HOMER AND HIS AGE BY THE SAME AUTHOR HOMER AND THE EPIC. Crown 8vo, 9s. net. MAGIC AND RELIGION. 8vo, los. 6d. net. THE MAKING OF RELIGION. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. MODERN MYTHOLOGY : a Reply to Professor Max Muller. 8vo, 9$. THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM. 8vo, los. 6d. net. SOCIAL ORIGINS. By Andrew Lang, M.A., LL.D. ; and PRIMAL LAW. By J. J. Atkinson, 8vo, ids, 6d. net. MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. 2 vols., crown 8vo, 7s. CUSTOM AND MYTH : Studies of Early Usage and Belief. With 15 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY -t^(^^" w »— t m w Q ;^ g S c o < Xj I HOMER AND HIS AGE BY ANDREW LANG LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1906 All rights reserved z^ W P^^m: :eral I fob TO R. W. RAPER IN ALL GRATITUDE PREFACE In Homer and the Epicy ten or twelve years ago, I examined the literary objections to Homeric unity. These objections are chiefly based on alleged discrep- ancies in the narrative, of which no one poet, it is supposed, could have been guilty. The critics repose, I venture to think, mainly on a fallacy. We may style it the fallacy of " the analytical reader." The poet is expected to satisfy a minutely critical reader, a person- age whom he could not foresee, and whom he did not address. Nor are ^^ contradictory instances " examined — that is, as Blass has recently reminded his country- men. Homer is put to a test which Goethe could not endure. No long fictitious narrative can satisfy *^^, at Mycenae : whether they be princes or simple oarsmen, they are cremated. A pyre of wood is built ; on this the warrior's body is laid, the pyre is lighted, the body is reduced to ashes, the ashes are placed in a vessel or box of gold, wrapped round with precious cloths (no arms are buried, as a general rule), and a mound, howe, barrow, or tumulus is raised over all. Usually a stele or pillar crowns the edifice. This method is ahuost uniform, and, as far as cremation and the cairn go, is universal in the Iliad and Odyssey whenever a burial is described. Now this mode of interment must be the mode of a single age in Greek civilisation. It is confessedly not the method of the Mycenaeans of the shaft grave, or of the latter tholos or stone beehive- "^ Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xvi. p. 174, fig. 50. Grosse. Les Debuts de PArt, pp. 124-176. ^ 86 HOMER AND HIS AGE shaped grave ; again, the Mycenaeans did not burn the dead ; they buried. Once more, the Homeric method is not that of the Dipylon period (say 900-750 B.C.) represented by the tombs outside the Dipylon gate of Athens. The people of that age now buried, now burned, their dead, and did not build cairns over them. Thus the Homeric custom comes between the shaft graves and the latter tholos graves, on the one hand, and the Dipylon custom of burning or burying, with sunk or rock-hewn graves, on the other. The Homeric poets describe the method of their own period. They assuredly do not adhere to an older epic tradition of shaft graves or tholos graves, though these must have been described in lays of the period when such methods of disposal of the dead were in vogue. The altar above the shaft -graves in Mycenai proves the cult of ancestors in Mycenae ; of this cult in the Iliad there is no trace, or only a dim trace of survival in the slaughter of animals at the funeral. The Homeric way of thinking about the state of the dead, weak, shadowy things beyond the river Oceanus, did not permit them to be worshipped as potent beings. Only in a passage, possibly interpolated, of the Odysseyj do we hear that Castor and Polydeuces, brothers of Helen, and sons of Tyndareus, through the favour of Zeus have immortality, and receive divine honours.^ These facts are so familiar that we are apt to over- look the strangeness of them in the history of religious evolution. The cjilt of ancestral spirits begins in the lowest barbarism, just above the level of the Australian tribes, who, among the Dieri, show some traces of the 1 Odyssey, XI. 298-304. BURIAL AND CREMATION 87 practice, at least, of ghost feeding.^ Sometimes, as in many African tribes, ancestor worship is almost the whole of practical cult. Usually it accompanies poly- theism, existing beside it on a lower plane. It was prevalent in the Mycenae of the shaft graves ; in Attica it was uninterrupted ; it is conspicuous in Greece from the ninth century onwards. But it is unknown to or ignored by the Homeric poets, though it can hardly have died out of folk custom. Consequently, the poems are of one age, an age of cremation and of burial in barrows, with no ghost worship. Apparently some^ revolution as regards burial occurred between the age of the graves of the Mycenaean acropolis and the age of Homer. That age, coming with its form of burning and its absence of the cult of the dead, between two epochs of inhumation, ancestor worship, and absence of cairns, is as certainly and definitely an age apart, a pecuHar period, as any epoch can be. Cremation, with cairn burial of the ashes, is, then, the only form of burial mentioned by Homer, and, as far as the poet tells us, the period was not one in which iron was used for swords and spears. At Assarlik (Asia Minor) and in Thera early graves prove the use of cremation, but also, unlike Homer, of iron weapons.^ In these graves the ashes are inurned. There are ex- amples of the same usage in Salamis, without iron. In Crete, in graves of the period of geometrical ornament ^ ('^ Dipylon "), burning is more common than inhuma- tion. Cremation is attested in a tholos or'4)eehive- shaped grave in Argos, where the vases were late 1 Howitt, Native Tribes of South- Eastern Australia, p. 448. There are also traces of propitiation in W^estern Australia (MS. of Mrs. Bates). 2 ^oXon, Journal of Hellenic Studies, viii. 64/: For other references, f/ Poulsen, Die Dipylongrdben, p. 2. Notes. Leipzig 1905. 88 HOMER AND HIS AGE Mycenaean. Below this stratum was an older shaft grave, as is usual in tholos interments ; it had been plundered.^ The cause of the marked change from Mycenaean inhumation to Homeric cremation is matter of con- jecture. It has been suggested that burning was intro- duced during the migrations after the Dorian invasion. Men could carry the ashes of their friends to the place where they finally settled.^ The question may, perhaps, be elucidated by excavation, especially in Asia Minor, on the sites of the earliest Greek colonies. At Colo- phon are many cairns unexplored by science. Mr. Ridgeway, as is well known, attributes the introduction of cremation to a conquering northern people, the Achaeans, his *< Celts." It is certain that cremation and urn burial of the ashes prevailed in Britain during the Age of Bronze, and co-existed with inhumation in the great cemetery of Hallstatt, surviving into the Age of Iron.^ Others suppose a change in Achaean ideas about the soul ; it was no longer believed to haunt the grave and grave goods and be capable of haunt- ing the living, but to be wholly set free by burning, and to depart for ever to the House of Hades, power- less and incapable of hauntings. It is never easy to decide as to whether a given mode of burial is the result of a definite opinion about the condition of the dead, or whether the explanation offered by those who practise the method is an after- thought. In Tasmania among the lowest savages, now extinct, were found monuments over cremated 1 Poulsen, p. 2. 2 Helbig, Homerische Epos, p. 83. ' Cf. Guide to Antiquities of Early Iron Age, British Museum, 1905, by Mr. Reginald A. Smith, under direction of Mr. Charles H. Read, for a brief account of Hallstatt culture. BURIAL AND CREMATION 89 human remains, accompanied with " characters crudely marked, similar to those which the aborigines tattooed on their forearms." In one such grave was a spear, *^ for the dead man to fight with when he is asleep," as a native explained. Some Tasmanian tribes burned the dead and carried the ashes about in amulets ; others buried in hollow trees ; others simply inhumed. Some placed the dead in a hollow tree, and cremated the body after lapse of time. Some tied the dead up tightly (a common practice with inhumation), and then burned him. Some buried the dead in an erect pos- ture. The common explanation of burning was that it prevented the dead from returning, thus it has always been usual to burn the bodies of vampires. Did a race so backward hit on an idea unknown to the Mycenaean Greeks ? ^ If the usual explanation be correct — burning prevents the return of the dead — how did the Homeric Greeks come to substitute burning for the worship and feeding of the dead, which had certainly prevailed ? How did the ancient method return, overlapping and blent with the method of cremation, as in the early Dipylon interments ? We can only say that the Homeric custom is definite and isolated, and that but slight variations occur in the methods of Homeric burial. (i) In Ilt'ad, VI. 416^, Andromache says that Achilles slew her father, "yet he despoiled him not, for his soul had shame of that ; but he burnt him in his inlaid armour, and raised a barrow over him." We are not told that the armour was interred with the ashes of Eetion. This is a peculiar case. We always hear in the 1 Ling Roth., The Tasmanians, pp. 1 28- 134. Reports of Early Dis- coverers. 90 HOMER AND HIS AGE Iliad that the dead are burned, and the ashes of princes are placed in a vessel of gold within an artificial hillock ; but we do not hear, except in this passage, that they are burned in their armour, or that it is burned, or that it is buried with the ashes of the dead. The invariable practice is for the victor, if he can, to despoil the body of the fallen foe ; but Achilles for some reason spared that indignity in the case of Eetion.^ (2) Iliad, VII. 85. Hector, in his challenge to a single combat, makes the conditions that the victor shall keep the arms and armour of the vanquished, but shall restore his body to his friends. The Trojans will burn him, if he falls ; if the Achaean falls, the others will do something expressed by the word rapyyawa-i, probably a word surviving from an age of embalment.^ It has come to mean, generally, to do the funeral rites. The hero is to have a barrow or artificial howe or hillock built over him, '^ beside wide Hellespont," a memorial of him, and of Hector's valour. On the River Helmsdale, near Kildonan, on the left bank, there is such a hillock which has never, it is believed, been excavated. It preserves the memory of its occupant, an early Celtic saint ; whether he was cremated or not it is impossible to say. But his memory is not lost, and the howe, cairn, or hillock, in Homer is desired by the heroes as a memorial. On the terms proposed by Hector the arms of the dead could not be either burned or buried with him. (3) Iliadf IX. 546. Phoenix says that the Calydonian 1 German examples of burning the arms of the cremated dead and then burying them are given by Mr. Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, vol. i. pp. 498, 499- "^ Helbig, Homerische Epos, pp. 55, 56. BURIAL AND CREMATION 91 boar " brought many to the mournful pyre." All were cremated. (4) Iliad, XXII. 510-515. Andromache in her dirge (the regret of the French mediaeval epics) says that Hector lies unburied by the ships and naked, but she will burn raiment of his, "' delicate and fair, the work of women ... to thee no profit, since thou wilt never lie therein, yet this shall be honour to thee from the men and women of Troy." Her meaning is not very clear, but she seems to imply that if Hector's body were in Troy it would be clad in garments before cremation. Helbig appears to think that to clothe the dead in garments was an Ionian, not an ancient epic custom. But in Homer the dead always wear at least one garment, the (papog, a large mantle, either white or purple, such as Agamemnon wears in peace (litadf II. 43), except when, like Eetion and Elpenor in the Odyssey^ they are burned in their armour. In Ih'ad, XXIII. 69 ff., the shadow of the dead unburned Patroclus appears to Achilles in his sleep asking for " his dues of fire." The whole passage, with the account of the funeral of Patroclus, must be read care- fully, and compared with the funeral rites of Hector at the end of Book XXIV. Helbig, in an essay of great erudition, though perhaps rather fantastic in its generalisations, has contrasted the burials of the two heroes. Patroclus is buried, he says, in a true portion of the old ^olic epic (Sir Richard Jebb thought the whole passage *^ Ionic "), though even into this the late Ionian bearbeiter (a spectral figure), has introduced his Ionian notions. But the Twenty-fourth Book itself is late and Ionian, Helbig says, not genuine early ^Eolian 92 HOMER AND HIS AGE epic poetry .1 The burial of Patroclus, then, save for Ionian late interpolations, easily detected by Helbig, is, he assures us, genuine '^kernel," 2 while Hector's burial '* is partly Ionian, and describes the destiny of the dead heroes otherwise than as in the old ^Eolic epos." Here Helbig uses that one of his two alternate theories according to which the late Ionian poets do not cling to old epic tradition, but bring in details of the life of their own date. By Helbig's other alternate theory, the late poets cling to the model set in old epic tradition in their pictures of details of life. Disintegrationists differ : far from thinking that the late Ionian poet who buried Hector varied from the -^olic minstrel who buried Patroclus (in Book XXIII.), Mr. Leaf says that Hector's burial is '' almost an ab- stract " of that of Patroclus.^ He adds that Helbig's attempts ''to distinguish the older ^Eolic from the newer and more sceptical ' Ionic ' faith seem to me visionary." * Visionary, indeed, they do seem, but they are examples of the efforts made to prove that the Iliad bears marks of composition continued through several centuries. We must remember that, according to Hel- big, the lonians, colonists in a new country, *' had no use for ghosts." A fresh colony does not produce ghosts. " There is hardly an English or Scottish castle without its spook (spuck). On the other hand, you look in vain for such a thing in the United States " — spiritualism apart.^ This is a hasty generalisation ! Helbig will, if he * Helbig, Zu den Homerischen Bestattungsgebraiichen. Aus den Sitzungs- berichten der philos. philol. und histor. Classe der Kgl. bayer. Academie der Wissenschaften. 1900. Heft, ii, pp. 199-299. » Op. laud., p. 208. 3 Leaf, Iliad, XXHI. Note to 791. * Iliady vol. ii. p, 619. Note 2. " Op. laud., p. 204. BURIAL AND CREMATION 93 looks, find ghosts enough in the literature of North America while still colonial, and in Australia, a still more newly settled country, sixty years ago Fisher's ghost gave evidence of Fisher's murder, evidence which, as in another Australian case, served the ends of justice.^ More recent Australian ghosts are familiar to psychical research. This colonial theory is one of Helbig's too ven- turous generalisations. He studies the ghost, or rather dream-apparition, of Patroclus after examining the funeral of Hector ; but we shall begin with Pat- roclus. Achilles (XXIII. 4—16) first hails his friend *< even in the House of Hades " (so he believes that spirits are in Hades), and says that he has brought Hector *' raw for dogs to devour," and twelve Trojans of good family << to slaughter before thy pyre." That night, when Achilles is asleep (XXIII. 65) the spirit (^vx^) of Patroclus appears to him, says that he is forgotten, and begs to be burned at once, that he may pass the gates of Hades, for the other spirits drive him off and will not let him associate with them ''beyond the River," and he wanders vaguely along the wide- gated dwelling of Hades. '< Give me thy hand, for never more again shall I come back from Hades, when ye have given me my due of fire." Patroclus, being newly discarnate, does not yet know that a spirit cannot take a living man's hand, though, in fact, tactile hallucinations are not uncommon in the presence of phantasms of the dead. "Lay not my bones apart from thine ... let one coffer " (a-opo^) *' hide our bones." ^opog, like larnax, is a coffin (Sarg), or what the 1 See, in The Valet's Tragedy (A. L.) : *• Fisher's Ghost" 94 HOMER AND HIS AGE Americans call a " casket/' in the opinion of Helbig : ^ it is an oblong receptacle of the bones and dust. Hector was buried in a larnax; so will Achilles and Patroclus be when Achilles falls, but the dust of Patroclus is kept, meanwhile, in a golden covered cup (^(pLoXrj) in the quarters of Achilles ; it is not laid in howe after his cremation (XXIII. 243). Achilles tries to embrace Patroclus, but fails, Hke Odysseus with the shade of his mother in Hades, in the Odyssey. He exclaims that ^^ there remaineth then even in the House of Hades a spirit and phantom of the dead, albeit the life " (or the wits) <^ be not anywise therein, for all night hath the spirit of hapless Patroclus stood over me. . . ." In this speech Helbig detects the hand of the late Ionian poet. What goes before is part of the genuine old Epic, the kernel, done at a time when men believed that spooks could take part in the affairs of the upper world. Achilles therefore (in his dream), thought that he could embrace his friend. It was the sceptical Ionian, in a fresh and spookless colony, who knew that he could not ; he thinks the ghost a mere dream, and introduces his scepticism in XXIII. 99-107. He brought in *' the ruling ideas of his own period." The ghost, says the Ionian bearbetter, is intangible, though in the genuine old epic the ghost himself thought otherwise — he being new to the situation and without experience. This is the first sample of the critical Ionian spirit, later so remarkable in philosophy and natural science, says Helbig.^ We need not discuss this acute critical theory. The natural interpretation of the words of Achilles is obvious; 1 0/>. laud., p. 217. 