[290] Helbig (Sittl. Zustände des Heldenalters, p. 30) says, “The consciousness in the bosom of Agamemnôn that he has offered atonement to Achilles strengthens his confidence and valor,” &c. This is the idea of the critic, not of the poet. It does not occur in the Iliad, though the critic not unnaturally imagines that it must occur. Agamemnôn never says, “I was wrong in provoking Achilles, but you see I have done everything which man could do to beg his pardon.” Assuming the ninth book to be a part of the original conception, this feeling is so natural, that we could hardly fail to find it, at the beginning of the eleventh book, numbered among the motives of Agamemnôn.

[291] Iliad, xi. 659; xiv. 128; xvi. 25.

[292] The intervention of Oneirus ought rather to come as an immediate preliminary to book viii. than to book ii. The first forty-seven lines of book ii would fit on and read consistently at the beginning of book viii, the events of which book form a proper sequel to the mission of Oneirus.

[293] O. Müller, (History of Greek Literature, ch. v. § 8,) doubts whether the beginning of the second book was written “by the ancient Homer, or by one of the later Homerids:” he thinks the speech of Agamemnôn, wherein he plays off the deceit upon his army, is “a copious parody (of the same words used in the ninth book) composed by a later Homerid, and inserted in the room of an originally shorter account of the arming of the Greeks.” He treats the scene in the Grecian agora as “an entire mythical comedy, full of fine irony and with an amusing plot, in which the deceiving and deceived Agamemnôn is the chief character.”

The comic or ironical character which is here ascribed to the second book appears to me fanciful and incorrect; but Müller evidently felt the awkwardness of the opening incident, though his way of accounting for it is not successful. The second book seems to my judgment just as serious as any part of the poem.

I think also that the words alluded to by O. Müller in the ninth book are a transcript of those in the second, instead of the reverse, as he believes,—because it seems probable that the ninth book is an addition made to the poem after the books between the first and the eighth had been already inserted,—it is certainly introduced after the account of the fortification, contained in the seventh book, had become a part of the poem: see ix. 349. The author of the Embassy to Achilles fancied that that hero had been too long out of sight, and out of mind,—a supposition for which there was no room in the original Achillêis, when the eighth and eleventh books followed in immediate succession to the first, but which offers itself naturally to any one on reading our present Iliad.

[294] Iliad, vii. 327.

[295] Heyne treats the eighth book as decidedly a separate song, or epic; a supposition which the language of Zeus and the agora of the gods at the beginning are alone sufficient to refute, in my judgment (Excursus 1, ad lib. xi. vol. vi. p. 269). This Excursus, in describing the sequence of events in the Iliad, passes at once and naturally from book eighth to book eleventh.

And Mr. Payne Knight, when he defends book eleventh against Heyne, says, “Quæ in undecimâ rhapsodiâ Iliadis narrata sunt, haud minus ex ante narratis pendent: neque rationem pugnæ commissæ, neque rerum in eâ gestarum nexum atque ordinem, quisquam intelligere posset, nisi iram et secessum Achillis, et victoriam quam Trojani inde consecuti erant, antea cognosset.” (Prolegom. c. xxix.)

Perfectly true: to understand the eleventh book, we must have before us the first and the eighth (which are those that describe the anger and withdrawal of Achilles, and the defeat which the Greeks experience in consequence of it); we may dispense with the rest.

[296] O. Müller (Hist. Greek Literat. ch. v. § 6) says, about this wall: “Nor is it until the Greeks are taught by the experience of the first day’s fighting, that the Trojans can resist them in open battle, that the Greeks build the wall round their ships.... This appeared to Thucydidês so little conformable to historical probability, that, without regard to the authority of Homer, he placed the building of these walls immediately after the landing.”

It is to be lamented, I think, that Thucydidês took upon him to determine the point at all as a matter of history; but when he once undertook this, the account in the Iliad was not of a nature to give him much satisfaction, nor does the reason assigned by Müller make it better. It is implied in Müller’s reason that, before the first day’s battle, the Greeks did not believe that the Trojans could resist them in open battle: the Trojans (according to him) never had maintained the field, so long as Achilles was up and fighting on the Grecian side, and therefore the Greeks were quite astonished to find now, for the first time, that they could do so.

