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IOS (Island) KYKLADES
Homerus (Homeros). The ancient Greeks never doubted the historical
existence of Homer. He was to them "the poet" (ho poietes) in a special
sense, but they knew nothing of him as a person. Eight Greek biographies of
him are still extant-- one under the name of Plutarch, another falsely ascribed
to Herodotus--but none of them have any historic value; most of them belong
to the Christian era. The early Greeks had no more interest in literary biography
than the English contemporaries of Chaucer, and later generations supplied the
lack of knowledge from vague tradition and from uncertain indications in the
works attributed to the poet. They did not require scientific accuracy of statement,
and enjoyed a good story too well to question its truth. A large variety of
manifestly fictitious genealogical trees is presented for Homer, in many of
which he is brought into some connection with Hesiod. Some made him a descendant
of Orpheus. He was called by some Melesigenes, as the son of the river-god Meles,
near Smyrna. Others called him Maeonides, either as the son of Maeon or the
son of Maeonia (Lydia). A well-known epigram emphasizes the uncertainty with
regard to his birthplace. More than seven cities claimed him as their own. Some
thought he was born at Smyrna, and near that city a grotto was shown in which
they said he composed his poems. Simonides called him a Chian, doubtless partly
on the strength of the verse in the Hymn to Delian Apollo, 172, tuphlos aner,
oikei de Chioi eni paipaloessei, which is quoted by Thucydides --a verse which
at least supported the popular belief in the poet's blindness. The great critic
Aristarchus thought him an Athenian, basing his arguments upon characteristics
of the Homeric dialect. Aristodemus of Nyssa believed him to be a Roman, because
of the similarity of certain Roman customs with those described by the poet.
Others would make an Ithacan of him. Others thought him an Aegyptian. Lucian
called him a Babylonian, but doubtless in merry jest. It was reserved for an
English scholar, however, to suggest that if Homer's name were read backwards,
in Hebrew style, OMEROS would become SOREMO, which was only another form for
Solomon; thus the Homeric poems were ascribed to the Hebrew king. He was generally
assumed to have lived about a century or a century and a half after the Trojan
War (B.C. 1183). Others made him flourish about B.C. 976. He was set by Herodotus
not more than four hundred years before his time, or B.C. 850. The church fathers,
Clemens Alexandrinus and Tatian, inclined to set the date of his birth as late
as possible, in order to sustain their claim that the wisdom of the Greeks was
derived from the Hebrews.
Scholars no longer ask where Homer was born or when he lived,
but in what regions and tribes of Greece epic poetry was perfected, and in what
centuries the Iliad and Odyssey received their present form. Not that all would
deny that any poet Homer ever lived to whom we owe the Iliad or Odyssey, or
both, but all authentic information regarding him has perished beyond recovery.
Even in his poems his personality is kept entirely in the background.
The meaning of the name Homer is uncertain. Many stories
were invented to account for it as meaning "a hostage." Half a century
ago it was explained as "the uniter" (homou ararisko), and thus it
was made to sustain the view that the poems are only a conglomeration of distinct
and independent lays. Georg Curtius showed that, according to analogy, the name
should mean "the united," not "the uniter." The plural Homeroi
would then be used of the members of a guild of poet-singers. The next generation
would be Homeridai, and from this patronymic an assumption was made of an original
Homeros. This process has been playfully but fairly illustrated by the succession
in English: "fellows" (homeroi), "the fellows' guild" (homeridai),
"the Fellows guild" (Homeridai), which last assumes a Mr. Fellows
(Homeros) as its founder. But very possibly the name had nothing to do with
the profession of song.
Homer was to the early Greeks the personification of epic
poetry. All the old epic poems were attributed to him, as all great achievements
were assigned to Heracles--not only what are extant, but also what are known
as the cyclic poems: the Cypria (ta Kupria, in eleven books, of the judgment
of Paris, the rape of Helen, and other events which immediately preceded the
Trojan War--ascribed by others to Stasinus of Cyprus), the Aethiopis and Iliupersis
(Aithiopis, in five books, of the arrival of the Amazons and the Aethiopian
Memnon, the defence of Troy, and the death of Achilles; and Iliou Persis, in
two books, of the device of the wooden horse and the capture of the city --generally
ascribed to Arctinus of Miletus), the Little Iliad (Ilias Mikra, in four books,
in which Philoctetes and Achilles' son Neoptolemus were brought to the help
of the Greeks--by Lesches of Mitylene), the Nosti (Nostoi, in five books, of
the adventures of the Greeks on their return from Troy--by Agias of Troezen),
and the Telegonia (Telegonia, in two books, a sort of conclusion of the story
of the Odyssey--by Eugammon of Cyrene).
When Aeschylus said that his tragedies were but crumbs from
the rich feast of Homer (Athen. viii. 347 E, tas hautou tragoidias temache einai
elege ton Homerou megalon deipnon), he probably had in mind not only the Iliad
and Odyssey, but also the other poems of the Trojan cycle, from which he borrowed
suggestions, as is seen from the titles of his plays. Herodotus was the first,
so far as is known, to deny the Homeric authorship of the Cypria. This he did
on the ground of the inconsistency that the poet of the Cypria made Paris reach
Troy on the third day from Sparta, while the poet of the Iliad represented him
as driven on a devious course to Sidon; and the historian remarks that nowhere
else does Homer contradict himself (oudamei allei anepodise heouton). Thucydides
seems to have acknowledged or assumed the Homeric authorship of the so-called
Homeric Hymns. Plato and Xenophon mean our Iliad and Odyssey when they speak
of Homer; but Aristotle quotes from the Margites (hosper Homeros phesin en toi
Margitei). The earliest Alexandrian editor of Homer, Zenodotus, seems to have
assigned to him only the Iliad and Odyssey.
Among the minor poems of Homer are generally placed the Hymns,
Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Batrachomuomachia), Jests (paignia), and Margites.
The Hymns are not hymns in the modern sense of the term; they are rather epic
than lyric. They number thirty-four in all, but ten are brief, having only three
to six lines each. The first two, to Apollo, were counted as one until the critic
Rhunken in 1749 convinced scholars that the first was in praise of Delian (178
verses) and the second of Pythian Apollo (368 verses). The latest editor endeavours
again to show that the two are simply parts of one. The third Hymn (580 verses)
tells of the birth of Hermes and the exploits and tricks of the new-born babe:
how he found a tortoise and invented the seven-stringed lyre (phorminx), how
he stole the cattle of Apollo and then returned to his cradle, finally appeasing
Apollo's wrath by the gift of the lyre. This and the one immediately following
are distinctly secular, not religious, in their character. The fourth Hymn (293
verses) tells of Aphrodite and her love for Anchises. The fifth Hymn (495 verses),
to Demeter, has a more serious tone than the preceding. It seems to have been
intended to state the mythical foundation for the Eleusinian Mysteries. It tells
how Persephone, Demeter's daughter, was carried off by Hades as she was plucking
flowers ("herself a fairer flower"), and of the disconsolate wanderings
of the mother in search of her daughter until she found a temporary home at
Eleusis; on her departure thence a temple was built in her honour, and at last
the mother and daughter were united. No one of the other Hymns has more than
sixty verses. They are “introductions,” proems (prooimia), intended to be sung
before the rhapsodist's recital of some other lay (perhaps at some rhapsodic
contest), as a sort of "grace before meat"--in the same spirit which
made every Greek festivity sacred to some divinity. No external evidence exists
for the date of these Hymns. They contain many Homeric formulas and tags of
verses which give an antique flavour even to what is comparatively modern. Parts
of the poems may go back to a remote antiquity; the Hymn to Demeter may have
been composed about B.C. 650; more date from the fifth and sixth centuries.
After the fifth century, the interest in epic recitations was so slight that
these proems would not be composed.
The Batrachomyomachia is a comic epic poem of 303 verses,
giving a burlesque account of the battle between the frogs and mice, when Puff-cheek
(Phusignathos), king of the frogs, caused the death of Crumb-snatcher (Psicharpax),
a promising young mouse, inviting him and bearing him on his back to visit his
home, but deserting him in the midst of the waters on the approach of a water-snake.
The story is composed with humour and some ingenuity, but is a light production.
It was ascribed to Pigres, son of Lygdamis and nephew of the Artemisia who distinguished
herself in the battle of Salamis; but if it were composed by him, it was interpolated
and worked over later. Very possibly it was composed in the Alexandrian period,
in mockery of the revival of epic poetry after the ancient spirit was lost.
The epigrams and jests are entirely insignificant, both in quantity and quality.
The only one of any note is the answer of Arcadian fishers to the question as
to their luck: "All that they took, they left; what they did not take,
they brought with them"(hoss helomen, lipomesth <*> hosa d ouch helomen
pheromestha). The Margites was a comic poem of considerable fame in antiquity,
part in dactylic hexameter and part in iambic trimeter verse, with the story
of a stupid (margos), bashful fellow, who had all manner of ridiculous adventures
and attempted many things which were beyond his powers. As long as critics are
not agreed as to what works are rightly attributed to Chaucer, and even as to
the authorship of some of the plays which have been ascribed to Shakespeare,
no one can wonder that little is known of the history of the incunabula of Greek
poetry, composed in the imaginative age, long before the classical period.
The Iliad and the Odyssey contain the story of parts of the
Trojan cycle of myths.
The Iliad opens with a scene in the last of the ten years
of the Siege of Troy, and the action of the poem continues for only seven weeks.
With great ingenuity (as it would seem) just enough incidental indications are
given of the early history of the war to supply the needed basis for an intelligent
appreciation of the story. As Horace says, Homer semper ad eventum festinat
et in medias res, non secus ac notas auditorem rapit. The judgment of Paris
and the assignment of the prize of beauty to the Goddess of Love are referred
to in the Homeric poems but once, and that in a doubtful passage, xxiv. 29,
30. Paris (his Greek name Alexander is more frequent in the poems), the voluptuous
son of Priam, king of Ilios (the later Ilium), in the Trojan land, on the south
western shore of the Hellespont, had sailed to Lacedaemon and carried away Helen,
the beautiful wife of Menelaus, the king, and many of her possessions. In order
to avenge this insult and to recover the woman and her treasures, Menelaus and
his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, gathered an army at Aulis, and with
1186 ships (and perhaps 100,000 men) set sail for the plain of Troy. For ten
years they besiege the city. They bring with them no supplies, and spend much
of their time in making forays on the neighbouring districts and more formal
expeditions against the adjoining towns. The captured men are slain or sold
to distant islands; the women are kept as slaves. The Trojans are not closely
barred within their walls, but they are unable to cultivate their fields and
are obliged to send their treasures to their neighbours, in order to buy provisions
and to hire mercenaries. The loss of men does not seem to have been very great
on either side in the early years of the war. At the opening of the Iliad, an
old priest of Apollo, Chryses, comes to the Greek camp to ransom his daughter,
who had been captured by the Greeks and given as a prize of honour to Agamemnon.
The king refuses the request, and Apollo avenges the slight to his priest by
sending a pestilence upon the Greek camp. After nine days an assembly of the
army is called, and the seer Calchas declares the cause of the god's anger.
The rude language used by Achilles, the mightiest of the Greek warriors, arouses
the wrath of Agamemnon, and a quarrel follows. Achilles "sulks in his tent,"
while his mother, the goddess Thetis, persuades Zeus to grant victory to the
Trojan arms. The action of the Iliad includes only four days of battle. In the
first, ii.-vii. 380, neither side gains any great advantage; in the second,
viii., the tide of battle often turns and the gods interfere again and again,
but at last the Trojans drive the foe to their camp, and bivouac on the plain,
near the Greek watchfires. In the third day of battle, xi.-xviii., the Trojans
break into the Greek camp and begin to set fire to the fleet; but as soon as
Achilles sees the flickering flame he sends his comrade Patroclus with his Myrmidons,
enjoining upon him to drive the Trojans from the camp, but not to attempt to
capture the city. Patroclus forgets the warning of his chief, and filled with
the spirit of the combat presses on too far; Apollo strikes him (the only instance
in the poems of such direct interference of a divinity), and Hector slays him.
Achilles now becomes more angry at Hector than he had been at Agamemnon, and
takes an active part in the fourth day of battle, xix.--xxii., in which he drives
the Trojans in confusion into their city, and slays Hector. The twenty-third
book is devoted to the funeral games in honour of Patroclus, in accordance with
the curious ancient custom of honouring the dead with horse-races and foot-races
and contests in wrestling, boxing, putting the shot, and shooting the bow. In
the twenty-fourth book old Priam comes to the Greek camp and ransoms the body
of Hector from Achilles, who here appears in a gentler mood. The poem closes
very simply: "Thus these were busy with the burial of Hector." After
the action of the Iliad, the Aethiopian Memnon comes with his men to the help
of Troy, while Philoctetes with the bow of Heracles and Neoptolemus, the son
of Achilles, after his father's death, come to aid the Greeks. The alliance
of the Amazons with the Trojans is not mentioned in the poems. Odysseus plans
the Wooden Horse, by which the city is captured. Athene's wrath is kindled against
the Greeks by their conduct after the capture of the city, and she sends upon
them a storm, which scatters their fleets. Menelaus is driven to Crete and Egypt,
and with Helen reaches his home in Sparta only in the eighth year of their wandering.
Odysseus is driven first to the land of the lotus-eaters, then to the island
of the Cyclopes, where Polyphemus slays and devours six of his comrades (and
is blinded by him), thence to the land of the Laestrygonians (where all but
one of his ships are destroyed), and to Circe's island, where he passes a year.
He then visits Hades, in order to consult the soul of the blind Theban seer,
Teiresias. In Hades he sees the shade of his mother and those of many of the
Greek heroes. On his return the dangers of Scylla and Charybdis are met. His
comrades slay one of the cattle of the Sun, and their boat is wrecked. Odysseus
himself is borne to the island of the sea-nymph Calypso, who cares for him tenderly,
and would make him immortal and her husband. The scene of the Odyssey opens
in the tenth year after the close of the Trojan War and the twentieth after
the departure of Odysseus from his home on Ithaca. He has been absent so long
that no expectation is entertained of his return. His home is filled by more
than a hundred young princes, each eager to win the hand of the faithful and
prudent wife, Penelope; and thus to become the king of the realm. The goddess
Athene pities Odysseus, who is weary of his sojourn in the grotto of Calypso
and longing for his home, and secures the decree of Zeus for his return. Meanwhile
she sends his son Telemachus to Nestor and Menelaus, asking for tidings of his
father. Odysseus sets out from Calypso's island, eighteen days' sail to the
west, but as he approaches Greece he is wrecked by the sea-god Poseidon, whose
son Polyphemus he had blinded, and is cast on the shore of the Phaeacians (identified
by the ancients with Corcyra, the modern Corfu), who convey him to his home.
Finding his palace in the possession of haughty suitors, he returns in the guise
of a beggar, but with the help of his son and two faithful servants (and Athene)
he slays the suitors and regains his kingdom and faithful wife.
The action of the Odyssey covers only six weeks --less even
than that of the Iliad--yet the events of the ten years of wandering are comprised
in the stories which are put into the mouth of Nestor, Menelaus, and Odysseus
himself. This device of introducing a full account of events which are not included
in the time of the proper action of the poem was followed by Vergil in his account
of the capture of Troy (as told by Aeneas), and by Milton in his account of
the war in heaven (told by Raphael). Many matters which are merely touched upon
in the poem were discussed more fully in the lesser epic poems, and the question
has been raised whether these brief mentions in the Iliad and Odyssey were allusions
to the fuller accounts, already familiar to the hearer, or rather were the fruitful
germs which were later developed into the Cypria, the Nosti, etc. In some cases
the latter alternative seems certain--e. g. on the death of Hector, his wife
Andromache despairs of safety for herself and her son Astyanax; "he will
either accompany her into slavery, or some Greek will seize him by the arm and
hurl him from the wall." This seems to have suggested to a later poet the
detailed description of such a death for the boy.
