The World of Homer
brought to the camp the three fairy daughters of the Delian priest
of Apollo, who magically produced corn, wine, and oil.[4] This silly
_Märchen_ about the fairy gifts of the three girls could never have
been introduced into an Epic by Homer, but it is quite in the manner of
the Cyclics.
According to the account of Trojan matters in prose, by the Greek
rhetorician, the pseudo-Dictys Cretensis, who rationalises everything,
Palamedes was successful as head of the Commissariat, and obtained
supplies when Odysseus failed. This is merely Dictys' way of narrating
the _Märchen_ of the girls with fairy gifts, and it was in jealousy
of Palamedes' success that Odysseus, aided by Diomede, slew the hero,
according to Dictys, treacherously, in the manner of the _Märchen_ of
Jean de l'Ours. According to Dictys, Odysseus and Diomede persuaded
the guileless Palamedes that there was a hoard of gold at the bottom of
a pit, induced him to descend thither, and then threw down stones and
slew him. This is not, as we shall see, the Attic tradition, though in
that, also, there is a fatal hoard of gold, and Palamedes is slain by
stoning.
The Athenian tragedians either improved on the story in the _Cypria_,
or found another legend, according to which Palamedes was treacherously
accused of treachery, was tried, condemned, and stoned by the Achaean
host: Odysseus being the contriver of the conspiracy. Thus Socrates, in
the _Apologia_, is made by Plato to say that in the next world he hopes
to meet Palamedes, and the Telamonian Aias, and others who died by an
unjust judgment.[5]
Each of the three great Attic tragedians wrote a play on Palamedes; and
Virgil makes Sinon speak of his unjust betrayal and death.[6] Aias, in
Quintus Smyrnaeus, brands Odysseus with his guilt in the matter: "Thou
didst destroy the divine Palamedes, far thy superior in strength and in
counsel."[7] The current Athenian story was that Odysseus contrived to
have an arrow, with a letter attached to it, shot towards Palamedes;
that Odysseus got possession of the letter, forged by himself but
purporting to be addressed by Priam, to Palamedes. Priam thanked him
for his services as a spy, and promised a gift of gold. This gold was
then hidden by Odysseus in the hut of Palamedes, and then discovered by
him who hid it.[8] Agamemnon was implicated in the job.
In the _Palamedes_ of Euripides the hero is not unavenged. His brother
Oiax writes the shameful story of the Achaean treachery and cruelty,
which ruined and destroyed Palamedes, on a number of _pinakes,_ or
tablets, like that which contained the fatal letter of Proetus in the
_Iliad_. These tablets Oiax threw into the sea; some of them drifted to
Nauplia, and the friends of Palamedes, by altering the guiding beacons
on the Greek coast, caused the shipwreck and death of many Achaeans on
their homeward way.[9]
Manifestly the whole scope of this Ionian and Attic favourite, the
story of Palamedes, is non-Achaean, and was not likely to be known to
Homer.
In Dictys, Palamedes is the true hero, and on every occasion takes
the lead; while Odysseus, the scoundrel, is an inveterate forger of
letters. By forged letters he induced Clytaemnestra to send Iphigeneia
to marry Achilles at Aulis, his real purpose being to have her
sacrificed to Artemis. In the _Cypria_, Iphigeneia is sent, on a false
and foolish pretence of marriage, to Aulis; whether or not, in the
_Cypria_, Odysseus managed the plot by forged letters, as in Dictys, we
do not know.
Through Dictys and through Virgil the Palamedes legend reached the
poets and romancers of the Middle Ages: there is even a Palamedes, a
paynim knight, at Arthur's court. Thus in Roman times, and much more in
the long mediaeval period of Homer's eclipse, Odysseus, Diomede, and
the Atridae were under a cloud, Ionian in origin, and Athenian. The
Ionians being "Pelasgians of the seacoast" (at least in the opinion of
Herodotean Greece), and Palamedes being a man of Nauplia, on the sea,
while the town was leagued with Athens, in the amphictyony of Calauria,
he was naturally a favourite of Ionian and Athenian poets. In him they
had a hero, the wisest and best, who perished from Achaean envy of his
greatness.
Now, did Homer know anything of Nauplia and of Palamedes? Was this
legend current in his time? If so, he ignored it, as Achaean poetry
ignores all things Ionian. It was necessary for the Ionian poets to
kill Palamedes just before the opening of the _Iliad_, for into that
epic they could neither foist him nor anything that was theirs. In
Shakespeare's _Troilus and Cressida_, Palamedes is fighting hard in
what answers to the Iliadic battle of Book xi.
I am inclined under correction to suppose that Palamedes was originally
no warrior under Ilios, but a Culture Hero of the "Pelasgians of the
seacoasts," the Culture Hero of a fairly advanced civilisation. He was
credited with the discovery of written characters,[10] or, at least,
of a syllabary; or he taught the Greeks to use Phoenician characters
in the Ionian alphabet. He also discovered arithmetic, Weights and
Measures; Astronomy; the reckoning of Time; military discipline,--with
post-Homeric centurions;--sentinels, fire-signals; a number of games,
such as draughts, and so forth. Homer knows nothing of such Culture
Heroes in the Achaean camp, where they are manifestly out of place.
It has been suggested that Palamedes is Palamaon, an ancient understudy
of Hephaestus; παλάμημα being _τέχνη_, art, or handicraft, and
_πάλαμις_ the Salaminian equivalent of τεχνίτης. Palamedes is properly
"the Inventor." I suggest that, in the mixed multitude of Ionia, poets
were found who simply inserted the old Culture Hero among the Achaean
heroes, and asserted his supremacy in counsel and in war; while, as
has been said, it was impossible to bring him into the _Iliad,_ so
he was made the martyr of the jealousy of Homer's bravest and wisest
Achaeans at the moment just before the _Iliad_ begins. In the opinion
of Socrates, Aias, no less than Palamedes, was the victim of an unjust
verdict, a belief which he never found in Homer. But Aias was claimed
as an ally and neighbour of Athens; Palamedes was of a seacoast city
allied with Athens; both heroes, therefore, were useful links between
the Ionians and Attica and the Trojan affair, in which, as in the
legendary affairs of Thebes and Calydon, the Ionians had no part,
except what they invented for themselves.
They imposed their version on Rome and on the Middle Ages, but we
repeat, they could not get a reference to Palamedes into the _Iliad_.
Among all its alleged borrowings from the Cyclics, the _Iliad_ never
borrowed a hint of Palamedes.[11]
After thus examining what is known about Palamedes, we ask, is it more
probable that the _Cypria_ is older than the _Iliad_, and based on a
totally different Achaean tradition about events and heroes; or is
the _Cypria_ later than the _Iliad_, and even intended as a kind of
antidote to that epic? One thing is clear, the _Cypria_ is Ionian, not
Achaean, if human sacrifice is Ionian rather than Achaean. Students who
think the _Cypria_ the older poem might perhaps argue thus: Many of
the mixed peoples who made up the Ionians had ancestors at the Trojan
war. Among these were Minyans, Boeotians, and Cretans. Their legends
may have had an _Achaean_ version of events which was not Homer's
version, but was hostile to Odysseus, Diomede, and the Atridae. This
version, Ionised, is given in the _Cypria._ Probably this version was
continued (though we have no such continuation) from the resolve of
Zeus to punish the host for the death of Palamedes: and the subsequent
account, in this version of the war, would take no notice of the Wrath
of Achilles about Briseis. Or, if that were assumed as the cause of the
Wrath, Zeus embroiled Achilles and Agamemnon without any prayer from
Thetis. Probably in this version, as in Dictys, Achilles was in love
with Polyxena, and was treacherously slain while wooing her. This is
the statement of the scholiast on Lycophron, and of Dictys, though it
is contrary to the Cyclic _Aethiopis,_ which follows the _Iliad_; Paris
and Apollo slew Achilles, as Hector prophesied, in the Scaean gate.
On this theory Polyxena was sacrificed to the dead Achilles precisely
because they loved each other.
Thus the theory might go on, explaining that _this_ Achaean version
(wholly unknown to us), with Palamedes and all, was crushed by the
supreme popularity of a later poem, the _Iliad_, but lived in an
underground way till it revived, very late, in Lycophron, Dictys, and
the rest. The details of ghosts, human sacrifices, hero-worship, and
purification by blood (all un-Homeric), will be genuinely old Achaean,
merely suppressed by some persons of taste who, later, "edited" the
_Iliad_. In this case these details of religion were common to the
Achaeans and the earlier populations, _not_ peculiar to "the conquered
races." They are Achaean, but were expurgated by the makers of _our_
Homer, why, and when, and how, I do not conjecture.
I have here invented as coherent a hypothesis as I can imagine to
account for Palamedes consistently with the theory that the _Cypria_ is
older than the _Iliad_. But the fact that Palamedes, "the inventor," is
clearly, in origin, a Culture Hero, like Prometheus and Daedalus, does
to me seem fatal to the hypothesis which I have sketched. If he had
been, originally, just another such warrior as Achilles or Idomeneus,
popular fancy would never have converted him into a being who won men
from savagery and invented arts and sciences.
[1] _Hermathena_, vol. i. p. 265 _et seqq_.
[2] Kinkel, p. 17.
[3] Mure, _History of Greek Literature_, vol. ii. p. 281, citing
Düntzer, p. 15. Welcker, _Ep. Cycl._, pt. i. p. 459.
[4] Schol. ad _Lycophr_, 570 _sqq_.; cf. Sophocles's _Palamedes_, Fr.
438. N2. _Cypria_, Kinkel, pp. 20, 30.
[5] Plato, _Apologia_, 41 B. Compare Scholion to Euripides, _Orestes,_
432.
[6] _Aeneid_, ii. 81.
[7] _Post-Homerica_, v. 198.
[8] Servius on _Aeneid_, ii. 81. Hyginus fr. _Fab_. 105.
[9] Scholiast, _Aristoph. Thesmophor_. 768.
[10] Stesichorus, Fr. 4 B. Schol. Eurip., _Orestes_, 432. Euripides,
_Palamedes_, Fr. 578, N.
[11] For the learning about Palamedes, see Roscher's _Lexikon_, _s.v.
Palamedes_.
CHAPTER XVIII
HOMER AND THE CYCLIC POEMS
Few subjects are more recalcitrant to lucidity of treatment than the
so-called "Cyclic poems." On the various meanings of the word "Cyclic"
as applied to poetry by the ancients, very much has been written.[1]
Into that question we need not enter, as we here call "Cyclic" all
these old epics on the Trojan theme (outside of the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_) of which we have only fragments, in quotations by later
Greek writers, and in fragmentary epitomes. Though these remains,
including the prose of the Greek authors who cite and comment on them,
occupy but forty-five pages of a book in small octavo,[2] the fragments
suffice to prove that the lost epics are far apart as the poles from
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ in taste, tone, narrative art, descriptions
of religious rites, customs, usages, and treatment of the heroic
characters. This was plain to Greek commentators, and is even more
obvious to modern criticism.
The questions, therefore, arise, were these Cyclic epics older in
_matter_ (as representing a more archaic tradition) than our Homer;
are they older, or more recent, in _composition_, or are they and our
Homer coeval? Mr. Monro expresses decisively the general opinion on
these points. The Cyclic poems are by "the poets who carried on the
traditions of Homeric art in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C."[3]
He collects from them many incidents, beliefs, usages, and proofs of