Now nothing can be more at variance with the tenor of the second and following books than this supposition. The Trojans come forth readily and fight gallantly; neither Agamemnôn, nor Nestor, nor Odysseus consider them as enemies who cannot hold front; and the circuit of exhortation by Agamemnôn (Epipôlêsis), so strikingly described in the fourth book, proves that he does not anticipate a very easy victory. Nor does Nestor, in proposing the construction of the wall, give the smallest hint that the power of the Trojans to resist in the open field was to the Greeks an unexpected discovery.

The reason assigned by Müller, then, is a fancy of his own, proceeding from the same source of mistake as others among his remarks; because he tries to find, in the books between the first and eighth, a governing reference to Achilles (the point of view of the Achillêis), which those books distinctly refuse. The Achillêis was a poem of Grecian disasters up to the time when Achilles sent forth Patroclus; and during those disasters, it might suit the poet to refer by contrast to the past time when Achilles was active, and to say that then the Trojans did not dare even to present themselves in battle-array in the field, whereas now they were assailing the ships. But the author of books ii. to vii. has no wish to glorify Achilles: he gives us a picture of the Trojan war generally, and describes the Trojans, not only as brave and equal enemies, but well known by the Greeks themselves to be so.

The building of the Grecian wall, as it now stands described, is an unexplained proceeding, which Müller’s ingenuity does not render consistent.

[297] Schol. ad Iliad. x. 1.

[298] Agamemnôn, after deploring the misguiding influence of Atê, which induced him to do the original wrong to Achilles, says (xix. 88-137),—

[299] The supposition of a smaller original Iliad, enlarged by successive additions to the present dimensions, and more or less interpolated (we must distinguish enlargement from interpolation,—the insertion of a new rhapsody from that of a new line), seems to be a sort of intermediate compromise, towards which the opposing views of Wolf, J. H. Voss, Nitzsch, Hermann, and Boeckh, all converge. Baumgarten-Crusius calls this smaller poem an Achillêis.

Wolf, Preface to the Göschen edit. of the Iliad, pp. xii-xxiii; Voss, Anti-Symbolik, part ii. p. 234; Nitzsch, Histor. Homeri, Fasciculus i. p. 112; and Vorrede to the second volume of his Comments on the Odyssey, p. xxvi: “In the Iliad (he there says) many single portions may very easily be imagined as parts of another whole, or as having been once separately sung.” (See Baumgarten-Crusius, Preface to his edition of W. Müller’s Homerische Vorschule, pp. xlv-xlix.)

Nitzsch distinguishes the Odyssey from the Iliad, and I think justly, in respect to this supposed enlargement. The reasons which warrant us in applying this theory to the Iliad have no bearing upon the Odyssey. If there ever was an Ur-Odyssee, we have no means of determining what it contained.

[300] The remarks of O. Müller on the Iliad (in his History of Greek Literature) are highly deserving of perusal: with much of them I agree, but there is also much which seems to me unfounded. The range of combination, and the far-fetched narrative stratagem which he ascribes to the primitive author, are in my view inadmissible (chap. v. § 5-11):—

“The internal connection of the Iliad (he observes, § 6) rests upon 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. But the plan of the Iliad is certainly very much extended beyond what was actually necessary; and in particular, the preparatory part, consisting of the attempts on the part of the other heroes to compensate for the absence of Achilles, has, it must be owned, been drawn out to a disproportionate length, so that the suspicion that there were later insertions of importance applies with greater probability to the first than to the last books.... 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 interest to a poem on the entire war, might find a place within the limits of its 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 the finest parts of them incorporated in the new poem.”