The influence of the Homeric poems upon the Greeks was very
great. Pindar says that Odysseus had more fame than he deserved because of the
sweet-voiced Homer (Nem. vii. 20, ego de pleon elpomai logon Odusseos e pathan
dia ton haduepe genesth Homeron). Herodotus even asserts that Homer and Hesiod
fixed the theogony of the Greeks, distributing to the gods their epithets, arts,
and honours. Appeal was made to the Homeric poems to settle questions of precedence
and of title to territory. These poems were in large measure the basis of the
Greek youth's education. A fragment of a play of Aristophanes shows us a father
examining his son, to prove his diligence in school, on the meaning of certain
obsolete Homeric words: ti kalousi korumba; ti kalous amenena karena; In the
Symposium of Xenophon, Niceratus says that his father, the noted Athenian general
Nicias, in his desire to make a good man of him, compelled him to learn all
the poems of Homer, and that he could repeat the entire Iliad and Odyssey from
memory. At the Panathenaic festival from the time of Solon early in the sixth
century, for at least two hundred years the recitation of portions of the Homeric
poems had a prominent place. The Platonic dialogue Ion reports a conversation
between Socrates and the Ephesian rhapsode Ion, who visits Athens after taking
the prize in the Homeric recitation at Epidaurus, and expects the same honour
from the Panathenaic festival. This Ion was a Homeric specialist; he claimed
no unusual familiarity with Hesiod and Archilochus, but asserted that no one
equalled him as an interpreter of Homer. Such men naturally magnified their
office and represented the poet as the teacher of much occult wisdom--finding
in his works the best maxims for war and for peace, for the statesman, the philosopher,
and the general. Even Aristophanes represents Aeschylus as saying, "From
what has divine Homer received his fame except from his most excellent instructions
with regard to tactics, brave deeds, and the arming of men?" (Frogs, 1034,
ho de theios Homeros | apo tou timen kai kleos eschen plen toud hoti chrest
edidaxen | taxeis aretas hopliseis andron). The words of Horace are familiar:
at Praeneste he read again Homer, who taught what was base and what was honourable
more fully and better than the Stoic Chrysippus or the Academic philosopher
Crantor (Epist. i. 2. 1, Troiani belli scriptorem . . . relegi; | qui quid sit
pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, | plenius ac melius Chrysippo et
Crantore dicit). Plato refutes the view that Homer had special wisdom in regard
to "ars, generalships, administration of cities, and the education of men,"
thus showing the prevalence of that belief.
According to an uncertain story, Pythagoras was said to have
seen Homer in Hades, suffering torments in return for his statements about the
gods. But the first definite criticism of Homer, so far as is known, was that
of Xenophanes, at the close of the sixth century B.C., that Homer and Hesiod
attributed to the gods all actions which are regarded as shameful by men. Heraclitus,
Xenophanes' contemporary, would have Homer driven from the musical contests.
Plato, in his Republic, enters into a detailed examination of the moral effect
exerted by the Homeric poems, and declares that the youths who are in process
of training to be the guardians of his ideal State must not be rendered impious
by hearing what would degrade the gods in their eyes; lest they should fear
death more than defeat and flight, they must not hear Zeus lamenting the death
of Sarpedon, and Achilles declaring that he would rather serve a poor man on
earth than rule over all the dead in the home of Hades; they must not be taught
insubordination and insolence to commanding officers by hearing Achilles call
Agamemnon a coward; and they must not learn to give free rein to their passions
from the wantonness of Zeus and from Odysseus' enjoyment of food and drink.
Thus, although with much regret because of his old regard and affection for
the poet, the works of Homer are not allowed in Plato's ideal State. The reader
is at a loss to know how seriously he is to understand these words of the philosopher,
who is fond of clinching an argument or giving a higher literary flavour to
a sentence by a quotation from the "inspired poet." Allegory was already
employed in the interpretation of the most offensive passages, but Plato says
that the young person cannot distinguish between what is allegorical and what
is not. In the Phaedrus he playfully suggests that the poet may have lost his
sight because of his false statements with regard to the gods. Plutarch, in
his treatise on "How a young man should study poetry," makes a formal
reply to Plato without naming him, urging that the young should be taught to
discriminate between what is admirable in itself and what is an admirable imitation
of the offensive or even base. The rhetorician Zoilus received the nickname
of Homer's Scourge (Homeromastix) because of his severe criticisms on the poet;
but these were meant very likely merely as a paradox, just as other rhetoricians
showed their ingenuity in maintaining the guilt of Socrates, the innocence of
Busiris, and the advantages of fever and vermin.
The old Greek commentaries (scholia, scholia) on Homer mention
editions by Antimachus of Colophon (himself an epic poet, a contemporary of
Plato), and by Aristotle, who was said to have prepared an edition expressly
for the use of his distinguished pupil, Alexander the Great. Athenian school-masters
prepared also lists of obsolete Homeric words. The critical study of Homer,
however, began at Alexandria, in connection with the great library and "Museum”
which were established by the Ptolemies. These kings of Egypt had abundant means
with which to encourage the arts and sciences, and desired by the help of Greek
civilization to break down the barriers which existed between the different
races of their subjects and to exalt their kingdom. They gathered men of literary
talent from all lands and set apart a portion of the palace for a great library.
Strenuous efforts were made to secure copies of all works of Greek literature,
and, in fact, of all literature, including, according to the story, the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. In the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus (who
reigned B.C. 285-247), the library was said to contain 400,000 volumes (rolls)--perhaps
equal to about 40,000 modern octavo volumes--such a collection as had never
existed before. It possessed copies of Homer from Marseilles, Chios (the seat
of the Homeridae), Sinope on the Black Sea, Argos, Cyprus, Crete. The Homeric
poems formed the centre of the literary studies of the Alexandrian scholars.
The first careful editor and reviser of the Homeric text was Zenodotus, the
earliest of the librarians. He had before him copies of the poems with variations
which extended over whole verses and clauses, as well as to words and forms.
A critical procedure was necessary. Even the same manuscript must have shown
marked inconsistencies of grammatical forms. The first critical edition, in
the nature of the case, must have been an experiment. The editor can have had
no fixed principles with regard to the formation of words and the characteristics
of the Homeric dialect. Zenodotus is thought to have been the first to divide
the Iliad and the Odyssey each into twenty-four books. In earlier times this
division was unknown. So, for example, Herodotus speaks of Iliad vi. 289-292
as en Diomedeos aristeiei. Aelian writes in detail of this ancient custom of
reference by the subject of each particular portion of the poems. The ancient
titles are preserved, though with some possible inaccuracies and no definite
authority, as the headings of the books in ordinary editions of the poems. The
division into books became necessary at this particular time, because then parchment
was replaced by papyrus as the ordinary writing material. The comparatively
frail papyrus was not suited for long rolls. Hence the works of Plato, Xenophon,
Thucydides, and Herodotus were divided, also. Zenodotus seems to have composed
no commentary to accompany his edition of the poems, but tradition preserved
his views of certain passages. He was not led to reject or change for grammatical
reasons, but seems to have been guided in many changes rather by a sense of
propriety. Thus he rejected Il. iii. 424, where Aphrodite took a chair and set
it for Helen, for the goddess to do menial service was aprepes in his eyes;
verses Il. i. 28-30 were unworthy of a king; in Il. i. 260, where Nestor says,
"I have been associated with better men than you" (areiosin ee per
humin), Zenodotus read "than we" (hemin), in order to make the expression
more courteous. But the work of this critic is coming to honour, and it is at
present fashionable in some quarters to praise him at the expense of Aristarchus.
The edition of Zenodotus formed the basis of that of his
successor, Aristophanes of Byzantium, a little after B.C. 200, who is noteworthy
as the first to introduce to general use the marks of accentuation and the signs
of quantity, which are still in use. His chief work was in lexicography.
Unquestionably the greatest of the literary critics of Alexandria
was Aristarchus, who was born in the island of Samothrace, but came to Alexandria
and studied under Aristophanes, whom he succeeded in the care of the library.
He prepared two revised editions of the Homeric text, with critical marks in
the margin, and wrote eight hundred tracts on many subjects, largely connected
with our poet. He founded a school of critics which continued active until the
time of the early Roman emperors. Many of his notes have been preserved to us
in the Greek scholia, and prove his learning and his caution. The watchword
and battle-cry of his school was analogy, opposed to the rival school of the
Stoic Crates at Pergamum, who was more free in the admission of anomalies in
the construction of sentences and in the formation and meaning of words. Crates
indulged in allegorical interpretation, paying little attention to grammatical
studies, and making Homer a philosopher and an orator, while Aristarchus was
more conservative and sober in his views.
The basis of our scholia to the Iliad is an epitome made
about A.D. 200, of four works. Of these the most important was a work by Didymus
(called Chalkenteros and Bibliolathas from his unwearied industry and literary
productivity), of the time of Augustus, in which Didymus aimed at giving a full
report of the readings of the editions of Aristarchus, in so far as they varied
from others. Next in importance was a work by an earlier contemporary, Aristonicus,
who endeavoured to explain the use of the critical signs of Aristarchus, and
the reasons for their employment in each case. Less full and important were
the extracts from a treatise by Herodian on Accentuation (he Iliake Prosoidia)
and one by Nicanor on Punctuation (Peri Stigmes). The epitome of these four
works has suffered serious losses in its transmission to the present time, and
considerable additional matter of little value and authority has been added.
The component parts of these scholia have been carefully analyzed and separated,
and scholars no longer speak of the statement of the scholiast, but of that
of Didymus, of Nicanor, etc. The extant scholia to the Odyssey are far less
extensive and important than those to the Iliad.
The Homeric text of the MSS. does not seem to be so distinctly
under the control of the text of Aristarchus as was to be expected. In many
particulars it differs from his editions--so widely that it seems that the vulgate
text was only indirectly and slightly influenced by his work. Many scholars
now regard the restoration of the Aristarchean text as the ultimate, or at least
the immediate, aim of Homeric text-criticism. But Bekker's edition of 1858 attempted
to present the text as it was sung--not as it stood in the old MSS.--inserting
the lost vau where the editor believed it had once been pronounced. Bekker had
been preceded by a wholly unscientific attempt of the same kind in 1820, by
R. Payne Knight, who inserted vaus with more zeal than discretion, printing
as the title of the Iliad WIDWIAS, and Tydeus as TUWDEWS, but who with many
absurdities had many ideas which have been confirmed by modern investigations.
Bekker has been followed by others, notably Nauck, who has made a scientific
edition of Homer such as he believes the poems to have been before the forms
were subjected to later Attic influence.
That the Homeric text of Plato and Aristotle was not exactly
like that of the present day is extremely probable, but these seem to have quoted
so freely that exact inferences are difficult. The view that they quoted from
memory is strengthened by the fact that each of the two makes a careless reference
to the Homeric story: Plato speaks of Eurypylus where he means Machaon, confusing
two similar incidents in the same book of the Iliad; and Aristotle puts into
the mouth of Calypso a command of Odysseus which was given in accordance with
advice of Circe. In the summer of 1891 the British Museum published a collation
of several very ancient papyrus texts of the Iliad, containing fragments of
several hundred lines. With the exception of two or three details, the most
important teaching of these MSS., one of which is from the very beginning of
our era, is that the ordinary texts of to-day are rather more accurate and intelligible
than those of two thousand years ago, but certain verses may not have been recognized
as Homeric then which are in modern texts.
For the last century the vexed and ever-burning Homeric Question
has been with regard to the composition and original form of the Homeric poems--whether
they were the creations of one poetic genius or the remnants of the songs of
many bards; whether their composition was organic or atomic; whether they can
be compared with Vergil's Aeneid and Milton's Paradise Lost, or whether they
were at first only short, scattered songs, grouped around central personages
and events, and gradually developed into longer poems with unity. The heat and
length of the discussion have made clear the fact that the question is difficult,
and no hypothesis has been presented free from grave objections. Scholars are
more nearly agreed than half a century ago, however. Probably no one who has
a right to an opinion on the subject now holds to the strict unity of the poems
in the old sense--that all of the Iliad and Odyssey was composed by one man--yet
comparatively few would deny a certain unity in the poems, however it was secured.
The ancient Alexandrians had their Separatists (chorizontes), Xeno and Hellanicus,
who denied that the Odyssey was composed by the author of the Iliad, and Perizonius
in 1684 called attention to the late use of writing for literary purposes. The
great Bentley in 1713 said that "Homer wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies
to be sung by himself for small earnings and good cheer, at festivals and other
days of merriment; the Iliad he made for the men, and the Odysseis for the other
sex. These loose songs were not collected together in the form of an epic poem
till about five hundred years after." Vico of Naples in 1725 expressed
his view that Homer never existed--that he was the personification of the early
songs of the Greeks. Robert Wood, in An Essay on the Original Genius of Homer
(1769), declared his belief that the art of writing was not known to Homer.
But the modern discussion of the Homeric Question dates from the Prolegomena
ad Homerum of Friedrich August Wolf, published in 1795. The Prolegomena excited
much attention, and probably has had greater influence than any other work on
the methods of historical and philological study, although its ideas were not
wholly novel. The poet Herder and the philologist Heyne each claimed that his
thunder had been stolen. The book owed its great success largely to its clear
and attractive presentation of the subject, and it is more valuable now for
its method than for its particular arguments. Wolf planned to give a critical
history of the Homeric poems through six periods, the first of which extended
from the composition of the poems (about B.C. 950, according to him) to the
age of Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens in the sixth century B.C., who, according
to an uncertain tradition, first collected and arranged them in their present
form; the second period extended from Pisistratus to Zenodotus, the earliest
of the Alexandrian critics. Wolf never completed his work beyond these first
two periods. He attempted to show (a) that the Homeric poems were not committed
to writing by the poet, but were intrusted to the memory of the rhapsodes, who
were gathered in schools, like the Hebrew prophets; thus before the poems were
written they were exposed to many and unintentional changes--from lapse of memory,
and from a singer's desire to improve a passage or suit it more perfectly to
a special occasion. Writing was unknown in Greece in Homer's time, and no class
of readers existed for whom a poem should be written. (b) After the poems had
been committed to writing, many more additional changes were made in them, in
order to remove inconsistencies and to give them the polish of an age advanced
in culture and poetic art. (c) The Iliad and Odyssey in their present form are
due not to the poetic genius of Homer, but to the intelligence of a later age--to
the united efforts of Pisistratus and the poets of his court. (d) The songs
themselves, of which the Iliad and Odyssey are composed, are not by the same
poet. These last two theses were never publicly discussed by Wolf in detail.
He only urged that if the poems were not to be committed to writing at the time
when they were composed, the sougs were not originally parts of one long work;
no one would have thought of making a poem which could not be read and which
was too long to be sung or recited at a single sitting. A bond of union would
be valueless between lays which were to be sung in no regular order on different
occasions. The Homeric poems unquestionably possess a certain unity beyond what
is found in Hesiod or in the late poet Quintus Smyrnaeus, but this unity must
be due to the editors of the Pisistratean age. Discrepancies are found which
could not occur in a single poem, but might very well be overlooked in the combination
of independent lays. Entire rhapsodies (e. g. Iliad x.) seem to be due to some
other than the poet of the greater part of the Iliad.
The views of Wolf were received with intense interest, but
with varied approval. The poet Schiller said that the man was a barbarian who
would tear asunder the Homeric poems and believe that they were put together
long after their composition. Goethe, while at first an enthusiastic admirer
of the Prolegomena, soon declared that he believed in the unity of the Iliad
more heartily than ever. On the whole, however, the work of Wolf was convincing,
at least in large part, to most scholars of Germany. Theologians received it
with special interest, on account of the applications of Wolf's principles to
the study of the Old Testament. But a reaction took place. Opponents urged that
the use of writing in Greece was much earlier than Wolf claimed; but they made
the fatal concession that such long poems would be impossible without the aid
of writing. Both sides claimed too much. Writing was certainly known in Greece
earlier than Wolf allowed, but was not used for extensive literary purposes
until long after the time alleged by his opponents. The power of the human memory
to retain accurately long poems had been underrated. The external arguments
against the original unity of the Homeric poems have yielded rather than advanced
since Wolf's time. The evidence in support of the story of the work of Pisistratus
in collecting and arranging the scattered Homeric poems is considered weak,
as well as that for the existence of schools of rhapsodists corresponding to
the schools of the prophets.
Only a beginning had been made of the attempt to disprove
the unity of the Homeric poems from internal evidence when Lachmann, of Berlin,
in 1837, applied to the Iliad the analysis which had been applied not much earlier
to the Nibelungenlied. He set to work to discover contradictions and inconsistencies
which would indicate the different authorship of different parts. The discussion
of the unity of the poems was conducted mainly on his principles for half a
century, and no one now lays stress on the external evidence, one way or the
other. In the first book of the Iliad he determined an original lay, complete
in itself, and two independent and inconsistent continuations. The beginning
of the second book (he says) cannot have been part of the same lay as the close
of the first book; at the close of book i., Zeus sleeps, with Hera by his side,
while at the beginning of book ii., Zeus cannot sleep and has an interview with
the Dream God, in which he tells much that he would not have Hera know. In the
third day of battle, which begins book xi. 1 and continues through book xviii.
240, the sun comes twice to the zenith. The twenty-third book of the Iliad cannot
have been intended to follow immediately upon the twenty-second--the one ending,
"Thus she spake weeping, and the women groaned in response," while
the next begins, "Thus these were groaning throughout the city." Following
such indications, Lachmann marked out the boundaries of eighteen distinct lays
in the Iliad. Kochly, following in Lachmann's footsteps, published in 1851 an
edition of the Iliad, in sixteen lays --not agreeing with Lachmann in the divisions
so well as in the number of the songs. The advocates of the theory that the
Homeric poems are but a conglomeration of independent lays have not succeeded
in coming to essential agreement with regard to the original songs. Their lines
of cleavage do not agree. Contradictions certainly exist: Odysseus' hair is
blonde, but black. Diomed and Odysseus are seriously wounded and retire from
the conflict, but two days later take part in the games in honour of Patroclus--Odysseus
wrestling with Telamonian Ajax, and winning the prize in the foot-race. Most
noted of all is the case of Pylaemenes; he is slain at Il. v. 576, but follows
the corpse of his son from the battle. Some inconsistencies may be considered
as trifles about which the poet did not concern himself; he was composing for
hearers rather than for critical readers who can turn backward and forward,
and compare statements. Other inconsistencies may have been caused by interpolations;
the incident of Pylaemenes in Il. xiii. 658 may have been added by a later poet
in order to give increased pathos to the scene. Possibly the Homeric Greeks
were not so much disturbed as some moderns at such inconsistencies. Similar
discrepancies are found in the works of Vergil and other poets.
In 1846, the historian Grote, declaring that "the idea
that a poem as we read it grew out of atoms not originally designed for the
places which they now occupy, involves us in new and inextricable difficulties
when we seek to elucidate either the mode of coalescence or the degree of existing
unity," proposed the theory that the present Iliad was made up by the combination
of an original Iliad with an Achilleid. This latter poem on the Wrath of Achilles
gives all that is "really necessary to complete the programme in the opening
proem of the poem."
In 1878, Professor Geddes of Aberdeen, following in Grote's
footsteps, declared that "the Homeric corpus of Iliad and Odyssey falls
asunder into two great sections, on the one hand the Achilleid, and on the other
the non-Achilleid, plus the Odyssey.""A poet, who is also the author
of the Odyssey, has engrafted on a more ancient poem, the Achilleid, splendid
and vigorous saplings of his own, transforming and enlarging it into an Iliad."
This view was maintained by many indications: Achilles is more gentle in the
Odyssean books; Helen is not mentioned in the Achilleid; the dog is more honoured
in the Odyssean books, the horse in the Achilleid, etc.
Organic development from a brief epic poem was claimed for
the Odyssey by Kirchhoff of Berlin, Bankes in 1859. He considers the original
part to be the old Return (Nostos) of Odysseus, of just 1200 verses; to this
simple story was added a longer story of 3560 verses, narrating the adventures
of Odysseus after his return to Ithaca; still later were added (7185 verses)
the Telemachia, or account of the journey of Telemachus to Pylus and Sparta,
the experiences of Odysseus in Phaeacia, and his adventures in the cave of Polyphemus,
in the island of Circe, in the realm of Hades, etc.
Christ of Munich published in 1884 an edition of the Iliad
in which he divided the poem into forty lays, and indicated by the use of four
different styles of Greek type his view of the relative order of composition
of the different parts of the poem. Immediately after the first book he places
the eleventh, the Bravery of Agamemnon, believing that the intermediate books
were composed after the poet saw what a rich vein he had struck, and to what
a magnificent growth his germ might be developed. He holds that most of the
poem proves a poet revolving a great plan in his mind, and arranging the parts
to form a whole.
Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff published in 1884 an important
work on this subject, Homerische Untersuchungen, dedicated to the well-known
Biblical scholar Wellhausen. Just as Wolf's Prole- gomena stimulated the investigation
of the historical sources and of the age of the Old Testament Scriptures, so
the method of the recent analysis of the Pentateuch has been applied to the
Homeric poems. Wilamowitz rejects Lachmann's lays as being fragments, unintelligible
when separated. He bases his work upon that of Kirchhoff, yet rejects many of
the latter's views. He follows him in putting the Odyssey in the front of the
discussion. Until Kirchhoff, no scholar had seriously attempted the critical
dissection of this poem, of which the artistic plan was not doubted. Two of
Wilamowitz's conclusions are that the Telemachia was composed in Asia Minor,
and that the Odyssey was brought into its present form in Greece proper --probably
near Corinth or in Euboea.
The Homeric Question is clearly full of difficulties. No
theory has been proposed which meets with general acceptance. The poems doubtless
contain a great mass of very ancient material. Professor Percy Gardner writes,
in his New Chapters in Greek History (1892), "There is a broad line dividing
mythical from political Hellas, a line which seems to coincide with the great
break made in the continuity of Hellas by the Dorian invasion. . . . The Homeric
poetry may have been reduced to form after the splendour of the Ionian and Achaean
chiefs had passed away. . . . In using the name of Homer, we do not, of course,
assert that the Homeric poems had a single author. But we do assert the antiquity
of those poems. Homer reflects the pre-historic age of Greece as truly as does
Herodotus the Greece of the Persian Wars, or Pausanias the Greece of the age
of the Antonines." The poet does not profess to have seen Priam's Troy;
he is clearly conscious that he belongs to a degenerate age, and that he is
dependent on the muse for his information. No one supposes that the poems are
an accurate record of a particular war. The recent excavations, however, establish
the fact that at Mycenae, the home of the Homeric Agamemnon, and on the shore
of the Hellespont, the home of the Homeric Priam, stood at the same period,
flourishing from about B.C. 1400 to about B.C. 1000, cities of wealth and power,
of similar culture. A war between these cities, which may have suggested the
Homeric story, is by no means an impossibility. The details, however, and perhaps
every name of a person, are due to the poet's imagination. The view that the
poems were essentially in their present condition before the historical period
in Greece began, early in the eighth century B.C., is moderate.
The Homeric dialect is artificial--that is, such as was never
spoken by any Greek tribe. It contains many ancient elements, but is far from
being the ancestor of all the later historical dialects. It is not even the
source of the Attic or Ionic dialects. The Aeolic element in it is so strong
as to suggest to Fick the view that the older parts of the poems were composed
in the Aeolic dialect and were afterwards translated into that of the Ionic.
The formulaic character of many of the Aeolic words and phrases, the large number
of Homeric proper names found in historical times in Northern Greece, the traditions
with regard to the seats of the Pierian Muses, and the prominence given to the
Thessalian hero, Achilles, make probable the view that epic poetry was first
cultivated by the Aeolians in Northern Greece, but was afterwards brought to
perfection by the Ionians in Asia Minor. The dialect certainly indicates a long
course of development. Obsolete words and forms were retained by the poets in
certain connections after they had been dropped from the ordinary speech of
the people. Certain late forms appear in the ordinary texts in sufficient number
to suggest to Paley the theory that the poems were brought into their present
form in the age of Pericles at Athens; but most of these forms can be explained
easily as the work of a careless copyist, who substituted a form which he heard
every day for one which was found only in old poems--just as a halfeducated
man would do to-day in copying the works of Chaucer, unless he were specially
warned and trained to be accurate in this matter. If the Homeric poems were
thoroughly worked over, revamped, in the time of Solon or of Pericles, some
clear trace would have been left of the culture and political relations of that
time. A strong indication of the falsity of the story that Pisistratus gathered
the poems and caused interpolations to be made to the glory of Athens, is the
simple fact that Athens is so insignificant in the Iliad and Odyssey. If the
unity of the poems were really due to Pisistratus, and he ordered the poets
of his court to insert passages which would honour Athens, we should find greater
distinction given to Athenian heroes and more myths of the Attic cycle. The
two or three verses assigned by the ancient critics to Athenian interpolators
are absolutely trifling.
Fortunately the Homeric poems exist, even though scholars
have not settled the question when and how they came into being. Destructive
criticism has not been able to disturb the fact that they remain the greatest
epic poems the world has seen-- admired by many ages and peoples of different
civilizations. They stand unrivalled. In comparison with them the vast epics
of India are as shapeless as the Hindoo idols, and are in their luxuriance like
to a tropical jungle; while the work of Vergil and of Milton, who take Homer
as their master, is artificial and unnatural in comparison with his--the "clearest-souled
of men."
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Homerus (Homeros). The poems of Homer formed the basis of Greek literature. Every
Greek who had received a liberal education was perfectly well acquainted with
them from his childhood, and had learnt them by heart at school; but nobody could
state any thing certain about their author. In fact, the several biographies of
Homer which are now extant afford very little or nothing of an authentic history.
The various dates assigned to Homer's age offer no less a diversity than 500 years
(from B. C. 1184-684). Crates and Eratosthenes state, that he lived within the
first century after the Trojan war; Aristotle and Aristarchus make him a contemporary
of the Ionian migration, 140 years after the war; the chronologist, Apollodorus,
gives the year 240, Porphyrius 275, the Parian Marble 277, Herodotus 400 after
that event; and Theopompus even makes him a contemporary of Gyges, king of Lydia
(Nitzsch, Melet. de Histor. Hom. fasc. ii., de Hist. Hom.). The most important
point to be determined is, whether we are to place Homer beforee or after the
lonian migration. The latter is supported by the best authors, and by the general
opinion of antiquity, according to which Homer was by birth an Ionian of Asia
Minor. There were indeed more than seven cities which claimed Homer as their countryman;
for if we number all those that we find mentioned in different passages of ancient
writers, we have seventeen or nineteen cities mentioned as the birth-places of
Homer; but the claims of most of these are so suspicious and feeble, that they
easily vanish before a closer examination. Athens, for instance, alleged that
she was the metropolis of Smyrna, and could therefore number Homer amongst her
citizens. Many other poems were attributed to Homer besides the Iliad and Odyssey.
The real authors of these poems were forgotten, but their fellow-citizens pretended
that Homer, the supposed author, had lived or been born among them. The claims
of Cyme and Colophon will not seem entitled to much consideration, because they
are preferred by Ephorus and Nicander. who were citizens of those respective towns.
After sifting the authorities for all the different statements, the claims of
Smyrna and Chios remain the most plausible, and between these two we have to decide.
Smyrna is supported by Pindar, Scylax. and Stesimbrotus ; Chios by Simonides,
Acusilaus, Hellanicus, Thucydides, the tradition of a family of Homerids at Chios,
and the local worship of a hero, Homeros. The preference is now generally given
to Smyrna. Smyrna was first founded by Ionians from Ephesus, who were followed,
and afterwards expelled, by Aeolians from Cyme : the expelled Ionians fled to
Colophon, and Smyrna thus became Aeolic. Subsequentlyy the Colophonians drove
out the Aeolians from Smyrna, which from henceforth was a purely Ionic city. The
Aeolians were originally in possession of the traditions of the Trojan war, which
their ancestors had waged, and in which no Ionians had taken part. Homer therefore.
himself an Ionian, who had come from Ephesus, received these traditions from the
new Aeolian settlers, and when the lonians were driven out of Smyrna, either he
himself fled to Chios, or his descendants or disciples settled there, and formed
the famous family of Homerids. Thus we may unite the claims of Smyrna and Chios,
and explain the peculiarities of the Homeric dialect, which is different from
the pure Ionic, and has a large mixture of Aeolic elements. According to this
computation, Homer would have flourished shortly after the time of the Ionian
migration, a time best attested, as we have seen, by the au thorities of Aristotle
and Aristarchus. But this result seems not to be reconcilable with the follow
ing considerations:
1. Placing Homer more than a century and a half after the Trojan war, we have
a long period which is apparently quite destitute of poetical exertions. Is it
likely that the heroes should not have found a bard for their deeds till more
than a hundred and fifty years after their death? And how could the knowledge
of these deeds be preserved without poetical traditions and epic songs, the only
chronicles of an illiterate age?
2. In addition to this, there was a stirring active time between the Asiatic settlements
of the Greeks and the war with Troy. Of the exploits of this time, certainly nowise
inferior to the exploits of the heroic age itself, we should expect to find something
mentioned or alluded to in the work of a poet who lived during or shortly after
it. But of this there is not a trace to be found in Homer.
3. The mythology and the poems of Homer could not have originated in Asia. It
is the growth of a long period, during which the ancient Thracian bards, who lived
partly in Thessaly, round Mount Olympus, and partly in Boeotia, near Helicon,
consolidated all the different and various local mythologies into one great mythological
system. If Homer had made the mythology of the Greeks, as Herodotus (ii. 53) affirms,
he would not have represented the Thessalian Olympus as the seat of his gods,
but some mountain of Asia Minor; his Muses would not have been those of Olympus,
but they would have dwelt on Ida or Gargaros. Homer, if his works had first originated
in Asia, would not have compared Nausicaa to Artemis walking on Tayyetus or Erymanthus
(Od. vi. 102); and a great many other allusions to European countries, which show
the poet's familiar acquaintance with them, could have found no place in the work
of an Asiatic. It is evident that Homer was far better acquainted with European
Greece than lie was with Asia Minor, and even the country round Troy. Sir W. Cell,
and other modern travellers, were astonished at the accuracy with which Homer
has described places in Peloponnesus, and particularly the island of Ithaca. It
has been observed, that nobody could have given these descriptions, except one
who had seen the country himself. How shall we, with all this, maintain our proposition,
that Homer was an Ionian of Asia Minor? It is indispensable, in order to clear
up this point, to enter more at large into the discussion concerning the origin
of the Homerie poems.
The whole of antiquity unanimously viewed the Iliad and the Odyssey
as the productions of a certain individual, called Homer. No doubt of this fact
ever entered the mind of any of the ancients; and even a large number of other
poems were attributed to thesame author. This opinion continued unshaken down
to the year 1795, when F. A. Wolf wrote his famous Prolegomena, in which he endeavoured
to show that the Iliad and Odyssey were not two complete poems, but small, separate,
independent epic songs, celebrating single exploits of the heroes, and that these
lays were for the first time written down and united, as the Iliad and Odyssey,
by Peisistratus, the tyrant of Athens. This opinion, startling and paradoxical
as it seemed, was not entirely new. Casaubon had already doubted the common opinion
regarding Homer, and the great Bentley had said expressly "that Homer wrote a
sequel of songs and rhapsodies. These loose songs were not collected together
in the form of an epic poem till about 500 years after" (Letter by Phileleutherus
Lipsiensis, 7). Some French writers, Perrault and Hedelin, and the Italian Vico,
had made similar conjectures, but all these were forgotten and overborne by the
common and general opinion, and the more easily, as these bold conjectures had
been thrown out almost at hazard, and without sound arguments to support them.
When therefore Wolf's Prolegomena appeared, the whole literary world was startled
by the boldness and novelty of his positions. His book, of course, excited great
opposition, but no one has to this day been able to refute the principal arguments
of that great critic, and to re-establish the old opinion, which he overthrew.
His views, however, have been materially modified by protracted discussions, so
that now we can almost venture to say that the question is settled. We will first
state Wolf's principal arguments, and the chief objections of his opponents, and
will then endeavour to discover the most probable result of all these inquiries.
In 1770, R. Wood published a book on the original Genius of Homer,
in which he mooted the question whether the Homeric poems had originally been
written or not. This idea was caught up by Wolf, and proved the foundation of
all his inquiries. But the most important assistance which he obtained was from
the discovery and publication of the famous Venetian scholia by Villoison (1788).
These valuable scholia, in giving us some insight into the studies of the Alexandrine
critics, furnished materials and an historical basis for Wolf's inquiries. The
point from which Wolf started was, as we have said. the idea that the Homeric
poems were originally not written. To prove this, he entered into a minute and
accurate discussion concerning the age of the art of writing. He set aside, as
groundless fables, the traditions which ascribed the invention or introduction
of this art to Cadmus, Cecrops, Orpheus, Linus, or Palamedes. Then, allowing that
letters were known in Greece at a very early period, he justly insists upon the
great difference which exists between the knowledge of the letters and their general
use for works of literature. Writing is first applied to public monuments, inscriptions,
and religious purposes, centuries before it is employed for the common purposes
of social life. This is still more certain to be the case when the common ordinary
materials for writing are wanting, as they were among the ancient Greeks. Wood,
lead, brass, stone, are not proper materials for writing down poems consisting
of twenty-four books. Even hides, which were used by the Ionians, seem too clumsy
for this purpose, and, besides, we do not know when they were first in use (Herod.
v. 58). It was not before the sixth century B. C. that papyrus became easily accessible
to the Greeks, through the king Amasis, who first opened Egypt to Greek traders.
The laws of Lycurgus were not committed to writing; those of Zaleucus, in Locri
Epizephyrii, in the 29th 01. (B. C. 664), are particularly recorded as the first
laws that were written down (Scymn. Perieg. 313; Strab. vi.). The laws of Solon,
seventy years later, were written on wood and boustrophedon. Wolf allows that
all these considerations do not prove that no use at all was made of the art of
writing as early as the seventh and eighth centuries B. C., which would be particularly
improbable in the case of the lyric poets, such as Archilochus, Aleman, Pisander,
and Aion, but that before the time of the seven sages, that is, the time when
prose writing first originated, the art was not so common that we can suppose
it to have been employed for such extensive works as the poems of Homer. Wolf
alleges the testimony of Josephus (c. Apion. i. 2): Opse Kai molis egnosan hoi
Hellenes phusin grammaton..Kai phasin oude touton (i.e. Homerum) en grammasi ten
autou poiesin katalpein, alla diamnemoneuomenen ek ton aismaton husteron suntethenai
(Besides Schol. ap. Villois. Anecd. Gr. ii.). But Wolf draws still more convincing
arguments from the poems themselves. In II. vii. 175, the Grecian heroes decide
by lot who is to fight with Hector. The lots are marked by each respective hero,
and all thrown into a hellnet, which is shaken till one lot is jerked out. This
is handed round by the herald till it reaches Ajax, who recognises the mark he
had made on it as his own. If this mark had been any thing like writing, the herald
would have read it at once, and not have handed it round. In Il. vi. 168, we have
the story of Bellerophon, whom Proetus sends to Lycia:
poren d hoge semata lugra,
Grapsas en pinaki ptuktoi Dumophthora polla
Deixai d' enogei hoi pentheroi, ophr apoloito.
Wolf shows that semata lugra are a kind of conventional marks, and not letters, and that this story is far from proving the existence of writing. Throughout the whole of Homer every thing is calculated to be heard, nothing to be read. Not a single epitaph, nor any other inscription, is mentioned ; the tombs of the heroes are rude mounds of earth; coins are unknown. In Od. viii. 163, an overseer of a ship is mentioned, who, instead of having a list of the cargo, must remember it; he is phortou mnemon. All this seemed to prove, without the possibility of doubt, that the art of writing was entirely unknown at the time of the Trojan war, and could not have been common at the time when the poems were composed.
Among the opponents of Wolf, there is none superior to Greg. W. Nitzsch,
in zeal, perseverance, learning, and acuteness. He wrote a series of monographies
(Quaestion. Homeric. Specim. i. 1824; Indagandae per Odyss. Interpolationis Praeparatio,
1828; De Hist. Homeri, fascic. i. 1830; De Aristotele contra Wolfianos, 1831;
Patria et Aetas Hom) to refute Wolf and his supporters. and he has done a great
deal towards establishing a solid and well-founded view of this complicated question.
Nitzsch opposed Wolf's conclusions concerning the later date of written documents.
He denies that the laws of Lycurgus were transmitted by oral tradition alone,
and were for this purpose set to music by Terpander and Thaletas, as is generally
believed, on the authority of Plutarch (de Mus. 3). The Spartan nomoi, which those
two musicians are said to have composed, Nitzsch declares to have been hymns and
not laws, although Strabo calls Thaletas a nomothetikos oner (by a mistake, as
Nitzsch ventures to say). Writing materials were, according to Nitzsch, not wanting
at a very early period. He maintains that wooden tablets, and the hides (diphtherai)
of the Ionians were employed, and that even papyrus was known and used by the
Greeks long before the time of Amasis, and brought into Greece by Phoenician merchants.
Amasis, according to Nitzsch, only rendered the use of papyrus more general (6th
century B. C.), whereas formerly its use had been confined to a few. Thus Nitzsch
arrives at the conclusion that writing was common in Greece full one hundred years
before the time which Wolf had supposed, namely, about the beginning of the Olympiads
(8th century B. C.), and that this is the time in which the Homeric poems were
committed to writing. If this is granted, it does not follow that the poems were
also composed at this time. Nitzsch cannot prove that the age of Homer was so
late as the eighth century. The best authorities, as we have seen, place Homer
much earlier, so that we again come to the conclusion that the Homeric poems were
composed and handed down for a long time without the assistance of writing. In
fact, this point seems indisputable. The nature of the Homeric language is alone
a sufficient argument, but into this consideration Nitzsch never entered (Hermann,
Opusc. vi. 1, 75; Giese, d. Aeol. Dialect.). The Homeric dialect could never have
attained that softness and flexibility, which render it so well adapted for versification--that
variety of longer and shorter forms, which existed together-that freedom in contracting
and resolving vowels, and of forming the contractions into two syllables-if the
practice of writing had at that time exercised the power, which it necessarily
possesses, of fixing the forms of a language. The strongest proof is the Aeolic
Digamma, a sound which existed at the time of the composition of the poems, and
had entirely vanished from the language when the first copies were made.
It is necessary therefore to admit Wolf's first position, that the
Homeric poems were originally not committed to writing. We proceed to examine
the conclusions which he draws from these premises.
However great the genius of Homer may have been, says Wolf, it is
quite incredible that, without the assistance of writing, he could have conceived
in his mind and executed such extensive works. This assertion is very bold. "Who
can determine", says Mueller (Hist. of Greek Lit.), "how many thousand verses
a person thoroughly impregnated with his subject, and absorbed in the contemplation
of it, might produce in a year, and confide to the faithful memory of disciples
devoted to their master and his art"? We have instances of modern poets, who have
composed long poems without writing down a single syllable, and have preserved
them faithfully in their memory, before committing them to writing. And how much
more easily could this have been done in the time anterior to the use of writing,
when all those faculties of the mind, which had to dispense with this artificial
assistance, were powerfully developed, trained, and exercised. We must not look
upon the old bards as amateurs, who amused themselves in leisure hours with poetical
compositions, as is the fashion now-a-days. Composition was their profession.
All their thoughts were concentrated on this one point, in which and for which
they lived. Their composition was, moreover, facilitated by their having no occasion
to invent complicated plots and wonderful stories; the simple traditions, on which
they founded their songs, were handed down to them in a form already adapted to
poetical purposes. If now, in spite of all these advantages, the composition of
the Iliad and Odyssey was no easy task, we must attribute some superiority to
the genius of Homer, which caused his name and his works to acquire eternal glory,
and covered all his innumerable predecessors, contemporaries, and followers, with
oblivion.
The second conclusion of Wolf is of more weight and importance. When
people neither wrote nor read, the only way of publishing poems was by oral recitation.
The bards therefore of the heroic age, as we see from Homer himself, used to entertain
their hearers at banquets, festivals, and similar occasions. On such occasions
they certainly could not recite more than one or two rhapsodies. Now Wolf asks
what could have induced any one to compose a poem of such a length, that it could
not be heard at once ? All the charms of an artificial and poetical unity, varied
by episodes, but strictly observed through many books, must certainly be lost,
if only fragments of the poem could be heard at once. To refute this argument,
the opponents of Wolf were obliged to seek for occasions which afforded at least
a possibility of reciting the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey. Banquets and small
festivals were not sufficient; but there were musical contests (agones), connected
with great national festivals, at which thousands assembled, anxious to hear and
patient to listen. "If", says Mueller, "the Athenians could at one festival hear
in succession about nine tragedies, three satyric dramas, and as many comedies,
without ever thinking that it might be better to distribute this enjoyment over
the whole year, why should not the Greeks of earlier times have been able to listen
to the Iliad and Odyssey, and perhaps other poems, at the same festival? Let us
beware of measuring by our loose and desultory reading the intention of mind with
which a people enthusiastically devoted to such enjoyments, hung with delight
on the flowing strains of the minstrel. In short, there was a time when the Greek
people, not indeed at meals, but at festivals, and under the patronage of their
hereditary princes, heard and enjoyed these and other less excellent poems, as
they were intended to be heard and enjoyed, viz. as complete wholes". This is
credible enough, but it is not quite so easy to prove it. We know that, in the
historical times, the Homeric poems were recited at Athens at the festival of
the Panathenaea (Lycurg. c. Leoer.); and that there were likewise contests of
rhapsodists at Sicyon in the time of the tyrant Cleisthenes (Herod. v. 67), in
Syracuse, Epidaurus, Orchomenus,Thespiae, Acraephia, Chios, Teos, Olympia (See
the authors cited by Mueller). Hesiod mentions musical contests (Op. 652, and
Frag. 456), at which he gained a tripod. Such contests seem to have been ever
anterior to the time of Homer, and are alluded to in the Homeric description of
the Thracian bard Thamyris (Il. ii. 594), who on his road from Eurytus, the powerful
ruler of Oechalia, was struck blind at Dorium by the Muses, and deprived of his
entire art, because he had boasted of his ability to contend even with the Muses
(Comp. Diog. Laert. ix. 1). It is very likely that at the great festival of Panionium
in Asia Minor such contests took place (Heyne, Exc. ad Il. vol. viii.; Welcker,
Ep. Cycl.; Heinrich, Epimenides); but still, in order to form an idea of the possible
manner in which such poems as the Iliad and Odyssey were recited, we must have
recourse to hypotheses, which have at best only internal probability, but no external
authority. Such is the inference drawn from the later custom at Athens, that several
rhapsodists followed one another in the recitation of the same poem (Welcker,
Ep. Cycl.), and the still bolder hypothesis of Nitzsch, that the recitation lasted
more than one day (Vorr. z. Anm. z. Od. vol. ii.). But, although the obscurity
of those times prevents us from obtaining a certain and positive result as to
the way in which such long poems were recited, yet we cannot be induced by this
circumstance to doubt that the Iliad and Odyssey, and other poems of equal length,
were recited as complete wholes, because they certainly existed at a time anterior
to the use of writing. That such was the case follows of necessity from what we
know of the Cyclic poets (See Proclus, Chrestomathia in Gaisford's Hephaestion).
The Iliad and Odyssey contained only a small part of the copious traditions concerning
the Trojan war. A great number of poets undertook to fill up by separate poems
the whole cycle of the events of this war, from which circumstance they are commonly
styled the Cyclic poets. The poem Cypria, most probably by Stasinus, related all
the events which preceded the beginning of the Iliad fiom the birth of Helen to
the ninth year of the war. The Aethiopis and Iliupersis of Arctinus continued
the narrative after the death of Hector, and related the arrival of the Amazons,
whose queen, Penthesileia, is slain by Achilles, the death and burial of Thersites,
the arrival of Memnon with the Aethiopians, who kills Antilochus, and is killed
in return by Achilles, the death of Achilles himself by Paris, and the quarrel
between Ajax and Ulysses about his arms. The poem of Arctinus then related the
death of Ajax, and all that intervened between this and the taking of Troy, which
formed the subject of his second poem, the Ilinpersis. These same events were
likewise partly treated by Lesches, in his Little Ilias, with some differences
in tone and form. In this was told the arrival of Philoctetes, who kills Paris,
that of Neoptolemus, the building of the wooden horse, the capture of the palladium
by Ulysses and Diomede, and, finally, the taking of Troy itself. The interval
between the war and the subject of the Odyssey is filled up by the return of the
different heroes. This furnished the subject for the Nostoi by Agias, a poem distinguished
by great excellencies of composition. The misfortunes of the two Atreidae formed
the main part, and with this were artfully interwoven the adventures of all the
other heroes, except Ulysses. The last adventures of Ulysses after his return
to Ithaca were treated in the Telegonia of Eugammon. All these poems were grouped
round those of Homer, as their common centre. "It is credible", says Mueller (Ibid.
p. 64), "that their authors were Homeric rhapsodists by profession (so also Nitzsch,
Hall. Encycl. s. v. Odyss.), to whom the constant recitation of the ancient Homeric
poems would naturally suggest the notion of continuing them by essays of their
own in a similar tone. Hence too it would be more likely to occur that these poems,
when they were sung by the same rhapsodists, would gradually acquire themselves
the name of Homeric epics". Their object of completing and spinning out the poems
of Homer is obvious. It is necessary therefore to suppose that the Iliad and Odyssey
existed entire, i.e. comprehending the same series of events which they now comprehend,
at least in the time from the first to the tenth Olympiad, when Arctinus, Agias
(Thiersch, Act. Monac. ii. 583), and probably Stasinus, lived. This was a time
when nobody yet thought of reading such poems. Therefore there must have been
an opportunity of reciting in some way or another, not only the Homeric poems,
but those of the Cyclic poets also, which were of about equal length (Nitzsch,
Vorr. z. Anmerk. vol. ii.). The same result is obtained from comparing the manner
in which Homer and these Cyclic poets treat and view mythical objects. A wide
difference is observable on this point, which justifies the conclusion, that as
early as the period of the composition of the first of the Cyclic poems, viz.
before the tenth Olympiad, the Homeric poems had attained a fixed form, and were
no longer, as Wolf supposes, in a state of growth and development, or else they
would have been exposed to the influence of the different opinions which then
prevailed respecting mythical subjects. This is the only inference we can draw
from an inquiry into the Cyclic poets. Wolf, however, who denied the existence
of long epic poets previous to the use of writing, because he thought they could
not be recited as wholes, and who consequently denied that the Iliad and Odyssey
possessed an artificial or poetical unity, thought to find a proof of this proposition
in the Cyclic poems, in which he professed to see no other unity than that which
is afforded by the natural sequence of events. Now we are almost unable to form
an accurate opinion of the poetical merits of those poems, of which we possess
only dry prosaic extracts; but, granting that they did not attain a high degree
of poetical perfection, and particularly, that they were destitute of poetical
unity, still we are not on this account at liberty to infer that the poems of
Homer, their great example, are likewise destitute of this unity. But this is
the next proposition of Wolf, which therefore we must now proceed to discuss.