2 Qp laud., pp. 233, 234. BURIAL AND CREMATION 95 as Mr. Leaf remarks, the words are *^ the cry of sudden personal conviction in a matter which has hitherto been lazily accepted as an orthodox dogma." ^ Already, as we have seen, Achilles has made promises to Patroclus in the House of Hades, now he exclaims ^^ there really is something in the doctrine of a feeble future life." It is vain to try to discriminate between an old epic belief in able-bodied ghosts and an Ionian belief in mere futile shadesy in the Homeric poems. Everywhere the dead are too feeble to be worth worshipping after they are burned ; but, as Mr. Leaf says with obvious truth, and with modern instances, *' men are never so inconsistent as in their beliefs about the other world." We our- selves hold various beliefs simultaneously. The natives of Australia and of Tasmania practise, or did practise, every conceivable way of disposing of the dead — bury- ing, burning, exposure in trees, carrying about the bodies or parts of them, eating the bodies, and so forth. If each such practice corresponded, as archaeologists believe, to a different opinion about the soul, then all beliefs were held together at once, and this, in fact, is the case. There is not now one and now another hard and fast orthodoxy of belief about the dead, though now we find ancestor worship prominent and now in the shade. After gifts of hair and the setting up of jars full of oil and honey, Achilles has the body laid on the top of the pyre in the centre. Bodies of sheep and oxen, two dogs and four horses, are strewed around ; why, we know not, for the dead is not supposed to need food : the rite may be a survival, for there were sacrifices at the burials of the Mycenaean shaft graves. Achilles 1 Iliad y vol. ii. p. 620. 96 HOMER AND HIS AGE slays also the twelve Trojans, *^ because of mine anger at thy slaying," he says (XXIII. 23). This was his reason, as far as he consciously had any reason, not that his friend might have twelve thralls in Hades. After the pyre is alit Achilles drenches it all night with wine, and, when the flame dies down, the dead hero's bones are collected and placed in the covered cup of gold. The circle of the barrow is then marked out, stones are set up round it (we see them round Highland tumuli), and earth is heaped up ; no more is done ; the tomb is empty ; the covered cup holding the ashes is in the hut of Achilles. We must note another trait. After the body of Patroclus was recovered, it was washed, anointed, laid on a bier, and covered from head to foot eavM Am, trans- lated by Helbig, *< with a linen sheet" (cf. XXIII. 254). The golden cup with the ashes is next wrapped eavw \iTi ; here Mr. Myers renders the words ^* with a linen veil." Scottish cremation burials of the Bronze Age retain traces of linen wrappings of the urn.^ Over all a white (papo9 (mantle) was spread. In limd, XXIV. 231, twelve (pdpea with chitons, single cloaks, and other articles of dress, are taken to Achilles by Priam as part of the ransom of Hector's body. Such is the death-garb of Patroclus ; but Helbig, looking for Ionian innovations in Book XXIV., finds that the death-garb of Hector is not the same as that of Patroclus in Book XXIII. One difference is that when the squires of Achilles took the ransom of Hector from the waggon of Priam, they left in it two (pdpea and a well -spun chiton. The women washed and ^ Proceedings of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries^ 1905, p. 552. For other cases, cf Leaf, Iliady XXIV. 796. Note. BURIAL AND CREMATION 97 anointed Hector's body ; they clad him in the chiton, and threw one (papog over it ; we are not told what they did with the other. Perhaps, as Mr. Leaf says, it was used as a cover for the bier, perhaps it was not, but was laid under the body (Helbig). All we know is that Hector's body was restored to Priam in a chiton and a (papogy which do not seem to have been removed before he was burned; while Patroclus had no chiton in death, but a (papog and, apparently, a linen sheet. To the ordinary reader this does not seem, in the circumstances, a strong mark of different ages and dif- ferent burial customs. Priam did not bring any linen sheet — or whatever eavog X/? may be — in the waggon as part of Hector's ransom ; and it neither became Achilles to give nor Priam to receive any of Achilles's stuff as death -garb for Hector. The squires, therefore, gave back to Priam, to clothe his dead son, part of what he had brought ; nothing can be more natural, and there, we may say, is an end on't. They did what they could in the circumstances. But Helbig has observed that, in a Cean inscription of the fifth century B.C., there is a sumptuary law, forbidding a corpse to wear more than three white garments, a sheet under him, a chiton, and a mantle cast over him.^ He supposes that Hector wore the chiton, and had one (papog over him and the other under him, though Homer does not say that. The Laws of Solon also confined the dead man to three articles of dress.^ In doing so Solon sanctioned an old custom, and that Ionian custom, described by the author of Book XXIV., bewrays him, says Helbig, for 1 op. laud., p. 209. * Plutarch, So/on, 21. 98 HOMER AND HIS AGE a late Ionian bearheiter^ deserting true epic usages and inserting those of his own day. But in some Attic Dipylon vases, in the pictures of funerals, we see no garments or sheets over the corpses. Penelope also wove a (papo^ against the burial of old Laertes, but surely she ought to have woven two for him ; on Helbig's showing Hector had two, Patroclus had only one ; Patroclus is in the old epic, Hector and Laertes are in the Ionian epics ; therefore, Laertes should have had two (pdpea, but we only hear of one. Penelope had to finish the (papas and show it ; ^ now if she wanted to delay her marriage, she should have begun the second (papas, just as necessary as the first, if Hector, with a pair of (papea, represents Ionian usage. But Penelope never thought of what, had she read Helbig, she would have seen to be so obvious. She thought of no funeral garments for the old man but one shroud {(rirelpov, Odyssey, II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a character of late Ionian, not of genuine old ^olic epic, she should have known better. It is manifest that if even the acuteness and vast erudition of Helbig can only find such invisible differences as these between the manners of the genuine old epic and the late Ionian innovations, there is really no difference, beyond such trifles as diversify custom in any age. Hector, when burned and when his ashes have been placed in the casket, is laid in a /caTrero?, a ditch or trench {Iliad, XV. 356 ; XVIII. 564) ; but here (XXIV. 797) KCLireros is a chamber covered with great stones, within the howe, the casket being swathed with purple robes, and this was the end. The ghost of Hector would not 1 Odyssey, XXIV. 147. BURIAL AND CREMATION 99 revisit the sun, as ghosts do freely in the Cyclic poems, a proof that the Cyclics are later than the Homeric poems.^ If the burning of the weapons of Eetion and Elpenor are traces of another than the old Mo\\q epic faith,^ they are also traces of another than the late Ionic epic faith, for no weapons are burned with Hector. In the Odyssey the weapons of Achilles are not burned ; in the Iliad the armour of Patroclus is not burned. No victims of any kind are burned with Hector : possibly the poet was not anxious to repeat what he had just described (his last book is already a very long book) ; possibly the Trojans did not slay victims at the burning. The howes or barrows built over the Homeric dead were hillocks high enough to be good points of outlook for scouts, as in the case of the barrow of ^syetes (Iliady II. 793) and "the steep mound," the howe of lithe Myrine (II. 814). We do not know that women were usually buried in howe, but Myrine was a warrior maiden of the Amazons. We know, then, minutely what the Homeric mode of burial was, with such variations as have been noted. We have burning and howe even in the case of an obscure oarsman like Elpenor. It is not probable, however, that every peaceful mechanic had a howe all to himself ; he may have had a small family cairn ; he may not have had an expensive cremation. The interesting fact is that no barrow burial pre- cisely of the Homeric kind has ever been discovered in Greek sites. The old Mycenaeans buried either in shaft graves or in a stately iholos; and in rock 1 Helbig, oJ>. laud., pp. 240, 241. ^ Ibid., p. 253. 100 HOMER AND HIS AGE chambers, later, in the town cemetery : they did not burn the bodies. The people of the Dipylon period sometimes cremated, sometimes inhumed, but they built no barrow over the dead.^ The Dipylon was a period of early iron swords, made on the lines of not the best type of bronze sword. Now, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, our Homeric accounts of burial " are all late ; the oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing." ^ We shall show, however, that Mr. Leaf's ^^ kernel " alludes to cremation. What is ^^ late " ? In this case it is not the Dipylon period, say 900-750 B.C. It is not any later period ; one or two late barrow burials do not answer to the Homeric descriptions. The <^ late " parts of the poems, therefore, dealing with burials, in Books VI., VII., XIX., XXIII., XXIV., and the Odysseyy are of an age not in " the Mycenaean prime," not in the Dipylon period, not in any later period, say the seventh or sixth centuries B.C., and, necessarily, not of any subsequent period. Yet nobody dreams of saying that the poets describe a purely fanciful form of interment. They speak of what they know in daily life. If it be argued that the late poets preserve, by sheer force of epic tradition, a form of burial unknown in their own age, we ask, ^' Why did epic tradition not preserve the burial methods of the Mycenaean prime, the shaft grave, or the iholoSf without cremation ? " Mr. Leaf's own conclusion is that the people of Mycenae were '^ spirit worshippers, practising inhumation, 1 Annul, de rinst., 1872, pp. 135, 147, 167. Plausen, ut supra. 2 Iliads vol. ii. p. 619. Note 2. While Mr. Leaf says that "the oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing " of burial, he accepts XXII. 342, 343 as of the oldest part. These lines describe cremation, and Mr. Leaf does not think them borrowed from the " later " VII. 79, 80, but that VII. 79, 80 are " per- haps borrowed " from XXII. 342, 343. It follows that '* the oldest parts of the poems " do tell us of cremation. BURIAL AND CREMATION loi and partial mummification ; " the second fact is dubious. ^^ In the post-Mycenaean ^ Dipylon ' period, we find cremation and sepulture practised side by side. In the interval, therefore, two beliefs have come into conflict.^ It seems that the Homeric poems mark this inter- mediate point. . . ." ^ In that case the Homeric poems are of one age, or, at least, all of them save " the original kernel " are of one age, namely, a period subsequent to the Mycenaean prime, but considerably prior to the Dipylon period, which exhibits a mixture of custom ; cremation and inhumation coexisting, with- out barrows or howes. We welcome this conclusion, and note that (what- ever may be the case with the oldest parts of the poems which say nothing about funerals) the latest expan- sions must be of about iioo— looo B.C. (?). The poem is so early that it is prior to hero worship and ancestor worship ; or it might be more judicious to say that the poem is of an age that did not, officially, practise ancestor worship, whatever may have occurred in folk- custom. The Homeric age is one which had outgrown ancestor and hero worship, and had not, like the age of the Cyclics, relapsed into it. Enfin, unless we agree with Helbig as to essential variations of custom, the poems are the work of one age, and that a brief age, and an age of peculiar customs, cremation and barrow burial ; and of a religion that stood, without spirit worship, between the Mycenaean period and the ninth century. 1 All conceivable beliefs, we have said, about the dead are apt to coexist. P^or every conceivable and some rather inconceivable contemporary Australian modes of dealing with the dead, see Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia ; Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 2 Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p. 622. 102 HOMER AND HIS AGE That seems as certain as anything in prehistoric times can be, unless we are to say, that after the age of shaft graves and spirit worship came an age of cremation and of no spirit worship ; and that late poets consciously and conscientiously preserved the tradition of this period into their own ages of hero worship and inhumation, though they did not preserve the tradition of the shaft-grave period. We cannot accept this theory of adherence to stereotyped poetical descrip- tions, nor can any one consistently adopt it in this case. The reason is obvious. Mr. Leaf, with many other critics, distinguishes several successive periods of <^ ex- pansion." In the first stratum we have the remains of *^the original kernel." Among these remains is The Slaying of Hector (XXII. 1-404), ^^ with but slight addi- tions." ^ In the Slaying of Hector that hero indicates cremation as the mode of burial. ^^Give them my body back again, that the Trojans and Trojans' wives grant me my due of fire after my death." Perhaps this allusion to cremation, in the ^* original kernel " in the Slaying of Hector, may be dismissed as a late borrowing from Book VII. 79, 80, where Hector makes con- ditions that the fallen hero shall be restored to his friends when he challenges the Achaeans to a duel. But whoever knows the curious economy by way of repetition that marks early national epics has a right to regard the allusion to cremation (XXII. 342, 343) as an example of this practice. Compare La Chancun de lVt7/ame, lines 1041— 1058 with lines 1140-1134. In both the dinner of a knight who has been long deprived of food is described in passages containing many iden- 1 Leaf, //tad, vol. ii. p. xi. BURIAL AND CREMATION 103 tical lines. The poet, having found his formula, uses it whenever occasion serves. There are several other examples in the same epic.^ Repetitions in Homer need not indicate late additions ; the artifice is part of the epic as it is of the ballad manner. If we are right, cremation is the mode of burial even in '*the original kernel." Hector, moreover, in the kernel (XXII. 256-259) makes, before his final fight with Achilles, the same proposal as he makes in his challenge to a duel (VII. 85 et seqq.\ The victor shall give back the body of the vanquished to his friends, but how the friends are to bury it Hector does not say — in this place. When dying, he does say (XXII. 342, 343). In the kernel and all periods of expansion, funeral rites are described, and in all the method is cremation, with a howe or a barrow. Thus the method of crema- tion had come in as early as the " kernel," The Slaying of Hector, and as early as the first expansions, and it lasted till the period of the latest expansions, such as Books XXIII., XXIV. But what is the approximate date of the various expansions of the original poem ? On that point Mr. Leaf gives his opinion. The Making of the Arms of Achilles (Books XVIIL, XIX. 1-39) is, with the Funeral of Patroclus (XXIII. 1-256), in the second set of expansions, and is thus two removes later than the original ^' kernel." ^ Now this is the period — the Making of the Shield for Achilles is, at least, in touch with the period— of '^the eminently free and naturalistic treatment which we find in the best Mycenaean work, 1 Romania, xxxiv. pp. 245, 246. 2 Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p. xii. 104 HOMER AND HIS AGE in the dagger blades, in the siege fragment, and notably in the Vaphio cups," (which show long-haired men, not men close-cropped, as in the daggers and siege frag- ment). ^ The poet of the age of the second expansions, then, is at least in touch with the work of the shaft grave and tholos ages. He need not be contemporary with that epoch, but ^' may well have had in his mind the work of artists older than himself." It is vaguely possible that he may have seen an ancient shield of the Mycenaean prime, and may be inspired by that.^ Moreover, and still more remarkable, the ordinary Homeric form of cremation and howe-burial is even older than the period which, if not contemporary with, is clearly reminiscent of, the art of the shaft graves. For, in the period of the first expansions (VII. 1-3 12), the form of burial is cremation, with a barrow or tumulus.* Thus Mr. Leaf's opinion might lead us to the con- clusion that the usual Homeric form of burial occurs in a period prior to an age in which the poet is apparently reminiscent of the work of two early epochs — the epoch of shaft graves and that of tholos graves. If this be so, cremation and urn burial in cairns may be nearly as old as the Mycenaean shaft graves, or as old as the tholos graves, and they endure into the age of the latest expansions. We must not press, however, opinions founded on the apparent technical resemblance of the free style and coloured metal work on the shield of Achilles, to the coloured metal work and free design on the daggers of the Mycenaean shaft graves. It is enough for us to note that the passages concerning burial, from the 1 Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p. 606. ^ Jbid., vol. ii. pp. 606, 607. ^ Jbid., vol. ii. p. xi. and pp. 606, 607. BURIAL AND CREMATION 105 " kernel " itself, and also from the earliest to the latest expansions, are all perfectly harmonious, and of a single age — unless we are convinced by Helbig's objections. That age must have been brief, indeed, for, before it arrives, the period of tholos graves, as at Vaphio, must expire, on one hand, while the blending of cremation with inhumation, in the Dipylon age, must have been evolved after the cremation age passed, on the other. That brief intervening age, however, was the age of the Iliad and Odyssey. This conclusion can only be avoided by alleging that late poets, however recent and revolutionary, carefully copied the oldest epic model of burial, while they innovated in almost every other point, so we are told. We can go no further till we find an unrifled cairn burial answering to Homeric descriptions. We have, indeed, in Thessaly, ^^ a large tumulus which contained a silver urn with burned remains." But the accompanying pottery dated it in the second century B.c.