These remarks of O. Müller intimate what is (in my judgment) the right view, inasmuch as they recognize an extension of the plan of the poem beyond its original limit, manifested by insertions in the first half; and it is to be observed that, in his enumeration of those parts, the union of which is necessary to the internal connection of the Iliad, nothing is mentioned except what is comprised in books i. viii. xi. to xxii. or xxiv. But his description of “the preparatory part,” as “the attempts of the other heroes to compensate for the absence of Achilles,” is noway borne out by the poet himself. From the second to the seventh book, Achilles is scarcely alluded to; moreover, the Greeks do perfectly well without him. This portion of the poem displays, not “the insufficiency of all the other heroes without Achilles,” as Müller had observed in the preceding section, but the perfect sufficiency of the Greeks under Diomêdês, Agamemnôn, etc. to make head against Troy; it is only in the eighth book that their insufficiency begins to be manifested, and only in the eleventh book that it is consummated by the wounds of the three great heroes. Diomêdês is, in fact, exalted to a pitch of glory in regard to contests with the gods, which even Achilles himself never obtains afterwards, and Helenus the Trojan puts him above Achilles (vi. 99) in terrific prowess. Achilles is mentioned two or three times as absent, and Agamemnôn, in his speech to the Grecian agora, regrets the quarrel (ii. 377), but we never hear any such exhortation as, “Let us do our best to make up for the absence of Achilles,”—not even in the Epipôlêsis of Agamemnôn, where it would most naturally be found. “Attempts to compensate for the absence of Achilles” must, therefore, be treated as the idea of the critic, not of the poet.

Though O. Müller has glanced at the distinction between the two parts of the poem (an original part, having chief reference to Achilles and the Greeks; and a superinduced part, having reference to the entire war), he has not conceived it clearly, nor carried it out consistently. If we are to distinguish these two points of view at all, we ought to draw the lines at the end of the first book and at the beginning of the eighth, thus regarding the intermediate six books as belonging to the picture of the entire war (or the Iliad as distinguished from the Achillêis): the point of view of the Achillêis, dropped at the end of the first book, is resumed at the beginning of the eighth. The natural fitting together of these two parts is noticed in the comment of Heyne, ad viii. 1: “Cæterum nunc Jupiter aperte solvit Thetidi promissa, dum reddit causam Trojanorum bello superiorem, ut Achillis desiderium Achivos, et pœnitentia injuriæ ei illatæ Agamemnonem incessat (cf. i. 5). Nam quæ adhuc narrata sunt, partim continebantur in fortunâ belli utrinque tentatâ ... partim valebant ad narrationem variandam,” etc. The first and the eighth books belong to one and the same point of view, while all the intermediate books belong to the other. But O. Müller seeks to prove that a portion of these intermediate books belongs to one common point of view with the first and eighth, though he admits that they have been enlarged by insertions. Here I think he is mistaken. Strike out anything which can be reasonably allowed for enlargement in the books between the first and eighth, and the same difficulty will still remain in respect to the remainder; for all the incidents between those two points are brought out in a spirit altogether indifferent to Achilles or his anger. The Zeus of the fourth book, as contrasted with Zeus in the first or eighth, marks the difference; and this description of Zeus is absolutely indispensable as the connecting link between book iii. on the one side and books iv. and v. on the other. Moreover, the attempt of O. Müller, to force upon the larger portion of what is between the first and eighth books the point of view of the Achillêis, is never successful: the poet does not exhibit in those books “insufficient efforts of other heroes to compensate for the absence of Achilles,” but a general and highly interesting picture of the Trojan war, with prominent reference to the original ground of quarrel. In this picture, the duel between Paris and Menelaus forms naturally the foremost item,—but how far-fetched is the reasoning whereby O. Müller brings that striking recital within the scheme of the Achillêis! “The Greeks and Trojans are for the first time struck by an idea, which might have occurred in the previous nine years, if the Greeks, when assisted by Achilles, had not, from confidence in their superior strength, considered every compromise as unworthy of them,—namely, to decide the war by a single combat between the authors of it.” Here the causality of Achilles is dragged in by main force, and unsupported either by any actual statement in the poem or by any reasonable presumption; for it is the Trojans who propose the single combat, and we are not told that they had ever proposed it before, though they would have had stronger reasons for proposing it during the presence of Achilles than during his absence.

O. Müller himself remarks (§ 7), “that from the second to the seventh book Zeus appears as it were to have forgotten his resolution and his promise to Thetis.” In other words, the poet, during this part of the poem, drops the point of view of the Achillêis to take up that of the more comprehensive Iliad: the Achillêis reappears in book viii,—again disappears in book x,—and is resumed from book xi. to the end of the poem.