Wolf observes that Aristotle first derived the laws of epic poetry
from the examples which he found laid down in the Iliad and Odyssey. It was for
this reason, says Wolf, that people never thought of suspecting that those examples
themselves were destitute of that poetical unity which Aristotle, from a contemplation
of them, drew up as a principal requisite for this kind of poetry. It was transmitted,
says Wolf, by old traditions, how once Achilles withdrew from the battle; how,
in consequence of the absence of the great hero, who alone awed the Trojans. the
Greeks were worsted; how Achilles at last allowed his friend Patroclus to protect
the Greeks; and how, finally, he revenged the death of Patroclus by killing Hector.
This simple course of the story Wolf thinks would have been treated by any other
poet in very much the same manner as we now read it in the Iliad; and he maintains
that there is no unity in it except a chronological one, in so far as we have
a narration of the events of several days in succession. Nay, he continues, if
we examine closely the six last books, we shall find that they have nothing to
do with what is stated in the introduction as the object of the poem,--namely,
the wrath of Achilles. This wrath subsides with the death of Patroclus, and what
follows is a wrath of a different kind, which does not belong to the former. The
composition of the Odyssey is not viewed with greater favour by Wolf. The journey
of Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta, the sojourn of Ulysses in the island of Calypso,
the stories of his wanderings, were originally independent songs, which, as they
happened to fit into one another, were afterwards connected into one whole, at
a time when literature, the arts, and a general cultivation of the mind began
to flourish in Greece, supported by the important art of writing.
These bold propositions have met with almost universal disapprobation.
Still this is a subject on which reasoning and demonstration are very precarious
and almost impossible. The feelings and tastes of every individual must determine
the matter. But to oppose to Wolf's sceptical views the judgment of a man whose
authority on matters of taste is as great as on those of learning, we copy what
Mueller says on this subject:
"All the laws which reflection and experience can suggest for the epic form are
observed (in Homer) with the most refined taste; all the means are employed by
which the general effect can be heightened. The anger of Achilles is an event
which did not long precede the final destruction of Troy, inasmuch as it produced
the death of Hector, who was the defender of the city. It was doubtless the ancient
tradition, established long before Homer's time, that Hector had been slain by
Achilles in revenge for the slaughter of his friend Patroclus, whose fall in battle,
unprotected by the son of Thetis, was explained by the tradition to have arisen
from the anger of Achilles against the other Greeks for an affront offered to
him, and his consequent retirement from the contest. Now the poet seizes, as the
most critical and momentous period of the action, the conversion of Achilles from
the foe of the Greeks into that of the Trojans: for as on the one hand the sudden
revolution in the fortunes of war, thus occasioned, places the prowess of Achilles
in the strongest light, so, on the other hand, the change of his firm and resolute
mind must have been the more touching to the feelings of the hearers. From this
centre of interest there springs a long preparation and gradual developement,
since not only the cause of the anger of Achilles, but also the defeats of the
Greeks occasioned by that anger, were to be narrated; and the display of the insufficiency
of all the other heroes at the same time offered the best opportunity for exhibiting
their several excellencies. It is in the arrangement of this preparatory part
and its connection with the catastrophe, that the poet displays his perfect acquaintance
with all the mysteries of poetical composition ; and in his continual postponement
of the crisis of the action, and his scanty revelations with respect to the plan
of the entire work, he shows a maturity of knowledge which is astonishing for
so early an age. To all appearance, the poet, after certain obstacles have been
first overcome, tends only to one point, viz. to increase perpetually the disasters
of the Greeks, which they have drawn on themselves by the injury offered to Achilles;
and Zeus himself, at the beginning, is made to pronounce, as coming from himself,
the vengeance and consequent exaltation of the son of Thetis. At the same time,
however, the poet plainly shows his wish to excite, in the feelings of an attentive
hearer, an anxious and perpetually increasing desire not only to see the Greeks
saved from destruction, but also that the unbearable and more than human haughtiness
and pride of Achilles should be broken. Both these ends are attained through the
fulfilment of the secret counsel of Zeus, which he did not communicate to Thetis,
and through her to Achilles (who, if he had known it, would have given up all
enmity against the Achaeans), but only to Hera, and to her not till the middle
of the poem; and Achilles, through the loss of his dearest friend, whom he had
sent to battle not to save the Greeks, but for his own glory, suddenly changes
his hostile attitude towards the Greeks, and is overpowered by entirely opposite
feelings. In this manner the exaltation of the son of Thetis is united to that
almost imperceptible operation of destiny, which the Greeks were required to observe
in all human affairs. To remove from this collection of various actions, conditions,
and feelings any substantial part, as not necessarily belonging to it, would in
fact be to dismember a living whole, the parts of which would necessarily lose
their vitality. As in an organic body life does not dwell in one single point,
but requires a union of certain systems and members, so the internal connection
of the Iliad rests on the union of certain parts; and neither the interesting
introduction describing the defeat of the Greeks up to the burning of the ship
of Protesilaus, nor the turn of affairs brought about by the death of Patroclus,
nor the final pacification of the anger of Achilles, could be spared from the
Iliad, when the fruitful seed of such a poem had once been sown in the soul of
Homer, and had begun to develop its growth" (Hist. of Gr. Lit. p. 48, &c.).
If we yield our assent to these convincing reflections, we shall hardly
need to defend the unity of the Odyssey, which has always been admired as one
of the greatest masterpieces of Greek genius, against the aggressions of Wolf,
who could more easily believe that chance and learned compilers had produced this
poem, by connecting loose independent pieces, than that it should have sprung
from the mind of a single man. Nitzsch (Hall. Encyclop. s. v. Odyssee, and Anmerk.
z. Odyss. vol. ii. pref.) has endeavoured to exhibit the unity of the plan of
this poem. He has divided the whole into four large sections, in each of which
there are again subdivisions facilitating the distribution of the recital for
several rhapsodists and several days.
1. The first part treats of the absent Ulysses (books i.--iv.). Here we are introduced
to the state of affairs in Ithaca during the absence of Ulysses. Telemachus goes
to Pylos and Sparta to ascertain the fate of his father.
2. The song of the returning Ulysses (books v.-xiii. 92) is naturally divided
into two parts; the first contains the departure of Ulysses from Calypso, and
his arrival and reception in Scheria; the second the narration of his wanderings.
3. The song of Ulysses meditating revenge (book xiii. 92--xix). Here the two threads
of tile story are united; Ulysses is conveyed to I thaca, and is met in the cottage
of Eumaeus by his son, who has just returned from Sparta.
4. The song of the revenging and reconciled Ulysses (xx.--xxiv.) brings all the
manifold wrongs of the suitors and the sufferings of Ulysses to the desired and
long-expected conclusion.
Although we maintain the unity of both the Homeric poems, we cannot deny that
they have suffered greatly from interpolations, omissions, and alterations; and
it is only by admitting some original poetical whole, that we are able to discover
those parts which do not belong to this whole. Wolf, therefore, in pointing out
some parts as spurious, has been led into an inconsistency in his demonstration,
since lie is obliged to acknowledge something as the genuine centre of the two
poems, which he must suppose to have been spun out more and more by subsequent
rhapsodists. This altered view, which is distinctly pronounced in the preface
to his edition of Homer, appears already in the Prolegomena, and has been subsequently
embraced by Hermann and other critics. It is, as we have said, a necessary consequence
from the discovery of interpolations. These interpolations are particularly apparent
in the first part of the Iliad. The catalogue of the ships has long been recognised
as a later addition, and can be omitted without leaving the slightest gap. The
battles from the third to the seventh book seem almost entirely foreign to the
plan of the Iliad. Zeus appears to have quite forgotten his promise to Thetis,
that he would honour her son by letting Agamemnon feel his absence. The Greeks
are far from feeling this. Diomede fights successfully even against gods; the
Trojans are driven back to the town. In an assembly of the gods, the glory of
Achilles is no motive to deliver Troy from her fate; it is not till the eighth
book that Zeus all at once seems mindful of his promise to Thetis. The preceding
five books are not only loosely connected with the whole of the poem, but even
with one another. The single combat between Menelaus and Paris (hook iii.), in
which the former was on the point of despatching the seducer of his wife, is interrupted
by the treacherous shot of Pandarus. In the next book all this is forgotten. The
Greeks neither claim Helen as the prize of the victory of Menelaus, nor do they
complain of a breach of the oath: no god revenges the perjury. Paris in the sixth
book sits quietly at home, where Hector severely upbraids him for his cowardice
and retirement from war; to which Paris makes no reply, and does not plead that
he had only just encountered Menelaus in deadly fight. The tenth book, containing
the nocturnal expedition of Ulysses and Diomede, in which they kill the Thracian
king Rhesus and take his horses, is avowedly of later origin (Schol. Ven. ad II.
x. 1). No reference is subsequently made by any of the Greeks or Trojans to this
gallant deed. The two heroes were sent as spies, but they never narrate the result
of their expedition; not to speak of many other improbabilities. To enumerate
all those passages which are reasonably suspected as interpolated, would lead
us too far. Muller (lbid. p. 50) very judiciously assigns "two principal motives
for this extension of the poem beyond its original plan, which might have exercised
an influence on the mind of Homer himself but had still more powerful effects
upon his successors, the later Homerids. In the first place, it is clear that
a design manifested itself at an early period to make this poem complete in itself,
so that all the subjects, descriptions, and actions which could alone give an
interest to a poem on the entire war, might find a place within the limits of
this composition. For this purpose, it is not improbable that many lays of earlier
bards, who had sung single adventures of the Trojan war, were laid under contribution,
and that the finest parts of them were adopted into the new poem, it being the
natural course of popular poetry propagated by oral tradition, to treat the best
thoughts of previous poets as common property, and to give them a new life by
working them up in a different context". Thus it would be explained why it is
not before the ninth year of the war that the Greeks build a wall round their
camp, and think of deciding the war by single combat. For the same reason the
catalogue of the ships could find a place in the Iliad, as well as the view of
Helen and Priam from the walls (Teichoskopia), by which we become acquainted with
the chief heroes along the Greeks, who were certainly not unknown to Priam till
so late a period of the war. "The other motive for the great extension of the
preparatory part of the catastrophe may, it appears, be traced to a certain conflict
between the plan of the poet and his own patriotic feelings. An attentive reader
cannot fail to observe that, while Homer intends that the Greeks should be made
to suffer severely from the anger of Achilles, he is yet, as it were, retarded
in his progress towards that end by a natural endeavour to avenge the death of
each Greek by that of a yet more illustrious Trojan, and thus to increase the
glory of the numerous Achaean heroes, so that even on the days in which the Greeks
are defeated, more Trojans than Greeks are described as being slain".
The Odyssey has experienced similar extensions, which, far from inducing
us to believe in an atomistical origin of the poem, only show that the original
plan has been here and there obscured. The poem opens with an assembly of the
gods, in which Athene complains of the long detention of Ulysses in Ogygia; Zeus
is of her opinion. She demands to send Hermes to Calypso with an order from Zeus
to dismiss Ulysses, whilst she herself goes to Ithaca to incite young Telenmachus
to determined steps. But in the beginning of the fifth book we have almost the
same proceedings, the same assembly of the gods, the same complaints of Athene,
the same assent of Zeus, who now at last sends his messenger to the island of
Calypso. Telemachus refuses to stay with Menelaus; he is anxious to return home;
and still, without our knowing how and why, he remains at Sparta for a time which
seems disproportionably long; for on his return to Ithaca he meets Ulysses, who
had in the meantime built his ship, passed twenty days on the sea, and three days
with the Phaeacians.
Nitzsch has tried to remove these difficulties, but he does not deny
extensive interpolations, particularly in the eighth book, where the song of Demodocos
concerning Ares and Aphrodite is very suspicious; in the nineteenth, the recognition
of Ulysses by his old nurse, and, most of all, some parts towards the end. All
that follows after xxiii. 296 was declared spurious even by the Alexandrine critics
Aristophanes and Aristarchus. Spohn (Comment. de extrem. Odysseae Parte, 1816)
has proved the validity of this judgment almost beyond the possibility of doubt.
Yet, as Mueller and Nitzsch observe, it is very likely that the original Odyssey
was concluded in a somewhat similar manner; in particular, we can hardly do without
the recognition of Laertes, who is so often alluded to in the course of the poem,
and without some reconciliation of Ulsses with the friends of the murdered suitors.
The second Necyia (xxiv. init.) is evidently spurious, and, like many parts of
the first Necyia (xi.), most likely taken from a similar passage in the Nostoi,
in which was narrated the arrival of Agamemnon in Hades (Paus. x. 23.4..)
Considering all these interpolations and the original unity, which
has only been obscured and not destroyed by them, we must come to the concluston
that the Homeric poems were originally composed as poetical wholes, but that a
long oral tradition gave occasion to great alterations in their original form.
We have hitherto considered only the negative part of Wolf's arguments.
He denied, 1st, the existence of the art of writing at the time when the Homeric
poems were composed; 2d. the possibility of composing and delivering them without
that art; and, 3rdly, their poetical unity. From these premises he came to the
conclusion, that the Homeric poems originated as small songs, unconnected with
one another, which, after being preserved in this state for a long time, were
at length put together. The agents, to whom he attributed these two tasks of composing
and preserving on the one hand, and of collecting and combining on the other,
are the rhapsodists and Peisistratus.
The subject of the rhapsodists is one of the most complicated and
difficult of all; because the fact is, that we know very little about them, and
thus a large field is opened to conjecture and hypothesis. Wolf derives the name
of rhapsodist from rhaptein, oiden, which he interprets breviora carmina modo
et ordine publicae recitationi apto connectere. These breviora carmina are the
rchapsodies of which the Iliad and Odyssey consist, not indeed containing originally
one book each, as they do now, but sometimes more and sometimes less. The nature
and condition of these rhapsodists may be learned from Homer himself, where they
appear as singing at the banquets, games, and festivals of the princes, and are
held in high honour (Od. iii. 267, xviii. 383). In fact, the first rhapsodists
were the poets themselves, just as the first dramatic poets were the first actors.
Therefore Homer and Hesiod are said to have rhapsodised. (Plat. Rep. x.; Schol.
ad Pind. Nem. ii. 1). We must imagine that these minstrels were spread over all
Greece, and that they did not confine themselves to the recital of the Homeric
poems. One class of rhapsodists at Chios, the Homerids (Harpocrat. s. v. Homeridai),
who called themselves descendants of the poet, possessed these particular poems,
and transmitted them to their disciples by oral teaching, and not by writing.
