LIBRARY OF CONGRESS?] Sheli..15.5 5. | -'tlNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS BY V Dr. HERMANN BOXITZ TRAXSLATED FROM THE FOURTH GERMAX EDITIOX By LEWIS R. PACKARD NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS FRANKLIN S Q V A E E 1 880 TJ^ : a*\ Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. The following lecture was delivered in I860 in Vienna, and has passed through four editions in Germany. It has been recognized by many schol- ars as presenting in brief space and with fairness the points involved in the discussion, and the prog- ress which has been made towards a solution of the problem. I have been led to translate it main- ly by the fact, as I suppose it to be, that there is no work in English which gives any just idea of the difficulties in the way of accepting the Homeric poems as the production of one poet, unless it be the large, and expensive work of Mure, which de- fends the unity of authorship. It seemed desira- ble that there should be accessible in English a partial statement of the reasons which have led so many German scholars to doubt the unity of au- thorship of the poems. Besides, the notes contain a very valuable, though not of course a complete, 4 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. bibliography of the subject, which would be of great service to one taking up the study of the Homeric question. I have translated the lecture in full ; but in the notes I have taken the liberty of omitting and con- densing, so far as could be done without detracting from their value. The references I have verified so far as was within my power. Lewis R. Packard. THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. On the threshold of Greek literature, as its ear- liest known work, not to us only, but to the Greeks themselves at the height of their historical devel- opment, 1 stand two majestic poems, to which few other works of profane literature can be compared, either for manifold influence on the intellectual life of their own nation, or for admiring recogni- tion among all peoples of high culture, even after the lapse of twenty-five centuries — the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. It seemed even to the ancients that the imperishable works of Greek literature, especially in poetry, were but the variously unfold- ed flowers of a tree whose root and trunk were the Homeric poems. 2 The Greek epic poetry was at first an echo, in later times a conscious imitation, of Homer. The founder of Greek tragedy in its classic grandeur, the mighty Aeschylus, declared himself that his poems were but fragments fallen b THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. from the rich table of Homer; 3 and the choicest praise of Sophokles — that master-poet whose dra- mas, even in modern times, in feeble reproductions, without the glory of festive representation, without the rhythmic dance of the chorus, without the in- imitable flavor of the original language, yet fasci- nate their hearers — was that his tragedies eminently displayed a Homeric character. 4 The Greek his- torians based their work on Homer, at first in unquestioning reception of his legends and invol- untary imitation of his narrative style, afterwards in critical explanation of the subject-matter of his poems. 5 The Greek philosophy, although, in its ef- fort to solve by the intellect the highest problems of humanity, it gradually came into most decided conflict with the popular faith and with the Ho- meric poems, the most sacred representative of that faith, 6 yet, at the same time, sought eagerly to find in those poems the foundation of its convictions. 7 From Homer, from certain particular verses of the Iliad, Pheidias, in the highest bloom of Greek sculpture, derived the idea of the Zeus which he set forth $t Olympia for the veneration of the peo- ple. 8 At Athens, the intellectual centre of Greece, THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 7 the systematic reading of the Homeric poems was made, by an institution of Solon's, an important part of the greatest national festival from the be- ginning of the sixth century before Christ. 9 From the time that reading and writing were introduced as a constant element into the education of the Athenian youth, the poems of Homer, especially the Iliad, formed the primary and necessary ma- terial for training in these matters, as well as in memorizing and in reading aloud; 10 and when, in the fifth century B.C., a young Athenian of noble family boasts in company that he still knows by heart the whole Iliad and Odyssey, no one finds anything incredible in the statement. 11 Whatever Greek classic, in poetry or prose, we read, 12 what- ever branch of Greek culture we stud} T , an intimate acquaintance with Homer is an indispensable con- dition of a thorough understanding of it, for the literature and all the intellectual life of the Hel- lenic people are bound by a thousand threads to the poems of Homer. To this universality of influence among his own people, 13 of which the instances above given are only hints, corresponds the range of extension abroad of 8 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. these poems. They have gone far beyond the lim- its which are ordinarily set for the greatest works of genius by the lapse of time, the divergencies of na- tional character, and the growth of new civilizations. Since the leading modern nations have definitely recognized the connection of their own culture with that of the classical nations of antiquity, and have found for this conviction an expression, nec- essarily varying in different times, in the form they have given to the higher education, the Homeric poems have taken a prominent place in the train- ing of all whose early years give them an oppor- tunity to study Greek. Although the learning of that lan^ua.o-e i s in some cases made much too la- borious, so that in after-years one looks back upon the time spent in it as so much fruitless waste, yet commonly the reading of Homer forms a bright spot on the dark background. For so soon as the first struggle with the discouraging abundance of forms and words is over, the fresh immortal youth in the poetry affects the student with a resistless charm. And though the delicate bloom of the original is destroyed by the loss of the sounds themselves in a translation, yet there remains a THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 9 vigorous material of true poetry so indestructible that all the cultivated peoples of modern times re- gard a successful translation of Homer as a real gain to their own national literature. 14 Thus, the effect upon our own German literature of the ap- pearance of Yoss's translation is still manifest from the letters and memories of that most active period of our literary history; and it will continue to be marked in its influence upon our poetry when those recollections shall have long lost their freshness. The poetry of Homer in the version of Yoss be- came a common inheritance of all cultivated per- sons, in which every one felt it his duty to claim a share. It cannot, indeed, be compared with the original in exquisite effects of language, in the nat- ural flow of the rhythm, in life-like richness of sig- nificance, in picturesqueness of epithets; but its true and faithful reproduction of many character- istics of the poems widened the circle of those wdio could advance from vague admiration to dis- tinct knowledge of the name and poetry of Homer. The sharp clearness of sensual perceptions and the poet's self-abandonment to them, the power of nat- ural passion, the vividness of presentation of out- 10 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC TOEMS. ward events or inward emotion, and all this con- trolled by a judicious moderation which seems to have been the happy endowment of the Greek intellect — these characteristics of Homer became, as it were, a standard of truth to nature, to which every descriptive poem must conform. 15 For, to use Goethe's words, " Homer presents realities, we mostly effects ; he paints the terrible, w r e the terror; he the charming, we the charm." 16 When Les- sing compares poetry, as to the power of represen- tation, with the plastic arts, and draws with con- clusive criticism the fixed boundaries of the two fields, it is in Homer especially, whose truth to nat- ure he trusts as if it w T ere Nature herself, that lie finds the norm for poetry. No poet of our time and of our people approaches so nearly to Homer's object! veness as Goethe himself, who so sharply contrasted him with modern poets in the words above quoted, and it was Goethe who gave up Nau- sikaa as a theme after it had fascinated him and he had already sketched a plan of treatment, on the ground that no one could safely venture into such rivalry with Homer. 17 When we consider thus the power of these THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 11 poems, we understand liow their author was thought worthy by his own people of heroic, almost of di- vine, honors, 18 and was referred to by them as " the poet," without further definition. What the admi- ration of his people expressed in this way has been confirmed in its true significance by the testimony of succeeding generations. But the almost divine honor of this hero-poet in his ow r n nation, and the undisputed recognition he obtained through more than two thousand years, could not protect him from the sudden uprising of doubts, one may say, as to his very existence, and of a theory of the most opposite character as to the origin of the Iliad and Odyssey. We may state the new views somewhat as follows : The Iliad and Odyssey, which we call the poems of Homer, are not the work of a single poet ; but each of them — certainly, at least, of the older of the two, the Iliad, this may be confidently said — is made up of the separate songs of different poets. For hundreds of years there were in circulation among the Greek tribes heroic songs about the in- cidents of the Trojan legend, each one of moderate length, each containing only a single transaction, 12 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. designed to be sung with the accompaniment of the lyre, and to be heard by a company who, after a banquet at any festival occasion, would enjoy re- calling the achievements of their ancestors. In course of time these separate songs were combined according to the order of the story, at first into large groups and then into the complete wholes, pretty much as we now have them, and were then, at last, made permanent in written form by the orders of Peisistratos, in the sixth century before Christ. It is, then, not the work of a single man, but the poetic product of a long period, which we find incorporated into the Iliad. These are some of the principal ideas which F. A. Wolf, the founder of philological science as now understood, set forth near the close of the last cen- tury in his Prolegomena to the Homeric poems. 19 As the veneration for the name of Homer, then freshly intensified by the recent publication of Voss's translation, had not been confined to the narrow circle of professional Greek scholars, so the excitement produced by Wolfs book extended far beyond that limited range. 20 The philosopher Fichte declared, out of lively sympathy, that he THE OBIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 13 himself had reached, on a priori grounds, the same result that Wolf had attained through historical re- search, an expression of approval to which Wolf re- plied with humorous irony. Of more weight was the entire assent to his views of the acute scholar W.von Humboldt. On the other hand, Schiller, who maintained with Humboldt a lively and fruitful exchange of thought on aesthetic questions, declared it absolutely barbarous to think of dismembering the Iliad or of its haying ever been put together from originally separate songs. 21 Lest we should suppose this the unanimous verdict of true poets on the theories of philologists, let us hear at once Goethe's enthusiastic assent to Wolfs views 22 — k, Erst die Gesundheit des Mamies, cler. endlich vom Xa- men Hoineros Kiilm mis befreiend, ims audi raft in die vollere Balm ! Derm wer wagte mit Gottern den Kanrpf. und wer mit dem Einen ? Docli Homeride zu sein, aucli nur als letzter. ist sell on." ' Still the same Goethe, in his old age, withdrew his assent to Wolfs revolutionary view, and preferred 14 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. to believe in, and gladly open his mind to, Homer as an individual, his poems as a whole. 23 We cannot here trace out further the sketch of these various and varying impressions made by Wolf's views. It must be enough to have given the principal facts in connection with the leading names, which may serve as a type of what went on in the educated world at large. The waves of dis- cussion would soon have subsided, and peaceful ac- quiescence in the traditional views have returned, had nothing but a troublesome paradox been thrown out to the world in Wolf's book. The merit of the book, that which makes it a notable and fruitful event in the field of historical science, is not the boldness of its attack upon a generally received opinion, but the conscientiousness of its method. For nearly twenty years Wolf silently entertained and examined the ideas which are unfolded in his Prolegomena. 24 All that could be detected by an eye steadily fixed on the subject in the laboriously gathered traditions of antiquity, in the poems them- selves, in the general progress of culture — all this lie considered with the strictest conscientiousness be- fore he finally, with unmistakable reluctance, 25 re- THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMEEIC POEMS. 