BOOK I.

BOOK II.

BOOK III.

BOOK IV.

BOOK V.

BOOK VI.

BOOK VII.

BOOK VIII.

BOOK IX.

BOOK X.

BOOK XI.

BOOK XII.

BOOK XIII.

BOOK XIV.

BOOK XV.

BOOK XVI.

BOOK XVII.

BOOK XVIII.

BOOK XIX.

BOOK XX.

BOOK XXI.

BOOK XXII.

BOOK XXIII.

BOOK XXIV.

INTRODUCTION.

Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of

scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the

most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very

gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and

emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set

aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be

daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and

anxiety to acquire.

And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which

progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which

persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu

of their conventional value. The same principles which have swept away

traditional abuses, and which are making rapid havoc among the revenues

of sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from attractive

superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in society. The

credulity of one writer, or the partiality of another, finds as

powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the healthy

scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams of

conservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the Church.

History and tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively recent

times, are subjected to very different handling from that which the

indulgence or credulity of former ages could allow. Mere statements are

jealously watched, and the motives of the writer form as important an

ingredient in the analysis of his history, as the facts he records.

Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this

troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is

sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting in its

demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than mere

facts. Human nature, viewed under an introduction of extended

experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history.

Historical characters can only be estimated by the standard which human

experience, whether actual or traditionary, has furnished. To form

correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a

great whole—we must measure them by their relation to the mass of

beings by whom they are surrounded; and, in contemplating the incidents

in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, we

must rather consider the general bearing of the whole narrative, than

the respective probability of its details.

It is unfortunate for us, that, of some of the greatest men, we know

least, and talk most. Homer, Socrates, and Shakespere have, perhaps,

contributed more to the intellectual enlightenment of mankind than any

other three writers who could be named, and yet the history of all

three has given rise to a boundless ocean of discussion, which has left

us little save the option of choosing which theory or theories we will

follow. The personality of Shakespere is, perhaps, the only thing in

which critics will allow us to believe without controversy; but upon

everything else, even down to the authorship of plays, there is more or

less of doubt and uncertainty. Of Socrates we know as little as the

contradictions of Plato and Xenophon will allow us to know. He was one

of the _dramatis personæ_ in two dramas as unlike in principles as in

style. He appears as the enunciator of opinions as different in their

tone as those of the writers who have handed them down. When we have

read Plato _or_ Xenophon, we think we know something of Socrates; when

we have fairly read and examined both, we feel convinced that we are

something worse than ignorant.

It has been an easy, and a popular expedient of late years, to deny the

personal or real existence of men and things whose life and condition

were too much for our belief. This system—which has often comforted the

religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of Strauss for

those of the New Testament—has been of incalculable value to the

historical theorists of the last and present centuries. To question the

existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more excusable act, than

to believe in that of Romulus. To deny a fact related in Herodotus,

because it is inconsistent with a theory developed from an Assyrian

inscription which no two scholars read in the same way, is more

pardonable, than to believe in the good-natured old king whom the

elegant pen of Florian has idealized—_Numa Pompilius_.

Scepticism has attained its culminating point with respect to Homer,

and the state of our Homeric knowledge may be described as a free

permission to believe any theory, provided we throw overboard all

written tradition, concerning the author or authors of the Iliad and

Odyssey. What few authorities exist on the subject, are summarily

dismissed, although the arguments appear to run in a circle. “This

cannot be true, because it is not true; and that is not true, because

it cannot be true.” Such seems to be the style, in which testimony upon

testimony, statement upon statement, is consigned to denial and

oblivion.

It is, however, unfortunate that the professed biographies of Homer are

partly forgeries, partly freaks of ingenuity and imagination, in which

truth is the requisite most wanting. Before taking a brief review of

the Homeric theory in its present conditions, some notice must be taken

of the treatise on the Life of Homer which has been attributed to

Herodotus.

According to this document, the city of Cumae in AEolia was, at an

early period, the seat of frequent immigrations from various parts of

Greece. Among the immigrants was Menapolus, the son of Ithagenes.

Although poor, he married, and the result of the union was a girl named

Critheis. The girl was left an orphan at an early age, under the

guardianship of Cleanax, of Argos. It is to the indiscretion of this

maiden that we “are indebted for so much happiness.” Homer was the

first fruit of her juvenile frailty, and received the name of

Melesigenes from having been born near the river Meles in Bœotia,

whither Critheis had been transported in order to save her reputation.

“At this time,” continues our narrative, “there lived at Smyrna a man

named Phemius, a teacher of literature and music, who, not being

married, engaged Critheis to manage his household, and spin the flax he

received as the price of his scholastic labours. So satisfactory was

her performance of this task, and so modest her conduct, that he made

proposals of marriage, declaring himself, as a further inducement,

willing to adopt her son, who, he asserted, would become a clever man,

if he were carefully brought up.”

They were married; careful cultivation ripened the talents which nature

had bestowed, and Melesigenes soon surpassed his schoolfellows in every

attainment, and, when older, rivalled his preceptor in wisdom. Phemius

died, leaving him sole heir to his property, and his mother soon

followed. Melesigenes carried on his adopted father’s school with great

success, exciting the admiration not only of the inhabitants of Smyrna,

but also of the strangers whom the trade carried on there, especially

in the exportation of corn, attracted to that city. Among these

visitors, one Mentes, from Leucadia, the modern Santa Maura, who

evinced a knowledge and intelligence rarely found in those times,

persuaded Melesigenes to close his school, and accompany him on his

travels. He promised not only to pay his expenses, but to furnish him

with a further stipend, urging, that, “While he was yet young, it was

fitting that he should see with his own eyes the countries and cities

which might hereafter be the subjects of his discourses.” Melesigenes

consented, and set out with his patron, “examining all the curiosities

of the countries they visited, and informing himself of everything by

interrogating those whom he met.” We may also suppose, that he wrote

memoirs of all that he deemed worthy of preservation. Having set sail

from Tyrrhenia and Iberia, they reached Ithaca. Here Melesigenes, who

had already suffered in his eyes, became much worse; and Mentes, who

was about to leave for Leucadia, left him to the medical

superintendence of a friend of his, named Mentor, the son of Alcinor.

Under his hospitable and intelligent host, Melesigenes rapidly became

acquainted with the legends respecting Ulysses, which afterwards formed

the subject of the Odyssey. The inhabitants of Ithaca assert, that it

was here that Melesigenes became blind, but the Colophonians make their

city the seat of that misfortune. He then returned to Smyrna, where he

applied himself to the study of poetry.

But poverty soon drove him to Cumae. Having passed over the Hermaean

plain, he arrived at Neon Teichos, the New Wall, a colony of Cumae.

Here his misfortunes and poetical talent gained him the friendship of

one Tychias, an armourer. “And up to my time,” continues the author,

“the inhabitants showed the place where he used to sit when giving a

recitation of his verses; and they greatly honoured the spot. Here also

a poplar grew, which they said had sprung up ever since Melesigenes

arrived.”

But poverty still drove him on, and he went by way of Larissa, as being

the most convenient road. Here, the Cumans say, he composed an epitaph

on Gordius, king of Phrygia, which has however, and with greater

probability, been attributed to Cleobulus of Lindus.

Arrived at Cumae, he frequented the _conversaziones_ of the old men,

and delighted all by the charms of his poetry. Encouraged by this

favourable reception, he declared that, if they would allow him a

public maintenance, he would render their city most gloriously

renowned. They avowed their willingness to support him in the measure

he proposed, and procured him an audience in the council. Having made

the speech, with the purport of which our author has forgotten to

acquaint us, he retired, and left them to debate respecting the answer

to be given to his proposal.

The greater part of the assembly seemed favourable to the poet’s

demand, but one man “observed that if they were to feed _Homers_, they

would be encumbered with a multitude of useless people.” “From this

circumstance,” says the writer, “Melesigenes acquired the name of

Homer, for the Cumans call blind men _Homers_.” With a love of economy,

which shows how similar the world has always been in its treatment of

literary men, the pension was denied, and the poet vented his

disappointment in a wish that Cumae might never produce a poet capable

of giving it renown and glory.

At Phocaea Homer was destined to experience another literary distress.

One Thestorides, who aimed at the reputation of poetical genius, kept

Homer in his own house, and allowed him a pittance, on condition of the

verses of the poet passing in his name. Having collected sufficient

poetry to be profitable, Thestorides, like some would-be literary

publishers, neglected the man whose brains he had sucked, and left him.

At his departure, Homer is said to have observed: “O Thestorides, of

the many things hidden from the knowledge of man, nothing is more

unintelligible than the human heart.”

Homer continued his career of difficulty and distress, until some Chian

merchants, struck by the similarity of the verses they heard him

recite, acquainted him with the fact that Thestorides was pursuing a

profitable livelihood by the recital of the very same poems. This at

once determined him to set out for Chios. No vessel happened then to be

setting sail thither, but he found one ready to start for Erythrae, a

town of Ionia, which faces that island, and he prevailed upon the

seamen to allow him to accompany them. Having embarked, he invoked a

favourable wind, and prayed that he might be able to expose the

imposture of Thestorides, who, by his breach of hospitality, had drawn

down the wrath of Jove the Hospitable.

