1^ 
 
, "^"^ 
 
I 
 
 HOMER 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED ON BEHALF 
 
 OF THE INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY 
 
 BY J. W. MACKAIL 
 
 HAMMERSMITH PUBLISHING SOCIETY 
 
 RIVER HOUSE HAMMERSMITH 
 
 MDCCCCV 
 

 This Address was delivered at Kensington 
 Town Hall March the 8th MDCCCCV 
 
THE NAME OF HOMER MEETS US 
 before the threshold of history, as one of 
 those which for five-and-twenty centuries have 
 dominated the world. The two great Homeric 
 poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, influenced 
 Greek life and letters, and through them the 
 life and letters of the whole world after Greece, 
 to a degree that is quite without parallel. Yet 
 themselves they hardly belong to Greece. As 
 a fine scholar has said of them, they stand in 
 strange isolation, like an island near a continent. 
 Nothing that preceded them has survived, and 
 after them there is a chasm in our records ; on 
 the nearer as well as on the farther side of that 
 island we come to sheer cliff and sundering 
 waters. And the island is peopled by a race of 
 its own : with affinities to the Greeks, yet not 
 Greek; with a life larger, wider, more varied 
 and more universal than any which has else- 
 where been imagined or recorded. It is to these 
 two poems, and to the life which they embody, 
 that I desire to call your attention this evening; 
 saying just so much about both, in the narrow 
 limits at our disposal, as may I hope excite you 
 to learn more. 
 
 The Iliad & Odyssey took the form in which 
 they have come down to us among a Greek 
 colony in Ionia, on the western coast of Asia 
 
 3 
 
 M40773 
 
« * •* • 
 
 ••• • • 
 
 Minor which faces the islands and the Greek 
 middle sea, about 800 years before the birth of 
 Christ. When or how they were originally com- 
 posed, or through what changes they passed 
 before they reached their consummate form, is 
 unknown ; the history on which they were based 
 was supposed to have happened at least two 
 centuries earlier than this, and in between there 
 had come one of those great revolutions in hu- 
 man affairs which obliterate the ancient land- 
 marks, the invasion and conquest of Greece by 
 the Greeks. In some way or another, no doubt, 
 generations of poets may have gone to their 
 making. As it has been well said that the name- 
 less archited; of Westminster Abbey was not 
 this man or that, but the people of South-East- 
 ern England, so the maker of the Iliad and 
 Odyssey was not merely a poet, or even a guild 
 of poets, but a whole nation. But this vast work 
 finally took shape in the hands of one or two 
 great poets. 
 
 It is uncertain whether, as they stand now, 
 both poems in substance represent the work 
 of the same author. The Greeks themselves 
 differed much in opinion as to this. The best 
 modern critics find traces in the Iliad and 
 Odyssey not only of different original sources 
 but of different final hands ; they think that 
 
 4 
 
the Odyssey was composed a generation, or 
 perhaps two generations, after the Iliad. But 
 both poems deal with the same sort of life, the 
 life of what is called the heroic age; the life of 
 a race earlier than that of the Greeks among 
 whom the poems were made, and differing not 
 only from them but from all adlual men in 
 being nearer the Gods by descent, and having 
 still traces of divine origin. Both are written 
 in the same admirably rapid, majestic, and 
 melodious verse ; both take places in the first 
 rank of poems by virtue of their length ; for 
 we may say roughly that, other things being 
 equal, a long poem is a greater achievement 
 than a short one; the Iliad is 15,000 lines long, 
 the Odyssey 12,000. 
 
 It may be well to say here, and one can never 
 be too careful to remember, that the life por- 
 trayed in these poems, both in broad outlines 
 and in smaller details, is such as the poet im- 
 agined, not necessarily such as he saw. It is 
 the more important to keep this in mind, be- 
 cause archaeology at present encroaches some- 
 what on the field of other studies, and there is 
 a fashion of valuing early poetry not so much 
 for itself as for the fads which it incidentally 
 preserves ; thus many students look in Homer 
 chiefly for traces of savage customs and pre- 
 
historic usages, which may be compared with 
 those of other prehistoric peoples, or of savage 
 tribes of the present day. There is no reason 
 why this should not be done ; it is an innocent 
 study ; but poetry, like all art, is chiefly valu- 
 able for its own sake, and the better the poetry 
 is, the greater its value becomes as poetry, and 
 the less does it serve the purpose of a record of 
 fadls. Of Homer it must be borne in mind from 
 first to last that he is essentially unhistorical. 
 He shows us what sort of life could then be 
 imagined by a poet. It becomes a question for 
 us when we read Homer whether we can clearly 
 imagine a life better than the Homeric life, or 
 even in some ways so good. Whether there 
 ever was any a(5lual human life really so simple, 
 beautiful and noble as the life represented in 
 the Iliad and Odyssey we cannot tell, because 
 we have no means of knowing ; but we have 
 no grounds for believing that there was. It 
 certainly was not so in any period of which we 
 have trustworthy knowledge. But the excel- 
 lence that ancient Greek life had — for in some 
 respects ancient Greek life holds up an unap- 
 proached ideal to us even now — was in no small 
 part due to their possessing Homer as their 
 chief poet, and keeping the Homeric ideal al- 
 ways closely before their imagination. 
 
 6 
 
It is a common saying that Homer was the 
 Greek Bible. Children were told stories out of 
 the Iliad and Odyssey as soon as they could 
 understand stories; boys learned reading out 
 of them at school ; whole cities used to gather 
 to hear parts of them publicly recited by a 
 sacred class or caste of Homerids, as they were 
 called, — an organized body of men, who, by one 
 of the fi(5lions dear to mankind, traced a sort of 
 apostolic succession from the poet himself. Ap- 
 peals to the authority of Homer were constantly 
 made by historians or orators to establish some 
 fadl or support some argument. The most em- 
 inent of Athenian poets, Sophocles, used to say 
 that his own tragedies were fragments from the 
 great Homeric banquet. Homer directly influ- 
 enced and moulded all Greek literature, and 
 through it, all Latin literature; and on Greek 
 and Latin literaturealmostthewholeof modern 
 culture is founded. Yet with all this vast dif- 
 fused influence, Homer has not, like many in- 
 fluences which once were great, spent himself 
 and become lost in his own results. We may 
 still approach that island with the wondering 
 eyes of the first navigators. Homer remains 
 still as fresh and as enchanting as he was to his 
 first hearers : the more so perhaps, that we have 
 wandered farther away than they had from what 
 
 7 
 
is called the freshness of the early world. Per- 
 haps, I say, the more so; for it is not an easy 
 question how much ought to be allowed for this. 
 Was the early world really fresher than ours? 
 Have we not still the same sights to see which 
 an ancient Greek poet was content to have seen 
 before he died? ' Him I call most happy,' he 
 says, 'who having looked on these august 
 things, the common sun, the stars, water, clouds, 
 fire, goes quickly back to the place whence he 
 came/ 
 