This kind of oral teaching was most carefully cultivated in Greece even when the
use of writing was quite common. The tragic and comic poets employed no other
way of training the actors than this oral didaskalia, with which the greatest
accuracy was combined. Therefore, says Wolf, it is not likely that, although not
committed to writing, the Homeric poems underwent very great changes by a long
oral tradition; only it is impossible that they should have remained quite unaltered.
Many of the rhapsodists were not destitute of poetical genius, or they acquired
it by the constant recitation of those beautiful lays. Why should they not have
sometimes adapted their recitation to the immediate occasion, or even have endeavoured
to make some passages better than they were?
We can admit almost all this, without drawing from it Wolf's conclusion.
Does not such a condition of the rhapsodists agree as well with the task which
we assign to them, of preserving and reciting a poem which already existed as
a whole? Even the etymology of the name of rhapsodist, which is surprisingly inconsistent
with Wolf's general view, favours that of his adversaries. Wolf's fundamental
opinion is, that the original songs were unconnected and singly recited. How then
can the rhapsodists have obtained their name from connecting poems ? On the other
hand, if the Homeric poems originally existed as wholes, and the rhapsodists connected
the single parts of these wholes for public recitation, they might per haps be
called "connecters of songs". But this etymology has not appeared satisfactory
to some, who have thought that this process would rather be a keeping together
than a putting together. They have therefore supposed that the word was derived
from rhabdos, the staff or ensign of the bards (Hes. Theog. 30); an etymology
which seemed countenanced by Pindar's (Isthm. iii. 5) expression rhabdon thespesion
epeon. But Pindar in another passage gives the other etymology (Nem. ii. 1) ;
and, besides, it does not appear how rhapsoidos could be formed from rhabdos,
which would make rhabdoidos. Others, therefore, have thought of rhapis (a stick),
and formed rhapisoidos, rhapsoidos. But even this will not do; for leaving out
of view that rhatis does not occur in the signification of rhabdos the word would
be rhapidoidos. Nothing is left, therefore, but the etymology from rhaptein oidas,
which is only to be interpreted in the proper way. Mueller (Ibid. p. 33) says
that rhapsoidein "signifies nothing more than the peculiar method of epic recitation",
consisting in some high-pitched sonorous declamations, with certain simple modulations
of the voice, not in singing regularly accompanied by an instrument, which was
the method of reciting lyrical poetry. "Every poem", says Mueller, "can be rhapsodised
which is composed in an epic tone, and in which the verses are of equal length,
without being distributed into correspond ing parts of a larger whole, strophes,
or similar systems. Rhapsodists were also not improperly called dtichoidoi , because
all the poems which they recited were composed in single lines independent of
each other (stichoi)". He thinks, therefore, that rhaptein oiden denotes the coupling
together of verses without any considerable divisions or pauses; in other words,
the even, continuous, and unbroken flow of the epic poem. But oide does not mean
a verse ; and besides a reference to the manner of epic recitation, as different
from that of lyrical poetry, could only be imparted to the word rhapsoidos at
a time when lyrical composition and recitation originated, that is, not before
Archilochus. Previous to that time the meaning of rhapsodist must have been different.
In fine, we do not see why rhaptein oidas should not have been used in the signification
of planning and making lays, as rhaptein kaka is to plan or make mischief. But
whatever may be the right derivation of the word, and whatever may have been the
nature and condition of the rhapsodists, so much is evident that no support can
be derived from this point for Wolf's position. We pass on, therefore, to the
last question -the collection of the Homeric poems ascribed to Peisistratus.
Solon made the first step towards that which Peisistratus accomplished.
Of him Diogenes Laertius (i. 57) says, ta Homeronu ech hupoboles egrapse rhapsoideideisthai,
i. e., according to Wolf's interpretation, Solon did not allow the rhapsodists
to recite arbitrarily, as they had been wont to do, such songs successively as
were not connected with one another, but he ordered that they should rehearse
those parts which were according to the thread of the story suggested to them.
Peisistratus did not stop here. The unanimous voice of antiquity ascribed to him
the merit of having collected the disjointed and confused poems of Homer, and
of having first committed them to writing (Cic. de Or. iii. 34; Paus. vii. 26;
Joseph, c. Ap. i. 2 ; Aelian, V. H. xiii. 14; Liban. Paneg. in Julian. i.)
In what light Wolf viewed this tradition has been already mentioned.
He held it to have been the first step that was taken in order to connect the
loose and incoherent songs into continued and uninterrupted stories, and to preserve
the union which he had thus imparted to these poems by first committing them to
writing. Pausanias mentions associates (hetairoi) of Peisistratus, who assisted
him in his undertaking. These associates Wolf thought to have been the diaskeuastai
mentioned sometimes in the Scholia; but in this he was evidently mistaken. Diaskeuastai
are, in the phraseology of the Scholia, interpolators, and not arrangers (Heinrich,
de Diask. Homericis ; Lehrs, Aristarchi stud. Hom.). Another weak point in Wolf's
reasoning is, that he says that Peisistratus was the first who committed the Homeric
poems to writing; this is expressly stated by none of the ancient writers. On
the contrary, it is not unlikely that before Peisistratus, persons began in various
parts of Greece, and particularly in Asia Minor, which was far in advance of the
mother-country, to write down parts of the Iliad and Odyssey, although we are
not disposed to extend this hypothesis so far as Nitzsch, who thinks that there
existed in the days of Peisistratus numbers of copies, so that Peisistratus only
compared and revised them, in order to obtain a correct copy for the use of the
Athenian festivals. Whom Peisistratus employed in his undertaking Wolf could only
conjecture. The poet Onomacritus lived at that time at Athens, and was engaged
in similar pursuits respecting the old poet Musaeus. Besides him, Wolf thought
of a certain Orpheus of Croton ; but nothing certain was known on this point,
till Professor Ritschl discovered, in a MS. of Plautus at Rome, an old Latin scholion
translated from the Greek of Tzetzes (published in Cramer's Anecdota). This scholion
gives the name of four poets who assisted Peisistratus, viz. Onomacritus, Zopyrus,
Orpheus, and a fourth, whose name is corrupted, Concylus (Ritschl, de Alex. Bibl.
u. d. Sammlung d. Hom. Gedichte durch Peisistr. 1838; Id. Corollar. Disput. de
Bibl. Alex. deque Peisistr. Curis Hom. 1840). These persons may have interpolated
some passages, as it suited the pride of the Athenians or the political purposes
of their patron Peisistratus. In fact, Onomacritus is particularly charged with
having interpolated Od. xi. 604 (Schol. Harlei. ed. Porson. ad loc.). The Athenians
were generally believed to have had no part in the Trojan war; therefore Il. ii.
547, 552-554, were marked by the Alexandrine critics as spurious, and for similar
reasons Od. vii. 80, 81, and Od. iii. 308. But how unimportant are these alterations
in comparison with the long interpolations which must be attributed to the rhapsodists
previous to Peisistratus ! It must be confessed that these four men accomplished
their task, on the whole, with great accuracy. However inclined we may be to attribute
this accuracy less to their critical investigations and conscientiousness, than
to the impossibility of making great changes on account of the general knowledge
of what was genuine, through the number of existing copies; and although we may,
on the whole, be induced, after Wolf's exaggerations, to think little of the merits
of Peisistratus, still we must allow that the praise bestowed on Peisistratus
by the ancient writers is too great and too general to allow us to admit of Nitzsch's
opinion, that he only compared and examined various MSS. If, then, it does not
follow, as Wolf thought, that the Homeric poems never formed a whole before Peisistratus,
it is at the same time undeniable that to Peisistratus we owe the first written
text of the whole of the poems, which, without his care, would most likely now
exist only in a few disjointed fragments. Some traditions attributed to Hipparchus,
the son and successor of Peisistratus, regulations for the recital of the Homeric
poems of a kind similar to those which had been already made by Solon (Plat. Hipp.).
He is said to have obliged the rhapsodists ech hupolepseos hepheches ta Homerou
diienai. The meaning of the words ech hupolepseos, and their difference from hech
hupoboles, which was the manner of recitation, ordained by Solon, has given rise
to a long controversy between Bockh and Hermann (comp Nitzsch, Melet. ii.); to
enter into which would be foreign to the purpose of this article.
Having taken this general survey of the most important arguments for
and against Wolfs hypothesis concerning the origin of the poems of Homer, the
following may be regarded as the most probable conclusion. There can be no doubt
that the seed of the Homeric poems was scattered in the time of the heroic exploits
which they celebrate, and in the land of the victorious Achaeans, that is, in
European Greece. An abundance of heroic lays preserved the records of the Trojan
war. It was a puerile idea, which is now completely exploded, that the events
are fictitious on which the Iliad and Odyssey are based, that a Trojan war never
was waged, and so forth. Whoever would make such a conclusion from the intermixture
of gods in the battles of men, would forget what the Muses say (Hes. Theog. 27):
*)/Idmen yeu/dea polla\ le/gein e)tu/moisin o(moi=a,
*)/Idmen d', eu)=t' e)qe/lwmen, a)lhqe/a muqh/sasqai.
and he would overlook the fact, that these songs were handed down a long time
before they attained that texture of truth and fiction which forms one of their
peculiar charms. Europe must necessarily have been the country where these songs
originated, both because here the victorious heroes dwelt, and because so many
traces in the poems still point to these regions. It was here that the old Thracian
bards had effected that unity of mythology which, spreading all over Greece, had
gradually absorbed and obliterated the discrepancies of the old local myths, and
substituted one general mythology for the whole nation, with Zeus as the supreme
ruler, dwelling on the snowy heights of Olympus. Impregnated with this European
mythology, the heroic lays were brought to Asia Minor by the Greek colonies, which
left the mother-country about three ages after the Trojan war. In European Greece
a new race gained the ascendancy, the Dorians, foreign to those who gloried in
having the old heroes among their ancestors. The heroic songs, therefore, died
away more and more in Europe; but in Asia the Aeolians fought, conquered, and
settled nearly in the same regions in which their fathers had signalised themselves
by immortal exploits, the glory or which was celebrated, and their memory still
preserved by their national bards. Their dwelling in the same locality not only
kept alive the remesmbrance of the deeds of their fathers, but gave a new impulse
to their poetry, just as in the middle ages in Germany the foundation of the kingdom
of the Hungarians in the East, and their destructive invasions, together with
the origin of a new empire of the Burgundians in the West, awakened the old songs
of the Niebelungen, after a slumber of centuries. (Gervinus, Poetical Lit. of
Germ. vol. i.)
Now the Homeric poems advanced a step further. From unconnected songs,
they were, for the first time, united by a great genius, who, whether he was really
called Homer, or whether the name be of later origin and significant of his work
of uniting songs (Welcker, Ep. Cycl.; Ilgen, Hymn. Hom. praef.; Heyne, ad Il.
vol. viii.), was the one individual who conceived in his mind the lofty idea of
that poetical unity which we cannot help acknowledging and admiring. What were
the peculiar excellencies which distinguished this one Homer among a great number
of contemporary poets, and saved his works alone from oblivion, we do not venture
to determine ; but the conjecture of Mueller (Greek Lit.; see also Nitzsch, Anm.
vol. ii.), is not improbable, that Homer first undertook to combine into one great
unity the scattered and fragmentary poems of earlier bards, and that it was a
task which established his great renown. We can now judge of the probability that
Homer was an Ionian, who in Smyrna, where Ionians and Aeolians were mixed, became
acquainted with the subject of his poems, and moulded them into the form which
was suited to the taste of his Ionian countrymen. But as a faithful preservation
of these long works was impossible in an age unacquainted with, or at least not
versed in the art of writing, it was a natural consequence, that in the lapse
of ages the poems should not only lose the purity with which they proceeded from
the mind of the poet, but should also become more and more dismembered, and thus
return into their original state of loose independent songs. Their public recitation
became more and more fragmentary, and the time at festivals and musical contests
formerly occupied by epic rhapsodists exclusively was encroached upon by the rising
lyrical performances and players of the flute and lyre. Yet the knowledge of the
unity of the different Homeric rhapsodies was not entirely lost. Solon, himself
a poet, directed the attention of his countrymen towards it; and Peisistratus
at last raised a lasting monument to his high merits, in fixing the genuine Homeric
poems by the indelible marks of writing, as far as was possible in his time and
with his means. That previous to the famous edition of Peisistratus parts of Homer,
or the entire poems, were committed to writing in other towns of Greece or Asia
Minor is not improbable, but we do not possess sufficient testimonies to prove
it. We can therefore safely affirm that from the time of Peisistratus, the Greeks
had a written Homer, a regular text, the source and foundation of all subsequent
editions.
Having established the fact, that there was a Homer, who must be considered
as the author of the Homeric poems, there naturally arises another question, viz.
which poems are Homeric? We have seen already that a great number of cyclic poems
were attributed to the great bard of the Anger of Achilles. Stasinus, the author
of the Cypria, was said to have received this poem from Homer as a dowry for his
daughter, whom he married. Creophylus is placed in a similar connection with Homer.
But these traditions are utterly groundless; they were occasioned by the authors
of the cyclic poems being at the same time rhapsodists of the Homeric poems, which
they recited along with their own. Nor are the hymns, which still bear the name
of Homer, more genuine productions of the poet of the Iliad than the cyclic poems.
They were called by the ancients prooimia, i. e. overtures or preludes, and were
sung by the rhapsodists as introductions to epic poems at the festivals of the
respective gods, to whom they are addressed. To these rhapsodists the hymns most
probably owe their origin. "They exhibit such a diversity of language and poetical
tone, that in all probability they contain fragments from every century from the
time of Homer to the Persian war" (Mueller, Ibid.). Still most of them were reckoned
to be Homeric productions by those who lived in a time when Greek literature still
flourished. This is easily accounted for; being recited in, connection with Hmeric
poems, they were gradually attributed to the same author, and continued to be
so regarded more or less generally, till critics, and particularly those of Alexandria,
discovered the differences between their style and that of Homer. At Alexandria
they were never reckoned genuine, which accounts for the circumstance that none
of the great critics of that school is known to have made a regular collection
of them (Wolf, Proleg.). Of the hymns now extant five deserve particular attention
on account of their greater length and mythological contents; they are those addressed
to the Delian and Pythian Apollo, to Hermes, Demeter, and Aphrodite. The hymn
to the Delian Apollo, formerly regarded as part of the one to the Pythian Apollo,
is the work of a Homerid of Chios, and approaches so nearly to the true Homeric
tone, that the author, who calls himself the blind poet, who lived in the rocky
Chios, was held even by Thucydides to be Homer himself. It narrates the birth
of Apollo in Delos, but a great part of it is lost. The hymn to the Pythian Apollo
contained the foundation of the Pythian sanctuary by the god himself, who slays
the dragon, and, in the form of a dolphin, leads Cretan men to Crissa, whom he
established as priests of his temple. The hymn to Hermes, which, on account of
its mentioning the seven-stringed lyre, the invention of Terpander, cannot have
been composed before the 30th olympiad, relates the tricks of the newborn Hermes,
who, having left his cradle, drove away the cattle of Apollo from their pastures
in Pieria to Pylos, there killed them, and then invented the lyre, made of a tortoise-shell,
with which he pacified the anger of Apollo. The hymn to Aphrodite celebrates the
birth of Aeneas in a style not very different from that of Homer. The hymn to
Demeter, first discovered 1778, in Moscow, by Mathaei, and first published by
Ruhnken, 1780, gives an account of Demeter's search after her daughter, Persephone,
who had been carried away by Hades. The goddess obtains from Zeus, that her daughter
should pass only one third part of the year with Hades, and return to her for
the rest of the year. With this symbolical description of the corn, which, when
sown, remains for some time under ground, and then springs up, the poet has connected
the mythology of the Eleusinians, who hospitably received the goddess on her wanderings,
afterwards built her a temple, and were rewarded by instruction in the mysterious
rites of Demeter.
