The Iliad
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 Laomedontiadæ, 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
preeminent 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 Olysseid.
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.”[27]
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[28] 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, “explains 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 Eubœans;
Tlepolemus, of the Rhodians; Pandarus, of the Lycians; Odius, 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 Pylæmenes, 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 _employês_ 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.[29] 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.”[30]
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[31] would lead him to preserve an ancient
and traditional order of the poems, rather than to patch and
re-construct 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 Mœonides, 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 Achilleïs[32] 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, Solôn 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.”[33]
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