 The common sun, the stars, water, clouds, 
 fire: these things remain. There is this great 
 difference, no doubt ; that wehave, with immense 
 labour, surrounded ourselves with things which 
 take away our attention from these, or which 
 absolutely prevent us from seeing them at all. 
 Uncommon is rather the epithet that modern 
 civilization has suggested for the sun. The stars 
 make no part of our life at all. Of fire and water 
 we have made dull, tamed slaves. Only in 
 clouds, perhaps, we could show that Greek poet 
 something that would astonish him. It makes 
 a difference, too, that we live here in England, 
 in a land which together with its sky and sea 
 is perhaps less beautiful than that Ionia where 
 the Iliad and Odyssey were written. But we 
 must guard against the illusion of distance. No 
 
 8 
 
age or country was ever intrinsically poetical 
 in itself. We may almost say that all ages are 
 in themselves equally poetical or unpoetical: 
 poetry, the poetic ideal, is but a borrowed light 
 upon men's adlual life, a visionary gleam, as 
 Wordsworth says, a light that never was on sea 
 or land. To idealize life thus, to see inwardly, 
 and to express in word, or tone, or colour, the 
 beauty below and beyond things which is es- 
 sential and unchangeable, this is the function of 
 art, & notably of the art of poetry. The author 
 of the Iliad and the author of the Odyssey was, 
 in each case, one of the great artists of the world. 
 The Greeks called Homer simply 'the poet'; 
 that described him to them sufficiently without 
 any further epithet ; and to us now it is still 
 Homer the poet that really matters. Even now, 
 if our sight is clear enough, we may see the 
 common adlions of life proceeding as Homer 
 describes them. It has been well said that he 
 does not even describe sailors pulling down 
 their boat into the sea without making a picture 
 in the great style. But a modern American poet 
 of the last century, and he hardly in the first 
 rank of poets, could describe such things as a 
 steam ferry or the building of a hotel so as to 
 make pidlures in the great style. This, how- 
 ever, is too wide a subjedl to enter on here. 
 
 9 B 
 
Now let us look at Homer's world in some of 
 its broader outlines ; to fill in this slight sketch 
 you must read the Iliad & Odyssey themselves. 
 For people who cannot read them in the Greek, 
 there are two ways of doing this, to read them 
 in an accurate prose translation, or in the poet- 
 ical version which you find gives you the most 
 pleasure. Each way has its advantages. There 
 are a number of prose translations, all pretty 
 much alike. Of poetic versions. Chapman's & 
 Pope's Iliad, & Worsley's & Morris' Odyssey, 
 each in different ways, reach a high level of 
 merit, & by comparing them one may perhaps 
 get some notion of what Homer is really like. 
 But no translation in prose or verse can repro- 
 duce the exquisite Greek language, a material 
 which, for fineness and beauty, stands to all 
 other languages as a precious stone does to peb- 
 bles or bits of glass. 
 
 First, then, of the world itself as the Ho- 
 meric poems imagine it. 
 
 I. The earth on which men live is flattish and 
 circular, like a plate turned over on its face. 
 Round the rim goes a great stream of water, 
 called Oceanus, the Swift-flowing: an imagin- 
 ative amplification & unification of those tides 
 and currents of the outer sea which were known 
 by rumour to the early Mediterranean peoples. 
 
 lO 
 
It moves with a steady current, circling round 
 in one direction and returning into itself. The 
 inner seas open into it through straits & chan- 
 nels: the sun and stars sink into it when they 
 set, and rise out of it again, bright from their 
 bath in its waters. Beyond the Ocean-rim, 
 dropping away into darkness, is an unknown 
 and ghostly region, not lit by the sun. Below 
 earth — under the inverted plate so to speak — 
 is the House of Hades, where dead men are; it 
 is shadowy and hardly real, like a dream : be- 
 low that again is hell, Tartarus, where great 
 sinners suffer torments. Great rivers of water 
 and fire pour down into it through chasms at 
 the edge of the world. Above earth, and rest- 
 ing on the rim of it all round as a dish-cover 
 rests on a dish, is heaven, a solid concave roof 
 or vault. Homer speaks of it sometimes as 
 made of iron, or as plated with brass, but that 
 is only a way of expressing its solidity & lus- 
 tre, which are like those of polished metal. The 
 heavenly bodies move along it. The sun, sink- 
 ing into the Ocean-river at sunset, travels back 
 all night under the earth, rising again out of 
 the 'very lovely lake' on the eastern edge of the 
 world behind Dawn, which is half personified as 
 amaiden with rosyfeet andyellowgown. In the 
 Odyssey, when the companions of Odysseus, 
 
 II 
 
being pressed hard with hunger on an island 
 where they are storm-stayed, have killed and 
 eaten the holy oxen of the Sun, the Sun-god 
 makes complaint against them in heaven, and 
 threatens that unless they are punished he will 
 descend into the world underground, and shine 
 among the dead in the House of Hades. The 
 Gods live in Olympus. Sometimes Olympus is 
 spoken of as a high mountain summit; some- 
 times as a great country up in the sky, spread- 
 ing above the whole earth. From it, in either 
 case, the Gods can look down and see all that 
 is happening on earth; they often descend and 
 mingle unknown among men, in the shape and 
 fashion of men. One of the reasons why hos- 
 pitality should always be freely given to stran- 
 gers, is that men have often thus entertained 
 Gods unawares. Or they can at their pleasure 
 take the form of birds or beasts. The Goddess 
 Athena in the Odyssey comes and goes in the 
 shape of a sea-eagle. At the single combat be- 
 tween Ajax and Hedlor in the Iliad, she and 
 Apollo sit on an oak tree looking on, in the 
 shape of vultures. After death certain eledl men 
 and women of heroic descent go to an earthly 
 Paradise, called the Elysian plain, beyond the 
 sunset, 'where life is very easy : no snow is there, 
 nor yet great storm, nor any rain, but Oceanus 
 
 J2 
 
always sends forth a whispering west-wind to 
 breathe cool upon men/ Some of great wicked- 
 ness go down to Tartarus and are tormented. 
 But the most live a dull & shadowy life among 
 the marsh-meadows of the House of Hades, 
 dark and comfortless and disembodied. 
 
 2. Of the world within the ring-fence of the 
 Ocean-river, Greece with the islands about it, 
 and the western coast of Asia Minor, are known 
 thoroughly ; beyond these limits the world is 
 but imperfe(5lly known, chiefly by travellers' 
 tales, and is peopled with strange things. To 
 the north there are wild tribes, who roam on 
 the great plains which stretch across Northern 
 Europe and Central Asia, drinking the milk 
 of mares, away beyond the mountain-chain of 
 Thrace. To the south something is known of 
 Egypt, with its magnificent capital, Thebes of 
 the hundred gates, and its one great river; and 
 oftheSidonians, who send their merchant-ships 
 all over the seas trading in dyed cloth, all kinds 
 of metal work, ivory, and precious stones. Far 
 in the extreme ends of the earth to east and 
 west (as we still speak of the East and West 
 Indies) live the Aethiopians or Dark-faces, the 
 most remote of men. On the northern coast of 
 Africa live the lotus-eaters, and beyond them 
 the pygmies or dwarfs (the same dwarfs who 
 
 13 
 
are still to be found about the sources of the 
 Congo), who make war with the cranes every 
 yearon their migration. Strange echoes of more 
 fabulous lands come in the stories of the places 
 to which Odysseus in the Odyssey travels — or 
 says he has travelled, for that is not quite the 
 same thing. The floating island of King Aeolus, 
 who keeps the winds bound in his palace, is girt 
 by a wall of bronze running sheer up from the 
 sea. This is the poet's version of a volcanic is- 
 land, such as Stromboli, with its sheer cliffs of 
 metallic-looking basalt, and its coast fringed 
 with fields of floating pumice-stone thrown out 
 from its crater, round which thunder-clouds 
 gather and tempests break forth. Telepylos, or 
 High-gate, is the city of the Laestrygonians, a 
 race of cannibal giants. In it ' the out-goings 
 of the night & the day are near together ' : some 
 rumour of the Ardlic summer and the midsum- 
 mer midnight Norway sun setting into sunrise 
 had drifted down to the Greek coast; there, we 
 are told, a man who needed no sleep might earn 
 a double wage, one as an oxherd, and the other 
 as a shepherd. In the islandof Aeaea there lives 
 in her palace in the thick oakwood a terrible en- 
 chantress, Circe, daughter of the Sun ; & there, 
 the poet says, is the land of sunrising, and the 
 dwelling-place and dancing-ground of Dawn. 
 
 14 
 
The land where Odysseus is to go on his last 
 journey is so far from the sea that the people of 
 it have never tasted salt, and will call the oar 
 which he carries a winnowing fan. From the 
 island of Circe he sails across the Ocean-river 
 to visit another more terrible land ; ' a waste 
 shore and the groves of Light-in-darkness, tall 
 poplar trees, and willows that shed their fruit,' 
 from which one may see the mouldering House 
 of Hades, and the four streams of Hell, the river 
 of shuddering, the river of wailing, the river of 
 sighing, and the river of burning fire. Last of 
 all he comes to the enchanted city of thePhaea- 
 cians, an earthly Paradise in a lonely sea, far 
 from men or traffic, where there are magical 
 ships that have no helms, nor oar or sail, but 
 of their own selves know the will of their pas- 
 sengers, and carry them across the sea by night 
 where they wish to go. 
 
 3. To return to the known world. Each 
 people is ruled by a king, whose title is * people- 
 leader,' or in fuller phrase, ' shepherd of the 
 people,' and ' protestor of men.' He is leader 
 in war, supreme judge, and president of the as- 
 sembly of the people. He rules by divine he- 
 reditary right, but he may not disregard the 
 Council of Elders, nor the assembly, which 
 consists of all the freemen of the kingdom. If 
 
 15 
 
illf tfie wfidle Mjck €artfi witfi it, afld an file 
 fi¥»§ run fM, Md iiie t0ncttt%taurMniflibc 
 §kfi§ nnd nUh hesMon^ from tiie Mils damn 
 
 U>illl€purpk§a^,roMit^2kAid,zodtbcfaams 
 of men crumble zw2y/ 
 
 4, The Godf love righteousness znd hate 
 iniquity. The dependence oi men on a spedal 
 h^venly Providence is msMer of certain am- 
 vidiion. To live justly is the service which the 
 Godi require; theirfavour surely follows when 
 that service is paid, their vengeance as surely, 
 though sometimes after a long interval, when 
 it is negleded, 'All mankind need Gods,' says 
 Pisiitratus, son of Nestor, to his guest, who 
 haH brought an unknown stranger with him: 
 ' give y(;ur friend the cup that he may make 
 offering, for he too, I suppose, prays to the 
 immortal Gods/ Simple piety is assumed as 
 natural to all men. The stranger and the beg- 
 gar are in the special protedion of heaven; it 
 is sacrilege to turn away from the gate any one 
 who has asked hospitality. Individual Gods 
 and Goddesses are very like magnified men 
 & women; they have human failings, human 
 
 16 
 
loves and hatreds, and even quarrel among one 
 another. But alongside of this multitude of 
 Gods, with their brilliant and restless life, is 
 the steady notion of a single power called the 
 Watching. To disregard this Watching is the 
 height of folly and crime. Even pirates, we are 
 told, when they have sacked a town, and sail 
 away with their ships laden with plunder un- 
 der the long trail of smoke from the burning 
 houses, are in great fear of the Watching. 
 Concurrent with the will of the Gods is a dark 
 mysterious power called Fate or Doom, which 
 spins the thread of each man's destiny at his 
 birth unalterably, and other powers called the 
 Erinyes or Avengers, which uphold right a- 
 mong Gods and men alike by punishing wrong 
 doing. 
 
 5. What is perhaps most beautiful in the 
 Homeric poems is the pidlure they give of so- 
 cial and domestic life. Rather than go into a 
 tedious stc^tement of the condition of the family 
 in Homer, 7 will mention a few passages from 
 the Iliad and Odyssey which bear upon it — 
 though indeea there is hardly a page of either 
 poem which does not bear upon it indiredlly. 
 
 On the shield of Achilles, forged for him by 
 the smith-god Hephaestus, are wrought repre- 
 sentations of life in peace and war. In the city 
 
 17 c 
 
of peace, ' a fair town of articulately speaking 
 men/ there are espousals and marriage-feasts. 
 Beneath the blaze of torches men are leading 
 a bride from her father's house through the 
 city, while the wedding-song rises loud ; young- 
 men are dancing in a ring to the music of flutes 
 and viols, and the women stand at their doors 
 and look on in admiration. In another scene 
 the young men and girls are dancing together, 
 holding one another's hands at the wrist, the 
 girls dressed in fine thin linen with their hair 
 garlanded. Outside the city wall is portrayed 
 a soft fresh ploughed field, with ploughmen 
 driving their yokes to and fro: also the same 
 field in harvest time, the harvesters reaping 
 with sharp sickles and the binders binding the 
 sheaves in twisted bands of straw. Behind 
 under an oak the indoor servants are making 
 ready supper, a roasted ox and barley bread, 
 for the reapers, and the king, with a staff in 
 his hand, stands on a furrow overlooking the 
 work, in silent gladness. Also there is a vint- 
 age scene, with girls carrying the sweet grape- 
 clusters in plaited baskets, a boy in the middle 
 sitting and singing to a viol. Beyond the tilled 
 land there are white sheep at pasture in a beau- 
 tiful valley, and a farm steading, and thatched 
 cottages, and sheepfolds. 
 
 i8 
 
Take again the scene where Telemachus in 
 the Odyssey comes to the house of King Men- 
 elaus at Sparta. He and his friend Pisistratus 
 have driven in their light chariot all day along 
 the wheat-bearing plain till sunset. At dusk 
 they reach the palace and drive straight into 
 the courtyard. Menelaus is entertaining com- 
 pany to supper, and a servant comes in to ask 
 him whether, as the house is already very full, 
 the new arrivals shall be sent on somewhere 
 else. The king is indignant at the very sug- 
 gestion: 'We also have eaten the bread of 
 many men in our wanderings,' he says ; * unyoke 
 their horses and bring them in.' The strangers 
 are at once brought in and made welcome. 
 First they are given a warm bath ; then they 
 sit down to supper, Menelaus saying to them, 
 * Taste food and be glad, and after you have 
 supped we will ask you what men you are.' 
 