[301] This tendency to insert new homogeneous matter by new poets into poems already existing, is noticed by M. Fauriel, in reference to the Romans of the Middle Ages:—

“C’est un phénomène remarquable dans l’histoire de la poésie épique, que cette disposition, cette tendance constante du goût populaire à amalgamer, à lier en une seule et même composition le plus possible des compositions diverses,—cette disposition persiste chez un peuple, tant que la poésie conserve un reste de vie; tant qu’elle s’y transmet par la tradition et qu’elle y circule à l’aide du chant ou des récitations publiques. Elle cesse partout où la poésie est une fois fixée dans les livres, et n’agit plus que par la lecture,—cette dernière époque est pour ainsi dire, celle de la propriété poétique—celle où chaque poëte prétend à une existence, à une gloire, personnelles; et où la poésie cesse d’être une espèce de trésor commun dont le peuple jouit et dispose à sa manière, sans s’inquiéter des individus qui le lui ont fait.” (Fauriel, Sur les Romans Chevaleresques, leçon 5^me, Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. xiii. p. 707.)

M. Fauriel thinks that the Shah Nameh of Ferdusi was an amalgamation of epic poems originally separate, and that probably the Mahabharat was so also (ib. 708).

[302] The remarks of Boeckh, upon the possibility of such coöperation of poets towards one and the same scheme are perfectly just:—

“Atqui quomodo componi a variis auctoribus successu temporum rhapsodiæ potuerint, quæ post prima initia directæ jam ad idem consilium et quam vocant unitatem carminis sint ... missis istorum declamationibus qui populi universi opus Homerum esse jactant ... tum potissimum intelligetur, ubi gentis civilis Homeridarum propriam et peculiarem Homericam poesin fuisse, veteribus ipsis si non testibus, at certe ducibus, concedetur.... Quæ quum ita sint, non erit adeo difficile ad intelligendum, quomodo, post prima initia ab egregio vate facta, in gente sacrorum et artis communione sociatâ, multæ rhapsodiæ ad unum potuerint consilium dirigi.” (Index Lection. 1834, p. 12.)

I transcribe this passage from Giese (Ueber den Æolischen Dialekt, p. 157), not having been able to see the essay of which it forms a part.

[303] Wolf, Prolegom. p. cxxxviii. “Quippe in universum idem sonus est omnibus libris; idem habitus sententiarum, orationis, numerorum,” etc.

[304] Wolf, Prolegomen. p. cxxxvii. “Equidem certe quoties in continenti lectione ad istas partes (i. e. the last six books) deveni, nunquam non in iis talia quædam sensi, quæ nisi illæ tam mature cum ceteris coaluissent, quovis pignore contendam, dudum ab eruditis detecta et animadversa fuisse, immo multa ejus generis, ut cum nunc Ὁμηρικώτατα habeantur, si tantummodo in Hymnis legerentur, ipsa sola eos suspicionibus νοθείας adspersura essent.” Compare the sequel, p. cxxxviii, “ubi nervi deficiant et spiritus Homericus,—jejunum et frigidum in locis multis,” etc.

[305] Iliad, xx. 25. Zeus addresses the agora of the gods,—

The formal restriction put upon the gods by Zeus at the beginning of the eighth book, and the removal of that restriction at the beginning of the twentieth, are evidently parts of one preconceived scheme.

It is difficult to determine whether the battle of the gods and goddesses in book xxi. (385-520) is to be expunged as spurious, or only to be blamed as of inferior merit (“improbanda tantum, non resecanda—hoc enim est illud, quo plerumque summa criseôs Homericæ redit,” as Heyne observes in another place, Obss. Iliad. xviii. 444). The objections on the score of non-Homeric locution are not forcible (see P. Knight, ad loc.), and the scene belongs to that vein of conception which animates the poet in the closing act of his Achillêis.

[306] While admitting that these last books of the Iliad are not equal in interest with those between the eleventh and eighteenth, we may add that they exhibit many striking beauties, both of plan and execution, and one in particular may be noticed as an example of happy epical adaptation. The Trojans are on the point of ravishing from the Greeks the dead body of Patroclus, when Achilles (by the inspiration of Hêrê and Iris) shows himself unarmed on the Grecian mound, and by his mere figure and voice strikes such terror into the Trojans that they relinquish the dead body. As soon as night arrives, Polydamas proposes, in the Trojan agora, that the Trojans shall retire without farther delay from the ships to the town, and shelter themselves within the walls, without awaiting the assault of Achilles armed on the next morning. Hector repels this counsel of Polydamas with expressions,—not merely of overweening confidence in his own force, even against Achilles,—but also of extreme contempt and harshness towards the giver; whose wisdom, however, is proved by the utter discomfiture of the Trojans the next day. Now this angry deportment and mistake on the part of Hector is made to tell strikingly in the twenty-second book, just before his death. There yet remains a moment for him to retire within the walls, and thus obtain shelter against the near approach of his irresistible enemy, but he is struck with the recollection of that fatal moment when he repelled the counsel which would have saved his countrymen: “If I enter the town, Polydamas will be the first to reproach me, as having brought destruction upon Troy on that fatal night when Achilles came forth, and when I resisted his better counsel.” (Compare xviii. 250-315; xxii. 100-110; and Aristot. Ethic. iii. 8.)

In a discussion respecting the structure of the Iliad, and in reference to arguments which deny all designed concatenation of parts, it is not out of place to notice this affecting touch of poetry, belonging to those books which are reproached as the feeblest.

[307] The latter portion of the seventh book is spoiled by the very unsatisfactory addition introduced to explain the construction of the wall and ditch: all the other incidents (the agora and embassy of the Trojans, the truce for burial, the arrival of wine-ships from Lemnos, etc.) suit perfectly with the scheme of the poet of these books, to depict the Trojan war generally.

[308] Unless, indeed, we are to imagine the combat between Tlepolemus and Sarpêdon, and that between Glaukus and Diomêdês, to be separate songs; and they are among the very few passages in the Iliad which are completely separable, implying no special antecedents.

[309] Compare also Heyne, Excursus ii. sect. ii. ad Iliad. xxiv. vol. viii. p. 783.

[310] Subsequent poets, seemingly thinking that the naked story, (of Diomêdês slaughtering Rhêsus and his companions in their sleep,) as it now stands in the Iliad, was too displeasing, adopted different ways of dressing it up. Thus, according to Pindar (ap. Schol. Iliad. x. 435), Rhêsus fought one day as the ally of Troy, and did such terrific damage, that the Greeks had no other means of averting total destruction from his hand on the next day, except by killing him during the night. And the Euripidean drama, called Rhêsus, though representing the latter as a new-comer, yet puts into the mouth of Athênê the like overwhelming predictions of what he would do on the coming day, if suffered to live; so that to kill him in the night is the only way of saving the Greeks (Eurip. Rhês. 602): moreover, Rhêsus himself is there brought forward as talking with such overweening insolence, that the sympathies of man, and the envy of the gods, are turned against him (ib. 458).

But the story is best known in the form and with the addition (equally unknown to the Iliad) which Virgil has adopted. It was decreed by fate that, if the splendid horses of Rhêsus were permitted once either to taste the Trojan provender, or to drink of the river Xanthus, nothing could preserve the Greeks from ruin (Æneid, i. 468, with Servius, ad loc.):—

All these versions are certainly improvements upon the story as it stands in the Iliad.

[311] Mr. Knight places the Iliad about two centuries, and the Odyssey one century, anterior to Hesiod: a century between the two poems (Prolegg. c. lxi.)

[312] Hermann, Præfat. ad Odyss. p. vii.

[313] Knight, Prolegg. 1, c. Odyss. xxii. 465-478.

[314] The arguments, upon the faith of which Payne Knight and other critics have maintained the Odyssey to be younger than the Iliad, are well stated and examined in Bernard Thiersch,—Quæstio de Diversâ Iliadis et Odysseæ Ætate,—in the Anhang (p. 306) to his work Ueber das Zeitalter und Vaterland des Homer.

He shows all such arguments to be very inconclusive; though the grounds upon which he himself maintains identity of age between the two appear to me not at all more satisfactory (p. 327): we can infer nothing to the point from the mention of Telemachus in the Iliad.

Welcker thinks that there is a great difference of age, and an evident difference of authorship, between the two poems (Der Episch. Cyclus, p. 295).

O. Müller admits the more recent date of the Odyssey, but considers it “difficult and hazardous to raise upon this foundation any definite conclusions as to the person and age of the poet.” (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. v. s. 13.)