15 solved to break loose from a belief which had been no less warmly cherished by him than by others, and which only the pitiless force of reasoning compel- led the earnest investigator to abandon. This merit of his book no one has remarked more justly than F. Schlegel, a man to whom certainly cannot be ascribed any pleasure in the overthrow or weaken- ing of an old and settled state of things. " Wolfs book/' says he, " by the thirst for knowledge and love of truth which inspire it, and by its firm grasp and close linking-together of so long a series of thoughts and observations in such a field, is a thorough model of the investigation of a point in ancient history, and yet its defenders compre- hended it almost as little, to say nothing of using it, as its assailants did." The want which Schle- gel saw in Wolfs contemporaries was made good in time ; the following generation, no longer be- wildered by the novelty of his theory, gave his in- vestigations their true value by developing fully the various lines of research first opened by him. The thorough study of the poems in regard to their internal consistency and their linguistic and met- rical form, the examination of all the statements 1G THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC TOEMS. of ancient writers bearing upon Homer and the Homeric poems, the combination of these research- es with a study of the general course of culture among the Greeks, and the comparison of their re- sults with kindred phenomena in other nations — all these points must be separately and fully weighed before a settled conclusion can be attained. To one scholar, K. Lachmann, 26 the acute investigator in the field of the early German poetry, belongs in- disputably the special merit of having given, in his minute and exhaustive study of one single point — the self-consistency of the Iliad — a model for such examinations, and an important contribution to the solving of the problem. He does not, however, stand alone ; for in this field, as in the others, each of which must be separately worked, other scholars have brought further support to the view proposed by Wolf. And, at the same time, with no less acuteness and zeal for the truth, has everything been used which could support the traditional be- lief in the original unity of each poem, and in Ho- mer as their author. 27 The great importance of the Homeric poems, not only in relation to Greek his- tory and literature, but also to all epic poetry, has THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 17 brought it about that the " Homeric question/' to use the common phrase, in all the course of the discussion as well as at its beginning, has secured the attention of learned men even outside of the circle of specialists. But for such lookers-on it is difficult almost impossible, to find their way through the labyrinth of separate investigations of all kinds, which form by this time an extensive literature in themselves. 28 The fatigue of this confused discus- sion is producing now an effect somewhat similar to that which the novelty of the theory at first pro- duced. Sympathies and antipathies, convictions which, however well-founded, have nothing to do with the question, have more weight than real study of the subject. Opprobrious epithets occa- sionally take the place of arguments. A foolish timidity suspects in this attack upon the traditions of two thousand years — for that seems, at first, the tendency of Wolfs ideas — a connection with other tendencies of the time, tendencies with which pure historical research has nothing to do. An aesthetic dogmatism which, as we have seen, can shelter it- self behind the names of Schiller and Goethe de- spises the barbarous pedantry which cuts up great 9 18 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. poetic creations into fragments ; and a frivolity which is not ashamed to put on airs of scientific omniscience looks with pity on the long-since re- futed paradoxes of "Wolf. It is impossible, in a single lecture of popular character, to go through such an involved discussion, and it would be un- seemly to urge in such a form one's personal views on disputed points. But it may be possible to show on what grounds the whole question as to the origin of the Homeric poems is justified — what are the means for its solution, and within what narrow limits the matters still in dispute between the opposed parties have been restricted. These are the questions which will now occupy us. " He who doubts that the Iliad and Odyssey, es- sentially in their present form, are the work of one poet, and that poet Homer, each originally a single mental product, is in conflict with the unanimous conviction of all antiquity. How can any one, separated by thousands of years from the period of the poems, possessing only scanty remains of so abundant a literature, be so foolish or so daring as to contradict the unanimous testimony of Homer's own nation ?" THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 19 This idea, expressed in manifold forms, excludes from the start all question as to the origin of the Homeric poems as unwarranted and inadmissible. It would have great weight if only it were quite true. Such a Homer, however, the author of these two poems, belonging, as any actual person must, to a definite time and a definite place, though he has gradually won a position in manuals of history, yet is not directly attested by any real historic doc- ument. Let us see what is the real content of tra- dition as to the principal points in regard to Homer and the Homeric poems. 29 The ancient Greeks possessed, besides the Iliad and Odyssey, a number of other epic poems of some extent connected with the Trojan myths, 30 which were concerned with parts of the legend preceding and following these two poems. The existence of this body of epic poetry can be traced back to a con- siderable distance beyond the beginning of the Greek national life. 31 Of it all we possess now but a few fragments, with some summaries of the narratives and other notices; yet there are enough data not only to bring before us the great extent of the epic poetry on the Trojan theme, but also to enable us 20 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. to recognize the fact tliat these other poems, though related to the Iliad and Odyssey, are distinguished from them by characteristic differences. 33 In regard to every one of these outlying Trojan epics, there exists a tradition uniform as to the place of origi- nation, and uniform, or in some cases varying be- tween two names, as to the name of the author. 33 Moreover, the time of composition belongs to a period not far removed from the light of historic knowledge. In spite of all this, these poems, to- gether with the Iliad and Odyssey, are sometimes ascribed to Homer. Homer is regarded as the au- thor not only of the Iliad and Odyssey, but, besides, of the other Trojan epics, either of most of them or of all ; or even of all these and of the so-called Plomeric hymns to the gods besides. This com- prehensive meaning is given to the name of Homer not only by those who were little in sympathy with the intellectual spirit and literature of the Greek people, but also by men whose statement is to us unquestioned authority. 34 The idea of limiting Ho- mer's authorship to the Iliad and Od} T ssey alone is held by only an individual here and there in the classical time ; it does not become an established THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 21 belief until, in the third century before Christ, Al- exandria becomes the centre of Greek learning and culture. 35 This belief is therefore the result of study, which did not reach definite conclusion un- til some five hundred years had passed since the Iliad was a completed work. On the other hand, the direct historical testimony of the classical pe- riod ascribes to Homer works of such extent and such widely differing character that even the bold- est fancy might well hesitate to attribute them to a single man. When, then, and where did this incomparable genius live? It is a well-known story, embalmed in several Greek epigrams, 36 that seven cities con- tended for the honor of having been Homer's birth- place. Another Greek epigram gives the happy poetical solution of the puzzle, that no spot on earth, but heaven itself, is his true fatherland; 37 but the historical solution of the difficulty is not at all furthered by this ingenious suggestion. For the numerous birthplaces of Homer are not mere- ly poetic fancy, but in sober prose we find a still greater number of claimants ; among them Smyr- na, Kolophon, and Miletus on the coast of Asia 22 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. Minor; Athens in Greece proper; Ios, Chios, Ivy- pros, and Krete among the islands. And always, no matter how late in time the statement is made, 38 some unexceptionable ancient authority is given for it, so that we have absolutely no right to rank the claim of one place clearly above that of anoth- er. Moreover, as to most of the places which claimed to be his birthplace, we find the further statement that there was a school there for the cul- tivation of epic poetry, associated by the tradition of art from generation to generation into a sort of family. 39 The tradition of such schools of poets exists, also, in the case of other places, as to 'which the statement that Homer was born or resided there may perhaps be only accidentally lost to us. 40 And when did Homer live ? We should not be sur- prised to find in so unhistorical a period an uncer- tainty of some fifty or a hundred years ; but when the statements as to the time of his life range from the period of the Greek migrations to Asia Minor — that is, about the middle of the eleventh century — down to the last third of the seventh century before Christ, and when all the statements fixing different points in this long period go back to authorities THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 23 among which we cannot give any decided prefer- ence to one over another, 41 then we recognize that w r e have to do with something more than the mere chronological inaccuracy of an earty age, Accord- ing to these accounts, Homer's life falls anywhere within a period of more than four hundred years, and that during a time marked by the most exten- sive changes in the social condition of the Greeks on both sides of the Aegean Sea. For this variation in regard to the place and the time of Homer's life, 42 the real historical significance has been determined by a recent investigation, in which one can hardly tell whether to admire most the self-evident sim- plicity of the main idea, or the merciless rigor of the historical argument. 43 It is this : Every state- ment as to time belongs to the tradition of a particu- lar locality. Thus the birth of Homer, according to the tradition of Smyrna, falls in the middle of the eleventh century ; according to that of Chios, about two generations later, or the beginning of the tenth century ; according to that of Samos, in the ninth century ; and so on. Also to the ninth century be- longed, according to Samian tradition and to He- rodotus, 44 the residence of Homer at Samos and the 2i THE OPJGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. founding of the school of poets there ; whereas the latter event at Chios, according to Chian tradition, fell at the beginning of the tenth century. If, now, the name Homer, as has been shown, is made to bear all the epic poetry of the Trojan circle of myths ; if this Homer is reported as born at differ- ent points in the Greek world during a period of more than four centuries ; if in each instance there is connected with his birth or residence in a given locality the story of the rise of a school of epic poetry in the same locality, then for any one who does not allow himself to accept or to reject any of these facts by itself the conclusion is irresistible. The statements as to Homer's birth at different places and at different times are really statements as to the beginning of epic poetry in the several localities. The sequence of dates and places yields a history of the spread of such poetry over the western coast of Asia Minor and among the islands. The order in which Smyrna, Chios, Kolophon, and so on to the remote Kypros and Krete, arrange themselves according to the succession of the re- spective traditions of time, corresponds to the geo- graphical position or the political relations of the THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 2d several places, and so furnishes an unsought con- firmation of this theory. 45 To these historical data in regard to the person of Homer let us now add the facts which are es- tablished as to the poems, without reference to the name of their author, The Iliad and Odyssey were not originally com- mitted to writing, but orally delivered. All the attacks made upon this proposition since Wolf first proved it have only served to establish its truth more firmly. 46 The poems themselves, by their form and contents, make it probable. No- where do we find in the narrative of the poems or in the numerous similes the slightest hint of the existence of the art of writing, not even where there was natural occasion for mention of it. 47 The language also, in its power of adapting itself to the metre by lengthening and shortening, separating and contracting, the vowels, shows a flexibility that is incomparably more natural for the spoken word than for the word fixed in a given form by writ- ing. 48 But the supposition that is thus made high- ly probable becomes certain from other considera- tions. In the eighth century before Christ, the Hi- 26 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. ad was already a completed work, as appears from the fact that other epics composed at that time by the limitations of their own subject-matter recog- nize the limits of that of the Iliad as already set- tled. 49 It is not until a full century later that we find the first beginnings of the use among the Greeks of the art of writing, and then it is for the recording of laws. 50 But from the use of writing to record the brief formulas of ancient laws to the use of it for long poems is a progress involving so many indispensable steps as to require a very long time. Poems so long as the Iliad and the Odyssey — one 16,000, the other 12,000 lines — are not writ- ten down, so long as the habit of hearing them re- cited is universal and there is no hope of their finding readers. The preservation of these poems, by oral tradition only, for a couple of centuries, which in itself is not without a parallel in the his- tory of epic poetry, 51 is in this case the less surpris- ing by reason of the historical fact that there were schools of poets who made it their business to cul- tivate epic poetry, and to recite and transmit the heroic songs of their ancestors. The earliest well-authenticated case of the com- THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 27 mission of the Iliad and Odyssey to writing oc- curred at Athens in the latter half of the sixth century before Christ, when the work was done by a committee organized by Peisistratos. 52 That this was the first time that the whole of the poems was written down may be clearly inferred from the form and character of the numerous statements in regard to it. If it had been only a combination and connection of written copies previously exist- ing, it would never have been, as it now is, cele- brated as an important event, as the accomplish- ment of a difficult task. And surely the ordinance of Solon, before the time of Peisistratos, directing the succession in the delivery of the Homeric songs at the great Panathenaic festival at Athens would have taken a different form if he could have re- ferred to existing written copies. After Peisistratos, and more especially after the end of the fifth century before Christ, when the love of reading became more general, copies of the Iliad were multiplied. 53 Certain cities had their own copies, which were probably the local test of the accuracy of the festival declamations. Alex- ander the Great held his copy in great honor, and 2S THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. set apart a jewelled casket from his Persian booty to keep it in. The form given to the poems under Peisistratos, when corrected of some errors that had subsequently crept in, was what the Alexandrian scholars of the third century before Christ aimed to restore, 54 and our modern editions strive to re- produce, as nearly as possible, the text as they de- termined it. 55 Now let us take together in one view the points thus historically settled. The Iliad and Odyssey were orally circulated for two centuries before they were put into written form. The prevalent opin- ion among the Greeks in the classical time made Homer the author not only of the Iliad and Odys- sey, but the originator of all their epic poetry, or at least all that pertained to the Trojan circle of myths. The traditions in regard to his life give no story of an individual existence connected with a definite time and place, but assume the shape of items as to the gradual spread of epic poetry among those Greek cities and tribes which chiefly cultivated it. The question whether the Iliad and Odyssey proceeded from the spontaneous concep- tion of a single poet, or were formed by putting THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 29 together the separate songs of one or of several poets, is not touched at all by these traditions, for either supposition is reconcilable with the histor- ical facts yielded by them. There is, however, one result gained by examining them, and that is, that the answer to this question is shown to be en- tirely apart from any supposed historical evidence. If any one is constrained, by arguments of another kind, to hold that the Homeric poems are not orig- inal units, but combinations of separate songs or enlargements of simpler poems, no one can charge him with, defying the testimony of a sure and well- defined tradition. The answer to the question be- tween original unity and subsequent combination can be sought only in the poems themselves. In the poems themselves. 56 That sounds very well as a theory, but in practical application it may be very likely to amount to leaving the decision to personal temperament and subjective inclination. We have just seen how men of the most cultivated judgment in the sphere of poetry, who undoubt- edly formed their opinion solely from the poems themselves, came to the most opposite conclusions. And, indeed, may it not be impossible to determine, 30 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. in regard to poems of so remote an age, what degree of self-consistency they ought to have in order to prove their original unity? 57 Such considerations must certainly inspire us with caution, but the fact of differences of opinion ought not to make us de- spair of reaching a satisfactory conclusion by going to the bottom of the subject; and, on the other hand, in the case of poems as long as the Iliad and Odyssey, a comparison of their several parts as to subject and form furnishes a standard of consist- ency which restricts very narrowly the caprices of individual judgments. It will be my endeavor to show that, in virtue of these things, a tenable opin- ion can be formed, and has been in part already settled. Let us look first at the Iliad. The series of transactions and incidents which the Iliad presents to our imagination is so con- nected together as to be easily embraced in one view. It is the tenth year of the siege, and the Achaean army is still striving to overthrow Troy in revenge for the outrage committed by Paris. Then it happens that their bravest hero, Achilles, is wounded in his honor by Agamemnon, the lead- er of the host, and resolves to avenge himself for THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMEEIG POEMS. 31 the insult by keeping aloof from the battle-field. His goddess-mother, Thetis, asks and obtains from Zeus the promise that the Achaean army shall have disasters until Agamemnon repents and atones for the wto no; he has done. For a time the valor of the other Achaean chiefs maintains the balance against the Trojans, but presently they are at such a disadvantage that Agamemnon sends an embas- sy of the noblest chiefs to beg forgiveness of Achil- les and offer him full compensation. But his thirst for revenge is not yet satisfied ; the woes of the Greeks must be yet greater; the Trojans must force their way into the camp, begin to burn the ships, and thus threaten them with complete de- struction, ere he will lay aside his wrath and come forth from his retirement. The very next day brings matters to this extremity. The bravest of the Achaean leaders are wounded and forced to leave the field. Hektor breaks through the wall of the Greek camp, and the resistance of the mighty Ajax cannot prevent his setting fire to one of the ships. Then Patroklos, the trusty companion-in- arms of Achilles, beseeches him in this crisis of need, if he will not go out himself, at least to allow 32 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMEBIC POEMS. him and the host of the Myrmidons to take part in the battle. This only he consents to do. By the successes that attend his unexpected appearance on the field, Patroklos is so carried away that he for- gets the strict command of Achilles, and lets him- self be drawn on from defence of the camp to an attack upon the Trojan army. In pressing the at- tack he is slain, and it is only with great effort that his body, stripped of its armor, is rescued from the eager foe. At the dreadful news of his friend's death, Achilles, late on that day, comes forth, and b}^ his mere presence checks the renewed onset of the Trojans. The next morning Agamemnon gives Achilles a full compensation for the wrong done him, and Achilles, burning with desire to avenge the death of his beloved friend, dismisses his anger at Agamemnon. In the now r renewed conflict he takes his revenge. Many Trojans fall before him, and, last of all, Hektor, who alone dared to meet his attack, and who alone was the hope of the Trojan cause. The burial of Patroklos, the funeral games in his honor, the return of the body of Hektor to his aged father, and the lament of the Trojans over it, bring the poem to a close. THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 33 This hasty sketch will suffice to recall to any one acquainted with the Iliad the main outline of the poem. One cannot thus bring it up to mind with- out being impressed with the manifest interlink- ing of the parts, the restriction of the story with- in well-chosen limits, the grouping of the whole around a common centre. Bat in recent times the admiration of this poem has gone a step far- ther, and made the discovery that the whole Iliad is guided and controlled bv one fundamental thought, one leading idea, 58 which is thus stated : "The wrath of Achilles is fully justified and right, and the supreme Governor of the world himself assures to it its satisfaction ; but then the man's passion pushes his wrath, right as it is in itself, to an undue excess. When he rejects the offered reconciliation, Achilles makes himself lia- ble to punishment, and by the death of his dearest friend pays the penalty of his excessive wrath." Who would deny that the succession of actions and events presented in the Iliad is perfectly adapt- ed to convey this sound ethical doctrine? Who could fail to recognize that a sort of national in- stinct made due moderation a necessary condition, 3 34 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. in the view of the Greeks in all ages, of the high- est moral goodness and nobleness ? But the ques- tion is a very different one, whether in the Iliad as we have it and the ancients had it, be it one poem or a combination of originally diverse ele- ments — whether in this Iliad we find this idea set forth as the controlling idea, or anything to justify us in reading it between the lines ? To this ques- tion we must certainly answer, No. It is not from the consideration of justice that Zeus promises the fullest satisfaction to the wrath of Achilles, but he owes gratitude to Thetis for previous benefits, and Thetis makes these benefits tell so as to secure the assent of Zeus to her request. 59 The rejection by Achilles of the offers of friendship does not con- stitute a turning-point in the action of the poem. There is no subsequent reference to it, even where there is the strongest reason for one; 60 and Zeus, without the slightest hint of disapproval of the implacability of Achilles, maintains unaltered his promise to avenge him by the increasing woes of the Greeks. 61 In the death of Patroklos, no one of gods or men detects a penalty for the excessive wrath of Achilles. He falls by the attack of a deity THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 35 friendly to the Trojans, and because he transgressed the strict command of Achilles as to the limits of his taking part in the contest. Thus we see that at every important point of the action not only do we fail to find that motive suggested which we ought to find on this theory, but another motive, essentially different and irreconcilable with that, is employed. In truth, one has to get away from the Iliad, and strive to forget what is really contained in it, before he can venture to impose upon the poem as it is a thought which might be the ruling thought of the whole. But, again, the most serious difficulties arise as to the mere continuity of connection in the narra- tive so soon as we descend from general outlines to particular details. So far as these depend on va- riation of tone and style, it is useless to try to give an idea of them. 62 They do not appear in the Ger- man translation, which, excellent as it is, spreads a uniform tone over the whole. So, also, of other grounds of suspicion, although as depending on the subject-matter they must appear in any ver- sion, yet one can hardly give an idea of their nnm- ber and the way they are inwrought in the whole 36 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. structure of the poem without going minutely through the whole. Still, perhaps, in some exam- ples the kind of doubt they raise may be so far in- dicated as to show whether they are such as to jus- tify positive inferences. Such cases as this, that the same warrior is killed on different days by dif- ferent foes, may be regarded as of little conse- quence. 62 They occur only in regard to inferior persons, and such contradictions in a long poem may be explained by failure of memory, even on the supposition of single authorship. But other things go deeper into the course of the main inci- dents. The larger part of the Iliad is taken up with the particular narrative of the events of three days of conflict. The first, favorable throughout to the Greek army without the help of Achilles, extends from the second book nearly to the end of the seventh ; the second day, which contains the extreme peril of the Greeks, the exploits and death of Patroklos, and finally the sudden appearance of Achilles on the field, begins in the eleventh and ends in the eighteenth book; the third, containing the vengeance of Achilles and the death of Hek- tor, covers books xx, xxi, and xxii. If now we THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 37 undertake to make clear to ourselves the incidents of the second and most important day, we stumble at everv step against the greatest difficulties. The narrative goes quickly over the beginning of the conflict. After only eighty lines we are told that so long as the sun was ascending the fortune of the battle was undecided, but that from mid-day on the scale was turned. And then, after we have followed through five books the most varied shift- ings of the contest, and have been told of incidents requiring considerable time — the battle about the wall of the Greek camp, and the storming of its gate against vigorous defence ; the help given by Poseidon to the Greeks; Hera's preparations for a trick upon Zeus, and her success in beguiling him to sleep, in order that Poseidon may work on unin- terrupted; the awakening of Zeus, and the help he sends to the Trojans; the turning of their retreat into an attack; the struggle around the ship of Ajax ; the appeal of Patroklos to Achilles for leave to rescue the Greeks ; the arming of Patroklos and the Myrmidons, and a large part of the exploits of Patroklos — after all this has been told, in more than 4000 lines, then we hear again that it is 38 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. mid-day and the sun standing high in heaven. 64 "We may, if we please, cut out ever so much of what lies between these two statements, as being a subsequent enlargement of a skilfully constructed original narrative. Bat we gain nothing by that; for, in any case, the development of the struggle which causes the appearance of Patroklos, and a great part of his achievements, have no time allowed for them, for they occur between two distinct indi- cations of the same hour. In another point of view, tlie^e is a difficulty as to the appearance of Patroklos on the field. When the battle is turning against the Greeks in the eleventh book, Patro- klos is sent out by Achilles to learn the name of a wounded man whom they see Nestor carrying away in his chariot. Patroklos is in such a hurry to perform the command of his impatient chief that he refuses to sit down in Nestor's tent. But this haste is forgotten ; for while the Greek wall is stormed by Hektor, and while the fortunes of war are changing back and forth through four long books, Patroklos remains seated in quiet conversa- tion in the tent of a Greek chieftain. 65 Kay, more than this, when he finally, in the sixteenth book, re- THE OEIGIX OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 39 turns to Achilles, not a word is said of an answer to the question of Achilles, nor, indeed, of Lis having been sent on the errand. 66 Similar discrepancies we find in the course of the whole narrative, lively and vivid as it is in the details. In closely con- nected passages we find different representations of the condition of the battle, of its form, of its local- ity. 67 The entrance of the same person, Poseidon, at the same time into the conflict is twice described, and in ways irreconcilable with each other. 63 Zeus utters on the same day two incompatible prophe- cies of the immediate future. 69 As to the death of one hero, Patroklos, we receive two inconsistent accounts in close connection. 70 As we read, we are carried along by the naturalness and vigor of the successive pictures, but the effort to hold one con- tinuous thread through them, to grasp a unity in the narrative, such as it must have even if only re- cited, so that the hearers should understand and see the incidents in imagination — this effort fails utterly. We find ourselves in a mighty concourse of tumultuous waves, where it is impossible to stand firmly. 71 Very different is the impression made by the 40 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. story of the first day of conflict in books ii-vii. There, with very slight exceptions, we enjoy the clear light of a transparent narrative. What read- er of the Iliad would not recall with lively admi- ration the charming passage of the view from the walls of Troy, with its happy delineations of Hel- en, Priam, and the Greek heroes; the exquisite de- scription of the shooting of the arrow of Panda- ros, the beauty of which Lessing has so clearly analyzed ; 72 the splendid story of the exploits of Diomedes, and then the peaceful episode between him and Glaukos, who meet as foes, but recognize each other as connected by hereditary ties of hos- pitality, and separate with mutual gifts ; finally, the parting of Hektor and Andromache, a scene often imitated, but not easily surpassed in the touching power of its simple naturalness ? But the beauty of these separate scenes, which makes it hard to tell which one is the most delightful, is quite equalled by the difficulty of combining them into one story. 73 The mass of the incidents threat- ens at the very outset to overwhelm us, when Ave recollect that they are to be supposed to occur within a single day; and then we find it, in almost THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMEKIC POEMS. 41 every case, impossible to discover the internal link between any two of them. We have a stately pict- ure of the arming of the Greek host, and then a roster of the whole Greek force down to the minor chiefs, occupying some 400 lines. Everything indi- cates the beginning of a grand general conflict, and then follows — a truce, and a single combat between Paris and Menelaos. 74 The agreement, sanctioned by a sacrifice and solemnly sealed by oaths, that if Menalaos is victor in this duel, Helen and the treas- ure taken with her shall be given up, is wantonly broken by the Trojans ; and on the same day, with the slightest possible reference to that former duel, Hektor challenges any of the Greek chiefs to a second one, without proposing that it shall decide so much. Still the Greeks accept his challenge, and utter no reproaches over the former breach of faith. Moreover, on the very day on which the previous duel has resulted in favor of their cham- pion, and on which, too, the general contest has brought the Trojans into extreme distress, the bravest Greek chiefs dread to enter this single combat, and have to be aroused from their conster- nation by Nestor's reproaches. 75 Even Diomedes, 42 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 'who on that very day lias undertaken and trium- phantly carried on a combat with Ares himself, is now among the terror-stricken. It is true, his cour- age has already before this, in some unexplained way, abandoned him. Immediately after he has, with valor inspired by Athene, vanquished and driv- en from the field Aphrodite and Ares, we find him meeting Glaukos, whom lie does not know, and ask- ing with pious anxiety whether it may not be a god who confronts him, for with gods a mortal must not venture to contend. 76 But I will not 2:0 on with the list of such contra- dictions, tempting as is the abundance of material. It is impossible to fairly present here the number of difficulties which arise in the two parts of the Iliad of which I have spoken, which make up about a half of the whole poem. My only purpose has been to bring to your view, by some easily pre- sented examples, the character and importance of them. Whoever wishes a confirmation from with- out of the gravity of these inconsistencies should seek it, not in the writings of those who have con- vincingly set them forth, 77 but rather in those of their adversaries, who, in order to maintain the THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 43 unity of the Iliad, labor to invalidate the grounds of suspicion. 78 The devices of interpretation and involved hypotheses by which they seek to seem to reconcile irreconcilable contradictions/ 9 form the strongest proof of the reasonableness of the doubts as to the original unity of the poem, and justify the simple inference drawn from them. When a poem like the Iliad presents, sometimes through two hundred lines, and sometimes through nearly a thousand, one scene and set of characters with strict consistency, even in the minutest details of the vivid delineations, and then in the very next lines passes on to the assumption of a different scene and a different disposition in the actors — when this kind of inconsistency, varying in degree, runs through the whole poem, and everywhere shows itself, not within single narrations, but only in the combination of these into one whole; 80 in such a case we find ourselves compelled to con- clude that those single narratives were originally separate, and that the combining of them was a subsequent process. The narrative of Diomede c ' conversation with Glaukos is, in its way, as admira- ble as that of his exploits in war, but as a continu- 44 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. ation of these it cannot have belonged to the ori^- inal conception and composition of the poem. Hektor's challenge to a single combat, the dread of the Greek chiefs to en^a^e with him, the bravest of the Trojans, Nestor's reproaches and exhorta- tions — all this is very well told ; but as a scene of the same dav on which the Greeks had been cheat- ed out of the stakes of another single combat (a day, too, in which they are everywhere successful in battle), such a representation is impossible. Facts of this kind speak so plainly that we can- not be deaf to them, and attention to them has al- ready brought about agreement on certain points between the two parties to this discussion. No one who really understands the questions at issue believes any longer in the original independent ex- istence of a poet, called Homer, if you please, who wrought up the myths of his people into the Iliad. 81 It is admitted by the most decided and most prom- inent champions of the theory of single authorship that the composer of the Iliad had before him sep- arate songs of earlier origin, that he took them up into his comprehensive poem without material al- terations, and that the contradictions — or, to use a THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 45 milder term, inequalities — which we discover pro- ceed from this adoption and combination of earlier songs. 82 The difference of opinion is limited now substantially to these points : that the defenders of the unity of the Iliad assert the impossibility of sep- arating it into the originally independent parts; 83 that they restrict as much as they can the amount of such incorporations in proportion to the rest of the Iliad ; and that they find the true value of the Iliad to lie, not in the poetic beauty of single lays, but in the majestic composition of the whole poem. As to the first point, there is hardly room for much dispute; for the real question is not whether it is possible in all, or even in a few, cases to mark off the originally separate songs, but whether the pres- ent form of the poem has grown out of such ele- ments without essential alteration of them ; and on this point there is agreement within certain limits. As to the relative extent of the incorporated ele- ments and of the new independently composed Iliad, the field of controversy will be narrowed by the further investigation of particular cases. The third question, whether the value and significance of the Iliad is to be seen in the poetry of single 40 THE OEIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. scenes or in the grand composition of the whole, might be left untouched so far as it is not answered in what has already been said. But it may be al- lowable, without undue influence from one's per- sonal opinions, to suggest two considerations which may prepare the way for a decision. The compo- sition of extended and elaborately constructed epic poems, in contrast with single songs containing each the story of a single adventure, marks un- questionably a great progress in poetic literature. 84 If, now, the Iliad was, as seems most probable, the earliest composition of such extent in the Greek epic poetry, then, even if it is almost wholly a mere patchwork of previously existing separate materi- als, still a high position in the development of the Greek epic is due to such a work of compilation. But it is a very different question whether in this poem, as we now have it, the chief value lies in the original elements or in the architectural skill which has made them into one whole. On this question let one simple fact be considered. The contradic- tions in the Iliad are so manifest and so absolute that when once pointed out they cannot be ignored, however one may strive to make them appear tri- THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 47 fling. But if thousands of readers, from antiquity to the present time, have felt the elevating and in- spiring influence of the Homeric poems without noticing the contradictions, it would surely be a great mistake to ascribe this surprising fact to a universal carelessness in reading. "We should rath- er explain it by the overpowering charm of the separate pictures, which draw off the attention from their connection with one another. Goethe's praises of Homer, Lessing's luminous deductions from him, all have reference to the separate nar- ratives, and remain true — yes, even gain in truth, when we believe that we have not one continuous narrative, but some eighteen or twenty separate epic songs arranged together according to the gen- eral course of the incidents. TTe have thus far turned our attention exclu- sively to the Iliad ; let us now in brief space con- sider the Odyssey. TTe might grant that the Odyssey must be recognized as originating in a single poetic conception, excluding altogether the supposition that it was made up of originally sep- arate materials, without thereby casting a doubt upon what has been more or less certainly deter- 48 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. mined with regard to the origin of the Iliad. It is quite possible that the two poems which now are inseparably united in our eyes, and which all antiquity, too, referred to the one all-including name of Homer, may have differed essentially in their real origin. Whether this is really the case is a question on which the conflict of opinion is not at present narrowed down to so small a field as in regard to the Iliad. The examination of the Odyssey from this point of view began later than that of the Iliad, 85 and so we find within the last few decades scholars who decidedly rejected the belief in the single authorship of the Iliad and yet as decidedly maintained a belief in that of the Odyssey. 86 The investigations which questioned or disproved the original unity of the Odyssey were mainly confined for a long time to single parts of the poem, and were conducted on the silent as- sumption that the process of construction in the two poems was essentially the same. 87 Under these circumstances, it is easy to see that one cannot, in the case of the Odyssey, mark out with the same prospect of assent the limits within which opin- ions are now agreed, and I may be excused if I THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 49 confine myself to a statement of a few principal points of view. The arguments for original unity of authorship in the Odyssey are not only the well-judged lim- itation of the material and the grouping of its manifold incidents about a single central point, but also the skilful complication of the story. The abundance and variety of the stories of Odysseus' adventures on the return from Troy, and in con- flict with the foes in his own home, are constantly focused upon one thing — the character of the hero. His courage and his cautious judgment are not to be broken down by the dangers of the long voyage, nor yet by the terrors of conflicts with giants and with supernatural powers. Neither the allure- ments of comfort, nor the charms of beautiful god- desses, nor the loveliness of the maiden who saves his life, can overpower his longing for home and faithful affection for his wife. And a like spirit in that wife, joined with courage and cunning, has meanwhile, in conflict with hardly less dangerous enemies, kept safe the home into which, after all his toils and struggles, he is to enter for a new lease of happiness. The copious details which fill 4 50 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. up this outline are not recited in simple chrono- logical order ; but the opening of the poem shows us the wanderings of Odysseus nearly at their end, while the previous incidents, instead of being told by the poet, are, far more effectively, put into the mouth of the hero himself at the time when lie, welcomed and entertained by the Phaeakians, is thereby assured of a return to his home. Two, or rather three, threads of narrative — the occurrences in the house of Odysseus, the journey of Telema- chos to visit his father's companions-in-arms, and the wanderings of Odysseus — are carried on at first independently side by side, and then are united w T hen the father and son, almost at the same mo- ment, return to Ithaka, and win their victory over the enemy at home. That this skilful arrange- ment is the result of matured reflection, and marks by its complication a higher stage of art in con- struction than the straightforward course of the Iliad, must be admitted without hesitation; but this by no means decides — does not, in fact, even touch — the question whether the Odyssey, in its present form, was originally conceived as a single poem, or is either a careful combination of ele- THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 51 ments not originally designed for such union, or the expansion of a nucleus originally much sim- pler. But against the supposition of original uni- ty of conception in the Odyssey as we have it, in- superable objections arise. In the first place, in order to find in the particulars above mentioned a proof of the original unity of the poem, it is nec- essary to apply them in the most general and ab- stract way to the actual details of our Odyssey. 88 The alleged connection of all the numerous inci- dents with the one person Odysseus cannot, surely, be held strictly true of those in the third and fourth books ; for the real subject of those books is the adventures of other heroes on the return from Troy, which have no natural connection with his. 89 The character of Odysseus certainly might be so presented throughout the whole poem as it has been sketched above ; but, in fact, we find this true only in the first half of the poem, while in the second half it is exaggerated on both sides almost to the point of caricature. On the one hand, the wise self-control of the hero degenerates, when he appears in his own house cunningly disguised as a beggar, almost to vulgar buffoonery; 90 and, on the 52 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. other, such valor as enables him alone to engage with more than a hundred able-bodied men, skilled in war, without even the help of a deity to make it credible, oversteps the limit of moderation which is observed in the earlier part of the narrative. 91 An artful complication of different threads of nar- rative is certainly characteristic of the Odyssey ; but not less characteristic is it that just this pecu- liarity of construction involves ns in unexplained, indeed for the most part inexplicable, difficulties. The incidents of the return of Odysseus are, indeed, interwoven with those of the vovage of Telema- chos; but, on closer study, admiration of this plot is more than shaken. For the journey of Telema- chos is not only altogether without influence on the main action, but is undertaken in the beginning without motive and prolonged without reason. 92 One cannot avoid the thought that it is introduced only in order to attach to the adventures of Odys- seus a sketch of those of some other heroes. And, more than all, the very points of contact of the combined narratives, those places on which the de- fence of original unity must lay special stress, bring us every time into undeniable inconsisten- THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 53 cies. In passing from the Telemachos story to the Odysseus story, at the beginning of the fifth book, we find a council of the gods which is irreconcila- ble in the subject of its dealing with that of the first book ; and the lines in which it is described are plainly a clumsy patchwork, made up from other passages of the poem. 93 Again, when we re- turn, in the fifteenth book, from the story of Odys- seus' arrival in Ithaka to that of Telemachos, the goddess Athene comes in to help out the transi- tion. Athene has been aiding Odysseus by word and deed since his arrival on the island, and she goes to Lakedaemon to stir up Telemachos to return home. But she leaves Odysseus long af- ter daybreak, and arrives in Lakedaemon on the same day before dawn ! Both marks of time are clearly given, and each is essential to the whole course of the narrative in which it stands, so that the contradiction is plain and admitted. 94 Such an inconsistency is not conceivable in an original creation ; but we understand it when we recognize here an artificial union of poems which, as already familiar and cherished, were brought into their new relation with the least possible change. 5-i THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. The supposition of original unity in the poem is upset, in the second place, by the consideration that there is want of harmony between different parts of the Odyssey as to certain fundamental matters which must have been fully present to the consciousness of the poet. For example, as to the deity to whose wrath the extraordinary woes of Odysseus are to be ascribed; 95 as to the proximate number of the suitors of Penelope 96 and the time during which their wild doings had gone on; 97 as to their offering; or not offering the customary marriage presents; 98 as to the personal appearance of the hero himself; 99 as to the age of Telema- chos; 100 as to the design against his life formed by the suitors ; 101 as to the namo of a person in the household of Odysseus who was of no little conse- quence to the action of the story 102 — in these and other points we find unmistakable contradictions which cannot be smoothed over or eliminated. Thirdly and finally, we observe in the tone and poetic quality of the narrative a variation which cannot escape notice even in the disguise of a translation. Let one read in immediate sequence the sixth book, for example (the meeting with THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 55 Nausikaa), and the twentieth (the incidents pre- ceding the fatal catastrophe), and he may safely offer a reward for any person who shall be able to attribute to the same poet the transparent clear- ness of the former and the helpless confusion of the latter. 103 There is, moreover, one peculiarity of the Odyssey which makes it very difficult to decide how T far the poem is made up of originally inde- pendent constituents, and how far it has merely been expanded by additions to an original whole, and that peculiarity is the repetition of essential- ly the same mythical matter in various forms, or what may be called twin narratives — a peculiarity which can hardly be paralleled from the Iliad, but is a characteristic feature of the last two thirds of the Odyssey. Thus we find in the adventures of Odysseus the two solitary divinities, Kirke and Ka- lypso ; the two mysterious helpers of his voyage, Aiolos and Alkinoos ; the two similar prophecies from Kirke and Teiresias ; the fatal sleep of Odys- seus twice repeated. 104 And so it is constantly after the arrival of Odysseus in Ithaka. The story of his coming into his own house unrecognized, in the disguise of a beggar, and having a bone or a foot- 56 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. stool thrown at him by the revellers who are eating up his substance, striking enough once, is repeated three times with slight variations; 105 four times the sagacity of the clogs is impressed upon us ; 106 four times we have fictitious accounts of himself and his history given by Odysseus, similar to one an- other, and yet not the same even in the principal features, although some of the same persons are present to hear them. 107 The quiet slumbers of Penelope in the upper room at all times in the day, 108 the inexhaustible capacity of Odysseus for eating and begging, 109 the accumulation of similar omens, 110 as if all Olympos were incessantly busy about the house of Odysseus — in a word, the mul- titude of difficulties, no single one of which can be satisfactorily cleared up unless all are, is so great as to discourage even an indefatigable student. 111 To have undertaken the investigation in its full scope, and to have carried it on with a keenness of judgment and a rigorous acceptance of truth which enabled him to reach as positive results for an understanding of the formation of the Odyssey as Lachmann did for the Iliad — this is the undis- puted honor of A. Kirchhoff. 112 It w r ould perhaps THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 57 he premature to indicate now, in regard to the Odyssey as in regard to the Iliad, within what limits the traditional assumption of original unity must confine its opposition to these views; but still one may be allowed to point out some things which seem to be settled with entire certainty by KirchhofFs investigations. The idea of original unity of construction in the Odyssey as we have it is not merely disturbed, but so completely set aside that scarcely the shadow of it can maintain itself. On the contrary, the poem has been systematically worked over by an editor with intelligent design and some degree of poetic power, who incorpo- rated into the originally more simple nucleus bor- rowed matter of kindred mythical tenor and addi- tions of his composition. And even that original nucleus which we must assume, the earliest nar- rative of the adventures and return of Odysseus, is not a simple song like those which we assume as making up the Iliad, but belongs to the period in which the epic poem as a form of art was being developed. But the expanded edition of its pres- ent form belongs to the time when the decay of the Greek epic had already begun, when mean- 58 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC TOEMS. ingless breadth of narration, conveyed in the tra- ditional forms of language and metre, served as a substitute for the freshness and vivid reality of true poetry. If, indeed, we lose anything of real value when we are obliged to give up the fond belief in a divine singer who gave forth the Iliad in his youth and the Odyssey in his old age, still we have gained something of much more impor- tance in its stead ; for these two poems have be- come for us, without suffering thereby harm or loss in their intrinsic value, reliable witnesses to the progressive growth of Greek epic poetry. The comparison to the rising and setting sun with which antiquity glorified the individual Homer as author of these two poems, we may adopt in an altered sense and apply to the poems themselves as representatives of the stages of that poetic de- velopment. I have now endeavored to fulfil the task which I proposed to myself in the beginning, to set forth the reasonableness of raising the question as to the origin of the Homeric poems, to suggest the means for its solution, and to indicate the limits within which the points in dispute are by this time re- THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 59 stricted. It may justly be demanded that I should bring together the positive conclusions, less mani- fest in themselves, which result from these nega- tive considerations, and thereby present a view in outline of the history of the formation of these two poems. To such an attempt a few words may be devoted in closing. 113 As in the case of all peoples where it is possible to trace the course of poetic development up to its beginnings, 114 so in the Greek tribes, epic song ap- pears as the earliest form of poetry. Its subject- matter is the legendary lore of the tribe and the people. Legend differs from history, not merely in beino; less certain and trustworthy because it depends solely on oral tradition, but also in that it gives a prominence to particular events and per- sonages as the most perfect expression of the char- acter of the people and shining types of what it wishes to be and to do. 115 Even written history does not exclude the growing-up of legend concerning the very same time — e. g., as to Charlemagne, as to the Crusades — if certain characters and events take hold of and inspire a whole people in its in- most being. Such a subject of uplifting and glo- 60 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. rious remembrance the Greek tribes had in the loner contest which thev carried on against kindred tribes on the coast of Asia Minor, the Trojan war. The heroic deeds of that conflict, the adventures of the heroes on their return, every one would wish to have recalled to memory on festival oc- casions in the happy enjoyment of quiet days. 116 Therefore the palace of a prince in the heroic time could not do without the bard to recite in verse, accompanied by the simple chords of the lvre, the fame of those heroes. High in honor at home and abroad was the man on whom the gods had bestowed the gift of song. 117 Mneme, Melete, Aoide — that is, Memory, Meditation, Song — are the characteristic names, dating from the earliest time, of the muses from whom this gift came. 118 For the singers merit did not consist in his creative orig- inality, but people wanted to hear from him that which they already knew, and they wanted, to hear it because they knew it and delighted in it. "The individual poet," to use the happy language of an honored scholar of our own time, 119 " influences the natural growth of legend in much the same way as a skilful gardener regulates and guides the nat- THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 61 ural growth of his plants.*' The bard brings the legendary heroes clearly before our perception, and that in rhythmical form, which is grateful to the hearers and at the same time aids his own memo- ry. There is no marked difference between de- livering songs which he himself has first put into shape and repeating those of other poets which have Avon the applause of their hearers. The song contains a single event which is limited within moderate compass and so can be taken in at one view. Such is the representation which the Ho- meric poems themselves give us of the bard in the period to which their story refers. The lay of Ares and Aphrodite, which is put in the Odyssey into the mouth of the Phaeakian bard, takes up no more than a hundred lines. It would be rash to seek to determine the average length of the earli- est epic lays from tin's example, 1 - which, by the way, is beyond question an interpolation, but that each song covered but one single incident — e. g., the building of the wooden horse — and was of limited extent, is proved by the other instances of heroic songs and by the manner of their use; for the listening to the bard is only one of several 62 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. social pleasures during or after a feast, and is al- ternated with other amusements. The bard had no need of long introductions to make the spe- cial narrative intelligible to his audience ; they were already familiar with the legend at every point. The period of the emigration of the Aeolic and Ionic tribes to Asia Minor was especially fitted to stimulate recollection of the heroic deeds of the Trojan war, for then a similar conflict had to be carried on in the same or neighboring localities, and so the remembrance of the past acted as an encouragement for the present. It is therefore significant that the earliest date 121 assigned for the lifetime of Homer makes him contemporary with the Ionic migration. In the Ionian colonies, which soon succeeded in establishing themselves, poetry was cultivated by schools of bards, and, as a prob- able consequence of the rise of these schools at in- tervals during the next four centuries, we find dif- ferent dates given for the birth of Homer in dif- ferent cities. The existence of these schools of poetry explains the preservation of heroic songs when once composed, and it also furnished the THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 63 natural transition to the next stage in the develop- ment of epic poetry. The prosperous growth of individual Greek cit- ies of Asia Minor and their active intercourse with one another gave opportunity for regularly recur- ring festivals, at which great assemblies of people gave themselves up for considerable time to re- fined enjoyments at their leisure. One important element of the festivities was the delivery of epic songs, and that no longer by a single poet or rhap- sode, but by several in succession in mutual rival- ry. 1 " 22 What, then, could be more natural than that, when longer time was given for the recital, and the demands of the audiences gradually became more exacting, the single son^s should be arranged together in the order which their subjects indi- cated ? Such combination would be facilitated by the fact that the legends naturally grew up around certain fixed central points of myth, and the al- ready settled popularity of the old songs would insure their being taken up into the new connec- tion with as little change as possible. That the change of a few lines and the addition of a few would be enough to combine these originally inde- G4 THE ORIGIN OF THE II0MEEIC POEMS. pendent elements, the separate hero-songs, into a long epic, seems proved by the successful attempt of a modern German poet to unite into such a form a part of the detached folk-songs of the Ser- vians, 123 as well as by the combination into a single epic of the Finnish folk-songs, which still exist separately, side by side with the epic, and number more than 22,000 lines. It is evident, too, that in the historical development of epic poetry this process has actually occurred several times, for, even if the method of formation of the German national epic, the Nibelungenlied, is still an open question, there is an undoubted instance in the old French poem of the battle of Roncesvalles. 124 Now, in what progressive steps this combination, by re- writing some lines and adding others, took place in the case of the Greek heroic songs of the wrath of Achilles and the return of Odysseus, can hardly be ascertained with complete definiteness ; but the poems themselves, as we have them, show us not only that some such process took place, but also that there is a marked difference between the two poems in the elements which may be recognized in them, in the method of their development, and THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. bO in the time when they were completed. The Il- iad, in most of its extent enables us to recognize the separate lavs, sometimes united by mere juxta- position, sometimes more skilfully dovetailed into one another, and then it brings its subject to a close with poetry of a later date which already shows signs of decay in freshness and vigor. 1 ' 25 In the Odyssey, the simplest element, recognizable as such by the style itself, belongs to an age in which epic poetry was entering upon more comprehen- sive composition ; the continuation of it and the editors work which expands, dilutes, and rounds off the story, belong to the time of the decline of epic poetry. It is not necessary to suppose that the earlier songs disappeared at once when this combining or final editing work was done ; fur- thermore, it is quite probable, in the nature of things, that frequently single passages of the com- posite epic were separately recited, for only in ex- traordinary festivals would there be time for the delivery of the whole. 1 - 6 When Solon fixed by law the order of the recitation of the Homeric poems for the great Athenian festival, 1 - 7 he took the first step in the preservation of the completed form. 5 66 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. The arrangements of Peisistratos for committing them to writing were the second step, and to that we owe their preservation to our time. This which I have given is but an outline of the history of the origin of the Homeric poems, a mere sketch which needs to be filled out at numer- ous points. Some points must always remain not filled out; others the progress of investigation w x ill supply, and so gradually circumscribe the region of the unknown, provided the same principles be observed which prevail in the philological science of to-day. These principles are, first, a conscien- tious upholding of the real tradition of antiquity — for the Homeric investigations since Wolf's day have not abandoned the traditions of antiquity, but rather have at last re-established a consistent connection with them ; second, an indefatigable in- vestigation of the most isolated and minute par- ticulars, for it is just as true of philology as it is of physical science, that no matter of investiga- tion can be called trifling, but everything may be important in its relations ; third, an extension of one's view over the entire literature of the nation immediately concerned, and over kindred phenom- THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMEEIC POEMS. 07 ena in other nations. 128 These are the means by which the philology of to-day endeavors to present to our mental view classical antiquity in its true form, and in the Homeric investigations we may clearly recognize the application of these means. Whatever near approach to historic truth has been attained in the field of the Homeric question has been due, not to the accident of happy suggestions, but to rigorous method, to unwearied investiga- tion, to absolute devotion to the subject. NOTES. 1 Herod. II. 53. Further instances in Bernhardy, Grie- chische Literatur-Geschichte, 2d ed. I. p. 251 ; Sengebusch, Horuerica dissertatio I. p. 91. 2 Numerous comparisons of this kind in Lauer, Gesch. der Horn. Poesie, p. 59. 3 Athen. VIII. 39. 4 Sengebusch, Horn. diss. I. p. 171. 5 Sengebusch, I. pp. 139-166. For the principles on which Thucydides used the Homeric poems for inferences as to the historical facts of the earliest times, see Roscher, Leben, Werk u. Zeitalter des Thukydides, p. 132 sqq. 6 So Xenophanes in Sext. Emp. adv. Math. IX. 193; I. 289 ; Plat. Rep. II. 377 D sqq. 7 E. g., Plat. Theaet. 180 D ; Arist. de an. III. 427 a, 25 ; with Trendelenburg's note, p. 449. 8 Val. Max. 3, 7. Cf. Lessings Laokoon, XXIL 9 Lycurg. adv. Leocr. § 102; Diog. Laert. I. 57. On the latter passage, Sengebusch, Horn. diss. II. p. 107 sq.; Lehrs, Rhein. Mus. N. F. XVII. p. 491 sqq. 10 Plat, Protag. 325 E ; Isoc. Paneg. § 159 ; Hermann, Grieeh. Antiq. III. § 35, 6 sq. 11 Xen. Conv. 3, 5. 12 As to Plato, for example, see the proof in Sengebusch, I. p. 121 sqq. The long list of Homeric lines quoted or re- 70 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC FOEMS. ferred to in the writings of Aristotle and those attributed to him is given in the Index Aristotelicus under "O^poQ. Those of the Odyssey are not half so numerous as those of the Iliad. It would be interesting to determine in the whole range of Greek literature the number of references to the Iliad and to the Odyssey respectively. 13 On this whole subject of the influence of Homer on the Greeks, see Lehrs, De Arist. stud. Horn. pp. 200-229 ; Lauer, Gesch. der Horn. Poesie, pp. 5-58 ; the greater part of Sengebusch, Horn. diss. I. ; Bergk, Griech. Lit. I. pp. 874- 882. 14 Information as to the principal translations into Latin, French, Italian, English, and German, is given in Bernhar- dy, Griech. Lit. 2d ed. II. 1, p. 175 sq. 15 Scarcely any book has done so much to further a real insight into the character and special excellence of the Homeric poetry as Lessing's Laokoon. A large part of the numerous subsequent treatises on the subject is based on his clear and simple remarks. One among these, W. Wackernagel's "Die Epische Poesie" (Schweiz. Museum fur histor. Wissenschaften, vol. i. and ii.), deserves special men- tion for breadth of view, thoughtful penetration, and mas- terly clearness. 16 Italienische Reise, II. [I am so doubtful of the transla- tion here that I subjoin the original. — Tr.] : " Homer stellt die Existenz dar, wir gewohnlich den Effect: er schildert das Furchterliche, wir furchterlich, er das Angenehme, wir angenehm." 17 Briefwechsel mit Schiller, No. 424. 18 Instances in Lauer, Gesch. der Horn. Poesie, p. 59 sq. 19 Prolegomena ad Homerum, sive de operum Homeri- corum prisca et genuina forma variisque mutationibus et NOTES 13-26. 71 probabili ratione einendandi — Scripsit Fried. Aug. Wolfius, vol. i. (no second volume was published), 1795. New edi- tion, 1859. For earlier suggestions of the idea which "Wolf was the first to establish by proof, see Bernhardy, Griech. Lit. II. p. 98 sq. ; Yolkinann, Gesch. und Kritik der WolPschen Prolegomena zu -Homer, pp. 1-35. 20 For the influence of Wolf's Prolegomena beyond the circle of scholars, see Friedlander, Die Homerische Kritik von Wolf bis Grote (1853), pp. 1-6; Bernhardy, Griech. Lit. II. 1, pp. 99-103, and especially the section on this topic in Yolkmann's book just cited, pp. 71-181. 21 Briefwechsel mit Goethe, No. 459. 22 Hermann und Dorothea, [The short poem in elegiac metre, not the well-known long one in hexameters. — Tr.] "Here's to the health of the man who has opened us all a new field Where we may roam, by breaking clown Homer's great name ! For who to the gods, or who to 'the poet,' refuses to yield? But to be ranked as a Homerid, even as youngest, is fame." 23 Goethe, Works, oct. ed. of 1827, vol. iii. p. 156. A sim- ilar utterance of his from a much earlier time, scarcely eighteen months after the expression of the liveliest as- sent to Wolf's views, in a letter to Schiller of May 16th, 1798, is given below in note 57. Compare Yolkmann as above, p. 75. 24 Korte,Leben Wolf's, pp. 64 sq., 73 sq., 265 ; Yolkmann, pp. 35-48. 25 Preface to edition of the Iliad, Leipzig, 1804, pp. xxi.- xxiv. 26 Lachmann, Betrachtungen iiber die Ilias, mit Zusatzen von Moritz Haupt (Berlin, 1847). Earlier than the first part (1837) of Lachmann's Betrachtungen appeared the valua- ble treatise of G. Hermann, " De interpolationibus Homeri " 72 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC FOEMS. (1832) ; Opuscula, vol. v. pp. 52-77. How decidedly Lach- maun's work made an epoch id the discussion is clear from the fact that the whole of the extensive literature upon the unity of the Iliad (the most important works of which are mentioned below in notes 58-82) consists of assent to, op- position to, or modification of, his researches. 27 As a comprehensive statement of the arguments on this side, G. W. Nitzsch's work, Die Sagenpoesie der Griechen kritisch dargestellt (1852), deserves prominent mention (see also Schomann's searching criticism of it in Jahn's Jahrbucher, vol. lxix., and in his treatise " De reticen- tia Homeri" (1853), Opusc. vol. iii.). That Nitzsch, how- ever, in spite of his absolutely rejecting and indefatiga- b]y assailing Lachmann's investigations, in some essential points comes very nearly to the same results, is shown be- low in note 82. Both tendencies, the opposition to Lach- mann and the substantial agreement with his results, ap- pear in his posthumous work, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Epischen Poesie der Griechen (1862) : it was criticised by J. La Roche in the Zeitschrift fur das osterreichische Gym- nasialwesen, 1863. On the same side with Nitzsch are sev- eral thorough essays by W. Baumlein : Kritik der Lach- mann'schen Schrift in the Zeitschrift f. d. A. W., 1848 and 1850; Commentatio de compositione II. et Odysseae (Maul- bronn, 1847) ; Preface to the Tauchnitz edition of the Iliad ; in Philologus, vols. vii. and xi. ; and in Jahn's Jahrb., vol. lxxv. Two essays in Diintzer's Homerische Abhandlun- gen (1872), pp. 28 and 101, oppose Lachmann's views in al- most every particular. Duntzer's own view as to the unity of the two poems is mentioned below in note 82. Fried- lander's essay in defence of Grote's theory of the Iliad, Die Homerische Kritik von Wolf bis Grote (1853), may NOTE 27. 73 also be regarded as a polemic against the main points of Lachmanns theory. It was attacked by W. Ribbeck, in Philologus, vol. viii. ; "Prafung neuerer Ansichten iiber die Ilias." Opposed to both these parties at once — to the party of Lachmann as well as to that of Nitzsch — is the " new hypothesis " advanced by J. Minckwitz in his Yor- schule zurn Homer (1863). As to its relation to the two parties, see note 82. A recent addition to the list of books in defence of the theory of original unity is F. Nutzhorn's Die Entstehungsweise der Homerischen G-ediehte — Unter- suchungen iiber die Berechtigung der auflosenden Homer- Kritik, with a preface by J. N. Madvig. In his preface Madvig denies to the agency of Peisistratos that impor- tance in the work of compiling the Homeric poems which Wolf and Lachmann have ascribed to it ; and supposes — very nearly as Xitzsch does (see note 82) — that unity of conception and the appropriation of earlier songs were combined in the production of the poems : " But he who conceived the grand poetic thought could easily, in a time when the ideas of literary reputation and property did not yet exist, take up into his poem with little alteration pas- sages which others had composed in the same metre, or his shaping of one passage or another might be so far de- termined by the influence of earlier lays that certain char- acteristic traits and even turns of expression might be re- produced in his poem. The Homeric poems are not a patchwork of songs, but were composed as independent wholes under the stimulus and control of earlier songs " (p. xi.). Xutzhorn, in the first part of his book ( %; The His- torical Evidence," pp. 1-98), strives to set aside as untrust- worthy the statements which are used to disprove the original unity of the poems. In the second part (" The 74 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. Internal Evidence," pp. 100-2G8) lie discusses some of the contradictions which have been pointed out in the Iliad, and explains them away or ascribes little importance to them, in the hope of thus establishing the original unity of conception of the poems against attack from any quar- ter. We may recognize the fervor of enthusiasm for the poet, for which Madvig praises the author (p. xi.), but the work itself can hardly be thought to contribute much to the Homeric discussion, since it touches no point connect- ed with the real question which had not been more calmly and more thoroughly treated in previous works. Bergk, in the first volume of his Griechische Litera- tur-Geschichte (Berlin, 1872) — which is mainly occupied with the subject of Homer — takes a position in defence of the original unity of the Iliad against Lachmann, but in a very different sense from the writers hitherto named. In or- der to avoid possible inaccuracies, I will confine myself, in attempting to state Bergk's view of the origin of the Iliad, so far as possible to his own words, even where the usual quotation marks do not appear. The Iliad, as well as the Odyssey, was originally " a single poem, composed on a definite plan," and written down by the poet himself, to whom we may reasonably assign the name Homer. In the present form of the Iliad " we detect three essentially dif- ferent elements : the original poem, additions in the form of continuations, and the work of a final reviser. The primitive Iliad was a poem of moderate length, though it is impossible now, since parts of it are lost, to tell exactly how long it was ; of the present poem the greater part consists of later additions. It was also simple in struct- ure." " The genuine portions of the Iliad have an incom- parable beauty and dignity. If it were possible to detach NOTE 27. 