 Still more remarkable is the whole descrip- 
 tion in the Odyssey of life in the city of the 
 Phaeacians, and of the meeting of Odysseus and 
 the Princess Nausicaa, one of the most perfed: 
 ladies in all poetry: so far as exquisite manners 
 go, both in men and women, no advance has 
 ever been made on this ideal Homeric world. 
 For this you should read the whole story in 
 the sixth and seventh books of the Odyssey. 
 
 19 
 
Or, once more, I may quote two of the ex- 
 quisite little pid;ures which are incidentally 
 given in similes. 
 
 When the God Apollo, going in front of the 
 Trojan army, dashes down the great earthen 
 rampart of the Greek camp and fills in the 
 ditch with it, making a bridgeway across it 
 for the full width of a spear-cast, the adlion is 
 described thus: 
 
 'As when a little boy scatters the sand on 
 the seashore, first making sand castles for 
 sport in his childishness, and then again in 
 play tumbling them down with his feet and 
 hands, even so didst thou, O archer Apollo, 
 overturn the long toil and labour of the 
 Greeks.' 
 
 Again, in the same day's fighting, when the 
 Greeks are being routed, and their champion 
 Achilles remains wrathfully in his tent and 
 will not go out to battle, his friend Patroclus 
 comes to him * shedding tears like a well-head 
 of dark water that pours its misty stream down 
 a rock-precipice,' to beseech him to help his 
 countrymen. Then Homer goes on: 
 
 ' And noble fleet-foot Achilles when he saw 
 him was grieved for his sake, and accosted 
 him and spoke winged words, saying. Why 
 weep you, Patroclus, like a baby girl that runs 
 
 20 
 
by her mother's side and cries to be carried, 
 pulling at her gown, and hindering her haste, 
 and looks up at her tearfully till she is lifted?* 
 6. The arts in Homer's world are still at an 
 early and simple stage. Weaving and spinning 
 are done at home by the women of the family. 
 Metal working is well advanced; iron is freely 
 used, but only for rougher implements; either 
 the ores worked were of poor quality or the 
 smelting was imperfedlly done: and so for ob- 
 jedls which require a fine temper or a cutting 
 edge it has not replaced bronze. Weapons and 
 armour are all of bronze. Rooms in rich houses 
 are lined with plates of hammered bronze, mixed 
 with plates of blue enamel made from copper 
 ore. Gold and silver are freely used for orna- 
 ments, and also, not stamped into coins, but 
 weighed, for money. Common houses are built 
 of wood; it is only those of important people 
 that are of stone. Brick is not mentioned. The 
 principal articles of food are bread (of wheat or 
 barley) , roast meat, and wine. Fish is only eaten 
 when meat is scarce. Fruit is plentiful, apples, 
 pears, figs, grapes, and pomegranates. Veget- 
 ables are not spoken of. Men's dress is a wool- 
 len shirt reaching to the knees, and over that a 
 cloak or plaid. Women wear a long gown of 
 wool or linen reaching to the feet and trailing 
 
 21 
 
slightly on the ground behind, fastened by a 
 girdle worn low down over the hips. On their 
 head they wear, married and unmarried women 
 alike, a coif with a veil attached which falls 
 over the back and shoulders: they do not keep 
 their faces covered like Orientals, but if they 
 feel so disposed can bring the edges of the veil 
 forward on both sides so as partly to screen 
 their face. For fighting, the warrior has a hel- 
 met, breast-plate and back-plate, greaves, belt, 
 and shield, all plated with bronze ; he carries 
 two long spears of ashwood with bronze heads, 
 which are either thrown from a short distance 
 or thrust with at close quarters, and a very short 
 sword, rather like a heavy knife. In fighting 
 also, as in hunting, bows and arrows are used, 
 but the archer is counted an inferior sort of 
 warrior. Though horses are trained, and the 
 art of riding perfectly known, cavalry are not 
 used in battle : the breed of horses was small 
 & not strong enough to carry a fighting man 
 with his heavy bronze armour any great dis- 
 tance: they fight either on foot or from light cha- 
 riots drawn by a pair of horses yoked to a single 
 shaft, sometimes with athird trace-horse along- 
 side of them. The art of writing is not prac- 
 tised nor is any allusion made to it. This fadl 
 has been taken to prove that the I Had & Odyssey 
 
 22 
 
cannot have been written down till long after 
 they were composed ; it proves at all events that 
 writing was no necessary art in such a life as 
 was then imagined ideal or desirable. Men get 
 their livelihood either by farming, or by trad- 
 ing with merchant-ships, or as artificers. The 
 ruler has a domain of public land for his life 
 use, and supports his household and retainers 
 fromit. Shipbuilding is a great art among them. 
 Somewhat beneath the freeman who does his 
 own work ranks the free hired labourer, who 
 has a rather hard life unless he has a good 
 master. Below these again is the class of slaves. 
 Prisoners taken in war become slaves, and so 
 do people who are kidnapped by pirates. But 
 slaves are always conceived of as being kindly 
 treated and attached to their masters. In fad: 
 there is in all this Homeric world no trace of 
 any such thing as a strife between classes. Life 
 is throughout carried on under the sandlion of 
 custom; and this custom, though liable to out- 
 bursts of savagery under the influence of great 
 excitement, is mild and humane in its ordinary 
 working. Justice & kindness bring the reward 
 of ease and plenty; and increase of wealth to 
 the rich is not wrung from the poor but makes 
 them, too, richer. 
 
 And now to return to Homer as a poet. 
 
 23 
 
The consent of all competent judges from 
 the earliest recorded time to our own has placed 
 the Homeric poems at the very head of all poetry. 
 To the Greeks, as I have said already, Homer 
 was simply ' the poet,' all epithets failing them 
 in their desire to do him honour. Amongst the 
 Latins, Lucretius speaks of him as holding the 
 single sceptre in the train of the Muses; Virgil 
 was called the Roman Homer as the highest 
 praise that could be given him. Dante in his 
 vision sees him leading the band of poets as 
 their lord and sovereign. Milton would fain 
 be equalled with him in renown. At the period 
 when enthusiasm for poetry was most dead in 
 England, Pope, in the preface to his celebrated 
 translation, uses these remarkable words: 
 
 ' It is to the strength of this amazing in- 
 vention we are to attribute that unequalled fire 
 and rapture which is so forcible in Homer, 
 that no man of a true poetical spirit is master 
 of himself while he reads him. What he writes 
 is of the most animated nature imaginable: 
 everything moves, everything lives, and is put 
 in ad:ion. If a council be called, or a battle 
 fought, you are not coldly informed of what 
 was said or done, as from a third person ; the 
 reader is hurried out of himself by the force of 
 the poet's imagination, and turns in one place 
 
 24 
 
to a hearer, in another to a spectator. The 
 course of his verses resembles that of the army 
 he describes, '' they pour along like a fire that 
 sweeps the whole earth before it." Exadl dispo- 
 sition, just thought, corred: elocution, polished 
 numbers, may have been found in a thousand ; 
 but this poetic fire in a very few. Even in 
 works where all those are imperfedl or neg- 
 ledled, this can overpower criticism, and make 
 us admire even while we disapprove. Nay, 
 where this appears, though attended with ab- 
 surdities, it brightens all the rubbish about it 
 till we see nothing but its own splendour. This 
 fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as 
 through a glass, refledled from Homer, more 
 shining than fierce, but everywhere equal and 
 constant; in Milton it glows like a furnace 
 kept up to an uncommon ardour by the force 
 of art; in Shakespeare it strikes before we are 
 aware, like an accidental fire from heaven ; but 
 in Homer, and in him only, it burns every- 
 where clearly, and everywhere irresistibly. 
 
 * Homer not only appears the inventor of 
 poetry, but excels all the inventors of other arts 
 in this, that he has swallowed up the honour 
 of those who succeeded him. What he has done 
 admitted no increase ; it only left room for 
 contraction or regulation. He showed all the 
 
 25 D 
 
stretch of fancy at once ; and if he has failed 
 in some of his flights, it was but because he 
 attempted everything. A work of this kind 
 seems like a mighty tree, which rises from the 
 most vigorous seed, is improved with industry, 
 flourishes, and produces the finest fruit: na- 
 ture and art conspire to raise it: pleasure and 
 profit join to make it valuable: and they who 
 find the justest faults, have only said that a 
 few branches, which run luxuriant through a 
 richness of nature, might be lopped into form 
 to give it a more regular appearance.' 
 
 This is how Pope speaks of the author of 
 the Iliad. I should like to read, in confirma- 
 tion of it, a passage from Pope's translation ; 
 only saying this beforehand, that while it gives 
 a good notion of Homer's splendour, it fails to 
 render his equally admirable simplicity and 
 directness. The passage I have chosen is from 
 the sixth book. Hedlor, the Trojan captain, has 
 armed himself to go out to battle, but he first 
 goes to find his wife Andromache, & bid what 
 he forebodes (as indeed turns out to be the case) 
 will be a last farewell to her & to his infant son. 
 
 At home he sought her, but he sought in vain: 
 She, with one maid of all her menial train, 
 Had thence retired ; and with her second joy, 
 
 z6 
 
The young Astyanax, the hope of Troy, 
 Pensive she stood on Ilion's towery height; 
 Beheld the war, and sicken'd at the sight ; 
 There her sad eyes in vain her lord explore, 
 Or weep the wounds her bleeding country bore. 
 
 But he who found not whom his soul desired, 
 Whose virtue charm'd him as her beauty fired. 
 Stood in the gates, and ask'd *What way she bent 
 Her parting step? If to the fane she went, 
 Where late the mourning matrons made resort ; 
 Or sought her sisters in the Trojan court?' 
 ' Not to the court, (replied the attendant train). 
 Nor mix'd with matrons to Minerva's fane: 
 To Ilion's steepy tower she bent her way, 
 To mark the fortunes of the doubtful day. 
 Troy fled, she heard, before the Grecian sword; 
 She heard, and trembled for her absent lord.' 
 
 Hedor, this heard, return'd without delay; 
 Swift through the town he trod his former way. 
 Through streets of palaces, and walks of state; 
 And met the mourner at the Scaean gate. 
 The nurse stood near, in whose embraces press'd 
 His only hope hung smiling at her breast. 
 Whom each soft charm and early grace adorn. 
 Fair as the new-born star that gilds the morn. 
 Silent the warrior smiled, and pleased resign'd 
 To tender passions all his mighty mind ; 
 His beauteous princess cast a mournful look, 
 
 27 
 
Hung on his hand, and then dejedled spoke; 
 Her bosom labour'd with a boding sigh, 
 And the big tear stood trembling in her eye. 
 
 * Too daring prince ! ah, whither dost thou run ? 
 Ah, too forgetful of thy wife and son ! 
 And think'st thou not how wretched we shall be, 
 A widow I, a helpless orphan he? 
 For sure such courage length of life denies. 
 And thou must fall, thy virtue's sacrifice. 
 Thou from this tower defend the important post; 
 There Agamemnon points his dreadful host. 
 Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack have given. 
 Or led by hopes, or didlated from heaven. 
 Let others in the field their arms employ, 
 But stay my Hedlor, here, and guard his Troy.' 
 
 The chief replied : 'That post shall be my care. 
 Not that alone, but all the works of war. 
 How would the sons of Troy, in arms renown'd, 
 And Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the 
 Attaint the lustre of my former name, [ground. 
 Should Hedlor basely quit the field of fame? 
 My early youth was bred to martial pains, 
 My soul impels me to the embattled plains; 
 Let me be foremost to defend the throne. 
 And guard my father's glories, and my own. 
 
 ' Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates; 
 (How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!) 
 The day when thou, imperial Troy I must bend, 
 
 ?8 
 
And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end. 
 And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind, 
 My mother's death, the ruin of my kind, 
 Not Priam's hoary hairs defiled with gore. 
 Not all my brothers gasping on the shore. 
 As thine, Andromache! Thy griefs I dread; 
 I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led. 
 In Argive looms our battles to design. 
 And woes, of which so large a part was thine: 
 To bear the vidlor s hard commands, or bring 
 The weight of waters from Hyperia's spring. 
 There while you groan beneath the load of life, 
 They cry, Behold the mighty Hedlor's wife! 
 Some haughty Greek, who lives thy tears to see, 
 Embitters all thy woes by naming me. 
 The thoughts of glory past, and present shame 
 A thousand griefs shall waken at the name. 
 May I lie cold before that dreadful day, 
 Press'd with a load of monumental clay! 
 Thy Hedlor, wrapt in everlasting sleep. 
 Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep.' 
 
 Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy 
 Stretch'd his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy. 
 The babe clung crying to his nurse's breast. 
 Scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest. 
 With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled. 
 And Hedtor hasted to relieve his child, 
 The glittering terrors from his brows unbound, 
 
 29 
 
And placed the beaming helmet on the ground ; 
 Then kiss'd the child, and, lifting high in air, 
 Thus to the Gods preferr'd a father's prayer: 
 
 ' O thou whose glory fills the ethereal throne. 
 And all ye deathless powers! proted: my son! 
 Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown, 
 To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown. 
 Against his country's foes the war to wage, 
 And rise the Hedlor of the future age! 
 So when triumphant from successful toils 
 Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils. 
 Whole hosts may hail him with deserved acclaim, 
 And say, This chief transcends his father's fame : 
 While pleased amidst the general shouts of Troy, 
 His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy.' 
 
