The World of Homer
geographical knowledge "of a post-Homeric type."[4] Of these, from one
poem, the _Cypria_, he selects five sets of examples. These represent
(i) human sacrifice; (2) geographical knowledge much beyond that
exhibited in _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_; (3) interest in magic, which is
un-Homeric; (4) the introduction of a non-Homeric hero, Palamedes, of
the first rank, of essential importance, and the "Cause of Wrath" of
Zeus against the Achaeans; (5) hero-worship; (6) I add, introduction
of a goddess unknown to Homer, but "a concrete figure of ancient
Attic religion;"[5] (7) introduction of the puerile fairy element in
_Märchen_ or folk-tales. Of this trait, and of magical incidents, there
are several examples. (8) loves of gods and goddesses, who take the
forms of various animals. From other Cyclic poems he selects other
instances of these non-Homeric types, and also un-Homeric apparitions
of men who have been duly burned and buried; and cases of the
purification of homicides by blood of pigs, wholly unknown to Homer.
All these traits of the Cyclic poems, with others, such as the
invention of pseudo-historic genealogies, as of Thersites, are
non-Homeric. Some, such as the genealogy of Thersites, due to the
_manie cyclique_, with the extended geographical outlook, are
_post_-Homeric. But the others, the religious and magical notions--
hero-worship, the ghost belief, blood-purification,--though later in
record than our Homer (we assume), are even earlier in development, and
are beliefs and rites of the pre-Homeric population. (See "Who were the
Ionians?" and Appendix, On "Expurgation.")
Now much confusion is caused by the term "old." The poems earlier _in
composition_ may represent Achaean ideas then new to Greece; the poems
later in composition may, and do, contain ideas old in Greece, but
alien to Homer's Achaeans. Meanwhile, Mr. Monro, as we saw, regards
the actual Cyclic poems as works of poets of the eighth to seventh
centuries B.C., who carried "on the traditions of Homeric art" in
Ionia. This means that they take up Achaean themes and traditions and
heroic characters, and use them in new poems "composed with direct
reference to the _Iliad_."[6] They lead up to the _Iliad_ by a long
chronicle of previous events in the _Cypria_, and continue the Homeric
narrative in their other epics. But they interlard the narrative with
their own rites, beliefs, their own Attic goddess (Nemesis of Rhamnus),
and their own non-Achaean heroes, such as the Attic sons of Theseus,
and the great Nauplian, Palamedes. They also add silly elements of
_Märchen_, and pseudo-historic genealogies. They carve and cook the
great Achaean joint, and serve up with Attic and Ionian sauce and
trimmings.
This is natural, for the Attic people, of the pre-Achaean population,
had not, as far as I know, any epic tradition of their own. They knew
that they were not engaged in any one of the alleged great collective
efforts and expeditions with which the Achaeans credited themselves.
Some legends were dynastic adaptations of _Märchen_, with kings and
princesses changed into birds; or accounts of their relations with
Thrace, or explanations of the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries.
They had, too, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, an adventure of
an individual hero of _Märchen_; but that ran contrary to all Achaean
and Cretan traditions, as we have seen. The Cyclic poets were mere
imitators of the Achaean epic: _epic_ tradition of their own, the
people of Attica and their Ionian colonists (confessedly mixed with a
mongrel multitude) had none.
Mr. Leaf takes the same view. He speaks of the Cyclic epics as "the
imitative poems which dealt with the old Tale of Troy, and essayed to
complete Homer."[7]
But a contradictory opinion seems to be held by von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, and, as I understand, by Mr. Murray. The
celebrated German scholar argued thus: Before criticism arose in
Greece, almost all ancient Epic poetry, and the Hymns, were attributed
to "Homer." As early as Herodotus, however, we find that historian
regarding the _Cypria_ (a chronicle of the whole events before the
opening of the _Iliad_) as not by the author of the _Iliad_.
As time went on, and criticism advanced, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_
alone were assigned to Homer, while the Cyclic poems were attributed
to various authors, such as Arctinus, Stasinus, and Lesches. The
attributions are late, various, perhaps never "evidential"; but
criticism came to recognise our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ as alone Homeric.
The other epics, the Cyclics, were thought to be of a later age, and by
inferior hands.
This view was evolved by Greek critics from Herodotus to Aristotle and
Aristarchus.
On the other hand, according to Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Homer and
the Cyclic poems were all qualitatively equivalent, and more or less
contemporaneous. A statement of this hypothesis, which deliberately
rejects the views of Greek criticism, shall be quoted from von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.[8]
"The epos" (the whole mass of early epic poetry) "is by Homer," so says
tradition. "The criticism of the subsequent centuries broke off from
the mass of epos one portion after another: one after another must go,
because it is inconsistent with the conception which has been framed of
Homer. At last the _Iliad_ alone abides. The only step that remained to
be taken was to reject (_athetiren_) the _Iliad_ also: this step the
ancients refused to take, for fear of falling into the abyss. But the
step has been taken long ago. The _Iliad_, as it stands, is not the
work of one man, or of one century: it is not _one_ work at all. The
_Iliad_ is nothing but a _κυκλικὸν ποίημα_. But we are in no abyss, no
bottomless pit. On the other hand, we regain firm ground, which ancient
criticism had in childish rashness abandoned. The _Iliad_ is just as
much and as little Homeric as the _Cypria_. There is no qualitative
difference between _ὁμηρικόν_ and _κυκλικόν_."
