The World of Homer
manifestly complementary to the part of the prose history by "Eumelus"
which Pausanias quotes. Taking the Eumelian verse and prose together,
we find that "Eumelus" in his _Corinthiaca_ appears in Greek literary
tradition as a chronicler in verse, a genealogist, a maker of patriotic
pseudo-history, and a narrator of a late version of the Argo story.
Now, as "Eumelus" began (as the Ram in the fairy story is requested
to do) "at the beginning," at the founding of Ephyre, or Corinth; and
as he told the Argonautic tale in full, including the aprocryphal
adventures of Medea in what he chose to call her rightful kingdom in
Corinth; and as the tale is a very long one, we may infer that this,
and not the entire mass of Corinthian legend, was the topic of his
book. If so, Bellerophon, though a Corinthian, was "out of the story";
for, by the Eumelian genealogies, he was four generations later than
Medea's tenure of the Corinthian throne. She was succeeded by Sisyphus,
whose exploits would fill a book; Sisyphus by Glaucus, and Glaucus
by Bellerophon. But the aim of "Eumelus" was to glorify Corinth by
attributing to her a share in the tale of Argo; its heroine, Medea,
must therefore be of the Corinthian Royal House; and, after proving
this, and telling the Argo saga, "Eumelus" must give her adventures,
after Argo's return to Greece, in Corinth; and these were many and
tragical.
Wishing, then, to attach Corinth to the Argonautic story, the
genealogiser manages matters thus. Helios, the Sun, he says, had two
sons _by Antiope_ (daughter of the river god Asopus); the sons were
Aloeus and Aietes. Homer does not borrow those facts from "Eumelus";
Homer tells a different story, but the historical effort of "Eumelus"
constrains him to make his local nymph, Antiope, mother of Aietes. That
is the basis of his forgery. Meanwhile Homer tells a contradictory
story about this Antiope (_Od_. xi. 260). Her lover was not Helios,
but Zeus. Her sons were not Aietes and Aloeus, but Amphion and Zethus.
Homer is not borrowing from _this_ genealogiser! The heroine Ephyre
founded Ephyre. (She was daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and wife of
Epimetheus, or daughter of Epimetheus, an un-Homeric kind of person.)
The river Asopus, father of Antiope (who was mother, says "Eumelus,"
by the Sun of Aloeus and Aietes), gave his name as "Asopia" to what
was later Sicyon. The Sun gave to _his_ son, Aloeus, "the land held by
Asopus, to his son Aietes he gave Ephyre" (Corinth). Aietes goes to
Colchis (a place necessarily unnamed by Homer, for it is at the extreme
east of the Euxine); but previously had arranged that Bounos is to be
regent of Ephyre till Aietes, _or a descendant of his,_ returns and
claims it.[14] Medea is to be that descendant.
So far we have Eumelian _verse_. How the story went on we learn from
the _prose_ version cited by Pausanias. Bounos died as king of Ephyre,
and was succeeded by the nephew of Aietes (a son of his brother
Aloeus), named Epopeus.[15] Epopeus was harsh to _his_ son Marathon,
and Marathon fled to Attica and founded the famous deme of Marathon. He
had two sons, Sicyon, to whom, on the death of his own father, Epopeus,
he gave Sicyon; while Ephyre he gave to his son Corinthus; hence
Ephyre came to be called Corinth. When Corinthus died childless, the
Corinthians sent to Colchis for Medea, in accordance with the entail
made by Aietes (as "Eumelus" has told us in verse), when he left
Ephyre for Colchis.[16] Nothing can be less Homeric.
The "Eumelus" of whom we have reports wrote pseudo-history in verse,
for he has to make Medea survive Aietes, Bounos, Epopeus, Marathon,
and Corinthus, and then, in the prime of beauty, succeed to the realm
of Corinthus as Queen of Corinth. Leaving Corinth for Athens under a
cloud, Medea gives Corinth to Sisyphus.[17]
"Eumelus," as Seeliger observes,[18] knows the Argo story in the common
late expanded form, Colchis and all; but chooses to make Aietes,
contrary to all other authorities, a king of Corinth. Attica, too,
must needs attach herself to the story of Argo, by making Medea seduce
King Aegeus, the father of Theseus, and try to poison Theseus himself:
she also made Aegeus send him on the desperate adventure of fighting
the Bull of Marathon.[19] This Bull of Marathon _donne à penser_. In
one legend Aegeus, father of Theseus, sent Androgeos, son of Minos, to
fight the bull, which killed him. It was therefore but tit-for-tat when
Minos sent Athenian tributary boys and girls to fight _his_ bull, the
bullheaded Minotaur.[20]
"Eumelus," as far as our evidence goes, stands for the school who,
for every town, supposed an eponymous person as founder, for Ephyre
(Corinth) he gives the nymphe Ephyre. Now Homer does not work on these
lines. When "Eumelus" had got his pseudo-history and false genealogies
to his taste, he must have told at full length the tale of Argo, for we
have five lines of his describing the terror caused in Aietes and the
Colchians by the throwing of the weight by Jason among the armed brood
born of the plain, which Jason ploughed with fire-breathing bulls.
These things, then, are what Greek literary tradition reports about
a pseudo-historical genealogist, and teller of the tale of Argo with
a purpose. That he ever mentioned Bellerophon we have no proof:
Pausanias does not cite Eumelus for Bellerophon. Homer, as usual, omits
the _Märchen_ of the winged horse Pegasus, whereby, in later poems,
Bellerophon accomplishes his feats. Pindar is copious about Pegasus:
that noble animal. The peculiarly gifted horse, hard to bridle, is
common property of "fairy tales." Usually some friendly person tells
the adventurous lad to use a peculiar bridle without which the steed is
untamable. The boy can always sell the horse, but keep the bridle; the
purchaser returns the nag, and the hero keeps the money. In Pindar's
Fourth Pythian Ode, Athene is the benevolent person of the _Märchen_.
Bellerophon, wanting to break in Pegasus, sleeps in her temple; she
presents him with the magical golden bit and head-stall. Dropping
Pegasus, magical bridle and all, Homer only says that the gods "gave
Bellerophon friendly convoy to Lycia."[21] Mr. Murray asks, "What
blameless guiding of the gods led Bellerophon to Lycia?" Clearly he
flew thither through upper air on Pegasus, like Commodore Trunnion
leaping a sunken way on the road to the hymeneal altar, "to the
unspeakable terror and amazement" of a waggoner below, says Smollett.
But Homer is not Smollett, and does not send Bellerophon flying through
air on a horse. Pindar saw no objections to the incident.[22]
Here we must try to explain a point on which Mr. Murray remarks, "There
has been an extraordinary reluctance among scholars to ... admit the
possibility of 'Homer,' as the phrase is, borrowing from the supposed
later author 'Eumelus,' or even from 'Hesiod.'" The reluctance is
natural and justifiable; because when we say "Eumelus" or "Hesiod," we
mean just what we have received from antiquity under the names of these
men. Their work, as it reaches us, is un-Homeric, is later, we say,
than the _Iliad_. But if "Eumelus" be a mythical name for a supposed
author of a body of Corinthian heroic poetry: if the Eumelian matter
which we have received was not that, then we know nothing about that,
and cannot say whether our Homer borrowed from some other Eumelian
_epê_ or not. Mr. Murray, as to Homer's debt to "Eumelus," writes: "If
anything were needed to make it clearer still, it would be that the
Verses of Eumelus are quoted as the earliest authority for the story
of the Argo and Medea, and the composer of our _Odyssey_ speaks of
the Argo as a subject of which 'all minds are full'"[23] The reader
naturally gathers that our Homer took his information about Argo from
"Eumelus." We can only say, "not from the Eumelus known to us in Greek
literary tradition." Thus Hesiod[24] tells of the birth of Circe and
Aietes her brother (the father of Medea) in precisely the same terms as
Homer does, and as Eumelus does not.[25] Both poets say that Helios, by
_Perses_ (Homer), or _Perseis_ (Hesiod), a daughter of Oceanus, was the
father of Circe and Aietes. Homer does not mention Medea, but Hesiod
says that she was the daughter of Aietes. Now Eumelus, in what we have
of him, says nothing of Circe, but makes Aietes the son of Helios and
Antiope, _not_ of Perses as in Homer. Manifestly, then, Homer did not
take his version from _this_ Eumelus; while, when Homer and Hesiod
precisely agree, if either borrowed from the other, it were quite
arbitrary to say that Homer borrowed from Hesiod, who knows Latium and
Etruria.
Homer certainly did not borrow here from our Eumelus, for he differs
from Eumelus; nor is Eumelus quoted, as far as I am aware, "as the
earliest authority for" the story of Argo. The scholiast on Pindar,
as I, for one, understand him, quotes Eumelus for something quite
different, namely, for his peculiar account (adopted by Pindar when
praising a Corinthian athlete) of Medea as rightful Queen of Corinth;
a point on which no Greeks agreed with the patriotic chronicler, the
Corinthian Eumelus, as Pausanias observes.
Homer knows about the ship Argo, and her escape from the clash of the
Rocks Wandering, through the favour of Hera.[26] The dangers of these
rocks are described by Circe to Odysseus, for he must pass by that
perilous path of the sea; and Circe ought to know, for she is sister of
King Aietes, from whose land Argo was sailing when she met the rocks.
But where did Aietes dwell? On that point Homer says nothing and knew
nothing.
It is manifest that Homer neither knows where Aiaie, the isle of
Circe, is, nor where the home of King Aietes is. To him Aiaie is "an
unsubstantial fairy place." In the _Odyssey_ (xii. 3, 4), Circe's
isle is "near the home and dancing-places of the Dawn, and the land
of sunrising." You cannot go farther east in a black ship. But in
Hesiod,[27] Circe's Aia must be in the west, for her sons by Odysseus
(unheard of by Homer) rule over Latins and Tyrsenians. Later poets
placed the Aia of Circe's brother, Aietes, in the east, in Colchis, at
the eastern limit of the Euxine; and Circe's Aia they located in the
west, at the promontory of Circeei in Italy. Homer himself shows no
knowledge of Italy, on one side, or of the extremity of the Euxine on
the other.[28] Even Mimnermus places the city of Aietes vaguely "at the
limit of Oceanus."[29] By way of finding reason where there is none,
Apollonius Rhodius explains that Circe originally lived in the Aia of
the east, as in the _Odyssey_, but was transported by Helios to the Aia
in the west.[30] Homer being so vague, we do not say he is borrowing
from our Eumelus, who locates Aietes in Colchis, under Caucasus, which
Homer, if pre-Ionian, never knew. Had Homer, or any of the supposed
late contributors to the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, lived in the eighth to
seventh centuries, and studied our Eumelus, or even our Hesiod, the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ would have had much more extensive geographical
knowledge than they possess. No one will say that our Homer borrows
from a genealogiser like our Eumelus, when Eumelus does not even agree
with Homer about the mother of Aietes.
The _Iliad_ does know that Jason, in the isle of Lemnos, had a son by
Hypsipyle;[31] and the adventures of the Argonauts in Lemnos are part
of the story of Argo. But Lemnos is well within Homer's geographical
knowledge, while the homes of Aietes and Circe are far beyond its
limits.
The confusion of early mythical geography is inextricable. In the
_Odyssey_ the ship Argo met the Rocks Wandering on her way home from
Aietes. Odysseus meets the rocks on his way home from Circe. She dwells
in the farthest east; so then, it seems, did Aietes. In Pindar,[32]