Beside the cyclic epics and the hymns, we find poems of quite a different
nature erroneously ascribed to Homer. Such was the case with the Margites, a poem,
which Aristotle regarded as the source of comedy, just as he called the Iliad
and Odyssey the fountain of all tragic poetry. From this view of Aristotle, we
may judge of the nature of the poem. It ridiculed a man who was said "to know
many things, and to know all badly". The subject was nearly related to the scurrilous
and satirical poetry of Archilochus and other contemporary iambographers, although
in versification, epic tone, and language, it imitated the Iliad. The iambic verses
which are quoted from it by grammarians were most likely interspersed by Pigres,
brother of Artemisia, who is also called the author of this poem, and who interpolated
the Iliad with pentameters in a similar manner.
The same Pigres was perhaps the author of the Batrachomyomachia, the
Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Suid. s. v.; Plut. de Malign. Herod. 43), a poem
frequently ascribed by the ancients to Homer. It is a harmless playful tale, without
a marked tendency to sarcasm and satire, amusing as a parody, but without any
great poetical merit which could justify its being ascribed to Homer.
Besides these poems, there are a great many more, most of which we
know only by name, and which we find attributed to Homer with more or less confidence.
But we have good reasons for doubting all such statements concerning lost poems,
whose claims we cannot examine, when we see that even Thucydides and Aristotle
considered as genuine not only such poems as the Margites and some of the hymns,
but also all those passages of the Iliad and Odyssey which are evidently interpolated,
and which at the present day nobody would dream of ascribing to their reputed
author (Nitzsch, Anm. z. Od. vol. ii.) The time in which Greek literature flourished
was not adapted for tracing out the poems which were spurious and interpolated.
People enjoyed all that was beautiful, without caring who was the author. The
task of sifting and correcting the works of literature was left to the age in
which the faculties of the Greek mind had ceased to produce original works, and
had turned to scrutinise and preserve former productions. Then it was not only
discovered that the cyclic poems and the hymns had no title to be styled " Homeric"
but the question was mooted and warmly discussed, whether the Odyssey was to be
attributed to the author of the Iliad. Of the existence of this interesting controversy
we had only a slight indication in Seneca (de Brevit. Vitae, 13) before the publication
of the Venetian Scholia. From these we know now that there was a regular party
of critics, who assigned the Iliad and Odyssey to two different authors, and were
therefore called Chorizontes (Chorizontes), the Separaters. Their arguments were
probably not very convincing, and might fairly be considered to be entirely refuted
by such reasonings as Longinus made use of, who affirmed (just as if he had heard
it from Homer himself) that the Iliad was composed by Homer in the vigour of life,
and the Odyssey in his old age. With this decision all critics were satisfied
for centuries, till, in modern times, the question has been opened again. Traces
have been discovered in the Odyssey which seemed to indicate a later time; and
although this is a difficult and doubtful point, because we do not know in many
cases whether the discrepancies in the two poems are to be considered as genuine
parts or as interpolations, yet there is so much in the one poem which cannot
be reconciled with the whole tenor of the other, that a later origin of the Odyssey
seems very probable (Nitzsch in Hall. Encycl.). We cannot lay much stress on the
observation, that the state of social life in the Odyssey appears more advanced
in refinement, comfort, and art, than in the Iliad, because this may be regarded
as the result of the different nature of the subjects. The magnificent palaces
of Menelaus and Alcinous, and the peaceful enjoyments of the Phaeacians, could
find no place in the rough camp of the heroes before Troy. But a great and essential
difference, which pervades the whole of the two poems, is observable in the notions
that are entertained respecting the gods. In the Iliad the men are better than
the gods; in the Odyssey it is the reverse. In the latter poem no mortal dares
to resist, much less to attack and wound a god; Olympus does not resound with
everlasting quarrels; Athene consults humbly the will of Zeus, and forbears offending
Poseidon, her uncle, for the sake of a mortal man. Whenever a god inflicts punishment
or bestows protection in the Odyssey. it is for some moral desert; not as in the
Iliad, through mere caprice, without any consideration of the good or bad qualities
of the individual. In the Iliad Zeus sends a dream to deceive Agamemnon; Athene,
after a general consultation of the gods, prompts Pandarus to his treachery; Paris,
the violator of the sacred laws of hospitality, is never upbraided with his crime
by the gods; whereas, in the Odyssey, they appear as the awful avengers of those
who do not respect the laws of the hospitable Zeus. The gods of the Iliad live
on Mount Olympus; those of the Odyssey are further removed from the earth; they
inhabit the wide heaven. There is nothing which obliges us to think of the Mount
Olympus. In the Iliad the gods are visible to every one except when they surround
themselves with a cloud; in the Odyssey they are usually invisible, unless they
take the shape of men. In short, as Benjamin Constant has well observed (de la
Relig. iii.), there is more mythology in the Iliad, and more religion in the Odyssey.
If we add to all this the differences that exist between the two poems in language
and tone, we shall be obliged to admit, that the Odyssey is of considerably later
date than the Iliad. Every one who admires the bard of the Iliad, with whom are
connected all the associations of ideas which have been formed respecting Homer,
feels naturally inclined to give him' credit for having composed the Odyssey also,
and is unwilling to fancy another person to be the author who would be quite an
imaginary and uninteresting personage. It is no doubt chiefly owing to these feelings
that many scholars have tried in various ways to prove that the same Homer is
the author of both the poems, although there seem sufficient reasons to establish
the contrary. Thus Mueller says: "If the completion of the Iliad and Odyssey seems
too vast a work for the lifetime of one man, we may perhaps have recourse to the
supposition, that Homer, after having sung the Iliad in the vigour of his youthful
years, in his old age communicated to some devoted disciple the plan of the Odyssey,
which had long been working in his mind, and left it to him for completion". Nitzsch
(Anmerk. z. Od. vol. ii.) has found out another expedient. He thinks, that in
the Iliad Homer has followed more closely the old traditions, which represented
the former and ruder state of society; whilst, in the Odyssey, he was more original,
and imprinted upon his own inventions his own ideas concerning the gods.
The history of the Homeric poems may be divided conveniently into
two great periods: one in which the text was transmitted by oral tradition, and
the other of the written text after Peisistratus. Of the former we have already
spoken: it therefore only remains to treat of the latter. The epoch from Peisistratus
down to the establishment of the first critical school at Alexandria, i. e. to
Zenodotus, presents very few facts concerning the Homeric poems. Oral tradition
still prevailed over writing for a long time; though in the days of Alcibiades
it was expected that every schoolmaster would have a copy of Homer with which
to teach his boys (Plut. Alcib.). Homer became a sort of ground-work for a liberal
education, and as his influence over the minds of the people thus became still
stronger, the philosophers of that age were naturally led either to explain and
recommend or to oppose and refute the moral principles and religious doctrines
contained in the heroic tales. It was with this practical view that Pythagoras,
Xenophanes, and Heracleitus, condemned Homer as one who uttered falsehoods and
degraded the majesty of the gods; whilst Theagenes, Metrodorus, Anaxagoras, and
Stesimbrotus, expounded the deep wisdom of Homer, which was disguised from the
eyes of the common observer under the veil of an apparently insignificant tale.
So old is the allegorical explanation, a folly at which the sober Socrates smiled,
which Plato refuted, and Aristarchus opposed with all his might, but which, nevertheless,
outlived the sound critical study of Homer among the Greeks, and has thriven luxuriantly
even down to the present day.
A more scientific study was bestowed on Homer by the sophists of Pericles'
age, Prodicus, Protagoras, Hippias, and others. There are even traces which seem
to indicate that the aporiai and luseis, such favourite themes with the Alexandrian
critics, originated with these sophists. Thus the study of Homer increased, and
the copies of his works must naturally have been more and more multiplied. We
may suppose that not a few of the literary men of that age carefully compared
the best MSS. within their reach, and choosing what they thought best made new
editions (diorthoseis). The task of these first editors was not an easy one. It
may be concluded from the nature of the case, and it is known by various testimonies,
that the text of those days offered enormous discrepancies, not paralleled in
the text of any other classical writer. There were passages left out, transposed,
added, or so altered, as not easily to be recognised; nothing, in short, like
a smooth vulgate existed before the time of the Alexandrine critics. This state
of the text must have presented immense difficulties to the first editors in the
infancy of criticism. Yet these early editions were valuable to the Alexandrians,
as being derived from good and ancient sources. Two only are known to us through
the scholia, one of the poet Antimachus, and the famous one of Aristotle (he ek
tou narthekos), which Alexander the Great used to carry about with him in a splendid
case (narthex) on all his expeditions. Besides these editions, called in the scholia
hai kat' andra, there were several other old diorthoseis at Alexandria, under
the name of hai kata poleis, or hai ek poleon, or hai politikai. We know six of
them, those of Massilia, Chios, Argos, Sinope, Cyprus, and Crete. It is hardly
likely that they were made by public authority in the different states, whose
names they bear; on the contrary, as the persons who had made them were unknown,
they were called, just as manuscripts are now, from the places where they had
been found. We are acquainted with two more editions, the aiolike, brought most
likely from some Aeolian town, and the kuklike, which seems to have been the copy
of Homer which formed part of the series of cyclic poems in the Alexandrian library.
All these editions, however, were only preparatory to the establishment
of a regular and systematic criticism and interpretation of Homer, which began
with Zenodotus at Alexandria. For such a task the times after Alexander were quite
fit. Lite had fled from the literature of the Greeks; it was become a dead body,
and was very properly carried into Egypt, there to be embalmed and safely preserved
for many ensuing centuries. It was the task of men, who, like Aristarchus, could
judge of poetry without being able to write any themselves, to preserve carefully
that which was extant, to clear it from all stains and corruptions, and to explain
what was no longer rooted in and connected with the institutions of a free political
life, and therefore was become unintelligible to all but the learned. Three men,
who stand in the relation of masters and pupils, were at the head of a numerous
host of scholars, who directed their attention either occasionally or exclusively
to the study and criticism of the Homeric poems. Zenodotus laid the foundation
of systematic criticism, by establishing two rules for purifying the corrupted
text. He threw out, 1st, whatever was contradictory to, or not necessarily connected
with, the whole of the work; 2d, what seemed unworthy of the genius of the author.
To these two rules his followers, Aristophanes and Aristarchus, added two more;
they rejected, 3d, what was contrary or foreign to the customs of the Homeric
age, and 4th, what did not agree with the epic language and versification. It
is not to be wondered at that Zenodotus, in his first attempt, did not reach the
summit of perfection. The manner in which he cut out long passages, arbitrarily
altered others, transposed and, in short, corrected Homer's text as he would have
done his own, seemed shocking to all sober critics of later times, and would have
proved very injurious to the text had not Aristophanes, and still more Aristarchus,
acted on sounder principles, and thus put a stop to the arbitrary system of Zenodotus.
Aristophanes of Byzantium, a man of vast learning, seems to have been more occupied
with the other parts of the Greek literature, particularly the comic poets, than
with Homer. He inserted in his edition many of the verses which had been thrown
out by Zenodotus, and in many respects laid the foundations for what his pupil
Aristarchus executed. The reputation of the latter as the prince of grammarians
was so great throughout the whole of antiquity, that before the publication of
the Venetian scholia by Villoison, we hardly knew how to account for it. But these
excellent scholia, which have chiefly enabled us to understand the origin of the
Homeric poems, teach us also to appreciate their great and unrivalled interpreter,
and have now generally led to the conclusion, that the highest aim of the ambition
of modern critics with respect to Homer is to restore the edition of Aristarchus,
an under-taking which is believed to be possible by one of the most competent
judges, chiefly through the assistance afforded by these scholia (Lehrs, de Aristarchi
Studiis Homericis, 1883). Lehrs has discovered the sources from which these scholia
are derived. 1. Aristonicus, Peri semeion ton tes Hiliados kai Odusseias. These
semeia are the critical marks of Aristarchus, so that from Aristonicus we learn
a great many of the readings of Aristarchus. 2. Didymus, Peri tes Aristarchou
diorthoseos. 3. Herodian, nrpoowyla Peri tes Aristarchou : the word prosody contained,
according to the use of those grammarians, not merely what is called prosody now,
but the rules of accentuation, contraction, spiritus, and the like. 4. Nicanor,
Peri stigmes, on the stoppings. On Aristarchus we need not say much here: we will
only add, that the obelos, one of the critical marks used by Aristarchus, and
invented, like the accents, by his master, Aristophanes, was used for the athetesis
i. e. to mark those verses which seemed improper and detrimental to the beauty
of the poem, but which Aristarchus dared not throw out of the text, as it was
impossible to determine whether they were to be ascribed to an accidental carelessness
of the author, or to interpolations of rhapsodists. Those verses which Aristarchus
was convinced to be spurious he left out of his edition altogether. Aristarchus
was in constant opposition to Crates of Mallus, the founder of the Pergamene school
of grammar. This Crates had the merit of transplanting the study of literature
to Rome. With regard to Homer, he zealously defended the allegorical explication
against his rival Aristarchus. In the time of Augustus the great compiler, Didymus,
wrote most comprehensive commentaries on Homer, copying mostly the works of preceding
Alexandrian grammarians, which had swollen to an enormous extent. Under Tiberius,
Apollonius Sophista lived, whose lexicon Homericum is very valuable (ed. Bekker,
1833). Apion, a pupil of Didymus, was of much less importance than is generally
believed, chiefly on the authority of Wolf: he was a great quack, and an impudent
boaster (Lehrs, Quaest. Epicae, 183). Longinus and his pupil, Porphyrius, of whom
we possess some tolerably good scholia, were of more value. The Homeric scholia
are dispersed in various MSS. Complete collections do not exist, nor are they
desirable, as many of them are utterly useless. The most valuable scholia on the
Iliad are those which have been referred to above, which were published by Villoison
from a MS. of the tenth century in the library of St. Mark at Venice, together
with the scholia to the Iliad previously published, Ven. 1788, fol. These scholia
were reprinted with additions, edited by I. Bekker, Berlin, 1825, with an appendix,
1826, which collection contains all that is worth reading. A few additions are
to be found in Bachmann's Scholia ad Homeri Iliadem, Lips. 1835. The most valuable
scholia to the Odyssey are those published by Buttmann, Berl. 1821, mostly taken
from the scholia originally published by A. Mai from a MS. at Milan in 1819. The
extensive commentary of Eustathius is a compilation destitute of judgment and
of taste, but which contains much valuable information from sources which are
now lost. The old editions of Homer, as well as the MSS., are of very little importance
for the restoration of the text, for which we must apply to the scholia. The Editio
Princeps by Demetrius Chalcondylas, Flor. 1488, was the first large work printed
in Greek (one psalm only and the Batrachomyomachia having preceded). This edition
was frequently reprinted. Wolf reckons scarcely seven critical editions from the
Editio Princeps to his time. That of H. Stephanus, in Poet. Graec. Princ. her.
Carm., Paris, 1566, was one of the best. In England the editions of Barnes, Cantab.,
1711, and of Clarke, who published the Iliad in 1729, and the Odyssey in 1740,
were generally used for a long time, and often reprinted. The latter was published
with additions by Ernesti, Lips. 1759-1764.. This edition was reprinted at Glasgow,
with Wolf's Prolegomena, in 1814, and again at Leipzig in 1824.