^ It is possible enough that all tumuli of the Homeric period have been robbed by grave plunderers in the course of the ages, as the Vikings are said to have robbed the cairns of Sutherlandshire, in which they were not Hkely to find a rich reward for their labours. A conspicuous howe invites robbery — the heroes of the Saga, like Grettir, occasionally rob a howe — and the fact is unlucky for the Homeric archaeologist. We have now tried to show that, as regards (i) the absence from Homer of new religious and ritual ideas, or of very old ideas revived in Ionia, (2) as concerns 1 Ridgeway, F.arly Age of Greece, vol. i. p. 49 1 5 Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xx. pp. 20-25. or THI UNIVERSITY ) OF io6 HOMER AND HIS AGE the clear conception of a loose form of feudalism, with an Over-Lord, and (3) in the matter of burial, the Iliad and Odyssey are self-consistent, and bear the impress of a single and peculiar moment of culture. The fact, if accepted, is incompatible with the theory that the poets both introduced the peculiar conditions of their own later ages and also, on other occasions, consciously and consistently '^archaised." Not only is such archaising inconsistent with the art of an un- critical age, but a careful archaiser, with all the resources of Alexandrian criticism at his command, could not archaise successfully. We refer to Quintus Smyrnaeus, author of the Post Homericaj in fourteen books. Quintus does his best ; but we never observe in him that naif delight in describing weapons and works of art, and details of law and custom which are so conspicuous in Homer and in other early poets. He does give us Penthesilea's great sword, with a hilt of ivory and silver ; but of what metal was the blade ? We are not told, and the reader of Quintus will observe that, though he knows yakKo^y bronze, as a synonym for weapons, he scarcely ever, if ever, says that a sword or spear or arrow-head was of bronze — a point on which Homer constantly insists. When he names the military metal Quintus usually speaks of iron. He has no interest in the con- stitutional and legal sides of heroic life, so attractive to Homer. Yet Quintus consciously archaises, in a critical age, with Homer as his model. Any one who believes that in an uncritical age rhapsodists archaised, with such success as the presumed late poets of the Iliad must have done, may try his hand in our critical age, at a ballad in the style of the Border ballads. If he BURIAL AND CREMATION 107 succeeds in producing nothing that will at once mark his work as modern, he will be more successful than any poet who has made the experiment, and more successful than the most ingenious modern forgers of gems, jewels, and terra-cottas. They seldom deceive experts, and, when they do, other experts detect the deceit. CHAPTER VII HOMERIC ARMOUR Tested by their ideas, their picture of political society, and their descriptions of burial rites, the pre- sumed authors of the alleged expansions of the Iliad all lived in one and the same period of culture. But, ac- cording to the prevalent critical theory, we read in the Iliad not only large ^' expansions " of many dates, but also briefer interpolations inserted by the strolling re- citers or rhapsodists. ^' Until the final literary redaction had come," says Mr. Leaf — that is about 540 B.C. — ''we cannot feel sure that any details, even of the oldest work, were secure from the touch of the latest poet."^ Here we are far from Mr. Leaf's own opinion that ''the whole scenery of the poems, the details of armour, palaces, dress, decoration . . . had become stereotyped, and formed a foundation which the Epic poet dared not intentionally sap. . . .'.' ^ We now find ^ that " the latest poet " saps as much as he pleases down to the middle of the sixth century B.C. Moreover, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., the supposed editor employed by Pisistratus made " constant additions of transitional passages," and added many speeches by Nestor, an ancestor of Pisistratus. Did these very late interlopers, down to the sixth century, introduce modern details into the picture of ^ Leaf, lliad^ vol. ii. p. ix. ^ Ibid.^ vol. i. p. xv. ^ Ibid.^ vol. ii. p. ix. 108 HOMERIC ARMOUR 109 life ? did they blur the unus color ? We hope to prove that, if they did so at all, it was but slightly. That the poems, however, with a Mycenaean or sub-Mycenaean basis of actual custom and usage, con- tain numerous contaminations from the usage of cen- turies as late as the seventh, is the view of Mr. Leaf, an4 Reichel and his followers.^ Reichel's hypothesis is that the heroes of the origi- nal poet had no defensive armour except the great Mycenaean shields ; that the ponderous shield made the use of chariots imperatively necessary ; that, after the Mycenaean age, a small buckler and a corslet super- seded the unwieldy shield ; that chariots were no longer used ; that, by the seventh century B.C., a warrior could not be thought of without a breastplate ; and that new poets thrust corslets and greaves into songs both new and old. How the new poets could conceive of warriors as always in chariots, whereas in practice they knew no war chariots, and yet could not conceive of them with- out corslets which the original poet never saw, is Reichel's secret. The new poets had in the old lays a plain example to follow. They did follow it as to chariots and shields ; as to corslets and greaves they reversed it. Such is the Reichelian theory. The Shield As regards armour, controversy is waged over the shield, corslet, and bronze greaves. In Homer the shield is of leather, plated with bronze, and of bronze is the corslet. No shields of bronze plating and no 1 Homerische Waffen. Von Wolfgang Reichel. Wien, 1901. no HOMER AND HIS AGE bronze corslets have been found in Mycenaean excava- tions. We have to ask, do the Homeric descriptions of shields tally with the representations of shields in works of art, discovered in the graves of Mycenae, Spata in Attica, Vaphio in Sparta, and elsewhere ? If the de- scriptions in Homer vary from these relics, to what extent do they vary ? and do the differences arise from the fact that the poet describes consistently what he sees in his own age, or are the variations caused by late rhapsodists in the Iron Age, who keep the great obsolete shields and bronze weapons, yet introduce the other military gear of their day, say 800-600 B.C. — gear unknown to the early singers ? It may be best to inquire, first, what does the poet, or what do the poets, say about shields ? and, next, to examine the evidence of representations of shields in Mycenaean art ; always remembering that the poet does not pretend to live, and beyond all doubt does not live, in the Mycenaean prime, and that the testimony of the tombs is liable to be altered by fresh discoveries. In Iliady II. 388, the shield {aspts) is spoken of as ^^ covering a man about " (a/iKpiSpor}]), while, in the heat of battle, the baldric {telamon)^ or belt of the shield, '^ shall be wet with sweat." The shield, then, is not an Ionian buckler worn on the left arm, but is suspended by a belt, and covers a man, or most of him, just as Mycenaean shields are suspended by belts shown in works of art, and cover the body and legs. This (II. 388) is a general description applying to the shields of all men who fight from chariots. Their great shield answers to the great mediaeval shield of the knights of the twelfth century, the ^* double targe," worn HOMERIC ARMOUR ^r, suspended from the neck by a belt. Such a shield covers a mounted knight's body from mouth to stirrup in an ivory chessman of the eleventh to twelfth cen- tury A.D.,^ so also in the Bayeux tapestry,^ and on seals. Dismounted men have the same shield (p. 132). The shield of Menelaus (III. 348) is "equal in all directions/' which we might conceive to mean, mathe- matically "circular/' as the words do mean that. A shield is said to have "circles/' and a spear which grazes a shield — a shield which was iravroa eetcrrj, " every way equal " — rends both circles, the outer circle of bronze, and the inner circle of leather {Ih'ad, XX. 273- 281). But the passage is not unjustly believed to be late ; and we cannot rely on it as proof that Homer knew circular shields among others. The epithet eJ/cu/cXo?, " of good circle," is commonly given to the shields, but does not mean that the shield was circular, we are told, but merely that it was " made of circular plates." ^ As for the shield of Menelaus, and other shields described in the same words, "every way equal," the epithet is not now allowed to mean " circular." Mr. Leaf, anno- tating Ih'ad, I. 306, says that this sense is " intolerably mathematical and prosaic," and translates Trdi/roa iefa-ri as " well balanced on every side." Helbig renders the epithets in the natural sense, as " circular." ^ To the rendering " circular " it is objected that a circular shield of, say, four feet and a half in diameter, would be intolerably heavy and superfluously wide, while the shields represented in Mycenaean art are not 1 Catalogue of Scottish National Antiquities, p. 375. 2 Gautier, Chanson de Roland. Seventh edition, pp. 393, 394. ^ Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. 573. * Helbig, Homerische Epos, p. 315 ; cf., on the other hand, p. 317, Note I. 112 HOMER AND HIS AGE circles, but rather resemble a figure of eight, in some cases, or a section of a cylinder, in others, or, again, a door (Fig. 5, p. 130). What Homer really meant by such epithets as " equal every way," " very circular," '^ of a good circle," cannot be ascertained, since Homeric epithets of the shield, which were previously rendered ^' circular," *' of good circle," and so on, are now translated in quite other senses, in order that Homeric descriptions may be made to tally with Mycenaean representations of shields, which are never circular as represented in works of art. In this position of affairs we are unable to determine the shape, or shapes, of the shields known to Homer. A scholar's rendering of Homer's epithets applied to the shield is obliged to vary with the variations of his theory about the shield. Thus, in 1883, Mr. Leaf wrote, ** The poet often calls the shield by names which seem to imply that it was round, and yet indicates that it was large enough to cover the whole body of a man. ... In descriptions the round shape is always implied." The words which indicated that the shield (or one shield) "really looked like a tower, and really reached from neck to ankles " (in two or three cases), were " received by the poet from the earlier Achaean lays." " But to Homer the warriors appeared as using the later small round shield. His belief in the heroic strength of the men of old time made it quite natural to speak of them as bearing a shield which at once combined the later circular shape and the old heroic expanse. . . ." ^ Here the Homeric words which naturally mean <* circular " or " round " are accepted as meaning " round " or *' circular." Homer, it is supposed, ^ Journal of Hellenic Studies^ iv. pp. 283-285. HOMERIC ARMOUR 113 in practice only knows the round shields of the later age, 700 B.C., so he calls shields '< round/' but, obedient to tradition, he conceives of them as very large. But, after the appearance of Reichel's speculations, the Homeric words for " round " and ^* circular " have been explained as meaning something else, and Mr. Leaf, in place of maintaining that Homer knew no shields but round shields, now writes (1900), "The small circular shield of later times ... is equally unknown to Homer, with a very few curious excep- tions," which Reichel discovered — erroneously, as we shall later try to show.^ Thus does science fluctuate ! Now Homer knows in practice none but light round bucklers, dating from about 700 B.C. ; again, he does not know them at all, though they were habitually used in the period at which the later parts of his Epic were composed. We shall have to ask, how did small round bucklers come to be unknown to late poets who saw them constantly ? Some scholars, then, believe that the old original poet always described Mycenaean shields, which are of various shapes, but never circular in Mycenaean art. If there are any circular shields in the poems, these, they say, must have been introduced by poets accus- tomed, in a much later age, to seeing circular bucklers. Therefore Homeric words, hitherto understood as mean- ing "circular," must now mean something else — even if the reasoning seems circular. Other scholars believe that the poet in real life saw various types of shields in use, and that some of 1 Leaf, /Had, vol. i. p. 575. H 114 HOMER AND HIS AGE them were survivals of the Mycenaean shields, semi- cylindrical, or shaped like figures of 8, or like a door ; others were circular ; and these scholars presume that Homer meant '< circular " when he said ^^ circular." Neither school will convert the other, and we cannot decide between them. We do not pretend to be certain as to whether the original poet saw shields of various types, including the round shape, in use, though that is possible, or whether he saw only the Mycenaean types. As regards size, Homer certainly describes, in several cases, shields very much larger than most which we know for certain to have been common after, say, 700 B.C. He speaks of shields reaching from neck to ankles, and ^' covering the body of a man about." Whether he was also familiar with smaller shields of various types is uncertain ; he does not explicitly say that any small bucklers were used by the chiefs, nor does he explicitly say that all shields were of the largest type. It is possible that at the time when the Epic was composed various types of shield were being tried, while the vast ancient shield was far from obsolete. To return to the size of the shield. In a feigned tale of Odysseus {Odyssey^ XIV. 474-477), men in a wintry ambush place their shields over their shoulders, as they lie on the ground, to be a protection against snow. But any sort of shield, large or small, would protect the shoulders of men in a recumbent position. Quite a large shield may seem to be indicated in Iliady XIII. 400-405, where Idomeneus curls up his whole person behind his shield ; he was ^< hidden " by it. Yet, as any one can see by experiment, a man who crouched low would be protected entirely by a Highland targe of HOMERIC ARMOUR "5 less than thirty inches in diameter, so nothing about the size of the shield is ascertained in this passage. On a black-figured vase in the British Museum (B. 325) the entire body of a crouching warrior is defended by a large Boeotian buckler, oval, and with e'chancrures in the sides. The same remark applies to Iliadf XXII. 273-275. Hector watches the spear of Achilles as it flies ; he crouches, and the spear flies over him. Robert takes this as an '^ old Mycenaean " dodge — to duck down to the bottom of the shield.^ The avoidance by ducking can be managed with no shield, or with a common Highland targe, which would cover a man in a crouching posture, as when Glen- bucket's targe was peppered by bullets at Clifton (1746), and Cluny shouted ^< What the devil is this ? " the assailants firing unexpectedly from a ditch. A few moments of experiment, we repeat, prove that a round targe can protect a man in Hector's attitude, and that the Homeric texts here throw no light on the size of the shield. The shield of Hector was of black buU's-hide, and as large and long as any represented in Mycenaean art, so that, as he walked, the rim knocked against his neck and ankles. The shape is not mentioned. Despite its size, he walked under it from the plain and field of battle into Troy {Iliad, VI. 116-118). This must be remem- bered, as Reichel ^ maintains that a man could not walk under shield, or only for a short way ; wherefore the war chariot was invented, he says, to carry the fighting man from point to point (Leaf, Iliady vol. i. p. 573). 1 Siudien zur I lias ^ p. 21. 2 Reichel, 38, 39. Father Browne {Handbook, p. 230) writes, " In Odyssey^ XIV 475, Odysseus says he slept within the shield." He says •• under arms " {Odyssey, XIV. 474, but cf. XIV. 479)- ii6 HOMER AND HIS AGE Mr. Leaf elaborates these points : '< Why did not the Homeric heroes ride ? Because no man could carry such a shield on horseback." ^ We reply that men could and did carry such shields on horse- back, as we know on the evidence of works of art and poetry of the eleventh to twelfth centuries A.D. Mr. Ridgeway has explained the introduction of chariots as the result of horses too small to carry a heavy and heavily-armed man as a cavalier. The shield (aairl^), we are told by followers of Reichel; was only worn by princes who could afford to keep chariots, charioteers, and squires of the body to arm and disarm them. But this can scarcely be true, for all the comrades of Diomede had the shield (ao-Tr/?, Ih'adf X. 152), and the whole host of Pandarus of Troy, a noted bowman, were shield-bearers (acnriaTdcov Xawv, Iliadf IV. 90), and some of them held their shields {(raKea) in front of Pandarus when he took a treacherous shot at Menelaus (IV. 113). The whole host could not have chariots and squires, we may presume, so the chariot was not indispensable to the ecuyer or shield-bearing man. The objections to this conjecture of Reichel are conspicuous, as we now prove. No Mycenaean work of art shows us a shielded man in a chariot ; the men with the monstrous shields are always depicted on foot. The only modern peoples who, to our knowledge, used a leather shield of the Mycenaean size and even of a Mycenaean shape had no horses and chariots, as we shall show. The ancient Eastern peoples, such as the Khita and Egyptians, who fought from chariots, carried small shields of various ^ Iliady vol. i. p. 573. HOMERIC ARMOUR 117 forms, as in the well-known picture of a battle between the Khita, armed with spears, and the bowmen of Rameses II., who kill horse and man with arrows from their chariots, and carry no spears ; while the Khita, who have no bows, merely spears, are shot down as they advance.^ Egyptians and Khita, who fight from chariots, use small bucklers, whence it follows that war chariots were not invented, or, at least, were not re- tained in use, for the purpose of giving mobility to men wearing gigantic shields, under which they could not hurry from point to point. War chariots did not cease to be used in Egypt, when men used small shields. Moreover, Homeric warriors can make marches under shield, while there is no mention of chariots to carry them to the point where they are to lie in ambush {Odyssey, XIV. 470-510). If the shield was so heavy as to render a chariot necessary, would Homer make Hector trudge a considerable distance under shield, while Achilles, under shield, sprints thrice round the whole circumference of Troy ? Helbig notices several other cases of long runs under shield. Either Reichel is wrong, when he said that the huge shield made the use of the war chariot necessary, or the poet is *Mate"; he is a man who never saw a large shield like Hector's, and, though he speaks of such shields, he thinks that men could walk and run under them. When men did walk or run under shield, or ride, if they ever rode, they would hang it over the left side, like the lion- hunters on the famous inlaid dagger of Mycenae,^ or the warrior on the chessman referred to above (p. iii). Aias, again, the big, brave, stupid Porthos of the ^ Maspero, Hist. Ancienne, ii. p. 225. 