the shoulders. But he hunched himself up and a big tear fell from
him, and a blood-red weal rose up from his back under the golden
sceptre. So he sat down and trembled, looked helpless, and wiped
away a tear in his pain, and they, for all their anger, laughed
sweetly at him. And thus a man would say, looking at his neighbour,
‘Lo, now! Verily Odysseus hath done a thousand good deeds both in
discovering good counsel and in leading the battle, but now this is
far his best deed among the Argives, in that he hath checked this
word-spattering maker of mischief from his rantings. Never again, I
ween, will his ambitious heart stir him up to revile kings with
words of reproof.’”
Thersites is not a product of simple undeveloped monarchy; the poet who
drew this portrait had seen the mob-orator in his native agora.
Thersites, it has been said, is the only private in the army. He is the
only man who is named without a patronymic. And yet modern research has
shown that even Thersites had an ancient cultus as a demigod in Sparta.
So true is it that all the figures of the epic stage are figures of
tribal ancestor-worship.
That is why the real gods come so badly out of the epics. They are the
only immoral people in Homer; they cheat and lie, they smack and
squabble. Perhaps we do not expect much decency from Zeus or Aphrodite,
but even the stately Hera herself alternates between the crafty
courtesan and the scolding fish-wife. And yet Homer is the “Bible of the
Greeks”! Herodotus said, and said truly, that it was Hesiod and Homer
who assigned to the gods their names, distributed their honours and
functions, and settled their appearance and characteristics. In
after-times Homer was the universal primer of education. It is extremely
probable that Homer and Hesiod selected certain deities out of a vast
number for special honour as members of the Olympian family. Why in the
world, then, did not Homer honour them? Various explanations have been
given. The old explanation was that this is the naive expression of
primitive anthropomorphism, which makes gods in the likeness of men,
enlarging the human vices as well as the virtues. But no one who really
studies Homer can believe in a theory which makes him simple and
childlike. Homer’s ridicule of the gods is not the unsophisticated
laughter of a child or a savage. It is to be noticed that it is only
some of the gods who come badly out of the Homeric theology. No figure
could be lovelier than that of the sea-goddess, Thetis, or more
dignified than Pallas Athene, or more ethereal than Iris, the
ambassadress of heaven. Professor Ridgeway’s belief that Homer was
written by a bard of the old race honouring his Achæan masters might
explain the mordant raillery of Northern gods like Zeus and Hera. But
then Aphrodite, who is the worst treated of all, would seem to be
actually the Nature-goddess of Crete, ever accompanied with doves in
Cretan art. It is just the Ægean naturalism which is excluded from
Homeric religion. There is nothing to connect even Iris with the
rainbow. My own explanation would be that hero-worship is Homer’s main
concern. So many of his heroes claim descent from Zeus by so many
mothers that Zeus cannot be endowed with monogamic morality. The gods
can look after themselves; it is the heroes who require the assistance
of the bard. I believe, too, in Professor Gilbert Murray’s suggestion
that in these passages of impiety we have the intervention of the later
Ionic spirit of rationalism. As such passages are widely diffused over
the Iliad we should have to place the composition of a considerable part
of it so late as the eighth and seventh century before Christ. But as we
have seen that the political background of Homer is in the main a scene
of aristocracy, precisely such as we have in the seventh-century poet
Hesiod, there is no real objection to a late dating.
Once you abandon the absurd belief in Homer’s “primitive simplicity” and
admit, what is now certain, that the epic poets could consciously
archaise their story, omitting all reference to events and customs which
seemed to them too modern to fit in with the divine race of heroes, just
as Malory does with the Arthurian knights, there is no objection to
believing that large parts of Homer were written in the eighth century.
