The World of Homer
saga-poetry began to be left on one side and neglected from the eighth
century on; and we find, to judge from our fragments" (of the Cyclic
poems), "that it remained in its semi-savage state" (_Anthropology
in Greek Epic_, 1908, p. 68). This knowledge is far from common. The
Cyclic poems are in the highly developed Homeric hexameter; they
are not, I venture to say, "semi-savage"; and, where they differ in
beliefs, rites, and customs from Homer, they represent the usages of
historic Hellas. They are generally believed to have been composed at
the date when Mr. Murray says that they "began to be neglected." Far
from being neglected, they certainly afforded much of the materials of
the Athenian tragedians, and of the vase painters who choose many more
subjects from the Cyclics than from our Homer.
[13] _R. G. E._ p. 134.
CHAPTER XV
ATTIC _versus_ ACHAEAN TRADITIONS
The mixed multitude of Ionian settlers in Asia must have had mixed
traditions, not the legends of Athens alone, but those of the towns
of the Calaurian amphictyony, and of many other regions, Cretan,
Boeotian, Euboean, and so on. The dominant legends, however, in poetry,
as known to us, were those of Athens, which are comparatively jejune,
being often constructed, perhaps out of the competing variants of the
Attic demes, to prove the legitimacy of one or another dynastic claim
to the kingship of Athens. We are so familiar with the traditions
as manipulated by the great tragedians, that we scarcely notice how
absolutely Athens lies outside of the heroic myths of the rest of
Greece.
Grote has justly observed that "neither the archaeology" (ancient
traditions) "of Attica, nor that of its component fractions, was much
dwelt upon by the ancient epic poets of Greece." He might have stated
the case much more strongly, for he says, "Theseus is noticed both in
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ as having carried off from Crete, Ariadne,
the daughter of Minos ... and the sons of Theseus take part in the
Trojan war." But Demophon and Acamas, as sons of Theseus, appear, _not
in the Iliad_, but only _in the Ionian Cyclic poems_; and if Theseus
carries off Ariadne in the _Odyssey_,[1] not in the _Iliad_, the
passage is of the most dubious, and the myth is obscure.
"Homer is," says Mr. Leaf, "of course, ignorant of the Theseus myth
in all its branches."[2] "There is no trace," says Mr. Monro, "in
Homer of acquaintance with the group of legends to which the story of
Aethra" (mother of Theseus) "belongs."[3] No acknowledged fact can
more perfectly demonstrate the difference between Attic and Homeric or
Achaean tradition than the circumstance that Homer, while he ignores
Theseus, takes a view of Minos and of the Cretan empire directly
opposed to Attic legend. This was perfectly plain to educated Athenians
of Plato's age.
Thus in the Platonic or pseudo-Platonic dialogue, _Minos_, Socrates
points out that to no other hero does Homer give the same praise as to
Minos, as not only a _son_, but a pupil of _Zeus_ (_Od_. xix. 178-180).
Says Socrates, "Minos every ninth year conversed with Zeus, and went to
be instructed by his wisdom,"--"this is marvellous praise." It is thus
that Socrates understands the Homeric world. Μίνως ἐννέωρος βασίλευε
Διὸς μεγάλου ὀαριστής: "Minos was king, who every nine years conversed
with Zeus." "Every nine years Minos went to the cave of Zeus to be
instructed," adds Socrates; but of the cave of Zeus, Homer says nothing.
The companion of Socrates then asks how Minos got such a bad name
as "an uneducated ruffian"? "Because he made war on us of Athens,"
answered Socrates; "and we are strong in poets, especially in that
delight of the populace, tragic poetry, which is very ancient with us;
and on the stage we avenged ourselves on Minos."
In truth, while Homer presented Minos as a son and pupil of Zeus, as
no god himself, but a mortal man, whose sceptred spirit administered
justice to the souls in Hades, it was impossible for educated Athenians
not to recognise that their own wild tales (how wild few knew), were
partisan fabrications.
Not only Homer, but Hesiod took the favourable view of Minos, as
against the hostile Attic legends; "and these two are more worthy of
belief than all the tragic poets together," says Socrates (_Minos_, 318
d).
The Athenians heaped not only Minos, but his wife and his brother
Rhadamanthus, under a pile of ordure. Helbig, who emphatically insists
on the gulf between Attic and Homeric accounts of Minos, may be
consulted for the abominable anti-Minoan stories.[4]
In Homer, Cretan Idomeneus (_Iliad_, xiii. 450) gives his genealogy as--
Zeus
|
Minos
|
Deucalion (Not he of the Deluge)
|
Idomeneus.
In the _Odyssey_, xi. 321-325, Minos is named as father of Ariadne,
whose tale is alluded to in a puzzling way: the other heroines of
the passage are Attic, Phaedra (wife of Theseus) and Procris. In xi.
568571, Minos, "splendid son of Zeus," is seen administering justice
to the dead. In a false tale of Odysseus he calls himself a Cretan
of the stock of Minos. In xix. 178, Minos is father of Deucalion,
and in some way is "the nine years old," or is "at periods of nine
years," the companion (_ὀαριστής_) of Zeus. There is in Homer nothing
about the Attic fables of bulls, the Minotaur, or Minoan cruelty.
Homeric tradition accepts and glories in the just king Minos: Athenian
tradition, in which Attica suffers grievous things at the hands of
Crete, heaps hatred and contumely on him, fixing on him the world-wide
_Märchen_ of the evil being whose fair daughter befriends the
adventurous hero; and adding the _Märchen_ of the black-sailed ship
which should have borne white sails of good tidings to Aegeus.