At Erythrae, Homer fortunately met with a person who had known him in

Phocaea, by whose assistance he at length, after some difficulty,

reached the little hamlet of Pithys. Here he met with an adventure,

which we will continue in the words of our author. “Having set out from

Pithys, Homer went on, attracted by the cries of some goats that were

pasturing. The dogs barked on his approach, and he cried out. Glaucus

(for that was the name of the goat-herd) heard his voice, ran up

quickly, called off his dogs, and drove them away from Homer. For some

time he stood wondering how a blind man should have reached such a

place alone, and what could be his design in coming. He then went up to

him and inquired who he was, and how he had come to desolate places and

untrodden spots, and of what he stood in need. Homer, by recounting to

him the whole history of his misfortunes, moved him with compassion;

and he took him and led him to his cot, and, having lit a fire, bade

him sup.

“The dogs, instead of eating, kept barking at the stranger, according

to their usual habit. Whereupon Homer addressed Glaucus thus: O

Glaucus, my friend, prythee attend to my behest. First give the dogs

their supper at the doors of the hut: for so it is better, since,

whilst they watch, nor thief nor wild beast will approach the fold.

“Glaucus was pleased with the advice and marvelled at its author.

Having finished supper, they banqueted afresh on conversation, Homer

narrating his wanderings, and telling of the cities he had visited.

“At length they retired to rest; but on the following morning, Glaucus

resolved to go to his master, and acquaint him with his meeting with

Homer. Having left the goats in charge of a fellow-servant, he left

Homer at home, promising to return quickly. Having arrived at Bolissus,

a place near the farm, and finding his mate, he told him the whole

story respecting Homer and his journey. He paid little attention to

what he said, and blamed Glaucus for his stupidity in taking in and

feeding maimed and enfeebled persons. However, he bade him bring the

stranger to him.

“Glaucus told Homer what had taken place, and bade him follow him,

assuring him that good fortune would be the result. Conversation soon

showed that the stranger was a man of much cleverness and general

knowledge, and the Chian persuaded him to remain, and to undertake the

charge of his children.”

Besides the satisfaction of driving the impostor Thestorides from the

island, Homer enjoyed considerable success as a teacher. In the town of

Chios he established a school, where he taught the precepts of poetry.

“To this day,” says Chandler, “the most curious remain is that which

has been named, without reason, the School of Homer. It is on the

coast, at some distance from the city, northward, and appears to have

been an open temple of Cybele, formed on the top of a rock. The shape

is oval, and in the centre is the image of the goddess, the head and an

arm wanting. She is represented, as usual, sitting. The chair has a

lion carved on each side, and on the back. The area is bounded by a low

rim, or seat, and about five yards over. The whole is hewn out of the

mountain, is rude, indistinct, and probably of the most remote

antiquity.”

So successful was this school, that Homer realised a considerable

fortune. He married, and had two daughters, one of whom died single,

the other married a Chian.

The following passage betrays the same tendency to connect the

personages of the poems with the history of the poet, which has already

been mentioned:—

“In his poetical compositions Homer displays great gratitude towards

Mentor of Ithaca, in the Odyssey, whose name he has inserted in his

poem as the companion of Ulysses, in return for the care taken of him

when afflicted with blindness. He also testifies his gratitude to

Phemius, who had given him both sustenance and instruction.”

His celebrity continued to increase, and many persons advised him to

visit Greece whither his reputation had now extended. Having, it is

said, made some additions to his poems calculated to please the vanity

of the Athenians, of whose city he had hitherto made no mention, he set

out for Samos. Here, being recognized by a Samian, who had met with him

in Chios, he was handsomely received, and invited to join in

celebrating the Apaturian festival. He recited some verses, which gave

great satisfaction, and by singing the Eiresione at the New Moon

festivals, he earned a subsistence, visiting the houses of the rich,

with whose children he was very popular.

In the spring he sailed for Athens, and arrived at the island of Ios,

now Ino, where he fell extremely ill, and died. It is said that his

death arose from vexation, at not having been able to unravel an enigma

proposed by some fishermen’s children.

Such is, in brief, the substance of the earliest life of Homer we

possess, and so broad are the evidences of its historical

worthlessness, that it is scarcely necessary to point them out in

detail. Let us now consider some of the opinions to which a

persevering, patient, and learned—but by no means consistent—series of

investigations has led. In doing so, I profess to bring forward

statements, not to vouch for their reasonableness or probability.

“Homer appeared. The history of this poet and his works is lost in

doubtful obscurity, as is the history of many of the first minds who

have done honour to humanity, because they rose amidst darkness. The

majestic stream of his song, blessing and fertilizing, flows like the

Nile, through many lands and nations; and, like the sources of the

Nile, its fountains will ever remain concealed.”

Such are the words in which one of the most judicious German critics

has eloquently described the uncertainty in which the whole of the

Homeric question is involved. With no less truth and feeling he

proceeds:—

“It seems here of chief importance to expect no more than the nature of

things makes possible. If the period of tradition in history is the

region of twilight, we should not expect in it perfect light. The

creations of genius always seem like miracles, because they are, for

the most part, created far out of the reach of observation. If we were

in possession of all the historical testimonies, we never could wholly

explain the origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey; for their origin, in

all essential points, must have remained the secret of the poet.”

From this criticism, which shows as much insight into the depths of

human nature as into the minute wire-drawings of scholastic

investigation, let us pass on to the main question at issue. Was Homer

an individual? or were the Iliad and Odyssey the result of an ingenious

arrangement of fragments by earlier poets?

Well has Landor remarked: “Some tell us there were twenty Homers; some

deny that there was ever one. It were idle and foolish to shake the

contents of a vase, in order to let them settle at last. We are

perpetually labouring to destroy our delights, our composure, our

devotion to superior power. Of all the animals on earth we least know

what is good for us. My opinion is, that what is best for us is our

admiration of good. No man living venerates Homer more than I do.”

But, greatly as we admire the generous enthusiasm which rests contented

with the poetry on which its best impulses had been nurtured and

fostered, without seeking to destroy the vividness of first impressions

by minute analysis, our editorial office compels us to give some

attention to the doubts and difficulties with which the Homeric

question is beset, and to entreat our reader, for a brief period, to

prefer his judgment to his imagination, and to condescend to dry

details. Before, however, entering into particulars respecting the

question of this unity of the Homeric poems, (at least of the Iliad,) I

must express my sympathy with the sentiments expressed in the following

remarks:—

“We cannot but think the universal admiration of its unity by the

better, the poetic age of Greece, almost conclusive testimony to its

original composition. It was not till the age of the grammarians that

its primitive integrity was called in question; nor is it injustice to

assert, that the minute and analytical spirit of a grammarian is not

the best qualification for the profound feeling, the comprehensive

conception of an harmonious whole. The most exquisite anatomist may be

no judge of the symmetry of the human frame; and we would take the

opinion of Chantrey or Westmacott on the proportions and general beauty

of a form, rather than that of Mr. Brodie or Sir Astley Cooper.

“There is some truth, though some malicious exaggeration, in the lines

of Pope:—

“‘The critic eye—that microscope of wit—

Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit;

How parts relate to parts, or they to whole.

The body’s harmony, the beaming soul,

Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse, shall see,

When man’s whole frame is obvious to a flea.’”

Long was the time which elapsed before any one dreamt of questioning

the unity of the authorship of the Homeric poems. The grave and

cautious Thucydides quoted without hesitation the Hymn to Apollo, the

authenticity of which has been already disclaimed by modern critics.

Longinus, in an oft-quoted passage, merely expressed an opinion

touching the comparative inferiority of the Odyssey to the Iliad; and,

among a mass of ancient authors, whose very names it would be tedious

to detail, no suspicion of the personal non-existence of Homer ever

arose. So far, the voice of antiquity seems to be in favour of our

early ideas on the subject: let us now see what are the discoveries to

which more modern investigations lay claim.

At the end of the seventeenth century, doubts had begun to awaken on

the subject, and we find Bentley remarking that “Homer wrote a sequel

of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself, for small comings and

good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment. These loose songs

were not collected together, in the form of an epic poem, till about

Peisistratus’ time, about five hundred years after.”

