The World of Homer
traces of historic events. We know that, because we have chronicles
and official annals corroborating parts of the _Chanson de Roland_, or
proving the historic existence of a few characters in the _Volsunga
Saga_, and _Beowulf_; but in the case of the Homeric poems we have no
evidence of the actual existence of any personage.
As for the _chansons de geste_, we know, or at least the most eminent
French scholars believe, that these, or the earliest of them, are the
final poetic results of actual reminiscences, recorded in lays or
ballads, popular or military, of the reign of Charlemagne. But Homer
is far in advance of the age of ballads on actual events in the remote
past.
M. Gaston Paris says: "The _Chanson de Roland_ is not a work composed
_d'un seul jet à un moment donné_, it contains elements of very
different dates and different sources"--there is a basis of popular or
military ballads; there are additions invented by professional poets
to increase the interest. "The author of the Chanson is Legion."[2] I
entirely agree, and Legion is the author of _Paradise Lost_, and the
author of _King Lear_, or _Hamlet_, or _Macbeth_. Legion is the name of
the myth-makers from an age of savagery onwards; of the Greek and Roman
and Celtic poets and historians, of the Christian theologians, and
Anglo-Saxon minstrels and low Latin versifiers, and heavy Dutch poets,
and gay Italian poets, who have contributed the ideas and material to
_Paradise Lost_. But the Epic is Milton's though Homer and Virgil are
among the authors: without their lives it had not been what it is. The
_form_ is Milton's, and the form of the _Iliad_ is Homer's.
These things are manifest. All poetry, down to a lyric like "Bonnie
Dundee," has, in one sense, a multiplicity of authors. The poet
selects, combines, and gives form to a mass of pre-existing materials.
In _Lear_, Shakespeare works on a _Märchen_ still current in rural
England. That _Märchen_ he takes in the pseudo-historic form given to
it by the chroniclers. Shakespeare combines with it--for Gloucester
and Edmund--a French story which he finds in Sidney's _Arcadia_. He
has before him an earlier drama on King Lear; he selects, arranges,
composes, he adds what is his own, the poetry, and the fatal
conclusion; and even so the author of our _Iliad_ treated _his_
materials. Of all poetry, and especially of all epic poetry, the
author's name is Legion. Legion supplies the materials, and examples of
different methods of dealing with them, and the stock of ballad or epic
formulae. The final poet makes his selections, his combinations, and
fuses all into a new form.
It may be said that I mean by "Legion" something which M. Gaston Paris
did not mean. But what _did_ he mean? Did he mean that a different
_laisses_, or strings of verses on one assonance in the _Chanson de
Roland_, were by different poets, and were tacked together by one man,
who, perhaps, made omissions and additions? If this was what M. Gaston
Paris meant, I do not agree with him, nor with any one who may hold the
same opinion about the evolution of our _Iliad_. I know perfectly well
what I mean, when I say that Legion provided Homer's materials, and
showed various methods of treating them.
What these materials were we cannot exactly know. There must have been
much heroic poetry in hexameter verse; in Homer the form has reached
perfection. The style retains some peculiarities of popular poetry, of
ballads, as in stereotyped formulae descriptive of habitual actions
of every kind. Like our ballads, the poet never avoids a formula, if
he can find one current; if he invents a new one, he clings to it.
This recurrence of formulae is no less marked in _Iliad_ viii. than in
Child's four hundred _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, or in _La
Chancun de Willame_, one of the oldest _chansons de geste_.
Homer's chief heroes need no introduction to his audience, as Roland
and Oliver, Ganelon and Naismes needed none. All his characters were
familiar figures in an ancient legend of an expedition against the
Northern shore of Asia. About that we have no historic knowledge,
and it is rare indeed that chronicles record any "facts" given in
early _chansons de geste_. The rear-guard action at Roncevaux is an
exception; it is a historical fact.
Homer surveyed the whole, selected some situations, invented others,
combined and fused all in the furnace of his genius, just as did Milton
and Shakespeare. But how Legion made the _Iliad_, with no Homer, no
one great genius, but in some incomprehensible manner of combination,
I have never understood. I have never seen any description of the
processes which was clear, coherent, intelligible, and corroborated
by an example historically known. Theories of "redactors," "editors,"
literary committees, are all in the air; we cannot say, with Mrs.
Quickly, "You, or any man, knows where to have them." No theory
shows us "where to have" the _Dichter_, where, or when, or in what
circumstances he did whatever he is supposed to have done.
[1] _Homer and his Age_, pp. 276-278.
[2] _Légendes du Moyen Age_, pp. 46-47.
APPENDIX A
THE CATALOGUE
The date, purpose, and historical value of the Catalogue are matters
vigorously disputed, and critics not only vary among themselves,
but change their own minds, as is natural, when new facts accrue.
Topographical study of the Greek mainland, and new discoveries of
prehistoric sites that had been overlooked, necessarily throw new light
on Homer's conception of prehistoric Greece. Thus M. Bérard appears to
have found again what learned late Greek geographers had lost, the site
of Nestor's city of Pylos.
Nestor, in _Iliad_, xi. 664-762,[1] telling a long story about his
early prowess, gives many topographical details. But he "is clearly
ignorant of the geography of the western Peloponnesus," says a critic.
