that so Homer adjoined mythical ornaments to true events. But history was the basis:—ἔλαβεν οὖν παρὰ τῆς ἱστορίας τὰς ἀρχάς[28]. And, in adopting the belief that Homer is to be taken generally for a most trustworthy witness to facts, I am far from saying that there are no cases of exception, where he may reasonably be suspected of showing less than his usual fidelity. The doctrine must be accepted with latitude: the question is not whether it is absolutely safe, but whether it is the least unsafe. We may most reasonably, perhaps, view his statements and representations with a special jealousy, when they are such as appear systematically contrived to enhance the distinctive excellencies of his nation. Thus, for instance, both in the causes and incidents of the war, and in the relative qualities and merits of Greeks and Trojans, we may do well to check the too rapid action of our judgments, and to allow some scope to the supposition, that the historical duties of the bard might here naturally become subordinate to his patriotic purpose in glorifying the sires of his hearers, that immortal group who became through him the fountain head to Greece, both of national unity and of national fame.
Indeed, while I contend keenly for the historic aim and character of Homer, I understand the terms in a sense much higher than that of mere precision in the leading narration. We may, as I am disposed to think, even if we should disbelieve the existence of Helen, of Agamemnon, or of Troy, yet hold, in all that is most essential, by the historical character of Homer. For myself, I ask to be permitted to believe in these, and in much besides these; yet I also plead that the main question is not whether he has correctly recorded a certain series of transactions, but whether he has truly and faithfully represented manners and characters, feelings and tastes, races and countries, principles and institutions. Here lies the pith of history; these it has for its soul, and fact for its body. It does not appear to me reasonable to presume that Homer idealized his narration with anything like the license which was permitted to the Carlovingian romance; yet even that romance did not fail to retain in many of the most essential particulars a true historic character; and it conveys to us, partly by fact and partly through a vast parable, the inward life of a period pregnant with forces that were to operate powerfully upon our own characters and condition. Even those who would regard the cases as parallel should, therefore, remember that they too must read Homer otherwise than as a poet in the vulgar and more prevailing sense, which divests poetry of its relation to reality. The more they read him in that spirit the higher, I believe, they will raise their estimate of his still unknown and unappreciated treasures.
In employing such a phrase as the date of Homer, I mean no reference to any given number of years before the Olympiads, but simply his relation in the order of history to the heroic age; to the events, and, above all, to the living type of that age.
When asserting generally the historic aims and authority of the poet, I do not presume to pronounce confidently upon the difficult question of the period at which he lived. I prefer to dwell upon the proposition that he is an original witness to manners, characters, and ideas such as those of his poems. It is not necessary, to make good this proposition, that we should determine a given number of years as the maximum that could have passed between the Trojan war and the composition of the Iliad or Odyssey. But the internal evidence seems to me very strongly to support the belief, that he lived before the Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus. That he was not an eye-witness of the war, we absolutely know from the Invocation before the Catalogue[29]. It also appears[30] that he must have seen the grandchildren of Æneas reigning over the land of Priam. It is no extravagant supposition that forty or fifty years after the siege, perhaps even less, might have brought this to pass.
