. Calchas prophesied, "we shall fight
nine years _there_ (_αῢθι_, at Troy), but take the city in the tenth
year."[20]
Such was Homer's opinion, the Greeks were warring in Troyland against
Ilios for nine years and more. But the author of the _Cypria_ desired
to fill up the nine years before the _Iliad_ opens in some way, and
this is how he did it. (Italics mark possible hints from Homer.)
_Learning from the Odyssey_ (xi. 519-521) _that Eurypylus, a Mysian
chief, son of Telephus, came to the aid of Troy after the death of
Achilles_, he makes the Achaeans land in Teuthrania, and supposing the
town to be Troy, they attack it. But Telephus comes to the rescue, and
is wounded by Achilles. A storm falls on the fleet, and the ships are
scattered. _Achilles arrives in Scyros and weds Deidameia_. The storm
that sends Achilles to marry and beget a son in Scyros was an easy
explanation of _Achilles' own statement_,[21] that he had a son at
Scyros.[22]
In the _Cypria_, Achilles later returns from Scyros to Argos,
apparently "Pelasgic Argos," that is, Phthia, to his home. The wounded
Telephus, as advised by prophecy, follows Achilles thither, and
Achilles' spear, or rust from the spear, in Dictys, heals the wound it
had inflicted: by "sympathetic magic," unknown to Homer. Achilles did
the healing, because it was prophesied that Telephus would pilot the
fleet to Troy; whereas, in Homer, Calchas directs the voyage.
The author of the _Cypria_, who is filling up his nine imaginary years
of the wanderings of the Greeks, now adopts the very stupid device of
mustering the scattered fleet at Aulis _for the second time_. This
enables him to please an Ionian audience by introducing their favourite
incident, the sacrifice of a princess: Attic traditions harp eternally
on this un-Homeric horror. Agamemnon shoots a stag, and boasts
himself a better shot than Artemis. The angry goddess sends a tempest
unceasing, the ships cannot sail, and Calchas (who dared not do such a
thing, _Iliad_, i. 78, 79) says that a daughter of Agamemnon must be
sacrificed, Iphigeneia. This name was, at least in later days, a name
of the homicidal Artemis of Tauris, on the north shore of the Euxine.
But Tauris, as Mr. Monro justly observes, was not known to Homer. In
the _Cypria_, Artemis substitutes a fawn for Iphigeneia, and carries
the maid "to the Tauroi," making her immortal. "This form of the
story," the form in the _Cypria_, "is necessarily later than the Greek
settlements on the northern coasts of the Euxine."[23] The connection
between Iphigeneia and a Tauric Artemis is thus late, un-Homeric, and
Ionian. Homer (_Iliad_, ix. 145) knows no Iphigeneia, but the daughters
of Agamemnon are Chrysothemis, Laodice, and Iphianassa. Even so early
a poet as Stesichorus could not account for Iphigeneia as a daughter
of Agamemnon. He therefore, says Pausanias, made her a foster-child
of Clytaemnestra, a child of Helen by Theseus (who, in Attic myth,
captured her), and Helen hands her baby over to the wife of Agamemnon.
Euphorion of Chalcis, Alexander of Pleuron, and the people of Argos
generally, maintained this theory, and at Argos they showed a temple
of Ilithyia, founded by Helen after her safe delivery![24] Tzetzes,
the father of nonsense, makes Iphigeneia the daughter of Agamemnon and
Chryseis; she is sacrificed, or threatened with sacrifice, during the
return from Troy.
However, the Ionian author of the _Cypria_ cannot deny himself an
allusion to human sacrifice. Iphigeneia was brought to Aulis, he says,
under the pretence that she was to wed Achilles. (See Euripides,
_Iphigeneia in Aulis_. He may be following the _Cypria_.) She was
tempted by letters forged by Odysseus, says Dictys Cretensis, who may
be following the _Cypria_.
