preferred to those of Homer, it is perhaps because, although they may
conflict with probability as well as with one another in an infinity
of points, yet they are in themselves more systematic and complete.
They represent to us for the most part _pasticcios_ arbitrarily made up
of materials of unequal value, but yet made up into wholes; whereas,
the evidence which he supplies is original though it is fragmentary.
Had he been followed by a continuous succession of authors, we should,
no doubt, do wisely in consenting to view the subjects of fact, with
which he dealt, mainly as they were viewed by those who trod in his
steps. But, on the contrary, they were separated from him by a gulf
both wide and deep; over which his compositions floated, in despite
of difficulties so great that many have deemed them positively
insurmountable, only by their extraordinary buoyancy.
It is in the Cyclic poems that we should naturally seek for materials
to enlarge, expound, or correct Homer. But there is not a line or a
notice remaining of any one of them, which would justify our assigning
to them any historical authority sufficient to qualify them for such a
purpose. Their reputed authors, from Arctinus downwards, all belong to
periods within the dates of the Olympiads[93]. They all bear marks of
having been written to fill the gaps which Homer had left unoccupied,
and so to enter into a partnership, if not with his fame, yet with his
popularity; with the popularity, of which his works, as we can well
judge from more recent experience, would be sure to shed some portion
upon all compositions ostensibly allied with them, and which then, as
now, presented the most cogent inducements to imitators who had their
livelihood to seek by means of their Muse.
Homer, without doubt, gave an immense addition of celebrity and vogue
to the subject of the Trojan war, much as Boiardo and Ariosto did to
the whole circle of the romances of which Orlando is the centre. One
of these poems, the Ἰλίου Πέρσις, is a simple expansion, as Mure has
observed[94], of the third lay of Demodocus in the Eighth Odyssey[95].
They seem to bear the mark of being, not composed first-hand from
actions of men, but from a stock of compositions in which heroic
actions had already been enshrined; so little do they appear to have
been stamped with the individuality which denotes original design. And
accordingly the usual manner of quoting them is not as the certain
works of a given person, but the form of citation is (ὁ γράψας τὴν
μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα, ὁ ποιήσας τὰ Κύπρια ἔπη), the writer of the little
Iliad, the composer of the Cyprian Songs, and the like. Heyne[96] holds
even the commencement of the Cyclic poems to have been at least a
century after the date of the Iliad and Odyssey.
Mr. Fynes Clinton, whose name can never be mentioned without a grateful
recognition of his merits and services, supplies, in the early part
of his Fasti Hellenici, many valuable suggestions for the sifting of
early Greek history. But he nowhere acknowledges, or approaches (I
believe) to the acknowledgment of the rule, that for the heroic age
the authority of Homer stands alone in kind. In the Fasti Hellenici
many statements, dating long after Homer, are delivered as if of
equal authority with his in regard to the history of that age; and
Mr. Clinton seems to have been led into a snare, to which his duty
as a chronologer probably exposed him, in assuming that history
and chronology may be expected to begin together; an assumption, I
apprehend, not supported by probability. Mr. Mitford has admirably
pointed out the importance of veracity to Homer’s function, and to his
fame as a poet, at a time when a poet could be the only historian[97],
the probability and singular consistency of his scattered anecdotes,
and the remarkable contrast between the clearness of his history, and
the darkness and uncertainty which follow after him, and continue until
the historic age begins; nor does he scruple to declare that ‘for these
early ages Homer is our best guide[98].’ But even this is still short
of my desire, which is not merely to recognise him as _primus inter
pares_, but to treat his testimony as paramount, and as constituting a
class by itself, with which no other literary testimony can compete.
And so once more Bishop Marsh, in his able work on the Pelasgi, assigns
no special office, I might perhaps say no peculiar weight, to the
Homeric testimony.
But I am glad to shelter myself under the authority afforded me by the
practice of Buttmann, who, in the Preface to his admirable Lexilogus,
declares his rule of philological investigation in Homer to be this:
to take, first, the evidence of the text itself in its several parts;
secondly, that of the succeeding epic poetry, and along with this
the testimony of the prime after-ages of Greek literature; thirdly,
grammatical tradition.
