[206] Hesiod. Theog. 338-340.

[207] Hesiod. Theogon. 1016; Hesiod. Fragm. 190-194, ed. Göttling; Strabo, i. p. 16; vii. p. 300. Compare Ukert, Geographie der Griechen und Römer, i. p. 37.

[208] The Greeks learned from the Babylonians, πόλον μὲν γὰρ καὶ γνώμονα καὶ τὰ δυωκαίδεκα μέρεα τῆς ἡμέρης (Herodot. ii. 109). In my first edition, I had interpreted the word πόλον in Herodotus erroneously. I now believe it to mean the same as horologium, the circular plate upon which the vertical gnomon projected its shadow, marked so as to indicate the hour of the day,—twelve hours between sunrise and sunset: see Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i. p. 233. Respecting the opinions of Thales, see the same work, part ii. pp. 18-57; Plutarch. de Placit. Philosophor. ii. c. 12; Aristot. de Cœlo, ii. 13. Costard, Rise and Progress of Astronomy among the Ancients, p. 99.

[209] We have very little information respecting the early Grecian mode of computing time, and we know that though all the different states computed by lunar periods, yet most, if not all, of them had different names of months as well as different days of beginning and ending their months. All their immediate computations, however, were made by months: the lunar period was their immediate standard of reference for determining their festivals, and for other purposes, the solar period being resorted to only as a corrective, to bring the same months constantly into the same seasons of the year. Their original month had thirty days, and was divided into three decades, as it continued to be during the times of historical Athens (Hesiod. Opp. Di. 766). In order to bring this lunar period more nearly into harmony with the sun, they intercalated every year an additional month: so that their years included alternately twelve months and thirteen months, each month of thirty days. This period was called a Dieteris,—sometimes a Trieteris. Solon is said to have first introduced the fashion of months differing in length, varying alternately from thirty to twenty-nine days. It appears, however, that Herodotus had present to his mind the Dieteric cycle, or years alternating between thirteen months and twelve months (each month of thirty days), and no other (Herodot. i. 32; compare ii. 104). As astronomical knowledge improved, longer and more elaborate periods were calculated, exhibiting a nearer correspondence between an integral number of lunations and an integral number of solar years. First, we find a period of four years; next, the Octaëteris, or period of eight years, or seventy-nine lunar months; lastly, the Metonic period of nineteen years, or 235 lunar months. How far any of these larger periods were ever legally authorized, or brought into civil usage, even at Athens, is matter of much doubt. See Ideler, Uber die Astronomischen Beobachtungen der Alten, pp. 175-195; Macrobius, Saturnal. i. 13.

[210] Herodot. i. 74; Aristot. Polit. i. 4, 5.

[211] Odyss. iii. 173.—

Compare Odyss. xx. 100; Iliad, i. 62; Eurip. Suppl. 216-230.

[212] The σήματα λυγρὰ mentioned in the Iliad, vi. 168, if they prove anything, are rather an evidence against, than for, the existence of alphabetical writing at the times when the Iliad was composed.

[213] Aristot. Poet. c. 17-37. He points out and explains the superior structure of the Iliad and Odyssey, as compared with the semi Homeric and biographical poems: but he takes no notice of the Hesiodic, or genealogical.

[214] Aristot. Poetic. c. 41. He considers the Hexameter to be the natural measure of narrative poetry: any other would be unseemly.

[215] Ulrici, Geschichte des Griechischen Epos, 5te Vorlesung, pp. 96-108; G. Hermann, Ueber Homer und Sappho, in his Opuscula, tom. vi. p. 89.

The superior antiquity of Orpheus as compared with Homer passed as a received position to the classical Romans (Horat. Art. Poet. 392).

[216] Respecting these lost epics, see Düntzer, Collection of the Fragmenta Epicor. Græcorum; Wüllner, De Cyclo Epico, pp. 43-66; and Mr. Fynes Clinton’s Chronology, vol. iii. pp. 349-359.

[217] Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, pp. 256-266; Apollodôr. ii. 7, 7; Diodôr. iv. 37; O. Müller, Dorians, i. 28.

[218] Welcker (Der Epische Kyklus, p. 209) considers the Alkmæônis as the same with the Epigoni, and the Atthis of Hegesinous the same with the Amazonia: in Suidas (v. Ὅμηρος) the latter is among the poems ascribed to Homer.

Leutsch (Thebaidos Cyclicæ Reliquiæ, pp. 12-14) views the Thebaïs and the Epigoni as different parts of the same poem.

[219] See the Fragments of Hesiod, Eumêlus, Kinæthôn, and Asius, in the collections of Marktscheffel, Düntzer, Göttling, and Gaisford.

I have already, in going over the ground of Grecian legend, referred to all these lost poems, in their proper places.

[220] Pausan. ix. 38, 6; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conv. p. 156.

