The World of Homer
we do not know _why_ in Arctinus, Polyxena was chosen as the _γέρας_,
or honourable gift, of the dead Achilles. The idea may only have been
that, while surviving leaders received each a damsel, the spirit of the
great chief should not be deprived of its reward. No idea can be less
Achaean, less Homeric, but it is congenial to the Ionian spirit.
The fact of the sacrifice would easily suggest, to still later writers,
that in his life days Achilles loved Polyxena, and was loved by her;
for Philostratus and Tzetzes aver that heart-broken by the murder of
Achilles, she slew herself above his tomb.
Thus we see how, in the Ionian epics, and onwards through Stesichorus,
the tragedians, the Roman poets, Dictys, and the mediaeval makers, the
poetic consciousness played freely round the Homeric data, colouring
them with the rainbow hues of changing beliefs and changing tastes.
There is at least as wide a gulf between the tastes and ideas of Homer,
on one side, and of the Ionians on the other, as between Arctinus, on
one hand, and Benoit de Troyes and Boccaccio, on the other.
That the Ionian ideas, tastes, rites, and legends, as of Theseus
and Palamedes, never were intruded into the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_,
considering that for so long Homer was "taught, recited, imitated in
Ionia,"[38] is an undeniable and amazing fact. How were Ionian hands
restrained from touching the substance of the Achaean epics? This is,
in the strict sense, a paradox, but the facts are undeniable: the
epics were never Ionised. Homer was falsely claimed by Athens as an
Ionian poet. Is there some basis of truth in the idea that the Aeolian
Homeridae of Chios guarded their own?[39]
I have now given my view of the Cyclic poems as late, post-Homeric, and
Ionian in (i) geographical knowledge; (2) in hero-worship; (3) in rites
of human sacrifice and purification; (4) in the mania for inventing
genealogies, as of Thersites, basest born of the host; (5) in partisan
attacks on great Achaeans; (6) in silly _Märchen_; (7) in efforts to
introduce representatives of Athens, the grandsons of Theseus, into the
war; (8) the Attic goddess, Nemesis.
Of these eight proofs of lateness and Ionicism, Mr. Murray takes no
notice: on the whole, he thinks our Homer later than some state of the
lost Epics. He supposes parts of the _Iliad_ to be borrowed from these
Epics. "We happen to know that there was an old chronicle poem which
both contained a catalogue of the ships and also narrated at length the
assembling of the fleet at Aulis--the so-called _Cypria_ or Cyprian
verses."[40] This piece of information may be correct, I know not; but
no authority is cited for the statement that the _Cypria_ contained a
catalogue of the ships, and no such authority is known to me.[41] Von
Wilamowitz--Moellendorff _conjectures_ that the _Cypria_ contained a
catalogue of the Achaeans, but that is not evidence.
In support of his theory that our _Iliad_ is "in a further state of
development" than some poetic chronicles, Mr. Murray writes that
passages in the _Iliad_ "seem to be derived from the _Cypria_, the
_Little Iliad_, and the _Sack of Ilion_, the so-called _Acthiopis_....
These, then, are all pieces of supposed history taken over from one
traditional poem into another."[42]
This appears to mean that the poems named were complete before the
_Iliad_ was complete, though all of them "were growing side by side
for centuries." Indeed, Mr. Murray might seem to change his ground in
a later statement of his opinions. In _The Rise of the Greek Epic_ we
hear of borrowings by the _Iliad_ from several Cyclic poems made in
Asia, and from the "Eumelian" verses in Europe. (For "Eumelus," see
"Homer and the Saga.") Of borrowings by the Cyclics and "Eumelus" from
the _Iliad_ we do not hear. On the other hand, in _Anthropology and
the Classics_ (lectures by various students), Mr. Murray writes, "the
extant remains of the non-Homeric poems frequently show in their form,
and sometimes even in their content, definite signs of presupposing
the _Iliad_, just as the _Iliad_ here and there shows signs of
presupposing them...."[43] But, _R. G. E_. p. 160, meets the charge of
changed views.
