The World of Homer
son, collected and arranged in a certain order the Homeric poems. The
earliest and only good evidence, says Mr. Monro, with regard to the
recitation of Homer at Athens, is that of two orators two centuries
later than Pisistratus, Lycurgus and Isocrates. The former said in
a speech "Our fathers thought Homer such a good poet that they made
a law for him alone among poets that his poems should be recited by
rhapsodists at every quinquennial holding of the Panathenaea."[4] No
date is given, but Lycurgus must apparently be thinking of a date prior
to Tyrtaeus, as we shall see later. When Lycurgus says that the poems
of Homer alone were to be recited at the festival, he is of so late
a date that he probably means the Iliad and Odyssey. If the Act were
made in Solon's time, "Homer" may conceivably include all heroic epic
poetry. We know nothing about it.
Isocrates[5] says that the ancestors of the Athenians "desired to make
Homer's art honoured, both in contests of music (i.e. of the reciters)
and in the education of the young" (Monro, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 15).
Still later, in a passage with an important lacuna, Diogenes Laertius
says that Solon passed a law regulating the recitations,[6] the very
law which is attributed to Hipparchus by the author of the Dialogue
of that name.[7] In Sicyon also, in the sixth century, there were
recitations of Homer by competing rhapsodists; they were put down by
the tyrant Cleisthenes.[8]
Mr. Monro says that for the existence of an Athenian law about
Homeric recitations, whatever the date of that law may have been, we
have historical testimony. Indeed, if there were no such law, even
rhetoricans of the fourth century could scarcely tell the Athenians
that such a law existed. But as to its date and scope, and the name
of the statesman who passed it, if any exact information had existed,
perhaps there might have been some agreement among the persons who
speak of it. If nothing like a History of Literature existed before
the fourth century, we can expect no information. If it did exist,
it was of no value to Ephorus, Heracleides, and the author of the
_Hipparchus_. They are all at odds.
Mr. Monro says, as every man trained in historical criticism must say,
"modern scholars have tried to harmonise these notices, and to assign
to (the Spartan) Lycurgus (named by Ephorus), Solon (named by Diogenes
Laertius)," Pisistratus, and Hipparchus their several shares in the
service done to Homer. "This would be legitimate if there were reason
to regard any of the notices as historical. But, in fact, they are
merely mythical anecdotes, supplemented by the guesses of scholars."[9]
Whatever Homeric critics may think, they will find no trained historian
to dissent from Mr. Munro on those points.
_Historia silet_! History is mute. We only know that from an uncertain
period there were quinquennial recitations of "Homer," and Homer alone,
at Athens, and that "Homer" was used in education. Beyond that all is
"guesses of scholars." These guesses vary according to the taste and
fancy of the learned.
In this conclusion every one who is accustomed to historical
criticism will agree with Mr. Monro. Nothing can be made out of late
and contradictory statements; nothing beyond the fact that "Homer"
(whatever may be meant by "Homer") was quinquennially recited, under
regulations, at Athens, and entered into public education.
Mr. A. W. Verrall, however, says: "In general, the very last thing that
we get from disputants on either side is an exact construction and
estimation of what, truly or falsely, is recorded about the history of
Homer." Mr. Verrall writes thus in a _Quarterly_ review of Mr. Murray's
_Rise of the Greek Epic_, and of my _Homer and his Age_.
The questions as to what is "recorded" about "the history of Homer," I
had treated in my _Homer and the Epic_ (pp. 35, 38, 67-70), examining
the evidence, such as it is, and the opinions of Wolf, Ritschl, and
others; and siding with Mr. Monro (I may add, with Blass, Meyer,
Nutzhorn, Mr. T. W. Allen, and many others). In _Homer and his Age_
(pp. 46-50), I again went over the old ground, in reference to Mr.
Leaf's changes of opinion.
Mr. Verrall writes:[10] "The texts, as we have said, are not treated
fairly." Now really the texts are treated as the historian treats all
texts that come into his province. The dates of the alleged events
are set beside the dates of the texts concerning them; the texts are
remote, contradictory, and unevidential; the best historians, and the
historian who most carefully examined the popular traditions concerning
Pisistratus and his sons, namely, Thucydides, say nothing about the
alleged events.
Mr. Verrall also writes: "The record, such as it is, is hardly ever
correctly represented. The most punctilious of scholars (Grote, for
example) are in this matter not to be trusted."[11]
These are severe reproaches! Mr. Monro is not mentioned: are any of
his remarks unfair and untrust-worthy?
Mr. Verrall says: "We cannot but think that the ancient record about
the origin of Homer suffers unfairly from certain prepossessions
which all would disclaim, but which are more easily disclaimed than
abandoned."
For me, I frankly confess my own prepossessions, but consciousness of
his bias is the safeguard of the historian; it compels him to make
certain that he adds nothing to and takes nothing from what Mr. Verrall
calls "the ancient record," and _I_ call "the various ancient legends."
Mr. Verrall insists that "internal evidence about the history of a
book, if not controlled by record, is liable to infinitely elastic
interpretation." Certainly, but there is no possibility of "control by
record" in the case of the history of the Homeric poems.
No historian can agree with Mr. Verrall that "as a matter of record
and apart from inference or hypothesis, this Homer of ours ... appears
as an artificial product of scholarship, the result of a critical
process."[12] It is he who insists on the technical term "record"; it
is not pedantic, therefore, to reply that "record" there is none. By
"record" Mr. Verrall seems to mean, as regards the "artificial product
of scholarship," a statement of opinion made five centuries after the
alleged events.