And yet the extensive contrariety between the old and the new is
admitted. ‘The Iliad and the Odyssey,’ says Mr. Grote[99], ‘and the
remaining Hesiodic fragments, exhibit but too frequently a hopeless
diversity, when confronted with the narratives of the logographers.’
And the author of the Minos[100] cleared away the fabulous and defaming
accounts of that sovereign, to return to the representations of Homer
and of Hesiod; καίτοι γε πιθανώτεροί εἰσιν ἢ σύμπαντες οἱ τραῳδοποιοὶ,
ὧν συ ἀκούων ταῦτα λέγεις. The great ancient writers, indeed, seem
never to have questioned the authority of Homer as a witness; nor
could any one wish to see him enthroned at a greater elevation than
that assigned to him as late as in the pages of Strabo. Virgil
systematically made light of him, but he was in a manner compelled by
his subject to make light of historical veracity altogether.
Historical scepticism, which has come of late years into possession of
the ground, has not redressed, as affecting Homer, the wrong that had
been done by historical credulity. We once exalted into history the
general mass of traditions relating to the ages which next preceded
those of continuous historic records; we now again decline the labour
of discrimination, and reduce them all alike into legend. The name of
Mr. Grote must carry great weight in any question of Greek research:
but it may be doubted whether the force and aptitude of his powerful
mind have been as successfully applied to the Homeric as to the later
periods. He presents us, indeed, with even more goodly and copious
catalogues than historians are wont of Æolids, of Pelopids, of ruling
families in every corner of Greece, and from the earliest times; but
he, too, fixes a chronological point for the commencement of history,
namely, the first recorded Olympiad[101]. He seems to think that the
trustworthy chronology of Greece begins before its real history. He
declines to take his start from disinterred Pelasgi[102]; he conceives
that we have no other authority for the existence of Troy than we have
for the theogonic revolutions[103]; the immense array of early names
that he presents are offered as names purely legendary. He will not
attempt to determine how much or how little of history these legends
may contain; he will not exhibit a picture from behind the curtain,
because, as he forcibly says, the curtain is the picture, and cannot by
any ingenuity be withdrawn[104]. He deals in the main alike with Homer,
Hesiod, the tragedians and minor Greek poets, the scattered notices
of the historians, of the antiquarian writers near the Christian era,
and of the Scholiasts. Of course, therefore, he cannot be expected
to rectify the fault, if such there has been, in regard to the
appreciation of the poems of Homer.
I may, however, observe that in this, as in other cases, extremes
appear to meet. Attempts to winnow the legendary lore, and to separate
the historic or primitive kernel from the husk, were clearing the
stage of a multitude of mythical personages unknown to the earliest
tradition; all of whom now are ushered in once more; they are, indeed,
labelled as unhistorical; but they are again mixed up wholesale with
those, from whose company critical observation had expelled them. In
thus reimparting a promiscuous character to the first scenes of Grecian
history, we seem to effect a retrogressive and not a progressive
operation. At any rate it should be understood that the issue raised
embraces the question, whether the personality of Achilles and
Agamemnon has no better root in history than that of Pelasgus, of
Prometheus, or of Hellen. And again, whether all these, being equal
to one another, are likewise equal, and no more than equal, in credit
to Ceres, Bacchus, or Apollo. As to all alike, what proportion of
truth there may be in the legend, or whether any, ‘it is impossible
to ascertain, and useless to inquire[105];’ all alike belong to a
region, essentially mythical, neither approachable by the critic, nor
measurable by the chronologer.
If the opinions which have been here expressed are in any degree
correct, we must endeavour to recover as substantial personages, and
to bring within the grasp of flesh and blood some of those pictures,
and even of those persons, whom Mr. Grote has dismissed to the land of
Shadow and of Dream.
In this view, the earliest Greek history should be founded on the text
of Homer, and not merely on its surface, but on its depths. Not only
its more broad and obvious statements should be registered, but we
should search and ransack all those slighter indications, suggestions,
and sources of inference, in which it is so extraordinarily rich;
and compel it, as it were, to yield up its treasures. We cannot,
indeed, like the zoologist, say the very words, Give me the bone, and
I will disinter the animal; yet so accurately was the mind of Homer
constructed, that we may come nearer to this certainty in dealing
with him, than with any other child of man. The later and inferior
evidence should be differently handled, and should not be viewed as
intrinsically authoritative. But that portion of it, which fills up the
gaps or confirms the suggestions of Homer, becomes thereby entitled
to something of historic rank. Again, widely extended and uniformly
continued traditions may amount to proof of notoriety, and may, not
by their individual credit, but by their concurrence, supply us with
standing ground of tolerable firmness. Beyond all this we may proceed,
and may present to view, where for any cause it seems desirable, even
ill-supported legends, but always as such, with fair notice of any
circumstances which may tend to fix their credit or discredit, and
with a line sufficiently marked between these and the recitals which
rest upon Homeric authority. Thus, the general rule would be to begin
with Homer: _a Jove principium_. We should plant his statements each
in their place, as so many foundation stones. While he leads us by the
hand, we should tread with comparative confidence; when we quit his
guidance, we should proceed with caution, with mistrust, with a tone no
higher than that of speculation and avowed conjecture.
In many instances, the application of these principles will require
the rudiments of early Greek history to be recast. In illustration of
this statement, I will refer to a legend, which has heretofore been
popularly assumed as in a great degree the ethnological starting point
of Greek history.
The current ideas respecting the distribution of the Greek races are
founded upon the supposition that there was a certain Hellen, and that
he had three sons, Dorus, Æolus, and Xuthus, the last of whom died and
left behind him two sons, Ion and Achæus. This Hellen was (so runs the
story) the son of Deucalion, and Deucalion was the son of Prometheus,
and the husband of Pyrrha, who again was the daughter of Epimetheus
and of Pandora, the first-made woman. From the agency of Deucalion and
Pyrrha, the human race took a new commencement after the Deluge. The
nation at large were called Hellenes, after Hellen; and from his two
surviving sons, and his grandsons Ion and Achæus, were named the four
great branches of the common stem. Such is the legend as it stands in
Apollodorus[106]; and that part of it which describes Hellen and his
three sons, but no more, is found in a fragment of Hesiod, quoted by
Tzetzes on Lycophron[107].
It is obvious that any one, setting about the invention of a story with
the compound purpose, first, of uniting the Greeks in a common bond of
race; secondly, of referring them to a common country as their cradle;
and, thirdly, of carrying up their origin to an extreme antiquity,
could hardly have done better than invent this tale. And that, which
might have been done at a stroke by an individual mind, was done no
less effectually by the common thought and wish of the Greek people
moulding itself by degrees into tradition. The tale has a symmetry
about it, most suggestive of design and invention. How clearly it
connects all the celebrated families or groups of the Greek nation;
with what accuracy it fixes their relation to the common stem; and with
how much impartial consideration for the self-love of every one among
them, and for their several shares of fame.
Not only in general, but even in detail, we may watch the gradual
formation of this tradition adapting itself to the state of Greece.
In Homer we find no Hellenes greatly distinguished, except Æolids
and Achæans. This is the first stage. But when the Dorians attain
to power[108], they claim a share in the past answerable to their
predominance in the present: and they receive accordingly the first
place in the genealogy as it stands in Hesiod, where Dorus is the
first-named among the three sons of Hellen. The Achæans, now in
depression, do not appear as Hellenes at all. But with the lapse of
time the Ionians of Athens, becoming powerful, desire to be also
famous: therefore room must be made for them: and the Achæans too
by their local intermixture with the same race, and their political
sympathy with Athens, once more come to be entitled to notice: Xuthus
accordingly, in the final form of the tradition is provided with two
sons. Ion and Achæus, and now all the four branches have each their
respective place.
This tradition, however, is neither in whole nor in part sustained by
Homer, and can by no effort be made to fit into Homer; to say nothing
of its containing within itself much incongruity. If we exclude Xuthus,
as a mere mute, it gives us five persons as the eponymists of five
races, the four last included in the first. But of the five persons
thus placed upon the stage, Homer gives us but one; that one, Æolus,
has no race or tribe, but only two or three lines of descendants
named after him. Again, the two or three children of Æolus in Homer
become five in Hesiod, twelve in Apollodorus, and by additions from
other writers reach a respectable total of seventeen[109]. Thus as
to persons, Homer has indeed an Æolus, but he has no Hellen, no
Dorus, no Ion, no Achæus. Now as to races. He mentions, without doubt,
Hellenes, Achæans, Dorians, Ionians; but affords hardly any means of
identifying Dorians with Hellenes, and as to Ionians, supplies pretty
strong presumptions that they were not Hellenic[110]. Nor does he
establish any relation whatever between any of the four races and any
common ancestor or eponymist. Again, the Deucalion of this legend is
two generations before its Æolus; but the Deucalion of Homer, who may
be reckoned as three generations before the fall of Troy, is also three
generations later than his Æolus. In fact, this legend of Hellen and
his family is like an ugly and flimsy, but formal, modern house, built
by the sacrilegious collection of the fragments of a noble ruin.
It may be thought dangerous, however, in setting up the authority
of Homer, to pull down that of Hesiod, who comes nearest to him.
But, firstly, Hesiod is only responsible for so much of the legend
as connects two persons named Æolus and Dorus with Hellen as their
source; which is at any rate no more than a poetical dress given to an
hypothesis substantially not in conflict with the Homeric traditions.
Secondly, as respects literal truth, the name Hellen at once bears
the strongest evidence against its own pretensions to an historical
character such as that assigned to it, because its etymology refers it
to the territorial name Ἑλλὰς, and through this to the national name
Ἕλλοι[111]. Lastly, the essential difference in point of authority lies
between Homer and Hesiod, not between Homer together with Hesiod on
the one side, and those who came after Hesiod on the other. Homer was
fully within the sphere and spirit of the heroic age; Hesiod was as
plainly outside it. He is apparently separated from the mighty master
by a considerable term, even as measured in years. That term it would
be difficult to define by any given number; but it is easy to see that
even when defined it would convey an utterly inadequate idea of the
interval of poetic and personal difference, and of moral and social
change, between Hesiod and Homer. It is not to be found in this or that
variation, for it belongs to the whole order of ideas; all the elements
of thought, the whole tone of the picture, the atmosphere in which
persons and objects are seen, are essentially modified.
I venture one remark, however, upon Hesiod’s very beautiful account of
the Ages. None can fail to be struck by the order in which he places
them. Beginning with the Golden, he comes next to the Silver age, and
then to Brass. But, instead of descending forthwith the fourth and last
step to the Iron age, he very singularly retraces his steps, and breaks
the downward chain by an age of heroes, of whom he says that it was
δικαιότερον καὶ ἄρειον,
ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων θεῖον γένος, οἱ καλέονται
ἡμίθεοι προτέρῃ γενεᾷ κατ’ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν[112].
These, he goes on to explain, were the men, partly slain in the Theban
and Trojan wars, partly translated by Jupiter to the ends of the earth,
the islands of the blest. After this, the scale drops, at once, to the
lowest point, the Iron age, the age without either Νέμεσις or Αἰδὼς,
the age of sheer wickedness and corruption.
This very curious turn in the arrangement of the Hesiodic Ages, and
especially the insertion, in a regular figurative series taken from the
metals, of a completely heterogeneous passage, calls for explanation;
and I venture to suggest that this passage should be construed as
disclosing to us that brilliant halo, which the Homeric poems had cast
over an age still recent, so as not only to hold it above the one that
followed, but also to raise it even above that which had preceded it;
above the age of Bellerophon, of Tantalus, of Sisyphus, of Minos, and
even of Hercules. The splendour of the fame of heroes really depended
on the Bard. The great Bard of Greece had lifted Achilles and Ulysses
to a height surpassing that of the older Heroes, who remained unsung
by him; and he had promised Menelaus, in the Fourth Odyssey[113],
that very seat in the regions of the blest, to which allusion is here
made by Hesiod. While the apparent poetic solecism of this passage is
thus accounted for, it becomes, at once, both an emphatic testimony
to the immense power exercised by the verse of Homer, and a distinct
declaration by Hesiod of the wide social interval, by which he was
himself separated from the heroic period; a declaration entirely
accordant with the internal evidence of the poems of Hesiod generally,
and amounting by implication to the double statement from this poet,
that Homer belonged to the heroic age, and that he himself did not
belong to it.
The tradition of Hellen and his sons, then, exhibits one of the cases
in which we must take our choice between the testimony of Homer, and
what are apparently the inventions of the later Greeks.
Another of these cases, which will be my second and last illustration,
relates to Helen of Troy.
It has been much disputed whether this celebrated character is to be
regarded as historical or fictitious. A writer of no less judgment
and authority than the Bishop of St. David’s, adopts the latter
alternative, upon various grounds. The strongest among them all, in
his view, is, that ‘in the abduction of Helen, Paris only repeats an
exploit, also attributed to Theseus[114].’ This exploit, the Bishop
thinks, was known to Homer, as he introduces Æthra, the mother of
Theseus, in the company of Helen at Troy. And other writers have
further developed these ideas, by finding absurdity in the Homeric tale
of Helen, on the ground that she must have been eighty years old when
the supposed abduction by Paris took place.
Now, the basis of these statements entirely depends upon the assumption
that the later traditions are entitled to be treated either as upon
a par, or, at any rate, as homogeneous with those of Homer. The
tradition which assigns a rape of Helen to Theseus, is only available
to discredit the tale of Homer, on the supposition that it rests upon
authority like that of Homer. But if it was a late invention, then it
is more probably to be regarded as a witness to the fame of the Homeric
personages, and the anxiety of Attica to give her hero the advantage
of similar embellishments, than as an original tradition which Homer
copied, or as a twin report with that which he has handed down.
The tradition of the rape of Helen by Theseus is mentioned by
Herodotus[115] as a tale current among the Athenians. He testifies
apparently to the fact, that the Deceleans of Attica enjoyed certain
immunities in Sparta, and were spared by the Lacedæmonian forces when
they invaded Attica; which was ascribed by the Athenians to their
having assisted in the recovery of Helen from Theseus, by pointing out
to the Tyndaridæ the place of her concealment. Herodotus, however,
does not affirm the cause stated by the Athenians, nor the abduction
by Theseus, which afterwards became, or had even then become, an
established tradition. Isocrates[116] handles it without misgiving, and
it is methodized in Plutarch, with a multitude of other particulars,
our acceptance of which absolutely requires the rejection of Homer’s
historical authority.
And so again with regard to Æthra, the daughter of Pittheus, whom the
later ages have connected with Theseus. We have no right to treat her
introduction in the company of Helen[117], as a proof that Homer knew
of a story connecting Helen with Theseus, unless we knew, which we do
not, from Homer, or from authority entitled to compete with Homer, that
there was a relation between Æthra and Theseus.
Now, the story of Homer respecting Helen, is perfectly self-consistent:
and so is his story respecting Theseus: but the two are separated by
an interval of little less than two generations, or say fifty years.
For Theseus[118] fought in the wars against the Φῆρες, in which Nestor
took part: and he wooed and wedded Ariadne, the aunt of Idomeneus, who
was himself nearly or quite one generation older than the Greek kings
in general. On the other hand, Homer shows the age of Helen to have
been in just proportion to that of Menelaus: for she had a daughter,
Hermione, before the abduction, and might, so far as age was concerned,
have borne children after their conjugal union was resumed[119].
Why, then, if Homer be the paramount authority, should we, upon
testimony inferior to his, introduce conflict and absurdity into two
traditions, which he gives us wide apart from one another and each
self-consistent, by forging a connexion between them?
I have stated these two cases, not by way of begging the question as to
the superiority in kind of Homer’s testimony, but to show how important
that question is; and in how many instances the history of the heroic
age must be rewritten, if we adopt the principle, that Homer ought to
be received as an original witness, contemporary with the manners, nay,
perhaps, even with some of the persons he describes, and subject only
to such deductions as other original witnesses are liable to suffer:
whereas the later traditions rest only upon hearsay; so much so, that
they can hardly be called evidence, and should never be opposed, on
their own credit, to the testimony of Homer.
In bringing this discussion to a close, I will quote a passage
respecting Homer, from the Earl of Aberdeen’s _Inquiry into the
Principles of Beauty in Grecian Architecture_, which, I think,
expresses with great truth and simplicity the ground of Homer’s general
claim to authority, subject, of course, to any question respecting the
genuineness of the received text: