Homērus
（
Ὅμηρος). The ancient Greeks never doubted the historical
existence of Homer. He was to them “the poet” (
ὁ
ποιητής) in a special sense, but they knew nothing of him as a person. Eight Greek
biographies of him are still extant— one under the name of Plutarch, another falsely
ascribed to Herodotus—but none of them have any historic value; most of them belong
to the Christian era. The early Greeks had no more interest in literary biography than the
English contemporaries of Chaucer, and later generations supplied the lack of knowledge from
vague tradition and from uncertain indications in the works attributed to the poet. They did
not require scientific accuracy of statement, and enjoyed a good story too well to question
its truth. A large variety of manifestly fictitious genealogical trees is presented for Homer,
in many of which he is brought into some connection with Hesiod. Some made him a descendant of
Orpheus. He was called by some Melesigenes, as the son of the river-god Meles, near Smyrna.
Others called him Maeonides, either as the son of Maeon or the son of Maeonia (Lydia). A
well-known epigram emphasizes the uncertainty with regard to his birthplace. More than seven
cities claimed him as their own. Some thought he was born at Smyrna, and near that city a
grotto was shown in which they said he composed his poems. Simonides (
Frag. 85)
called him a Chian, doubtless partly on the strength of the verse in the Hymn to Delian
Apollo, 172,
τυφλὸς ἀνήρ, οἰκεῖ δὲ Χίῳ ἔνι
παιπαλοέσσῃ, which is quoted by Thucydides (iii. 104)—a verse which at
least supported the popular belief in the poet's blindness. The great critic Aristarchus
thought him an Athenian, basing his arguments upon characteristics of the Homeric dialect.
Aristodemus of Nyssa believed him to be a Roman, because of the similarity of certain Roman
customs with those described by the poet. Others would make an Ithacan of him. Others thought
him an Aegyptian. Lucian called him a Babylonian, but doubtless in merry jest. It was reserved
for an English scholar, however, to suggest that if Homer's name were read backwards, in
Hebrew style,
ΟΜΗΡΟΣ would become
ΣΟΡΗΜΟ, which was only another form for Solomon; thus the Homeric poems were
ascribed to the Hebrew king. He was generally assumed to have lived about a century or a
century and a half after the Trojan War
(B.C. 1183). Others
made him flourish about B.C. 976. He was set by Herodotus (ii. 53) not more than four hundred
years before his time, or B.C. 850. The church fathers, Clemens Alexandrinus and Tatian,
inclined to set the date of his birth as late as possible, in order to sustain their claim
that the wisdom of the Greeks was derived from the Hebrews.
Scholars no longer ask where Homer was born or when he lived, but in what regions and tribes
of Greece epic poetry was perfected, and in what centuries the
Iliad and
Odyssey received their present form. Not that all would deny that any poet
Homer ever lived to whom we owe the
Iliad or
Odyssey, or both,
but all authentic information regarding him has perished beyond recovery. Even in his poems
his personality is kept entirely in the background.
The meaning of the name Homer is uncertain. Many stories were invented to account for it as
meaning “a hostage.” Half a century ago it was explained as “the
uniter” (
ὁμοῦ ἀραρίσκω), and thus it was made to
sustain the view that the poems are only a conglomeration of distinct and independent lays.
Georg Curtius showed that, according to analogy, the name should mean “the
united,” not “the uniter.” The plural
Ὅμηροι would then be used of the members of a guild of poet-singers. The next
generation would be
Ὁμηρίδαι, and from this patronymic an
assumption was made of an original
Ὅμηρος. This pro
 |
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Ideal Head of Homer. (Sans Souci Palace, Potsdam.)
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cess has been playfully but fairly illustrated by the succession in English:
“fellows” (
ὅμηροι), “the
fellows' guild” (
ὁμηρίδαι), “the Fellows
guild” (
Ὁμηρίδαι), which last assumes a Mr.
Fellows (
Ὅμηρος) as its founder. But very possibly the name
had nothing to do with the profession of song.
Homer was to the early Greeks the personification of epic poetry. All the old epic poems
were attributed to him, as all great achievements were assigned to Heracles—not only
what are extant, but also what are known as the cyclic poems: the
Cypria
(
τὰ Κύπρια, in eleven books, of the judgment of Paris, the
rape of Helen, and other events which immediately preceded the Trojan War—ascribed
by others to Stasinus of Cyprus), the
Aethiopis and
Iliupersis
(
Αἰθιοπίς, in five books, of the arrival of the Amazons
and the Aethiopian Memnon, the defence of Troy, and the death of Achilles; and
Ἰλίου Πέρσις, in two books, of the device of the wooden horse and
the capture of the city —generally ascribed to Arctinus of Miletus), the
Little Iliad (
Ἰλιὰς Μικρά, in four books,
in which Philoctetes and Achilles' son Neoptolemus were brought to the help of the
Greeks—by Lesches of Mitylené), the
Nosti (
Νόστοι, in five books, of the adventures of the Greeks on their
return from Troy—by Agias of Troezen), and the
Telegonia (
Τηλεγονία, in two books, a sort of conclusion of the story of the
Odyssey—by Eugammon of Cyrené).
When Aeschylus said that his tragedies were but crumbs from the rich feast of Homer (Athen.
viii. 347 E,
τὰς αὑτοῦ τραγῳδίας τεμάχη εἶναι ἔλεγε τῶν
Ὁμήρου μεγάλων δείπνων), he probably had in mind not only the
Iliad and
Odyssey, but also the other poems of the Trojan cycle,
from which he borrowed suggestions, as is seen from the titles of his plays. Herodotus was the
first, so far as is known, to deny the Homeric authorship of the
Cypria. This
he did (ii. 117) on the ground of the inconsistency that the poet of the
Cypria
made Paris reach Troy on the third day from Sparta, while the poet of the
Iliad
represented him as driven on a devious course to Sidon; and the historian remarks that nowhere
else does Homer contradict himself (
οὐδαμῇ ἄλλῃ ἀνεπόδισε
ἑωυτόν). Thucydides (iii. 104) seems to have acknowledged or assumed the Homeric
authorship of the so-called Homeric Hymns. Plato and Xenophon mean our
Iliad
and
Odyssey when they speak of Homer; but Aristotle (
Nicom. Eth.
