The World of Homer
think, and do think, that our epics were composed by a poet to amuse
the leisure of an Achaean Court, and also that they were miraculously
preserved, whether by writing or in memory, through several changeful
centuries. I believe that this occurred because the poems are great
harmonious structures, such as only a poet could produce; and because
the many changes in society, costume, law, belief, and usage which the
successive ages evolved, do not appear in the poems.
Mr. Murray, I think, has also to postulate another kind of miracle.
Evolution, in some way which I do not understand, produced our epics
out of a mass of floating poetical material. It appears that men are
born to hold one view or the other, to believe in one or the other
prodigy.
However, in the view which is not mine, stylistic conventions in the
later poetry were based on a following of what was no convention in
the older poetry, say as to the use of coined money or of cavalry. Now
I know no other early national poetry, and no literary epics of the
critical ages of Greek and Roman literature, where such convention is
employed. Virgil was learned; Virgil knew Homer intimately; yet his
Greeks and Trojans use iron weapons, not weapons of bronze; and the
Roman buckler, not the Homeric shield.
To take another case, as soon as armorial bearings came into
mediaeval Europe, the singers of the _chansons de geste_ introduced
them,--regardless of their absence in the earlier lays, which knew no
such blazons. No convention of silence arose.
There is only one mention of writing in Homer. The Greek tragedians
knew well that writing was, as far as Homer shows, very rare in the
heroic age. But some of the heroes and heroines write whenever they
have occasion. There is no archaistic convention. As I have shown
in _Homer and his Age_, ancient poets and artists had, no more than
Shakespeare, our modern habit of attending to "local colour" as
historically known to us by research.
Perhaps it may be urged in reply, that early mediaeval epic poets were
much less conservative than early Greeks. They altered, for example,
the assonant _laisses_ of the early _chansons_, and did them into
rhyme, while Greece for epic purposes never deserted the hexameter. But
I can give a fair parallel to the Greek non-observance of a convention
in the Irish epic cycles.
The poets of the ancient Irish cycle of Fian ought, by the theory of
convention, to have made their heroes use war-chariots like the heroes
of the elder saga of Cuchullin. But they follow no such convention;
their heroes ride or fight on foot, because such was the nature of war
in their own later time.
The same reasoning applies throughout. I cannot believe that the makers
of our epics, working in the early historic age, omitted mention of
cavalry, coined money, periodical games, or anything else known to
them, because they found no such matter in more ancient lays concerning
and composed in a previous age. We have seen that the old "non-Homeric"
epics were, as their fragments prove, full of non-Homeric usages. No
"stylistic convention" forbade mention of these usages.
Thus no such stylistic convention--maintained in our _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_, neglected in the _Cypria, Aethiopis,_ and the rest--can be
accepted. In fact, another and a special cause for many of Homer's
silences has to be suggested, as we shall see. Once more it is my
assumption that our epics were made in the main as we have them, for a
peculiar audience, a courtly and knightly audience, known to themselves
and their poet as "Achaeans." That they were of unmixed race I do not
suppose; these Northern invaders, their chiefs at least, would marry
the daughters of the princes of the land. But I assume that our epics
were made for them, _while they retained their Northern ideas_; on
many points very like the ideas, usages, and beliefs of the heathen
Scandinavian settlers in Iceland. It is maintained by Mr. Murray that
the ideas of "the conquered races" were very different, and that, as
the two peoples mingled, the ideas of the conquered races re-emerged.
This is manifestly true. But my view is that Achaean society, courtly
society at least, had not adopted the beliefs and usages of the
conquered races at the time when our epics, which ignore them, were
composed. But these usages and ideas are usual in the fragments of the
Cyclic epics on Trojan affairs. No stylistic convention interfered
and kept them out. Mr. Murray has to discover a special cause for the
presence in the "Cyclic" of much that is absent from our two epics.
The ideas of Mr. Murray, in some passages of his work, appear to be
precisely the opposite of my own. In other passages we seem to be on
the very point of agreement.
When we are told, in passages to be quoted, that there was in the
formation of the _Iliad_, and to a less extent in that of the
_Odyssey_, a strong element of reform and expurgation, we ask
ourselves--who, in what age, and from what motives, were the reformers
and purgers of _what_ pre-existing poetic and legendary materials? Were
those materials the property of the "Achaean or Northern" conquerors,
or of the pre-existing "conquered races" (to use Mr. Murray's terms);
or were the materials a medley derived from both sources? Were the
purgers Achaean poets working on materials, at least in part the
property of the conquered races? Or was the purgation mainly done by
Ionians, that is, by the mixed Greek peoples settled in Asia; peoples
certainly retaining many of the ideas of the conquered races which our
Homer ignores? Or did "the Achaean or Northern spirit" purge away some
things distasteful to that spirit, while the Ionians purged away other
things? What the elements more or less purged away are supposed to be,
we shall see later. In the passage to which I have referred[1] we find
the following statements:--
"The epic tradition of Greece, vast and tangled in its wealth of varied
beauty and ugliness, was left by the Homeric poets a much cleaner and
colder thing than they found it. In the result, two influences were
mainly at work. First, a general humanising of the imagination, the
progress of a spirit which, as it loved beauty, hated cruelty and
uncleanness. Secondly, a race prejudice. The relation of the Northern
and the aboriginal elements in the Homeric poems are involved, when
you come to details, in inextricable confusion, but in general the
'Homeric' tone of mind represents more of the Achaean or Northern
spirit; the spirit of those scattered strong men who in their various
settlements were leading and shaping the Aegean world. The special
myths, beliefs, and rites that were characteristic of the conquered
races are pruned away or ignored; the hero-worship, the oracles, the
magic and witchcraft, the hocus-pocus of purification, all that savours
of 'the monstrous regiment of women, the uncanny prowess of dead men,
and the baleful confusion between man and God.'