The single idea or form of expression in the poems, which at first sight tends to suggest a very long interval, is that quoted by Velleius Paterculus[31], the οἷοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσι[32]. But the question arises, whether this is an historical land-mark, or a poetical embellishment? In the former sense, as implying a great physical degeneracy of mankind, it would require us to suppose nothing less than a lapse of centuries between the Troica and the epoch of the poet. This hypothesis, though Heyne speaks of the eighth or ninth generation[33], general opinion has rejected. If it be dismissed, and if we adopt the view of this formula as an ornament, it loses all definite chronological significance. Thus it is lost in the phrase, common in our own time with respect to the intellectual characters of men now no more, but yet not removed from us, perhaps, by more than from a quarter to half a century—‘there were giants in those days.’ Nay, the observation of Paterculus, especially as he was an enthusiastic admirer, itself exemplifies the little care with which these questions have been treated. For the Iliad itself supplies a complete answer in the speech of Nestor, who draws the very same contrast between the heroes of the Troica and those of his own earlier days:
And it is curious that we have in these words a measure, supplied by Homer himself, of the real force of the phrase, which seems to fix it at something under half a century, and thus makes it harmonise with the indication afforded by the passage relating to the descendants of Æneas. The argument of Mitford[35] on the age of Homer appears to me to be of great value: and, while it is rejected, it is not answered by Heyne[36]. Nor is it easy to conceive the answer to those who urge that, so far as the poet’s testimony goes, the years from Pirithous to the siege are as many as from the siege to his own day[37]. But Pirithous was the father of Polypætes, who led a Thessalian division in the war.[38]
If this view of Homer’s meaning in the particular case be correct, we can the better understand why it is that the poet, who uses this form of enhancement four times in the Iliad, does not employ it in the Odyssey, though it is the later poem, and though he had opportunities enough; such as the athletic exploits of Ulysses in Phæacia, and especially the handling of the Bow in Ithaca. For in the Iliad a more antique tone of colouring prevails, as it is demanded by the loftier strain of the action.
There is one passage, and one only, which is just capable of being construed as an allusion to the great Dorian conquest: it is that in the Fourth Book of the Iliad, where Juno tells Jupiter that she well knows he can destroy in spite of her, whensoever he may choose, her three dearest cities, Argos, Sparta, and Mycenæ[39]. It is probable that the passage refers to sacking such as had been practised by Hercules[40], and such as is pathetically described by Phœnix[41]. But, in the first place, we do not know that these cities were in any sense destroyed by the Dorian conquest, more than they had been by previous dynastic and territorial changes. If, on the other hand, it be contended, that we need not construe the passage as implying more than revolution independent of material destruction, then we need not introduce the idea of the Dorian conquest at all to sustain the propriety of the passage, for Homer already knew by tradition how those cities, and the territory to which they belonged, had changed hands from Danaïds to Perseids, and from Perseids to Pelopids.
But indications even far less equivocal from an isolated passage would be many times outweighed, in a case like that of Homer, by any conclusion justly drawn from features, whether positive or negative, that are rooted in the general body of the poems. Now such a conclusion arises from the admitted and total absence of any allusion in Homer to the general incidents of the great Dorian conquest, and to the consequent reconstruction of the old or European Greece, or to the migrations eastward, or to the very existence of the new Asiatic Greece which it is supposed to have called into being. Respecting the conquest itself, he might by a sustained effort of deliberate intention have kept silence: but is it possible that he could have avoided betraying by reference to results, on a thousand occasions, his knowledge of a change which had drawn anew the whole surface of society in Greece? It would be more rational, were we driven to it (which is not the case), even to suppose that the passage in question had been tampered with, than to imagine that the poet could have forborne through twenty-eight thousand lines, to make any other reference to, or further betray his knowledge of, events which must on this supposition have occupied for him so large a part of the whole horizon of life and experience.
Again, the allusions to the trumpet and the riding-horse found in illustrative passages, but not as used in the war, are by far too slight and doubtful, to sustain the theory that Homer saw around him a system of warfare different from that which he recorded; and require us to adopt no supposition for the explanation of them, beyond the very natural one that the heroic poet, without essentially changing manners, yet, within certain limits, insensibly projects himself and his subject from the foreground of every-day life into the mellowness of distance; and, therefore, that he may advisedly have excluded from his poem certain objects or practices, which notwithstanding he knew to have been more or less in use. Again, what are we to say to the minute knowledge of Greece proper and the Peloponnesus, which Homer has displayed? Why does he (apparently) know it so much better than he knew Asia Minor? How among the rude Dorians, just emerged from comparative barbarism, could he learn it at all? How strange, that Lycurgus should have acquired the fame of having first introduced the poems to the Peloponnesus, unless a great revolution and a substitution of one dominant race for another had come between, to obliterate or greatly weaken the recollection of them in the very country, which beyond all others they covered with a blaze of glory.
Of the very small number of passages in the poems which contain a reference to events later than the action, there are two, both relating to the same subject, for which at first sight it appears difficult to account. Why does Neptune obtrude upon the Olympian Court his insignificant and rather absurd jealousy, lest the work of defence, hastily thrown up by the Achæan army, should eclipse the wall built around Troy by Apollo and himself? Evidently in order to obtain from Jupiter the suggestion, that he should subsequently himself efface all traces of it. But why does Homer show this anxiety to account for its non-appearance? Why does he return subsequently to the subject, and most carefully relate how Jupiter by raining, and Apollo by turning the mouths of eight rivers, and Neptune with his trident, all cooperated to destroy the work, and make the shore smooth and even again? Had Homer lived many generations after the Trojan war, these passages would have been entirely without purpose, for he need not then have given reasons to show, why ages had left no trace still visible of the labour of a day. But if he lived near the period of the war, the case is very different. He might then be challenged by his maritime hearers, who, if they frequented the passage into the Sea of Marmora, would have had clear views of the camp of Agamemnon, and who would naturally require him to assign a cause for the disappearance even of such a work as a day’s labour of the army could produce, and as the Trojan soldiery could make practicable for their chariots to drive over[42].
These particular indications appear to be worth considering: but the great reasons for placing the date of Homer very near to that of the War are, his visible identity with the age, the altering but not yet vanished age, of which he sings, and the broad interval in tone and feeling between himself, and the very nearest of all that follows him.
Let us now proceed to consider the question, what assumption is it, on the whole, safest to make, or what rule can we most judiciously follow, as our guide in Homeric studies, with reference to the text of the Poems?
Shall we adopt a given form of completely reconstructed text, like that of Mr. Payne Knight?
Shall we, without such adherence to a particular pattern, assume it to be either indisputable or, at least, most probable that an extensive corruption of the text can hardly have been avoided[43]; and shall we, in consequence, hold the received text provisionally, and subject to excision or to amendment according to any particular theory concerning Homer, his age, its manners and institutions, which we may ourselves have thought fit to follow or construct?
Shall we admit as authoritative, the excisions of Aristarchus or the Alexandrian critics, and the obeli which he has placed against verses which he suspected?
Or shall we proceed, as a general rule, upon the belief, that the received text of Homer is in general sound and trustworthy, so far, at least, as to be very greatly preferable to any reconstructed or altered form whatever, in which it has hitherto been produced or proposed for our acceptance?
My decided preference is for the fourth and last of these alternatives: with the observation, however, in passing, that the third does not essentially differ from it with respect to the great body of the Poems, so far as we know what the Alexandrian text really was.
I prefer this course as by far the safest: as the only one which can be entered upon with such an amount of preliminary assent, as to secure a free and unbiassed consideration of Homeric questions upon a ground held in common: and as, therefore, the only one, by means of which it can be hoped to attain to solid and material results as the reward of inquiry. In order fairly to raise the issue, the two following propositions may be stated as fitting canons of Homeric study:—
1. That we should adopt the text itself as the basis of all Homeric inquiry, and not any preconceived theory, nor any arbitrary standard of criticism, referable to particular periods, schools, or persons.
2. That as we proceed in any work of construction by evidence drawn from the text, we should avoid the temptation to solve difficulties found to lie in our way, by denouncing particular portions of it as corrupt or interpolated: should never set it aside except upon the closest examination of the particular passage questioned; should use sparingly the liberty even of arraying presumptions against it; and should always let the reader understand both when and why it is questioned.
Now, let us consider these rules, and the method which it is proposed by means of them to apply,
a. With reference to the failure of other methods.
b. With reference to the antecedent probabilities for or against the general soundness of the text.
c. With reference to the internal evidence of soundness or unsoundness afforded by the text itself.
The first of the two rules has been brought more and more into operation by the believers in Homer as the Poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, in self-defence against the sceptical theories: and it has been both announced and acted upon by Mure with such breadth and completeness, as to leave to those, who adopt it, simply the duty of treading in his footsteps.
Again, as to the second, it may now be hoped that by the force of circumstances it is gradually coming into vogue, though perhaps less, as yet, by a distinct conviction of its reasonableness, than through the utter failure and abortiveness of all other methods. First to theorise rashly (with or without consciousness), and then rudely to excise from the Homeric text whatever clashes with our crude conceptions, is, after all, an essentially superficial and vulgar method of proceeding: and if it was excusable before the evidence touching the Poet and the text had been so greatly confirmed, as it has recently been, by closer scrutiny, it can hardly be forgiven now. The text of Homer cannot be faultless: but, in the first place, it is plain, as far as general consent can make it so, that the poems, as they stand, afford a far better and surer foundation than any other form of them which has been proposed, whether curtailed in their principal members, as by the destructive school, or only amended by free handling in detail. All the recasting processes which have yet been tried, have begotten ten solecisms, or another solecism of tenfold magnitude, for every one that they did away. In fact, the end of schemes, such as that of Lachmann[44], has been not to achieve any thing like real progress in a continuous work, but simply to launch so many distinct speculations, isolated, conflicting, each resting on its author’s own hearty approval, and each drawing from the rest of the world no other sign than the shrug or the smile, which seems to be the proper reward of perverted ingenuity.
It would be presumptuous and unjust to treat the remarkable performance of Mr. Payne Knight as one of what may be called—to borrow a phrase from the commercial world—the Homeric bubble-schemes. It was anticipated with eagerness by Heyne. It was hailed by the calm judgment and refined taste of Lord Aberdeen. Yet this was not enough.
The ordeal of time has not destroyed the value of Mr. Payne Knight’s Prolegomena, but it has been decidedly unfavourable to his text as a practical attempt at reconstruction. With the old text in the right hand, and Mr. Knight’s in the left, who would doubt in which to look for the nearest likeness to Homer? Or who will ever again venture to publish an abridged or re-modelled Iliad?
Apart, however, from the unsatisfactoriness of the results of attempts at reconstruction, have we reason to believe that the text of Homer has, as a whole, been seriously vitiated by interpolation or corruption? The difficulties attending its transmission from the time of the poet are not to be denied. But I think we have scarcely enough considered the amount of means which were available, and which were actually employed, in order to neutralize those difficulties, and achieve the task. Although writing of some description appears to have existed at the epoch of the Poems, it can be probably proved, and may at any rate be fully admitted, that Homer did not write, but recited only. This is the first step: now for the second. I pass by the argument with those, who deny that poems of this length could be transmitted orally at all, as one already disposed of by the general verdict of the world. So, likewise, I leave behind me, at the point where Mure has placed them, all the reasonings of the piecers, who say that there were originally a number of Iliadic and Odyssean songs, afterwards made up into the poems such as we now have them: of the amplifiers, who look upon them as expanded respectively by gradual interpolations and additions from an original of small dimensions; of the separators, who will have just two Homers and no more, one for the Iliad, and one for the Odyssey. I assume for the present purpose the contrary of all these three propositions: and simply invite those who disbelieve them, but who also conceive that the text is generally unsafe and untrustworthy in its detail, to some consideration of that subject.
In attempting to weigh retrospectively the probable fortunes of the Homeric text, I presume that we may establish as our point of departure the judgment delivered by Heyne[46], that the manuscripts of Homer are satisfactory: that we possess all, or nearly all, that the Alexandrian critics possessed; and that by the advance of the critical art, we have now probably, on the whole, a better and truer Homer than that of Aristarchus, which is the basis of the modern text. The imperfect state of notation when writing first began to be used, and the changes in pronunciation, have not, we may also suppose with Heyne[47], done more than trifling or secondary damage to the copies.
The first serious question is this; how far was Homer mutilated, first, by the rhapsodists, or reciters, before he was put into writing, and secondly, by those who, in order to bring the lays of the Iliad into one body, must, it is assumed, have added and altered much, even if they had no whims of their own, and only sought to do what was needful nexûs et juncturæ causâ. It is, of course, admitted that these lays, even though ideally one as they came from their framer, were in many cases actually separated. And Heyne quotes the Scholiast of Pindar[48], complaining by report that Cinæthus and his school had interpolated largely, as well as the passage in which Josephus[49] (so he states) gives it as his opinion that the Iliad, from having been pieced together long after it was composed, presented many discrepancies. Now, even if this were the opinion of Josephus, it would have no more pretension to historical authority, than if it had been delivered yesterday. But the fact is, that Josephus mentions it simply as a current notion; φασὶν οὐδὲ τοῦτον ... ἀλλὰ διαμνημονευομένην ... καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πολλὰς ἐν αὐτῇ σχεῖν τὰς διαφωνίας. Indeed, it cannot be too carefully borne in mind, that if the positive notices of Homer in early times are slight, so as to throw us back very much upon the poems for their own vindication, yet, on the other hand, all the authorities cited on the sceptical side, are chronologically so remote from the question in debate, that they are but opinions and not proofs, and that we may canvass and question them without the smallest scruple, or fear that we are pitting mere theory against legitimate evidence.
It is not to be denied that the condition of the Homeric poems, before they were committed to writing, was one of great danger. But the question may well be asked, how came poems of such length to be preserved at all by mere oral transmission through a period of undefined, and possibly of very great, length? It is plain that nothing but an extraordinary celebrity, and a passionate attachment on the part of the people, could have kept them alive. Now, if we suppose this celebrity and this attachment, let us inquire further, whether they may not have supplied the means of neutralizing and counteracting, in the main, the dangers to which the poems were exposed; and whether it is unreasonable to say, That which could have preserved them in their unity at all, must, in all likelihood, have preserved them in a tolerably genuine state. Fully admitting that the evidence in the case is imperfect, and can only lead to disputable conclusions, I nevertheless ask, What is the most probable supposition respecting the condition of the Homeric poems in the pre-historic times of Greece? Is it not this—that, with due allowance for a different state of circumstances, they were then, what they were in later times; the broad basis of mental culture; the great monument of the glory of the nation, and of each particular State or race; the prime entertainment of those prolonged festive gatherings which were so characteristic of early Greece; that they were not only the special charge and pride of particular poetical schools, but distinct objects of the care of legislators and statesmen; that in this manner they were recognised as among the institutions of the country, and that they had thus to depend for their transmission, not only on the fire of national and poetic feeling, but upon a jealous custody much resembling that which even a comparatively rude people gives to its laws?
I shall attempt a summary of the arguments and testimonies which appear to me to recommend, if they do not compel, the adoption of these conclusions.
1. Heraclides Ponticus, a pupil of Plato, in a fragment περὶ πολιτειῶν, declares that Lycurgus was the first to bring the poetry of Homer into Peloponnesus: τὴν Ὁμήρου ποίησιν, παρὰ τῶν ἀπογόνων Κρεοφύλου λαβὼν, πρῶτος διεκόμισεν εἰς Πελοπόννησον. This testimony is late with reference to the fact it reports, but not late in the history of Greek literature. Of the source from which it was derived by the author who gives it us, we know nothing. No light is thrown upon it by Ælian,[50] who adds the epithet ἀθρόαν to ποίησιν. Plutarch enlarges the expression of the tradition, but seems to add little to its matter, except that some portions of Homer were known before Lycurgus brought the whole from Crete.[51] It is stated in the Republic of Plato,[52] that Creophylus was a companion of Homer. Strabo[53] informs us that he was a Samian; and Hermodamas, the master of Pythagoras, is said by Diogenes Laertius[54] to have been his descendant. Now, we cannot call any part of these statements history; but they exhibit a body of tradition, of which the members, drawn from scattered quarters, agree with one another, and agree also with the general probability that arises out of a fact so astonishing as is in itself the actual preservation of the poems of Homer. It is in truth this fact that lays the best ground for traditions such as the one in question. If they came before us artificially complete and embellished, that might be made a ground of suspicion. But appearing, as this one does, with an evident absence of design, there is every presumption of its truth. Before considering the full force which attaches to it if it be true, we will draw out the kindred traditions.
2. Of these, the next, and a most important one, is the statement of Herodotus respecting Clisthenes, the ruler of Sicyon, who, when he had been at war with Argos, ῥαψῳδοὺς ἔπαυσε ἐν Σικυῶνι ἀγωνίζεσθαι, τῶν Ὁμηρείων ἐπέων εἵνεκα, ὅτι Ἀργεῖοί τε καὶ Ἄργος τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ὑμνέαται[55]. He proceeds to say, that Clisthenes sought to banish the memory of Adrastus, as being an Argive hero, from Sicyon. It is not necessary to inquire what these Homeric poems may have included; but the conclusion of Grote, that they were ‘the Thebais and the Epigoni, not the Iliad[56],’ seems to me incredible. Nor is it correct that the Iliad fails to supply matter to which the statement may refer. In the Iliad, the name of Argos, though meaning it is true the country rather than a city, is nearly associated with the chief seat of power, and becomes representative of the whole Hellenic race in its heroic infancy. This is surely honour infinitely higher, than any local fame it could derive from the civil feud with Thebes. The Iliad, too, marks most clearly the connexion of Adrastus with Argos—for it names Diomed as the husband of his daughter or granddaughter, Ægialea[57]; it also marks the subordinate position of Sicyon,
by making it a mere town in the dominions of Agamemnon, while Argos figures as a sovereign and powerful city. There may therefore perhaps be room to doubt whether Herodotus meant even to include the Thebais or Epigoni in the phrase ‘Homeric poems.’
But the importance of the passage is not wholly dependent on these considerations. It shows,
a. That there were, at Sicyon, State-recitations of Homer six centuries before the Christian era, attended with rewards for the successful performers.
b. That these recitations were in conformity with common use; for they are named as something ordinary and established, which was then set aside, not as a custom peculiar to Sicyon.
c. That the recitations depended upon the Homeric poems, since they were entirely stopped on account of exceptionable matter which the Homeric poems were deemed to contain.
d. That these recitations were in the nature of competitive contests among the rhapsodists, when the best and most approved, of course, would obtain prizes. This implies that the recitations were not single, as if by poet laureates, but that many shared in them.
3. Next to this tradition, and nearly coeval with it, but reported by later authority, is that respecting Solon and Athens. Dieuchidas of Megara, an author of uncertain age, placed by Heyne[59] later than Alexander, is quoted in Diogenes Laertius[60] as testifying to the following effect concerning Solon: τά τε Ὁμήρου ἐξ ὑποβολῆς γέγραφε ῥαψῳδεῖσθαι. οἷον ὅπου ὁ πρῶτος ἔληξεν, ἐκεῖθεν ἄρχεσθαι τὸν ἐχόμενον. μᾶλλον οὖν Σόλων Ὅμηρον ἐφώτισεν, ἢ Πεισίστρατος. But we have also a better witness, I think, in Lycurgus the orator, contemporary with Demosthenes,[61] who gives a most striking account of the political and martial use of the Homeric songs. He says, οὕτω γὰρ ὑπέλαβον ὑμῶν οἱ πατέρες σπουδαῖον εἶναι ποιήτην, ὥστε νόμον ἔθεντο καθ’ ἑκάστην πενταετηρίδα τῶν Παναθηναίων μόνου τῶν ἄλλων ποιήτων ῥαψωδεῖσθαι τὰ ἔπη. ‘It was with these songs in their ears,’ he proceeds, ‘that your fathers fought at Marathon; and so valiant were they then, that from among them their brave rivals, the Lacedæmonians, sought a general, Tyrtæus.’
a. Now, these words appear to carry the traditional origin of this law, as far as the authority of Lycurgus will avail, back to the early part of the seventh century, when Tyrtæus lived.[62]
b. Thus, at the period when Athens is just beginning to rise towards eminence, she enacts a law that the poems of Homer shall be recited at her greatest festival.
c. This honour she accords to Homer (whatever that name may have imported) alone among poets.
d. This appears, from the connexion with Tyrtæus, to be a tradition of a matter older still than the one mentioned by Dieuchidas. But the two are in thorough accordance. For Dieuchidas does not say that Solon introduced the recitations of Homer, nor does he refer simply to the Panathenaica. He pretty clearly implies, that Solon did not begin the recitations, but that he reformed—(by bringing them into regular succession, which implies a fixed order of the songs)—what had been introduced already; while Lycurgus seems to supply the notice of the original introduction as having occurred before the time even of Tyrtæus.
4. The argument from the sculptures on the chest of Cypselus, representing subjects taken out of the Iliad, refers to a period nearly corresponding with that of Tyrtæus, as Cypselus was probably born about B. C. 700: and tends to show that the Iliad was famous in Corinth at that date.[63]
5. The next of the specific traditions is that relating to Pisistratus. To his agency it has been the fashion of late years to assign an exaggerated, or even an exclusive, importance. But whereas the testimonies respecting Lycurgus, Clisthenes, and Solon, (as well as the Athenian legislators before him,) are derived from authors probably, or certainly, of the fourth and fifth centuries B. C., we have none at all respecting Pisistratus earlier than the Augustan age.[64] Cicero says he first disposed the Homeric books in their present order; Pausanias,[65] that he collected them, διεσπασμένα τε καὶ ἀλλαχοῦ μνημονευόμενα; Josephus,[66] who, as we have seen, merely refers to the report that the Iliad was not committed to writing until after Homer’s time, is wrongly quoted[67] as a witness to the labours of Pisistratus. An ancient Scholion, recently discovered,[68] names four poets who worked under that prince. And it may be admitted, that the traditions respecting Pisistratus have this distinctive mark—that they seem to indicate the first accomplishment of a critical and literary task upon Homer’s text under the direct care and responsibility of the sovereign of the country.
Thus, the testimony concerning Pisistratus is of an order decidedly inferior to that which supports the earlier traditions, and cannot with propriety be put into the scale against them where they are in conflict with it; but there is no reason to reject the report that he fixed the particular order of the poems, which the law of Solon may have left open in some degree to the judgment of the reciters, although they were required by it to recite in order.
6. The dialogue, doubtfully ascribed to Plato under the name of Hipparchus, states that that sovereign—
τὰ Ὁμήρου πρῶτος ἐκόμισεν ἐς τὴν γῆν ταυτηνὶ, καὶ ἠνάγκασε τοὺς ῥαψῳδοὺς Παναθηναίοις ἐξ ὑπολήψεως ἐφεξῆς αὐτὰ διιέναι, ὥσπερ νῦν ἔτι οἵδε ποιοῦσι[69].
As regards the matter of original introduction, this passage contradicts all the foregoing ones. From the uncertainty who is its author, it must yield to them as of less authority. But this is not all. It is on the very face of it incredible: for it asserts, not that his poetry was first arranged or adjusted, but first brought into the country by Hipparchus. This is in itself absurd: and it is also directly in the teeth of the statement, which can hardly be a pure fiction, that Solon by law required the poems of Homer to be recited at the Panathenæa. As regards the succession in reciting, it is quite possible that he may have put the last hand to the work of his father.
However, the passage may deserve notice as a sign of the general belief that the care of the poems of Homer, and provision for their orderly publication in the only mode then possible, was a fit and usual part of the care of States and their rulers.
The whole mass of the passages which have been cited may be thought to bear primarily on the controversies which I have waived. But they have a most important, even if secondary, bearing upon the question, whether the received text is generally sound in its structure. The dangers which menaced that text of course were referable to two sources: the one, want of due care; and the other, falsification for a purpose: and it is necessary to bring into one view the whole positive evidence with respect to the preservation and publication of the Homeric poems, in order to estimate the amount both of these dangers and of the safeguards against them. I resume the prosecution of this task.
From the word ἀγωνίζεσθαι, applied by Herodotus to the recitations at Sicyon, it is plain that they were matches among the rhapsodists. And as the match did not in the main depend upon the original compositions of the candidates, but on the repetition of what Homer was reputed to have composed, the question arises, on what grounds could the prize be adjudged? Partly, perhaps, for the voice and manner of the rhapsodist; but partly also, nay, we must assume principally, for his comparative fidelity to the supposed standard of his original. And, when we consider the length of the poems, we may the more easily understand how the retentiveness of memory required to give an adequate command of them, might well deserve and receive reward. True, the vanity of a particular rhapsodist might readily induce him to suppose that he could improve upon Homer. But surely such an one would be subject to no inconsiderable check from the vigilance, and the impartial, or more probably the jealous, judgment of his contemporaries and rivals. The aberrations, too, or interpolations, of each one inventor, would be immediately crossed by those of every other; and the intrinsic superiority of the great poet himself, and the extraordinary reverence paid to his name, would thus derive powerful aid from the natural play of human passions. I look upon the circumstance that these recitations were competitive, and probably open to all comers, as one of the utmost importance. Freedom, in such a case, would be far more conservative than restriction.
The force of such considerations is abated indeed, but it is not destroyed, by the fact that poems not composed by Homer were esteemed to be Homeric. We have no means of knowing whether this false estimation reached in general beyond the character of mere vulgar rumour. We find, indeed, that Callinus ascribed the Thebais to Homer, Thucydides the Pythian Hymn, and Aristotle the Margites. But, of these three, the last judgment, for all we know, may have been a true one. The Thebais was judged by Pausanias to be the best of the epics, after the Iliad and Odyssey. It does not therefore follow, that because a poet might assign this to him, he would also have assigned others. Few authors show more slender marks of critical acumen than Herodotus; but even he treats the notions that the Cyprian epic or the Epigoni belonged to Homer in terms such as to show, that they were at most mere speculations, and not established public judgments.[70]
Now, even in a critical age, it seems to be inevitable, that authors of conspicuous popularity shall be followed on their path, not only by imitators, but, where there is the least hope of even temporary success, by forgers. We see, in the present day, attempts to vent new novels under the name of Walter Scott. I have myself a volume, purchased in Italy, of spurious verses, printed under the name of her great, though not yet famous, modern poet, Giacomo Leopardi. In periods far less critical, impostors would be bolder, and dupes more numerous. But it cannot be shown that a number of other epics, or even that any single one, had been generally ascribed to Homer with the same confidence as the Iliad and Odyssey; nor that the same care, public or private, was taken in any other case for the keeping and restoration of the text.
Again, though the Spartan and Athenian traditions take no specific notice of competition, yet we are justified in supposing that it existed, because the practice can be traced to an antiquity more remote than any of them. It is true that in Homer we have no example of competition among bards actually exhibited; but neither do the poems furnish us with an occasion when it might have been looked for. The ordinary place of the bard was as a member of a king’s or chieftain’s household. At the great assemblages of tribes, or of the Greek race, to which the chiefs repaired in numbers, more bards than one would also probably appear. Some light is thrown upon this subject by the passage relating to Thamyris in the second Book of the Iliad.[71] He met his calamity at Dorion, when on a journey; and it caught him Οἰχαλίηθεν ἰόντα παρ’ Εὐρύτου Οἰχαλιῆος. Homer’s usual precision justifies our arguing that, when he says he came, not simply from a place, but also from, or from beside, the lord of a place, the meaning is, that he was attached to that lord as the bard of his court or household. Again, he was on a journey. Whither bound, except evidently to one of these contests? This is fully shown by the lines that follow, for they contemplate a match as then about to take place forthwith. For the form of his boast was not simply that he could beat the Muses, but (to speak in our phraseology) he vauntingly vowed that he would win, even though the Muses themselves should be his rivals.