2 For the chariots, cf. Reichel, Homerische Waffen, 120 ff. Wien, 1901. ii8 HOMER AND HIS AGE Iliady has the largest shield of all, '* like a tower " (this shield cannot have been circular), and is recognised by his shield. But he never enters a chariot, and, like Odysseus, has none of his own, because both men come from rugged islands, unfit for chariot driving. Odysseus has plenty of shields in his house in Ithaca, as we learn from the account of the battle with the Wooers in the Odyssey ; yet, in Ithaca, as at Troy, he kept no chariot. Here, then, we have nations who fight from chariots, yet use small shields, and heroes who wear enormous shields, yet never own a chariot. Clearly, the great shield cannot have been the cause of the use of the war chariot, as in the theory of Reichel. Aias and his shield we meet in Iliady VII. 206-220. *' He clothed himself upon his flesh in all his armour " (reJ^^ea), to quote Mr. Leaf's translation ; but the poet only describes his shield : his ^' towerlike shield of bronze, with sevenfold ox-hide, that Tychius wrought him cunningly ; Tychius, the best of curriers, that had his home in Hyle, who made for him his glancing shield of sevenfold hides of stalwart bulls, and overlaid the seven with bronze." The shield known to Homer then is, in this case, so tall as to resemble a tower, and has bronze plating over bull's hide. By tradition from an age of leather shields the currier is still the shield-maker, though now the shield has metal plating. It is fairly clear that Greek tradition regarded the shield of Aias as of the kind which covered the body from chin to ankles, and resembled a bellying sail, or an umbrella unfurled, and drawn in at the sides in the middle, so as to offer the semblance of two bellies, or of one, pinched in at or near the centre. HOMERIC ARMOUR 119 This is probable, because the coins of Salamis, where Aias was worshipped as a local hero of great influence, display this shield as the badge of the -^ginetan dynasty, claiming descent from Aias. The shield is bossed, or bellied out, with two half-moons cut in the centre, representing the waisiy or pinched-in part, of the ancient Mycenaean shield ; the same device occurs on a Mycenaean ring from ^gina in the British Museum.^ In a duel with Aias the spear of Hector pierced the bronze and six layers of hide on his shield, but stuck in the seventh. The spear of Aias went through the circular (or <^ every way balanced ") huge shield of Hector, and through his corslet and chitouy but Hector had doubled himself up laterally {€k\lvQv}j VII. 254), and was not wounded. The next stroke of Aias pierced his shield, and wounded his neck ; Hector replied with a boulder that lighted on the centre of the shield of Aias, '^ on the boss," whether that means a mere ornament or knob, or whether it was the genuine boss — which is disputed. Aias broke in the shield of Hector with another stone ; and the gentle and joyous passage of arms was stopped. The shield of Agamemnon was of the kind that ^' cover all the body of a man,'- and was ^^ every way equal," or '< circular." It was plated with twelve circles of bronze, and had twenty ojuiCpaKoif or ornamental knobs of tin, and the centre was of black cyanus (XI. 31-34). There was also a head of the Gorgon, with Fear and Panic. The description is not intelligible, and I do not discuss it. A man could be stabbed in the middle of the belly, "under his shield" (XI. 424-425), not an easy thing 1 ^\2Xi%y Journal of Hellenic Studies^ xiii. 213-216. 140 HOMER AND HIS AGE to do, if shields covered the whole body to the feet ; but, when a hero was leaping from his chariot (as in this case), no doubt a spear could be pushed up under the shield. The ancient Irish romances tell of a gae bulgt a spear held in the warrior's toes, and jerked up under the shield of his enemy ! Shields could be held up on high, in an attack on a wall garrisoned by archers (XII. 139), the great Norman shield, also, could be thus lifted. The Locrians, light armed infantry, had no shields, nor bronze helmets, nor spears, but slings and bows (XIII. 714). Mr. Leaf suspects that this is a piece of " false archaism," but we do not think that early poets in an uncritical age are ever archaeologists, good or bad. The poet is aware that some men have larger, some smaller shields, just as some have longer and some shorter spears (XIV. 370-377) ; but this does not prove that the shields were of different types. A tall man might inherit the shield of a short father, or vice versa, A man in turning to fly might trip on the rim of his shield, which proves how large it was : '' it reached to his feet." This accident of tripping occurred to Periphetes of Mycenae, but it might have happened to Hector, whose shield reached from neck to ankles.^ Achilles must have been a large man, for he knew nobody whose armour would fit him when he lost his own (though his armour fitted Patroclus), he could, however, make shift with the tower-like shield of Aias, he said. The evidence of the Iliad, then, is mainly to the effect that the heroes carried huge shields, suspended by belts, covering the body and legs. If Homer means, 1 Iliad, XV. 645-646. HOMERIC ARMOUR 121 by the epithets already cited, ^< of good circle" and '^ every way equal," that some shields of these vast dimensions were circular^ we have one example in early Greek art which corroborates his description. This is '^ the vase of Aristonothos," signed by that painter, and supposed to be of the seventh century (Fig. i). On one side, the companions of Odysseus are boring out the eye of the Cyclops ; on the other, a galley is being rowed to the attack of a ship. On the raised deck of the galley stand three warriors, helmeted and bearing spears. The artist has represented their shields as covering their right sides, probably for the purpose of showing their devices or blazons. Their shields are small round buck- lers. On the ship are three warriors whose shields, though circular, cover the body from chin to ankles ^ as in Homer. One shield bears a bull's head ; the next has three crosses ; the third blazon is a crab.^ Such personal armorial bearings are never mentioned by Homer. It is not usually safe to argue, from his silence, that he is ignorant of anything. He never mentions seals or signet rings, yet they cannot but have been familiar to his time. Odysseus does not seal the chest with the Phaeacian presents ; he ties it up with a cunning knot ; there are no rings named among the things wrought by Hephaestus, nor among the offerings of the Wooers of Penelope.^ But, if we are to admit that Homer knew not rings and seals, which lasted to the latest Mycenaean times, through the Dipylon age, to the very late ^ginetan treasure (800 B.C.) in the British Museum, and appear • 1 Mon. dell. Inst. , ix. pi. 4. 2 Helbig citing Odyssey, VIII. 445-448 ; I^iad, XVIII. 401 ; Odyssey, XVIII. 292-301. 122 HOMER AND HIS AGE again in the earliest dawn of the classical age and in a Cyclic poem, it is plain that all the expansionists lived in one, and that a most peculiar ringless age. This view suits our argument to a wish, but it is not credible that rings and seals and engraved stones, so very common in Mycenaean and later times, should have vanished wholly in the Homeric time. The poet never mentions them, just as Shakespeare never men- tions a thing so familiar to him as tobacco. How often are finger rings mentioned in the whole mass of Attic tragic poetry ? We remember no example, and in- stances are certainly rare : Liddell and Scott give none. Yet the tragedians were, of course, familiar with rings and seals. Manifestly, we cannot say that Homer knew no seals, because he mentions none ; but armorial blazons on shields could be ignored by no poet of war, if they existed. Meanwhile, the shields of the warriors on the vase, being circular and covering body and legs, answer most closely to Homer's descriptions. Helbig is reduced to suggest, first, that these shields are worn by men aboard ship, as if warriors had one sort of shield when aboard ship and another when fighting on land, and as if the men in the other vessel were not equally engaged in a sea fight. No evidence in favour of such difference of practice, by sea and land, is offered. Again, Helbig does not trust the artist, in this case, though the artist is usually trusted to draw what he sees ; and why should he give the men in the other ship or boat small bucklers, genuine, while bedecking the warriors in the adverse vessel with large, purely imaginary shields ? ^ It is not ^ Helbig, Das Homerische Epos, ii. pp. 313-314. HOMERIC ARMOUR 123 in the least '' probable," as Helbig suggests, that the artist is shirking the trouble of drawing the figure. Reichel supposes that round bucklers were novelties when the vase was painted (seventh century), and that the artist did not understand how to depict them/ But he depicted them very well as regards the men in the galley, save that, for obvious aesthetic reasons, he chose to assume that the men in the galley were left-handed and wore their shields on their right arms, his desire being to display the blazons of both parties.^ We thus see, if the artist may be trusted, that shields, which both *^ reached to the feet " and were circular, existed in his time (the seventh century), so that possibly they may have existed in Homer's time and survived into the age of small bucklers. Tyrtaeus (late seventh century), as Helbig remarks, speaks of ^^ a wide shield, covering thighs, shins, breast, and shoulders." ^ Nothing can be more like the large shields of the vase of Aristonothos. Thus the huge circular shield seems to have been a practicable shield in actual use. If so, when Homer spoke of large circular shields he may have meant large circular shields. On the Dod- well pyxis of 650 to 620 B.C., a man wears an oval shield, covering him from the base of the neck to the ankles. He wears it on his left arm.* Of shields certainly small and light, worn by the chiefs, there is not a notice in the Iliady unless there be a hint to that effect in the accounts of heroes running, walking considerable distances, and << stepping lightly " 1 Homerische Waff en, p. 47. 2 See the same arrangement in a Dipylon vase. Baumeister, Denkmdler^ iii. p. 1945- 3 Tyrtaeus, xi. 23 ; Helbig, Das Homerische Epos, u. p. 315, Note 2. * Walters, Ancient Pottery, p. 316. 124 HOMER AND HIS AGE under shields, supposed, by the critics, to be of crushing weight. In such passages the poet may be carried away by his own vervcy or the heroes of ancient times may be deemed capable of exertions beyond those of the poet's contemporaries, as he often tells us that, in fact, the old heroes were. A poet is not a scientific military writer ; and in the epic poetry of all other early races very gross exaggeration is permitted, as in the Chansons de Geste^ the old Celtic romances, and, of course, the huge epics of India. In Homer " the skill of the poet makes things impossible convincing," Aristotle says ; and it is a cri- tical error to insist on taking Homer absolutely and always au pied de la lettre. He seems, undeniably, to have large body-covering shields present to his mind as in common use. Small shields of the Greek historic period are *' un- known to Homer," Mr. Leaf says, '^ with a very few curious exceptions,"^ detected by Reichel in Book X. 152, where Diomede's men sleep with their heads resting on their shields, whereas a big-bellied Mycenaean shield rises, he says, too high for a pillow. But some Mycenaean shields were perfectly flat ; while, again, nothing could be more comfortable, as a head-rest, than the hollow between the upper and lower bulges of the Mycenaean huge shield.^ The Zulu wooden head-rest is of the same character. Thus this passage in Book X. does not prove that small circular shields were known to Homer, nor does X. 513, 526-530, an obscure text in which it is uncertain whether Diomede and Odysseus ride or drive the horses of Rhesus. They could ride, as every one must see, even though equipped with great body-covering shields. True, the shielded hero could 1 Iliad, vol. i. p. 575. 2 /^^-^^ ^^j j p ^g^^ g^^ 3 HOMERIC ARMOUR 125 neither put his shield at his back nor in front of him when he rode ; but he could hang it sidewise, when it would cover his left side, as in the early Middle Ages (1060-1160 A.D.). The taking of the shield from a man's shoulders (XI. 374) does not prove the shield to be small ; the shield hung by the belt {telamon) from the shoulder.^ So far we have the results that Homer seems most familiar with vast body-covering shields ; that such shields were suspended by a baldric, not worn on the left arm ; that they were made of layers of hide, plated with bronze, and that such a shield as Aias wore must have been tall, doubtless oblong, ^< like a tower," possibly it was semi-cylindrical. Whether the epithets denoting roundness refer to circular shields or to the double targe, 8-shaped, of Mycenaean times is uncertain. We thus come to a puzzle of unusual magnitude. If Homer does not know small circular shields, but refers always to huge shields, whereas, from the eighth century B.C. onwards, such shields were not in use (dis- regarding Tyrtaeus, and the vase of Aristonothos on which they appear conspicuously, and the Dodwell pyxis), where are we ? Either we have a harmonious picture of war from a very ancient date of large shields, or late poets did not introduce the light round buckler of their own period. Meanwhile they are accused of introducing the bronze corslets and other defensive armour of their own period. Defensive armour was unknown, we are told, in the Mycenaean prime, which, if true, does not affect the question. Homer did not live in or describe the Mycenaean prime, with its stone 1 On the other side, see Reichel, Homerische Waffen, pp. 40-44. Wien, 1901. We have replied to his arguments above. 126 HOMER AND HIS AGE arrow-tips. Why did the late poets act so inconsis- tently ? Why were they ignorant of small circular shields, which they saw every day ? Or why, if they knew them, did they not introduce them in the poems, which, we are told, they were filling with non-Mycenaean greaves and corslets ? -—This is one of the dilemmas which constantly arise to confront the advocates of the theory that the Iliad is a patchwork of many generations. *^ Late " poets, if really la^e, certainly in every-day life knew small parry- ing budfelers worn on the left arm, and huge body- covering shields perhaps they rarely saw in use. They also knew, and the original poet, we are told, did not know bronze corslets and greaves. The theory of critics is that late poets introduced the bronze corslets and greaves with which they were familiar into the poems, but scrupulously abstained from alluding to the equally familiar small shields. Why are they so recklessly anachronistic and " up-to-date " with the corslets and greaves, and so staunchly but inconsistently conserva- tive about keeping the huge shields ? Mr. Leaf explains thus : " The groundwork of the Epos is Mycenaean, in the arrangement of the house, in the prevalence of copper " (as compared with iron), ** and, as Reichel has shown, in armour. Yet in many points the poems are certainly later than the prime, at least, of the Mycenaean age " — ^which we are the last to deny. " Is it that the poets are deliberately trying to present the conditions of an age anterior to their own ? or are they depicting the circumstances by which they are surrounded — circumstances which slowly change during the period of the development of the Epos ? Cauer decides for the latter alternative, the only one which HOMERIC ARMOUR 127 is really conceivable ^ in an age whose views are in many ways so naive as the poems themselves prove them to have been."^ Here we entirely side with Mr. Leaf. No poet, no painter, no sculptor, in a naif, uncritical age, ever repre- sents in art anything but what he sees daily in costume, customs, weapons, armour, and ways of life. Mr. Leaf, however, on the other hand, occasionally chides pieces of deliberate archaeological pedantry in the poets, in spite of his opinion that they are always ^^ depicting the circumstances by which they are surrounded." But as huge man-covering shields are not among the circum- stances by which the supposed late poets were sur- rounded, why do they depict them ? Here Mr. Leaf corrects himself, and his argument departs from the statement that only one theory is ^' conceivable," namely, that the poets depict their own surroundings, and we are introduced to a new proposition. ^' Or rather we must recognise everywhere a compromise between two opposing principles : the singer, on the one hand, has to be conservatively tenacious of the old material which serves as the substance of his song ; on the other hand, he has to be vivid and actual in the contributions which he himself makes to the common stock." * The conduct of such singers is so weirdly incon- sistent as not to be easily credible. But probably they went further, for *^ it is possible that the allusions " to the corslet " may have been introduced in the course of successive modernisation such as the oldest parts of the Iliad seem in many cases to have passed through. But, ^ Then how is the alleged archaeology of the poet of Book X. conceivable ? ^ Classical Review^ ix. pp. 463, 464. ' Ibid., ix. pp. 463, 464. 128 HOMER AND HIS AGE in fact, Iliady XI. 234 is the only mention of a corslet in any of the oldest strata, so far as we can distinguish them, and here Reichel translates thorex < shield.' " ^ Mr. Leaf's statement we understand to mean that, when the singer or reciter was delivering an ancient lay he did not introduce any of the military gear — light round bucklers, greaves, and corslets — with which his audience were familiar. But when the singer delivers a new lay, which he himself has added to *' the kernel," then he is *^ vivid and actual," and speaks of greaves and corslets, though he still cleaves in his new lay to the obsolete chariot, the enormous shield, and, in an age of iron, to weapons of bronze. He is a sadly inconsistent new poet ! Meanwhile, sixteen allusions to the corslet ^^ can be cut out," as probably ^' some or all these are additions to the text made at a time when it seemed absurd to think of a man in full armour without a corslet." ^ Thus the reciters, after all, did not spare " the old material " in the matter of corslets. The late singers have thus been " conservatively tenacious " in clinging to chariots, weapons of bronze, and obsolete enormous shields, while they have also been *^ vivid and actual " and " up to date " in the way of introducing everywhere bronze corslets, greaves, and other armour unknown, by the theory, in '< the old material which is the sub- stance of their song." By the way, they have not even spared the shield of the old material, for it was of leather or wood (we have no trace of metal plating on the old Mycenaean shields), and the singer, while retaining the size of it, has added a plating of bronze, which we have every reason to suppose that Mycenaean 1 Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. 