A new period began with Wolf's second edition (Homeri et Homeridarum
Op. et Rel. Halis, 1794), the first edition (1784 and 1785) being merely a copy
of the vulgate. Along with the second edition were published the Prolegomena.
A third edition was published from 1804-1807. It is very much to be regretted
that the editions of Wolf are without commentaries or critical notes, so that
it is impossible to know in many cases on what grounds he adopted his readings,
which differ from the vulgate. Heyne began in 1802 to publish the Iliad, which
was finished in eight volumes, and was most severely and unsparingly reviewed
by Wolf, Voss, and Eichstädt, in the Jenaer Literatur Zeitung, 1803. A ninth
volume, containing the Indices, was published by Grofenhan in 1822. A curious
and most ridiculous attempt was made by Payne Knight, who published (London, 1820)
the Homeric text cleared of all interpolations, so far at least as his judgment
reached, and well crammed (by way of compensation) with digammas, it being the
intention of the editor to restore the genuine spelling. This edition is a palpable
confirmation of the fact, that to restore the edition of Aristarchus is all which
modern critics can attempt to achieve. The best recension of the text is that
by I. Bekker, Berlin, 1843. A very good edition of the Iliad, with critical notes,
was published by Spitzner, Gotha, 1832-1836, but the author did not live to publish
his explanatory commentary. There is an excellent commentary to the two first
books of the Iliad by Freytag, Petersburgh, 1837; but the best of all commentaries
which have yet appeared on the Homeric poems are those of Nitzsch on the Odyssey,
Hannov. 1825, &c., of which the three volumes now published extend only as far
as the twelfth book. The most valuable of the separate editions of the Hymns are
those by Ilgen, Hal., 1791, and Hermann, Lips. 1806. The Lexicon Novum Homericum
(et Pindaricum) of Damm, originally published at Berlin in 1765, and reprinted,
London, 1827, is still of some value, though the author was destitute of all sound
principles of criticism; but a far more important work for the student is Buttmann's
Lexilogus, Berlin, 1825 and 1837, translated by Fishlake, Lond. 1840, 2nd edition.
Homer has been translated into almost all the modern European languages.
Of these translations the German one by Voss is the best reproduction of the great
original: the English translations by Chapman, Pope, and Cowper must be regarded
as failures.
The most important works on the Homeric poems and the controversy
respecting their original have been mentioned in the course of this article. A
complete account of the literature of the Homeric poems will be found in the Bibliotheca
Homerica, Halis, 1837, and in the notes to the first volume of Bode's Geschichte
der Hellenischen Dichtkunst. An account of the present state of the controversy
is given in an appendix to the first volume of the new edition of Thirlwall's
Hist. of Greece, London, 1845.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Jan 2006 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Editor's Information
The e-texts of the works by Homer are found in Greece (ancient country) under the category Ancient Greek Writings.
A Homeric Dictionary, Georg Autenrieth
Epos.
(1) Greek. Many indications point to the fact that the oldest poetry of
the Greeks was connected with the worship of the gods, and that religious poetry
of a mystical kind was composed by the priests of the Thracians, a musical and
poetical people, and diffused in old times through Northern Greece. The worship
of the Muses was thus derived from the Thracians, who in later times had disappeared
from Greece Proper; and accordingly the oldest bards whose names are known to
the Greeks-- Orpheus, Musaeus, Eumolpus, Thamyris--are supposed to have been Thracians
also. The current ideas of the nature and action of the gods tended more and more
to take the form of poetical myths respecting their birth, actions, and sufferings.
Hence, these compositions, of which an idea may be derived from some of the so-called
Homeric Hymns, gradually assumed an epic character. In course of time the epic
writers threw off their connection with religion, and struck out on independent
lines. Confining themselves no longer to the myths about the gods, they celebrated
the heroic deeds both of mythical antiquity and of the immediate past. Thus, in
the Homeric descriptions of the epic age, while the bards Phemius and Demodocus
appear as favourites of the gods, to whom they are indebted for the gift of song,
they are not attached to any particular worship. The subjects of their song are
not only stories about the gods, such as the loves of Ares and Aphrodite, but
the events of recent times, the conquest of Troy by means of the wooden horse,
and the tragic return of the Achaeans from Troy. Singers like these, appearing
at public festivals, and at the tables of princes, to entertain the guests with
their lays, must have existed early in Greece Proper. It was, however, the Ionian
Greeks of Asia Minor who first fully developed the capacities of epic poetry.
By long practice, extending probably through centuries, a gradual progress was
probably effected from short lays to long epic narratives; and at the same time
a tradition delivered from master to scholar handed on and perfected the outer
form of style and metre. Thus, about B.C. 900, epic poetry was brought
to its highest perfection by the genius of Homer, the reputed author of the Iliad
and Odyssey. After Homer it sank, never to rise again, from the height to which
he had raised it.
It is true that in the following centuries a series of epics, more
or less comprehensive, were composed by poets of the Ionic school in close imitation
of the style and metre of Homer. But not one of them succeeded in coming even
within measurable distance of their great master. The favourite topics of these
writers were such fables as served either to introduce, or to extend and continue,
the Iliad and Odyssey. They were called Cyclic Poets perhaps because the most
important of their works were afterwards put together with the Iliad and Odyssey
in an epic cycle, or circle of lays. The Cyprian poems (ta Kupria), of Stasinus
of Salamis in Cyprus (B.C. 776), formed the introduction to the Iliad. These embraced
the history of the period between the marriage of Peleus and the opening of the
Iliad. At about the same time Arctinus of Miletus composed his Aethiopis in five
books. This poem started from the conclusion of the Iliad, and described the death
of Achilles, and of the Ethiopian prince Memnon, the contest for the arms of Achilles,
and the suicide of Aias. The Destruction of Ilium, by the same author, was in
two books. By way of supplement to the Homeric Iliad, Lesches of Mitylene, either
about B.C. 708 or 664, wrote a Little Iliad, in four books. This embraced the
contest for the arms of Achilles, the appearance of Neoptolemus and Philoctetes,
and the capture of the city. The transition from the Iliad to the Odyssey was
formed by the five books of Nostoi (The Return of the Heroes), written by Agias
of Troezen. The Telegonia, by Eugammon of Cyrene (about 570), continued the Odyssey.
This was in two books, embracing the history of Odysseus from the burial of the
suitors until his death at the hands of his son Telegonus. These poems and those
of the other cyclics were, after Homer, the sources from which the later lyric
and dramatic poets drew most of their information. But only fragments of them
remain. See Cyclic Poets below.
A new direction was given to epic poetry in Greece Proper by the didactic
and genealogical poems of Hesiod
of Ascra, about a hundred years after Homer. Hesiod was the founder of a school,
the productions of which were often attributed to him as those of the Ionic school
were to Homer. One of these disciples of Hesiod was Eumelus of Corinth (about
B.C. 750), of the noble family of the Bacchiadae. But his poems, like those of
the rest, are lost.
The most notable representatives of mythical epic poetry in the following
centuries are Pisander of Camirus (about B.C. 640), and Panyasis of Halicarnassus
(during the first half of the fifth century). In the second half of the fifth
century Choerilus of Samos wrote a Perseis on the Persian Wars, the first attempt
in Greece at an historical epic. His younger contemporary, Antimachus of Colophon,
also struck out a new line in his learned Thebais, the precursor and model of
the later epic of Alexandria. The Alexandrians laid great stress on learning and
artistic execution in detail, but usually confined themselves to poems of less
magnitude. The chief representatives of the Alexandrian school are Callimachus
(about B.C. 250), Rhianus, Euphorion, and Apollonius of Rhodes. The last made
a futile attempt to return to the simplicity of Homer. His Argonautica is, with
the exception of the Homeric poems, the only Greek epic which has survived from
the ante-Christian era. In the 200 years between the fourth and sixth centuries
A.D., the mythical epic is represented by Quintus Smyrnaeus, Nonnus, Colluthus,
Tryphiodorus, Musaeus, and the apocryphal Orpheus. Nonnus, Colluthus, and Tryphiodorus
were Egyptians. Nonnus and Musaeus, alone among these writers, have any claim
to distinction. The talent of Nonnus is genuine, but undisciplined; Musaeus knows
how to throw a charm into his treatment of a narrow subject. The whole series
is closed by the Iliaca of Joannes Tzetzes, a learned but tasteless scholar of
the twelfth century A.D. .
As Homer was the master of the mythical, so Hesiod was the master
of the didactic epic. After him this department of poetry was best represented
by Xenophanes of Colophon, Parmenides of Elea, and Empedocles of Agrigentium,
in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. In the Alexandrian period, didactic poetry
was much taken up, and employed upon the greatest possible variety of subjects.
But none of its representatives succeeded in writing more than poetic prose, or
in handling their intractable material with the mastery which Vergil shows in
his Georgics. The period produced the astronomical epic of Aratus of Sicyon (about
B.C. 275), and two medical poems by Nicander of Colophon (about 150). Under the
Roman Empire more didactic poetry was produced by the Greek writers. Maximus and
the so-called Manetho wrote on astrology. Dionysius Periegetes on geography, Oppian
on angling, and an imitator of Oppian on hunting. The Alexandrian period also
produced didactic poems in iambic senarii, as, e. g., several on geography bearing
the names of Dicaearchus and Scymnus, which still survive.
(2) Roman. The Romans possibly had songs of an epic character from the
earliest times; but these were soon forgotten. They had, however, a certain influence
on the later and comparatively artificial literature, for both Livius Andronicus
in his translation of the Odyssey, and Naevius in his Punic War, wrote in the
traditional Italian metre, the versus Saturnius. Naevius was, it is true, a national
poet, and so was his successor Ennius, but the latter employed the Greek hexameter
metre, instead of the rude Saturnian. To follow the example of Ennius, and celebrate
the achievements of their countrymen in the form of the Greek epic, was the ambition
of several poets before the fall of the Republic. A succession of poets, as Hostius,
the tragedian Attius, and Furius were the authors of poetical annals. Here it
is proper also to mention cicero's epics on Marius and on his own consulship,
besides the poem of Terentius Varro of Atax (Atacinus) on Caesar's war with the
Sequani (Bellum Sequanicum). Latin epics on Greek mythical subjects seem to have
been rare in the republican age. At least we know of only a few translations,
as that of the Iliad by Mattius and Ninnius Crassus, and of the Cypria by Laevinus.
Toward the end of the republican age it was a favourite form of literary activity
to write in free imitation of the learned Alexandrians. Varro of Atax, for example,
followed Apollonius of Rhodes in his Argonautica; others, like Helvius Cinna and
the orator Licinius Calvus, preferred the shorter epics so much in favour with
the Alexandrians. Only one example in this style is completely preserved, the
quasi epithalamium (lxiv.) of Catullus. This is the only example we possess of
the narrative epic of the Republic.
But in the Augustan Age both kinds of epic, the mythic and the historical,
are represented by a number of poets. Varius Rufus, Rabirius, Cornelius Severus,
and Pedo Albinovanus treated contemporary history in the epic style; Domitius
Marsus and Macer turned their attention to the mythology. The Aeneid of Vergil,
the noblest monument of Roman epic poetry, combines both characters. Of all the
epic productions of this age, the only ones which are preserved intact are the
Aeneid, a panegyric on Messala, which found its way into the poems of Tibullus,
and perhaps two poems, the Culexand Ciris, both often attributed to Vergil.
In the first century A.D. we have several examples of the historical
epic: the Pharsalia of Lucan, the Punica of Silius Italicus, a Bellum Civile in
the satirical romance of Petronius, and an anonymous panegyric on Calpurnius Piso,
who was executed for conspiracy under Nero, A.D. 65. The heroic style is represented
by the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus, and the Thebais and Achilleis of Statius,
to which we may add the metrical epitome of the Iliad by the so-called Pindarus
Thebanus. The politico-historical poems of the succeeding centuries, by Publius
Porfirius Optatianus in the fourth century, Claudianus, Merobaudes, Sidonius Apollinaris
in the fifth, Priscian, Corippus, and Venantius Fortunatus in the sixth, are entirely
panegyric in character, and intended to do homage to the emperor or men of influence.
Of all these poets, Claudianus is the most important. He and Dracontius (towards
the end of the fifth century) are among the last who take their subjects from
mythology.
Didactic poetry, which suited the serious character of the Romans,
was early represented at Rome. In this the Romans were in many ways superior to
the Greeks. Appius Claudius Caecus and the elder Cato were authors of gnomic poetry.
Ennius, the tragedian Attius, and several of his contemporaries wrote didactic
pieces; the satires of Lucilius and Varro were also in part didactic. It was,
however, not till the end of the republican period that the influence of Greek
literature gave predominance to the Greek epic form. It was then adopted by Varro
of Atax, by M. Cicero, and above all by Lucretius, whose philosophical poem De
Rerum Natura is the only didactic poem of this period that has been preserved
intact, as it is one of the most splendid monuments of Roman genius. In the Augustan
Age many writers were active in this field. Valgius Rufus and Aemilius Macer followed
closely in the steps of the Alexandrians. Grattius wrote a poem on hunting, a
part of which still survives; Manilius, an astronomical poem which survives entire.
But the Georgics of Vergil throw all similar work, Greek or Latin, into the shade.
Ovid employs the epic metre in his Metamorphoses and Halieutica, the elegiac in
his Fasti.
In the first century A.D. Germanicus translated Aratus. Columella
wrote a poem on gardening; an unknown author (often called Lucilius), the Aetna.
The third century produced the medical poem of Sammonicus Serenus, and that of
Nemesianus on hunting. In the fourth we have Ausonius, much of whose work is didactic;
Palladius on agriculture; an adaptation of Aratus and of Dionysius Periegetes
by Avienus, with a description of the sea-coasts of the known world in iambics;
in the fifth, besides some of Claudianus's pieces, a description by Rutilius Namatianus
in elegiacs of his return home. The book of Dionysius Periegetes was adapted by
Priscian in the sixth century. A collection of proverbs, bearing the name of Cato
, belongs to the fourth century. In most of these compositions the metrical form
is a mere set off; and in the school verses of the grammarians, as in those by
Terentianus Maurus on metres, and in those by an anonymous author on rhetorical
figures, and on weights and measures, there is no pretence of poetry at all.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited July 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Cyclic Poets. A name given by the ancient grammarians to a class of minor poets, who selected, for the subjects of their productions, events occurring as well during the Trojan War as before and after, and who, in treating of these subjects, confined themselves within a certain round or cycle (kuklos, circulus) of fable. In order to understand the subject more fully, we must observe that there was both a Mythic and a Trojan cycle. The former of these embraced the whole series of fable, from the genealogies of the gods down to the time of the Trojan War; the latter comprised the fables that had reference to, or were in any way connected with, the Trojan War. Of the first class were Theogonies, Cosmogonies, Titanomachies, and the like; of the second, the poems of Arctinus, Lesches, Agias, Eugammon, Stasinus, and others. (See Homeric Question.) At a later period the term cyclic was applied, as a mark of contempt, to two species of poems--one, where the poet confined himself to a trite and hackneyed round (kuklos) of particulars (cf. Horace, Ars Poet. 132); the other, where, from an ignorance of the true nature of epic poetry, he indulged in an inordinate and tiresome amount of detail, going back to the remotest beginnings of a subject. The most celebrated of the Cyclic poems were the Cypria, the Aethiopis of Arctinus, the Little Iliad (Ilias Mikra) of Pausanias, the Nostoi of Agias, the Telegonia of Eugammon, the Batrachomyomachia, and the Margites of Pigres.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited July 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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