[221] See Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, about the date of Arktinus, vol i. p. 350.

[222] Perhaps Zenodotus, the superintendent of the Alexandrine library under Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the third century B. C.: there is a Scholion on Plautus, published not many years ago by Osann, and since more fully by Ritschl,—“Cæcius in commento Comœdiarum Aristophanis in Pluto,—Alexander Ætolus, et Lycophron Chalcidensis, et Zenodotus Ephesius, impulsu regis Ptolemæi, Philadelphi cognomento, artis poetices libros in unum collegerunt et in ordinem redegerunt. Alexander tragœdias, Lycophron comœdias, Zenodotus vero Homeri poemata et reliquorum illustrium poetarum.” See Lange, Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter, p. 56 (Mainz. 1837); Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, p. 8; Ritschl, Die Alexandrinischen Bibliotheken, p. 3 (Breslau, 1838).

Lange disputes the sufficiency of this passage as proof that Zenodotus was the framer of the Epic Cycle: his grounds are, however, unsatisfactory to me.

[223] That there existed a cyclic copy or edition of the Odyssey (ἡ κυκλικὴ) is proved by two passages in the Scholia (xvi. 195; xvii. 25), with Boeckh’s remark in Buttmann’s edition: this was the Odyssey copied or edited along with the other poems of the cycle.

Our word to edit—or edition—suggests ideas not exactly suited to the proceedings of the Alexandrine library, in which we cannot expect to find anything like what is now called publication. That magnificent establishment, possessing a large collection of epical manuscripts, and ample means of every kind at command, would naturally desire to have these compositions put in order and corrected by skilful hands, and then carefully copied for the use of the library. Such copy constitutes the cyclic edition: they might perhaps cause or permit duplicates to be made, but the ἔκδοσις or edition was complete without them.

[224] Respecting the great confusion in which the Epic Cycle is involved, see the striking declaration of Buttmann, Addenda ad Scholia in Odysseum, p. 575: compare the opinions of the different critics, as enumerated at the end of Welcker’s treatise, Episch. Kyk. pp. 420-453.

[225] Our information respecting the Epic Cycle is derived from Eutychius Proclus, a literary man of Sicca during the second century of the Christian era, and tutor of Marcus Antoninus (Jul. Capitolin. Vit. Marc. c. 2),—not from Proclus, called Diadochus, the new-Platonic philosopher of the fifth century, as Heyne, Mr. Clinton, and others have imagined. The fragments from his work called Chrestomathia, give arguments of several of the lost cyclic poems connected with the Siege of Troy, communicating the important fact that the Iliad and Odyssey were included in the cycle, and giving the following description of the principle upon which it was arranged: Διαλαμβάνει δὲ περὶ τοῦ λεγομένου ἐπικοῦ κύκλου, ὃς ἄρχεται μὲν ἐκ τῆς Οὐράνου καὶ Γῆς ὁμολογουμένης μίξεως ... καὶ περατοῦται ὁ ἐπικὸς κύκλος, ἐκ διαφόρων ποιητῶν συμπληρούμενος, μέχρι τῆς ἀποβάσεως Ὀδυσσέως.... Λέγει δὲ ὡς τοῦ ἐπικοῦ κύκλου τὰ ποιήματα διασώζεται καὶ σπουδάζεται τοῖς πολλοῖς, οὐχ οὕτω διὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν, ὡς διὰ τὴν ἀκολουθίαν τῶν ἐν αὐτῇ πραγμάτων (ap. Photium, cod. 239).

This much-commented passage, while it clearly marks out the cardinal principle of the Epic Cycle (ἀκολουθία πραγμάτων), neither affirms nor denies anything respecting the excellence of the constituent poems. Proclus speaks of the taste common in his own time (σπουδάζεται τοῖς πολλοῖς): there was not much relish in his time for these poems as such, but people were much interested in the sequence of epical events. The abstracts which he himself drew up in the form of arguments of several poems, show that he adapted himself to this taste. We cannot collect from his words that he intended to express any opinion of his own respecting the goodness or badness of the cyclic poems.

[226] The gradual growth of a contemptuous feeling towards the scriptor cyclicus (Horat. Ars. Poetic. 136), which was not originally implied in the name, is well set forth by Lange (Ueber die Kyklisch. Dicht. pp. 53-56).

Both Lange (pp. 36-41), however, and Ulrici (Geschichte des Griech. Epos, 9te Vorles. p. 418) adopt another opinion with respect to the cycle, which I think unsupported and inadmissible,—that the several constituent poems were not received into it entire (i. e. with only such changes as were requisite for a corrected text), but cut down and abridged in such manner as to produce an exact continuity of narrative. Lange even imagines that the cyclic Odyssey was thus dealt with. But there seems no evidence to countenance this theory, which would convert the Alexandrine literati from critics into logographers. That the cyclic Iliad and Odyssey were the same in the main (allowing for corrections of text) as the common Iliad and Odyssey, is shown by the fact, that Proclus merely names them in the series without giving any abstract of their contents: they were too well known to render such a process necessary. Nor does either the language of Proclus, or that of Cæcius as applied to Zenodotus, indicate any transformation applied to the poets whose works are described to have been brought together and put into a certain order.

The hypothesis of Lange is founded upon the idea that the (ἀκολουθία πραγμάτων) continuity of narrated events must necessarily have been exact and without break, as if the whole constituted one work. But this would not be possible, let the framers do what they might: moreover, in the attempt, the individuality of all the constituent poets must have been sacrificed, in such manner that it would be absurd to discuss their separate merits.

The continuity of narrative in the Epic Cycle could not have been more than approximate,—as complete as the poems composing it would admit: nevertheless, it would be correct to say that the poems were arranged in series upon this principle and upon no other. The librarians might have arranged in like manner the vast mass of tragedies in their possession (if they had chosen to do so) upon the principle of sequence in the subjects: had they done so, the series would have formed a Tragic Cycle.

[227] Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, pp. 37-41; Wuellner, De Cyclo Epico, p. 43, seq.; Lange, Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter, p. 47; Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. p. 349.

[228] Schol. Pindar. Olymp. vi. 26; Athenæ. xi. p. 465.

[229] It is a memorable illustration of that bitterness which has so much disgraced the controversies of literary men in all ages (I fear, we can make no exception), when we find Pausanias saying that he had examined into the ages of Hesiod and Homer with the most laborious scrutiny, but that he knew too well the calumnious dispositions of contemporary critics and poets, to declare what conclusion he had come to (Paus. ix. 30, 2): Περὶ δὲ Ἡσιόδου τε ἡλικίας καὶ Ὁμήρου, πολυπραγμονήσαντι ἐς τὸ ἀκριβέστατον οὔ μοι γράφειν ἡδὺ ἦν, ἐπισταμένῳ τὸ φιλαίτιον ἄλλων τε καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα ὅσοι κατ᾽ ἐμὲ ἐπὶ ποιήσει τῶν ἐπῶν καθεστήκεσαν.

[230] See the extract of Proclus, in Photius Cod. 239.

[231] Suidas, v. Ὅμηρος; Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. p. 330.

[232] Pausan. ix. 9, 3. The name of Kallinus in that passage seems certainly correct: Τὰ δὲ ἔπη ταῦτα (the Thebaïs) Καλλῖνος, ἀφικόμενος αὐτῶν ἐς μνήμην, ἔφησεν Ὅμηρον τὸν ποιήσαντα εἶναι· Καλλίνῳ δὲ πολλοί τε καὶ ἄξιοι λόγου κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔγνωσαν. Ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν ποίησιν ταύτην μετά γε Ἰλιάδα καὶ Ὀδύσσειαν ἐπαινῶ μάλιστα.

To the same purpose the author of the Certamen of Hesiod and Homer, and the pseudo-Herodotus (Vit. Homer, c. 9). The Ἀμφιαρέω ἐξελασία, alluded to in Suidas as the production of Homer, may be reasonably identified with the Thebaïs (Suidas, v. Ὅμηρος).

The cyclographer Dionysius, who affirmed that Homer had lived both in the Theban and the Trojan wars, must have recognized that poet as author of the Thebaïs as well as of the Iliad (ap. Procl. ad Hesiod. p. 3).

[233] Herodot. v. 67. Κλεισθένης γὰρ Ἀργείοισι πολεμήσας—τοῦτο μὲν, ῥαψῳδοὺς ἔπαυσε ἐν Σικυῶνι ἀγωνίζεσθαι, τῶν Ὁμηρείων ἐπέων εἵνεκα, ὅτι Ἀργεῖοί τε καὶ Ἄργος τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ὑμνέαται—τοῦτο δὲ, ἡρῴον γὰρ ἦν καὶ ἔστι ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ἀγορᾷ τῶν Σικυωνίων Ἀδρήστου τοῦ Ταλαοῦ, τοῦτον ἐπεθύμησε ὁ Κλεισθένης, ἐόντα Ἀργεῖον, ἐκβαλεῖν ἐκ τῆς χώρης. Herodotus then goes on to relate how Kleisthenês carried into effect his purpose of banishing the hero Adrastus: first, he applied to the Delphian Apollo, for permission to do so directly, and avowedly; next, on that permission being refused, he made application to the Thebans, to allow him to introduce into Sikyôn their hero Melanippus, the bitter enemy of Adrastus in the old Theban legend; by their consent, he consecrated a chapel to Melanippus in the most commanding part of the Sikyonian agora, and then transferred to the newly-imported hero the rites and festivals which had before been given to Adrastus.

Taking in conjunction all the points of this very curious tale, I venture to think that the rhapsodes incurred the displeasure of Kleisthenês by reciting, not the Homeric Iliad, but the Homeric Thebaïs and Epigoni. The former does not answer the conditions of the narrative: the latter fulfils them accurately.

1. It cannot be said, even by the utmost latitude of speech, that, in the Iliad, “Little else is sung except Argos and the Argeians,”—(“in illis ubique fere nonnisi Argos et Argivi celebrantur,”)—is the translation of Schweighäuser: Argos is rarely mentioned in it, and never exalted into any primary importance: the Argeians, as inhabitants of Argos separately, are never noticed at all: that name is applied in the Iliad, in common with the Achæans and Danaans, only to the general body of Greeks,—and even applied to them much less frequently than the name of Achæans.

2. Adrastus is twice, and only twice, mentioned in the Iliad, as master of the wonderful horse Areion, and as father-in-law of Tydeus; but he makes no figure in the poem, and attracts no interest.

Wherefore, though Kleisthenês might have been ever so much incensed against Argos and Adrastus, there seems no reason why he should have interdicted the rhapsodes from reciting the Iliad. On the other hand, the Thebaïs and Epigoni could not fail to provoke him especially. For,

1. Argos and its inhabitants were the grand subject of the poem, and the proclaimed assailants in the expedition against Thêbes. Though the poem itself is lost, the first line of it has been preserved (Leutsch, Theb. Cycl. Reliq. p. 5; compare Sophoclês, Œd. Col. 380 with Scholia),—

2. Adrastus was king of Argos, and the chief of the expedition. It is therefore literally true, that Argos and the Argeians were “the burden of the song” in these two poems.

To this we may add—

1. The rhapsodes would have the strongest motive to recite the Thebaïs and Epigoni at Sikyôn, where Adrastus was worshipped and enjoyed so vast a popularity, and where he even attracted to himself the choric solemnities which in other towns were given to Dionysus.

2. The means which Kleisthenês took to get rid of Adrastus indicates a special reference to the Thebaïs: he invited from Thêbes the hero Melanippus, the Hector of Thêbes, in that very poem.

For these reasons, I think we may conclude that the Ὁμήρεια ἔπη, alluded to in this very illustrative story of Herodotus, are the Thebaïs and the Epigoni, not the Iliad.

[234] Herodot. ii. 117; iv. 32. The words in which Herodotus intimates his own dissent from the reigning opinion, are treated as spurious by F. A. Wolf, and vindicated by Schweighäuser: whether they be admitted or not, the general currency of the opinion adverted to is equally evident.

[235] The Life of Homer, which passes falsely under the name of Herodotus, contains a collection of these different stories: it is supposed to have been written about the second century after the Christian era, but the statements which it furnishes are probably several of them as old as Ephorus (compare also Proclus ap. Photium, c. 239).

The belief in the blindness of Homer is doubtless of far more ancient date, since the circumstance appears mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo where the bard of Chios, in some very touching lines, recommends himself and his strains to the favor of the Delian maidens employed in the worship of Apollo. This hymn is cited by Thucydidês as unquestionably authentic, and he doubtless accepted the lines as a description of the personal condition and relations of the author of the Iliad and Odyssey (Thucyd. iii. 104): Simonidês of Keôs also calls Homer a Chian (Frag. 69, Schneidewin).

There were also tales which represented Homer as the contemporary, the cousin, and the rival in recited composition, of Hesiod, who (it was pretended) had vanquished him. See the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, annexed to the works of the latter (p. 314, ed. Göttling; and Plutarch, Conviv. Sept. Sapient. c. 10), in which also various stories respecting the Life of Homer are scattered. The emperor Hadrian consulted the Delphian oracle to know who Homer was: the answer of the priestess reported him to be a native of Ithaca, the son of Telemachus and Epikastê, daughter of Nestôr (Certamen Hom. et Hes. p. 314). The author of this Certamen tells us that the authority of the Delphian oracle deserves implicit confidence.

Hellanikus, Damastes, and Pherekydês traced both Homer and Hesiod up to Orpheus, through a pedigree of ten generations (see Sturz, Fragment. Hellanic. fr. 75-144; compare also Lobeck’s remarks—Aglaophamus, p. 322—on the subject of these genealogies). The computations of these authors earlier than Herodotus are of value, because they illustrate the habits of mind in which Grecian chronology began: the genealogy might be easily continued backward to any length in the past. To trace Homer up to Orpheus, however, would not have been consonant to the belief of the Homêrids.

The contentions of the different cities which disputed for the birth of Homer, and, indeed, all the legendary anecdotes circulated in antiquity respecting the poet, are copiously discussed in Welcker, Der Epische Kyklos (pp. 194-199).