578. 2 jf,^^^ ^ol. i. p. 577. HOMERIC ARMOUR 129 shields of the prime did not present to the stone-headed arrow. This theory of singers, who are at once " conserva- tively tenacious " of the old and impudently radical in pushing in the new, appears to us to be logically untenable. We have, in Chapter I., observed the same inconsistency in Helbig, and shall have occasion to remark again on its presence in the work of that great archaeologist. The inconsistency is inseparable from theories of expansion through several centuries. ^' Many a method," says Mr. Leaf, ^^ has been proposed which, up to a certain point, seemed irresistible, but there has always been a residuum which returned to plague the inventor." ^ This is very true, and our explanation is that no method which starts from the hypothesis that the poems are the product of several centuries will work. The " residuum " is the element which cannot be fitted into any such hypothesis. But try the hypothesis that the poems are the product of a single age, and all is harmonious. There is no baffling " residuum." The poet describes the details of a definite age, not that of the Mycenaean bloom, not that of 900-600 A.D. We cannot, then, suppose that many generations of irresponsible reciters at fairs and public festivals conser- vatively adhered to the huge size of the shield, while alter- ing its material ; and also that the same men, for the sake of being ^^ actual " and up to date, dragged bronze corslets and greaves not only into new lays, but into pas- sages of lays by old poets who had never heard of such things. Consequently, the poetic descriptions of arms and armour must be explained on some other theory. 1 IHad, vol. ii. p. x. I 130 HOMER AND HIS AGE If the poet, again, as others suppose — Mr. Ridgeway for one — knew such bronze-covered circular shields as are common in central and western Europe of the Bronze Age, why did he sometimes represent them as extending from neck to ankles, whereas the known bronze circular shields are not of more than 2 feet 2 inches to 2 feet 6 inches in diameter ? ^ Such a shield, without the wood or leather, weighed 5 lbs. 2j ozs.,^ and a strong man might walk or run under it. Homer's shields would be twice as heavy, at least, though, even then, not too heavy for a Hector, or an Aias, or Achilles. I do not see that the round bronze shields of Limerick, Yetholm, Beith, Lincolnshire, and Tarquinii, cited by Mr. Ridgeway, answer to Homer's descriptions of huge shields. They are too small. But it is perfectly possible, or rather highly probable, that in the poet's day shields of various sizes and patterns coexisted. Archaeology of the Shields Turning to archaeological evidence, we find no remains in the graves of the Mycenaean prime of the bronze which covered the ox-hides of Homeric shields, though we do find gold ornaments supposed to have been attached to shields. There is no evidence that the Mycenaean shield was plated with bronze. But if we judge from their shape, as represented in works of Mycenaean art, some of the Mycenaean shields were not of wood, but of hide. In works of art, such as engraved rings and a bronze dagger (Fig. 2) with pictures inlaid ^ Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, vol. i. pp. 453, 471, '^ Jbid., vol. i. p. 462, HOMERIC ARMOUR 131 in other metals, the shield, covering the whole body, is of the form of a bellying sail, or a huge umbrella *^ up," and pinched at both sides near the centre ; or is like a door, or a section of a cylinder ; only one sort of shield resembles a big-bellied figure of 8. Ivory models of shields indicate the same figure.^ A gold necklet found at Enkomi, in Cyprus, consists of a line of models of this Mycenaean shield.^ There also exists a set of small Mycenaean relics called Palladia, found at Mycenae, Spata, and in the earliest strata of the Acro- polis at Athens. They re- semble '^two circles joined together so as to intersect one another slightly," or " a long oval pinched in at the middle." They vary ^^^- 3- in size from six inches to half an inch, and are of ivory, glazed ware, or glass. Several such shields are engraved on Mycenaean gems ; one, in gold, is attached to a silver vase. The ornamentation shown on them occurs, too, on Mycenaean shields in works of art ; in short, these little objects are representations in miniature of the big double-bellied Mycenaean shield. Mr. Ernest Gardner concludes that these objects are the '^schematised" reductions of an armed human figure, only the shield which covered the whole body is left. They are talismans symbolising an armed divinity, Pallas or another. A Dipylon vase (Fig. 3) shows a man with a shield, possibly evolved out of this kind, much scooped out at the waist, and 1 Schuchardt, Schliemann's Excavations ^ p. 192. 2 Excavations in Cyprus, pi. vii. fig. 604. A. S. Murray, 190a 132 HOMER AND HIS AGE reaching from neck to knees. The shield covers his side, not his back or front.^ One may guess that the original pinch at the waist of the Mycenaean shield was evolved later into the two deep scoops to enable the warrior to use his arms more freely, while the shield, hanging from his neck by a belt, covered the front of his body. Fig. 4 shows shields of 1060— 11 60 A.D. equally designed to cover Fig. 4. body and legs. Men wore shields, if we believe the artists of Mycenae, when lion-hunting, a sport in which speed of foot is desirable ; so they cannot have been very weighty. The shield then was hung over one side, and running was not so very difficult as if it hung over back or front {cf. Fig. 2). The shields sometimes reach only from the shoulders to the calf of the leg.2 The wearer of the largest kind could only be got at by a sword-stab over the rim into the throat ^ (Fig. 5). 1 Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xiii. pp. 21-24. 2 Reichel, p. 3, fig. 5, Grave III. at Mycense. ^ ji,^^,^ p. 2, fig. 2. ^^mM Fig. 5.— RINGS: SWORDS AND SHIELDS HOMERIC ARMOUR 133 Some shields of this shape were quite small, if an engraved rock-crystal is evidence ; here the shield is not half so high as an adjacent goat, but it may be a mere decoration to fill the field of the gem.^ Other shields, covering the body from neck to feet, were sections of cylinders ; several of these are repre- sented on engraved Mycenaean ring stones or on the gold ; the wearer was protected in front and flank ^ (Fig. 5). In a " maze of buildings " outside the precincts of the graves of Mycenae, Dr. Schliemann found fragments of vases much less ancient than the contents of the sepulchres. There was a large amphora, the " Warrior Vase " (Fig. 6). The men wear apparently a close-fitting coat of mail over a chiton, which reaches with its fringes half down the thigh. The shield is circular, with a half-moon cut out at the bottom. The art is infantile. Other warriors carry long oval shields reaching, at least, from neck to shin.^ They wear round leather caps, their enemies have helmets. On a Mycenaean painted steliy apparently of the same relatively late period, the costume is similar, and the shield — oval — reaches from neck to knee.* The Homeric shields do not answer to the smaller of these late and ugly representations, while, in their bronze plating, Homeric shields seem to differ from the leather shields of the Mycenaean prime. Finally, at Enkomi, near Salamis, in Cyprus, an ivory carving (in the British Museum) shows a fighting man whose perfectly circular shield reaches from neck 1 Reichel, p. 3, fig. 7. ^ /^^^.^ p. ^^ fig. u^ 12; p. i, fig. i. ^ Schuchardt, Schliemann' s Excavations, pp. 279-285. ^ Ridgeway, vol. i. p. 314. 134 HOMER AND HIS ACE to knee ; this is one of several figures in which Mr. Arthur Evans finds ^' a most valuable illustration of the typical Homeric armour." V The shield, how- ever, is not so huge as those of Aias, Hector, and Periphetes. I can only conclude that Homer describes inter- mediate types of shield, as large as the Mycenaean but plated with bronze, for a reason to be given later. This kind of shield, the kind known to Homer, was not the invention of late poets living in an age of circular bucklers, worn on the left arm, and these supposed late poets never introduce into the epics such bucklers. What manner of military needs prompted the in- vention of the great Mycenaean shields which, by Homer's time, were differentiated by the addition of metal plating ? The process of evolution of the huge Mycenaean shields, and of the Homeric shields covering the body from chin to ankles, can easily be traced. The nature of the attack expected may be inferred from the nature of the defence employed. Body-covering shields were, obviously, at first, defences against showers of arrows tipped with stone. ^* In the earlier Mycenaean times the arrow-head of obsidian alone appears," as in Mycenaean Grave IV. In the upper strata of Mycenae and in the later tombs the arrow-head is usually of bronze.^ No man going into battle naked, without body armour, like the Mycenaeans (if they had none), could protect himself with a small shield, or even with a ^Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxx. pp. 209-214, figs. 5, 6,9. 2 Tsountas and Manatt, p. 206. Fig. 6.— fragments OF WARRIOR VASE I* HOMERIC ARMOUR 135 round buckler of twenty-six inches in diameter, against the rain of shafts. In a fight, on the other hand, where man singled out man, and spears were the missiles, and when the warriors had body armour, or even when they had not, a small shield sufficed ; as we see among the spear-throwing Zulus and the spear-throwing abori- gines of Australia (unacquainted with bows and arrows), who mainly use shields scarcely broader than a bat. On the other hand, the archers of the Algonquins in their wars with the Iroquois, about 16 10, used clubs and tomahawks but no spears, no missiles but arrows, and their leather shield was precisely the aimipL^poTtj aorwig of Homer, *' covering the whole of a man." It is curious to see, in contemporary drawings (1620), Mycenaean shields on Red Indian shoulders ! In Champlain's sketches of fights between French and Algonquins against Iroquois (16 10-1620), we see the Algonquins outside the Iroquois stockade, which is defended by archers, sheltering under huge shields shaped like the Mycenaean '^ tower " shield, though less cylindrical ; in fact, more like the shield of the fallen hunter depicted on the dagger of Mycenae. These Algonquin shields partially cover the sides as well as the front of the warrior, who stoops behind them, resting the lower rim of the shield on the ground. The shields are oblong and rounded at the top, much like that of Achilles' in Mr. Leaf's restora- tion.^ The sides curve inward. Another shield, oval in shape and flat, appears to have been suspended from the neck, and covers an Iroquois brave from chin to feet. The Red Indian shields, like those of Mycenae, were made of leather; usually of buffalo 1 //tad, vol. ii. p. 605. 136 HOMER AND HIS AGE hide/ good against stone-tipped arrows. The braves are naked, like the unshielded archers on the Mycenaean silver vase fragment representing a siege (Fig. 7). The description of the Algonquin shields by Champlain, when compared with his drawings, suggests that we cannot always take artistic representations as exact. In his designs only a few Algonquins and one Iroquois carry the huge shields ; the unshielded men are stark naked, as on the Mycenaean silver vase. But in his text Champlain says that the Iroquois, like the Algon- quins, ^' carried arrow-proof shields " and *' a sort of armour woven of cotton thread " — Homer's \ivoOwprj^ (Ih'adf II. 259, 850). These facts appear in only one of Champlain's drawings ^ (Fig. 8). These Iroquois and Algonquin shields are the armour of men exposed, not to spears, but to a hail of flint-tipped arrows. As spears came in for missiles in Greek warfare, arrows did not wholly go out, but the noble warriors preferred spear and sword.^ Mr. Ridgeway erroneously says that ^*no Achaean warrior employs the bow for war."* Teucer, frequently, and Meriones use the bow ; like Pandarus and Paris, on the Trojan side, they resort to bow or spear, as occa- sion serves. Odysseus, in Ilmd, Book X., is armed with the bow and arrows of Meriones when acting as a spy; in the Odyssey his skill as an archer is notorious, but he would not pretend to equal famous bowmen of an older generation, such as Heracles and Eurytus of CEchalia, whose bow he possessed 1 Les Voyages de Sr. de Champlain, Paris, 1620, f. 22: '^rondache de cuir bouUi, qui est d'un animal, comme le boufle." '^ Dix's Champlain, p. 113. Appleton, New York, 1903. Laverdiere's Champlain, vol. iv., plate opposite p. 85 (1870). 3 Cf. Archilochus, 3. « Early Age of Greece, i. 301. Fig. 7.— fragment OF SIEGE VASE HOMERIC ARMOUR 137 but did not take to Troy. Philoctetes is his master in archery.^ The bow, however, was little esteemed by Greek warriors who desired to come to handstrokes, just as it was despised, to their frequent ruin, by the Scots in the old wars with England. Dupplin, Falkirk, Halidon Hill and many another field proved the error. There was much need in Homeric warfare for protection against heavy showers of arrows. Mr. Monro is hardly correct when he says that, in Homer, '^ we do not hear of bodies of archers, of arrows darken- ing the air, as in descriptions of oriental warfare." ^ These precise phrases are not used by Homer; but, nevertheless, arrows are flying thick in his battle pieces. The effects are not often noticed, because, in Homer, helmet, shield, corslet, zosiery and greaves, as a rule prevent the shafts from harming the well-born, well- armed chiefs ; the nameless host, however, fall fre- quently. When Hector came forward for a parley {Iliady III. 79), the Achaeans ^'kept shooting at him with arrows," which he took unconcernedly. Teucer shoots nine men in Iliad, VIII. 297-304. In XI. 85 the shafts (/3eXea) showered and the common soldiers fell — ^eXea being arrows as well as thrown spears.^ Agamemnon and Achilles are as likely, they say, to be hit by arrow as by spear (XI. 191; XXI. 113). Machaon is wounded by an arrow. Patroclus meets Eurypylus limping, with an arrow in his thigh — archer unknown.* Meriones, though an Achaean paladin, sends a bronze-headed arrow through the body of Harpalion (XIII. 650). The light-armed Locrians are 1 Odyssey, VIII. 219-222. 2 /^/^.^ vol. ii. 305. '^ Iliad, IV. 465 ; XVI. 668, 678. ^ Iliad, XL 809, 810. 138 HOMER AND HIS AGE all bowmen and slingers (XIII. 716). Acamas taunts the Argives as ^'bowmen" (XIV. 479). "The war-cry rose on both sides, and the arrows leaped from the bowstrings" (XV. 313). Manifestly the arrows are always on the wing, hence the need for the huge Homeric and Mycenaean shields. Therefore, as the Achaeans in Homer wore but flimsy corslets (this we are going to prove), the great body-covering shield of the Mycenaean prime did not go out of vogue in Homer's time, when bronze had superseded stone arrow-heads, but was strengthened by bronze plating over the leather. In a later age the bow was more and more neglected in Greek warfare, and consequently large shields went out, after the close of the Mycenaean age, and round parrying bucklers came into use. The Greeks appear never to have been great archers, for some vases show even the old heroes employing the "primary release," the arrow nock is held between the thumb and forefinger — an in- effectual release.^ The archers in early Greek art often stoop or kneel, unlike the erect archers of old England ; the bow is usually small — a child's weapon ; the string is often drawn only to the breast, as by Pandarus in the Iliad (IV. 123). By 730 B.C. the release with three fingers, our western release, had become known.^ The course of evolution seems to be: (i) the Mycenaean prime of much archery, no body armour (?) ; huge leather "man-covering" shields are used, like those of the Algonquins ; (2) the same shields streng- ^ C. J. Longman, Archery. Badminton Series. 2 Leaf Iliad^ vol. i. p. 585. Fig. 8. — ALGONQUIN CORSLET From Laverdiere, CEuvres de Champlain, vol. iv. fol. 4. Quebec, 1870. HOMERIC ARMOUR 139 thened with metal, light body armour — thin corslets — and archery is frequent, but somewhat despised (the Homeric age) ; (3) the parrying shield of the latest Mycenaean age (infantry with body armour) ; (4) the Ionian hoplites, with body armour and small circular bucklers. It appears, then, that the monstrous Mycenaean shield is a survival of an age when bows and arrows played the same great part as they did in the wars of the Algonquins and Iroquois. The celebrated picture of a siege on a silver vase, of which fragments were found in Grave IV., shows archers skirmishing ; there is an archer in the lion hunt on the dagger blade ; thirty-five obsidian arrow-heads were discovered in Grave IV., while ^^ in the upper strata of Mycenae and in the later tombs the arrow-head is usually of bronze, though instances of obsidian still occur." In 1895 Dr. Tsountas found twenty arrow-heads of bronze, ten in each bundle, in a Mycenaean chamber tomb. Messrs. Tsountas and Manatt say, ^' In the Acropolis graves at Mycenae . . . the spear - heads were but few . . . arrow-heads, on the contrary, are compara- tively abundant." They infer thaft "picked men used shield and spear ; the rank and file doubtless fought simply with bow and sling." ^ The great Mycenaean shield was obviously evolved as a defence against arrows and sling-stones flying too freely to be parried with a small buckler. What other purpose could it have served ? But other defensive armour was needed, and was evolved, by Homer's men, as also, we shall see, by the Algonquins and Iroquois. The Algonquins and Iroquois thus prove that men who thought their ^ Tsountas and Manatt, 209. 