It is not merely the Attic myths of Theseus of Crete, and of the
character of Minos, that differ from the Homeric. Attic legends are
quite un-Homeric in character.[5] Two Attic characteristics may be
noted. "The story of the sacrifice of a maiden" (or of several maidens
at once) "appears and reappears in Attic tradition.... We have it
in Iphigeneia...."[6] But we have it not in Homer. Again, among the
royal family of Athens, in Attic tradition, it was chronic to be
metamorphosed into birds. The stories were meant, originally, to
account for the colours and habits of birds; such tales are numberless
in the legends of Australian and other savages, who have a whole
mythology of primal fowls, which is restated in the _parabasis_ of
_The Birds_ of Aristophanes. Homer tells but one such bird myth. In
_Odyssey_, xix. 518, Penelope speaks of the daughter of Pandareus,
the brown bright nightingale, lamenting "Itylus, whom she slew with
the sword unwittingly; Itylus, son of Zethus the prince." "The story
has, _as would be expected in a Homeric myth, nothing whatever to do
with Athens_."[7] The Attic story, much more horrible, is that of
Philomela, Procne, and Tereus: it is as bad as _Titus Andronicus_. The
Ionians transferred the scene to Miletus, Colophon, and Ephesus.[8]
Homer wholly abstains from Attic myths, except for the mention of their
heroines in a dubious passage of the eleventh book of the _Odyssey_.
Thus the Ionians, though they have adopted Homeric traditions, have
counter-Homeric traditions, just as they have and retain the customs
and rites of "the conquered race." These are demonstrable facts. On
the other side, the Homeric poet ignores Ionian legends, and Ionians
and Athenians have been unable to interweave Ionian tradition into the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. There is no doubt about this matter; Homer has
no Ionian, the Ionians had no Homeric traditions. This abstinence from
Attic legends is not peculiar to Homer. The greatest Achaean tradition,
after the Tale of Troy, was the Tale of Thebes. The Attic tragedians
have so Atticised it, especially in the _Oedipous Coloncus_ and the
_Suppliants_ of Euripides, that we think of the hapless Theban king as
a patron saint of Athens; and of Theseus as his host and as the heroic
friend of Thebes.
But the ancient epos of Thebes knew no more of Athens than did the
ancient epos of Troy. The Athenians could not and did not pretend,
like the Argives, Arcadians, and other Peloponnesians, to have taken
part in the first great collective Achaean attack on Thebes, an
attack led by Adrastus, Tydeus, father of Diomede, Polynices, and the
rest.[9] Neither did they pretend, though Ionians dwelt near the Theban
Cadmeians in Boeotia, to have aided Thebes in her peril. Athens did
allege that the useful Theseus led her army to rescue the unburied body
of Polynices, or the bodies of him and Eteocles; it was her favourite
boast.[10]
But this tale, as Grote says, "seems to have had its origin in the
patriotic pride of the Athenians," in their ceaseless efforts to attach
themselves to the great traditions that steadily ignore them. Adrastus,
chief of the army which failed at Thebes, came, said the Athenians,
as a suppliant to the useful Theseus at Eleusis. Then Theseus, with
an Athenian force, vanquished the Thebans, and gave due burial to
the dead. Euripides and Isocrates boast of this Flower of Chivalry,
Theseus;[11] and Pausanias saw the tombs of Eteocles and Polynices--at
Eleusis in Attica.[12] The Thebans denied the fable.
In the return match of the Epigonoi against Thebes, the Athenians did
not pretend to have played a part. In the lists of heroes who take a
share in the Argonautic expedition, and in the hunt of the Calydonian
boar, the name of Theseus appears; but he did no more than Menestheus
achieved at Troy. The Ionians in Asia made a desperate effort to
connect themselves with the Trojan war by borrowing the descendants of
Nestor, the Nelidae, who fled from the Dorians to Athens, obtained the
throne, and led the Ionian migration into Asia.[13] The very fact that
they had to borrow these refugees, in order to connect themselves with
Achaean "saga," proves the Athenian lack of genuine mythical connection
with the united efforts of the rest of Greece against Troy.
The burial of Oedipous at Colonus, the topic of the noble tragedy of
Sophocles, is, poetry apart, mere body-snatching. The _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_,[14] and even Hesiod,[15] know nothing of a sepulchral
connection of Oedipous with Athens. Oedipous's funeral feast was held
at Thebes. These sepulchral connections of Athens with the tale of
Thebes are necessarily un-Homeric, for they are based on the very
fanaticism of hero-worship, and fall into line with the craze of
historic Greece for securing the relics of heroes, who will defend a
city if duly propitiated.
Remote Aetolia is far more closely connected with the Tales of Thebes
and of Troy than is Athens. For some reason, then, Athens, and with her
the Ionians, is "not of the centre," is out of the central legends,
and her efforts to attach herself to them are late, and are wholly
un-Homeric. Naturally the really old Epic poets knew nothing of these
Ionian pretensions, which are the work of Ionian Burkes tampering with
the Homeric "Peerage." Athens wished to "have it both ways," to appear
as a city that had always been held by the same race,[16] that stood
apart, and had been the asylum of exiles from the rest of Greece; and
also as a city that took a great part in the legendary history of the
rest of Greece, whose traditions did not recognise her share.
Thus it seems probable that Attica was the seat of a people standing
somewhat apart, and possessing an older stratum of inhabitants than the
makers of Achaean saga. But Athens and the Ionians were not content
with this respectable antiquity. The Ionians of Asia, first, in the