Two French writers—Hedelin and Perrault—avowed a similar scepticism on

the subject; but it is in the “Scienza Nuova” of Battista Vico, that we

first meet with the germ of the theory, subsequently defended by Wolf

with so much learning and acuteness. Indeed, it is with the Wolfian

theory that we have chiefly to deal, and with the following bold

hypothesis, which we will detail in the words of Grote:—

“Half a century ago, the acute and valuable Prolegomena of F. A. Wolf,

turning to account the Venetian Scholia, which had then been recently

published, first opened philosophical discussion as to the history of

the Homeric text. A considerable part of that dissertation (though by

no means the whole) is employed in vindicating the position, previously

announced by Bentley, amongst others, that the separate constituent

portions of the Iliad and Odyssey had not been cemented together into

any compact body and unchangeable order, until the days of

Peisistratus, in the sixth century before Christ. As a step towards

that conclusion, Wolf maintained that no written copies of either poem

could be shown to have existed during the earlier times, to which their

composition is referred; and that without writing, neither the perfect

symmetry of so complicated a work could have been originally conceived

by any poet, nor, if realized by him, transmitted with assurance to

posterity. The absence of easy and convenient writing, such as must be

indispensably supposed for long manuscripts, among the early Greeks,

was thus one of the points in Wolf’s case against the primitive

integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey. By Nitzsch, and other leading

opponents of Wolf, the connection of the one with the other seems to

have been accepted as he originally put it; and it has been considered

incumbent on those who defended the ancient aggregate character of the

Iliad and Odyssey, to maintain that they were written poems from the

beginning.

“To me it appears, that the architectonic functions ascribed by Wolf to

Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the Homeric poems, are

nowise admissible. But much would undoubtedly be gained towards that

view of the question, if it could be shown, that, in order to

controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting long

written poems, in the ninth century before the Christian aera. Few

things, in my opinion, can be more improbable; and Mr. Payne Knight,

opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no less than

Wolf himself. The traces of writing in Greece, even in the seventh

century before the Christian aera, are exceedingly trifling. We have no

remaining inscription earlier than the fortieth Olympiad, and the early

inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed; nor can we even assure

ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonides of Amorgus, Kallinus Tyrtaeus,

Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric poets, committed their

compositions to writing, or at what time the practice of doing so

became familiar. The first positive ground which authorizes us to

presume the existence of a manuscript of Homer, is in the famous

ordinance of Solon, with regard to the rhapsodies at the Panathenaea:

but for what length of time previously manuscripts had existed, we are

unable to say.

“Those who maintain the Homeric poems to have been written from the

beginning, rest their case, not upon positive proofs, nor yet upon the

existing habits of society with regard to poetry—for they admit

generally that the Iliad and Odyssey were not read, but recited and

heard,—but upon the supposed necessity that there must have been

manuscripts to ensure the preservation of the poems—the unassisted

memory of reciters being neither sufficient nor trustworthy. But here

we only escape a smaller difficulty by running into a greater; for the

existence of trained bards, gifted with extraordinary memory, is far

less astonishing than that of long manuscripts, in an age essentially

non-reading and non-writing, and when even suitable instruments and

materials for the process are not obvious. Moreover, there is a strong

positive reason for believing that the bard was under no necessity of

refreshing his memory by consulting a manuscript; for if such had been

the fact, blindness would have been a disqualification for the

profession, which we know that it was not, as well from the example of

Demodokus, in the Odyssey, as from that of the blind bard of Chios, in

the Hymn to the Delian Apollo, whom Thucydides, as well as the general

tenor of Grecian legend, identifies with Homer himself. The author of

that hymn, be he who he may, could never have described a blind man as

attaining the utmost perfection in his art, if he had been conscious

that the memory of the bard was only maintained by constant reference

to the manuscript in his chest.”

The loss of the digamma, that _crux_ of critics, that quicksand upon

which even the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked, seems to prove beyond

a doubt, that the pronunciation of the Greek language had undergone a

considerable change. Now it is certainly difficult to suppose that the

Homeric poems could have suffered by this change, had written copies

been preserved. If Chaucer’s poetry, for instance, had not been

written, it could only have come down to us in a softened form, more

like the effeminate version of Dryden, than the rough, quaint, noble

original.

“At what period,” continues Grote, “these poems, or indeed any other

Greek poems, first began to be written, must be matter of conjecture,

though there is ground for assurance that it was before the time of

Solon. If, in the absence of evidence, we may venture upon naming any

more determinate period, the question at once suggests itself, What

were the purposes which, in that state of society, a manuscript at its

first commencement must have been intended to answer? For whom was a

written Iliad necessary? Not for the rhapsodes; for with them it was

not only planted in the memory, but also interwoven with the feelings,

and conceived in conjunction with all those flexions and intonations of

voice, pauses, and other oral artifices which were required for

emphatic delivery, and which the naked manuscript could never

reproduce. Not for the general public—they were accustomed to receive

it with its rhapsodic delivery, and with its accompaniments of a solemn

and crowded festival. The only persons for whom the written Iliad would

be suitable would be a select few; studious and curious men; a class of

readers capable of analyzing the complicated emotions which they had

experienced as hearers in the crowd, and who would, on perusing the

written words, realize in their imaginations a sensible portion of the

impression communicated by the reciter. Incredible as the statement may

seem in an age like the present, there is in all early societies, and

there was in early Greece, a time when no such reading class existed.

If we could discover at what time such a class first began to be

formed, we should be able to make a guess at the time when the old epic

poems were first committed to writing. Now the period which may with

the greatest probability be fixed upon as having first witnessed the

formation even of the narrowest reading class in Greece, is the middle

of the seventh century before the Christian aera (B.C. 660 to B.C.

630), the age of Terpander, Kallinus, Archilochus, Simenides of

Amorgus, &c. I ground this supposition on the change then operated in

the character and tendencies of Grecian poetry and music—the elegiac

and the iambic measures having been introduced as rivals to the

primitive hexameter, and poetical compositions having been transferred

from the epical past to the affairs of present and real life. Such a

change was important at a time when poetry was the only known mode of

publication (to use a modern phrase not altogether suitable, yet the

nearest approaching to the sense). It argued a new way of looking at

the old epical treasures of the people, as well as a thirst for new

poetical effect; and the men who stood forward in it may well be

considered as desirous to study, and competent to criticize, from their

own individual point of view, the written words of the Homeric

rhapsodies, just as we are told that Kallinus both noticed and

eulogized the Thebais as the production of Homer. There seems,

therefore, ground for conjecturing that (for the use of this

newly-formed and important, but very narrow class), manuscripts of the

Homeric poems and other old epics,—the Thebais and the Cypria, as well

as the Iliad and the Odyssey,—began to be compiled towards the middle

of the seventh century B.C.; and the opening of Egypt to Grecian

commerce, which took place about the same period, would furnish

increased facilities for obtaining the requisite papyrus to write upon.

A reading class, when once formed, would doubtless slowly increase, and

the number of manuscripts along with it: so that before the time of

Solon, fifty years afterwards, both readers and manuscripts, though

still comparatively few, might have attained a certain recognized

authority, and formed a tribunal of reference against the carelessness

of individual rhapsodies.”

But even Peisistratus has not been suffered to remain in possession of

the credit, and we cannot help feeling the force of the following

observations:—

“There are several incidental circumstances which, in our opinion,

throw some suspicion over the whole history of the Peisistratid

compilation, at least over the theory that the Iliad was cast into its

present stately and harmonious form by the directions of the Athenian

ruler. If the great poets, who flourished at the bright period of

Grecian song, of which, alas! we have inherited little more than the

fame, and the faint echo; if Stesichorus, Anacreon, and Simonides were

employed in the noble task of compiling the Iliad and Odyssey, so much

must have been done to arrange, to connect, to harmonize, that it is

almost incredible that stronger marks of Athenian manufacture should

not remain. Whatever occasional anomalies may be detected, anomalies

which no doubt arise out of our own ignorance of the language of the

Homeric age; however the irregular use of the digamma may have

perplexed our Bentleys, to whom the name of Helen is said to have

caused as much disquiet and distress as the fair one herself among the

heroes of her age; however Mr. Knight may have failed in reducing the

Homeric language to its primitive form; however, finally, the Attic

dialect may not have assumed all its more marked and distinguishing

characteristics:—still it is difficult to suppose that the language,

particularly in the joinings and transitions, and connecting parts,

should not more clearly betray the incongruity between the more ancient

and modern forms of expression. It is not quite in character with such

a period to imitate an antique style, in order to piece out an

imperfect poem in the character of the original, as Sir Walter Scott

has done in his continuation of Sir Tristram.

“If, however, not even such faint and indistinct traces of Athenian

compilation are discoverable in the language of the poems, the total

absence of Athenian national feeling is perhaps no less worthy of

observation. In later, and it may fairly be suspected in earlier times,

the Athenians were more than ordinarily jealous of the fame of their

ancestors. But, amid all the traditions of the glories of early Greece

embodied in the Iliad, the Athenians play a most subordinate and

insignificant part. Even the few passages which relate to their

ancestors, Mr. Knight suspects to be interpolations. It is possible,

indeed, that in its leading outline, the Iliad may be true to historic

fact; that in the great maritime expedition of western Greece against

the rival and half-kindred empire of the Laomedontiadae, the chieftain

of Thessaly, from his valour and the number of his forces, may have

been the most important ally of the Peloponnesian sovereign: the

pre-eminent value of the ancient poetry on the Trojan war may thus have

forced the national feeling of the Athenians to yield to their taste.