75 them wholly from the later additions and modifications, our enjoyment and admiration of them would be greatly intensified. " Still w T e must not " set up too high a stand- ard for the work of a poet who made the first attempt to construct an epic poem ; such a work could be brought to perfection only by slow degrees." u This gradual build- ing-up of the poem is the sufficient explanation of many contradictions and many variations in the poetic style." " Still the difference of the various parts [of what we actu- ally have], the amount of the disturbing element, is too great to allow the opinion that the Iliad in its present form proceeded from a single hand." This " suggests the agency of several persons in the expansion of the orig- inal poem. The work of the great master was at once carried on by younger poets, whom we must suppose to have lived in close connection with him, and whom we may call Homeridae. But others, too, who were not born into this family circle, took part in the work, as one addi- tion gave rise to another." The " self-restraint and mod- eration which distinguished those poets were unfortunate- ly lacking in the editor who undertook to combine these later songs with the primitive Iliad, and, at the same time, to continue the work of the younger poets. Thus he not only worked over the original nucleus and its outgrowths, but added longer or shorter passages of his own produc- tion. These additions of the reviser exceed in length and audacity all that his predecessors had done in this direc- tion. But the chief injury done by him to the poems consists in his having wholly suppressed important parts of them, substituting his own work in their place, or so modified them that it is hardly possible to recognize the original any more, and that not only where his additions 76 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. involved such changes, but also arbitrarily and needlessly. It has been the principal task of the present critical anal- ysis of the Iliad to indicate the work of this audacious re- viser, for, although he impressed a distinct character on all that passed through his hands, the real facts of the matter have never, up to this time, been suspected by scholars." " This reviser gave to the Iliad essentially the form it now has. After him but few considerable additions — such as the Catalogue of the Ships and the last two books — were made. Even these additions were made before the be- ginning of the Olympiads, so that Arktinos and the oth- er cyclic poets had the poem before them in completed form." [Here follows Bergk's analysis of the Iliad, which is omitted on account of its length. — Tit.] When I try to estimate — so far as Bergk's language makes it possible — the amount of the several elements of our present Iliad on the basis of his analysis, I find that of the (about) 16,000 lines of the poem he recognizes some 1400 as genuine, that is, as belonging to the original Iliad, and some 5800 as half genuine, that is, as original lines, but so modified by the reviser that it is no longer possible to distinguish clearly the original element from the modification. The probability of such a thorough change of form, consist- ing not merely in additions and expansions, but also in omissions, substitutions, etc., seems greatly embarrassed by Bergk's supposition that the Iliad was originally com- mitted to writing by its author. Bergk anticipates this objection, and says : " It is precisely oral tradition that best preserves the details. A poem that passes from mouth to mouth is handed down more nearly as it is received, or, if changed at all, is completely changed ; whereas putting it in writing brings with it its own evils. NOTE 27. 77 Every rhapsode who wrote down the poem for himself could easily change the text at his pleasure, and the longer poems gave ojjportunity for partial changes, arbi- trary additions, and new combinations of parts. The ear- lier epic poetry was in the highest degree fluid in sub- stance, and the use of writing put no check upon its va- riation; indeed, we may say that writing facilitated the production of a corrupt and defective text/' For answer to this, if any answer is needed, one may see the remarks of W. Hartel in his review of Bergk's Literatur-Geschichte in the Zeitschrift far d. osterr. Gym., 1873, p. 357. To esti- mate the reality of these changes, and judge as to the as- signment of particular passages to these different hands, would require more room than Bergk's analysis itself oc- cupies, and is made more difficult by special peculiarities. In spite of no lack of confidence on his part, we rind so frequently expressions implying uncertainty — " probably," " may be," " would seem," etc. — that it is hardly less dif- ficult to draw a clear line between what he considers proved and what he indicates as mere opinion, than be- tween the genuine and the ungenuine in the Iliad. And for what he puts forward as certain there is either no rea- son given, or the reason is either a presupposition as to the contents of the original mythical matter (e. g. that ev- ery mention of Idomeneus is due to the reviser), which implies knowledge which is not and perhaps never can be attained, or an aesthetic judgment (as in his high opinion of the river-battle in XXI.) which will hardly command general assent. Bergk says indignantly of Lachmann : " It goes beyond all reasonable credibility when the mod- ern criticism expects us to recognize a mere compilation of loosely connected songs in those two poems, which not 78 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. only the simple, natural, popular feeling, but the unani- mous verdict of acknowledged masters in poetry and philosophy has for centuries regarded as an indivisible whole." That this " unanimous verdict," imposing as it sounds, is no reality, I have endeavored above (p. 18 sqq.) to show ; but when Bergk invokes it against Lachmann, it is hard to see how he can deny that it bears with just the same force against himself. Aeschylos and Sophokles, Plato and Aristotle, we know had the Iliad in the same form — apart from inconsiderable variations of the text — in which we read it ; and what they admired was. the Iliad as a whole and as the work of one poet; of the rav- ages of the audacious reviser they had as little suspicion as had modern criticism before Bergk. What really sur- passes " all reasonable credibility " is that Bergk expects us to recognize, of the poem which he himself describes as above, only one tenth as the untouched work of that creator of the epic, a much larger part as the off-hand production of the light-minded reviser, and more than half of the whole as a confused mixture of successive de- posits of poetry. 28 Even for professional scholars there have appeared in recent times several statements of the present condition of the Homeric question, e. g. by K. A. J. Hoffmann, "Der gegenwartige Stand der Untersuchungen tiber die Einheit der Ilias" (Allg. Monatsschrift fur Wissensch. und Literatur, 1852) ; G. Curtius, " Andeutungen liber den gegenw. Stand der Homerischen Frage" (Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1854) ; Hiecke, Der gegenw. Stand der Horn. Frage (Stralsund, 1856). An article by J. La Koche (" Ueber die Entstehung der Horn. Gedichte " in the last -men- tioned journal for 1863) is an attempt to determine with NOTES 28-33. 79 the aid of the labors of previous scholars the definite marks of interpolations and points of juncture through the vrhole of the two poems. It contains also a brief statement of the author's opinions as to the general proc- ess of growth of the Iliad and Odyssey, and an attempt to indicate the several original lays which can still be recognized in it. 29 In this section I have endeavored to present briefly some of the principal results of the pregnant discussions by M. Sengebusch (Homerica dissertatio prior et posterior) referred to above in the early notes. 30 The Hesiodic epic and the cyclic poems not con- nected with the Trojan myths have been purposely left unmentioned to simplify the discussion, inasmuch as they do not throw light directly upon the point of view under which the question is here discussed. 31 A sketch of the several epics belonging to the Trojan myth, made up by combination of scattered notices and scanty fragments, is given by Welcker in Der Epische Cy- clus oder die Homerischen Dickter. This book, like all his similar w^orks, has great value from his profound knowledge of all the remains of ancient Greek literature and art ; but it oversteps the limits that are set to our knowledge by the fragmentary condition of its sources. The section on the post-Homeric epic poets in Xitzsch's Beitrage zur Geschichte der Epischcn Poesie goes still further in this direction. 32 Welcker, as above, pp. 1-82. A modification of "Welckers view is implied in KirchhofTs investigations on the composition of the Odyssey, see p. 56 sqq. of the lecture and the accompanying notes. 33 Sengebusch, Diss. II. pp. 23-25. 80 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 34 Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 14, gives a view of the amount of the epic poetry which is assigned to Homer by Pindar, Simonides, Aeschylos, Sophokles, Aristophanes, and Thucydides ; the proof of his statements is given in the corresponding passage of Diss. I. 35 Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 15. 36 Brought together in Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 13. 37 Anthol. Pal. II. pp. 715, 295 sq. (in Jacob's Delectus Epigramm. Graecorum, IV. 6). 38 As to the time of composition of the lives of Homer that have come down to us, see Sengebusch, Diss. I. pp. 1-13, and the authorities quoted in them, p. 19 sq. The whole of diss. I. treats of their value. 39 Sengebusch, Diss. II. pp. 47-69. 40 Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 70. 41 A view of the several dates, with the authorities for them, is given by Sengebusch in Jahn's Jahrbucher, 67, p. 611 sqq., and Diss. II. p. 78. Roth (Geschichte der abencll. Philosophic, II. p. 38), with noteworthy naivete* quotes the date given by Herodotus as if it were the only one ever suggested. By such a method it is certainly easy to triumph over the whole Homeric discussion set on foot by Wolf as " a long since exploded paradox," which "proceeded from half- knowledge of history." I mention this because such lofty language actually imposes upon readers who are not in a position to investigate the matter themselves ; and also because recently (Literal*. Centralblatt, 1860, No. 7) philology was reproached with having kept a significant silence about Roth's book. The groundlessness of this reproach can be seen by a glance at the second edition of Zeller's Philosophie der Griechen. But such a method as that just mentioned in regard to NOTES 34-43. 81 the period of Homer needs no criticism but to be left to bring on its own judgment. 42 Those statements are excluded, in both cases, which depend not on actual tradition, but merely on the conject- ures and computations of learned men. — Sengebusch, Jahn's Jahrb. 67, p. 609 sqq. ; Diss. II. p. 69. 43 Sengebusch, first in his review of Lauer's Gesch. der Horn. Poesie, Jahn's Jahrb. 67 ; then in Diss. II. The chronological principles followed in these discussions are attacked by J. Brandis, De temporum antiquiss. Graeco- rum rationibus, Index lect. (Bonna, 1857-58). Compare the review of this essay by A. von Gutschmid, Jahn's Jahrb. 83. An unqualified condemnation of Sengebusch's in- vestigations is expressed by Bergk (Griech. Literatur- Gesch. I. p. 463) : " This hypothesis has been praised as not only ingenious but well-supported ; yet any oue who takes the pains to examine it thoroughly will find it hol- low and worm-eaten all through." This thorough exam- ination Bergk does not offer us directly nor enable us to gain indirectly from his own treatment of the subject. For, among the statements as to the place of Homer, he accepts one and condemns all the rest without reason given ; and, as to the time of Homer, he rejects all tradi- tions as pure fiction, and puts his confidence solely in general combinations. Such a proceeding is, in truth, very simple and convenient, but it wholly neglects to ex- plain the real and unique multiplicity of statements, and gives one no right to condemn at a blow every attempt to explain it. See Hartel, Zeitschr. ftir d. osterr. Gym., 1873; and, as to the pseudo-Herodotean life of Homer, which Bergk adopts, J. Schmidt, De Herodotea quae fertur vita Homeri (Halle, 1875). 6 82 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 44 Herod. II. 53 ; Sengebusch, Jahn's Jalirb. 67, p. 373 sqq. 45 Sengebusch, Jahn's Jalirb. 67, p. 614. Against this, Volkmann, Gesch. unci Kritik der Wolf schen Prolego- mena, p. 358 (cf. p. 275 sqq.) : u We have no tradition of the work or of the existence of Homeric! ae or of any school of epic poetry outside of Chios. The assumption of their existence is a purely arbitrary assumption." 