[236] Even Aristotle ascribed to Homer a divine parentage: a damsel of the isle of Ios, pregnant by some god, was carried off by pirates to Smyrna, at the time of the Ionic emigration, and there gave birth to the poet (Aristotel. ap. Plutarch. Vit. Homer. p. 1059).

Plato seems to have considered Homer as having been an itinerant rhapsode, poor and almost friendless (Republ. p. 600).

[237] Pindar, Nem. ii. 1, and Scholia; Akusilaus, Fragm. 31, Didot; Harpokration, v. Ὁμήριδαι; Hellanic. Fr. 55, Didot; Strabo, xiv. p. 645.

It seems by a passage of Plato (Phædrus, p. 252), that the Homêridæ professed to possess unpublished verses of their ancestral poet—ἔπη ἀποθέτα. Compare Plato, Republic, p. 599, and Isocrat. Helen, p. 218.

[238] Nitzsch (De Historiâ Homeri, Fascic. 1, p. 128, Fascic. 2, p. 71), and Ulrici (Geschichte der Episch. Poesie, vol. i. pp. 240-381) question the antiquity of the Homêrid gens, and limit their functions to simple reciters, denying that they ever composed songs or poems of their own. Yet these gentes, such as the Euneidæ, the Lykomidæ, the Butadæ, the Talthybiadæ, the descendants of Cheirôn at Peliôn, etc., the Hesychidæ (Schol. Sophocl. Œdip. Col. 489), (the acknowledged parallels of the Homêridæ), may be surely all considered as belonging to the earliest known elements of Grecian history: rarely, at least, if ever, can such gens, with its tripartite character of civil, religious, and professional, be shown to have commenced at any recent period. And in the early times, composer and singer were one person: often at least, though probably not always, the bard combined both functions. The Homeric ἀοιδὸς sings his own compositions; and it is reasonable to imagine that many of the early Homêrids did the same.

See Niebuhr, Römisch. Gesch. vol. i. p. 324; and the treatise, Ueber die Sikeler in der Odyssee,—in the Rheinisches Museum, 1828, p. 257; and Boeckh, in the Index of Contents to his Lectures of 1834.

“The sage Vyasa (observes Professor Wilson, System of Hindu Mythology, Int. p. lxii.) is represented, not as the author, but as the arranger and compiler of the Vedas and the Puránás. His name denotes his character, meaning the arranger or distributor (Welcker gives the same meaning to the name Homer); and the recurrence of many Vyasas,—many individuals who new-modelled the Hindu scriptures,—has nothing in it that is improbable, except the fabulous intervals by which their labors are separated.” Individual authorship and the thirst of personal distinction, are in this case also buried under one great and common name, as in the case of Homer.

[239] Thucyd. i. 3.

[240] See the statements and citations respecting the age of Homer, collected in Mr. Clinton’s Chronology, vol. i. p. 146. He prefers the view of Aristotle, and places the Iliad and Odyssey a century earlier than I am inclined to do,—940-927 B. C.

Kratês, probably placed the poet anterior to the Return of the Hêrakleids, because the Iliad makes no mention of Dorians in Peloponnêsus: Eratosthenês may be supposed to have grounded his date on the passage of the Iliad, which mentions the three generations descended from Æneas. We should have been glad to know the grounds of the very low date assigned by Theopompus and Euphoriôn.

The pseudo-Herodotus, in his life of Homer, puts the birth of the poet one hundred and sixty-eight years after the Trojan war.

[241] Herodot. ii. 53. Hêrakleides Ponticus affirmed that Lykurgus had brought into Peloponnêsus the Homeric poems, which had before been unknown out of Ionia. The supposed epoch of Lykurgus has sometimes been employed to sustain the date here assigned to the Homeric poems; but everything respecting Lykurgus is too doubtful to serve as evidence in other inquiries.

[242] The Homeric hymns are proœms of this sort, some very short, consisting only of a few lines,—others of considerable length. The Hymn (or, rather, one of the two hymns) to Apollo is cited by Thucydidês as the Proœm of Apollo.

The Hymns to Aphroditê, Apollo, Hermês, Dêmêtêr, and Dionysus, are genuine epical narratives. Hermann (Præf. ad Hymn. p. lxxxix.) pronounces the Hymn to Aphroditê to be the oldest and most genuine: portions of the Hymn to Apollo (Herm. p. xx.) are also very old, but both that hymn and the others are largely interpolated. His opinion respecting these interpolations, however, is disputed by Franke (Præfat. ad Hymn. Homeric. p. ix-xix.); and the distinction between what is genuine and what is spurious, depends upon criteria not very distinctly assignable. Compare Ulrici, Gesch. der Ep. Poes. pp. 385-391.

[243] Phemius, Demodokus, and the nameless bard who guarded the fidelity of Klytæmnêstra, bear out this position (Odyss. i. 155; iii. 267; viii. 490; xxi. 330; Achilles in Iliad, ix. 190).