[315] Dr. Thirlwall has added to the second edition of his History of Greece a valuable Appendix, on the early history of the Homeric poems (vol. i. pp. 500-516); which contains copious information respecting the discrepant opinions of German critics, with a brief comparative examination of their reasons. I could have wished that so excellent a judge had superadded, to his enumeration of the views of others, an ampler exposition of his own. Dr. Thirlwall seems decidedly convinced upon that which appears to me the most important point in the Homeric controversy: “That before the appearance of the earliest of the poems of the Epic Cycle, the Iliad and Odyssey, even if they did not exist precisely in their present form, had at least reached their present compass, and were regarded each as a complete and well-defined whole, not as a fluctuating aggregate of fugitive pieces.” (p. 509.)

This marks out the Homeric poems as ancient both in the items and in the total, and includes negation of the theory of Wolf and Lachmann, who contend that, as a total, they only date from the age of Peisistratus. It is then safe to treat the poems as unquestionable evidences of Grecian antiquity (meaning thereby 776 B. C.), which we could not do if we regarded all congruity of parts in the poems as brought about through alterations of Peisistratus and his friends.

There is also a very just admonition of Dr. Thirlwall (p. 516) as to the difficulty of measuring what degree of discrepancy or inaccuracy might or might not have escaped the poet’s attention, in an age so imperfectly known to us.

[316] There are just remarks on this point in Heyne’s Excursus, ii. sect. 2 and 4, ad Il. xxiv. vol. viii. pp. 771-800.

[317] “Wenig Deutsche, und vielleicht nur wenige Menschen aller neuern Nationen, haben Gefühl für ein æsthetisches Ganzes: sie loben und tadeln nur stellenweise, sie entzücken sich nur stellenweise.” (Goethe, Wilhelm Meister: I transcribe this from Welcker’s Æschyl. Trilogie, p. 306.)

What ground there is for restricting this proposition to modern as contrasted with ancient nations, I am unable to conceive.

[318] The κινούμενα ὀνόματα of Homer were extolled by Aristotle; see Schol. ad Iliad. i. 481; compare Dionys. Halicarn. De Compos. Verbor. c. 20. ὥστε μηδὲν ἡμῖν διαφέρειν γινόμενα τὰ πράγματα ἢ λεγόμενα ὁρᾶν. Respecting the undisguised bursts of feeling by the heroes, the Scholiast ad Iliad, i. 349 tells us,—ἕτοιμον τὸ ἡπωϊκον πρὸς δάκρυα,—compare Euripid. Helen. 959, and the severe censures of Plato, Republ. ii. p. 388.

The Homeric poems were the best understood, and the most widely popular of all Grecian composition, even among the least instructed persons, such (for example) as the semibarbarians who had acquired the Greek language in addition to their own mother tongue. (Dio Chrysost. Or. xviii. vol. i. p. 478; Or. liii. vol. ii. p. 277, Reisk.) Respecting the simplicity and perspicuity of the narrative style, implied in this extensive popularity, Porphyry made a singular remark: he said, that the sentences of Homer really presented much difficulty and obscurity, but that ordinary readers fancied they understood him, “because of the general clearness which appeared to run through the poems.” (See the Prolegomena of Villoison’s edition of the Iliad, p. xli.) This remark affords the key to a good deal of the Homeric criticism. There doubtless were real obscurities in the poems, arising from altered associations, customs, religion, language, etc., as well as from corrupt text; but while the critics did good service in elucidating these difficulties, they also introduced artificially many others, altogether of their own creating. Refusing to be satisfied with the plain and obvious meaning, they sought in Homer hidden purposes, elaborate innuendo, recondite motives even with regard to petty details, deep-laid rhetorical artifices (see a specimen in Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhetor. c. 15, p. 316, Reiske; nor is even Aristotle exempt from similar tendencies, Schol. ad Iliad. iii. 441, x. 198), or a substratum of philosophy allegorized. No wonder that passages, quite perspicuous to the vulgar reader, seemed difficult to them.

There could not be so sure a way of missing the real Homer as by searching for him in these devious recesses. He is essentially the poet of the broad highway and the market-place, touching the common sympathies and satisfying the mental appetencies of his countrymen with unrivalled effect; but exempt from ulterior views, either selfish or didactic, and immersed in the same medium of practical life and experience, religiously construed, as his auditors. No nation has ever yet had so perfect and touching an exposition of its early social mind as the Iliad and Odyssey exhibit.

In the verbal criticism of Homer, the Alexandrine literati seem to have made a very great advance, as compared with the glossographers who preceded them. (See Lehrs, De Studiis Aristarchi, Dissert. ii. p. 42.)

[319] Horat. Epist. i. 2, v. 1-26:—

Horace contrasts the folly and greediness of the companions of Ulysses, in accepting the refreshments tendered to them by Circe, with the self-command of Ulysses himself in refusing them. But in the incident as described in the original poem, neither the praise nor the blame, here implied, finds any countenance. The companions of Ulysses follow the universal practice in accepting hospitality tendered to strangers, the fatal consequences of which, in their particular case, they could have no ground for suspecting; while Ulysses is preserved from a similar fate, not by any self-command of his own, but by a previous divine warning and a special antidote, which had not been vouchsafed to the rest (see Odyss. x. 285). And the incident of the Sirens, if it is to be taken as evidence of anything, indicates rather the absence, than the presence, of self-command on the part of Ulysses.

Of the violent mutations of text, whereby the Grammatici or critics tried to efface from Homer bad ethical tendencies (we must remember that many of these men were lecturers to youth), a remarkable specimen is afforded by Venet. Schol. ad Iliad. ix. 453; compare Plutarch, de Audiendis Poetis, p. 95. Phœnix describes the calamitous family tragedy in which he himself had been partly the agent, partly the victim. Now that an Homeric hero should confess guilty proceedings, and still more guilty designs, without any expression of shame or contrition, was insupportable to the feelings of the critics. One of them, Aristodemus, thrust two negative particles into one of the lines; and though he thereby ruined not only the sense but the metre, his emendation procured for him universal applause, because he had maintained the innocence of the hero (καὶ οὐ μόνον ηὐδοκίμησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐτιμήθη, ὡς εὐσεβῆ τηρήσας τὸν ἥρωα). And Aristarchus thought the case so alarming, that he struck out from the text four lines, which have only been preserved to us by Plutarch (Ὁ μὲν Ἀρίσταρχος ἔξειλε τὰ ἔπη ταῦτα, φοβηθείς). See the Fragment of Dioscorides (περὶ τῶν παρ᾽ Ὁμήρῳ Νόμων) in Didot’s Fragmenta Historicor. Græcor. vol. ii. p. 193.

[320] “C’est un tableau idéal, à coup sûr, que celui de la société Grecque dans les chants qui portent le nom d’Homère: et pourtant cette société y est toute entière reproduite, avec la rusticité, la férocité de ses mœurs, ses bonnes et ses mauvaises passions, sans dessein de faire particulièrement ressortir, de célébrer tel ou tel de ses mérites, de ses avantages, ou de laisser dans l’ombre ses vices et ses maux. Ce mélange du bien et du mal, du fort et du faible,—cette simultanéité d’idées et de sentimens en apparence contraires,—cette variété, cette incohérence, ce développement inégal de la nature et de la destinée humaine,—c’est précisément là ce qu’il y a de plus poétique, car c’est le fond même des choses, c’est la vérité sur l’homme et le monde: et dans les peintures idéales qu’en veulent faire la poésie, le roman et même l’histoire, cet ensemble, si divers et pourtant si harmonieux, doit se retrouver: sans quoi l’idéal véritable y manque aussi bien que la réalité.” (Guizot, Cours d’Histoire Moderne; Leçon 7^me, vol. i. p. 285.)

[321] Compare Strong, Statistics of the Kingdom of Greece, p. 2; and Kruse, Hellas, vol. i. ch. 3, p. 196.

[322] Dikæarch, 31, p. 460, ed. Fuhr:—

Skylax, c. 35.—Ἀμβρακία—ἐντεῦθεν ἄρχεται ἡ Ἑλλὰς συνεχὴς εἶναι μέχρι Πηνείου ποτάμου, καὶ Ὁμολίου Μαγνητικῆς πόλεως, ἥ ἔστι παρὰ τὸν πόταμον.

[323] Herod. i. 146: ii. 56. The Molossian Alkôn passes for a Hellen (Herod. vi. 127).

[324] The mountain systems in the ancient Macedonia and Illyricum, north of Olympus, have been yet but imperfectly examined: see Dr. Griesebach, Reise durch Rumelien und nach Brussa im Jahre 1839, vol. ii. ch. 13, p. 112, seqq. (Götting. 1841), which contains much instruction respecting the real relations of these mountains as compared with the different ideas and representations of them. The words of Strabo (lib. vii. Excerpt. 3, ed. Tzschucke), that Scardus, Orbêlus, Rhodopê, and Hæmus extend in a straight line from the Adriatic to the Euxine, are incorrect.

See Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, vol. i. p. 335: the pass of Tschangon, near Castoria (through which the river Devol passes from the eastward to fall into the Adriatic on the westward), is the only cleft in this long chain from the river Drin in the north down to the centre of Greece.

[325] For the general sketch of the mountain system of Hellas, see Kruse, Hellas, vol. i. ch. 4, pp. 280-290; Dr. Cramer, Geog. of An. Greece, vol. i. pp. 3-8.

Respecting the northern regions, Epirus, Illyria, and Macedonia, O. Müller, in his short but valuable treatise Ueber die Makedoner, p. 7 (Berlin, 1825), may be consulted with advantage. This treatise is annexed to the English translation of his History of the Dorians by Mr. G. C. Lewis.

[326] Out of the 47,600,000 stremas (= 12,000,000 English acres) included in the present kingdom of Greece, 26,500,000 go to mountains, rocks, rivers, lakes, and forests,—and 21,000,000 to arable land, vineyards, olive and currant grounds, etc. By arable land is meant, land fit for cultivation; for a comparatively small portion of it is actually cultivated at present (Strong, Statistics of Greece, p. 2, London, 1842).

The modern kingdom of Greece does not include Thessaly. The epithet κοιλὸς (hollow) is applied to several of the chief Grecian states,—κοιλὴ Ἦλις, κοιλὴ Λακεδαίμων, κοιλὸν Ἄργος, etc.

Κόρινθος ὀφρύᾳ τε καὶ κοιλαίνεται, Strabo, viii. p. 381.

The fertility of Bœotia is noticed in Strabo, ix. p. 400, and in the valuable fragment of Dikæarchus, Βίος Ἑλλάδος, p. 140, ed. Fuhr.

[327] For the geological and mineralogical character of Greece, see the survey undertaken by Dr. Fiedler, by orders of the present government of Greece, in 1834 and the following years (Reise durch alle Theile des Königreichs Griechenland in Auftrag der K. G. Regierung in den Jahren 1834 bis 1837, especially vol. ii. pp. 512-530).

Professor Ross remarks upon the character of the Greek limestone,—hard and intractable to the mason,—jagged and irregular in its fracture,—as having first determined in early times the polygonal style of architecture, which has been denominated (he observes) Cyclopian and Pelasgic, without the least reason for either denomination (Reise auf den Griech. Inseln, vol. i. p. 15).

[328] Griesebach, Reisen durch Rumelien, vol. ii. ch. 13, p. 124.

[329] In passing through the valley between Œta and Parnassus, going towards Elateia, Fiedler observes the striking change in the character of the country. “Romelia (i. e. Akarnania, Ætolia, Ozolian Lokris, etc.), woody, well-watered, and covered with a good soil, ceases at once and precipitously: while craggy limestone mountains, of a white-grey color, exhibit the cold character of Attica and the Morea.” (Fiedler, Reise, i. p. 213.)

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo conceives even the πεδίον πυρήφορον of Thebes as having in its primitive state been covered with wood (v. 227).

The best timber used by the ancient Greeks came from Macedonia, the Euxine, and the Propontis: the timber of Mount Parnassus and of Eubœa was reckoned very bad; that of Arcadia better (Theophrast. v. 2, 1; iii. 9).

[330] See Fiedler, Reise, etc. vol. i. pp. 84, 219, 362, etc.

Both Fiedler and Strong (Statistics of Greece, p. 169) dwell with great reason upon the inestimable value of Artesian wells for the country.

[331] Ross, Reise auf den Griechischen Inseln, vol. i. letter 2, p. 12.

[332] The Greek language seems to stand singular in the expression χειμαῤῥοῦς,—the Wadys of Arabia manifest the like alternation, of extreme temporary fulness and violence, with absolute dryness (Kriegk, Schriften zur allgemeinen Erdkunde, p. 201, Leipzig, 1840).

[333] Thucydid. ii. 102.