 He spoke, and fondly gazing on her charms. 
 Restored the pleasing burden to her arms; 
 Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid, 
 Hush'd to repose, and with a smile survey'd. 
 The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear, 
 She mingled with a smile a tender tear. 
 The soften'd chief with kind compassion view'd 
 And dried the falling drops, and thus pursued: 
 
 'Andromache! my soul's far better part. 
 Why with untimely sorrows heaves thy heart? 
 No hostile hand can antedate my doom, 
 Till fate condemns me to the silent tomb. 
 Fix'd is the term to all the race of earth; 
 
 30 
 
I 
 
 And such the hard condition of our birth: 
 No force can then resist, no flight can save, 
 All sink alike, the fearful and the brave/ 
 
 A passage from another verse translation 
 of the Odyssey in a more modern manner may 
 follow, to give some idea of what is as remark- 
 able in Homer as his elevation and splendour, 
 andwhat Pope, & the eighteenth century gener- 
 ally, did not quite fully appreciate. This other 
 quality is his delicate and romantic beauty. 
 
 In the Odyssey, Telemachus, the only son 
 of Odysseus and Penelope, who has just grown 
 up to manhood, has by the advice of the God- 
 dess Athena, sailed to the mainland to seek 
 news of his long-lost father. Odysseus has been 
 so long gone that nearly every one believes 
 him dead; and the palace is full of young 
 princes who have come to make suit to Pene- 
 lope, and who live at free quarters in her house. 
 Telemachus took his journey in secret, con- 
 cealing it even from his mother, that he might 
 not vex her; when it becomes known that he 
 is gone, she is in the utmost distress, and the 
 suitors are furious. Hitherto they had neg- 
 ledled him, as merely a boy ; now they realize 
 that he is a man, and that they must make an 
 end of him or he will make an end of them. 
 
 31 
 
They fill a ship with armed men, and send it to 
 lie in the channel by which he must sail home, 
 intending to capture and kill him. Meanwhile 
 Penelope prays to Athena, who comforts her in 
 a dream in the likeness of her sister Iphthime. 
 
 But in the upper chamber wretchedly 
 Fasting from food lay wise Penelope, 
 And meat and drink she touched not, musing deef 
 Whether the prince her son from death might flee, 
 
 Or be laid low and not return again 
 
 From the proud suitors' hands : and even as when 
 
 A lion full of fear uneasily 
 
 Broods in his heart amid the throng of men, 
 
 When round his lair the circling toils have swept ; 
 Such deep debate within her heart she kept: 
 Till slumber overcame her, and her limbs 
 Were loosened, and she sank adown and slept. 
 
 But now the grey-eyed Goddess taking thought 
 Another counsel yet devised and sought ; 
 And fashioned forth a phantom, in the shape 
 And bodily semblance of Iphthime wrought, 
 
 Icarius' child, that prince of high renown, 
 Wife of Eumelus, who in Pherae town 
 Abode; and to divine Odysseus' house 
 Upon Penelope she sent it down, 
 
 32 
 
To stay her from her sighs and tears she shed, 
 Weeping and wailing and uncomforted; 
 And through the keyhole of the door it passed 
 Into her bower and stood above her head; 
 
 And in these words its voice to her was borne: 
 
 * You sleep, Penelope, your heart forlorn 
 Within you: yet the Gods who live in bliss 
 Forbid you longer to lament and mourn. 
 
 * For yet your child returning you shall see, 
 Since not a sinner in God's sight is he/ 
 Then, slumbering softly in the gates of dreams, 
 Spake and made answer wise Penelope: 
 
 * Wherefore, O sister, are you come this day 
 Hither, a strange and unfamiliar way? 
 
 For far and far apart from us you dwell. 
 And now you bid me my distress allay 
 
 * And all the many pangs wherein are tossed 
 My heart and soul, who first of all have lost 
 My husband lion-hearted, who of old 
 
 Was excellent among the Danaan host 
 
 ' In all achievement; and like him was none 
 Through Hellas and mid-Argos fame that won. 
 And now once more upon a hollow ship 
 Is gone from me my own beloved son; 
 
 33 E 
 
'A child, that of men's words and deeds may know 
 But little: wherefore greater is my woe 
 For him than for that other, and for him 
 I fear and tremble lest to harm he go, 
 
 * At sea, or at a stranger people's hand. 
 Where he has journeyed : for against him stand, 
 Devising evil, many men who long 
 To slay him, ere he reach his native land.' 
 
 But answering spake to her the phantom dim: 
 ^Take courage, nor be much afraid for him: 
 So great the Guide is that beside him goes. 
 Whom men in peril of their life and limb 
 
 ' Have prayed full often by their side to stand, 
 Pallas Athena of the mighty hand. 
 And you she pities mourning: wherefore now 
 To tell you this I come at her command.' 
 
 Then spake and answered wise Penelope: 
 ' Now tell me, if a God indeed you be. 
 Or a God's voice have heard, concerning him, 
 That man ill-fated, whether haply he 
 
 ' Yet lives and looks upon the light of day. 
 Or down to the Dark House has gone his way.' 
 But answering spake to her the phantom dim : 
 ^ Hereof no answer plain return I may, 
 
 34 
 
' Whether in truth he be alive or dead. 
 Words are but wind, and often best unsaid/ 
 So saying, through the keyhole of the door 
 Into a breath of wind it vanished. 
 
 Then woke Icarius' daughter, and upright 
 Started from sleep, and all her heart was light 
 Within, because a dream so clear had come 
 Upon her in the darkness of the night. 
 
 Now let us take another passage, one of the 
 battle pieces in the Iliad, and translate it liter- 
 ally, in order to get some idea of Homer s sim- 
 plicity, some idea how vivid & rapid and diredl 
 he is. This passage shows us too, how, even 
 out of the cruelty and carnage of war, he brings 
 something that uplifts the heart & fills it with 
 no barbarous delight, but only with steadfast 
 courage and a great pity. It is the story of the 
 fighting by the ships in which the Lycian cap- 
 tain Sarpedon is slain by the Greek Patroclus. 
 Zeus longs to save him, but cannot oppose Fate. 
 
 'But Patroclus followed, calling the Greeks 
 fiercely on, and counselling ill against the Tro- 
 jans, who broke, and filled all the ways with 
 din and rout, and on high a whirlwind of dust 
 was scattered up to the clouds, as the hoofed 
 horses galloped back towards the city, away 
 
 35 
 
from the ships and huts. But even where Patro- 
 clus saw the press thickest, thither he drove on, 
 shouting, while men fell prone from their cha- 
 riots under the axle-trees and cars were flung 
 upside down; and straight over the trench in 
 forward career leapt the swift deathless horses. 
 NowwhenSarpedonsawhis unbelted comrades 
 fallen under the hands of Patroclus son of 
 Menoetius, he cried aloud in upbraiding to his 
 godlike Lycians: 
 
 'Shame, O Lycians! Whither do you flee? 
 Now be strong, for I will face this man, and 
 know who it is that conquers us : truly much 
 harm has he dealt to the Trojans, loosening 
 the knees of many men and good. 
 