The Greeks, the storm abating, sail to Tenedos, where _Philoctetes is
bitten by a snake and carried away to howl in Lemnos_. This might be
taken from _Iliad_, ii. 718-725. _At Troy on landing, the Greeks lose
Protesilaus,_ slain by Hector. Here again the _Iliad_ may supply the
fact, not naming Hector. The author of the _Cypria_ has now, we see,
filled up his empty nine years by various expedients and delays. He
next tells of the embassy to ask for the return of Helen and the stolen
property; the embassy he could get from _Iliad_, iii. 204-207: _a
subsequent fight at the wall of Troy_ from _Iliad_, vi. 435-439, where
it is described briefly by Andromache.
At what precise period the Greek commissariat took the form of
three girls with fairy gifts, who produced corn, wine, and oil, is
uncertain; but the incident was in the _Cypria_, on the authority of
Pherecydes.[25]
The _Cypria_ says that Aphrodite contrived an interview between Helen
and Achilles, Thetis was chaperon, and that Achilles restrained the
Greeks, who wished to go home. _That Achilles sacked Lyrnessus and
Pedasus, and sent Lykaon captive to Lemnos_, was to be read in the
_Iliad_ (xx. 92, xxi. 55 ff.), where also the story of Briseis and
Chryseis, given in the _Cypria_, was to be found. But not in the
_Iliad_ was Palamedes, with his murder by Odysseus and Diomede, whence,
in the _Cypria_, came the will of Zeus to sunder Achilles from the
Achaean host.[26]
We now perceive how much of his material the Ionian author of
the _Cypria_ could obtain from out Homer. We note the marks of
non-Achaeanism and lateness, and of Ionian geographical knowledge, in
the reference to Tauris; in the Attic Nemesis; in the per-sonifications
of moral qualities; in the intended human sacrifice; in the _Märchen_;
in the telling of the tale of Theseus and Ariadne; in the hero-worship;
and in the introduction of the Nauplian anti--Odyssean Palamedes.
The lateness of the poem declares itself also in the naming of the
Peloponnesus. The use of very childish _Märchen_ is un-Homeric: Homer
uses _Märchen_ to better purpose. (See "Homer and the Saga.")
* * * * *
Perhaps few who have had the patience to read through this tedious
analysis of the vast and wandering metrical pseudo-chronicle, the
_Cypria_, with its marks of bad taste, Ionicism, and lateness, will
maintain that, in character, it is on a level with our Homer, or is in
age contemporary with his society.
Weary as is the task, we must in conscience expose the similar lateness
and Ionic character of the other Cyclic poems on the Trojan affairs.
The authorship of the _Aethiopis_ was attributed to Arctinus of
Miletus. Tradition called him "Homer's pupil."[27] As condensed in the
summary of Proclus, the _Aethiopis_ was a mere _doppelgänger_ of the
_Iliad_. Taking up the tale after Hector's death, and under the shadow
of Hector's prophecy of the doom of Achilles, "in the day when Paris
and Phoebus Apollo slay thee in the Scaean gate,"[28] the _Aethiopis_
fills out the story.
The Amazon, Penthesilea, comes to aid Troy, and is slain by Achilles,
who is stirred by pity for the beauty of his victim. For this Thersites
taunts him, and he slays the wretch: so he needs purification, _in
accordance with Ionian ideas_.
The _Aethiopis_ went on to mark the usual distinction between the
Homeric and Ionian epic. Diomede took up the blood-feud for Thersites,
and, in Homeric law, Achilles must have paid the blood-wyte, or gone
into exile, or "tholed the feud." Even the Scholiast[29] knew that this
was the Homeric (as it was the Icelandic) law. But the Ionian makes
Achilles sail to Lesbos, to sacrifice to Apollo, Artemis, and Leto, and
be purified (in pig's blood probably) by Odysseus.
Thus the Ionian makes us certain that he was of an un-Homeric state
of society. He dates himself in similar fashion, when he makes Memnon
(who, as in the _Odyssey_, slays Antilochus) receive after death
the gift of immortality; and when he makes Thetis carry the body of
Achilles (burned in the _Odyssey_) to be the worshipped hero of the
isle of Leuke in the Euxine. There, when Ionian colonists reached the
Euxine, Achilles became a ruling religious hero, recognised by Alcaeus
(Fr. 49). "The Locrians in Italy," according to Pausanias, had a cult
of Aias, whose armed ghost wounded Leonymus of Croton in battle. (In
post-Homeric Greece the ghosts of heroes appeared in mortal wars, as
St. James fought for Cortes against the Aztecs. Homer could conceive
no such folly.) The Delphic oracle dispatched Leonymus to Leuke, where
he found Achilles happily married to Helen, who sent by Leonymus a
message to the poet Stesichorus, that had libelled her. Patroclus and
Antilochus were with Achilles in Leukê, etc. etc.[30]
If the _Aethiopis_ is earlier than these Ionian colonies, if Leuke in
fable meant "the isle of light," then the colonists identified the
Euxine isle with the isle of light, and so worshipped the dead Achilles
of Leuke. The Ionian trading cities, of which Miletus was chief, had
begun to adopt the new religious ideas that grew up, after the Homeric
age, in honour of the national heroes.[31] It is more probable that
the Ionians had never dropped the rites and religions of the conquered
races, and merely added Achilles to Erechtheus. They had no spite
against Achilles, who had never, like Agamemnon and Diomede, been their
master.
For the rest, the story of the _Aethiopis_ is conducted on the lines of
the _Iliad_, as far as the events included in the poems, ending with
the death of Achilles in the Scaean gate, permit imitation; and all
concludes with a lament or _regret_, a funeral, and funeral games, as
in the _Iliad_.
The _Little Iliad_ contains several main incidents, of which seven
were, or may have been, expansions of hints in the _Odyssey_ and
_Iliad_. The additions are the theft of the Palladium, a kind of fetich
ignored by Homer; the magical power of the arrows of Philoctetes over
the fate of Troy; the introduction of Sinon, as followed by Virgil in
the _Aeneid_; and a long story about Aethra, mother of Theseus and
slave of Helen in Troy, and about her grandsons, sons of Theseus, whose
presence in the Achaean host is unknown to Homer. In _Iliad_, iii. 144,
Helen has, in an interpolated line, an attendant, "Aethra, daughter of
Pittheus." This was enough for the Ionian poets; for, as Aethra was
the name of the mother of Theseus, "naturally the later poets took
advantage of it in order to find a place for the Attic heroes in the
main body of epic narrative."[32]
Mr. Leaf makes _Iliad_, iii. 144, "a clear case of an interpolation of
a later myth," a myth introduced here to please the Athenians. Aethra
and the rape of Helen by Theseus, to avenge which the brothers of Helen
carried the mother of Theseus away, were depicted and described on
the chest of Cypselus,[33] and painted by Polygnotus, following the
_Little Iliad_ of Lesches, on the _Leschê_ at Delphi. But here Aethra
was with the Homeric maids of Helen (Panthalis and Electra), but was
being recognised by her un-Homeric grandson, son of Theseus, Demophon.
According to the _Little Iliad_, Aethra escaped to the Greek camp: by
permission of Helen, Agamemnon restores Aethra to her grandsons.[34]
Ionia could only drag fair Helen into the Athenian legend of Theseus
by averring that he carried her off when she was a child, and that she
was brought back to the house of Tyndareus her sire by her brothers,
Castor and Polydeuces. They also seized Aethra, the mother of Theseus,
who accompanied Paris and Helen to Troy, and was still in Helen's
service after the ten years of the leaguer. Now as Theseus in his prime
was contemporary with the youth of Nestor, and as Nestor was, say,
seventy in the tenth year of the war, the mother of Theseus must have
been more than a centenarian when she was the _suivante_ of Helen, in
_Iliad_, Book iii. But Ionians stuck at nothing in the effort to bring
themselves into touch with the great Achaean enterprise; that is, stuck
at nothing except at interpolating their fables into the _Iliad_. They
could perhaps insert, as in _Iliad_, iii. 144, a mention or two of
Theseus, and some lines on Attic heroines in _Odyssey_, xi.
There can be no more conclusive proof that Ionians did not possess the
power of adding what they pleased to the Achaean epics.
The _Ilion Persis_, or _Sack of Troy_, was a poem attributed, like
the _Aethiopis_, to Arctinus of Miletus. Herein occurs the affair of
the Wooden Horse, familiar to readers of the _Odyssey_ in the lay of
Demodocus at the board of Alcinous.[35] Demodocus tells enough to serve
Arctinus with a theme which only needs expansion. The story was given
much as Virgil and Quintus Smyrnaeus render it; we have the portent
of Laocoon and the serpents, which causes Aeneas and his men (not as
in Virgil) to retire to Mount Ida. In the song of Demodocus, Odysseus
gets most of the credit of success; the hero in _Odyssey_, xi. 504-537,
gives the glory to Neoptolemus--and himself. In Arctinus, Odysseus
murders the child of Hector, Astyanax (an un-Homeric cruelty); Odysseus
is always degraded by the Ionians and usually by the Attic tragedians.
Aias Oileus's son enrages Athene by dragging down her image while
struggling with Cassandra; hence the sorrows of the Achaeans on their
way home. The sons of Theseus carry to Athens their aged grandmother,
Aethra. Could anything be more characteristic of the Athenians than
the fact that the heroes looking out from the Horse, in a bronze group
on the Acropolis, were Attic, the two apocryphal sons of Theseus, the
Athenian Menestheus, and Teucer, "who expresses the Athenian claim to
Salamis"?[36]
By a truly Ionian touch, Polyxena, daughter of Priam, is sacrificed at
the tomb of Achilles. It seems probable that the _Iliou Persis_ really
took up the story with the suicide of Aias (from this part of the poem
a fragment is quoted in the scholia to _Iliad_, xi. 515),[37] and that
the poem contained the whole prowess of Neoptolemus at Troy, and the
affair of the bringing back of Philoctetes from Lemnos. The prominence
of Aeneas expands the hint in _Iliad_, xx. 307, 308, the prophecy of
Poseidon that he and his children will long rule over the Trojans.
Throughout the _Iliad_, Aeneas is protected by Aphrodite, and is looked
on jealously by Priam, as a Stewart might look on a Hamilton; for,
failing issue of Priam, Aeneas succeeds to the Trojan crown. The whole
poem, wherever Aeneas appears, is affected by the tradition that he did
continue the Trojan line.
The sacrifice of Polyxena at the tomb of Achilles appears to be
peculiar to Arctinus. It would be interesting to know whether or not
any Ionian poem was the source of the story of Polyxena as given by
Dictys Cretensis. In Dictys, Patroclus moves Achilles to be reconciled
to Agamemnon: the army goes into winter quarters, and Trojans and
Achaeans meet on friendly terms in the grove of Thymbraean Apollo;
Achilles sees Polyxena at a sacrifice, and falls in love with her.
Hector offers her as the price of his treason to the Achaeans, which
annoys Achilles. At Polyxena's request he later restores the body of
Hector to Priam. At a subsequent meeting in Apollo's temple, Paris
stabs Achilles to death. After the capture of Troy, Odysseus advises
the sacrifice of Polyxena to the ghost of Achilles, but Euripides and
later writers make the ghost or voice of Achilles demand her death. In
other respects, as to the fate of the Trojan ladies, Dictys follows
Arctinus.
All this tale deeply affected the mediaeval tale of Troy. Meanwhile,
we do not know _why_ in Arctinus, Polyxena was chosen as the _γέρας_,
or honourable gift, of the dead Achilles. The idea may only have been
that, while surviving leaders received each a damsel, the spirit of the
great chief should not be deprived of its reward. No idea can be less
Achaean, less Homeric, but it is congenial to the Ionian spirit.
The fact of the sacrifice would easily suggest, to still later writers,
that in his life days Achilles loved Polyxena, and was loved by her;
for Philostratus and Tzetzes aver that heart-broken by the murder of
Achilles, she slew herself above his tomb.
Thus we see how, in the Ionian epics, and onwards through Stesichorus,
the tragedians, the Roman poets, Dictys, and the mediaeval makers, the
poetic consciousness played freely round the Homeric data, colouring
them with the rainbow hues of changing beliefs and changing tastes.
There is at least as wide a gulf between the tastes and ideas of Homer,
on one side, and of the Ionians on the other, as between Arctinus, on
one hand, and Benoit de Troyes and Boccaccio, on the other.
That the Ionian ideas, tastes, rites, and legends, as of Theseus
and Palamedes, never were intruded into the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_,
considering that for so long Homer was "taught, recited, imitated in
Ionia,"[38] is an undeniable and amazing fact. How were Ionian hands
restrained from touching the substance of the Achaean epics? This is,
in the strict sense, a paradox, but the facts are undeniable: the
epics were never Ionised. Homer was falsely claimed by Athens as an
Ionian poet. Is there some basis of truth in the idea that the Aeolian
Homeridae of Chios guarded their own?[39]
I have now given my view of the Cyclic poems as late, post-Homeric, and
Ionian in (i) geographical knowledge; (2) in hero-worship; (3) in rites
of human sacrifice and purification; (4) in the mania for inventing
genealogies, as of Thersites, basest born of the host; (5) in partisan
attacks on great Achaeans; (6) in silly _Märchen_; (7) in efforts to
introduce representatives of Athens, the grandsons of Theseus, into the
war; (8) the Attic goddess, Nemesis.
Of these eight proofs of lateness and Ionicism, Mr. Murray takes no
notice: on the whole, he thinks our Homer later than some state of the
lost Epics. He supposes parts of the _Iliad_ to be borrowed from these
Epics. "We happen to know that there was an old chronicle poem which
both contained a catalogue of the ships and also narrated at length the
assembling of the fleet at Aulis--the so-called _Cypria_ or Cyprian
verses."[40] This piece of information may be correct, I know not; but
no authority is cited for the statement that the _Cypria_ contained a
catalogue of the ships, and no such authority is known to me.[41] Von
Wilamowitz--Moellendorff _conjectures_ that the _Cypria_ contained a
catalogue of the Achaeans, but that is not evidence.
In support of his theory that our _Iliad_ is "in a further state of
development" than some poetic chronicles, Mr. Murray writes that
passages in the _Iliad_ "seem to be derived from the _Cypria_, the
_Little Iliad_, and the _Sack of Ilion_, the so-called _Acthiopis_....
These, then, are all pieces of supposed history taken over from one
traditional poem into another."[42]
This appears to mean that the poems named were complete before the
_Iliad_ was complete, though all of them "were growing side by side
for centuries." Indeed, Mr. Murray might seem to change his ground in
a later statement of his opinions. In _The Rise of the Greek Epic_ we
hear of borrowings by the _Iliad_ from several Cyclic poems made in
Asia, and from the "Eumelian" verses in Europe. (For "Eumelus," see
"Homer and the Saga.") Of borrowings by the Cyclics and "Eumelus" from
the _Iliad_ we do not hear. On the other hand, in _Anthropology and
the Classics_ (lectures by various students), Mr. Murray writes, "the
extant remains of the non-Homeric poems frequently show in their form,
and sometimes even in their content, definite signs of presupposing
the _Iliad_, just as the _Iliad_ here and there shows signs of
presupposing them...."[43] But, _R. G. E_. p. 160, meets the charge of
changed views.
If the _Cypria_ be earlier than the _Iliad_, yet presupposes the
_Iliad_ (about Palamedes it does not), I presume it may also borrow
from the _Iliad_; whereas, previously, the _Iliad_ was mainly credited
with the borrowings from the Cyclics. Perhaps we are intended to
understand that "had we seen these poems before they were made," we
would find that they all borrowed from each other. My mind is not
metaphysical enough to conceive what the poems were "before they were
made." To me it seems that they must, before they were made, have been
mere masses of materials, traditions, legends, lays of unknown extent,
and _Märchen_ that had no original connection with definite places
and persons. There was no _Cypria_, no _Iliad_, no _Little Iliad_, no
_Aethiopis_ before these poems were made. We should not, I think, speak
of any unmade poem in the making as borrowing matter from another poem
which, by our theory, is also still unmade.
We can only speak of the poets as selecting, each for himself, from
the same mass of materials. If we conceive one poem to have been made
before another, then the author or authors of that other may borrow
from the earlier work. Thus, when the _Cypria_ or other Cyclic poems
coincide in topic with the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, that may be (1)
because the authors work out hints given in these finished poems; or
(2) the authors may have had recourse to the same "masses of tradition"
as were open to the author of the _Iliad_. But the Cyclic poets do not
often appear to know Achaean traditions, of the Trojan affair outside
of our Homer. We have shown that Palamedes was not originally an
Achaean of the Achaeans, but a culture hero. The legend of Telephus,
with its sympathetic magic, is wholly un-Achaean; so is Iphigeneia; so
are the sons of Theseus; so is the Attic Nemesis.
As we shall show in an Appendix, Mr. Murray accounts for the
non-Achaean elements so conspicuous in the Cyclic poems, by the theory
that they once also appeared in the lays whence our _Iliad_ arose,
but were expurgated by the clear Hellenic spirit of Greece in the
sixth century, because these lays alone were recited at Panionian and
Panathenaean festivals. Our own conclusion is that the Muses befriended
Homer when they permitted the fragments of the Cyclic poems to escape
the tooth of time. For these fragments suffice to prove that the Ionian
poets could take up an Achaean theme, but in a score of ways, in their
epics, betrayed themselves as non-Achaean.
Their poems are not sections cut out of an Achaean mass of lays, and
our Homer is not a similar section, is not Cyclic. It has now been
proved, I think, that in no point or trait of life, religion, legends,
armour, tactics, rites, taste, poetic method, or anything else, is
Homer affected by Ionian influences. The _Iliad_, and mainly the
_Odyssey_, are entirely distinct in all their contents from Ionian
work. They are much older, and are the fruit of the brief-lived flower
of Achaean culture.[44]
[1] In English the best critical treatises are _Homer and the Cyclic
Poems_, by the late Mr. Binning Monro in his _Odyssey_, Books
xiii.-xxiv. pp. 340-384, with his "On the Fragment of Proclus's
Abstract of the Epic Cycle," _Journal of Hellenic Society_, vol. iv.
pp. 305-334. The discussion of the whole topic by Mr. T. W. Allen in
_The Classical Quarterly_ (1908) leaves no hint of ancient evidence
unexplored, however remote and obscure its lurking place. Mr. Allen
specially criticises the ingenious inferences of von Wilamowitz
Moellendorff in his _Homerische Untersuchungen_, inferences which
appear to be accepted by Mr. Murray in his _Rise of the Greek Epic_,
and his lecture, "Anthropology in the Greek Epic Tradition outside of
Homer," in _Anthropology and the Classics_, 1908.
[2] Kinkel, _Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta_, 1898.
[3] _J. H. S._, vol. iv p. 305.
[4] _Odyssey_, vol. ii pp. 352-354.