A degree of inviolability seems attached to the person of the bard as well as to that of the herald (Odyss. xxii. 355-357).

[244] Spartian. Vit. Hadrian. p. 8; Dio Cass. lxix. 4: Plut. Tim. c. 36.

There are some good observations on this point in Näke’s comments on Chœrilus, ch. viii. p. 59:—

“Habet hoc epica poesis, vera illa, cujus perfectissimam normam agnoscimus Homericam—habet hoc proprium, ut non in possessione virorum eruditorum, sed quasi viva sit et coram populo recitanda: ut cum populo crescat, et si populus Deorum et antiquorum heroum facinora, quod præcipium est epicæ poeseos argumentum, audire et secum repetere dedidicerit, obmutescat. Id vero tum factum est in Græciâ, quum populus eâ ætate, quam pueritiam dicere possis, peractâ, partim ad res serias tristesque, politicas maxime—easque multo, quam antea, impeditiores—abstrahebatur: partim epicæ poeseos pertæsus, ex aliis poeseos generibus, quæ tum nascebantur, novum et diversum oblectamenti genus primo præsagire, sibi, deinde haurire, cœpit.”

Näke remarks, too, that the “splendidissima et propria Homericæ poeseos ætas, ea quæ sponte quasi suâ inter populum et quasi cum populo viveret,” did not reach below Peisistratus. It did not, I think, reach even so low as that period.

[245] Xenoph. Memorab. iv. 2, 10; and Sympos. iii. 6. Οἶσθά τι οὖν ἔθνος ἠλιθιώτερον ῥαψῴδων; ... Δῆλον γὰρ ὅτι τὰς ὑπονοίας οὐκ ἐπίστανται. Σὺ δὲ Στησιμβρότῳ τε καὶ Ἀναξιμάνδρῳ καὶ ἄλλοις πολλοῖς πολὺ δέδωκας ἀργύριον, ὥστε οὐδέν σε τῶν πολλοῦ ἀξίων λέληθε.

These ὑπονοῖαι are the hidden meanings, or allegories, which a certain set of philosophers undertook to discover in Homer, and which the rhapsodes were no way called upon to study.

The Platonic dialogue, called Iôn, ascribes to Iôn the double function of a rhapsode, or impressive reciter, and a critical expositor of the poet (Isokratês also indicates the same double character, in the rhapsodes of his time,—Panathenaic, p. 240); but it conveys no solid grounds for a mean estimate of the class of rhapsodes, while it attests remarkably the striking effect produced by their recitation (c. 6, p. 535). That this class of men came to combine the habit of expository comment on the poet with their original profession of reciting, proves the tendencies of the age; probably, it also brought them into rivalry with the philosophers.

The grounds taken by Aristotle (Problem. xxx. 10; compare Aul. Gellius, xx. 14) against the actors, singers, musicians, etc. of his time, are more serious, and have more the air of truth.

If it be correct in Lehrs (de Studiis Aristarchi, Diss. ii. p. 46) to identify those early glossographers of Homer, whose explanations the Alexandrine critics so severely condemned, with the rhapsodes, this only proves that the rhapsodes had come to undertake a double duty, of which their predecessors before Solôn would never have dreamed.

[246] Plato, Apolog. Socrat. p. 22, c. 7.

[247] Aristotel. Poetic. c. 47; Welcker, Der Episch. Kyklos; Ueber den Vortrag der Homerischen Gedichte, pp. 340-406, which collects all the facts respecting the aœdi and the rhapsodes. Unfortunately, the ascertained points are very few.

The laurel branch in the hand of the singer or reciter (for the two expressions are often confounded) seems to have been peculiar to the recitation of Homer and Hesiod (Hesiod, Theog. 30: Schol. ad Aristophan. Nub. 1367. Pausan. x. 7, 2). “Poemata omne genus (says Apuleius, Florid. p. 122, Bipont.) apta virgæ, lyræ, socco, cothurno.”

Not only Homer and Hesiod, but also Archilochus, were recited by rhapsodes (Athenæ, xii. 620; also Plato, Legg. ii. p. 658). Consult, besides, Nitzsch, De Historiâ Homeri, Fascic. 2, p. 114, seq., respecting the rhapsodes; and O. Müller, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. iv. s. 3.

The ideas of singing and speech are, however, often confounded, in reference to any verse solemnly and emphatically delivered (Thucydid. ii. 53)—φάσκοντες οἱ πρεσβύτεροι πάλαι ᾄδεσθαι, Ἥξει Δωριακὸς πόλεμος καὶ λοιμὸς ἅμ᾽ αὐτῷ. And the rhapsodes are said to sing Homer (Plato, Eryxias, c. 13; Hesych. v. Βραυρωνίοις); Strabo (i. p. 18) has a good passage upon song and speech.

