The World of Homer
tradition which runs more or less clearly through most of our later
literature, and whose spirit is what we call classic, Homeric, or
Olympian.
"But there is also in the earliest epic tradition another stratum,
of which this Olympian character does not hold. A stratum full of
the remains, and at times even betraying the actuality, of those
'beastly devices of the heathen' which are dear to the heart of
us anthropologists--if a mere Greek scholar may venture to class
himself among even amateur anthropologists; ceremonies of magic
and purification, beast-worship, stone-xvorship, ghosts, and
anthropomorphic (theriomorphic?) gods, traces of the peculiar powers
of women both as 'good medicine' and as titular heads of the family,
and especially a most pervading and almost ubiquitous memory of Human
Sacrifice.
"This stratum is represented by Hesiod and the Rejected Epics,--I mean
those products of the primitive saga-poetry which were not selected for
recitation at the Panathenaea (or the unknown Ionian archetype of the
Panathenaea), and which consequently fell into neglect,--by the Orphic
literature, by a large element in tragedy, most richly, perhaps, by
the antiquarian traditions preserved in Pausanias, and in the hostile
comments of certain Christian writers, such as Clement and Eusebius.
"Now the first thing for the historian to observe about this
non-Homeric stratum is this: that non-Homeric is by no means the same
thing as post-Homeric. We used to be taught that it was. We used to be
taught that Homer was, practically speaking, primitive: that we started
from a pure epic atmosphere and then passed into an age of romantic
degradation. 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; and it is not until recently that
we have been able to understand properly the nature and the method of
composition of an ancient Traditional Book. I will not go into that
point in detail here. Even supposing that the _Cypria,_ as a poem,
could definitely be called 'later' than the _Iliad_, it is enough to
say that a later literary whole may often contain an older kernel or
a more primitive mass of material, and in the case of the non-Homeric
saga-poems it is fairly clear that they do so.
"Two arguments will suffice: First, the argument from analogy. Few
anthropologists, with the knowledge now at our command, will regard the
high, austere, knightly atmosphere of the _Iliad_ as primitive when
compared with that of Hesiod. In the second place, a great proportion
of our anthropological material is already to be found in prehistoric
Crete. The an-iconic worship, the stones, the beasts, the pillars, and
the ouranian birds; the great mother goddess of Anatolia, the human
sacrifices, and the royal and divine bull. I speak under correction
from those who know the Cretan finds better than I; but to me it seems
that there are many bridges visible from Crete to Hesiod or Eumelus or
even Pausanias; but the gulf between Crete and Homer seems, in certain
places, to have no bridge.
"Thus the later literary whole contains the more primitive modes of
thought, the earlier religion.
"Now this fact in itself, though it may be stated in different ways, is
not much disputed among scholars. But the explanations of the fact are
various. That which seems to me much the most probable is the theory
of Expurgation. As Mr. Lang seems not quite to have understood what I
tried to say about this in my _Rise of the Greek Epic_, I will restate
it in this way: We know that the great mass of saga-poetry began to
be left on one side and neglected from about the eighth century on;
and we find, to judge from our fragments, that it remained in its
semi-savage state. Two poems, on the contrary, were selected at some
early time for public recitation at the solemn four-yearly meeting of
"all Ionians,"[13] and afterwards of "all Athenians." The poems were
demonstrably still in a fluid condition; and the intellect of Greece
was focussed upon them. This process lasted on through the period
of that great movement which raised the shores of the Aegean from a
land of semi-savages to the Hellas of Thales, of Aeschylus, and of
Euripides. And we find, naturally, that amid all the colour of an ideal
past, in which these two epics, like all other epics, have steeped
their story, there has been a gradual but drastic rejection of all the
uglier and uncleaner elements. That is a very broad statement; it omits
both the evidence and the additional causes and qualifications. But it
serves to explain why I treat the non-Homeric sagas as representing
more faithfully the primitive pre-Hellenic habits of thought, the mere
slough out of which Hellas rose."
* * * * *
I agree that the "non-Homeric sagas" represent more faithfully the
primitive pre-Hellenic habits of thought. Homer was not concerned
with pre-Hellenic habits of thought; he represents the Hellenes who
"possessed Hellas, the land of fair women, and followed Achilles."
I also entirely agree that "the later literary whole" (by which I at
least mean Hesiod, the "Cyclic" fragment, and much of Greek tragedy,
not to speak of antiquarian learning) "contains the more primitive
modes of thought, the earlier religion." But the theory that these
things were once in, but were purged out of, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey,_
still baffles me. If they were usages peculiar to the conquered races,
how could they appear in the poetry of the uncontaminated Northern or
Achaean conquerors?
How, again, can we say that "the great mass of saga poetry began to
be left on one side and neglected from about the eighth century"?
Notoriously the "Cyclic" poems, or the legends which were given in
those poems, were greatly preferred as subjects of art by the Athenian
vase-painters of the sixth century, and by Polygnotus when he decorated
the Lesche at Delphi. The stories, I have shown, reached the Middle
Ages through Rome and through Graeco-Roman literature, and eclipsed our
Homer. To them we owe the unhappy _Troilus and Cressida_ of Shakespeare.
We have no evidence known to me that proves the selection, "at some
early time for public recitation," of "two poems," at the solemn
four-yearly meeting of "All Ionians" and afterwards of "all Athenians."
Mr. Verrall supposes the "Cyclic" poems, as well as our Homer, to have
been recited at the Panathenaea. I know no evidence that they were, and
none proving that they were not. I am unaware of any reason for which
our _Iliad_ should have been specially selected for education in the
Ionia of the eighth century, and for public recitation. The reason is
the further to seek if the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, when thus selected,
"were demonstrably still in a fluid condition"; indeed, while they were
still in a fluid condition, I do not know how they could have been
deemed so much more choiceworthy than other poems still (I presume)
fluidic.
If "the intellect of Greece was focussed upon" _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_
while they were still fluidic, but already selected, then the
expurgation was due, not to Achaean poets who ignored and pruned
away the usages and beliefs of the conquered races, but to _les
intellectuels_ of Greece, who (whatever their private opinions might
be) saw hero-worship in daily practice; and if they killed any
one, were purified by pigs' blood. Hesiod stood high in universal
knowledge, was a consecrated authority; if he could be purged, why
was he not purged? Because he was not recited? Yet he was part of
education, and needed a Bowdler much more than Homer.
The practices and beliefs expurgated from Homer were not "done in a
corner" in historic Greece.
So "primitive," so barbaric was the intellect of historic Greece even
in the sixth century and in the age of Pericles, and later, in regard
to heroic tombs, for example, that the heroic ghosts were supposed to
inhabit their sepulchres in the shape of rather harmless snakes, like
the _Idhlozi_ of the Zulus. "In Snake form the hero dwelt in his tomb,"
says Miss Harrison.[14]
Miss Harrison publishes reproductions of works of Greek art from
the sixth century (when all ugly things of this kind, we are told,
were drastically rejected from the _Odyssey_ and _Iliad_) to the
fourth century. We see the dead, a male and a female ghost, receiving
offerings. The artist is determined to make his meaning clear. Behind
the chairs of the holy heroes is a huge snake with a man's beard. He is
a _human_ snake, the incarnation of the dead man's ghost. This is the
belief of the Baronga of Delagoa and of the Zulus.[15]
In a vase, a _lecythus_, of the fifth century, the worshippers surround
a tumulus with a phallus-shaped pillar on top. A huge snake occupies
the tumulus; he is the ghost's incarnation.[16]
Not in glens of mountainous Arcadia, or in recesses of rural chapels
alone, were these things done. The theatre showed sacred tombs; each
place of periodical games had its presiding hero; relics were in high
request, living men, conquerors or athletes, came to be divinised; at
the Eleusinia the initiates saw rites of savage origin; oracles of the
dead were publicly consulted; the purification rites went on as law
demanded--all publicly, all unrebuked.
Does any one suppose that priapic images like those of the Admiralty
Islands were features in Homer's conception of a street in Mycenae or
Ilios? These images were sacred in the Athens of Pericles, the Hermae
were not like Homer's Hermes. Is it likely that, if the managers of
Delian or Athenian recitations found such things as these in Homer,
they would cut them out as too naughty to be mentioned, or for some
other reason not to be mentioned, at a public festival of men and women
familiar with all these things, and seeing in them nothing but good?
It seems unlikely. Moreover, if the Northern or Achaean spirit had
ignored or pruned away these things, they could give no trouble to the
managers of Delian or Athenian recitations.
When we come to consider examples of expurgation, we may prefer to pass
by the odious vices reprobated by the code of Australian savages, but
highly popular in historic Greece. They do not occur in our Homer, and
I know but one allusion to them in the Icelandic sagas, and that is in
a mere impossible taunt about a Bogle. But no one can say that Homer
never heard of such things; we might as well say that, because nobody
coughs in Homer, no Achaean ever condescended to cough. The profession
of Rahab cannot have been unknown, though Homer never mentions it. In
short, a high ideal tone is preserved, Homer is not Monsieur Zola; an
epic is not a "naturalistic" novel.
When the Greeks did entertain a moral objection to anything, to
adelphic marriage, for example: if Homer mentioned such an union, among
the Phaeacians, I can easily believe that a palliative explanation
might be later inserted. Thus, in _Odyssey_, vii. 54, Alcinous and
Arete are "of the self-same parents." Later, a genealogy makes them
uncle and niece. This, for what I know, may be a later palliative
interpolation. But it is all one to Homer. He follows a well-known
_Märchen,_ a tale of No Man's Land, as in his mention of the adelphic
marriages of the sons and daughters of Aeolus. Adelphic unions are
capital offences in savage customary law; one has no reason to suppose
that the Homeric Achaeans were more lax than savages, or no less
depraved by Egyptian influences than the Ptolemy and Berenice of
Theocritus.[17]
I am following Mr. Murray's examples of expurgation. The spirit of the
battles in the _Iliad_ "is chivalrous," he says. "No enemy is ever