The first testimony, or "record," cited by Mr. Verrall has nothing
to say about our Homer as "an artificial product of scholarship." It
deals merely with the legalised recitation of Homeric poetry, and of
that poetry alone, at the Panathenaea. The text is that which Mr.
Monro calls "the earliest evidence," "that of the orators Lycurgus and
Isocrates," in the fourth century.
That is good evidence. Lycurgus could not speak to the Athenians of
a law which, to their knowledge, did not exist. Lycurgus, in fact,
had been cajoling his Athenian audience with a set of fables about
their ancestors, whose patriotism and valour in _pre-Homeric times_ he
applauds. Did not Erechtheus in a war with Thrace sacrifice his own
daughter in obedience to an oracle, and then defeat the invaders! For
this noble action Lycurgus cites a play by Euripides, _The Erechtheus_!
Lycurgus next says that Athens made a law that the poems of Homer
alone should be recited at the Panathenaea; and that, encouraged by
the patriotism ascribed by the poet to Hector, the Athenians, in the
Persian affair, were ready to die, not for their city only, but for all
Hellas. Such men were the Athenians, in public and private life: then
comes the story of the Spartans borrowing Tyrtaeus from Athens, and
their approval of a Tyrtaean poem adapted in part from _Iliad_, xxii.
71 ff.
That is all. Mr. Verrall writes: "By Lycurgus this whole educational
movement, and the adoption of Homer as the basis of it, is attributed
to the Athenians as a people...." What Mr. Verrall says about "a
revolution in the method of education not less momentous than any
movement in history,"[13] has, I think, but scanty warrant in the
actual words of Lycurgus. It is Mr. Verrall, not Lycurgus, who
compares the effect of Homer on Athens with the effect ("notorious,"
as he too truly says) of the Bible upon Scotland. All this about an
educational movement, however true it may be, is, I fear, "inference
and hypothesis" of Mr. Verrall's own. Lycurgus speaks of learning
courageous patriotism from Homer, all the rest we have to assume; at
least I cannot find it in Lycurgus.
Mr. Verrall has next to meet the charge of contradictions among the
late writers who attribute to Solon, Pisistratus, and _Hipparchus_
the law about recitations at the Panathenaea. But these texts, except
the pseudo-Platonic _Hipparchus_, say nothing about Homer as "an
artificial product of scholarship." Mr. Verrall declares that Lycurgus
and the _Hipparchus_ say nothing about the "arrangement" of the poems,
"they speak merely of adoption and compilation."[14] But Lycurgus
says nothing about compilation, the Hipparchus says nothing about
compilation.
The _Hipparchus_ says, what Lycurgus does not say, "that _Hipparchus_,
son of Pisistratus, first brought the poems of Homer to Attica, and
that he obliged the rhapsodists at the Panathenaic festival to recite
consecutively, so that the people might hear entire poems, and not
merely passages chosen at the will of the reciter."[15]
Not a word about "compilation." The Hipparchus falls into all the
errors regarding the history of the Pisistradae that are pointed out by
Thucydides.[16] Mr. Verrall is not lucky, he chooses a very erroneous
anonymous author, and makes him speak of "compilation," which I do not
see that he mentions, and calls his "no late or dubious authority."[17]
Next, the _Hipparchus_ attributes to a man who might have been Solon's
great-grandson the law which Diogenes Laertius attributes to Solon.
Mr. Verrall palliates the contradictions in a curious way. "These
ascriptions have presumably the same measure of truth as the connecting
of the Reformation now with one and now writh another of the princes or
statesmen of the sixteenth century."[18]
I do not know what historian connects the Reformation with one
statesman or prince and with one only. But the texts of Mr. Verrall
attribute not a religious and political movement dating, in England,
from about 1370 to--?, but a single legislative Act, to several
statesmen of about four generations. They are not speaking of a
prolonged "educational movement," but of one legislative Act,--about
which they really know no particulars.
The correct analogy to this Act is the authorisation of a translation
of the Bible in England. No historian attributes that feat to any
prince but gentle King Jamie: none says that it was due to Henry
VIII., Edward VI., or Elizabeth. The historian cannot assume that
when Diogenes Laertius attributes the law on recitations to Solon,
and the _Hipparchus_ attributes it to the son of Pisistratus, both
authorities mean only that a whole educational movement occurred in
the sixth century. The existence of primary education in the Athens
of the seventh and sixth centuries is proved by the multitude of
_inscribed_ vases with paintings of Homeric, Cyclic, and Attic legends;
but Diogenes and the _Hipparchus_ are speaking variously about a single
legislative enactment.
Mr. Verrall next supposes that the "Homer" then recited and taught
at Athens was probably the whole "Cycle" of Cyclic poems.[19] This
question he must settle with Mr. Murray, who, we have seen, says that
the poetry selected for recitation at the Panathenaea was none but the
still fluid lays of which, as I understand, our two epics are the final
result; while the Cyclic poems were rejected.
[1] _Prolegomena_, 2nd edition, 1859, p. 85.
[2] See _Homer and his Age_, pp. 44-50.
[3] _De Oratore_, iii. 34.
[4] _Leocr_. p. 209.
[5] _Panegyr_. c. 42.