rest of the poem appear as chiefs of the first order. In the case of
Idomeneus alone is this in any way obscured; as the passage (645-51)
runs: ‘Idomeneus led the Cretans.... Idomeneus led them, with
Meriones.’ But it is very remarkable that Meriones holds just this sort
of ambiguous relation to Idomeneus in the poem at large: sometimes he
is called his θεράπων (xxiii. 113 _et alibi_), and his ὀπάων (x. 58 _et
alibi_), while he stands among the nine first warriors of the army, who
(vii. 161), volunteer for single combat with Hector; and when Idomeneus
leads the van, he manages the rear (iv. 251-4). Again, though the
opportunities afforded by the Catalogue are of necessity narrow, yet
Homer has contrived within its limits to mark distinctly the character
and position of nearly every great chieftain: certainly of Agamemnon,
Achilles, Menelaus, Telamonian Ajax (v. 668), and Ulysses.
_The Epilogue._
The third portion, or epilogue, appears to be ascribable chiefly to
the genial love of Homer for the horse. His arrangement of the army
according to the number of ships, which conveyed each division, had
shut out the mention of the chariots and the coursers who drew them,
and he appears to have devised this closing invocation for the purpose
of supplying the defect. It was certainly not necessary in order to
fix the position of Achilles in the army, which the First Book had
completely developed; and the passage is chiefly occupied with the
horses of Eumelus, together with those of Achilles and his force.
It contains, however, two remarkable notes of historical veracity. The
horses of Eumelus, a Thessalian, are proclaimed to have been by far the
best (μέγ’ ἄρισται): and the Myrmidons, again a Thessalian contingent,
are here spoken of as having a number of separate chariots and horses;
we are told (773), ‘the soldiers played at games.... The horses stood
feeding, each near his own chariot, and the chariots were in their
sheds.’ This is never said of any other contingent in the army. In
strict harmony with this picture, Thessaly was conspicuous throughout
the historic times of Greece, for the excellence of its breeds of
horses, and the high character of its cavalry.
If all this be so, we cannot wonder at the high estimation in which the
Catalogue of Homer was held by the Greeks of after-ages, as the great
and only systematic record of the national claims of the respective
states.
This was not merely literary or private estimation: the Catalogue had
the place of an authoritative public document. Under the laws of Solon,
for example, it received the honour of public recitation on solemn
occasions. It was also quoted for the decision of controversies. In the
critical moment, which preceded the first Persian war, the Athenian and
Spartan envoys apply on the part of Greece to Gelon for his aid. He
claims the command. In resisting this claim and urging their own right
to lead the fleet, unless that post be claimed by the Lacedæmonians,
the Athenians found their pretensions on the magnitude of their fleet,
their autochthonism, and, finally, the testimony of Homer to the merits
of Menestheus[494].
_The Trojan Catalogue._
The Trojan Catalogue has less of organic connection than the Greek with
the structure of the poem at large.
In proceeding to this portion of his work, the poet does not renew his
ornamental similes, or his invocation to the Muse. He evidently meant
to lower the tone of his strain: and moreover he was not about to tax
memory as he had done in the former operation, the proper names being
only about one fourth in number of those used for the Greeks, and none
of them being arranged in long strings like the towns of Bœotia.
He now begins in what may be called a natural order: taking first that
section of the army, which was supplied by the Troic sovereignties,
principal and subordinate; and among these giving the first place to
the troops of Ilion itself, as the most considerable, and as those
chiefly concerned. The next is given to the Dardan forces, which were
connected with the original seat of the race, and the following ones to
the contingents supplied by the subordinate sovereigns of the rest of
Troas.
His pursuit of this order reminds us, that the geographical
distribution was in the case of the Trojan list simple, and did not
require the aid of mental geometry, as he had only to follow, almost
throughout, a single line of States along the European and Asiatic
coasts. It also strengthens the presumption that, when Homer chose an
order so different, and so much less natural and obvious, in the case
of the Greeks, he must have been governed by some peculiar reason.
It will be observed that, of the eleven divisions of the Allies, the
two first are the Pelasgians and the Thracians. As the blood of these
two races flowed likewise in the veins of the Greeks, the precedence
given to them may have been founded on this relationship. But this
presumption is qualified by our finding that, doubtless on the ground
of geographical order, the Lycian contingent, which had, at any rate,
strong Greek affinities, comes last of all.
For a reason given elsewhere, we must consider the numbers assigned
to the Greek contingents as approximate representations of their
respective force: but the omission to particularize numbers at all in
the Trojan Catalogue is itself an evidence of its historical character.
The Trojan army was of a miscellaneous character: we also know that
the allied contingents went and came, and that their absence from
home, not prompted by the same powerful motives as that of the Greeks,
was shortened by reliefs. Thus we find Rhesus with his Thracians just
arrived in the Tenth Book[495]: Memnon comes to Troy after the death
of Hector[496]: and we are told of the sons of Hippotion (Il. xiii.
792), who ἦλθον ἀμοιβοί, had come as reliefs, on the preceding day. An
army thus collected piecemeal, and thus fluctuating in its composition,
could not leave behind it the same accessible traditions. Again, the
destruction of Troy itself obliterated what alone could have been their
depository; nor had Homer, as a Greek bard, either the same motives
or the same means for gathering detailed information, as he would
naturally possess with reference to his own countrymen.
Hence, as the Trojan Catalogue is shorter, so also its scope is more
limited. It contains no specification of forces: no anecdotes going
farther back than the existing generation: scarcely any of what may
be called specialties of character or position as to the chiefs. It
shows a good deal of knowledge of the geography and products of the
countries, but this knowledge is of a much more general and vague
character, than that which he has displayed in almost every portion
of the Greek Array. He gives here very few lists of towns at all, and
never uses epithets requiring us to believe that he had a personal
knowledge of their site and character. Only Ariste is δῖα, and Larissa
is ἐριβώλαξ. In two or three cases he speaks of commercial products;
a characteristic which it is obvious that he might have learned
without any personal experience of the countries. He does not use
this particular kind of sign at all in the descriptions of the Greek
Catalogue: and we may perhaps correctly interpret it, where it appears,
as a token of his want of vivid and experimental knowledge.
He also occasionally names a mountain or a river. But there is a
general avoidance of particular and characteristic epithets, such
as, (to refer to the Bœotian list alone,) πετρήεσσα given to Aulis,
πολύκνημος to Eteonos, εὐρύχορος to Mycalesos, ἐϋκτίμενον to Medeon and
Hypothebæ, πολυτρήρων to Thisbe, ποιήεις to Haliartos, πολυστάφυλος to
Arne, ἐσχατόωσα to Anthedon, with perhaps one or two other cases.
Another material inference is suggested by the very different texture
of the Trojan Catalogue.
Upon the whole, this vagueness of description cannot, I think, but be
regarded as much in conflict with the belief that Homer was a Greek of
Asia Minor, if at least his comparative knowledge of the two countries
on the opposite sides of the Ægean is to be taken as a sign, either
positive or negative, of his nativity.
FOOTNOTES:
[480] Fig. i. in Map.
[481] Fig. ii. in Map.
[482] Fig. iii. in Map.
[483] ix. 5. p. 430.
[484] Fig. iv. in Map.
[485] Strabo ix. p. 435.
[486] Ibid. p. 439.
[487] Ibid. p. 442.
[488] Thuc. i. 2.
[489] Fig. v. in Map.
[490] Od. i. 170, _et alibi_.
[491] I am not prepared to contend that the numbers of the ships are to
be taken as literally correct: but this subject will be discussed in
conjunction with his general mode of using number, in the ‘Studies on
Poetry,’ sect. iii.
[492] Od. ii. 386.
[493] The reasons for treating this as a coincidence will be found in a
paper on Homer’s use of number. (Studies on Poetry, sect. iii.)
[494] Herod. vii. 161.
[495] Il. x. 434.
[496] Od. xi. 521.
SECT. VI.
_On the Hellenes of Homer; and with them_,
Hellas; Panhellenes; Cephallenes; Helli or Selli.
_The Hellas of Homer._
We have next to inquire into the force of the Hellenic name in the
poems of Homer.
It meets us not, like the Pelasgic, in a single form, but in a group of
words; among which, the principal are as follows:
1. Ἕλληνες, Il. ii. 684. }
2. Πανέλληνες, ibid. 530. } National or tribal names.
3. Σελλοὶ, Il. xvi. 234. }
And, lastly, the territorial name of
4. Ἕλλας.