1141 a) quotes from the
Margites (
ὥσπερ Ὅμηρός
φησιν ἐν τῷ Μαργίτῃ). The earliest Alexandrian editor of Homer, Zenodotus,
seems to have assigned to him only the
Iliad and
Odyssey.
Among the minor poems of Homer are generally placed the
Hymns, Battle of the Frogs
and Mice (
Βατραχομυομαχία),
Jests
(
παίγνια), and
Margites. The
Hymns are not hymns in the modern sense of the term; they are rather epic than
lyric. They number thirty-four in all, but ten are brief, having only three to six lines each.
The first two, to Apollo, were counted as one until the critic Rhunken in 1749 convinced
scholars that the first was in praise of Delian (178 verses) and the second of Pythian Apollo
(368 verses). The latest editor endeavours again to show that the two are simply parts of one.
The third Hymn (580 verses) tells of the birth of Hermes and the exploits and tricks of the
new-born babe: how he found a tortoise and invented the seven-stringed lyre (
φόρμιγξ), how he stole the cattle of Apollo and then returned to his
cradle, finally appeasing Apollo's wrath by the gift of the lyre. This and the one immediately
following are distinctly secular, not religious, in their character. The fourth Hymn (293
verses) tells of Aphrodité and her love for Anchises. The fifth Hymn (495 verses),
to Demeter, has a more serious tone than the preceding. It seems to have been intended to
state the mythical foundation for the Eleusinian Mysteries. It tells how
Persephoné, Demeter's daughter, was carried off by Hades as she
was plucking flowers (“herself a fairer flower”), and of the disconsolate
wanderings of the mother in search of her daughter until she found a temporary home at
Eleusis; on her departure thence a temple was built in her honour, and at last the mother and
daughter were united. No one of the other Hymns has more than sixty verses. They are
“introductions,” proems (
προοίμια),
intended to be sung before the rhapsodist's recital of some other lay (perhaps at some
rhapsodic contest), as a sort of “grace before meat”—in the same
spirit which made every Greek festivity sacred to some divinity. No external evidence exists
for the date of these Hymns. They contain many Homeric formulas and tags of verses which give
an antique flavour even to what is comparatively modern. Parts of the poems may go back to a
remote antiquity; the Hymn to Demeter may have been composed about B.C. 650; more date from
the fifth and sixth centuries. After the fifth century, the interest in epic recitations was
so slight that these proems would not be composed.
The
Batrachomyomachia is a comic epic poem of 303 verses, giving a burlesque
account of the battle between the frogs and mice, when Puff-cheek (
Φυσίγναθος), king of the frogs, caused the death of Crumb-snatcher (
Ψιχάρπαξ), a promising young mouse, inviting him and bearing him on
his back to visit his home, but deserting him in the midst of the waters on the approach of a
water-snake. The story is composed with humour and some ingenuity, but is a light production.
It was ascribed to Pigres, son of Lygdamis and nephew of the Artemisia who distinguished
herself in the battle of Salamis; but if it were composed by him, it was interpolated and
worked over later. Very possibly it was composed in the Alexandrian period, in mockery of the
revival of epic poetry after the ancient spirit was lost. The epigrams and jests are entirely
insignificant, both in quantity and quality. The only one of any note is the answer of
Arcadian fishers to the question as to their luck: “All that they took, they left;
what they did not take, they brought with them” (
ὅσς᾿
ἕλομεν, λιπόμεσθ̓ <*> ὅσα δ̓ οὐχ ἕλομεν φερόμεσθα). The
Margites was a comic poem of considerable fame in antiquity, part in dactylic
hexameter and part in iambic trimeter verse, with the story of a stupid (
μάργος), bashful fellow, who had all manner of ridiculous adventures and
attempted many things which were beyond his powers. As long as critics are not agreed as to
what works are rightly attributed to Chaucer, and even as to the authorship of some of the
plays which have been ascribed to Shakespeare, no one can wonder that little is known of the
history of the incunabula of Greek poetry, composed in the imaginative age, long before the
classical period.
The
Iliad and the
Odyssey contain the story of parts of the
Trojan cycle of myths.
The
Iliad opens with a scene in the last of the ten years of the Siege of
Troy, and the action of the poem continues for only seven weeks. With great ingenuity (as it
would seem) just enough incidental indications are given of the early history of the war to
supply the needed basis for an intelligent appreciation of the story. As Horace says, Homer
semper ad eventum festinat et in medias res, non secus ac notas auditorem
rapit. The judgment of Paris and the assignment of the prize of beauty to the Goddess
of Love are referred to in the Homeric poems but once, and that in a doubtful passage,
xxiv. 29, 30. Paris (his Greek name Alexander is more frequent in the poems), the voluptuous
son of Priam, king of Ilios (the later Ilium), in the Trojan land, on the south western shore
of the Hellespont, had sailed to Lacedaemon and carried away Helen, the beautiful wife of
Menelaüs, the king, and many of her possessions. In order to avenge this insult and
to recover the woman and her treasures, Menelaüs and his brother Agamemnon, king of
Mycenae, gathered an army at Aulis, and with 1186 ships (and perhaps 100,000 men) set sail for
the plain of Troy. For ten years they besiege the city. They bring with them no supplies, and
spend much of their time in making forays on the neighbouring districts and more formal
expeditions against the adjoining towns. The captured men are slain or sold to distant
islands; the women are kept as slaves. The Trojans are not closely barred within their walls,
but they are unable to cultivate their fields and are obliged to send their treasures to their
neighbours, in order to buy provisions and to hire mercenaries. The loss of men does not seem
to have been very great on either side in the early years of the war. At the opening of the
Iliad, an old priest of Apollo, Chryses, comes to the Greek camp to ransom his
daughter, who had been captured by the Greeks and given as a prize of honour to Agamemnon. The
king refuses the request, and Apollo avenges the slight to his priest by sending a pestilence
upon the Greek camp. After nine days an assembly of the army is called, and the seer Calchas
declares the cause of the god's anger. The rude language used by Achilles, the mightiest of
the Greek warriors, arouses the wrath of Agamemnon, and a quarrel follows. Achilles
“sulks in his tent,” while his mother, the goddess Thetis, persuades Zeus
to grant victory to the Trojan arms. The action of the
Iliad includes only four
days of battle. In the first, ii.-vii. 380, neither side gains any great advantage; in the
second, viii., the tide of battle often turns and the gods interfere again and again, but at
last the Trojans drive the foe to their camp, and bivouac on the plain, near the Greek
watchfires. In the third day of battle, xi.-xviii., the Trojans break into the Greek camp and
begin to set fire to the fleet; but as soon as Achilles sees the flickering flame he sends his
comrade Patroclus with his Myrmidons, enjoining upon him to drive the Trojans from the camp,
but not to attempt to capture the city. Patroclus forgets the warning of his chief, and filled
with the spirit of the combat presses on too far; Apollo strikes him (the only instance in the
poems of such direct interference of a divinity), and Hector slays him. Achilles now becomes
more angry at Hector than he had been at Agamemnon, and takes an active part in the fourth day
of battle, xix.—xxii., in which he drives the Trojans in confusion into their city,
and slays Hector. The twenty-third book is devoted to the funeral games in honour of
Patroclus, in accordance with the curious ancient custom of honouring the dead with
horse-races and foot-races and contests in wrestling, boxing, putting the shot, and shooting
the bow. In the twenty-fourth book old Priam comes to the Greek camp and ransoms the body of
Hector from Achilles, who here appears in a gentler mood. The poem closes very simply:
“Thus these were busy with the burial of Hector.”
After the action of the
Iliad, the Aethiopian Memnon comes
with his men to the help of Troy, while Philoctetes with the bow of Heracles and Neoptolemus,
the son of Achilles, after his father's death, come to aid the Greeks. The alliance of the
Amazons with the Trojans is not mentioned in the poems. Odysseus plans the Wooden Horse, by
which the city is captured. Athené's wrath is kindled against the Greeks by their
conduct after the capture of the city, and she sends upon them a storm, which scatters their
fleets. Menelaüs is driven to Crete and Egypt, and with Helen reaches his home in
Sparta only in the eighth year of their wandering. Odysseus is driven first to the land of the
lotus-eaters, then to the island of the Cyclopes, where Polyphemus slays and devours six of
his comrades (and is blinded by him), thence to the land of the Laestrygonians (where all but
one of his ships are destroyed), and to Circe's island, where he passes a year. He then visits
Hades, in order to consult the soul of the blind Theban seer, Teiresias. In Hades he sees the
shade of his mother and those of many of the Greek heroes. On his return the dangers of Scylla
and Charybdis are met. His comrades slay one of the cattle of the Sun, and their boat is
wrecked. Odysseus himself is borne to the island of the sea-nymph Calypso, who cares for him
tenderly, and would make him immortal and her husband. The scene of the
Odyssey
opens in the tenth year after the close of the Trojan War and the twentieth after the
departure of Odysseus from his home on Ithaca. He has been absent so long that no expectation
is entertained of his return. His home is filled by more than a hundred young princes, each
eager to win the hand of the faithful and prudent wife, Penelopé; and thus to
become the king of the realm. The goddess Athené pities Odysseus, who is weary of
his sojourn in the grotto of Calypso and longing for his home, and secures the decree of Zeus
for his return. Meanwhile she sends his son Telemachus to Nestor and Menelaüs, asking
for tidings of his father. Odysseus sets out from Calypso's island, eighteen days' sail to the
west, but as he approaches Greece he is wrecked by the sea-god Poseidon, whose son Polyphemus
he had blinded, and is cast on the shore of the Phaeacians (identified by the ancients with
Corcyra, the modern Corfu), who convey him to his home. Finding his palace in the possession
of haughty suitors, he returns in the guise of a beggar, but with the help of his son and two
faithful servants (and Athené) he slays the suitors and regains his kingdom and
faithful wife.
The action of the
Odyssey covers only six weeks —less even than
that of the
Iliad—yet the events of the ten years of wandering are
comprised in the stories which are put into the mouth of Nestor , Menelaüs, and
Odysseus himself. This device of introducing a full account of events which are not included
in the time of the proper action of the poem was followed by Vergil in his account of the
capture of Troy (as told by Aeneas), and by Milton in his account of the war in heaven (told
by Raphael). Many matters which are merely touched upon in the poem were discussed more fully
in the lesser epic poems, and the question has been raised whether these brief mentions in the
Iliad and
Odyssey were allusions to the fuller accounts,
already familiar to the hearer, or rather were the fruitful germs which were later developed
into the
Cypria, the
Nosti, etc. In some cases the latter
alternative seems certain—e. g. on the death of Hector, his wife
Andromaché despairs of safety for herself and her son Astyanax; “he will
either accompany her into slavery, or some Greek will seize him by the arm and hurl him from
the wall.” This seems to have suggested to a later poet the detailed description of
such a death for the boy.
The influence of the Homeric poems upon the Greeks was very great. Pindar says that Odysseus
had more fame than he deserved because of the sweet-voiced Homer (
Nem. vii. 20,
ἐγὼ δὲ πλέον̓ ἔλπομαι λόγον
Ὀδυσσέος ἢ πάθαν διὰ τὸν ἁδυεπῆ γενέσθ̓ Ὅμηρον). Herodotus (ii. 53)
even asserts that Homer and Hesiod fixed the theogony of the Greeks, distributing to the gods
their epithets, arts, and honours. Appeal was made to the Homeric poems to settle questions of
precedence and of title to territory. These poems were in large measure the basis of the Greek
youth's education. A fragment of a play of Aristophanes (
Frag. 222) shows us a
father examining his son, to prove his diligence in school, on the meaning of certain obsolete
Homeric words:
τί καλοῦσι κόρυμβα; τί καλοῦς᾿ ἀμενηνὰ
κάρηνα; In the
Symposium of Xenophon (iii. 5), Niceratus says that
his father, the noted Athenian general Nicias, in his desire to make a good man of him,
compelled him to learn all the poems of Homer, and that he could repeat the entire
Iliad and
Odyssey from memory. At the Panathenaic festival from
the time of Solon early in the sixth century, for at least two hundred years the recitation of
portions of the Homeric poems had a prominent place (
Leocrates, 102). The
Platonic dialogue
Ion reports a conversation between Socrates and the Ephesian
rhapsode Ion, who visits Athens after taking the prize in the Homeric recitation at Epidaurus,
and expects the same honour from the Panathenaic festival. This Ion was a Homeric specialist;
he claimed no unusual familiarity with Hesiod and Archilochus, but asserted that no one
equalled him as an interpreter of Homer. Such men naturally magnified their office and
represented the poet as the teacher of much occult wisdom—finding in his works the
best maxims for war and for peace, for the statesman, the philosopher, and the general. Even
Aristophanes represents Aeschylus as saying, “From what has divine Homer received
his fame except from his most excellent instructions with regard to tactics, brave deeds, and
the arming of men?” (
Frogs, 1034,
ὁ δὲ θεῖος Ὅμηρος
|
ἀπὸ τοῦ τιμὴν καὶ κλέος ἔσχεν πλὴν τοῦδ̓ ὅτι
χρήστ̓ ἐδίδαξεν |
τάξεις ἀρετὰς ὁπλίσεις
ἀνδρῶν). The words of Horace are familiar: at Praeneste he read again Homer, who
taught what was base and what was honourable more fully and better than the Stoic Chrysippus
or the Academic philosopher Crantor (
Epist. i. 2.1,
Troiani belli
scriptorem . . . relegi; | qui quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid
non, | plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit). Plato (
Rep. x. 599 c) refutes the view that Homer had special wisdom in regard
to “wars, generalships, administration of cities, and the education of
men,” thus showing the prevalence of that belief.
According to an uncertain story, Pythagoras was said to have seen Homer in Hades, suffering
torments in return for his statements about the gods. But the first definite criticism of
Homer, so far as is known, was that of Xenophanes (
Frag. 7), at the close of
the sixth century B.C., that Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all
actions which are regarded as shameful by men. Heraclitus, Xenophanes' contemporary, would
have Homer driven from the musical contests. Plato, in his
Republic (ii. 377
d-iii. 391 c), enters into a detailed examination of the moral effect exerted by the Homeric
poems, and declares that the youths who are in process of training to be the guardians of his
ideal State must not be rendered impious by hearing what would degrade the gods in their eyes;
lest they should fear death more than defeat and flight, they must not hear Zeus lamenting the
death of Sarpedon (
Il. xvi. 433 foll.), and Achilles declaring that he would rather serve
a poor man on earth than rule over all the dead in the home of Hades (
Od. xi. 488 foll.); they must not be taught insubordination and
insolence to commanding officers by hearing Achilles call Agamemnon a coward (
Il. i. 225); and they must not learn to give free rein to their
passions from the wantonness of Zeus (
Il. xiv. 314 foll.) and from Odysseus' enjoyment of food and drink
(
Od. ix. 5 foll.). Thus, although with much regret because of his old
regard and affection for the poet, the works of Homer are not allowed in Plato's ideal State.
The reader is at a loss to know how seriously he is to understand these words of the
philosopher, who is fond of clinching an argument or giving a higher literary flavour to a
sentence by a quotation from the “inspired poet.” Allegory was already
employed in the interpretation of the most offensive passages, but Plato says that the young
person cannot distinguish between what is allegorical and what is not (
Rep. ii. 378 d). In the
Phaedrus (
243 a) he playfully suggests that the poet may have lost his
sight because of his false statements with regard to the gods. Plutarch, in his treatise on
“How a young man should study poetry,” makes a formal reply to Plato
without naming him, urging that the young should be taught to discriminate between what is
admirable in itself and what is an admirable imitation of the offensive or even base. The
rhetorician Zoïlus received the nickname of Homer's Scourge (
Ὁμηρομάστιξ) because of his severe criticisms on the poet; but these were meant
very likely merely as a paradox, just as other rhetoricians showed their ingenuity in
maintaining the guilt of Socrates, the innocence of Busiris, and the advantages of fever and
vermin.
The old Greek commentaries (
scholia,
σχόλια) on Homer mention editions by Antimachus of Colophon (himself an epic poet,
a contemporary of Plato), and by Aristotle, who was said to have prepared an edition expressly
for the use of his distinguished pupil, Alexander the Great (
Plut.
Alex. 8). Athenian school-masters prepared also lists of obsolete
Homeric words. The critical study of Homer, however, began at Alexandria, in connection with
the great library and “Museum” which were established by the Ptolemies.
These kings of Egypt had abundant means with which to encourage the arts and sciences, and
desired by the help of Greek civilization to break down the barriers which existed between the
different races of their subjects and to exalt their kingdom. They gathered men of literary
talent from all lands and set apart a portion of the palace for a great library. Strenuous
efforts were made to secure copies of all works of Greek literature, and, in fact, of all
literature, including, according to the story, the Greek translation of the Hebrew
Scriptures. In the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus (who reigned B.C. 285-247), the library was
said to contain 400,000 volumes (rolls)—perhaps equal to about 40,000 modern octavo
volumes—such a collection as had never existed before. It possessed copies of Homer
from Marseilles, Chios (the seat of the Homeridae), Sinope on the Black Sea, Argos, Cyprus,
Crete. The Homeric poems formed the centre of the literary studies of the Alexandrian
scholars. The first careful editor and reviser of the Homeric text was Zenodotus, the earliest
of the librarians. He had before him copies of the poems with variations which extended over
whole verses and clauses, as well as to words and forms. A critical procedure was necessary.
Even the same manuscript must have shown marked inconsistencies of grammatical forms. The
first critical edition, in the nature of the case, must have been an experiment. The editor
can have had no fixed principles with regard to the formation of words and the characteristics
of the Homeric dialect. Zenodotus is thought to have been the first to divide the
Iliad and the
Odyssey each into twenty-four books. In earlier
times this division was unknown. So, for example, Herodotus (ii. 116) speaks of
Iliad vi. 289-292 as
ἐν Διομήδεος
ἀριστείῃ. Aelian (
Varia Hist. xiii. 14) writes in detail of this
ancient custom of reference by the subject of each particular portion of the poems. The
ancient titles are preserved, though with some possible inaccuracies and no definite
authority, as the headings of the books in ordinary editions of the poems. The division into
books became necessary at this particular time, because then parchment was replaced by papyrus
as the ordinary writing material. The comparatively frail papyrus was not suited for long
rolls. Hence the works of Plato, Xenophon, Thucydides, and Herodotus were divided, also.
Zenodotus seems to have composed no commentary to accompany his edition of the poems, but
tradition preserved his views of certain passages. He was not led to reject or change for
grammatical reasons, but seems to have been guided in many changes rather by a sense of
propriety. Thus he rejected
Il. iii. 424, where Aphrodité took a chair and set it for
Helen, for the goddess to do menial service was
ἀπρεπές in
his eyes; verses
Il. i. 28-30 were unworthy of a king; in
Il. i. 260, where Nestor says, “I have been associated with
better men than you” (
ἀρείοσιν ἠέ περ ὑμῖν),
Zenodotus read “than we” (
ἡμῖν), in
order to make the expression more courteous. But the work of this critic is coming to honour,
and it is at present fashionable in some quarters to praise him at the expense of Aristarchus.
The edition of Zenodotus formed the basis of that of his successor, Aristophanes of
Byzantium, a little after B.C. 200, who is noteworthy as the first to introduce to general use
the marks of accentuation and the signs of quantity, which are still in use. His chief work
was in lexicography.
Unquestionably the greatest of the literary critics of Alexandria was Aristarchus, who was
born in the island of Samothrace, but came to Alexandria and studied under Aristophanes, whom
he succeeded in the care of the library. He prepared two revised editions of the Homeric text,
with critical marks in the margin, and wrote eight hundred tracts on many subjects, largely
connected with our poet. He founded a school of critics which continued active until the time
of the early Roman emperors. Many of his notes have been preserved to us in
the Greek scholia, and prove his learning and his caution. The watchword and battle-cry of his
school was
analogy, opposed to the rival school of the Stoic Crates at
Pergamum, who was more free in the admission of
anomalies in the
construction of sentences and in the formation and meaning of words. Crates indulged in
allegorical interpretation, paying little attention to grammatical studies, and making Homer a
philosopher and an orator, while Aristarchus was more conservative and sober in his views.
The basis of our scholia to the
Iliad is an epitome made about A.D. 200, of
four works. Of these the most important was a work by Didymus (called
Χαλκέντερος and
Βιβλιολάθας from his unwearied
industry and literary productivity), of the time of Augustus, in which Didymus aimed at giving
a full report of the readings of the editions of Aristarchus, in so far as they varied from
others. Next in importance was a work by an earlier contemporary, Aristonicus, who endeavoured
to explain the use of the critical signs of Aristarchus, and the reasons for their employment
in each case. Less full and important were the extracts from a treatise by Herodian on
Accentuation (
ἡ Ἰλιακὴ Προσῳδία) and one by Nicanor on
Punctuation (
Περὶ Στιγμῆς). The epitome of these four
works has suffered serious losses in its transmission to the present time, and considerable
additional matter of little value and authority has been added. The component parts of these
scholia have been carefully analyzed and separated, and scholars no longer speak of the
statement of the scholiast, but of that of Didymus, of Nicanor, etc. The extant scholia to the
Odyssey are far less extensive and important than those to the
Iliad.
The Homeric text of the MSS. does not seem to be so distinctly under the control of the text
of Aristarchus as was to be expected. In many particulars it differs from his
editions—so widely that it seems that the vulgate text was only indirectly and
slightly influenced by his work. Many scholars now regard the restoration of the Aristarchean
text as the ultimate, or at least the immediate, aim of Homeric text-criticism. But Bekker's
edition of 1858 attempted to present the text as it was sung—not as it stood in the
old MSS.—inserting the lost
vau where the editor believed it
had once been pronounced. Bekker had been preceded by a wholly unscientific attempt of the
same kind in 1820, by R. Payne Knight, who inserted
vaus with more zeal
than discretion, printing as the title of the
Iliad
ϝΙΔϝΙΑΣ, and Tydeus as
ΤΥϝΔΕϝΣ, but who with many absurdities had many ideas which have been
confirmed by modern investigations. Bekker has been followed by others, notably Nauck, who has
made a scientific edition of Homer such as he believes the poems to have been before the forms
were subjected to later Attic influence.
That the Homeric text of Plato and Aristotle was not exactly like that of the present day is
extremely probable, but these seem to have quoted so freely that exact inferences are
difficult. The view that they quoted from memory is strengthened by the fact that each of the
two makes a careless reference to the Homeric story: Plato (
Rep. iii. 405 e) speaks of Eurypylus where he means Machaon, confusing
two similar incidents in the same book of the
Iliad (xi. 638-641, 822-848); and
Aristotle (
Nicom. Eth. ii. 1109, a 31) puts into the mouth of Calypso a
command of Odysseus which was given in accordance with advice of Circé (
Od. xii. 219). In the summer of 1891 the British Museum published a
collation of several very ancient papyrus texts of the
Iliad, containing
fragments of several hundred lines. With the exception of two or three details, the most
important teaching of these MSS., one of which is from the very beginning of our era, is that
the ordinary texts of to-day are rather more accurate and intelligible than those of two
thousand years ago, but certain verses may not have been recognized as Homeric then which are
in modern texts.
For the last century the vexed and ever-burning Homeric Question has been with regard to the
composition and original form of the Homeric poems—whether they were the creations
of one poetic genius or the remnants of the songs of many bards; whether their composition was
organic or atomic; whether they can be compared with Vergil's
Aeneid and
Milton's
Paradise Lost, or whether they were at first only short, scattered
songs, grouped around central personages and events, and gradually developed into longer poems
with unity. The heat and length of the discussion have made clear the fact that the question
is difficult, and no hypothesis has been presented free from grave objections. Scholars are
more nearly agreed than half a century ago, however. Probably no one who has a right to an
opinion on the subject now holds to the strict unity of the poems in the old
sense—that all of the
Iliad and
Odyssey was composed
by one man—yet comparatively few would deny a certain unity in the poems, however it
was secured. The ancient Alexandrians had their Separatists (
χωρίζοντες), Xeno and Hellanicus, who denied that the
Odyssey was
composed by the author of the
Iliad, and Perizonius in 1684 called attention to
the late use of writing for literary purposes. The great Bentley in 1713 said that
“Homer wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies to be sung by himself for small
earnings and good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment; the
Iliad he
made for the men, and the
Odysseïs for the other sex. These loose
songs were not collected together in the form of an epic poem till about five hundred years
after.” Vico of Naples in 1725 expressed his view that Homer never
existed—that he was the personification of the early songs of the Greeks. Robert
Wood, in
An Essay on the Original Genius of Homer (1769), declared
his belief that the art of writing was not known to Homer. But the modern discussion of the
Homeric Question dates from the
Prolegomena ad Homerum of Friedrich August
Wolf, published in 1795. The
Prolegomena excited much attention, and probably
has had greater influence than any other work on the methods of historical and philological
study, although its ideas were not wholly novel. The poet Herder and the philologist Heyne
each claimed that his thunder had been stolen. The book owed its great success largely to its
clear and attractive presentation of the subject, and it is more valuable now for its method
than for its particular arguments. Wolf planned to give a critical history of the Homeric
poems through six periods, the first of which extended from the composition of the poems
(about B.C. 950, according to him) to the age of Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens in the sixth
century B.C., who, according to an uncertain tradition, first collected and arranged them in
their present form; the second period extended from Pisistratus to
Zenodotus, the earliest of the Alexandrian critics. Wolf never completed his work beyond these
first two periods. He attempted to show (
a) that the Homeric poems were
not committed to writing by the poet, but were intrusted to the memory of the rhapsodes, who
were gathered in schools, like the Hebrew prophets; thus before the poems were written they
were exposed to many and unintentional changes—from lapse of memory, and from a
singer's desire to improve a passage or suit it more perfectly to a special occasion. Writing
was unknown in Greece in Homer's time, and no class of readers existed for whom a poem should
be written. (
b) After the poems had been committed to writing, many more
additional changes were made in them, in order to remove inconsistencies and to give them the
polish of an age advanced in culture and poetic art. (
c) The
Iliad and
Odyssey in their present form are due not to the
poetic genius of Homer, but to the intelligence of a later age—to the united efforts
of Pisistratus and the poets of his court. (
d) The songs themselves, of
which the
Iliad and
Odyssey are composed, are not by the same
poet. These last two theses were never publicly discussed by Wolf in detail. He only urged
that if the poems were not to be committed to writing at the time when they were composed, the
sougs were not originally parts of one long work; no one would have thought of making a poem
which could not be read and which was too long to be sung or recited at a single sitting. A
bond of union would be valueless between lays which were to be sung in no regular order on
different occasions. The Homeric poems unquestionably possess a certain unity beyond what is
found in Hesiod or in the late poet Quintus Smyrnaeus, but this unity must be due to the
editors of the Pisistratean age. Discrepancies are found which could not occur in a single
poem, but might very well be overlooked in the combination of independent lays. Entire
rhapsodies (e. g.
Iliad x.) seem to be due to some other than the poet of the
greater part of the
Iliad.
The views of Wolf were received with intense interest, but with varied approval. The poet
Schiller said that the man was a barbarian who would tear asunder the Homeric poems and
believe that they were put together long after their composition. Goethe, while at first an
enthusiastic admirer of the
Prolegomena, soon declared that he believed in the
unity of the
Iliad more heartily than ever. On the whole, however, the work of
Wolf was convincing, at least in large part, to most scholars of Germany. Theologians received
it with special interest, on account of the applications of Wolf's principles to the study of
the Old Testament. But a reaction took place. Opponents urged that the use of writing in
Greece was much earlier than Wolf claimed; but they made the fatal concession that such long
poems would be impossible without the aid of writing. Both sides claimed too much. Writing was
certainly known in Greece earlier than Wolf allowed, but was not used for extensive literary
purposes until long after the time alleged by his opponents. The power of the human memory to
retain accurately long poems had been underrated. The external arguments against the original
unity of the Homeric poems have yielded rather than advanced since Wolf's time. The evidence
in support of the story of the work of Pisistratus in collecting and arranging the
scattered Homeric poems is considered weak, as well as that for the existence of schools of
rhapsodists corresponding to the schools of the prophets.
Only a beginning had been made of the attempt to disprove the unity of the Homeric poems
from internal evidence when Lachmann, of Berlin, in 1837, applied to the
Iliad
the analysis which had been applied not much earlier to the
Nibelungenlied. He
set to work to discover contradictions and inconsistencies which would indicate the different
authorship of different parts. The discussion of the unity of the poems was conducted mainly
on his principles for half a century, and no one now lays stress on the external evidence, one
way or the other. In the first book of the
Iliad he determined an original lay
(1-347), complete in itself, and two independent and inconsistent continuations (430-492; and
348-429, 493-611). The beginning of the second book (he says) cannot have been part of the
same lay as the close of the first book; at the close of book i., Zeus sleeps, with Hera by
his side, while at the beginning of book ii., Zeus cannot sleep and has an interview with the
Dream God, in which he tells much that he would not have Hera know. In the third day of
battle, which begins book xi. 1 and continues through book xviii. 240, the sun comes twice to
the zenith (at xi. 86 and xvi. 777, nearly 4000 verses later). The twenty-third book of the
Iliad cannot have been intended to follow immediately upon the
twenty-second—the one ending, “Thus she spake weeping, and the women
groaned in response,” while the next begins, “Thus these were groaning
throughout the city.” Following such indications, Lachmann marked out the boundaries
of eighteen distinct lays in the
Iliad. Köchly, following in
Lachmann's footsteps, published in 1851 an edition of the
Iliad, in sixteen
lays (omitting books x., xix.-xxiii., and parts of some others)—not agreeing with
Lachmann in the divisions so well as in the number of the songs. The advocates of the theory
that the Homeric poems are but a conglomeration of independent lays have not succeeded in
coming to essential agreement with regard to the original songs. Their lines of cleavage do
not agree. Contradictions certainly exist: Odysseus' hair is blonde (
Od. xiii. 431), but black (
Od. xvi. 176). Diomed and Odysseus are seriously wounded and retire
from the conflict (
Il. xi. 369 foll.
Il., 428 foll.), but
two days later take part in the games in honour of Patroclus—Odysseus wrestling with
Telamonian Ajax (
Il. xxiii. 709), and winning the prize in the foot-race (
Il. xxiii. 778). Most noted of all is the case of Pylaemenes; he is
slain at
Il. v. 576, but follows the corpse of his son from the battle (
Il. xiii. 658). Some inconsistencies may be considered as trifles about
which the poet did not concern himself; he was composing for hearers rather than for critical
readers who can turn backward and forward, and compare statements. Other inconsistencies may
have been caused by interpolations; the incident of Pylaemenes in
Il. xiii. 658 may have been added by a later poet in order to give
increased pathos to the scene. Possibly the Homeric Greeks were not so much disturbed as some
moderns at such inconsistencies. Similar discrepancies are found in the works of Vergil and
other poets.
In 1846, the historian Grote, declaring that “the idea that a
poem as we read it grew out of atoms not originally designed for the places which they now
occupy, involves us in new and inextricable difficulties when we seek to elucidate either the
mode of coalescence or the degree of existing unity,” proposed the theory that the
present
Iliad was made up by the combination of an original
Iliad (books ii.-vii., ix., x., xxiii.-xxiv.) with an
Achilleïd (books i., viii., xi.-xxii.). This latter poem on the Wrath
of Achilles gives all that is “really necessary to complete the programme in the
opening proem of the poem.”
In 1878, Professor Geddes of Aberdeen, following in Grote's footsteps, declared that
“the Homeric corpus of
Iliad and
Odyssey falls asunder
into two great sections, on the one hand the
Achilleïd, and on the
other the non-Achilleïd,
plus the Odyssey.”
“A poet, who is also the author of the
Odyssey, has engrafted on a
more ancient poem, the
Achilleïd, splendid and vigorous saplings of
his own, transforming and enlarging it into an
Iliad.” This view was
maintained by many indications: Achilles is more gentle in the Odyssean books; Helen is not
mentioned in the
Achilleïd; the dog is more honoured in the Odyssean
books, the horse in the
Achilleïd, etc.
Organic development from a brief epic poem was claimed for the
Odyssey by
Kirchhoff of Berlin,
in 1859. He considers the original part to be the old
Return
(
Νόστος)
of Odysseus, of just 1200 verses;
to this simple story was added a longer story of 3560 verses, narrating the adventures of
Odysseus after his return to Ithaca; still later were added (7185 verses) the
Telemachia, or account of the journey of Telemachus to Pylus and Sparta, the
experiences of Odysseus in Phaeacia, and his adventures in the cave of Polyphemus, in the
island of Circé, in the realm of Hades, etc.
Christ of Munich published in 1884 an edition of the
Iliad in which he
divided the poem into forty lays, and indicated by the use of four different styles of Greek
type his view of the relative order of composition of the different parts of the poem.
Immediately after the first book he places the eleventh, the Bravery of Agamemnon, believing
that the intermediate books were composed after the poet saw what a rich vein he had struck,
and to what a magnificent growth his germ might be developed. He holds that most of the poem
proves a poet revolving a great plan in his mind, and arranging the parts to form a whole.
Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff published in 1884 an important work on this subject,
Homerische Untersuchungen, dedicated to the well-known Biblical scholar
Wellhausen. Just as Wolf's
Prolegomena
stimulated the investigation of the historical sources and of the age of the Old
Testament Scriptures, so the method of the recent analysis of the Pentateuch has been applied
to the Homeric poems. Wilamowitz rejects Lachmann's lays as being fragments, unintelligible
when separated. He bases his work upon that of Kirchhoff, yet rejects many of the latter's
views. He follows him in putting the
Odyssey in the front of the discussion.
Until Kirchhoff, no scholar had seriously attempted the critical dissection of this poem, of
which the artistic plan was not doubted. Two of Wilamowitz's conclusions are that the
Telemachia （
Od. ii. 1-iv. 619) was composed in Asia Minor, and that the
Odyssey was brought into its present form in Greece proper —probably
near Corinth or in Euboea.
The Homeric Question is clearly full of difficulties. No theory has been proposed which
meets with general acceptance. The poems doubtless contain a great mass of very ancient
material. Professor Percy Gardner writes, in his
New Chapters in Greek
History (1892), “There is a broad line dividing mythical from
political Hellas, a line which seems to coincide with the great break made in the continuity
of Hellas by the Dorian invasion. . . . The Homeric poetry may have been reduced to form after
the splendour of the Ionian and Achaean chiefs had passed away. . . . In using the name of
Homer, we do not, of course, assert that the Homeric poems had a single author. But we do
assert the antiquity of those poems. Homer reflects the pre-historic age of Greece as truly as
does Herodotus the Greece of the Persian Wars, or Pausanias the Greece of the age of the
Antonines.” The poet does not profess to have seen Priam's Troy; he is clearly
conscious that he belongs to a degenerate age, and that he is dependent on the muse for his
information. No one supposes that the poems are an accurate record of a particular war. The
recent excavations, however, establish the fact that at Mycenae, the home of the Homeric
Agamemnon, and on the shore of the Hellespont, the home of the Homeric Priam, stood at the
same period, flourishing from about B.C. 1400 to about B.C. 1000, cities of wealth and power,
of similar culture. A war between these cities, which may have suggested the Homeric story, is
by no means an impossibility. The details, however, and perhaps every name of a person, are
due to the poet's imagination. The view that the poems were essentially in their present
condition before the historical period in Greece began, early in the eighth century B.C., is
moderate.
The Homeric dialect is artificial—that is, such as was never spoken by any Greek
tribe. It contains many ancient elements, but is far from being the
ancestor of all the later historical dialects. It is not even the source of the Attic or Ionic
dialects. The Aeolic element in it is so strong as to suggest to Fick the view that the older
parts of the poems were composed in the Aeolic dialect and were afterwards translated into
that of the Ionic. The formulaic character of many of the Aeolic words and phrases, the large
number of Homeric proper names found in historical times in Northern Greece, the traditions
with regard to the seats of the Pierian Muses, and the prominence given to the Thessalian
hero, Achilles, make probable the view that epic poetry was first cultivated by the Aeolians
in Northern Greece, but was afterwards brought to perfection by the Ionians in Asia Minor. The
dialect certainly indicates a long course of development. Obsolete words and forms were
retained by the poets in certain connections after they had been dropped from the ordinary
speech of the people. Certain late forms appear in the ordinary texts in sufficient number to
suggest to Paley the theory that the poems were brought into their present form in the age of
Pericles at Athens; but most of these forms can be explained easily as the work of a careless
copyist, who substituted a form which he heard every day for one which was found only in old
poems—just as a halfeducated man would do to-day in copying the works of Chaucer,
unless he were specially warned and trained to be accurate in this matter. If the Homeric
poems were thoroughly worked over, revamped, in the time of Solon or of Pericles, some clear
trace would have been left of the culture and political relations of that time. A strong
indication of the falsity of the story that Pisistratus gathered the poems and caused
interpolations to be made to the glory of Athens, is the simple fact that Athens is so
insignificant in the
Iliad and
Odyssey. If the unity of the
poems were really due to Pisistratus, and he ordered the poets of his court to insert passages
which would honour Athens, we should find greater distinction given to Athenian heroes and
more myths of the Attic cycle. The two or three verses assigned by the ancient critics to
Athenian interpolators are absolutely trifling.
Fortunately the Homeric poems
exist, even though scholars have not
settled the question when and how they came into being. Destructive criticism has not been
able to disturb the fact that they remain the greatest epic poems the world has
seen— admired by many ages and peoples of different civilizations. They stand
unrivalled. In comparison with them the vast epics of India are as shapeless as the Hindoo
idols, and are in their luxuriance like to a tropical jungle; while the work of Vergil and of
Milton, who take Homer as their master, is artificial and unnatural in comparison with
his—the “clearest-souled of men.”
Bibliography.—The best MS. of the
Iliad
is Venetus A, now in the library of San Marco at Venice, written in the eleventh century on
327 large leaves of parchment. The best MS. of the
Odyssey is Codex Harleianus,
now in the British Museum, written in the thirteenth century on 150 folio leaves of parchment.
The best introduction to Homer, with a delightful literary flavour, is Professor
Jebb's Homer (1887). This treats of the general literary
characteristics of the poems, the Homeric world, Homer in antiquity, and the Homeric question.
For the Homeric question, see
Wolf, Prolegomena ad Homerum
(1795); Lachmann,
Betrachtungen über Homers Ilias (1837,
1865); Kirchhoff,
Die homerische Odyssee und ihre Entstehung
(1859, 1879); Grote,
History of Greece, vol. ii.;
Geddes,
Problem of the Homeric Poems (1878);
Bonitz, Origin of
the Homeric Poems (1880);
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Homerische
Untersuchungen (1884).
The best critical edition of the poems, with brief notes, is that of Nauck, 2 vols.
(1874-79); the most complete critical apparatus for the
Iliad is
in the edition of La Roche
(1873), and for the
Odyssey in the
edition of Ludwich
(1889); the best exegetical commentary is that of Ameis-Hentze
(with German notes, in twelve parts, of different dates—three parts as yet published
with English notes); the best complete edition of the
Iliad with English notes
is that of Leaf, 2 vols.
(1886-88); the best edition of the
Odyssey with English notes is that of Hayman, 3 vols.
(1866-82).
Convenient text editions are those of Dindorf-Hentze and Cauer, both published at Leipzig. The
most complete lexicon for Homer is the
Lexicon Homericum of Ebeling, 1700 pages
(1871-85); admirable is the
Index Homericus of Gehring
(1891); Keep's
Autenrieth's Homeric Dictionary
(1891) is capitally convenient; more elaborate than the last mentioned is
Capelle's Wörterbuch über die Gedichte des Homeros und die
Homeriden (1889). The best work in its department is Monro's
Homeric Grammar (1882, 1891).
For Homeric antiquities, see Buchholz,
Homerische Realien, 3 vols.
(1871-85); Helbig,
Das homerische Epos aus den Denkmälern
erklärt (1884, 1887); Inghirami,
Galleria Omerica, 3
vols.
(1829); Anderson's
Engelmann's Pictorial Atlas to
Homer (1892). For Schliemann's work in connection with Homer, see
Schuchhardt, Schliemann's Excavations (1891) and
Gardner's
New Chapters in Greek History (1892). The old Greek commentaries
(Scholia ) are published best by Dindorf and Maass, 8 vols.
(1855- 1887); for
their illustration, see Lehrs'
De Aristarchi Studiis Homericis (3d ed.
1882), and Ludwich's
Aristarchs Homerische Textkritik
(1884-85).
Very many translations have been made, and different tastes will like different
translations. See Matthew Arnold's essay
On Translating Homer. The translations
of Chapman and Pope are classics in their way. Within the last few years two good prose
translations of the
Odyssey have appeared— one by Palmer, the other
by Butcher and Lang. That of the
Iliad by Lang, Leaf, and Myers, is not so
good. Worsley's verse is enjoyed by some, and Bryant's by others. Leaf has published a
Companion to the Iliad (1892), and Andrew Lang a work entitled
Homer and the Epic (1892), in connection with their versions.