Here I should absolutely agree with Mr. Murray, if I were convinced
that "the Northern or Achaean spirit" of Achaean poets was dealing
mainly with "the epic tradition" of præ-Achaean Greece. If they were,
they would certainly "ignore or prune away" manners and beliefs which
were not their own. But I have shown, I think, that between Achaean
and Athenian early "Saga" a great gulf was fixed in Homeric times.
The Homeric poet dealt with Achaean legend, which could not contain
ghost-worship, "hocus-pocus of purification," and so on. Let me here
remark that no known later Greek taste objected to the _märchenhaft_,
the preposterous element in "Saga." Pindar and the dramatists do not
reject it, I have shown, but Homer does in the _Iliad_. Had Homer
revelled in it, later Greek taste saw nothing out of keeping here; had
no temptation to expurgate Pegasus, or the soul-box of Meleager, or the
magical invulnerability of Achilles, or his medicinal spear, or that
magical property, the Luck of Troy, the palladium, and so forth. The
genius of Homer, not later expurgation, accounts for his reticence.
Next, I seem to discern that "the progress of a spirit which hated
cruelty and uncleanness" refers to a period when "Achaeans" and
"Pelasgians," long intermingled, were becoming what is called
"Hellenic," the people of early historic Greece in the sixth century.
What this Hellenic spirit might, if it could, purge away is just the
ferocity which is _not_ purged away; the ferocity which mutilates, and,
when the deed is not executed, has threatened to mutilate foes slain in
open fight; and which denies, or wishes to deny, honourable burial to
the dead. On the dead "unseemly things" are wrought, with little or no
rebuke from the poet, except in the case of the extreme ferocities of
Achilles against Hector and the twelve Trojan captives. Thus Agamemnon
"smote Hippolochus to earth, and cut off his arms and neck with the
sword, then tossed him like a ball of stone to roll through the
throng"; or rather "like the trunk of a tree."[2] In the same way the
minor Aias cuts off the head of Imbrios, and throws it like a football
"into the scrum."[3] Hector is keen to cut off the head of Patroclus,
and stick it on a stake, like the head of the great Montrose.[4]
Peneleus decapitates Ilioneus, and waves the head at the Trojans.[5]
Manifestly these ferocities were _de bonne guerre_ in the society to
which Homer sang. I conceive that they were hateful to the taste of the
historic Hellenic spirit. Could it have expurgated these ferocities it
would have done so. But it could not. Other examples might be given.
Thus Euphorbus,[6] who dealt the first wound to Patroclus, threatens
to cut off and carry home the head of Menelaus. Euphorbus was avenging
his brother, slain by Menelaus. Peneleus was avenging Antimachus, his
friend. The ferocities are sometimes prompted by personal vengeance.
Euphorbus would have kept his word, but the spear of Menelaus pierced
his throat. We cannot find expurgation in failure to accomplish a
purpose. Hector meant to fix the head of Patroclus on a stake, so Iris
tells Achilles,[7] and to give his body to the dogs to devour. Such was
warfare as known to Homer; and the intellect of later Greece, which
probably abhorred such deeds, expurgated nothing.
Mr. Murray writes[8] that "no other corpse" (except Hector's) "is
maltreated in the Iliad." Such treatment was quite deliberately planned
by men of both armies, and was also executed in hot blood. I have given
examples enough of such maltreatment.
To cruelty we return, and to refusal of burial. It seems to have been
quite usual. The notable exception in clemency is Achilles; before his
passion came on him he ransomed his captives, and "his soul had shame
to despoil the dead Eëtion"; but he burned him in his inlaid armour,
and raised a barrow over him.[9]
In the Iliad ferocity runs high, in these particulars; the historic
hatred of such doings is growing but slowly. "The spirit that
hated cruelty" has left the facts where it found them; there is no
expurgation of them. As to the Hellenic historic spirit and its
hatred of "uncleanness"--_autres temps, autres moeurs_! Homer has no
allusions to the survival of savage vices detested by "the Northern
spirit." But, granting that the waxing spirit of Hellenism expurgated
atrocities committed on the dead (though they stand staring upon us
in the _Iliad_), "the Northern or Achaean spirit" is credited by Mr.
Murray with "pruning away or ignoring" the characteristic rites,
beliefs, and usages of the conquered races.
The earlier the period, the more drastic would be the purification.
Achaeans, not yet leavened with "Pelasgian" blood and beliefs, could
not celebrate what they confessedly did not practise. In their work no
later expurgation could cleanse away that which their work could not
contain.