Observing the order of derivation as it has been pointed out by
Mure[497], we shall naturally look to the word Ἕλλας as a guide to
the meaning of its derivatives, Ἕλληνες and Πανέλληνες. It is itself
drawn from Ἑλλοὶ or Σελλοί: but as that name is only once used in the
Poems, and as by far the largest body of evidence tells upon the word
Ἕλλας, the decision upon the whole group of words will turn mainly upon
the inquiry we shall have to make into the use of that word by Homer.
With it therefore we shall commence. Is there, we have to ask, clear
proof, that it went beyond the dominions of Peleus? If it went beyond
them, how far did it go? and did it include that division of Greece, in
which Locris lay, whose inhabitants a particular line of the Catalogue
classes with the Panhellenes? For no suspicion of spuriousness can
justly arise out of the fact (if it be one), that Homer calls by the
name of Hellenes the inhabitants of any country, which was itself
within the scope of the territorial name Hellas: inasmuch as this is
little more than, the word Yorkshire being given, to make use also of
the word Yorkshiremen.
At the outset, however, it is essential to observe, that a certain
elasticity in the use of geographical as well as political names could
not but belong to the age, in which Homer lived: first, because of the
successive movements of tribes, like wave on wave, so that the use of
any such name would ordinarily be either growing or declining, but
not stationary: secondly, because of the indeterminate forms which
political authority assumed, as resting on a mixture, in unknown
proportions, of the various elements of custom, compact, reverence, and
force: and, thirdly, because of the want of well-defined geographical
boundaries.
We are not entitled to assume that the territory, which we call Greece,
was, in Homer’s time, subdivided with precision between a given number
of territorial names. We hear of Phthia, Ægialus, Elis, Arcadia:
but these seem to be the exceptions rather than the rule. For many
parts of it there are no local names whatever; and we must not look
for any thing resembling the manner in which England is made up of
its counties, France of its departments, or the later Greece of its
individual states.
The passages in which the word Hellas is used by Homer stand as follows
in the order of the Poems:
1. A verse in the Catalogue, Il. ii. 683:
οἵ τ’ εἶχον Φθίην ἠδ’ Ἑλλάδα καλλιγυναῖκα.
2. (Achilles _loquitur_), ix. 395:
πολλαὶ Ἀχαΐιδές εἰσιν ἀν’ Ἑλλάδα τε Φθίην τε.
3. (Phœnix _loq._), ibid. 447:
οἷον ὅτε πρῶτον λίπον Ἑλλάδα καλλιγυναῖκα.
4. (Phœnix _loq._), ibid. 478:
φεῦγον ἔπειτ’ ἀπάνευθε δι’ Ἑλλάδος εὐρυχόροιο,
Φθίην δ’ ἐξικόμην ἐριβώλακα.
5. (In the narrative), Il. xvi. 595:
Χάλκωνος φίλον υἱὸν, ὃς Ἑλλάδι οἴκια ναίων
ὄλβῳ τε πλούτῳ τε μετέπρεπε Μυρμιδόνεσσιν.
6. (Penelope _loq._), Od. i. 344:
μεμνημένη αἰεὶ
ἀνδρὸς, τοῦ κλέος εὐρὺ καθ’ Ἑλλάδα καὶ μέσον Ἄργος.
7. (Penelope _loq._), Od. iv. 724:
ἣ πρὶν μὲν πόσιν ἐσθλὸν ἀπώλεσα θυμολέοντα,
παντοίῃς ἀρέτῃσι κεκασμένον ἐν Δαναοῖσι,
ἐσθλὸν, τοῦ κλέος εὐρὺ καθ’ Ἑλλάδα καὶ μέσον Ἄργος.
8. Penelope repeats the same lines, Od. iv. 814-16.
9. (Achilles _loq._), Od. xi. 494:
εἶπε δέ μοι, Πηλῆος ἀμύμονος εἴ τι πέπυσσαι·
ἢ ἐτ’ ἔχει τιμὴν πολέσιν μετὰ Μυρμιδόνεσσιν
ἤ μιν ἀτιμάζουσιν ἀν’ Ἑλλάδα τε Φθίην τε.
10. (Menelaus _loq._), to Telemachus, Od. xv. 80:
εἰ δ’ ἐθέλεις τραφθῆναι ἀν’ Ἑλλάδα καὶ μέσον Ἄργος,
ὄφρα τοι αὐτὸς ἕπωμαι, ὑποζεύξω δέ τοι ἵππους,
ἄστεα δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἡγήσομαι.
Of these passages, there are some which admit for the word Hellas
the contracted sense of the dominions of Peleus, or even of a simple
portion of them. Namely the following:
In (1) we are reading part of the description of the country, from
which the force of Achilles was drawn. Beginning from the line which
precedes it, we may translate thus: ‘the inhabitants of Alos, and of
Alope, and of Trachin, and those who occupied Phthia, and the Hellas
of fair women.’ It is clear, on the face of the passage, that, whatever
it may mean, the sense does not require it to mean more in this place
than a particular district, forming part of the dominions of Peleus.
In (2), where Achilles says, there are many Achæan maids through Hellas
and Phthia, any one of whom he can have for a wife.
In (5), where we are told that Bathycles, son of Chalcon, dwelt in
Hellas, preeminent among the Myrmidons in prosperity and wealth.
And in (9), where the shade of Achilles asks whether his father Peleus
is still in the enjoyment of kingly power in the populous country of
the Myrmidons, or whether he is deprived and despised through the range
of Hellas and Phthia.
But among these four passages there is a distinction. In (1), (5), and
(9) Hellas is combined with Phthia. Now we have seen, that there were
Phthians beyond the dominions of Peleus: if the territorial name Phthia
was similarly extended, then the presumption would arise that Hellas
also might mean something more than lay within those dominions. But
there are many passages where Phthia is used without Hellas; and in
them all it is used to express the district where Peleus reigned. It
is not unlikely therefore, at first sight, that Hellas has the limited
sense of a part of the kingdom in these passages. And in the passage
relating to Bathycles, the son of Chalcon, the limited sense is yet
more strongly suggested; yet, as we may hereafter see more clearly, it
is by no means positively required either in that or in any of these
four places.
And it is abundantly clear, from the remainder of the passages, that
the name Hellas had already, in Homer’s time, begun to bear a more
extended sense.
In proof of this, let us take, firstly, the two passages in which it
stands alone. In Il. ix. 444-8, Phœnix tells us that nothing would
induce him to quit Achilles; no, not even if the gods, brushing off
his old age, were to make him young and vigorous again, such as he was
when first he left Hellas, the land of fair women, flying from his
feud with his father Amyntor. Now this passage absolutely proves that
the word Hellas was used by Homer, at least occasionally, for some
limited district, and not (as in after times) for the entire country;
inasmuch as Phœnix could not otherwise have said he _left_ Hellas on
this occasion. But on the other hand it demonstrates, that the limits
of Hellas were not so narrow, as the passages heretofore considered
might permit us to suppose. For Phœnix goes on to describe the cause
of quarrel; and (478-80) says he took his course _through_ broad
open Hellas, and came _into_ fertile Phthia, to Peleus the king. The
supposition most consistent with the wording of these passages is, that
Phthia comprised the principal district of the dominions of Peleus,
while a portion of them may have fallen (as we elsewhere see was
perhaps the case) under the name of Hellas: but they absolutely place
the abode of Amyntor outside the realm of Peleus; and therefore, in
saying that Phœnix left Hellas, and that he fled from his home through
Hellas, they imply necessarily that Hellas, the region from which he
fled, was, in part at least, outside of that realm to which he fled.
But these passages will harmonise perfectly with each other, and with
those formerly examined, if we suppose that Hellas meant the whole of
Northern Greece generally, but that a particular portion of it had been
more definitely stamped with the name of Phthia, as the chief seat of
Peleus and the Myrmidons. For then the original abode of Phœnix might
be in Hellas, as he says (in ix. 447) that it was: and yet he would
pursue his way through Hellas, as he says (ibid. 478) that he did: and
he would also leave Hellas, namely by coming into Phthia: and moreover
the dominions of Peleus might go beyond what was commonly known by the
particular designation of Phthia, and might include some portion of
Hellas, as, from Il. ii. 683, they evidently did.
This supposition is recommended to us, not only by its conforming to
all the requisite conditions, and furnishing a convenient construction
for all the passages we have examined, but by the fact that Phthia, and
Phthia alone, is commonly mentioned in the poem as the home of Achilles
and the Myrmidons: which shows that they had a more special relation to
the territory known by that name, than to Hellas.
If any thing be still wanting, the proof is brought to completeness by
two other passages: the one (Il. x. 261-7), which tells us that this
Amyntor, son of Ormenus, dwelt in Eleon; dwelt there permanently, since
Autolycus stole from him an helmet, by breaking into his substantial
well-built house,
πύκινον δόμον ἀντιτορήσας[498]:
and the other the verse of the Catalogue[499], which places Eleon in
Bœotia. These passages therefore clearly appear to carry the name
Hellas as far as Bœotia, and to make it reach continuously from thence
to Phthia. And if Hellas comes down to Bœotia, then it includes
Locris; and the various tribes of these regions may be included in
the general name of Hellenes, though to all appearance they were not
as yet familiarly and ordinarily so called. And if Locris and Bœotia,
with part of Southern Thessaly (the dominions of Peleus), are included
within the range of the name Hellas, we can have no difficulty in
supposing that it included Northern Thessaly also, which must have been
the pathway of the Helli to the South.
But we find Ἕλλας in another combination besides that with Phthia,
in the four passages of the Odyssey, (one of them being a simple
repetition of another,) which we have still to examine.
Now the line Od. iv. 726, repeated 816, is under suspicion, of which it
is not worth while to scrutinise the justice: as the idea and force of
it is just the same with that of Od. i. 344,
Ἀνδρὸς, τοῦ κλέος εὐρὺ καθ’ Ἑλλάδα καὶ μέσον Ἄργος.
This passage describes the fame of Ulysses as spread through the
breadth of Hellas and mid-Argos; (or, from the heart of Argos to its
extremities, right through or _all over_ Argos.) And again in Od.
xv. 80, when Telemachus has proposed to return home forthwith from
the court of Menelaus, his host gently dissuades him from haste, and
counsels a more extended tour, καθ’ Ἑλλάδα καὶ μέσον Ἄργος; offering
to take charge of his horses, and to shew him ‘the cities,’ or secured
dwellings, ‘of men.’
The signification of the word Ἄργος will be considered hereafter: for
the present purpose it is enough to observe that the word μέσον, as
used by Menelaus, in combination with Hellas, of itself prevents our
applying it simply to the narrow corner of the Peloponnesus in which
the city of Argos was placed; and therefore that it can scarcely mean
less than Peloponnesus. And it is not less plain, that whatever may
be the force of the words when taken singly, their effect when taken
together can hardly be less than this: Menelaus must mean to point to
Greece at large, as the scene of the proposed excursion. For there is
no assignable portion of Greece to which, consistently with the words
and the sense, he can be held to confine his meaning. If we could
suppose him to mean Peloponnesus only by the two names Hellas and
Argos, which he employs in this place, we should but enlarge thereby
the Homeric capacity of the word Hellas; for we have already brought it
down from the north to Bœotia; and we should, in the way now proposed,
carry it through the isthmus, and over Peloponnesus, or, at the least,
over some part of it. But even if Menelaus means Peloponnesus only,
which is most improbable, it is plainly incredible that such should be
the meaning of Penelope in Od. i. 344. As a Greek, she _cannot_ mean to
limit the renown of her husband to any sphere less wide than Greece.
We have already seen, that Hellas sometimes includes certainly the
territory from Southern Thessaly to Bœotia, and probably Thessaly at
large: and it is quite plain that, if it comes to Bœotia, it does not
stop there, but applies to the whole of Middle Greece, the region
between Thessaly and the isthmus: for the application of the term
Hellas could not stop except at some great natural division of the
country, and the isthmus is here the only one possible.
Now the name Argos is related to Thessaly[500], but much more specially
related to the Peloponnesus, as we shall see from a number of passages.
It has no relation at all in Homer to that division of the country in
particular which we call Middle Greece.
Assuming it, then, to mean Peloponnesus, in that case Hellas means
Middle with Northern Greece: and the two names of Hellas and Argos,
taken together, completely and conveniently express the whole country.
The only alterations are such as would assign to Hellas a larger sense;
in no case can it, as to this passage, admit of a more restricted one.
The foregoing argument is supported to a certain extent by the fact,
that while territorial names are frequent for the Peloponnesian part of
Greece, (we have Achaic Argos, Iasian Argos, Elis, Arcadia, Lacedæmon,)
the continent to the north of the isthmus is generally without
territorial names: Phthia and Pelasgic Argos are, I think, the only
exceptions. There is thus before us a gap, which the name Hellas, as it
has been here construed, seems conveniently to fill.
This construction of certain passages, in which the word Hellas is
contained, is not one which should be adopted by the reader unawares.
But if, like myself, after examining into it strictly he assents to
its justice and necessity, then he will find that it is of the utmost
importance to the elucidation of Homeric history; for it supplies a key
to other much contested uses of the Hellenic name.