Here the theory is that Nestor's story is by a late editor of the
Iliad, who had read the Catalogue, picked out some places named at
random, and thrown them in anywhere.[2] But M. Bérard studies the
topography on the spot, and finds sites which, he thinks, coincide
perfectly with the topography of Nestor, and also, with that of the
journey of Telemachus, in the _Odyssey_, to Pylos, the home of Nestor,
and on to Menelaus in Sparta. It is strong corroboration that M.
Bérard's location of Pherae, where Telemachus passes the night on his
way to Sparta, and of Pylos itself, makes the topography of Homer
intelligible.[3]
But we must remember that people who deem the _Iliad_ a thing of rags
and patches, stitched on, in this case, by some ignoramus of about 540
B.C., are eager to find discrepancies everywhere; while the learned and
minute French geographer was equally anxious to find proofs of Homer's
accuracy. At all events, if he is right, Nestor does not talk ignorant
nonsense.
Geographical and archaeological research produce modifications of
opinion, but the critical weathercock veers, less necessarily, with
every wind of theory that blows from Germany. Thus Mr. Leaf, in the
first edition of his _Iliad_ (vol. i. p. 73), found nothing to prove
that the Catalogue "is of late origin." "It was considered a classical
work--The Doomsday Book of Greece, at a very early date.... There
seems to be no valid reason for doubting that it, like the bulk of the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, was composed in Achaean times, and carried with
the emigrants to the coast of Asia Minor."
Nothing new has been discovered since Mr. Leaf wrote in this orthodox
fashion, nothing new has arisen except the studies of M. Bérard, which,
if we accept his view, confirm the accuracy of the Catalogue. But, in
1900, Mr. Leaf abandoned his earlier position.
"The whole perspective of the Catalogue," he says, "is entirely
different from that of the _Iliad_." Heroes, as Niese remarks, appear
in the _Iliad_ who do nothing in that poem; but play their parts
"in other portions of the Epic Cycle." The conclusion is that "the
Catalogue originally formed an introduction to the whole cycle, and was
composed for that portion of it which, as worked up into a separate
poem, was called the _Cypria_, and relates the beginning of the tale of
Troy, and the mustering of the fleet at Aulis."[4] This contains much
debatable matter. What the cycle was before it was "worked up into"
separate poems, or whether such a nebulous cycle existed at all, we
know not. I must refer the reader to Mr. Allen's essay on the whole
subject, which is too condensed to be summarised in briefer space.[5]
"The Catalogue was taken by Homer from its time and place in saga to
his second Book and to the Troad." I do not quite understand how a long
passage in hexameters could be taken from "saga." Mr. Allen's critical
remarks on prehistoric Greek topography and territorial divisions,
are most valuable; and so is his account of the Dorian and other
pretensions which wrought confusion in topographical designations. He
has proved, I think, that the Catalogue is a very archaic document,
which no later persons were interested in inventing, or would have been
able to invent. Beyond that I am unable to go, and we must await the
results of excavation on prehistoric sites in Greece. Our information
as to the _Cypria_ credits it with no Catalogue of the Achaean ships
and men; but it is easy to reply that our accounts are wrong, that the
authors spoke of a _Cypria_ made up after the Catalogue was placed in
the _Iliad_.
[1] Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. 465, 466.
[2] Leaf, Note to _Iliad_, xi. 756; _Iliad_, ii. 615, 617.
[3] Bérard, _Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée_, pp. 108-113.
[4] Leaf, vol. i. p. 86.
[5] _Classical Quarterly_, April 1909.
APPENDIX B
The argument of my book is that the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ represent
the usages and ideas of a prehistoric society. They are not the ideas
and usages of proto-historic and historic Hellas, but of the Achaean
invaders, or, at least, of the high-born men and women to whom Homer
sang. On the other hand, Mr. Murray, if I succeed in understanding his
position, holds that the ideas and usages of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_
are a kind of mosaic, the result of a long process of "expurgation
of Homer." If this view be correct, my whole argument, of course, is
builded on the sand. Homer does not represent the ethical and religious
beliefs and usages of a moment in the past.
It is therefore necessary to state, with textual citations as full as
possible, Mr. Murray's presentation of his case, given, first, in his
_Rise of the Greek Epic_, and, later, in one of the Oxford Lectures
by several authors, published in _Anthropology and the Classics_. Mr.
Murray has very kindly assisted me by explaining points in which I
was unable to follow his reasoning. But these explanations prove that
we start from assumptions so opposed in their nature that community
in conclusions is impossible. Perhaps even mutual intelligence cannot
be perfect. Thus my reading of the Epics leads me to the conviction
that they were composed in an age which knew nothing of coined money;
an age when cattle were the standard of values:--this or that object
was worth so many cows. But in Mr. Murray's opinion this standard was
preserved in the epics, after it was obsolete in practice, for reasons
of stylistic convention. While I suppose our two epics to have been
epics at a period very remote, when Achaean society was in its bloom;
he holds that there were no epics till the Achaeans and the conquered
peoples were intermingled. Earlier, there were only lays, and the
silence of our epics as to coined money, for example, is a convention
derived from the lays of a time when cows were the measure of value.
Each of us, it seems to me, has to assume a kind of miracle. I have to