The songs which spoke of their own great ancestor were, no doubt, of

far inferior sublimity and popularity, or, at first sight, a Theseid

would have been much more likely to have emanated from an Athenian

synod of compilers of ancient song, than an Achilleid or an Odysseid.

Could France have given birth to a Tasso, Tancred would have been the

hero of the Jerusalem. If, however, the Homeric ballads, as they are

sometimes called, which related the wrath of Achilles, with all its

direful consequences, were so far superior to the rest of the poetic

cycle, as to admit no rivalry,—it is still surprising, that throughout

the whole poem the _callida junctura_ should never betray the

workmanship of an Athenian hand; and that the national spirit of a

race, who have at a later period not inaptly been compared to our

self-admiring neighbours, the French, should submit with lofty

self-denial to the almost total exclusion of their own ancestors—or, at

least, to the questionable dignity of only having produced a leader

tolerably skilled in the military tactics of his age.”

To return to the Wolfian theory. While it is to be confessed, that

Wolf’s objections to the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey

have never been wholly got over, we cannot help discovering that they

have failed to enlighten us as to any substantial point, and that the

difficulties with which the whole subject is beset, are rather

augmented than otherwise, if we admit his hypothesis. Nor is Lachmann’s

modification of his theory any better. He divides the first twenty-two

books of the Iliad into sixteen different songs, and treats as

ridiculous the belief that their amalgamation into one regular poem

belongs to a period earlier than the age of Peisistratus. This as Grote

observes, “ex-plains the gaps and contradictions in the narrative, but

it explains nothing else.” Moreover, we find no contradictions

warranting this belief, and the so-called sixteen poets concur in

getting rid of the following leading men in the first battle after the

secession of Achilles: Elphenor, chief of the Euboeans; Tlepolemus, of

the Rhodians; Pandarus, of the Lycians; Odins, of the Halizonians:

Pirous and Acamas, of the Thracians. None of these heroes again make

their appearance, and we can but agree with Colonel Mure, that “it

seems strange that any number of independent poets should have so

harmoniously dispensed with the services of all six in the sequel.” The

discrepancy, by which Pylaemenes, who is represented as dead in the

fifth book, weeps at his son’s funeral in the thirteenth, can only be

regarded as the result of an interpolation.

Grote, although not very distinct in stating his own opinions on the

subject, has done much to clearly show the incongruity of the Wolfian

theory, and of Lachmann’s modifications, with the character of

Peisistratus. But he has also shown, and we think with equal success,

that the two questions relative to the primitive unity of these poems,

or, supposing that impossible, the unison of these parts by

Peisistratus, and not before his time, are essentially distinct. In

short, “a man may believe the Iliad to have been put together out of

pre-existing songs, without recognising the age of Peisistratus as the

period of its first compilation.” The friends or literary _employés_ of

Peisistratus must have found an Iliad that was already ancient, and the

silence of the Alexandrine critics respecting the Peisistratic

“recension,” goes far to prove, that, among the numerous manuscripts

they examined, this was either wanting, or thought unworthy of

attention.

“Moreover,” he continues, “the whole tenor of the poems themselves

confirms what is here remarked. There is nothing, either in the Iliad

or Odyssey, which savours of modernism, applying that term to the age

of Peisistratus—nothing which brings to our view the alterations

brought about by two centuries, in the Greek language, the coined

money, the habits of writing and reading, the despotisms and republican

governments, the close military array, the improved construction of

ships, the Amphiktyonic convocations, the mutual frequentation of

religious festivals, the Oriental and Egyptian veins of religion, &c.,

familiar to the latter epoch. These alterations Onomakritus, and the

other literary friends of Peisistratus, could hardly have failed to

notice, even without design, had they then, for the first time,

undertaken the task of piecing together many self-existent epics into

one large aggregate. Everything in the two great Homeric poems, both in

substance and in language, belongs to an age two or three centuries

earlier than Peisistratus. Indeed, even the interpolations (or those

passages which, on the best grounds, are pronounced to be such) betray

no trace of the sixth century before Christ, and may well have been

heard by Archilochus and Kallinus—in some cases even by Arktinus and

Hesiod—as genuine Homeric matter. As far as the evidences on the case,

as well internal as external, enable us to judge, we seem warranted in

believing that the Iliad and Odyssey were recited substantially as they

now stand (always allowing for partial divergences of text and

interpolations) in 776 B.C., our first trustworthy mark of Grecian

time; and this ancient date, let it be added, as it is the

best-authenticated fact, so it is also the most important attribute of

the Homeric poems, considered in reference to Grecian history; for they

thus afford us an insight into the anti-historical character of the

Greeks, enabling us to trace the subsequent forward march of the

nation, and to seize instructive contrasts between their former and

their later condition.”

On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that the labours of

Peisistratus were wholly of an editorial character, although I must

confess that I can lay down nothing respecting the extent of his

labours. At the same time, so far from believing that the composition

or primary arrangement of these poems, in their present form, was the

work of Peisistratus, I am rather persuaded that the fine taste and

elegant, mind of that Athenian would lead him to preserve an ancient

and traditional order of the poems, rather than to patch and

reconstruct them according to a fanciful hypothesis. I will not repeat

the many discussions respecting whether the poems were written or not,

or whether the art of writing was known in the time of their reputed

author. Suffice it to say, that the more we read, the less satisfied we

are upon either subject.

I cannot, however, help thinking, that the story which attributes the

preservation of these poems to Lycurgus, is little else than a version

of the same story as that of Peisistratus, while its historical

probability must be measured by that of many others relating to the

Spartan Confucius.

I will conclude this sketch of the Homeric theories with an attempt,

made by an ingenious friend, to unite them into something like

consistency. It is as follows:—

“No doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like the common sailors

of some fifty years ago, some one qualified to ‘discourse in excellent

music’ among them. Many of these, like those of the negroes in the

United States, were extemporaneous, and allusive to events passing

around them. But what was passing around them? The grand events of a

spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to impress themselves, as the

mystical legends of former times had done, upon their memory; besides

which, a retentive memory was deemed a virtue of the first water, and

was cultivated accordingly in those ancient times. Ballads at first,

and down to the beginning of the war with Troy, were merely

recitations, with an intonation. Then followed a species of recitative,

probably with an intoned burden. Tune next followed, as it aided the

memory considerably.

“It was at this period, about four hundred years after the war, that a

poet flourished of the name of Melesigenes, or Moeonides, but most

probably the former. He saw that these ballads might be made of great

utility to his purpose of writing a poem on the social position of

Hellas, and, as a collection, he published these lays connecting them

by a tale of his own. This poem now exists, under the title of the

‘Odyssea.’ The author, however, did not affix his own name to the poem,

which, in fact, was, great part of it, remodelled from the archaic

dialect of Crete, in which tongue the ballads were found by him. He

therefore called it the poem of Homeros, or the Collector; but this is

rather a proof of his modesty and talent, than of his mere drudging

arrangement of other people’s ideas; for, as Grote has finely observed,

arguing for the unity of authorship, ‘a great poet might have re-cast

pre-existing separate songs into one comprehensive whole; but no mere

arrangers or compilers would be competent to do so.’

“While employed on the wild legend of Odysseus, he met with a ballad,

recording the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon. His noble mind seized

the hint that there presented itself, and the Achilleis grew under his

hand. Unity of design, however, caused him to publish the poem under

the same pseudonyme as his former work; and the disjointed lays of the

ancient bards were joined together, like those relating to the Cid,

into a chronicle history, named the Iliad. Melesigenes knew that the

poem was destined to be a lasting one, and so it has proved; but,

first, the poems were destined to undergo many vicissitudes and

corruptions, by the people who took to singing them in the streets,

assemblies, and agoras. However, Solon first, and then Peisistratus,

and afterwards Aristoteles and others, revised the poems, and restored

the works of Melesigenes Homeros to their original integrity in a great

measure.”

Having thus given some general notion of the strange theories which

have developed themselves respecting this most interesting subject, I

must still express my conviction as to the unity of the authorship of

the Homeric poems. To deny that many corruptions and interpolations

disfigure them, and that the intrusive hand of the poetasters may here

and there have inflicted a wound more serious than the negligence of

the copyist, would be an absurd and captious assumption; but it is to a

higher criticism that we must appeal, if we would either understand or

enjoy these poems. In maintaining the authenticity and personality of

their one author, be he Homer or Melesigenes, _quocunque nomine vocari

eum jus fasque sit_, I feel conscious that, while the whole weight of

historical evidence is against the hypothesis which would assign these

great works to a plurality of authors, the most powerful internal

evidence, and that which springs from the deepest and most immediate

impulse of the soul, also speaks eloquently to the contrary.

The minutiae of verbal criticism I am far from seeking to despise.

Indeed, considering the character of some of my own books, such an

attempt would be gross inconsistency. But, while I appreciate its

importance in a philological view, I am inclined to set little store on

its aesthetic value, especially in poetry. Three parts of the

emendations made upon poets are mere alterations, some of which, had

they been suggested to the author by his Maecenas or Africanus, he

would probably have adopted. Moreover, those who are most exact in

laying down rules of verbal criticism and interpretation, are often

least competent to carry out their own precepts. Grammarians are not

poets by profession, but may be so _per accidens_. I do not at this

moment remember two emendations on Homer, calculated to substantially

improve the poetry of a passage, although a mass of remarks, from

Herodotus down to Loewe, have given us the history of a thousand minute

points, without which our Greek knowledge would be gloomy and jejune.

But it is not on words only that grammarians, mere grammarians, will

exercise their elaborate and often tiresome ingenuity. Binding down an

heroic or dramatic poet to the block upon which they have previously

dissected his words and sentences, they proceed to use the axe and the

pruning knife by wholesale; and, inconsistent in everything but their

wish to make out a case of unlawful affiliation, they cut out book

after book, passage after passage, till the author is reduced to a

collection of fragments, or till those who fancied they possessed the

works of some great man, find that they have been put off with a vile

counterfeit got up at second hand. If we compare the theories of

Knight, Wolf, Lachmann; and others, we shall feel better satisfied of

the utter uncertainty of criticism than of the apocryphal position of

Homer. One rejects what another considers the turning-point of his

theory. One cuts a supposed knot by expunging what another would

explain by omitting something else.

Nor is this morbid species of sagacity by any means to be looked upon

as a literary novelty. Justus Lipsius, a scholar of no ordinary skill,

seems to revel in the imaginary discovery, that the tragedies

attributed to Seneca are by _four_ different authors. Now, I will

venture to assert, that these tragedies are so uniform, not only in

their borrowed phraseology—a phraseology with which writers like

Boethius and Saxo Grammaticus were more charmed than ourselves—in their

freedom from real poetry, and last, but not least, in an ultra-refined

and consistent abandonment of good taste, that few writers of the

present day would question the capabilities of the same gentleman, be

he Seneca or not, to produce not only these, but a great many more

equally bad. With equal sagacity, Father Hardouin astonished the world

with the startling announcement that the AEneid of Virgil, and the

satires of Horace, were literary deceptions. Now, without wishing to

say one word of disrespect against the industry and learning—nay, the

refined acuteness—which scholars like Wolf have bestowed upon this

subject, I must express my fears, that many of our modern Homeric

theories will become matter for the surprise and entertainment, rather

than the instruction, of posterity. Nor can I help thinking that the

literary history of more recent times will account for many points of

difficulty in the transmission of the Iliad and Odyssey to a period so

remote from that of their first creation.

I have already expressed my belief that the labours of Peisistratus

were of a purely editorial character; and there seems no more reason

why corrupt and imperfect editions of Homer may not have been abroad in

his day, than that the poems of Valerius Flaccus and Tibullus should

have given so much trouble to Poggio, Scaliger, and others. But, after

all, the main fault in all the Homeric theories is, that they demand

too great a sacrifice of those feelings to which poetry most powerfully

appeals, and which are its most fitting judges. The ingenuity which has

sought to rob us of the name and existence of Homer, does too much

violence to that inward emotion, which makes our whole soul yearn with

love and admiration for the blind bard of Chios. To believe the author

of the Iliad a mere compiler, is to degrade the powers of human

invention; to elevate analytical judgment at the expense of the most

ennobling impulses of the soul; and to forget the ocean in the

contemplation of a polypus. There is a catholicity, so to speak, in the

very name of Homer. Our faith in the author of the Iliad may be a

mistaken one, but as yet nobody has taught us a better.

While, however, I look upon the belief in Homer as one that has nature

herself for its mainspring; while I can join with old Ennius in

believing in Homer as the ghost, who, like some patron saint, hovers

round the bed of the poet, and even bestows rare gifts from that wealth

of imagination which a host of imitators could not exhaust,—still I am

far from wishing to deny that the author of these great poems found a

rich fund of tradition, a well-stocked mythical storehouse, from whence

he might derive both subject and embellishment. But it is one thing to

_use_ existing romances in the embellishment of a poem, another to

patch up the poem itself from such materials. What consistency of style

and execution can be hoped for from such an attempt? or, rather, what

bad taste and tedium will not be the infallible result?

A blending of popular legends, and a free use of the songs of other

bards, are features perfectly consistent with poetical originality. In

fact, the most original writer is still drawing upon outward

impressions—nay, even his own thoughts are a kind of secondary agents

which support and feed the impulses of imagination. But unless there be

some grand pervading principle—some invisible, yet most distinctly

stamped archetypus of the great whole, a poem like the Iliad can never

come to the birth. Traditions the most picturesque, episodes the most

pathetic, local associations teeming with the thoughts of gods and

great men, may crowd in one mighty vision, or reveal themselves in more

substantial forms to the mind of the poet; but, except the power to

create a grand whole, to which these shall be but as details and

embellishments, be present, we shall have nought but a scrap-book, a

parterre filled with flowers and weeds strangling each other in their

wild redundancy; we shall have a cento of rags and tatters, which will

require little acuteness to detect.

Sensible as I am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware

as I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my belief,

it still seems to me that the Homeric question is one that is reserved

for a higher criticism than it has often obtained. We are not by nature

intended to know all things; still less, to compass the powers by which

the greatest blessings of life have been placed at our disposal. Were

faith no virtue, then we might indeed wonder why God willed our

ignorance on any matter. But we are too well taught the contrary

lesson; and it seems as though our faith should be especially tried,

touching the men and the events which have wrought most influence upon

the condition of humanity. And there is a kind of sacredness attached

to the memory of the great and the good, which seems to bid us repulse

the scepticism which would allegorize their existence into a pleasing

apologue, and measure the giants of intellect by an homaeopathic

dynameter.

Long and habitual reading of Homer appears to familiarize our thoughts

even to his incongruities; or rather, if we read in a right spirit and

with a heartfelt appreciation, we are too much dazzled, too deeply

wrapped in admiration of the whole, to dwell upon the minute spots

which mere analysis can discover. In reading an heroic poem, we must

transform ourselves into heroes of the time being, we in imagination

must fight over the same battles, woo the same loves, burn with the

same sense of injury, as an Achilles or a Hector. And if we can but

attain this degree of enthusiasm (and less enthusiasm will scarcely

suffice for the reading of Homer), we shall feel that the poems of

Homer are not only the work of one writer, but of the greatest writer

that ever touched the hearts of men by the power of song.

And it was this supposed unity of authorship which gave these poems

their powerful influence over the minds of the men of old. Heeren, who

is evidently little disposed in favour of modern theories, finely

observes:—

“It was Homer who formed the character of the Greek nation. No poet has

ever, as a poet, exercised a similar influence over his countrymen.

Prophets, lawgivers, and sages have formed the character of other

nations; it was reserved to a poet to form that of the Greeks. This is

a feature in their character which was not wholly erased even in the

period of their degeneracy. When lawgivers and sages appeared in

Greece, the work of the poet had already been accomplished; and they

paid homage to his superior genius. He held up before his nation the

mirror in which they were to behold the world of gods and heroes, no

less than of feeble mortals, and to behold them reflected with purity

and truth. His poems are founded on the first feeling of human nature;

on the love of children, wife, and country; on that passion which

outweighs all others, the love of glory. His songs were poured forth

from a breast which sympathized with all the feelings of man; and

therefore they enter, and will continue to enter, every breast which

cherishes the same sympathies. If it is granted to his immortal spirit,

from another heaven than any of which he dreamed on earth, to look down

on his race, to see the nations from the fields of Asia, to the forests

of Hercynia, performing pilgrimages to the fountain which his magic

wand caused to flow; if it is permitted to him to view the vast

assemblage of grand, of elevated, of glorious productions, which had

been called into being by means of his songs; wherever his immortal

spirit may reside, this alone would suffice to complete his happiness.”

Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the “Apotheosis of

Homer” is depictured, and not feel how much of pleasing association,

how much that appeals most forcibly and most distinctly to our minds,

is lost by the admittance of any theory but our old tradition? The more

we read, and the more we think—think as becomes the readers of

Homer,—the more rooted becomes the conviction that the Father of Poetry

gave us this rich inheritance, whole and entire. Whatever were the

means of its preservation, let us rather be thankful for the treasury

of taste and eloquence thus laid open to our use, than seek to make it

a mere centre around which to drive a series of theories, whose

wildness is only equalled by their inconsistency with each other.

As the hymns, and some other poems usually ascribed to Homer, are not

included in Pope’s translation, I will content myself with a brief

account of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, from the pen of a writer

who has done it full justice:—

“This poem,” says Coleridge, “is a short mock-heroic of ancient date.

