Homer and His Age

CHAPTER XII: LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES

CHAPTER XIII: THE "DOLONEIA"—"ILIAD," BOOK X.

CHAPTER XIV: THE INTERPOLATIONS OF NESTOR

CHAPTER XV: THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS

CHAPTER XVI: HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS

CHAPTER XVII: CONCLUSION

CHAPTER I

THE HOMERIC AGE

The aim of this book is to prove that the Homeric Epics, as wholes, and apart from passages gravely suspected in antiquity, present a perfectly harmonious picture of the entire life and civilisation of one single age. The faint variations in the design are not greater than such as mark every moment of culture, for in all there is some movement; in all, cases are modified by circumstances. If our contention be true, it will follow that the poems themselves, as wholes, are the product of a single age, not a mosaic of the work of several changeful centuries.

This must be the case—if the life drawn is harmonious, the picture must be the work of a single epoch—for it is not in the nature of early uncritical times that later poets should adhere, or even try to adhere, to the minute details of law, custom, opinion, dress, weapons, houses, and so on, as presented in earlier lays or sagas on the same set of subjects. Even less are poets in uncritical times inclined to "archaise," either by attempting to draw fancy pictures of the ma

The most erudite ancient poet, in a critical age of iron, does not archaise in our modern fashion. He does not follow his model, Homer, in his descriptions of shields, swords, and spears. But, according to most Homeric critics, the later continuators of the Greek Epics, about 800-540 B.C., are men living in an age of iron weapons, and of round bucklers worn on the left arm. Yet, unlike Virgil, they always give their heroes arms of bronze, and, unlike Virgil (as we shall see), they do not introduce the buckler worn on the left arm. They adhere conscientiously to the use of the vast Mycenaean shield, in their time obsolete. Yet, by the theory, in many other respects they i

All attempts to prove that the Homeric poems are the work of several centuries appear to rest on a double hypothesis: first, that the later contributors to the ILIADkept a steady eye on the traditions of the remote Achaean age of bronze; next, that they i

Poets of an uncritical age do not archaise. This rule is overlooked by the critics who represent the Homeric poems as a complex of the work of many singers in many ages. For example, Professor Percy Gardner, in his very interesting New chapters in Greek History(1892), carries neglect of the rule so far as to suppose that the late Homeric poets, being aware that the ancient heroes could not ride, or write, or eat boiled meat, consciously and purposefully represented them as doing none of these things. This they did "on the same principle on which a writer of pastoral idylls in our own day would avoid the mention of the telegraph or telephone." {Footnote: Op. cit., p. 142.} "A writer of our own day,"—there is the pervading fallacy! It is only writers of the last century who practise this archaeological refinement. The authors of Beowulfand the Nibelungenlied, of the Chansons de Gesteand of the Arthurian romances, always describe their antique heroes and the details of their life in conformity with the customs, costume, and armour of their own much later ages.

But Mr. Leaf, to take another instance, remarks as to the lack of the metal lead in the Epics, that it is mentioned in similes only, as though the poet were aware the metal was unknown in the heroic age. {Footnote: Iliad, Note on, xi. 237.} Here the poet is assumed to be a careful but ill-informed archaeologist, who wishes to give an accurate representation of the past. Lead, in fact, was perfectly familiar to the Mycenaean prime. {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 73.} The critical usage of supposing that the ancients were like the most recent moderns—in their archaeological preoccupations—is a survival of the uncritical habit which invariably beset old poets and artists. Ancient poets, of the uncritical ages, never worked "on the same principle as a writer in our day," as regards archaeological precision; at least we are acquainted with no example of such accuracy.

Let us take another instance of the critical fallacy. The age of the Achaean warriors, who dwelt in the glorious halls of Mycenae, was followed, at an interval, by the age represented in the relics found in the older tombs outside the Dipylon gate of Athens, an age begi

We shall later show that this Homeric picture of a past political and social condition of Greece is of vivid and delicate accuracy, that it is drawn from the life, not constructed out of historical materials. Mr. Hall explains the fact by "the conscious and consistent" archaeological precision of the Asiatic poets of the ninth century. Now to any one who knows early national poetry, early uncritical art of any kind, this theory seems not easily tenable. The difficulty of the theory is increased, if we suppose that the Achaeans were the recent conquerors of the Mycenaeans. Whether we regard the Achaeans as "Celts," with Mr. Ridgeway, victors over an Aryan people, the Pelasgic Mycenaeans; or whether, with Mr. Hall, we think that the Achaeans were the Aryan conquerors of a non-Aryan people, the makers of the Mycenaean civilisation; in the stress of a conquest, followed at no long interval by an expulsion at the hands of Dorian invaders, there would be little thought of archaising among Achaean poets. {Footnote: Mr. Hall informs me that he no longer holds the opinion that the poets archaised.}