 ' He spoke, and leapt in his armour to ground 
 out of the chariot. But Patroclus on the other 
 side, when he saw him, sprang from his; and 
 they, like vultures with crooked talons and 
 curved beaks that fight with loud screams on 
 some great cliff, rushed with a shout against 
 each other. But looking on them the son of 
 Cronus the Counsellor had pity, and said to 
 Hera his wedded sister: 
 
 ' Woe is me for fate, that Sarpedon, the best- 
 beloved of men, must go down before Patroclus 
 son of Menoetius. My heart in my breast is 
 divided in sundering purpose, whether I shall 
 
 36 
 
snatch him yet alive out of the tearful battle 
 & set him in the fat land of Lycia, or whether 
 I shall now subdue him under the hands of 
 the son of Menoetius. 
 
 * Thereat answered him the great-eyed Lady 
 Hera: 
 
 ' Most dread son of Cronus, what word is 
 this you have spoken? will you ransom from 
 sad-sounding death this man that is mortal & 
 long destined to doom? Do so : but all we other 
 Gods praise it not. This too I tell you : consider 
 it ; if you send Sarpedon home alive, bethink 
 you lest then another God also may wish to 
 save a son of his own likewise out of the violent 
 battle; for many children of the Immortals 
 fight round Priam's great city : so will you stir 
 fierce anger among us. But if he is dear to you 
 and your heart is pitiful, then suffer him indeed 
 to fall in the strong battle beneath the hands of 
 Patroclus son of Menoetius, but when breath 
 and life have left him, send Death & unawaken- 
 ing Sleep to carry him till they reach the land 
 of wide Lycia, where his kith and kin will bury 
 him, with a mound and pillar, as is the due of 
 the dead. 
 
 ' So she spoke, and the father of Gods & men 
 disregarded her not : but he shed a drizzle of 
 blood upon earth, honouring his dear son, whom 
 
 37 
 
Patroclus was about to slay in fruitful Troy 
 far from his native land. 
 
 ' So when they advanced and closed, there 
 Patroclus struck noble Thrasymelus, the good 
 squire of prince Sarpedon, low down on the 
 belly, and loosened his limbs. And Sarpedon in 
 his turn threw & missed him with his shining 
 spear, but wounded his horse Pedasus on the 
 right shoulder, who screamed as he breathed 
 out his life, and fell moaning in the dust, and 
 his spirit fled away. But the other two horses 
 reared asunder, and the yoke creaked and the 
 reins fell in a heap on them, as the trace-horse 
 lay in the dust. Yet Automedon the good spear- 
 man found a remedy: drawing the keen-edged 
 sword where it hung by his stout thigh he 
 sprang out & cut the horse loose, not fumbling 
 about it; so the pair righted themselves and 
 straightened out the traces, and the chiefs met 
 again in the fatal strife. 
 
 * Then Sarpedon missed again with his shin- 
 ing spear; the point flew over the left shoulder 
 of Patroclus and struck him not: but Patroclus 
 in turn darted the bronze, and the cast flew not 
 vainly from his hand, but struck, just where 
 the midriff" clasps the beating heart; & he fell, 
 as falls an oak or a silver poplar or a tall pine, 
 that shipwrights on the hills fell with whetted 
 
 38 
 
axes to be ship-timber: even so he lay along in 
 front of chariot and horses, moaning aloud and 
 clutching at the bloody dust. Even as when a 
 lion has sprung upon a herd & killed a flame- 
 coloured bull, high of courage among the sway- 
 ing oxen, and under the lion's claws he groans 
 and dies, so under Patroclus the captain of the 
 shielded Lycians writhed in death and called 
 aloud to his comrade: 
 
 ' Dear Glaucus, warrior among men, now is 
 good need that you be a spearman and brave in 
 battle: now let baleful war be your desire, if 
 you are swift of your hands. Fight for me with 
 bronze; for henceforward and all your days I 
 shall be a shame and reproach to you, if the 
 Greeks strip me of my armour when I am 
 fallen in battle at the ships. Stand strongly, 
 and hearten all the people. 
 
 ' So as he spoke the end of death covered his 
 eyes.' 
 
 One more passage, even more famous than 
 any of these, I may give. It is from the last 
 book of the Iliad. When Hedlor, the prop of 
 Troy, has been slain by Achilles and dragged 
 at his chariot wheels, his corpse lies unburied 
 in the Greek camp. But the Gods take pity at 
 this, and send Hermes to conduct King Priam 
 into the Greek lines by night. Under this super- 
 
 39 
 
natural guidance he passes unseen through the 
 Greek sentinels, the gates of the entrenchment 
 unbar and open of themselves before him, and 
 he comes to the tent of Achilles and begs his 
 son's body. Achilles relents so far as to give 
 him the body, and before daybreak he again 
 passes unseen out of the camp, still under the 
 guidance of Hermes. 
 
 'But when they came to the ford of the fair- 
 flowing river, then Hermes passed away to 
 wide heaven, and yellow Dawn began to spread 
 over all the land. So with wail and moan they 
 drove the horses to the city, & the mules drew 
 the dead man. And no one knew them, man or 
 fair-girdled woman, until Cassandra, beautiful 
 as the golden daughter of the Foam, climbed 
 upon the fortress-tower & was aware of her own 
 father as he stood in the chariot, and the herald 
 with him, the crier to the town. Then she saw 
 him who lay on the bier behind the mules, and 
 thereat she wailed and cried aloud through all 
 the city, 
 
 ' Come hither, men and women of Troy, and 
 look upon Hed;or, if ever while he yet lived you 
 rejoiced when he came back out of battle; for 
 great rejoicing was he to the city & all the folk. 
 
 ' So she spoke; and not a man or woman was 
 left in the city, for sorrow beyond bearing over- 
 
 40 
 
came them all; and near the gates they met 
 Priam bringing home the dead. Foremost his 
 own wife and the Queen his mother cast them- 
 selves on the wheeled carriage and rent their 
 hair, and touched his head ; & round them stood 
 the multitude weeping. And all day long till 
 sunset would they have wept & wailed for Hec- 
 tor without the gates, had not the old man from 
 his chariot spoken among the people, 
 
 * Give place for the mules to pass through : 
 hereafter you shall have your fill of lamenta- 
 tion, when I have brought him home. 
 
 ' So he spoke, and they stood apart and gave 
 place for the waggon. And they, when they had 
 brought him to the glorious house, laid him on 
 a carved bed, & set by him singers to lead the 
 dirge; &theydirged him withasong of lament- 
 ation, and the women made moan after them. 
 And among the women white-armed Andro- 
 macheledthe lamentation, holding between her 
 hands the head of Hedlor slayer of men. 
 