The text varies in different editions, and is obviously disturbed and

corrupt to a great degree; it is commonly said to have been a juvenile

essay of Homer’s genius; others have attributed it to the same Pigrees

mentioned above, and whose reputation for humour seems to have invited

the appropriation of any piece of ancient wit, the author of which was

uncertain; so little did the Greeks, before the age of the Ptolemies,

know or care about that department of criticism employed in determining

the genuineness of ancient writings. As to this little poem being a

youthful prolusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the

beginning to the end, it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of

the general spirit, but of numerous passages of the Iliad itself; and,

even if no such intention to parody were discernible in it, the

objection would still remain, that to suppose a work of mere burlesque

to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse

that order in the development of national taste, which the history of

every other people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost

ascertained to be a law of the human mind; it is in a state of society

much more refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that

any popularity would attend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is

contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed three

other poems of the same kind attributed, for aught we can see, with as

much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of

them were of the Homeric age. Knight infers from the usage of the word

δὲλτος, ‘writing tablet,’ instead of διφθέρα, ‘skin,’ which, according

to Herod 5, 58, was the material employed by the Asiatic Greeks for

that purpose, that this poem was another offspring of Attic ingenuity;

and generally that the familiar mention of the cock (v. 191) is a

strong argument against so ancient a date for its composition.”

Having thus given a brief account of the poems comprised in Pope’s

design, I will now proceed to make a few remarks on his translation,

and on my own purpose in the present edition.

Pope was not a Grecian. His whole education had been irregular, and his

earliest acquaintance with the poet was through the version of Ogilby.

It is not too much to say that his whole work bears the impress of a

disposition to be satisfied with the general sense, rather than to dive

deeply into the minute and delicate features of language. Hence his

whole work is to be looked upon rather as an elegant paraphrase than a

translation. There are, to be sure, certain conventional anecdotes,

which prove that Pope consulted various friends, whose classical

attainments were sounder than his own, during the undertaking; but it

is probable that these examinations were the result rather of the

contradictory versions already existing, than of a desire to make a

perfect transcript of the original. And in those days, what is called

literal translation was less cultivated than at present. If something

like the general sense could be decorated with the easy gracefulness of

a practised poet; if the charms of metrical cadence and a pleasing

fluency could be made consistent with a fair interpretation of the

poet’s meaning, his words were less jealously sought for, and those who

could read so good a poem as Pope’s Iliad had fair reason to be

satisfied.

It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope’s translation by our own

advancing knowledge of the original text. We must be content to look at

it as a most delightful work in itself,—a work which is as much a part

of English literature as Homer himself is of Greek. We must not be torn

from our kindly associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most

cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because

Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to

ἀμφικύπελλον being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from

us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman’s

fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from us to hold up his

translation as what a translation of Homer _might_ be. But we can still

dismiss Pope’s Iliad to the hands of our readers, with the

consciousness that they must have read a very great number of books

before they have read its fellow.

THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.

_Christ Church._

THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER.

BOOK I.

ARGUMENT.

MINERVA’S DESCENT TO ITHACA.

The poem opens within forty eight days of the arrival of Ulysses in his

dominions. He had now remained seven years in the Island of Calypso,

when the gods assembled in council, proposed the method of his

departure from thence and his return to his native country. For this

purpose it is concluded to send Mercury to Calypso, and Pallas

immediately descends to Ithaca. She holds a conference with Telemachus,

in the shape of Mantes, king of Taphians; in which she advises him to

take a journey in quest of his father Ulysses, to Pylos and Sparta,

where Nestor and Menelaus yet reigned; then, after having visibly

displayed her divinity, disappears. The suitors of Penelope make great

entertainments, and riot in her palace till night. Phemius sings to

them the return of the Grecians, till Penelope puts a stop to the song.

Some words arise between the suitors and Telemachus, who summons the

council to meet the day following.

The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d,

Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound;

Who, when his arms had wrought the destined fall

Of sacred Troy, and razed her heaven-built wall,

Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray’d,

Their manners noted, and their states survey’d,

On stormy seas unnumber’d toils he bore,

Safe with his friends to gain his natal shore:

Vain toils! their impious folly dared to prey

On herds devoted to the god of day;

The god vindictive doom’d them never more

(Ah, men unbless’d!) to touch that natal shore.

Oh, snatch some portion of these acts from fate,

Celestial Muse! and to our world relate.

Now at their native realms the Greeks arrived;

All who the wars of ten long years survived;

And ’scaped the perils of the gulfy main.

Ulysses, sole of all the victor train,

An exile from his dear paternal coast,

Deplored his absent queen and empire lost.

Calypso in her caves constrain’d his stay,

With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay;

In vain-for now the circling years disclose

The day predestined to reward his woes.

At length his Ithaca is given by fate,

Where yet new labours his arrival wait;

At length their rage the hostile powers restrain,

All but the ruthless monarch of the main.

But now the god, remote, a heavenly guest,

In Æthiopia graced the genial feast

(A race divided, whom with sloping rays

The rising and descending sun surveys);

There on the world’s extremest verge revered

With hecatombs and prayer in pomp preferr’d,

Distant he lay: while in the bright abodes

Of high Olympus, Jove convened the gods:

The assembly thus the sire supreme address’d,

AEgysthus’ fate revolving in his breast,

Whom young Orestes to the dreary coast

Of Pluto sent, a blood-polluted ghost.

“Perverse mankind! whose wills, created free,

Charge all their woes on absolute degree;

All to the dooming gods their guilt translate,

And follies are miscall’d the crimes of fate.

When to his lust AEgysthus gave the rein,

Did fate, or we, the adulterous act constrain?

Did fate, or we, when great Atrides died,

Urge the bold traitor to the regicide?

Hermes I sent, while yet his soul remain’d

Sincere from royal blood, and faith profaned;

To warn the wretch, that young Orestes, grown

To manly years, should re-assert the throne.

Yet, impotent of mind, and uncontroll’d,

He plunged into the gulf which Heaven foretold.”

Here paused the god; and pensive thus replies

Minerva, graceful with her azure eyes:

“O thou! from whom the whole creation springs,

The source of power on earth derived to kings!

His death was equal to the direful deed;

So may the man of blood be doomed to bleed!

But grief and rage alternate wound my breast

For brave Ulysses, still by fate oppress’d.

Amidst an isle, around whose rocky shore

The forests murmur, and the surges roar,

The blameless hero from his wish’d-for home

A goddess guards in her enchanted dome;

(Atlas her sire, to whose far-piercing eye

The wonders of the deep expanded lie;

The eternal columns which on earth he rears

End in the starry vault, and prop the spheres).

By his fair daughter is the chief confined,

Who soothes to dear delight his anxious mind;

Successless all her soft caresses prove,

To banish from his breast his country’s love;

To see the smoke from his loved palace rise,

While the dear isle in distant prospect lies,

With what contentment could he close his eyes!

And will Omnipotence neglect to save

The suffering virtue of the wise and brave?

Must he, whose altars on the Phrygian shore

With frequent rites, and pure, avow’d thy power,

Be doom’d the worst of human ills to prove,

Unbless’d, abandon’d to the wrath of Jove?”

“Daughter! what words have pass’d thy lips unweigh’d!

(Replied the Thunderer to the martial maid;)

Deem not unjustly by my doom oppress’d,

Of human race the wisest and the best.

Neptune, by prayer repentant rarely won,

Afflicts the chief, to avenge his giant son,

Whose visual orb Ulysses robb’d of light;

Great Polypheme, of more than mortal might?

Him young Thousa bore (the bright increase

Of Phorcys, dreaded in the sounds and seas);

Whom Neptune eyed with bloom of beauty bless’d,

And in his cave the yielding nymph compress’d

For this the god constrains the Greek to roam,

A hopeless exile from his native home,

From death alone exempt—but cease to mourn;

Let all combine to achieve his wish’d return;

Neptune atoned, his wrath shall now refrain,

Or thwart the synod of the gods in vain.”

“Father and king adored!” Minerva cried,

“Since all who in the Olympian bower reside

Now make the wandering Greek their public care,

Let Hermes to the Atlantic isle repair;

Bid him, arrived in bright Calypso’s court,

The sanction of the assembled powers report:

That wise Ulysses to his native land

Must speed, obedient to their high command.

Meantime Telemachus, the blooming heir

Of sea-girt Ithaca, demands my care;

’Tis mine to form his green, unpractised years

In sage debates; surrounded with his peers,

To save the state, and timely to restrain

The bold intrusion of the suitor-train;

Who crowd his palace, and with lawless power

His herds and flocks in feastful rites devour.

To distant Sparta, and the spacious waste

Of Sandy Pyle, the royal youth shall haste.

There, warm with filial love, the cause inquire

That from his realm retards his god-like sire;

Delivering early to the voice of fame

The promise of a green immortal name.”

She said: the sandals of celestial mould,

Fledged with ambrosial plumes, and rich with gold,

Surround her feet: with these sublime she sails

The aërial space, and mounts the winged gales;

O’er earth and ocean wide prepared to soar,

Her dreaded arm a beamy javelin bore,

Ponderous and vast: which, when her fury burns,

Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o’erturns.