If the _Cypria_ be earlier than the _Iliad_, yet presupposes the
_Iliad_ (about Palamedes it does not), I presume it may also borrow
from the _Iliad_; whereas, previously, the _Iliad_ was mainly credited
with the borrowings from the Cyclics. Perhaps we are intended to
understand that "had we seen these poems before they were made," we
would find that they all borrowed from each other. My mind is not
metaphysical enough to conceive what the poems were "before they were
made." To me it seems that they must, before they were made, have been
mere masses of materials, traditions, legends, lays of unknown extent,
and _Märchen_ that had no original connection with definite places
and persons. There was no _Cypria_, no _Iliad_, no _Little Iliad_, no
_Aethiopis_ before these poems were made. We should not, I think, speak
of any unmade poem in the making as borrowing matter from another poem
which, by our theory, is also still unmade.
We can only speak of the poets as selecting, each for himself, from
the same mass of materials. If we conceive one poem to have been made
before another, then the author or authors of that other may borrow
from the earlier work. Thus, when the _Cypria_ or other Cyclic poems
coincide in topic with the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, that may be (1)
because the authors work out hints given in these finished poems; or
(2) the authors may have had recourse to the same "masses of tradition"
as were open to the author of the _Iliad_. But the Cyclic poets do not
often appear to know Achaean traditions, of the Trojan affair outside
of our Homer. We have shown that Palamedes was not originally an
Achaean of the Achaeans, but a culture hero. The legend of Telephus,
with its sympathetic magic, is wholly un-Achaean; so is Iphigeneia; so
are the sons of Theseus; so is the Attic Nemesis.
As we shall show in an Appendix, Mr. Murray accounts for the
non-Achaean elements so conspicuous in the Cyclic poems, by the theory
that they once also appeared in the lays whence our _Iliad_ arose,
but were expurgated by the clear Hellenic spirit of Greece in the
sixth century, because these lays alone were recited at Panionian and
Panathenaean festivals. Our own conclusion is that the Muses befriended
Homer when they permitted the fragments of the Cyclic poems to escape
the tooth of time. For these fragments suffice to prove that the Ionian
poets could take up an Achaean theme, but in a score of ways, in their
epics, betrayed themselves as non-Achaean.
Their poems are not sections cut out of an Achaean mass of lays, and
our Homer is not a similar section, is not Cyclic. It has now been
proved, I think, that in no point or trait of life, religion, legends,
armour, tactics, rites, taste, poetic method, or anything else, is
Homer affected by Ionian influences. The _Iliad_, and mainly the
_Odyssey_, are entirely distinct in all their contents from Ionian
work. They are much older, and are the fruit of the brief-lived flower
of Achaean culture.[44]
[1] In English the best critical treatises are _Homer and the Cyclic
Poems_, by the late Mr. Binning Monro in his _Odyssey_, Books
xiii.-xxiv. pp. 340-384, with his "On the Fragment of Proclus's
Abstract of the Epic Cycle," _Journal of Hellenic Society_, vol. iv.
pp. 305-334. The discussion of the whole topic by Mr. T. W. Allen in
_The Classical Quarterly_ (1908) leaves no hint of ancient evidence
unexplored, however remote and obscure its lurking place. Mr. Allen
specially criticises the ingenious inferences of von Wilamowitz
Moellendorff in his _Homerische Untersuchungen_, inferences which
appear to be accepted by Mr. Murray in his _Rise of the Greek Epic_,
and his lecture, "Anthropology in the Greek Epic Tradition outside of
Homer," in _Anthropology and the Classics_, 1908.
[2] Kinkel, _Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta_, 1898.
[3] _J. H. S._, vol. iv p. 305.
[4] _Odyssey_, vol. ii pp. 352-354.
[5] Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, vol. ii pp. 488-493. Mr.
Monro seems to have been unaware of these facts. _Odyssey_, vol. ii p.
354.
[6] Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 350.
[7] _Companion to the Iliad_, p. 46.
[8] _Homerische Untersuchungen_, pp. 374, 375. On
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff's opinion that the Cyclics were lost before
the time of Pausanias, see Mr. Allen, _Classical Quarterly_, January,
April, 1908. The _Iliad, as it stands_, appears to be regarded as later
and more artistic than the rest.
[9] Aristotle, _Poetics_, ch. xxiv.
[10] _R. G. E._ p. 165.
[11] _Ibid._ p. 165.
[12] _Ibid._ p. 163.
[13] The seven Greek verses to this effect are preserved by the Venice
Scholiast on _Iliad_, i. 5, 6. The words Διὸς δ'ἐτελείετο βουλή are
also in _Iliad_, i. 5, whether the author of the _Cypria_ borrowed
them, or whether they were an old epic formula.
[14] Schol. Ven., _Iliad_, i, 5, 6.
[15] _R. G. E._ pp. 80-88.
[16] Pausanias, i. 33.
[17] _Bekk. Anecdot_. p. 282. 32. Pausanias, i. 33. 2.
[18] Pausanias, vii. 5. 3. See Farnell, _Cults of Greek States_, vol.
ii. pp. 487-495. 594. 595.
[19] Kinkel, _Ep. Graec. Frag_. p. 25 9.
[20] _Iliad_, ii. 326-329.
[21] xix. 326, 327.
[22] The common tale that Achilles was sent to Scyros to avoid the
war, in girl's dress; that he there begat Neoptolemus, and was then
unmasked by Odysseus, was in contradiction with _Iliad_, xi. 766-785,
where Nestor tells how he summoned Achilles at the house of Peleus, his
father.
[23] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 352.
[24] Pausanias, ii. 22.
[25] Kinkel, p. 29.
[26] See "The Story of Palamedes."
[27] Welcker, _Das Ep. Kyk._, vol. i. pp. 211, 212.
[28] _Iliad_, xx ii. 358-360.
[29] _Iliad_, xi. 690.
[30] Pausanias, iii. 19.
[31] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 361.
[32] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 370.
[33] Pausanias, v. 19.
[34] Pausanias, x. 25.
[35] _Odyssey_, viii. 492-520.
[36] Pausanias, 1. 23. 10.
[37] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 372, 373.
[38] Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 476.
[39] Cf. Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 398-402. He is sceptical, as
is Mr. Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. xviii, xix. But see Mr. Allen in
_Classical Quarterly_, i. 135 ff.
[40] _R. G. E_. p. 164.
[41] Mr. Leaf writes _(Iliad_, vol. i. p. 86): "The conclusion is that
the Catalogue" (of _Iliad_, ii.) "originally formed an introduction
to the whole Cycle, and was composed for that part of it which,
as worked up into a separate poem, was called the _Kypria_, and
related the beginning of the Tale of Troy, and the mustering of the
ships at Aulis." I do not quite know what Mr. Leaf means; but the
evidence is that the _Cypria_ contained "a _Catalogue of the allies
of the Trojans_" (Kinkel, p. 20). Nothing is said of its containing
a Catalogue of the Achaeans. Mr. Monro _(Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 351)
justly remarks that the _Trojan_ Catalogue in the _Cypria_ was intended
to supplement the short Catalogue of the allies of Troy given in the
_Iliad_: "Such an enlarged roll would be the natural fruit of increased
acquaintance" (on the part of Greek settlers in Asia) "with the
non-Hellenic races of Asia Minor."
[42] _R. G. E_. p. 165.
[43] _ Anthropology and the Classics_, 1908, p. 67.
[44] See Appendix, "Homeric Epics, Lost Epics, and 'Traditional Books.'"
CHAPTER XIX
THE GREAT DISCREPANCIES
The standing argument against the old belief in the unity of
authorship of the Epics, has for several generations been based on the
discrepancies and inconsistencies which are said to abound in these
poems. "The only begetter" of the critical school which lacerates
Homer was Wolf; but Wolf's suspicions were not originally roused by