William Grimm (Deutsche Heldensage, p. 373) supposes the ancient German heroic romances to have been recited or declaimed in a similar manner with a simple accompaniment of the harp, as the Servian heroic lays are even at this time delivered.

Fauriel also tells us, respecting the French Carlovingian Epic (Romans de Chevalerie, Revue des Deux Mondes, xiii. p. 559): “The romances of the 12th and 13th centuries were really sung: the jongleur invited his audience to hear a belle chanson d’histoire,—‘le mot chanter ne manque jamais dans la formule initiale,’—and it is to be understood literally: the music was simple and intermittent, more like a recitative; the jongleur carried a rebek, or violin with three strings, an Arabic instrument; when he wished to rest his voice, he played an air or ritournelle upon this; he went thus about from place to place, and the romances had no existence among the people, except through the aid and recitation of these jongleurs.”

It appears that there had once been rhapsodic exhibitions at the festivals of Dionysus, but they were discontinued (Klearchus ap. Athenæ. vii. p. 275)—probably superseded by the dithyramb and the tragedy.

The etymology of ῥαψῳδὸς is a disputed point: Welcker traces it to ῥάβδος, most critics derive it from ῥάπτειν ἀοιδὴν, which O. Müller explains “to denote the coupling together of verses without any considerable divisions or pauses,—the even, unbroken, continuous flow of the epic poem,” as contrasted with the strophic or choric periods (l. c.).

[248] Homer, Hymn to Apoll. 170. The κίθαρις, ἀοιδὴ, ὀρχηθμὸς, are constantly put together in that hymn: evidently, the instrumental accompaniment was essential to the hymns at the Ionic festival. Compare also the Hymn to Hermês (430), where the function ascribed to the Muses can hardly be understood to include non-musical recitation. The Hymn to Hermês is more recent than Terpander, inasmuch as it mentions the seven strings of the lyre, v. 50.

[249] Terpander,—see Plutarch, de Musicâ, c. 3-4; the facts respecting him are collected in Plehn’s Lesbiaca, pp. 140-160; but very little can be authenticated.

Stesander at the Pythian festivals sang the Homeric battles, with a harp accompaniment of his own composition (Athenæ. xiv. p. 638).

The principal testimonies respecting the rhapsodizing of the Homeric poems at Athens, chiefly at the Panathenaic festival, are Isokratês, Panegyric. p. 74; Lycurgus contra Leocrat. p. 161; Plato, Hipparch. p. 228; Diogen. Laërt. Vit. Solon. i. 57.

Inscriptions attest that rhapsodizing continued in great esteem, down to a late period of the historical age, both at Chios and Teôs, especially the former: it was the subject of competition by trained youth, and of prizes for the victor, at periodical religious solemnities: see Corp. Inscript. Boeckh, No. 2214-3088.

[250] Knight, Prolegom. Hom. c. xxxviii-xl. “Haud tamen ullum Homericorum carminum exemplar Pisistrati seculo antiquius extitisse, aut sexcentesimo prius anno ante C. N. scriptum fuisse, facile credam: rara enim et perdifficilis erat iis temporibus scriptura ob penuriam materiæ scribendo idoneæ, quum literas aut lapidibus exarare, aut tabulis ligneis aut laminis metalli alicujus insculpere oporteret.... Atque ideo memoriter retenta sunt, et hæc et alia veterum poetarum carmina, et per urbes et vicos et in principum virorum ædibus, decantata a rhapsodis. Neque mirandum est, ea per tot sæcula sic integra conservata esse, quoniam—per eos tradita erant, qui ab omnibus Græciæ et coloniarum regibus et civitatibus mercede satis amplâ conducti, omnia sua studia in iis ediscendis, retinendis, et rite recitandis, conferebant.” Compare Wolf, Prolegom. xxiv-xxv.

The evidences of early writing among the Greeks, and of written poems even anterior to Homer, may be seen collected in Kreuser (Vorfragen ueber Homeros, pp. 127-159, Frankfort, 1828). His proofs appear to me altogether inconclusive. Nitzsch maintains the same opinion (Histor. Homeri, Fasc. i. sect. xi. xvii. xviii.),—in my opinion, not more successfully: nor does Franz (Epigraphicê Græc. Introd. s. iv.) produce any new arguments.

I do not quite subscribe to Mr. Knight’s language, when he says that there is nothing wonderful in the long preservation of the Homeric poems unwritten. It is enough to maintain that the existence, and practical use of long manuscripts, by all the rhapsodes, under the condition and circumstances of the 8th and 9th centuries among the Greeks, would be a greater wonder.

[251] See this argument strongly put by Nitzsch, in the prefatory remarks at the beginning of his second volume of Commentaries on the Odyssey (pp. x-xxix). He takes great pains to discard all idea that the poems were written in order to be read. To the same purpose, Franz (Epigraphicê Græc. Introd. p. 32), who adopts Nitzsch’s positions,—“Audituris enim, non lecturis, carmina parabant.”

[252] Odyss. viii. 65; Hymn. ad Apoll. 172: Pseudo-Herodot. Vit. Homer. c. 3; Thucyd. iii. 104.

Various commentators on Homer imagined that, under the misfortune of Demodokus, the poet in reality described his own (Schol. ad Odyss. 1. 1; Maxim. Tyr. xxxviii. 1).

[253] Xenoph. Sympos. iii. 5. Compare, respecting the laborious discipline of the Gallic Druids, and the number of unwritten verses which they retained in their memories, Cæsar, B. G. vi. 14; Mela. iii. 2; also Wolf, Prolegg. s. xxiv. and Herod. ii. 77, about the prodigious memory of the Egyptian priests at Heliopolis.

I transcribe, from the interesting Discours of M. Fauriel (prefixed to his Chants Populaires de la Grèce Moderne, Paris 1824), a few particulars respecting the number, the mnemonic power, and the popularity of those itinerant singers or rhapsodes who frequent the festivals or paneghyris of modern Greece: it is curious to learn that this profession is habitually exercised by blind men (p. xc. seq.).

“Les aveugles exercent en Grèce une profession qui les rend non seulement agréables, mais nécessaires; le caractère, l’imagination, et la condition du peuple, étant ce qu’ils sont: c’est la profession de chanteurs ambulans.... Ils sont dans l’usage, tant sur le continent que dans les îles, de la Grèce, d’apprendre par cœur le plus grand nombre qu’ils peuvent de chansons populaires de tout genre et de toute époque. Quelques uns finissent par en savoir une quantité prodigieuse, et tous en savent beaucoup. Avec ce trésor dans leur mémoire, ils sont toujours en marche, traversent la Grèce en tout sens; ils s’en vont de ville en ville, de village en village, chantant à l’auditoire qui se forme aussitôt autour d’eux, partout où ils se montrent, celles de leurs chansons qu’ils jugent convenir le mieux, soit à la localité, soit à la circonstance, et reçoivent une petite rétribution qui fait tout leur revenu. Ils ont l’air de chercher de préférence, en tout lieu, la partie la plus inculte de la population, qui en est toujours la plus curieuse, la plus avide d’impressions, et la moins difficile dans le choix de ceux qui leur sont offertes. Les Turcs seuls ne les écoutent pas. C’est aux réunions nombreuses, aux fêtes de village connues sous le nom de Paneghyris, que ces chanteurs ambulans accourent le plus volontiers. Ils chantent en s’accompagnant d’un instrument à cordes que l’on touche avec un archet, et qui est exactement l’ancienne lyre des Grecs, dont il a conservé le nom comme la forme.

“Cette lyre, pour être entière, doit avoir cinq cordes: mais souvent elle n’en a que deux ou trois, dont les sons, comme il est aisé de présumer, n’ont rien de bien harmonieux. Les chanteurs aveugles vont ordinairement isolés, et chacun d’eux chante à part des autres: mais quelquefois aussi ils se réunissent par groupes de deux ou de trois, pour dire ensemble les mêmes chansons.... Ces modernes rhapsodes doivent être divisés en deux classes. Les uns (et ce sont, selon toute apparence, les plus nombreux) se bornent à la function de recueillir, d’apprendre par cœur, et de mettre en circulation, des pièces qu’ils n’ont point composées. Les autres (et ce sont ceux qui forment l’ordre le plus distingué de leur corps), à cette fonction de répétiteurs et de colporteurs des poésies d’autrui, joignent celle de poëtes, et ajoutent à la masse des chansons apprises d’autres chants de leur façon.... Ces rhapsodes aveugles sont les nouvellistes et les historiens, en même temps que les poëtes du peuple, en cela parfaitement semblables aux rhapsodes anciens de la Grèce.”

To pass to another country—Persia, once the great rival of Greece: “The Kurroglian rhapsodes are called Kurroglou-Khans, from khaunden, to sing. Their duty is, to know by heart all the mejjlisses (meetings) of Kurroglou, narrate them, or sing them with the accompaniment of the favorite instrument of Kurroglou, the chungur, or sitar, a three-stringed guitar. Ferdausi has also his Shah-nama-Khans, and the prophet Mohammed his Koran Khans. The memory of those singers is truly astonishing. At every request, they recite in one breath for some hours, without stammering, beginning the tale at the passage or verse pointed out by the hearers.” (Specimens of the Popular Poetry of Persia, as found in the Adventures and Improvisations of Kurroglou, the Bandit Minstrel of Northern Persia, by Alexander Chodzko: London 1842, Introd. p. 13)

“One of the songs of the Calmuck national bards sometimes lasts a whole day.” (Ibid. p. 372.)