From high Olympus prone her flight she bends,

And in the realms of Ithaca descends,

Her lineaments divine, the grave disguise

Of Mentes’ form conceal’d from human eyes

(Mentes, the monarch of the Taphian land);

A glittering spear waved awful in her hand.

There in the portal placed, the heaven-born maid

Enormous riot and misrule survey’d.

On hides of beeves, before the palace gate

(Sad spoils of luxury), the suitors sate.

With rival art, and ardour in their mien,

At chess they vie, to captivate the queen;

Divining of their loves. Attending nigh,

A menial train the flowing bowl supply.

Others, apart, the spacious hall prepare,

And form the costly feast with busy care.

There young Telemachus, his bloomy face

Glowing celestial sweet, with godlike grace

Amid the circle shines: but hope and fear

(Painful vicissitude!) his bosom tear.

Now, imaged in his mind, he sees restored

In peace and joy the people’s rightful lord;

The proud oppressors fly the vengeful sword.

While his fond soul these fancied triumphs swell’d,

The stranger guest the royal youth beheld;

Grieved that a visitant so long should wait

Unmark’d, unhonour’d, at a monarch’s gate;

Instant he flew with hospitable haste,

And the new friend with courteous air embraced.

“Stranger, whoe’er thou art, securely rest,

Affianced in my faith, a ready guest;

Approach the dome, the social banquet share,

And then the purpose of thy soul declare.”

Thus affable and mild, the prince precedes,

And to the dome the unknown celestial leads.

The spear receiving from the hand, he placed

Against a column, fair with sculpture graced;

Where seemly ranged in peaceful order stood

Ulysses’ arms now long disused to blood.

He led the goddess to the sovereign seat,

Her feet supported with a stool of state

(A purple carpet spread the pavement wide);

Then drew his seat, familiar, to her side;

Far from the suitor-train, a brutal crowd,

With insolence, and wine, elate and loud:

Where the free guest, unnoted, might relate,

If haply conscious, of his father’s fate.

The golden ewer a maid obsequious brings,

Replenish’d from the cool, translucent springs;

With copious water the bright vase supplies

A silver laver of capacious size;

They wash. The tables in fair order spread,

They heap the glittering canisters with bread:

Viands of various kinds allure the taste,

Of choicest sort and savour, rich repast!

Delicious wines the attending herald brought;

The gold gave lustre to the purple draught.

Lured with the vapour of the fragrant feast,

In rush’d the suitors with voracious haste;

Marshall’d in order due, to each a sewer

Presents, to bathe his hands, a radiant ewer.

Luxurious then they feast. Observant round

Gay stripling youths the brimming goblets crown’d.

The rage of hunger quell’d, they all advance

And form to measured airs the mazy dance;

To Phemius was consign’d the chorded lyre,

Whose hand reluctant touch’d the warbling wire;

Phemius, whose voice divine could sweetest sing

High strains responsive to the vocal string.

Meanwhile, in whispers to his heavenly guest

His indignation thus the prince express’d:

“Indulge my rising grief, whilst these (my friend)

With song and dance the pompous revel end.

Light is the dance, and doubly sweet the lays,

When for the dear delight another pays.

His treasured stores those cormarants consume,

Whose bones, defrauded of a regal tomb

And common turf, lie naked on the plain,

Or doom’d to welter in the whelming main.

Should he return, that troop so blithe and bold,

With purple robes inwrought, and stiff with gold,

Precipitant in fear would wing their flight,

And curse their cumbrous pride’s unwieldy weight.

But ah, I dream!-the appointed hour is fled.

And hope, too long with vain delusion fed,

Deaf to the rumour of fallacious fame,

Gives to the roll of death his glorious name!

With venial freedom let me now demand

Thy name, thy lineage, and paternal land;

Sincere from whence began thy course, recite,

And to what ship I owe the friendly freight?

Now first to me this visit dost thou deign,

Or number’d in my father’s social train?

All who deserved his choice he made his own,

And, curious much to know, he far was known.”

“My birth I boast (the blue-eyed virgin cries)

From great Anchialus, renown’d and wise;

Mentes my name; I rule the Taphian race,

Whose bounds the deep circumfluent waves embrace;

A duteous people, and industrious isle,

To naval arts inured, and stormy toil.

Freighted with iron from my native land,

I steer my voyage to the Brutian strand

To gain by commerce, for the labour’d mass,

A just proportion of refulgent brass.

Far from your capital my ship resides

At Reitorus, and secure at anchor rides;

Where waving groves on airy Neign grow,

Supremely tall and shade the deeps below.

Thence to revisit your imperial dome,

An old hereditary guest I come;

Your father’s friend. Laertes can relate

Our faith unspotted, and its early date;

Who, press’d with heart-corroding grief and years,

To the gay court a rural shed prefers,

Where, sole of all his train, a matron sage

Supports with homely fond his drooping age,

With feeble steps from marshalling his vines

Returning sad, when toilsome day declines.

“With friendly speed, induced by erring fame,

To hail Ulysses’ safe return I came;

But still the frown of some celestial power

With envious joy retards the blissful hour.

Let not your soul be sunk in sad despair;

He lives, he breathes this heavenly vital air,

Among a savage race, whose shelfy bounds

With ceaseless roar the foaming deep surrounds.

The thoughts which roll within my ravish’d breast,

To me, no seer, the inspiring gods suggest;

Nor skill’d nor studious, with prophetic eye

To judge the winged omens of the sky.

Yet hear this certain speech, nor deem it vain;

Though adamantine bonds the chief restrain,

The dire restraint his wisdom will defeat,

And soon restore him to his regal seat.

But generous youth! sincere and free declare,

Are you, of manly growth, his royal heir?

For sure Ulysses in your look appears,

The same his features, if the same his years.

Such was that face, on which I dwelt with joy

Ere Greece assembled stemm’d the tides to Troy;

But, parting then for that detested shore,

Our eyes, unhappy never greeted more.”

“To prove a genuine birth (the prince replies)

On female truth assenting faith relies.

Thus manifest of right, I build my claim

Sure-founded on a fair maternal fame,

Ulysses’ son: but happier he, whom fate

Hath placed beneath the storms which toss the great!

Happier the son, whose hoary sire is bless’d

With humble affluence, and domestic rest!

Happier than I, to future empire born,

But doom’d a father’s wretch’d fate to mourn!”

To whom, with aspect mild, the guest divine:

“Oh true descendant of a sceptred line!

The gods a glorious fate from anguish free

To chaste Penelope’s increase decree.

But say, yon jovial troops so gaily dress’d,

Is this a bridal or a friendly feast?

Or from their deed I rightlier may divine,

Unseemly flown with insolence and wine?

Unwelcome revellers, whose lawless joy

Pains the sage ear, and hurts the sober eye.”

“Magnificence of old (the prince replied)

Beneath our roof with virtue could reside;

Unblamed abundance crowned the royal board,

What time this dome revered her prudent lord;

Who now (so Heaven decrees) is doom’d to mourn,

Bitter constraint, erroneous and forlorn.

Better the chief, on Ilion’s hostile plain,

Had fall’n surrounded with his warlike train;

Or safe return’d, the race of glory pass’d,

New to his friends’ embrace, and breathed his last!

Then grateful Greece with streaming eyes would raise,

Historic marbles to record his praise;

His praise, eternal on the faithful stone,

Had with transmissive honour graced his son.

Now snatch’d by harpies to the dreary coast.

Sunk is the hero, and his glory lost;

Vanish’d at once! unheard of, and unknown!

And I his heir in misery alone.

Nor for a dear lost father only flow

The filial tears, but woe succeeds to woe

To tempt the spouseless queen with amorous wiles

Resort the nobles from the neighbouring isles;

From Samos, circled with the Ionian main,

Dulichium, and Zacynthas’ sylvan reign;

Ev’n with presumptuous hope her bed to ascend,

The lords of Ithaca their right pretend.

She seems attentive to their pleaded vows,

Her heart detesting what her ear allows.

They, vain expectants of the bridal hour,

My stores in riotous expense devour.

In feast and dance the mirthful months employ,

And meditate my doom to crown their joy.”

With tender pity touch’d, the goddess cried:

“Soon may kind Heaven a sure relief provide,

Soon may your sire discharge the vengeance due,

And all your wrongs the proud oppressors rue!

Oh! in that portal should the chief appear,

Each hand tremendous with a brazen spear,

In radiant panoply his limbs incased

(For so of old my father’s court he graced,

When social mirth unbent his serious soul,

O’er the full banquet, and the sprightly bowl);

He then from Ephyre, the fair domain

Of Ilus, sprung from Jason’s royal strain,

Measured a length of seas, a toilsome length, in vain.

For, voyaging to learn the direful art

To taint with deadly drugs the barbed dart;

Observant of the gods, and sternly just,

Ilus refused to impart the baneful trust;

With friendlier zeal my father’s soul was fired,

The drugs he knew, and gave the boon desired.