 * Husband, you are perished youngout of life, 
 and leave me a widow in your house, and the 
 child is yet but a little one, the child of ill-fated 
 parents, you and me; nor, I think, will he grow 
 to manhood, for first shall this city be sacked 
 utterly, since you are perished, its watcher, who 
 guarded it and kept its careful wives and little 
 
 41 F 
 
babies. Soon shall they beborne inhollowships, 
 and I myself with them; & you, O child, shall 
 either go with me to a place where you must 
 labour at mean work, toiling before the face of 
 an unmerciful lord, or else some Greek will 
 grasp you by the wrist and fling you from the 
 battlements, a grievous death, in his wrath be- 
 cause Hedor slew his brother or father or son ; 
 since many and many a Greek under Hedlor s 
 hands has bitten earth's measureless floor ; for 
 no light hand had your father in the bitter fight; 
 therefore the people lament him amid the city. 
 Woeful wailing and grief have you left to your 
 parents, O Hedlor, but the bitterest sorrow shall 
 remain with me; because neither did you stretch 
 your hand to me from the deathbed, nor say to 
 me one precious word that I might have remem- 
 bered while my tears kept falling, through all 
 the nights and days. 
 
 ' So she spoke, weeping, & the women wailed 
 after her. And again among them Hecuba led 
 the loud lamentation. 
 
 * Heftor, far the dearest to mine heart of all 
 my children, surely while yet alive you were 
 dear to the Gods, & even in the doom of death 
 they have cared for you. Other sons of mine 
 fleet-footed Achilles took captive & sold across 
 the unharvested sea to Samos or Imbros, or 
 
 42 
 
cloud-capt Lemnos ; but you he slew with the 
 long-edged bronze & dragged round & round 
 the tomb of his comrade, even Patroclus whom 
 you slew; howbeit not so did he raise him up 
 again. Yet now dewy and fresh you lie in 
 hall, like him whom silver-shafted Apollo has 
 touched and slain with his soft arrows. 
 
 ' So she spoke, weeping, and stirred up the 
 unending lamentation.* 
 
 And here one might fancy that the last word 
 had been spoken. But there is just one more: 
 there is still a further depth to sound in awe & 
 pity. The grief of the wife, the grief of the mo- 
 ther, over the dead warrior is piercing indeed, 
 yet such as is poured forth over many men. We 
 should hardly remember Hedor as we do if he 
 had been only a good son and a kind husband : 
 it is not that, beautiful as that is, which has 
 made his name imperishable. The war of Troy 
 was kindled by the beauty of Helen; it was for 
 her sake that all those heroes fought and fell. 
 Her beauty blinded the whole people; they 
 cursed her & yet could not bear to give her up. 
 Hedlor himself (he was not a very clever man) 
 had no illusions about her; he had always con- 
 demned his brother Paris for carrying her 
 away ; 'a sore mischief she is,' he tells him once 
 to his face, ' to our father and the city and all 
 
 43 
 
the realm/ But to Helen herself he had never 
 spoken an unkind word. I go on with the 
 Homer. 
 
 ' And then third among them Helen led the 
 lamentation. 
 
 * Hedor, far the dearest to mine heart of all 
 my brothers; since godlike Alexandros, my 
 lord, brought me to Troy — would to God I had. 
 died first ! this is now the twentieth year since 
 I came thence and departed from my own land; 
 but from you I never heard an ill word or a 
 harsh : nay, if another ever taunted me in the 
 palace, whether brother of yours or sister or 
 goodly-gowned sister-in-law, or your mother 
 — but your father was ever kind to me as if he 
 were my own — then would you silence and 
 soothe such an one with words, with your gen- 
 tle-heartedness and with your gentle words: 
 therefore I weep for you and my miserable self 
 together, in bitterness of heart; for there is not 
 one other left in all wide Troy to be kind or 
 dear to me, but they all abhor me.' 
 
 Hedlor is not the hero of the Iliad, at least in 
 the sense of being the principal figure in it, or 
 the one upon whom all the ad:ion hinges. But 
 this is the sort of thing that makes us under- 
 stand why later ages regarded him with a feel- 
 ing hardly short of worship. 
 
 44 
 
'So she spoke, weeping; and the infinite 
 people moaned after her. But the aged Priam 
 spoke and said to the people, 
 
 ' Bring wood now, O Trojans, into the city, 
 and have no fear of a crafty ambush of the 
 Greeks; for Achilles sent me away from the 
 black ships with this message, that he will do 
 us no harm till the twelfth dawn shine. 
 
 'Thus he spoke: and they yoked oxen and 
 mules to waggons, and quickly gathered before 
 the city. Nine days they carried an endless 
 store of wood, but when the tenth dawn shone 
 and lightened upon men, then they carried 
 forth brave Hedlor, shedding tears, and laid 
 the dead man on the top of the pile, and set 
 fire to it. 
 
 ' But when the Lady of Morning, rose-footed 
 Dawn, shone forth, then the people gathered 
 round glorious Hed;or s pyre ; and first with 
 flame-coloured wine they quenched all the 
 burning, as far as the strength of the fire had 
 gone, and then his brothers and comrades 
 gathered his white bones, lamenting, and the 
 big tear trickled down their cheeks. And these 
 they took and laid in a golden coffer wrapt in 
 soft crimson cloths, & straightway laid the cof- 
 fer in a hollow grave and piled above it a great 
 store of large stones, and heaped the mound 
 
 45 
 
quickly, with watchers set all about, lest the 
 mail-clad Greeks might attack before the time. 
 But when they had heaped the mound they 
 went back and gathered together as is fit, and 
 feasted the feast of honour in the palace of 
 Priam, the god-fostered King. 
 
 ' So these held funeral for Hedlor the 
 knight.' 
 
 This is the end of the Iliad. Noble & simple 
 as Homer is always, he excels himself here in 
 the way he finishes his story. The poet Cow- 
 per, who translated Homer, says in a note at 
 the end of his translation, T cannot take my 
 leave of this noble poem without expressing 
 how much I am struck with this plain conclu- 
 sion of it. It is like the exit of a great man out 
 of company whom he has entertained magnifi- 
 cently, neither pompous nor familiar; not con- 
 temptuous, yet without much ceremony. I re- 
 coiled nothing among the works of mere man 
 that exemplifies so strongly the true style of 
 great antiquity.' 
 
 Let us think then for a moment and try to 
 express in precise words what Homer has to . 
 do with us, what his value for us is. Our con- 
 cern, everywhere and at every moment, is with 
 the life in us and around us, the power and 
 the will to live it well. All life lives upon ideals, 
 
 46 
 
strives by the very law of its nature towards 
 an unattained good. What we most urgently 
 need, here and now, for ourselves and for the 
 society to which we belong, is to keep an ideal 
 of life, lived nobly and simply, perpetually 
 burning before us like a fire. Now among the 
 ideals of a noble and simple life that set before 
 us in Homer is one of the highest that have 
 ever been conceived by man. 
 
 47 
 
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