46 Wolf, Prolegomena, pp. 40-94 ; Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 41 sqq. I have left the statement in the lecture un- changed, although Bergk (Griech. Lit. I. pp. 185-214), and after him Volkmann (Gesch. etc., pp. 181-232), have en- deavored to prove that even before the Trojan War the art of writing was in use among the Greeks. The earliest instance of waiting yet discovered, of determinable date, is the cutting of their names by Greek mercenaries on the Nubian colossus (Kirchhoff, Griech. Alphabet, 2cl eel. p. 31 sqq.). If we assume as probable the earlier of the possi- ble dates for this inscription, it proves that the art of writing was widely diffused among the Greeks about 620 B.C. ; and, of course, this wide diffusion implies the existence and practice of it for a considerable time before that date. These facts agree fully with the development of Greek literature in prose and poetry. But to carry back the use of writing more than five hundred years be- fore that elate is in no way justified by the existence of this inscription. Bergk himself frankly admits this as applying to Homer, whose period he puts fully two cen- turies after the Trojan War: "It is impossible to decide, on historical evidence, whether these poems were, in the first instance, committed to writing. . . . We are, therefore, left to depend upon combinations." As to the value of NOTES 44-47. 83 the most important of these combinations, see Hartel, Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1873, p. 350 sqq., 1874, p. 822 sqq. "While I express, at the beginning of my discussion of the origin of the poems, the conviction that they were not originally committed to writing, and therein follow the historical course of the investigation, I feel myself obliged, in opposition to Bergk and especially to Volk- mann, to deny that this conviction includes the central point, or even a clearly decisive element of the answer to the question as to the origin of the poems. On the con- trary, this question is to be decided only by arguments drawn from the poems themselves. If the study of the poems constrains us to the conclusions stated on p. 59 sqq., we must hold fast those conclusions whether an orig- inal use of writing in this case is proved on other grounds or not, although it cannot be overlooked that they agree best with the latter supposition. 47 Roth, it is true, says (Abendl. Philos. II. p. 41) : " Ho- mer himself mentions the art of writing, and that, too, as practised in the heroic age;" and, certainly, in his transla- tion of II. 6 : 169 there is mention of it. But that there is no such mention of it in the words of Homer is so familiar a fact that it is hardly necessary to refer a reader of Homer to Lehrs, De Aristarcho, p. 103 ; Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 42 sqq. Bergk says on this passage : k - The well-known pas- sage in the Iliad, where Proteus intrusts to Bellerophon the fateful missive, is explained, not necessarily, but very probably, as referring to a system of secret writing. This, however, by no means excludes, but rather pre- supposes the knowledge and use of the ordinary writ- ing." The reason given by Bergk for the absence in Ho- mer of any mention of the arts of reading and writing, S-i THE ORIGIN OF TOE HOMERIC POEMS. though they were known before the Trojan War, viz., " be- cause they seemed inconsistent with his ideal picture of a primitive state of society," is one that I cannot criticise, be- cause I do not understand it. Homer finds it consistent with his "picture of primitive society" to mention a high degree of art in weaving, in the working of metal, ivory, wood, not as produced by gods only, but by men also, on whom Athene and Hephaestos have bestowed such gifts. How would the art of writing, if in use before the heroic age of the Iliad, as a gift of Hermes perhaps, differ from these so as to disturb the picture of primitive society? But, possibly, for it is not easy to follow out his analysis of the poem, all those references to other arts of civilization are inventions of the "audacious reviser." 48 Bekker, Horn. Blatter, I. p. 136 : " This [Homeric] language, developed in the course of a great migration, under the unceasing influences of the meetings, the fric- tions, the interminglings of kindred tribes, and controlled only by song and the lyre, attained indeed to a great wealth of euphonious forms, but seems to have gone through the stage of trying all possible combinations, and to have had no fixed, unchanging, exclusive system of forms, such as came in later by the general spread of writing. Litem scripta manetP On the other hand, Bergk, Griech. Lit. I. p. 200: "As the peculiar orthography of the poems is a conclusive proof of their great age, so the remarkably regular and transparent form of the language shows the wide diffusion in early times of the art of writing. The rare purity in which the Greek language was preserved is scarcely credible without constant use of that art, which is not only the foundation of all higher cultivation, but gives to language its settled form and its power to pro- NOTES 48-55. S5 tect itself against corrupting influences." Compare on this Hartel. Zeitsehr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1873, p. 352. M The AiOioTric and 'iXt'ou jre/wwc of the Milesian Arkti- nos.TVelcker.EpischeCyel.il. For the settling of the date 775 B.C. as the ar/iq of Arktinos. see Sengebusch. Jahn's Jahrb. 67. — KirchhofF in his essay. Quaestionum Horn. particula ('Berlin. 1845), proves that the Krrota of Stasi- nos. written about 660 B.C.. recognized several books of the Iliad in the form and connection in which we have them. 1 The laws of Zaleukos. about 664 B.C. Cf. Wolf, Proleg. p. 66 sqq. 51 Sengebusch. Diss. II. p. 45. -'- The authorities for this important fact are given in Sengebusch. Diss. II. pp. 27-41 : Diintzer. Homerische Ab- handlungen. pp. 1-27. The historic credibility of the state- ments about Peisistratos is criticised by Xutzhorn (n. '27). pp. 16-66. and Volkmann. sa Sengebusch. Diss. I. pp. 193-107. - Sengebusch, Diss. I. pp. 71 sq., 186^ 200 sqq. 55 The principles of text-criticism in regard to the Ho- meric poems which have been accepted since "Wolf's time are concisely stated by L. Friedlander, Jahn's Jahrb. 79. The relation of Wolf's text to those of previous editions and to Yilloison's edition of the MS. Yen. 454 is stated by Bekker. Horn. Blatter, pp. 232, '296. A material part of the principles on which Bt-kker's text-edition of 1S43 is based will be found in his criticism of Wolf's edition. Horn. Blat- ter, p. 29. Bekker's text (1843) is the foundation of the editions which have since appeared, with the exception of Dindorf 's in the Teubner series, as to which cf. J. La Roche. Zeitsehr. far d. osterr. Gym.. 1 S G 3 . How far Bekker's princi- ples were modified in his second edition of 1858 is stated SG THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. in the preface to that edition, and further explanations are to be found in the Horn. Blatter. This second edition was reviewed by W. C. Kayser, Philologus, vols. xvii. and xviii.; Friedlander, Jahn's Jahrb. 79; Rumpf, J aim's Jahrb. 81 ; J. La Roche, Zeitschr. far d. Osterr. Gym., 1860. As to the most recent text-editions with critical apparatus of the Odyssey by J. La Roche, Leipzig, 1867, and A. Nauck, Berlin, 1874, see A. Ludwich, Wissensch. Monatsblatter, 1873 ; JalnVs Jahrb. 109 ; and Eickholt, Zeitschrift fur cl. Gymnasialwesen, 1868. 56 These words mark the limits within which all the fol- lowing discussion is confined; it contains no conclusions to which the two Homeric poems, as they now lie before us, do not lead by reasonable inference. It is, for instance, possible that one might be led, by comparison of the de- velopment of epic poetry in other nations or by general reasonings, to hold that, before the existence of epic lays of moderate comjDass and limited to single incidents of the myth, such as the Iliad implies, there must be assumed as existing epic poems of equally moderate extent but cover- ing the main substance of the whole myth with less detail. The reasonableness of such or similar assumptions is not here discussed, because that would involve abandonment of the ground on which all our conclusions are based, viz., the facts presented to us in Greek literature. 57 Goethe, correspondence with Schiller, No. 472 : "I am more than ever convinced of the unity and indivisibility of the poem, and there is no man living, nor will there ever be, who can settle the question. I, at least, find myself every moment coming back to a mere subjective opinion ; so has it been with others before us, and so will it be with others after us. 1 ' NOTES 56-GO. 87 58 Nitzsch, Sagenpoesie, p. 89, and this idea is carried out at length in pp. 184-273. Cf. Baumlein, Commentatio de Homero ej usque carniinibus (prefixed to tlie Iliad in the Tauchnitz series), pp. xx. -xxvii., particularly p. xxiii. : "Nor will any one doubt that a single, and, as Mtzsch has shown, a tragical idea runs through the whole Iliad," and again in Philol. II. p. 417. Against such a single funda- mental idea in the Iliad, see Duntzer, Jahivs Jahrb. 83, and Supplementband 2 (Honi. Abhandlungen, pp. 236, 410). 59 Schomann, De reticentia Homeri, Opusc. III. p. 12 sq., and Jalm's Jahrb. 69. 60 Grote, History of Greece, Am. ed. II. p. 179 sqq. As to the method in which Nitzsch tries to bring the important passages II. 11 : 609 sq. ; 16 : 72 sqq. into harmony with the ninth book, see Schomann, Jahn's Jahrb. 69, and De reticen- tia Horn., Opusc. III. p. 15. Franke's revision of Faesi's Ili- ad, in the note on the former passage and at the beginning of the ninth book, frankly acknowledges the inconsistency. The silence of La Roche as to the difficulty in both the pas- sages quoted is a neglect of the function of an explanatory edition. Faesi's note on the passage in the sixteenth book, wdiere Achilles, when Patroklos begs his permission to go into the battle, answers that the Trojans would be in dis- graceful flight instead of triumphant, d poi Kpeicov 'AyafxsfjLvwv i]7ria ddeh], " if Agamemnon were well disposed to me," is as follows : " The haughty Achilles is not yet willing to con- fess that the chief blame for the calamity lies on him, and refuses to remember that Agamemnon, in the ninth book, has done all in his power to appease him. He will not be put in the wrong." The fact, that is, that the here inevita- ble reference to the ninth book is lacking, is twisted into a delicate touch of psychological portraiture, but Faesi 8S THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. could hardly deny that for such a purpose the poet ought to use and would have used other means. This interpreta- tion really substitutes something else for the text. The ap- proving reference in Franke's Faesi to the exclusion by the early critics of 11 : 767-785 seems hardly justified. The es- sential reason on the part of the early critics (see Schol. Yen.) for the exclusion of these lines was their want of har- mony with the ninth book, a point of view which this ed- itor cannot adopt; and the assumption of an interpolation is reasonable only when some occasion for the insertion of it can be shown. 61 II. 15 : 63, 593. Schomann, Jahn's Jahrb. 69. 62 Lachmann has warned us (Friecllander, Die Horn. Kri- tik, p. vii.) how uncertain the result is if such considera- tions are allowed much weight. Rash conclusions from the a-rral slprjjjieva and from the differences of vocabulary be- tween the Iliad and Odyssey are discouraged by the statis- tics of L. Friedlander, Die kritische Benutzung der unal dpr)nkva, Philol. 6, and Dissertatio de vocabulis Horn., quae in alterutro carmine non inveniuntur I -III. (Universitats- Schriften, Konigsberg, 1858-59) . This, however, diminishes in no degree the value of careful and thorough investiga- tions in this direction, such as C. A. J. Hoffmann's Quaestio- nes Homericae (Clausthal, 1848) ; J. La Roche's Homerische Studien (Wien, 1861), especially p. vii. sq. ; L. Friedlander's Die Garten des Alkinous und der Gebrauch des Prasens bei Homer, Philol. 6 ; or of special observations, like those of Liesegang, Zwei Eigenthumlichkeiten des 16. und 17. Buches der Bias, Philol. 6 (against which see Mtzsch, Die Apostro- phe in Bias und Odyssee, Philol. 16) ; and Koch, Ueber das Vorkommen gewisser Formeln in manchen Theilen der Bi- as, anclerer fur dieselbe Sache in anderen Theilen, Philol. 7. NOTES 61-65. 89 We may confidently expect that the thorough investiga- tion of the Homeric poems in regard to matters of syntax and vocabulary which is now just started will contribute to the correction or confirmation of the conclusions which have been reached hitherto mainly on other lines of evi- dence. A recent example of most comprehensive, keen- sighted, and conscientious investigation of this kind is W. HarteFs Beitrage zur Homerischen Prosodie und Metrik, in his Homerische Studien, Sitzungsberichte der Phil.-Hist. Classe der Wiener Akademie, I. vol. 68 (second edition, Ber- lin, 1873), II. vol. 76, III. vol. 78. 63 A number of these little points are brought together in Faesi's Iliad, Introd. p. vii., with references to the notes, where the attempt is made to reduce the contradictions as much as possible ; in Franke's revision (Introd. p. v.) the notes are free from the endeavor to disguise and explain away the extent of the contradictions. 64 "cf. II. 16 : 777 with 11 : 86. Schomann, Jahn s Jahrb. 69, p. 18, considers Kitzsch's attempt to reconcile the pas- sages. Faesi's attempt to diminish the inconsistency does violence to the language, and is in conflict with his own note on 8 : 66. Franke (Introd. p. xxxii. and note on 11 : 86) and La Roche (notes on the two passages) rec- ognize the contradiction without trying to smooth it away. The essay by A. Kiner, Die Chronologie der Ilias, Jahn's Jahrb. 83, constructs a complete table of the days in the action of the Iliad, without paying any attention to such little matters as these. 65 Schomann, Jahn's Jahrb. 69, p. 19. On this point, which every discussion of the subject touches, I refer to Schomanms article, because it includes a consideration of Mtzsch's argument in defence of the unity. 90 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 66 Facsi himself admits, at the beginning of the sixteenth book, that this and the following book contain few points of connection with the four that precede them, and that they w r ere originally planned as an independent poem. Yet his translation, in the note on 16 : 2, of 7rapi