Of course, there are much older traditions and older fragments of epic
poetry embedded in our Iliad and Odyssey. No real violence is done to
ancient tradition by bringing these poems down to the verge of
historical times, for Homer and Hesiod were generally regarded as
contemporaries in antiquity. All the civilisation depicted in Homer is
far closer to that of historical Greece than to that of the Ægean
excavations. Take the armour for another example. Although, as has been
said, the heroes generally “smite with the bronze” and their shields are
sometimes “like a tower” and “reaching to the feet” and “girding the
body,” as on the monuments of Mycenæ and Crete, yet in the ordinary
thought of the poets the swords are undoubtedly of iron, since the cut
is commoner than the thrust and you do not cut with a sword of bronze,
and the shields are “circular,” “equal every way,” “bossed,” and “like
the moon.” Sometimes, as in the case of the shield of Achilles, or the
shield of Agamemnon, they are adorned with a blazon. In fact, the
Homeric warrior is dressed and equipped exactly like the hoplite of
Greek history. As regards his methods of fighting, the epic convention
naturally requires a series of duels in order to show the individual
prowess of the heroes; and, indeed, the various episodes of the Iliad
are labelled as “The Prowess of Diomede,” “The Prowess of Menelaus,” and
so forth. But at the back of the poet’s mind there constantly appears an
ordinary Greek combat between two lines of warriors. Agamemnon once
divides the host up into companies, tribe with tribe and brotherhood
with brotherhood. Finally, by placing Homer late, in the flourishing
culture of Æolis and Ionia, we avoid the absurdity of supposing that a
literary form so exquisite and elaborate as the epic should have sprung
out of nothing in times of violent unrest, of invasions, migrations, and
ceaseless strife. _A priori_ any one would say that lyric poetry must
precede epic, as it has done in England. Greek tradition places Orpheus,
the father of lyric song, before Homer. There would be nothing
surprising in placing the early elegiac poetry on the same chronological
level as the earliest hexameters. That the ordinary forms of lyric verse
already existed in Homeric times we can see, if we read the poems
attentively. The boy sings his vintage song of the death of Linus. At
the burial of Hector there are bards to sing dirges. There is reference
to the Hymenæus, or wedding-song. There were banquet songs too: in the
First Iliad they sing all day long over their cups. Bards like Demodocus
sing of the loves of the gods. Thus there is ample evidence that all the
common forms of Greek lyric poetry preceded the epic, and that Homer did
not spring into existence ready-made out of the void. Still less did the
Achæan invaders from the cold North import a finished literary form of
composition into the civilised peninsulas of the Mediterranean.
ART OF THE EPIC PERIOD
And now the question arises as to what sort of art we are to match with
the poetry of Homer. It was the desire to give some literary equivalent
for the glorious art of Mycenæ and Cnossos which led Schliemann and his
school to equate it with Homer. Doubtless prehistoric Crete had its
literature. But that has all perished, unless the undecipherable written
tablets should chance to yield us something. We must realise that great
literature can coexist with crude art. There is no great art in England
to correspond with Shakespeare, Milton, or Shelley. Language being the
easiest medium of artistic expression, literature commonly develops
earlier than the graphic or plastic arts. We must therefore be prepared
for the shock of finding that Homer belongs to the same period as a very
ugly and inartistic decorative style on the vases and most rudimentary
and primitive forms of statuary. The pages of Homer do not really lead
us to expect anything else. Sculpture is scarcely mentioned in Homer.
There is only one temple statue, and that is the statue of Athena at
Troy, of which we are told that the Trojan women used to lay a richly
embroidered robe upon its knees. We are probably, then, to conceive a
rude seated figure of wood or stone such as we find at the earliest
stages of Greek sculpture. Their roughness and rudeness might be
mitigated by coverings of embroidery. At Branchidæ, near Miletus, a
whole series of such figures was discovered, dedicated with writing of
about 550 B.C.; but we can easily believe that such a type might persist
for more than a century. It is believed that this type of statue has
been evolved from the throne, for it appears certain that empty thrones
were worshipped before iconic deities were carved. One can see also that
it is only lately derived from a technique of wood, so flat are the
planes of its surface. The goddess belongs to the chair rather than the
chair to the goddess.
Beyond this there are some obviously imaginary figures in Homer, such as
the golden torch-bearers in the fairyland of Phæacia, but nothing that
we can call sculpture. Also there are many minor “objects of virtue,”
such as the drinking-cup of Nestor and the brooch of Odysseus, some of
which may be matched by the relics of the Mycenæan tombs; but of course
cups and jewels of gold were still preserved from the older
civilisation, and notably enough such objects are always accounted for:
either Hephæstus has wrought them, or they have been handed down as
heirlooms, or brought by the Sidonians over the sea. Homer does not take
his art for granted. He uses the potter’s wheel in similes, but the
only
[Illustration: Seated Statue from Branchidæ]
art he really describes is that of tapestry-weaving, the domestic art
carried on by all his ladies. Thus Helen employs herself at Troy in
weaving figures of warriors into her web, and Andromache weaves flowers
into hers. What pattern Penelope wove into her everlasting shroud is
known only to those who know what song the sirens sang. Appropriate to
this prominence of the textile art is the style of ornamentation
described, as we have read, upon the shield of Achilles. For these
parallel bands of picture-writing
[Illustration: Geometric Vase]
which were in the poet’s mind when he depicted the shield are known to
us in the pottery of the seventh and sixth centuries. It is called by
modern archæologists the Geometric style, because the whole body of the
vase is divided into bands and panels by strips of zigzag ornament. An
early phase of the Geometric style is specially named after the Dipylon
Gate at Athens, because huge vases of a certain type were found in great
numbers in the ancient cemetery of Athens in that neighbourhood. The
subject of these vases is generally funereal. We see the body laid out
upon the bier and the mourners indicating their grief by laying their
hands upon their heads. The figures are rendered in conventional
diagrams. To my taste they are almost repulsive. Not only is the drawing
of the figures careless and clumsy, but the spirit of the whole thing is
ugly. The fidgety nerves of the artist trying to fill every corner with
some sort of scrawl, scraping meaningless emblems even between the legs
of his horses, wearies the eye of the spectator. His designs have no
sort of correspondence with the form of his material, any more than the
modern house-decorator’s friezes and dados properly belong to the four
flat surfaces of his walls. The vital qualities of good Greek art are
self-control, the subordination of the artist to his work, and the
perfect adaptation of the artistic form to the subject under treatment.
The Dipylon Style does violence to all these canons of good taste.
There must be an explanation.
It is easy to see that the ornamentation of a Dipylon vase is borrowed
from an alien technique. Pottery never required the artist to divide his
field up into parallel bands with borders and fringes. It is clearly
from needlework, embroidery, or tapestry that this style is borrowed.
You can see the stitches and the threads in many of the patterns.
Primitive tapestry is necessarily linear, geometrical, and rectangular.
Now the whole thing becomes clear. Greece is dominated by a masculine
race of warriors inartistic by ancestral tradition. Music they have
always loved. They are generous patrons to the bard who sings the
praises of their ancestors. They like a prettily designed brooch or
golden cup. But there are no patrons for the other arts. While their
lords are fighting hard and drinking deep the women are perpetually at
their looms. The only arts that flourish are the textile arts, and they
are largely modelled on Asiatic imported fabrics. The potter is a
wretched, despised slave, probably of the old race. He has lost all his
manhood and most of his taste, he gets no encouragement to make his
cheap pots beautiful, and he has no models for design except the
patterns of tapestry or metalwork. All the beautiful earthenware of
Cnossos and Kamàres is broken or buried under the ground.
Yet even the Dipylon style gradually improved. While still retaining its
Geometric character, vase-painting improves in drawing and colour, until
in early Attic work like the famous François vase[14] we reach designs
of considerable beauty. Here the horse becomes the favourite animal
type. When the potters advance far enough they begin to deal with scenes
of heroic legend and mythology, carefully labelling their heroes with
their names. The Gorgon, which often figures in Homer, as on the shield
of Agamemnon and the ægis of Athene, begins to be an art type in the
Dipylon period; so do the sphinx and griffin, which, curiously enough,
do not appear in our Homer.
THE HERO’S HOME
In Crete art dwelt in palaces; in classical Greece it haunted the
market-place and the temple. For the present art is confined to the
home. If we may judge by the charming “interior” pictures which Homer
most skilfully introduces as a counterfoil to the everlasting clash of
arms in the Iliad, domestic life was at its richest and best in the age
of the epics. Every one has been struck with the dignified and important
part played by women in Homer, contrasted with their seclusion and
neglect in historical Greece. No one but Shakespeare has given us so
charming a series of feminine portraits as Andromache, Helen, Penelope,
Nausicaa, Thetis, and Calypso. The ingenious Samuel Butler actually
attempted to prove that the Odyssey was written by a woman, so
sympathetic is the poet’s insight into the feminine point of view. But
the same is equally true of the Iliad; and, indeed, the respect for
women becomes part of the heroic tradition even in Attic tragedy, so
that the audience in the theatre of Athens must have seen the heroines
on their stage acting with a freedom and treated with a deference which
was quite alien to their own homes.
But even at this, its highest point, the domesticity of Greek life falls
far short of modern ideas, and the dignity of the heroes’ wives is
somewhat illusory. Possibly the inconsistencies are due once more to the
many hands and many successive generations which have had their part in
building up the epic. Certainly, for monogamists, the matrimonial ideas
of the heroes are far from exclusive. Agamemnon announces his intention
of taking Chryseis home, for he likes her better than his dear wife
Clytæmnestra, and makes no secret of the position she is to occupy. He
does actually take Cassandra home to his wife. In the Odyssey, too, we
get a hint of arrangements decidedly Oriental in what Penelope says
about her son and the fifty handmaidens. Again, there is a singular
contrast between the tender conjugal devotion of Hector and Andromache,
or Odysseus and Penelope, and the extraordinary callousness sometimes
indicated with regard to feminine charms. It is often remarked as an
instance of Homer’s subtlety that he nowhere describes the beauty of
Helen, whose face
“Launched a thousand ships
And shook the topmost towers of Ilium,”
only indicating it by making the old men of Troy look at her as she
walks past and say to one another, “No wonder that the Greeks and
Trojans should suffer pain so long for such a woman. Her countenance is
wondrous like the immortal goddesses.” These traditions of the power of
love and beauty must belong to the original epic story; for the whole
plot of the Iliad, so far as it has a plot, turns on the beauty of
Helen, as the whole plot of the Odyssey depends on the love of Odysseus
for his wife and the constancy of Penelope. Thus both epics have a basis
which might be the foundation of modern romantic fiction. Nevertheless,
the spirit of romance is as completely absent from Homer as it is from
all true Greek art and literature. Though Agamemnon is very angry at
losing Chryseis he has no love for her. Odysseus simply gets tired of
the lovely nymph Calypso, and parts from the charming Nausicaa without a
pang. Such shocks as these are constantly in store for the modern
reader, who is fed upon romance in the nursery.
If we look at the houses in which the domestic scenes of Homer are set
we shall find that they are of a simplicity in strong contrast with the
elaborate palaces of Crete or Tiryns; and this in spite of the obvious
intention of the bard to depict them on a scale of heroic magnificence.
They are mainly built of wood. The palace of Paris consists of three
parts--_thalamos_, _dōma_, and _aule_. The _thalamos_ is the private
part of the house, and contains the marriage-bed of the royal couple.
The _dōma_, or _megaron_, is the public hall for meals and receptions.
The _aule_ is the court with colonnades surrounding it. Priam had a
large family: fifty sons slept with their wives in fifty _thalamoi_ of
polished stone built outside his court, while his daughters slept with
their husbands in twelve _roofed_ chambers within the court. The palace
of Odysseus is more elaborate, and is so intended, for the disguised
wanderer says: “Verily, this is the fair house of Odysseus, and easily
may it be known and distinguished even among many. For there is building
beyond building, and the court of the house is cunningly wrought with a
wall and copings, and there are well-fitting double doors.” Standing
outside the front door he can perceive by the smell of roast meat that
there is a banquet going on. No great magnificence here. In front of the
“well-fitting doors” there is a heap of manure, with an aged hound
asleep upon it (a similar dung-heap, it may be remarked, graces the
court of the palace of Priam in Troy City). Inside the doors there is
the _megaron_, where the banquet is going on. Odysseus sits down on the
ashen threshold, leaning against a pillar of cypress wood, specially
commended for its straightness. Telemachus takes a lump of meat, “as
much as his two hands can grasp,” and a whole loaf out of the fair
basket, and Odysseus (who is disguised as a beggar) devours it on his
dirty wallet as he sits on the threshold. This threshold under the
portico of the hall is the regular meeting-place of beggars, and it is
there that strangers are put to sleep. Within the hall there is an upper
chamber where Penelope sleeps and lives with her maidens. The wooers set
up three braziers in the hall to give them light, and heap them with
wood and pine-brands; consequently the hall is so full of smoke that the
weapons have to be removed to a storeroom to keep them useful. Odysseus,
sleeping in the “prodomos” of the hall, can hear a remark made by one of
the twelve grinding-women who have their hand-mills in the house next
door. Under the same echoing colonnade where Odysseus sleeps goats and
cattle are tethered by day. The walls of the hall itself are of wood,
the ceiling is of wood, and the floor is of stamped earth, for it is
cleaned with a spade, and fires are raked out of the braziers on to the
floor. As for the bridal chamber, Odysseus had built it himself with
stone, and it contained a marvellous bed wrought by the hero out of a
living olive-tree. Finally, there was a rather obscure postern-gate set
high in the wall of the hall above a stone threshold, and opening on to
an open gallery. Thus the feature of the house of Odysseus is that it is
of two stories; otherwise it consists, as usual, of three parts--hall,
court, and chamber.
Our learned archæologists have been setting their intellects to the task
of making these Homeric houses fit in with the palaces of Mycenæ and
Tiryns, but they have found it hard work. They have had to admit that
the palace of Odysseus is a good deal simpler than the meanest of the
Ægean palaces. And yet our poet has deliberately advertised it as
something out of the common. Does not that betray singular poverty of
imagination? He could not even make his heroic domiciles as splendid as
the actual buildings in which he sang his lays. What should we think of
a novelist who professed to write about duchesses and described them as
sitting in sumptuous front parlours? Of course we know the explanation.
It is hopeless to attempt to synchronise the Homeric age with the ages
of Ægean palaces. Homer lived in an altogether lower civilisation as
regards wealth and comfort. Just as we saw that his “kings” were only
country squires, so his “palaces” are no more than farmhouses, with all
their picturesque squalor and simplicity. Dirt and magnificence may go
hand in hand, as in our own mediæval halls, but in the Homeric
civilisation the magnificence is only in the poet’s heart. His material
surroundings are fitly typified by the Dipylon vases.
HESIOD’S WORLD