140 HOMER AND HIS AGE huge shields very efficient, yet felt the desirableness of the protection afforded by corslets, for they wore, in addition to their shields, such corslets as they were able to manufacture, made of cotton, and corresponding to the Homeric XipoOwprj^} Mr. Leaf, indeed, when reviewing Reichel, says that '' the use of the Mycenaean shield is inconsistent with that of the metal breastplate ; " the shield <^ covers the wearer in a way which makes a breastplate an useless encumbrance ; or rather, it is ignorance of the breast- plate which alone can explain the use of such fright- fully cumbrous gear as the huge shield." ^ But the Algonquins and Iroquois wore such breast- plates as they could manufacture, though they also used shields of great size, suspended, in Mycenaean fashion, from the neck and shoulder by a telamon or belt. The knights of the eleventh century A.D., in addition to very large shields, wore ponderous hau- berks or byrnies, as we shall prove presently. As this ^ In the interior of some shields, perhaps of all, were two Kav6v€s (VIII. 193; XIII. 407). These have been understood as meaning a brace through which the left arm went, and another brace which the left hand grasped. Herodotus says that the Carians first used shield grips, and that previously shields were suspended by belts from the neck and left shoulder (Herodotus, i. 171). It would be interesting to know how he learned these facts— perhaps from Homer ; but certainly the Homeric shield is often described as suspended by a belt. Mr. Leaf used to explain the Kav6ve^ (XIII. 407) as * ' serving to attach the two ends of the baldrick to the shield " {Hellenic Society s Journal, iv. 291), as does Mr. Ridgeway. But now he thinks that they were two pieces of wood, crossing each other, and making the framework on which the leather of the shield was stretched. The hero could grasp the cross-bar, at the- centre of gravity, in his left hand, rest the lower rim of the shield on the ground, and crouch behind it (XI. 593 ; XIII. 157). In neither passage cited is anything said about resting the lower rim " on the ground," and in the second passage the warrior is actually advancing. In this attitude, however— grounding the lower rim of the great body-covering shield, and crouching behind it — we see Algonquin warriors of about 1610 in Champlain's drawings of Red Indian warfare. * Classical Review, ix. p. 55. 1895. HOMERIC ARMOUR 141 combination of great shield with corslet was common and natural, we cannot agree with Mr. Leaf when he says, "it follows that the Homeric warriors wore no metal breastplate, and that all the passages where the Owpr]^ is mentioned are either later interpolations or refer to some other sort of armour," which, ex hypothesis would itself be superfluous, given the body-covering shield. Shields never make corslets superfluous when men can manufacture corslets. The facts speak for themselves : the largest shields are not exclusive, so to speak, of corslets ; the Homeric warriors used both, just as did Red Indians and the mediaeval chivalry of Europe. The use of the aa-Trlg in Homer, therefore, throws no suspicion on the con- comitant use of the corslet. The really surprising fact would be if late poets, who knew only small round bucklers, never introduced them into the poems, but always spoke of enormous shields, while they at the same time did introduce corslets, unknown to the early poems which they continued. Clearly Reichel's theory is ill inspired and inconsistent. This becomes plain as soon as we trace the evolution of shields and corslets in ages when the bow played a great part in war. The Homeric bronze-plated shield and bronze corslet are defences of a given moment in military evolution ; they are improvements on the large leather shield of Mycenaean art, but, as the arrows still fly in clouds, the time for the small parrying buckler has not yet come. By the age of the Dipylon vases with human figures, the shield had been developed into forms unknown to Homer. In Fig. 3 (p. 131) we see one warrior with a fantastic shield, slim at the waist, with 142 HOMER AND HIS AGE horns, as it were, above and below ; the greater part of the shield is expended uselessly, covering nothing in particular. In form this targe seems to be a burlesque parody of the figure of 8 Mycenaean shield. The next man has a short oblong shield, rather broad for its length — perhaps a reduction of the Mycenaean door- shaped shield. The third warrior has a round buckler. All these shields are manifestly post-Homeric ; the first type is the most common in the Dipylon art ; the third survived in the eighth-century buckler. Fig. 9._G0LD CORSLET CHAPTER VIII THE BREASTPLATE No *' practicable " breastplates, hauberks, corslets, or any things of the kind have so far been discovered in graves of the Mycenaean prime. A corpse in Grave V. at Mycenae had, however, a golden breastplate, with oval bosses representing the nipples and with prettily inter- laced spirals all over the remainder of the gold (Fig. 9). Another corpse had a plain gold breastplate with the nipples indicated.^ These decorative corslets of gold were probably funereal symbols of practicable breast- plates of bronze, but no such pieces of armour are worn by the fighting-men on the gems and other works of art of Mycenae, and none are found in Mycenaean graves. But does this prove anything ? Leg-guards, broad metal bands clasping the leg below the knee, are found in the Mycenaean shaft graves, but are never represented in Mycenaean art.^ Meanwhile, bronze corslets are very frequently mentioned in the Iliad; ^' rarely alluded to," says Mr. Leaf,^ but this must be a slip of the pen. Connected with the breastplate or thorex (dcopt]^) is the verb OMpTja-a-w, Oodpyia-aeOaiy which means '^ to arm," or <^ equip " in general. The Achaeans are constantly styled in the Iliad and in the Odyssey ^^ chalkochitonesy^ *^with bronze chitons." Opponents of the presence of corslets in the original ^ Schuchardt, Schliemanns Excavations, pp. 254-257, fig. 256. 2 Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. 575- ^ Iii(^^ vol. i. p. 576. H3 144 HOMER AND HIS AGE epics have therefore boldly argued that by " bronze chitons " the poet pleasantly alludes to shields. But as the Mycenaeans seem scarcely to have worn any chitons in battle, as far as we are aware from their art, and are not known to have had any bronze shields, the argu- ment evaporates, as Mr. Ridgeway has pointed out. Nothing can be less like a chiton or smock, loose or tight, than either the double-bellied huge shield, the tower-shaped cylindrical shield, or the flat, doorlike shield, covering body and legs in Mycenaean art. ^^ The bronze chitony" says Helbig, '^ is only a poetic phrase for the corslet." Reichel and Mr. Leaf, however, think that " bronze chitoned"is probably ^' a picturesque expression . . . and refers to the bronze-covered shield." ^ The breast- plate covered the upper part of the chiton^ and so might be called a '^bronze chiton^" above all, if it had been evolved, as corselets usually have been, out of a real chitony interwoven with small plates or rings of bronze. The process of evolution might be from a padded linen chiton (\ivo6u)pr]^) worn by Teucer, and on the Trojan side by Amphius (as by nervous Protestants during Oates's ^^ Popish Plot"), to a leathern chiton, strengthened by rings, or studs, or scales of bronze, and thence to plates.2 Here, in this armoured chiton, would be an object that a poet might readily call ''a chiton of bronze." But that, if he lived in the Mycen^an age, when, so far as art shows, chitons were not worn at all, or very little, and scarcely ever in battle, and when we know nothing of bronze-plating on shields, the poet should constantly call a monstrous double-bellied leather shield, 1 Leaf, J/iac/, i. 578. ^ Ridgeway, £ar/jy Age of Greece, vol. i. pp. 309, 310. THE BREASTPLATE 145 or any other Mycenaean type of shield, " a bronze chitouy" seems almost unthinkable. " A leather cloak " would be a better term for such shields, if cloaks were in fashion. According to Mr. Myres (1899) the '< stock line" in the Iliady about piercing a TroXvSalSaXog Owpt]^ or corslet, was inserted ^r}Tpai^^ COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS 293 in later MSS. is reduced to regular rhymes and is re- touched in many essential respects. The matter of the Nibelungenlied is of heathen origin. We see the real state of heathen affairs in the Icelandic versions of the same tale, for the Icelanders were peculiar in preserving ancient lays ; and, when these were woven into a prose saga, the archaic and heathen features were retained. ^ Had the post-Christian prose author of the Volsunga Saga been a great poet, we might find in his work a true parallel to the Iliad. But, though he preserves the harmony of his picture of pre-Christian princely life (save in the savage beginnings of his story), he is not a poet ; so the true parallel to the Greek epic fails, noble as is the saga in many passages. In the German Nibelungenlied all..is modernised ; the characters are Christian, the manners are chivalrous, and Mdrchen older than Homer are forced into a wandering mediaeval chronicle-poem. The Germans, in short, had no early poet of genius, and therefore could not produce a true parallel to Iliad or Odyssey, The mediaeval poets, of course, never dreamed of archaeological anxiety, as the supposed Ionian continuators are sometimes said to have done, any more than did the French and late Welsh handlers of the ancient Celtic Arthurian materials. The late German bearbeiter of the Nibelungenlied has^ no idea of^ unity of pip t — enfin^ Germany, having excellent and ancient legendary material for an epic, but producing no parallel to Iliad and Odyssey, only proves how absolutely essential a Homer was to the Greek epics. " If any inference could properly be drawn from the Edda " (the Icelandic collection of heroic lays), says Sir Richard Jebb, " it would be that short separate poems on cognate subjects can long exist as a collec- 294 HOMER AND HIS AGE tion without coalescing into such an artistic whole as the Iliad or the Odyssey," ^ It is our own argument that Sir Richard states. ** Short separate poems on cognate subjects " can cer- tainly co-exist for long anywhere, but they cannot automatically and they cannot by aid of an editor become a long epic. Nobody can stitch and vamp them into a poem like the Iliad or Odyssey, To produce a poem like either of these a great poetic genius must arise, and fuse the ancient materials, as Hephaestus fused copper and tin, and then cast the mass into a mould of his own making. A small poet may reduce the legends and lays into a very inartistic whole, a very inharmonious whole, as in the Nibelungenliedy but a controlling poet, not a mere redactor or editor, is needed to perform even that feat. Where a man who is not a poet undertakes to produce the coalescence, as Dr. Lonnrot (i 835-1 849) did in the case of the peasant, not courtly, lays of Finland, he "fails to prove that mere combining and editing can form an artistic whole out of originally distinct songs, even though concerned with closely related themes," says Sir Richard Jebb.^ This is perfectly true ; much as Lonnrot botched and vamped the Finnish lays he made no epic out of them. But, as it is true, how did the late Athenian drudge of Pisistratus succeed where Lonnrot failed ? " In the dovetailing of the Odyssey we see the work of one mind," says Sir Richard.^ This mind cannot have been the property of any one but a great poet, obviously, as the Odyssey is confessedly '* an artistic whole." Conse- 1 Homer, p. 133. ^ Homer, p. 134-135. ^ Homer, p. 129. COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS 295 quently the disintegrators of the Odyssey, when they are logical, are reduced to averring that the poem is an exceedingly inartistic whole, a whole not artistic at all. While Mr. Leaf calls it ^*a model of skilful construction," Wilamowitz Mollendorff denounces it as the work of ''a slenderly-gifted botcher," of about 650 B.C., a century previous to Mr. Leaf's Athenian editor. Thus we come, after all, to a crisis in which mere literary appreciation is the only test of the truth about a work of literature. The Ocfyssey is an admirable piece of artistic composition, or it is the very reverse. Blass, Mr. Leaf, Sir Richard Jebb, and the opinion of the ages declare that the composition is excellent. A crowd of German critics and Father Browne, S.}., hold that the composition is feeble. The criterion is the literary taste of each party to the dispute. Kirchhoif and Wilamowitz Mollendorff see a late bad patchwork, where Mr. Leaf, Sir Richard Jebb, Blass, Wolf, and the verdict of all mankind see a masterpiece of excel- lent construction. The world has judged : the Odyssey is a marvel of construction ; therefore is not the work of a late botcher of disparate materials, but of a great early poet. Yet Sir Richard Jebb, while recognising the Odyssey as " an artistic whole " and an harmonious picture, and recognising Lonnrot's failure *' to prove that mere combining and editing can form an artistic whole out of originally distinct songs, even though concerned with closely related themes," thinks that Kirchhoff has made the essence of his theory of late combination of distinct strata of poetical material from different sources and periods, in the Odyssey, ** in the highest degree probable." ^ ^ Homer, p. 131. 296 HOMER AND HIS AGE It is, of course, possible that Mr. Leaf, who has not edited the Odyssey, may now, in deference to his belief in the Pisistratean editor, have changed his opinion of the merits of the poem. If the Odyssey, like the Ilmdy was, till about 540 B.C., a chaos of lays of all ages, variously known in various repertoires of the rhapsodists, and patched up by the Pisistratean editor, then of two things one — either Mr. Leaf abides by his enthusiastic beUef in the excellency of the composition, or he does not. If he does still believe that the composition of the Odyssey is a masterpiece, then the Pisistratean editor was a great master of construction. If he now, on the other hand, agrees with Wilamowitz M611endorf¥ that the Odyssey is cobbler's work, then his literary opinions are unstable. CHAPTER XVI HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS Sir Richard Jebb remarks, with truth, that "before any definite solution of the Homeric problem could derive scientific support from such analogies " (with epics of other peoples), " it would be necessary to show that the particular conditions under which the Homeric poems appear in early Greece had been reproduced with sufficient closeness elsewhere."^ Now we can show that the particular conditions under which the Homeric poems confessedly arose were "reproduced with sufficient closeness elsewhere," except that no really great poet was elsewhere present. This occurred among the Germanic aristocracy, " the Franks of France," in the eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth centuries of our era. The closeness of the whole parallel, allowing for the admitted absence in France of a very great and truly artistic poet, is astonishing. " We have first, in France, answering to the Achaean aristocracy, the Frankish noblesse of warriors dwelling in princely courts and strong castles, dominating an older population, owing a practically doubtful fealty to an Over-Lord, the King, passing their days in the chace, in private war, or in revolt against the Over-Lord, and, for all literary entertainment, depending on the 1 Ho??ier, pp. 131, 132. 297 298 HOMER AND HIS AGE recitations of epic poems by jongleurs^ who in some cases are of gentle birth, and are the authors of the poems which they recite. " This national poetry," says M. Gaston Paris, ^* was born and mainly developed among the warlike class, princes, lords, and their courts. ... At first, no doubt, some of these men of the sword themselves composed and chanted lays " (like Achilles), '* but soon there arose a special class of poets. . . . They went from court to court, from castle. . . . Later, when the townsfolk began to be interested in their chants, they sank a degree, and took their stand in public open places. . . . " ^ In the Iliad we hear of no minstrels in camp : in the Odyssey a prince has a minstrel among his retainers — Demodocus, at the court of Phaeacia; Phemius, in the house of Odysseus. In Ionia, when princes had passed away, rhapsodists recited for gain in market- places and at fairs. The parallel with France is so far complete. The French national epics, like those of the Achaeans, deal mainly with legends of a long past legendary age. To the French authors the greatness and the fortunes of the Emperor Charles and other heroic heads of great Houses provide a theme. The topics of song are his wars, and the prowess and the quarrels of his peers with the Emperor and among themselves. These are seen magnified through a mist of legend ; Saracens are substituted for Gascon foes, and the great Charles, so nobly venerable a figure in the oldest French epic (the Chanson de Roland^ circ. 1 050-1070 in its earliest { extant form), is more degraded, in the later epics, than Agamemnon himself. The <* machinery" of the gods ^ Litth-ature Fran^aise an Moyen Age, pp. 36, 37. 1888. HOMER AND FRENCH MEDIEVAL EPICS 299 in Homer is replaced by the machinery of angels, but the machinery of dreams is in vogue, as in the Iliad and Odyssey, The sources are traditional and legendary. We know that brief early lays of Charles and other heroes had existed, and they may have been familiar to the French epic poets, but they were not merely patched into the epics. The form of verse is not ballad-like, but a series of laisses of decasyllabic lines, each laisse presenting one assonance, not rhyme. As time went on, rhyme and Alexandrine lines were introduced, and the old epics were expanded, altered, condensed, remanieSf with progressive changes in taste, metre, language, manners, and ways of life. Finally, an age of Cyclic poems began ; authors took new characters, whom they attached by false genealogies to the older heroes, and they chanted the adventures of the sons of the former heroes, like the Cyclic poet who sang of the son of Odysseus by Circe. All these condi- tions are undeniably ^' true parallels " to *' the conditions under which the Homeric poems appeared." The only obvious point of difference vanishes if we admit, with Sir Richard Jebb and M. Salomon Reinach, the possi- bility of the existence of written texts in the Greece of the early iron age. We do not mean texts prepared for a reading public. In France such a public, demanding texts for reading, did not arise till the decadence of the epic. The oldest French texts of their epics are small volumes, each page containing some thirty lines in one column. Such volumes were carried about by iht jongleurs, who chanted their own or other men's verses. They were not in the hands of readers.^ ^ epopees Franfuises, Leon Gautier, vol. i. pp. 226-22S. 1878. 