[5] Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, vol. ii pp. 488-493. Mr.
Monro seems to have been unaware of these facts. _Odyssey_, vol. ii p.
354.
[6] Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 350.
[7] _Companion to the Iliad_, p. 46.
[8] _Homerische Untersuchungen_, pp. 374, 375. On
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff's opinion that the Cyclics were lost before
the time of Pausanias, see Mr. Allen, _Classical Quarterly_, January,
April, 1908. The _Iliad, as it stands_, appears to be regarded as later
and more artistic than the rest.
[9] Aristotle, _Poetics_, ch. xxiv.
[10] _R. G. E._ p. 165.
[11] _Ibid._ p. 165.
[12] _Ibid._ p. 163.
[13] The seven Greek verses to this effect are preserved by the Venice
Scholiast on _Iliad_, i. 5, 6. The words Διὸς δ'ἐτελείετο βουλή are
also in _Iliad_, i. 5, whether the author of the _Cypria_ borrowed
them, or whether they were an old epic formula.
[14] Schol. Ven., _Iliad_, i, 5, 6.
[15] _R. G. E._ pp. 80-88.
[16] Pausanias, i. 33.
[17] _Bekk. Anecdot_. p. 282. 32. Pausanias, i. 33. 2.
[18] Pausanias, vii. 5. 3. See Farnell, _Cults of Greek States_, vol.
ii. pp. 487-495. 594. 595.
[19] Kinkel, _Ep. Graec. Frag_. p. 25 9.
[20] _Iliad_, ii. 326-329.
[21] xix. 326, 327.
[22] The common tale that Achilles was sent to Scyros to avoid the
war, in girl's dress; that he there begat Neoptolemus, and was then
unmasked by Odysseus, was in contradiction with _Iliad_, xi. 766-785,
where Nestor tells how he summoned Achilles at the house of Peleus, his
father.
[23] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 352.
[24] Pausanias, ii. 22.
[25] Kinkel, p. 29.
[26] See "The Story of Palamedes."
[27] Welcker, _Das Ep. Kyk._, vol. i. pp. 211, 212.
[28] _Iliad_, xx ii. 358-360.
[29] _Iliad_, xi. 690.
[30] Pausanias, iii. 19.
[31] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 361.
[32] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 370.
[33] Pausanias, v. 19.
[34] Pausanias, x. 25.
[35] _Odyssey_, viii. 492-520.
[36] Pausanias, 1. 23. 10.
[37] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 372, 373.
[38] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 476.
[39] Cf. Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 398-402. He is sceptical, as
is Mr. Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. xviii, xix. But see Mr. Allen in
_Classical Quarterly_, i. 135 ff.
[40] _R. G. E_. p. 164.
[41] Mr. Leaf writes _(Iliad_, vol. i. p. 86): "The conclusion is that
the Catalogue" (of _Iliad_, ii.) "originally formed an introduction
to the whole Cycle, and was composed for that part of it which,
as worked up into a separate poem, was called the _Kypria_, and
related the beginning of the Tale of Troy, and the mustering of the
ships at Aulis." I do not quite know what Mr. Leaf means; but the
evidence is that the _Cypria_ contained "a _Catalogue of the allies
of the Trojans_" (Kinkel, p. 20). Nothing is said of its containing
a Catalogue of the Achaeans. Mr. Monro _(Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 351)
justly remarks that the _Trojan_ Catalogue in the _Cypria_ was intended
to supplement the short Catalogue of the allies of Troy given in the
_Iliad_: "Such an enlarged roll would be the natural fruit of increased
acquaintance" (on the part of Greek settlers in Asia) "with the
non-Hellenic races of Asia Minor."
[42] _R. G. E_. p. 165.
[43] _ Anthropology and the Classics_, 1908, p. 67.
[44] See Appendix, "Homeric Epics, Lost Epics, and 'Traditional Books.'"