Appear’d he now with such heroic port,

As then conspicuous at the Taphian court;

Soon should yon boasters cease their haughty strife,

Or each atone his guilty love with life.

But of his wish’d return the care resign,

Be future vengeance to the powers divine.

My sentence hear: with stern distaste avow’d,

To their own districts drive the suitor-crowd;

When next the morning warms the purple east,

Convoke the peerage, and the gods attest;

The sorrows of your inmost soul relate;

And form sure plans to save the sinking state.

Should second love a pleasing flame inspire,

And the chaste queen connubial rights require;

Dismiss’d with honour, let her hence repair

To great Icarius, whose paternal care

Will guide her passion, and reward her choice

With wealthy dower, and bridal gifts of price.

Then let this dictate of my love prevail:

Instant, to foreign realms prepare to sail,

To learn your father’s fortunes; Fame may prove,

Or omen’d voice (the messenger of Jove),

Propitious to the search. Direct your toil

Through the wide ocean first to sandy Pyle;

Of Nestor, hoary sage, his doom demand:

Thence speed your voyage to the Spartan strand;

For young Atrides to the Achaian coast

Arrived the last of all the victor host.

If yet Ulysses views the light, forbear,

Till the fleet hours restore the circling year.

But if his soul hath wing’d the destined flight,

Inhabitant of deep disastrous night;

Homeward with pious speed repass the main,

To the pale shade funereal rites ordain,

Plant the fair column o’er the vacant grave,

A hero’s honours let the hero have.

With decent grief the royal dead deplored,

For the chaste queen select an equal lord.

Then let revenge your daring mind employ,

By fraud or force the suitor train destroy,

And starting into manhood, scorn the boy.

Hast thou not heard how young Orestes, fired

With great revenge, immortal praise acquired?

His virgin-sword AEgysthus’ veins imbrued;

The murderer fell, and blood atoned for blood.

O greatly bless’d with every blooming grace!

With equal steps the paths of glory trace;

Join to that royal youth’s your rival name,

And shine eternal in the sphere of fame.

But my associates now my stay deplore,

Impatient on the hoarse-resounding shore.

Thou, heedful of advice, secure proceed;

My praise the precept is, be thine the deed.

“The counsel of my friend (the youth rejoin’d)

Imprints conviction on my grateful mind.

So fathers speak (persuasive speech and mild)

Their sage experience to the favourite child.

But, since to part, for sweet refection due,

The genial viands let my train renew;

And the rich pledge of plighted faith receive,

Worthy the heir of Ithaca to give.”

“Defer the promised boon (the goddess cries,

Celestial azure brightening in her eyes),

And let me now regain the Reithrian port;

From Temese return’d, your royal court

I shall revisit, and that pledge receive;

And gifts, memorial of our friendship, leave.”

Abrupt, with eagle-speed she cut the sky;

Instant invisible to mortal eye.

Then first he recognized the ethereal guest;

Wonder and joy alternate fire his breast;

Heroic thoughts, infused, his heart dilate;

Revolving much his father’s doubtful fate.

At length, composed, he join’d the suitor-throng;

Hush’d in attention to the warbled song.

His tender theme the charming lyrist chose.

Minerva’s anger, and the dreadful woes

Which voyaging from Troy the victors bore,

While storms vindictive intercept the store.

The shrilling airs the vaulted roof rebounds,

Reflecting to the queen the silver sounds.

With grief renew’d the weeping fair descends;

Their sovereign’s step a virgin train attends:

A veil, of richest texture wrought, she wears,

And silent to the joyous hall repairs.

There from the portal, with her mild command,

Thus gently checks the minstrel’s tuneful hand:

“Phemius! let acts of gods, and heroes old,

What ancient bards in hall and bower have told,

Attemper’d to the lyre, your voice employ;

Such the pleased ear will drink with silent joy.

But, oh! forbear that dear disastrous name,

To sorrow sacred, and secure of fame;

My bleeding bosom sickens at the sound,

And every piercing note inflicts a wound.”

“Why, dearest object of my duteous love,

(Replied the prince,) will you the bard reprove?

Oft, Jove’s ethereal rays (resistless fire)

The chanter’s soul and raptured song inspire

Instinct divine? nor blame severe his choice,

Warbling the Grecian woes with heart and voice;

For novel lays attract our ravish’d ears;

But old, the mind with inattention hears:

Patient permit the sadly pleasing strain;

Familiar now with grief, your tears refrain,

And in the public woe forget your own;

You weep not for a perish’d lord alone.

What Greeks new wandering in the Stygian gloom,

Wish your Ulysses shared an equal doom!

Your widow’d hours, apart, with female toil

And various labours of the loom beguile;

There rule, from palace-cares remote and free;

That care to man belongs, and most to me.”

Mature beyond his years, the queen admires

His sage reply, and with her train retires.

Then swelling sorrows burst their former bounds,

With echoing grief afresh the dome resounds;

Till Pallas, piteous of her plaintive cries,

In slumber closed her silver-streaming eyes.

Meantime, rekindled at the royal charms,

Tumultuous love each beating bosom warms;

Intemperate rage a wordy war began;

But bold Telemachus assumed the man.

“Instant (he cried) your female discord end,

Ye deedless boasters! and the song attend;

Obey that sweet compulsion, nor profane

With dissonance the smooth melodious strain.

Pacific now prolong the jovial feast;

But when the dawn reveals the rosy east,

I, to the peers assembled, shall propose

The firm resolve, I here in few disclose;

No longer live the cankers of my court;

All to your several states with speed resort;

Waste in wild riot what your land allows,

There ply the early feast, and late carouse.

But if, to honour lost, ’tis still decreed

For you my bowl shall flow, my flock shall bleed;

Judge and revenge my right, impartial Jove!

By him and all the immortal thrones above

(A sacred oath), each proud oppressor slain,

Shall with inglorious gore this marble stain.”

Awed by the prince, thus haughty, bold, and young,

Rage gnaw’d the lip, and wonder chain’d the tongue.

Silence at length the gay Antinous broke,

Constrain’d a smile, and thus ambiguous spoke:

“What god to your untutor’d youth affords

This headlong torrent of amazing words?

May Jove delay thy reign, and cumber late

So bright a genius with the toils of state!”

“Those toils (Telemachus serene replies)

Have charms, with all their weight, t’allure the wise.

Fast by the throne obsequious fame resides,

And wealth incessant rolls her golden tides.

Nor let Antinous rage, if strong desire

Of wealth and fame a youthful bosom fire:

Elect by Jove, his delegate of sway,

With joyous pride the summons I’d obey.

Whene’er Ulysses roams the realm of night,

Should factious power dispute my lineal right,

Some other Greeks a fairer claim may plead;

To your pretence their title would precede.

At least, the sceptre lost, I still should reign

Sole o’er my vassals, and domestic train.”

To this Eurymachus: “To Heaven alone

Refer the choice to fill the vacant throne.

Your patrimonial stores in peace possess;

Undoubted, all your filial claim confess:

Your private right should impious power invade,

The peers of Ithaca would arm in aid.

But say, that stranger guest who late withdrew,

What and from whence? his name and lineage shew.

His grave demeanour and majestic grace

Speak him descended of no vulgar race:

Did he some loan of ancient right require,

Or came forerunner of your sceptr’d sire?”

“Oh son of Polybus!” the prince replies,

“No more my sire will glad these longing eyes;

The queen’s fond hope inventive rumour cheers,

Or vain diviners’ dreams divert her fears.

That stranger-guest the Taphian realm obeys,

A realm defended with encircling seas.

Mentes, an ever-honour’d name, of old

High in Ulysses’ social list enroll’d.”

Thus he, though conscious of the ethereal guest,

Answer’d evasive of the sly request.

Meantime the lyre rejoins the sprightly lay;

Love-dittied airs, and dance, conclude the day

But when the star of eve with golden light

Adorn’d the matron brow of sable night,

The mirthful train dispersing quit the court,

And to their several domes to rest resort.

A towering structure to the palace join’d;

To this his steps the thoughtful prince inclined:

In his pavilion there, to sleep repairs;

The lighted torch, the sage Euryclea bears

(Daughter of Ops, the just Pisenor’s son,

For twenty beeves by great Laertes won;

In rosy prime with charms attractive graced,

Honour’d by him, a gentle lord and chaste,

With dear esteem: too wise, with jealous strife

To taint the joys of sweet connubial life.

Sole with Telemachus her service ends,

A child she nursed him, and a man attends).

Whilst to his couch himself the prince address’d,

The duteous dame received the purple vest;

The purple vest with decent care disposed,

The silver ring she pull’d, the door reclosed,

The bolt, obedient to the silken cord,

To the strong staple’s inmost depth restored,

Secured the valves. There, wrapped in silent shade,

Pensive, the rules the goddess gave he weigh’d;

Stretch’d on the downy fleece, no rest he knows,

And in his raptured soul the vision glows.