300 HOMER AND HIS AGE An example of an author-reciter, Jendeus de Brie (he was the maker of the first version of the Bataille Loquifevy twelfth century) is instructive, i Of Jendeus de Brie it is said that <^> only a mass of Volkslieder. Cauer's other argument, that the German popular tales, Grimm's tales, were unwritten till 18 12, is as remote from the point at issue. Nothing can be less like an epic than a volume of Mdrchen, As usual we are driven back upon a literary judg- ment. Is the Iliad a patchwork of metrical Mdrchen or is it an epic nobly constructed ? If it is the former, writing was not needed ; if it is the latter, in the absence of Homeric guilds or colleges, only writing can account for its preservation. It is impossible to argue against a critic's subjective sense of what is likely. Possibly that sense is born of the feeling that the Cretan linear script, for example, or the Cyprian syllabary, looks very odd and outlandish. The critic's imagination boggles at the idea of an epic written in such scripts. In that case his is not the scientific imagination ; he is checlced merely by the unfamiliar. Or his sense of unlikelihood may be a subconscious survival of Wolf's opinion, formed by him at a time when the existence of the many scripts of the old world was unknown. Our own sense of probability leads us to the con- clusion that, in an age when people could write, people 314 HOMER AND HIS AGE wrote down the Epic. If they applied their art to literature, then the preservation of the Epic is explained. Written first in a prae- Phoenician script, it continued to be written in the Greek adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet. There was not yet, probably, a reading public, but there were a few clerkly men. That the Cretans, at least, could write long before the age of Homer, Mr. Arthur Evans has demonstrated by his discoveries. From my remote undergraduate days I was of the opinion which he has proved to be correct, starting, like him, from what I knew about savage pictographs.^ M. Reinach and Mr. Evans have pointed out that in this matter tradition joins hands with discovery. Diodorus Siculus, speaking of the Cretan Zeus and probably on Cretan authority, says : '^ As to those who hold that the Syrians invented letters, from whom the Phoenicians received them and handed them on to the Greeks, . . . and that for this reason the Greeks call letters ^ Phoenician,' some reply that the Phoenicians did not discover letters, but merely modified (trans- posed ?) the forms of the letters, and that most men use this form of script, and thus letters came to be styled * Phoenician.' " ^ In fact, the alphabet is a col- lection of signs of palaeolithic antiquity and of vast diffusion.^ Thus the use of writing for the conservation of the Epic cannot seem to me to be unlikely, but rather probable ; and here one must leave the question, as ^ Cretan Pictographs and Prce-Ph(£nician Script. London, 1905. Annual of British School of Athens, 1900-1901, p. 10. Journal of Hellenic Studies y 1897, pp. 327-395- 2 Diodorus Siculus, v. 74. V Anthropologie, vol. xi. pp. 497-502. ' Origins of the Alphabet, A. L. Fortnightly Review, 1904, pp. 634- 645. { CONCLUSION 315 the subjective element plays so great a part in every man's sense of what is likely or unlikely. That writing cannot have been used for this literary purpose, that the thing is impossible, nobody will now assert. My supposition is, then, that the text of the Epic existed in ^gean script till Greece adapted to her own tongue the " Phoenician letters," which I think she did not later than the ninth to eighth centuries ; ^* at the beginning of the ninth century," says Professor Bury.^ This may seem an audaciously early date, but when we find vases of the eighth to seventh centuries bearing inscriptions, we may infer that a knowledge of reading and writing was reasonably common. When such a humble class of hirelings or slaves as the pot-painters can sign their work, expecting their signatures to be read, reading and writing must be very common accom- plishments among the more fortunate classes. If Mr. Gardner is right in dating a number of incised inscriptions on early pottery at Naucratis before the middle of the seventh century, we reach the same conclusion. In fact, if these inscriptions be of a cen- tury earlier than the Abu Simbel inscriptions, of date 590 B.C., we reach 690 B.C. Wherefore, as writing does not become common in a moment, it must have existed in the eighth century B.C. We are not dealing here with a special learned class, but with ordinary persons who could write.^ Interesting for our purpose is the verse incised on a Dipylon vase, found at Athens in 1880. It is of an ordinary cream-jug shape, with a neck, a handle, a 1 History of Greece^ vol. i. p. 78. 1902. ^ The Early Ionic Alphabet : Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. vii. pp. 220- 239. Roberts, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy y pp. 31, 151, 159, 164, 165- 167. 3i6 HOMER AND HIS AGE spout, and a round belly. On the neck, within a zigzag *^ geometrical " pattern, is a doe, feeding, and a tall water-fowl. On the shoulder is scratched with a point, in very antique Attic characters running from right to left, 09 wv opyriaTcov iravTwv araXwTaTa Tra/^ei, Tov ToSe. *^This is the jug of him who is the most delicately sportive of all dancers of our time." The jug is attributed to the eighth century.^ Taking the vase, with Mr. Walters, as of the eighth century, I do not suppose that the amateur who gave it to a dancer and scratched the hexameter was of a later generation than the jug itself. The vase may have cost him sixpence : he would give his friend a new vase ; it is improbable that old jugs were sold at curiosity shops in these days, and given by amateurs to artists. The inscription proves that, in the eighth to seventh centuries, at a time of very archaic charac- ters (the Alpha is lying down on its side, the aspirate is an oblong with closed ends and a stroke across the middle, and the Iota is curved at each end), people could write with ease, and would put verse into writing. The general accomplishment of reading is taken for granted. Reading is also taken for granted by the Gortyn (Cretan) inscription of twelve columns long, boustro- phedon (running alternately from left to right, and from right to left). In this inscribed code of laws, incised on stone, money is not mentioned in the more ancient part, but fines and prices are calculated in " chalders " ^ Walters, History of Ancient Pottery^ vol. ii. p. 243 ; Kretschmer, Grie- chischen Vasen inschriften, p. no, 1894, of the seventh century. H. von Rohden, Denkmaler, iii. pp. 1945, 1946 : " Probably dating from the seventh century." Roberts, op. cit., vol. i. p. 74, ** at least as far back as the seventh century," p. 75. CONCLUSION 317 and ^* bolls " (Xe^rjTeg and Tjonrofe), as in Scotland when coin was scarce indeed. Whether the law con- templated the value of the vessels themselves, or, as in Scotland, of their contents in grain, I know not. The later inscriptions deal with coined money. If coin came in about 650 B.C., the older parts of the inscrip- tion may easily be of 700 B.C. The Gortyn inscription implies the power of writing out a long code of laws, and it implies that persons about to go to law could read the public inscription, as we can read a proclamation posted up on a wall, or could have it read to them.^ The alphabets inscribed on vases of the seventh century (Abecedaria), with *' the archaic Greek forms of every one of the twenty-two Phoenician letters arranged precisely in the received Semitic order," were, one supposes, gifts for boys and girls who were learning to read, just like our English alphabets on gingerbread.^ Among inscriptions on tombstones of the end of the seventh century, there is the epitaph of a daughter of a potter.^ These writings testify to the general know- ledge of reading, just as much as our epitaphs testify to the same state of education. The Athenian potter's daughter of the seventh century B.C. had her epitaph, but the grave-stones of highlanders, chiefs or commoners, were usually uninscribed till about the end of the eighteenth century, in deference to custom, itself aris- ing from the illiteracy of the highlanders in times past.* I find no difficulty, therefore, in supposing that there ^ Roberts, vol. i. pp. 52-55. 2 For Abecedaria, cf. Roberts, vol. i. pp. 16-21. ' Roberts, vol. i. p. 76. * Ramsay, Scotland and Scotsmen^xx. p. 426. 1888. 3i8 HOMER AND HIS AGE were some Greek readers and writers in the eighth century, and that primary education was common in the seventh. In these circumstances my sense of the pro- bable is not revolted by the idea of a written epic, in Greek characters, even in the eighth century, but the notion that there was no such thing till the middle of the sixth century seems highly improbable. All the conditions were present which make for the com- position and preservation of literary works in written texts. That there were many early written copies of Homer in the eighth century I am not inclined to believe. The Greeks were early a people who could read, but were not a reading people. Setting newspapers aside, there is no such thing as a reading people. The Greeks preferred to listen to recitations, but my hypothesis is that the rhapsodists who recited had texts, like the jongleurs* books of their epics in France, and that they occasionally, for definite purposes, inter- polated matter into their texts. There were also texts, known in later times as *' city texts " (at Kara -TroXeig), which Aristarchus knew, but he did not adopt the various readings.^ Athens had a text in Solon's time, if he entered the decree that the whole Epic should be recited in due order, every five years, at the Panathenaic festival.^ '< This implies the possession of a complete text." ^ Cauer remarks that the possibility of ^^interpola- tion " ^* began only after the fixing of the text by Pisistratus." * But surely if every poet and reciter could thrust any new lines which he chose to make 1 Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 435. ^ /did., vol. ii. p. 395. 3 /did., vol. ii. p. 403. * Grtindfragen, p. 205. CONCLUSION 319 into any old lays which he happened to know, that was interpolation, whether he had a book of the words or had none. Such interpolations would fill the orally recited lays which the supposed Pisistratean editor must have written down from recitation before he began his colossal task of making the Iliad out of them. If, on the other hand, reciters had books of the words, they could interpolate at pleasure into them^ and such books may have been among the materials used in the construction of a text for the Athenian book market. But if our theory be right, there must always have been a few copies of better texts than those of the late reciters' books, and the effort of the editors for the book market would be to keep the parts in which most manuscripts were agreed. But how did Athens, or any other city, come to possess a text ? One can only conjecture ; but my conjecture is that there had always been texts — copied out in successive generations — in the hands of the curious ; for example, in the hands of the Cyclic poets, who knew our Iliad as the late French Cyclic poets knew the earlier Chansons de Geste. They certainly knew it, for they avoided interference with it ; they worked at epics which led up to it, as in the Cypria ; they borrowed motifs from hints and references in the Iliad,^ and they carried on the story from the death of Hector, in the jEthiopis of Arctinus of Miletus. This epic ended with the death of Achilles, when The Little Iliad pro- duced the tale to the bringing in of the wooden horse. Arctinus goes on with his Sack of Iliosy others wrote of The Return of the Heroes, and the Telegonia is a sequel to the Odyssey, The authors of these poems knew the ^ Monro, Odyssey^ vol. ii. pp. 350, 351. 320 HOMER AND HIS AGE Iliad^ then, as a whole, and how could they have known it thus if it only existed in the casual repertoire of strolling reciters ? The Cyclic poets more probably had texts of Homer, and themselves wrote their own poems — how it paid, whether they recited them and collected rewards or not, is, of course, unknown. The C3xlic poems, to quote Sir Richard Jebb, ^^ help to fix the lowest limit for the age of the Homeric poems.^ The earliest Cyclic poems, dating from about 776 B.C., presuppose the Iliady being planned to introduce or continue it. . . . It would appear, then, that the Iliad must have existed in something like its present compass as early as 800 B.C. ; indeed a con- siderably earlier date will seem probable, if due time is allowed for the poem to have grown into such fame as would incite the effort to continue it and to prelude to it." Sir Richard then takes the point on which we have already insisted, namely, that the Cyclic poets of the eighth century B.C. live in an age of ideas, religions, ritual, and so forth which are absent from the Iliad?' Thus the Iliad existed with its characteristics that are prior to 800 B.C., and in its present compass, and was renowned before 800 B.C. As it could not possibly have thus existed in the repertoire of irresponsible strol- ling minstrels and reciters, and as there is no evidence for a college, school, or guild which preserved the Epic by a system of mnemonic teaching, while no one can deny at least the possibility of written texts, we are driven to the hypothesis that written texts there were, whence descended, for example, the text of Athens. We can scarcely suppose, however, that such texts 1 Homer, pp. 151, 154. 2 Homer, pp. 154, 155. CONCLUSION 321 were perfect in all respects, for we know how, several centuries later, in a reading age, papyrus fragments of the Iliad display unwarrantable interpolation.^ But Plato's frequent quotations, of course made at an earlier date, show that "whatever interpolated texts of Homer were then current, the copy from which Plato quoted was not one of them."^ Plato had something much better. When a reading public for Homer arose — and, from the evidences of the widespread early knowledge of reading, such a small public may have come into existence sooner than is commonly supposed — Athens was the centre of the book trade. To Athens must be due the prae-Alexandrian Vulgate, or prevalent text, prac- tically the same as our own. Some person or persons must have made that text — not by taking down from recitation all the lays which they could collect, as Herd, Scott, Mrs. Brown, and others collected much of the Border Minstrelsy^ and not by then tacking the lays into a newly-composed whole. They must have done their best with such texts as were accessible to them, and among these were probably the copies used by reciters and rhapsodists, answering to the MS. books of the mediaeval jongleurs. Mr. Jevons has justly and acutely remarked that "we do not know, and there is no external evidence of any description which leads us to suppose, that the Iliad was ever expanded" (/. H, S., vii. 291-308). That it was expanded is a mere hypothesis based on the idea that " if there was an Iliad at all in the ninth century, its length must have been such as was compatible with the conditions of an oral delivery," — ^ Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 422-426. ^ Jdid.y p. 429. X 322 HOMER AND HIS AGE ^^ a poem or poems sHort enough to be recited at a single sitting." But we have proved, with Mr. Jevons and Blass, and by the analogy of the Chansons de Gestey that, given a court audience (and a court audience is granted), there were no such narrow limits imposed on the length of a poem orally recited from night to night. The length of the Iliad yields, therefore, no argu- ment for expansions throughout several centuries. - ; That theory, suggested by the notion that the original poem must have been short, is next supposed to be warranted by the inconsistencies and discrepancies. But we argue that these are only visible, as a rule, to ^^ the analytical reader," for whom the poet certainly was not composing ; that they occur in all long works of fictitious narrative ; that the discrepancies often are not / discrepancies ; and, finally, that they are not nearly so I glaring as the inconsistencies in the theories of each j separatist critic. A theory, in such matter as this, is j itself an explanatory myth, or the plot of a story which the critic invents to account for the facts in the case. These critical plots, we have shown, do not account for the facts of the case, for the critics do not excel in constructing plots. They wander into unper- ceived self-contradictions which they would not pardon in the poet. These contradictions are visible to '^ the analytical reader," who concludes that a very early poet may have been, though Homer seldom is, as inconsistent as a modern critic. Meanwhile, though we have no external evidence that the Iliad was ever expanded — that it was expanded is an explanatory myth of the critics — ^< we do know, on good evidence," says Mr. Jevons, *' that the Iliad CONCLUSION 323 was rhapsodised." The rhapsodists were men, as a rule, of one day recitations, though at a prolonged festival at Athens there was time for the whole Iliad to be recited. ^^ They chose for recitation such incidents as could be readily detached, were interesting in them- selves, and did not take too long to recite." Mr. Jevons suggests that the many brief poems collected in the Homeric hymns are invocations which the rhapsodists preluded to their recitals. The practice seems to have been for the rhapsodist first to pay his reverence to the god, ^^ to begin from the god," at whose festival the re- citation was being given (the short proems collected in the Hymns pay this reverence), " and then proceed with his rhapsody" — with his selected passage from the Iliad, *< Beginning with thee " (the god of the festival), ^^ I will go on to another lay," that is, to his selection from the Epic. Another conclusion of the proem often is, " I will be mindful both of thee and of another lay," meaning, says Mr. Jevons, that ^^ the local deity will figure in the recitation from Homer which the rhap- sodist is about to deliver." These explanations, at all events, yield good sense. The invocation of Athene (Hymns, XL, XXVIIL) would serve as the proem of invocation to the recital of Iliad^ v., VL 1-3 1 1, the day of valour of Diomede, spurred on by the wanton rebuke of Agamemnon, and aided by Athene. The invocation of Hephaestus (Hymn XX.), would prelude to a recital of the Making of the Arms of Achilles, and so on. But the rhapsodist may be reciting at a festival of Dionysus, about whom there is practically nothing said in the Iliad ; for it is a proof of the antiquity of the Iliad that, when it was composed, Dionysus had not been / ■^ v^ I 324 HOMER AND HIS AGE raised to the Olympian peerage, being still a folk-god only. The rhapsodist, at a feast of Dionysus in later times, has to introduce the god into his recitation. The god is not in his text, but he adds him.