Now that careless child, Aristotle, was of a different opinion. He
saw that the _Iliad_ varies absolutely in nature from some of the
Cyclics, and the fact is conspicuous. The _Iliad_ also varies, as the
scholiasts observed, from the Cyclics historically; varies in manners,
rites, religion, taste, and geographical knowledge. All these facts are
absolutely demonstrable. So great a critic as Aristotle, and, we may
add, so unprejudiced a critic, for he lived long before Wolf, could
not but remark the essential differences between the _Iliad_, on the
one hand, and some of the Ionian Cyclic poems on the other, as far as
_quality_ is concerned. Into the differences which archaeology and
anthropology detect, Aristotle did not enter, for he was writing on
the Art of Poetry. Unity in a poem, he said, is not obtained merely by
the selection of a single hero (the _Cypria_ is so far like _Vanity
Fair_ that it is a chronicle "without a hero," unless the hero be Paris
or Palamedes). _Unity of action_ is, says Aristotle, essential to an
Epic, and Homer observes this unity, grouping all the events round one
_motif_, the Wrath of Achilles, or the Return of Odysseus. The _Cypria_
has no such unity; it simply ends where the _Iliad_ begins.
Unity, concentration, "with beginning, middle, and end," is as
necessary, Aristotle holds, to epic as to dramatic poetry. The Trojan
war, to be sure, has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but the whole
could not be treated in an Epic under poetic conditions of space. One
_motif_ is therefore selected by Homer, with diversifying episodes.
The author of the _Cypria_ did not adopt the true method of epic: in
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are subjects but for one or two tragedies;
whereas the _Cypria_, extending over many years and dealing with many
regions, yields subjects for many, and the _Little Iliad_ for eight or
more plays, which are enumerated.[9]
We would not now state the case precisely in the terms of Aristotle:
and the Attic tragedians possibly chose so many topics from the
Cyclics, so few from the _Iliad_, partly because the Athenians, as
chiefs of the Ionian name, preferred Ionian versions of the legends;
while, as Republicans, they used the Ionian term for Agamemnon and
Menelaus as "tyrants"; and kept up the singular Ionian feud against
Odysseus, preferring to him Aias, a neighbour of Athens; Philoctetes,
oppressed by the "tyrants"; and Palamedes, the victim of the tyrants
and of their minion Odysseus.
Such were the tastes of the Athenians; but we see that Aristotle
observes the essential difference in poetic _quality_ between the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, which are Epics, while some of the Cyclic poems
are mere metrical chronicles.
The difference between epic and versified chronicle is, I think,
that which divides Barbour's _The Brus_ and the _Wallace_ of Blind
Harry (poetical chronicles like the _Heracleis_, the late poem on the
history of Heracles), from epics like the _Chanson de Roland_ with
its one motive, "The Wrath of Ganelon," its origins and consequences.
Our _Iliad_, in Aristotle's opinion, then, is an epic; the _Cypria_,
the _Heracleis_, and so on, are _not_ epics, but rather are versified
chronicles. In Mr. Murray's opinion, too, the _Iliad_ is an epic, the
_Cypria_ is "an old chronicle poem." But this only proves, to his mind,
that the _Iliad_ is the further developed.[10] "They grew together
side by side" or centuries; but the _Iliad_, as we have it, is, he
thinks, of later and more accomplished art. Mr. Murray writes: "In its
actual working up, however, our _Iliad_ has reached a further stage of
development than the ordinary run of poetic chronicles, if I may use
the term."[11]
Now, as far as analogy serves our turn, the "poetic chronicle" is in a
_later_ stage of development than the epic. Thus Barbour's _The Brus_,
or the Argonautic poem of the very late Apollonius, is in a much later
stage of development than the old Germanic epics, or _Beowulf_, which
selects two main events from the career of the hero. Again, versified
chronicles in France are much later in development than the epic, the
_Chanson de Roland_, "The Wrath of Ganelon."
However, as analogies are never satisfactory, let us be content to note
that the _Iliad_ confessedly differs in character from the _Cypria_, as
the epic differs from the verse-chronicle. On this point von Wilamowitz
Moellendorff appears to agree, as does Mr. Murray, who studies the
subject in the spirit of the learned German. To repeat his statement,
he writes, "These various books or masses of tradition in verse form
were growing up side by side for centuries."[12]
Now, "masses of tradition" certainly grew up through many centuries,
before and after Homer's time; but the _Iliad_ is not merely "a mass
of tradition." It is a splendid work of art, fashioned, in our view,
by a great poet, out of masses of tradition, while what we know of
the _Cypria_ is a compilation, partly from hints in the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_, with popular tales or _Märchen_ thrown in; and is animated
by a distinct _tendenz_, a partisan desire to debase the favourite
heroes of Homer, and to exalt a hero, Palamedes, who, to myself, seems
intended to represent the Ionian share in the Trojan war, neglected as
it is by Homer. To justify these criticisms as most probable on the
evidence, it is necessary to offer an analysis of the _Cypria_, as far
as its contents are known to us from fragments and epitomes.
The _Cypria_ opened thus: Zeus takes counsel on the problem of
over-population. He "resolves to relieve of her burden Earth that
nourishes all, by raising the great strife of the Ilian war, that death
may lighten the weight: the heroes were slain in Troyland, _but the
Will of Zeus was accomplished._"[13]
The following account of the early part of the _Cypria_ is given by