^ Why should any mortal have made this interpola- tion ? Mr. Jevons's theory supplies the answer. The rhapsodist added the passages to suit the Dionysus feast, at which he was reciting. The same explanation is offered for the long story of the Bt'rfh of Heraclesy which Agamemnon tells in his speech of apology and reconciliation.^ There is an in- vocation to Heracles (Hymns, XV.), and the author may have added this speech to his rhapsody of the Reconcilia- tion, recited at a feast of Heracles. Perhaps the remark of Mr. Leaf offers the real explanation of the presence of this long story in the speech of Agamemnon : ^' Many speakers with a bad case take refuge in telling stories." Agamemnon shows, says Mr. Leaf, ^^the peevish ner- vousness of a man who feels that he has been in the wrong," and who follows a frank speaker like Achilles, only eager for Agamemnon to give the word to form and charge. So Agamemnon takes refuge in a long story, throwing the blame of his conduct on Destiny. We do not need, then, the theory of a rhapsodist's interpolation, but it is quite plausible in itself. Local heroes, as well as gods, had their feasts in post- Homeric times, and a reciter at a feast of -^neas, or of his mother. Aphrodite, may have foisted in the very futile discourse of Achilles and -^neas,^ with its reference to Erichthonius, an Athenian hero. In other cases the rhapsodist rounded off his 1 Ibid., VI. 130-141. 2 7^/^^^ XIX. 136. 3 ji,^^^ XX. 213-250. CONCLUSION 325 selected passage by a few lines, as in Iliady XIII, 656- 659, where a hero is brought to follow his son's dead body to the grave, though the father had been killed in V. 576. " It is really such a slip as is often made by authors who write," says Mr. Leaf ; and, in Esmondy Thackeray makes similar errors. The passage in XVI. 69—80, about which so much is said, as if it contradicted Book IX. {The Embassy to Achilles), is also, Mr. Jevons thinks, to be explained as " inserted by a rhapsodist wishing to make his extract complete in itself." Another example — the confusion in the beginning of Book II. — we have already discussed (see Chapter IV.), and do not think that any explanation is needed, when we understand that Agamemnon, once wide-awake, had no confidence in his dream. However, Mr. Jevons thinks that rhapsodists, anxious to recite straight on from the dream to the battle, added II. 35-41, "the only Hnes which represent Agamemnon as believing confidently in his dream." We have argued that he only believed //// he awokey and then, as always, wavered. Thus, in our way of looking at these things, in- terpolations by rhapsodists are not often needed as explanations of difficulties. Still, granted that the rhap- sodists, like the jongleurs, had texts, and that these were studied by the makers of the Vulgate, interpolations and errors might creep in by this way. As to changes in language, " a poetical dialect ... is liable to be gra- dually modified by the influence of the ever-changing colloquial speech. And, in the early times, when writ- ing was little used, this influence would be especially operative." ^ To conclude, the hypothesis of a school of mnemonic ^ Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 461. 326 HOMER AND HIS AGE teaching of the Iliad would account for the preservation of so long a poem in an age destitute of writing, when memory would be well cultivated. There may have been such schools. We only lack evidence for their existence. But against the hypothesis of the existence of early texts, there is nothing except the feeling of some critics that it is not likely. ** They are dangerous guides, the feelings." In any case the opinion that the Iliad was a whole, centuries before Pisistratus, is the hypothesis which is by far the least fertile in difficulties, and, consequently, in inconsistent solutions of the problems which the theory of expansion first raises, and then, like an unskilled magician, fails to lay. > or THE UNIVERSITY INDEX Abu Simnel, Greek inscriptions at, 319 Achilles, Character of, 29, 30 Quarrel with Agamemnon, 53 Indifference of, to feudal custom, 58 Wrath of, supposed early poem on, 80 ^olic Epic, Helbig on, 91, et seqq. Agamemnon and Charlemagne, 303-309 Agamemnon, Position and char- acter of, 51, et seqq. Aias, has no chariot. His great shield, 117, 118 Alcaeus, speaks of linen corslets, Alcinous, his sleeping chamber, where? 216 Algonquins, their shields, why large? i^)"^, et seqq. their corslets, 140, et seqq. Allen, T. W., on the Pisistratean legend, 49 on the Doloneia^ 256 defends antiquity of Epics, 257 on the Catalogue, 287, 288 Anachronisms, alleged, in Homer, 27 Ancestors, Cult of, un-Homeric, 86, et seqq. Angling. Heroes angle in Cyclic poems, 20 Archaeology of Shields, 130, et seqq. Archaism, not practised by poets in uncritical ages, i, 2, 3 of painters and poets, 5 Archaism, Moellendorff on, 10 Helbig on, 10, 13, 14 unsuccessfully attempted by Quintus Smyrnaeus, 106 False poets accused of, 120 by early poets. Leaf on, 1 26, 127 Archers, Achaean, 136, 140 Trojan, 136 Areithous, his iron mace, 179, 180 Aristarchus and legend of Pisis- tratus, 44, 45 on corslets, 151, 159 Aristonothos, Vase of, 121, 123 Aristotle on Iliad, II. 558, 44, 45 on Homer's art, 124 on Illyrian spears, 174 Armorial bearings, Greek and Mediaeval, 36, 121 Armour, 108, et seqq. defensive. Evolution of, 172 Arms, disposal of those of the dead, 89, 90 Arrow heads, bronze, at Mycenae, 135 head, one of iron, 179, et seqq. Arrows, poison for Arrow heads, 253 with stone tips. Not in Homer, 125, 126, 134, et seqq. Assarlik, Graves at, 87 Art (" Mycenaean "), Changes in, 84,85 Chronology, 84 at Enkomi, Vaphio, Knossos, • 85 Assembly, in Book II., ^6,etseqq. 32S INDEX Athens and Megara. Their Homeric dispute, 45, 47 Book Market of, 319-321 Atonement, Customary law of, 76 AustraHans, their shields, 135 Axes. Peaceful implements. In Homer usually of iron, 178, et seqq. Ballads, Repetitions of verses and formulse in, as in Homer, 103 Border, Forgeries attempted of, 106 Barrow, see Cairn Baths, in Iliad 2L,n6. Odyssey^ 270 Battle Axes, of bronze, 183 in Scotland, 183 Beowulf^ Lay of, cited, 205, 206, 292 B^rard (Monsieur), cited on bronze and iron, 194, 195 on Homeric topography, 285 Blass on Pisistratean legend, 48 Bow, 130-140 Breastplate, see Corslet Bride-Price, in Layof Demodocus, 235 in Odyssey, Repayal of, claimed by injured hus- band, 241-243 Penelope, Legal questions as to her, 243 Agamemnon offers daughter without, 243 Njal's Saga on, 243 Brie (Jendeus de), 300 Bronze, Weapons of, not used in Virgil, 2 in Quintus Smyrnaeus, 106 Homeric shields plated with, 109 Mycenaean shields not plated with, 109, no No evidence of, on My- cenaean shields, 130 for arrow heads, 135, ^/ seqq. in Homer used mainly for weapons and armour, 176- 208 Spears always of, 1 8 1 ,^/ seqq. Bronze, Swords always of, 181, ^/ seqq. Battle axes made of, 183 Browne (Father), on early writ- ing, 312, 313 Burial (Cairn), as in Homer. None discovered, 28, 82, et seqq. after cremation, in " oldest parts" of poems, 100 (Note 2) Australian, Howitt cited for, lOI Australian, Spencer and Gillen cited for, loi Burns, his treatment of old Scot- tish songs, 35, 36 Bury (Professor), cited, 315 Cairn Burials (Homeric), none discovered, 28 The burial chamber in, 98 Height of chamber within, 99 Cairns, frequently robbed, pro- bably plundered, 105 Calypso, 183 Carl Robert, on corslets, 158 Catalogue, of ships, Leaf on, 48 Allen on, 287 Leaf on, 287 Cauer (Paul), on Homeric uses of iron, 195-197 Celtic Land tenure compared with Homeric, 237, et seqq. Celts, Bad iron swords of, 188, 189 Champlain, his drawings of shields, 135, et seqq. Chancun de Willame, cited for Homeric parallels, 102 cited, 146 on armour, cited, 163 Changes of language and metre in, 247 Chansons de Geste " explain Iliad and Odyssey ^^ 6 compared with Homer, 83 Chanson de Roland in relation to later Chansons de Geste, 6 INDEX 329 Chariot, Reichel on, 109, et seqq. Chariots, Theories of origin of Reichel and Ridgeway on, 115, 116 Charlemagne, the Agamemnon of early French Epics, 52 and Agamemnon, 302-309 Chios, Homeridae in, 38 Chiton^ as part of grave clothes, 97 Chitons, Bronze, 143, et seqq. Leaf on, 144 Myres on, 145 Comparetti, his work on the Kaiewaia, 141 Copper, bartered for iron, 179 Corslet, 20 Reichel on, 109, ef seqq. said to be "late," 126-128 Leaf on, 140 of Red Indians, 140 Early evolution of, 140 Golden, in Mycenaean graves, 143-17 5 Decorated Mycenaean, bronze, 145, 146 Red Indian, Hill Tout on, 148, 149 Evolution of, 1 50 Linen and cotton, 150, 151 Homeric, their feeble power of resistance, 151-154 Reichel's change of view concerning, 154 difficulties as to those in Homer, 154-160 not explicitly mentioned in Odyssey, 156 Carl Robert on, 158 Evans cited for early, versus Reichel, 161 worn by early invaders of Egypt, 161 Costume, Homeric : in peace, 59, 60 Cremation, 82, et seqq. Method of burial in the "oldest parts" of the poems, 100 (Note 2), 100- 103, 107 Crete, Graves in, 87 Crete, Mycenaean bronze corslet from, 145, 146 Bronze and iron tools and weapons in, 207 Viking voyages from, 236 Early writing in, 313, 314 Land tenure in, 238, 239 Cyclic poems, in relation to Jliad and Odyssey, 18-24 Ghosts of dead in, 99 Cypria, tradition that it was written, 300 Dasent (Sir George), on Ice- landic houses, 222, et seqq. Dead, disposal of : spirits of, 82 et seqq. Raiment of, 91, etseqq. Helbig on, 91, et seqq. Delphi, ^^^"Pytho" Demodocus, Song of, said to be " late," 220, 234, 235 Dieuchidas of Megara : on Pisis- tratean Recension, 44-47 Diogenes Laertius on disputed passage in the Catalogue, 46-48 Diomede, his attitude towards Agamemnon, 74, 75 Dipylon Age, Culture of, 4 Art of the, 27 Little known of the, 28 Modes of burying in, 86 Vases, no sheets over corpses on, 98 Swords of Early Iron, 100 Vase, showing shields, 131 Vase, with three forms of shields, 142 Divine Right, Over Lord rules by, 54 Dodona, 235 Dodwell pyxis. Large shield on, 123 Doloneia, {Iliad, Book X.), Hel- big on, 1 2, 1 3 Studniczka on, 13 Shields used as pillows in, 124, 173-175 Authenticity of, defended, 259-280 330 INDEX Dorians, their Invasion not al- \ luded to by Homer, 26 "^ Dream, The false, 58, et seqq. Edda^ 293, 294 Egypt, Early invaders of, wear corslets, 161 Thebes in, 236 Egyptian Shields, 116 Embalment, 90 Enkomi, Art in graves of, 85 (Crete), necklace of gold shields, 131 (Crete), Ivory figure of, 134 Ivory figure, corsleted, at, 161 Ivories of, 173 Early bronze dagger of, 174 Iron in graves of, 178 Epic, Repetitions in, 229, 230 Epics, Theories of growth of Homeric, 15-44 Early, comparative study of, 289, et seqq. Erhardt, on the art in Iliad^ Book II., 21, 22 on lateness of the Doloneia, 267, 268 Evans (A. J.), cited, 119, 134, 173 cited on corslets, 161 opposes Reichel, 174 on Cretan writing, 314 (Sir John), cited, 193 Eyrbggja Saga, Iron in, 207 cited on Icelandic House, 226 "Expansion," Theories of, 14 Feudalism, Homeric, ^i,etseqq. Fields, common, 236, et seqq. Fion Mac Cumhail, the Irish Agamemnon, 52 France, Mediaeval Epics of, 297, et seqq. Gardner (Prof. Percy), his theory that Homeric poets consciously archaize, 3 (Mr. Ernest), cited, 131 (Mr. Ernest), on early in- scribed vases, 3 1 5 Gautier (Ldon), cited for eleventh century shield, 1 1 1 Geography, in //zWand Odyssey ^ 235> 236 " German Scholarship," Blass re- bukes it, 49 Ghosts, in Cyclic poems and in Homer, 21 in Homer only of unburned men, 98, 99 in Cyclics common, 99 Gods, in J Had and Odyssey, 231, et seqq. — ' Grammar, in Iliad and Odyssey, 244, et seqq. Graves, at Assarlik, Thera, Sal- amis, in Crete, 89 shaft, tholos, and cairn, 100 Greaves, 109, et seqq., 172-17^ Gudmundsson (Dr. Valtyr), cited, 222, et seqq. Hades, Various theories of, 93, et seqq. Hall (H. R.), on Epic archaisms, 4,5 Hallstatt, Culture of, 88 Mitri from, 1 7 1 Uses of iron at, 188 Hector, The Slaying of, early or late work ? 30, 3 1 Ransoming of, early or late ? 32 Grave clothes of, 95-98 his large shield, 1 1 5 Helbig, his theory of archaism in early art and poetry, 10, 1 1 on Doloneia, 1 2 on burial and grave clothes, 91, et seqq. on absence of rings in Homer, 121 on vase of Aristonothos, 122 cites Tyrtsus, 123 on iron and bronze in Homer, 177, et seqq. theory of Homeric uses of bronze and iron, 197-203 Helen of Troy : Did she sleep in her dining-room ? 216,217 Helmets, 172-175 INDEX \i 331 ermes, in Iliad and Odyssey^ 233, 234 Hero-worship, un-Homeric, loi Hesiod, on Iron, 186 Highland, the Highland targe, 115 Hill Tout (Prof.), cited, 148, 149 Homer, Repetitions of lines and formulas in, 102-103 now said to know round shields only : and now, not to know round shields, 113 never mentions armorial bearings, 121, 122 Aristotle on art of, 124 said not to know small shields, 124 Archery in, 136-140 describes arms and armour of a single age, 175 tradition about Cypria, 300 Homeric Epics : Works of a single age, 7 Poems, of age between My- cenaean prime and Dipylon age, 100, loi, 105 Armour, 108, et seqq. Armour, Reichel's theory of, 109, et seqq. Shields, size of, 114-118 Age : An age of early iron, 177, et seqq. House, Leaf on, 288 Homeridae (of Chios), 38 Houses at Mycenae, 211, 212 Icelandic, 222, et seqq. House, sleeping chambers, where? 216-222 The Homeric, 289, et seqq. Howe, see Cairn Howitt (Dr.), cited, loi Hymns (Homeric), 322, et seqq. Iceland, of the Saga period, houses in, 209, et seqq. Dower and Bride-price in, 243 Iliad,f a thing of shreds and patches.? 31 • Tests of multiplex authorship of, 32 Iliad, Book II., Theory of two versions of, 56, et seqq. General picture of shields in, 120 Iron in, 176 Religion in, 231-236 Iris in, 233, 234 Geography in, 235, 236 four Books " Odyssean " in language, 244, et seqq. Morality in, not less ad- vanced than in Odyssey^ 251, et seqq. Unity of, is historical, 306 Illyrians, Aristotle on, 174 Ionian, Author of Iliad, Book XXIV., said to be an, 97, 98 Light buckler, no, etseqq. lonians, their culture and treat- ment of the Epics, 18 their funerals, 91, ^/ seqq. Ireland, the Over-Lord in Early Irish Literature, 52 the \xv^ gcB-bulg, 120 Early land tenure in, 257, et seqq. Iris in Iliad BXid Odyssey, 234 Iron, Weapons of, used by Vir- gil's heroes, 2 Uses of, in Homer, 176- 208 in Homer, used for imple- ments, knives, axes, &c., 176-208 Rings of, 178 One arrow head of, 179, et seqq. Two weapons of, in Homer, 179, 180 Tempering of, described in Odyssey, 184 at Hallstatt, 188 Doubtful line on, in Odyssey, 192 Berard on, 194, 195 Cauer on, 195-197 Helbig on, 197-203 Naber on, 203 Ridge way on Homeric uses of, 203-206 332 INDEX Iron, Scandinavian, badly tem- pered, 207 Iroquois, their shields, 135, et seqq. their corslets, 140, et seqq. Irus, male Iris, in Odyssey^ 234 Ivory, Figure in, at Enkomi, 134 Figure of, corsleted, at En- komi, 161 Jebb (Sir R. C), on compara- tive study of Epics, 289, et seqq. Jevons (Prof.), on Iliad^ Book II., and Dream of Agamem- non, 67, 68 on Rhapsodists' Interpola- tions, 321, et seqq. Jongleurs., compared with Rhap- sodists, 298, et seqq. Julius Africanus on the Pisistra- tean legend, 49 Kalewala, 41, 294, 295 Keller (Mr.), cited on Homeric land tenure, 240 "Kernel," Mr. Leafs theory of, 30, 31 Khita, Shields of the, 116, 117 Kiene, on Doloneia, 275 Knives, in Homer usually of iron. Not used in fighting, 178, et seqq. Knossos, Art of, 85 Land tenure, Homeric, 236, et seqq. Language, as a test of dates of composition of Epics, 244, et seqq. difficulty suggested, 245, et seqq. Law, customary, 54-56 of Atonement, 76 of Reconciliation, 78 Lead, in the Epics, 3, 4 Leaf, on lead in the Epics, 3 theory of growth of Epics, 15, et seqq. • his Itiad, 1 5, 26 Leaf, on lateness of written texts of Epics, 42, 43 on Catalogue of Ships ^ 48 his theory of two versions of Iliad^ Book II., 56, et seqq. on Helbig's theory of Ionic and ^olic burials, 92 Homeric poems of age be- tween Mycenaean and Dipylon, 100, loi on late interpolations by Rhapsodists, 108, 109 on shape of shields, iw^et seqq. his varying opinion as to Homer's knowledge of round shields, 113 accuses poet of false archa- ism, 120 on archaising of poets, 126, 127 on bronze chitons^ 144 on linen corslets, 150, 151 Difficulties as to Homeric corslets raised by, 154- 160 on Rhapsodists. Their in- consistencies, 165-169 on Zoster^ Zoma, and Mitre^ 169-172 on Homeric Smithy, 184 on Homeric House, 228 on religion in Epics, 231 on language as test of date, 244, et seqq. on archaising tendency of the Doloneia, 266, 267 on Doloneia^ shifting opinions, 272-274 on interpolations concerning Nestor, 280-288 thinks early written texts improbable, 311, et seqq. Linen, Corslets of, 150, 151 Alcaeus on, 151 " Local colour." Did Homer seek it? 6 Locrians, light-armed and shield- less, 120 Lonnrot, Editor of Kalewala, 41, 294, 295 INDEX 333 Mace, one of iron, 179, 180 Manatt (Prof.), cited, 139, and passim Maoris, their Schools of sacred poetry, 37 Megara and Athens, their Hom- eric dispute, 45, 47 Menelaus, Love of Agamemnon for : rebukes Agamemnon, 73 Merry (W. W.), on Olympus, 232 Minstrels, Homeric, 9 Mitre^ 169-172 Moellendorff, on tradition in the Epics, 10, 1 1 Monro (D. B.), on the Cyclic poems, 18 on Diogenes Lasrtius, 47 on Pisistratean legend, 49 on iron and bronze in Homer, 176, 177 on Icelandic and Homeric Houses, 222, et seqq. on differences between Odyssey and lliad^ 229- 239 on religion in Epics, 231, et seqq. on language as test of date, 244, et seqq. on Doloneia^ 271, 272 Morals in Iliad and Odyssey^ No change in, 251, et seqq. ^ Mycenae, Houses at, 211, 212 Mycenaean culture, compared with Homeric, 28, 29 art. Changes in, 84, 85 spirit- worship, 100 art, shows no shield-wearing charioteers, 116 shields, not bronze plated, 130 arrow heads, usually of stone, 1 34, et seqq. shield, originally a defence against arrows, 139 bronze corslet, 145, 146 swords, two kinds of, 191 Mycenaeans, who were they ? 5 Myres, on bronze chitons, 145 on Mycenaean swords, 191 Myres, on the Homeric House, 211-214 Naber, on Homeric uses of iron, 203 Nestor, his military advice, 75 his shield exchanged for that of his son, 262, 276, 278 Alleged interpolations con- cerning, 280-288 Nibelungenlied, 292, et seqq. Nitzsche, on Doloneia, 275 Njal's Saga, Plan of house in, 215 cited on sleeping chamlDers, 227 cited for Dower and Bride- price, 243 Noack, on Homeric houses, 211, et seqq. Oath of the Trojans, broken, 75 Odyssey, Shields in, 114-118 contains no explicit men- tion of corslets, 1 56 Iron in, 176 Description of tempering iron in, 184 Doubtful hne in, on iron, 192 Descriptions of houses in, 210, et seqq. Changes in manners in, criticised, 299, et seqq. Monro on, 229-239 Religion in, 231-236 Hermes in, 233, 234 Geography in, 235, 236 Language and grammar of, 244, et seqq. Morality in. No advance in Iliad, 251, .1 15^3063 JHE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY