Homer and His Age Part 3

The lines disputed by the Megarians occur in the _Catalogue_, and, as to the date and original purpose of the _Catalogue_, the most various opinions prevail. In Mr. Leaf's earlier edition of the _Iliad_ (vol. i.

p. 37), he says that "nothing convincing has been urged to show" that the _Catalogue_ is "of late origin." We know, from the story of Solon and the Megarians, that the _Catalogue_ "was considered a cla.s.sical work--the Domesday Book of Greece, at a very early date"--say 600-580 B.C. "It agrees with the poems in being pre-Dorian" (except in lines 653-670).

"There seems therefore to be no valid reason for doubting that it, like the bulk of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, was composed in Achaean times, and carried with the emigrants to the coast of Asia Minor...."

In his new edition (vol. ii. p. 86), Mr. Leaf concludes that the _Catalogue_ "originally formed an introduction to the whole Cycle," the compiling of "the whole Cycle" being of uncertain date, but very late indeed, on any theory. The author "studiously preserves an ante-Dorian standpoint. It is admitted that there can be little doubt that some of the material, at least, is old."

These opinions are very different from those expressed by Mr. Leaf in 1886. He cannot now give "even an approximate date for the composition of the _Catalogue_" which, we conceive, must be the latest thing in Homer, if it was composed "for that portion of the whole Cycle which, as worked up in a separate poem, was called the _Kypria_" for the _Kypria_ is obviously a very late performance, done as a prelude to the _Iliad_.

I am unable to imagine how this mutilated pa.s.sage of Diogenes, even if rightly restored, proves that Dieuchidas, a writer of the fourth century B.C., alleged that Pisistratus made a collection of scattered Homeric poems--in fact, made "a standard text."

The Pisistratean hypothesis "was not so long ago unfas.h.i.+onable, but in the last few years a clear reaction has set in," says Mr. Leaf.

[Footnote: _Iliad_, i. p. XIX.]

The reaction has not affected that celebrated scholar, Dr. Bla.s.s, who, with Teutonic frankness, calls the Pisistratean edition "an absurd legend." [Footnote: Bla.s.s, Die _Interpolationen_ in der _Odyssee_, pp. I, 2. Halle, 1904.] Meyer says that the Alexandrians rejected the Pisistratean story "as a worthless fable," differing here from Mr. Leaf and Wilamowitz; and he spurns the legend, saying that it is incredible that the whole Greek world would allow the tyrants of Athens to palm off a Homer on them. [Footnote: Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, ii. 390, 391. 1893.]

Mr. T. W. Allen, an eminent textual scholar, treats the Pisistratean editor with no higher respect. In an Egyptian papyrus containing a fragment of Julius Africa.n.u.s, a Christian chronologer, Mr. Allen finds him talking confidently of the Pisistratidae. They "st.i.tched together the rest of the epic," but excised some magical formulae which Julius Africa.n.u.s preserves. Mr. Allen remarks: "The statements about Pisistratus belong to a well-established category, that of Homeric mythology.... The anecdotes about Pisistratus and the poet himself are on a par with Dares, who 'wrote the _Iliad_ before Homer.'" [Footnote: _Cla.s.sical Review_ xviii. 148.]

The editor of Pisistratus is hardly in fas.h.i.+on, though that is of no importance. Of importance is the want of evidence for the editor, and, as we have shown, the impossible character of the task allotted to him by the theory.

As I suppose Mr. Leaf to insinuate, "fas.h.i.+on" has really nothing to do with the question. People who disbelieve in written texts must, and do, oscillate between the theory of an Homeric "school" and the Wolfian theory that Pisistratus, or Solon, or somebody procured the making of the first written text at Athens in the sixth century--a theory which fails to account for the harmony of the picture of life in the poems, and, as Mr. Monro, Grote, Nutzhorn, and many others argue, lacks evidence.

As Mr. Monro reasons, and as Bla.s.s states the case bluntly, "Solon, or Pisistratus, or whoever it was, put a stop, at least as far as Athens was concerned, to the mangling of Homer" by the rhapsodists or reciters, each anxious to choose a pet pa.s.sage, and not going through the whole _Iliad_ in due sequence. "But the unity existed before the mangling.

That this has been so long and so stubbornly misunderstood is no credit to German scholars.h.i.+p: blind uncritical credulity on one side, limitless and arbitrary theorising on the other!" We are not solitary sceptics when we decline to accept the theory of Mr. Leaf. It is neither bottomed on evidence nor does it account for the facts in the case. That is to say, the evidence appeals to Mr. Leaf as valid, but is thought worse than inadequate by other great scholars, such as Monro and Bla.s.s; while the fact of the harmony of the picture of life, preserved through four or five centuries, appears to be left without explanation.

Mr. Leaf holds that, in order to organise recitations in due sequence, the making of a text, presenting, for the first time, a due sequence, was necessary. His opponents hold that the sequence already existed, but was endangered by the desultory habits of the rhapsodists. We must here judge each for himself; there is no court of final appeal.

I confess to feeling some uncertainty about the correctness of my statement of Mr. Leaf's opinions. He and I both think an early Attic "recension" probable, or almost certain. But (see' "Conclusion") I regard such recension as distinct from the traditional "edition" of Pisistratus. Mr. Leaf, I learn, does not regard the "edition" as having "made" the _Iliad_; yet his descriptions of the processes and methods of his Pisistratean editor correspond to my idea of the "making" of our _Iliad_ as it stands. See, for example, Mr. Leaf's Introduction to _Iliad_, Book II. He will not even insist on the early Attic as the first _written_ text; if it was not, its general acceptance seems to remain a puzzle. He discards the idea of one Homeric "school" of paramount authority, but presumes that, as recitation was a profession, there must have been schools. We do not hear of them or know the nature of their teaching. The Beauvais "school" of _jongleurs_ in Lent (fourteenth century A.D.) seems to have been a holiday conference of strollers.

CHAPTER IV

LOOSE FEUDALISM: THE OVER-LORD IN "ILIAD," BOOKS I. AND II.

We now try to show that the Epics present an historical unity, a complete and harmonious picture of an age, in its political, social, legal, and religious aspects; in its customs, and in its military equipment. A long epic can only present an unity of historical ideas if it be the work of one age. Wandering minstrels, living through a succession of incompatible ages, civic, commercial, democratic, could not preserve, without flaw or failure, the att.i.tude, in the first place, of the poet of feudal princes towards an Over-Lord who rules them by undisputed right divine, but rules weakly, violently, unjustly, being subject to gusts of arrogance, and avarice, and repentance. Late poets not living in feudal society, and unfamiliar alike with its customary law, its jealousy of the Over-Lord, its conservative respect for his consecrated function, would inevitably miss the proper tone, and fail in some of the many [blank s.p.a.ce] of the feudal situation. This is all the more certain, if we accept Mr. Leaf's theory that each poet-rhapsodist's _repertoire_ varied from the _repertoires_ of the rest. There could be no unity of treatment in their handling of the character and position of the Over-Lord and of the customary law that regulates his relations with his peers. Again, no editor of 540 B.C. could construct an harmonious picture of the Over-Lord in relation to the princes out of the fragmentary _repertoires_ of strolling rhapsodists, which now lay before him in written versions. If the editor could do this, he was a man of Shakespearian genius, and had minute knowledge of a dead society.

This becomes evident when, in place of examining the _Iliad_ through microscopes, looking out for discrepancies, we study it in its large lines as a literary whole. The question being, Is the _Iliad_ a literary whole or a mere literary mosaic? we must ask "What, taking it provisionally as a literary whole, are the qualities of the poet as a painter of what we may call feudal society?"

Choosing the part of the Over-Lord Agamemnon, we must not forget that he is one of several a.n.a.logous figures in the national poetry and romance of other feudal ages. Of that great a.n.a.logous figure, Charlemagne, and of his relations with his peers in the earlier and later French mediaeval epics we shall later speak. Another example is Arthur, in some romances "the blameless king," in others _un roi faineant_.

The parallel Irish case is found in the Irish saga of Diarmaid and Grainne. We read Mr. O'Grady's introduction on the position of Eionn Mac c.u.mhail, the legendary Over-Lord of Ireland, the Agamemnon of the Celts.

"Fionn, like many men in power, is variable; he is at times magnanimous, at other times tyrannical and petty. Diarmaid, Oisin, Oscar, and Caoilte Mac Rohain are everywhere the [Greek: kaloi kachotoi] of the Fenians; of them we never hear anything bad." [Footnote: _Transactions of the Ossianic_ Society, vol. iii. p. 39.]

Human nature eternally repeats itself in similar conditions of society, French, Norse, Celtic, and Achaean. "We never hear anything bad" of Diomede, Odysseus, or Aias, and the evil in Achilles's resentment up to a certain point is legal, and not beyond what the poet thinks natural and pardonable in his circ.u.mstances.

The poet's view of Agamemnon is expressed in the speeches and conduct of the peers. In Book I. we see the bullying truculence of Agamemnon, wreaked first on the priest of Apollo, Chryses, then in threats against the prophet Chalcas, then in menaces against any prince on whom he chooses to avenge his loss of fair Chryseis, and, finally, in the Seizure of Briseis from Achilles.

This part of the First Book of the _Iliad_ is confessedly original, and there is no varying, throughout the Epic, from the strong and delicate drawing of an historical situation, and of a complex character.

Agamemnon is truculent, and eager to a.s.sert his authority, but he is also possessed of a heavy sense of his responsibilities, which often unmans him. He has a legal right to a separate "prize of honour" (geras) after each capture of spoil. Considering the wrath of Apollo for the wrong done in refusing his priest's offered ransom for his daughter, Agamemnon will give her back, "if that is better; rather would I see my folks whole than peris.h.i.+ng." [Footnote: _Iliad_, I. 115-117.]

Here we note points of feudal law and of kingly character. The giving and taking of ransom exists as it did in the Middle Ages; ransom is refused, death is dealt, as the war becomes more fierce towards its close. Agamemnon has sense enough to waive his right to the girlish prize, for the sake of his people, but is not so generous as to demand no compensation. But there are no fresh spoils to apportion, and the Over-Lord threatens to take the prize of one of his peers, even of Achilles.

Thereon Achilles does what was frequently done in the feudal age of western Europe, he "renounces his fealty," and will return to Phthia. He adds insult, "thou dog-face!" The whole situation, we shall show, recurs again and again in the epics of feudal France, the later epics of feudal discontent. Agamemnon replies that Achilles may do as he pleases. "I have others by my side that shall do me honour, and, above all, Zeus, Lord of Counsel" (I. 175). He rules, literally, by divine right, and we shall see that, in the French feudal epics, as in Homer, this claim of divine right is granted, even in the case of an insolent and cowardly Over-Lord. Achilles half draws "his great sword," one of the long, ponderous cut-and-thrust bronze swords of which we have actual examples from Mycenae and elsewhere. He is restrained by Athene, visible only to him. "With words, indeed," she says, "revile him .... hereafter shall goodly gifts come to thee, yea, in threefold measure...."

Gifts of atonement for "surquedry," like that of Agamemnon, are given and received in the French epics, for example, in the [blank s.p.a.ce].

The _Iliad_ throughout exhibits much interest in such gifts, and in the customary law as to their acceptance, and other ritual or etiquette of reconciliation. This fact, it will be shown, accounts for a pa.s.sage which critics reject, and which is tedious to our taste, as it probably was tedious to the age of the supposed late poets themselves. (Book XIX.). But the taste of a feudal audience, as of the audience of the Saga men, delighted in "realistic" descriptions of their own customs and customary law, as in descriptions of costume and armour. This is fortunate for students of customary law and costume, but wearies hearers and readers who desire the action to advance. Pa.s.sages of this kind would never be inserted by late poets, who had neither the knowledge of, nor any interest in, the subjects.

To return to Achilles, he is now within his right; the moral G.o.ddess a.s.sures him of that, and he is allowed to give the reins to his tongue, as he does in pa.s.sages to which the mediaeval epics offer many parallels. In the mediaeval epics, as in Homer, there is no idea of recourse to a duel between the Over-Lord and his peer. Achilles accuses Agamemnon of drunkenness, greed, and poltroonery. He does not return home, but swears by the sceptre that Agamemnon shall rue his _outrecuidance_ when Hector slays the host. By the law of the age Achilles remains within his right. His violent words are not resented by the other peers. They tacitly admit, as Athene admits, that Achilles has the right, being so grievously injured, to "renounce his fealty," till Agamemnon makes apology and gives gifts of atonement. Such, plainly, is the unwritten feudal law, which gives to the Over-Lord the lion's share of booty, the initiative in war and council, and the right to command; but limits him by the privilege of the peers to renounce their fealty under insufferable provocation. In no Book is Agamemnon so direfully insulted as in the First, which is admitted to be of the original "kernel." Elsewhere the sympathy of the poet occasionally enables him to feel the elements of pathos in the position of the over-tasked King of Men.

As concerns the apology and the gifts of atonement, the poet has feudal customary law and usage clearly before his eyes. He knows exactly what is due, and the limits of the rights of Over-Lord and prince, matters about which the late Ionian poets could only pick up information by a course of study in const.i.tutional history--the last thing they were likely to attempt--unless we suppose that they all kept their eyes on the "kernel," and that steadily, through centuries, generations of strollers worked on the lines laid down in that brief poem.

Thus the poet of Book IX.--one of "the latest expansions,"--thoroughly understands the legal and const.i.tutional situation, as between Agamemnon and Achilles. Or rather all the poets who collaborated in Book IX., which "had grown by a process of accretion," [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. 371.] understood the legal situation.

Returning to the poet's conception of Agamemnon, we find in the character of Agamemnon himself the key to the difficulties which critics discover in the Second Book. The difficulty is that when Zeus, won over to the cause of Achilles by Thetis, sends a false Dream to Agamemnon, the Dream tells the prince that he shall at once take Troy, and bids him summon the host to arms. But Agamemnon, far from doing that, summons the host to a peaceful a.s.sembly, with the well-known results of demoralisation.

Mr. Leaf explains the circ.u.mstances on his own theory of expansions compiled into a confused whole by a late editor. He thinks that probably there were two varying versions even of this earliest Book of the poem.

In one (A), the story went on from the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, to the holding of a general a.s.sembly "to consider the altered state of affairs." This is the a.s.sembly of Book H, but debate, in version A, was opened by Thersites, not by Agamemnon, and Thersites proposed instant flight! That was probably the earlier version.

In the other early version (B), after the quarrel between the chiefs, the story did not, as in A, go on straight to the a.s.sembly, but Achilles appealed to his mother, the fair sea-G.o.ddess, as in our Iliad, and she obtained from Zeus, as in the actual _Iliad_, his promise to honour Achilles by giving victory, in his absence, to the Trojans. The poet of version B, in fact, created the beautiful figure of Thetis, so essential to the development of the tenderness that underlies the ferocity of Achilles. The other and earliest poet, who treated of the Wrath of the author of version A, neglected that opportunity with all that it involved, and omitted the purpose of Zeus, which is mentioned in the fifth line of the Epic. The editor of 540 B.C., seeing good in both versions, A and B, "combined his information," and produced Books I. and II. of the _ILIAD_ as they stand. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p.

47.]

Mr. Leaf suggests that "there is some ground for supposing that the oldest version of the Wrath of Achilles did not contain the promise of Zeus to Thetis; it was a tale played exclusively on the earthly stage."

[Footnote: _Ibid_, vol. i. p. xxiii.] In that case the author of the oldest form (A) must have been a poet very inferior indeed to the later author of B who took up and altered his work. In _his_ version, Book I. does not end with the quarrel of the princes, but Achilles receives, with all the courtesy of his character, the unwelcome heralds of Agamemnon, and sends Briseis with them to the Over-Lord. He then with tears appeals to his G.o.ddess-mother, Thetis of the Sea, who rose from the grey mere like a mist, leaving the sea deeps where she dwelt beside her father, the ancient one of the waters. Then sat she face to face with her son as he let the tears down fall, and caressed him, saying, "Child, wherefore weepest thou, for what sorrow of heart? Hide it not, tell it to me; that I may know it as well as thou." Here the poet strikes the keynote of the character of Achilles, the deadly in war, the fierce in council, who weeps for his lost lady and his wounded honour, and cries for help to his mother, as little children cry.

Such is the Achilles of the _Iliad_ throughout and consistently, but such he was not to the mind of Mr. Leaf's probably elder poet, the author of version A. Thetis, in version B, promises to persuade Zeus to honour Achilles by making Agamemnon rue his absence, and, twelve days after the quarrel, wins the G.o.d's consent.

In Book II. Zeus reflects on his promise, and sends a false Dream to beguile Agamemnon, promising that now he shall take Troy. Agamemnon, while asleep, is full of hope; but when he wakens he dresses in mufti, in a soft doublet, a cloak, and sandals; takes his sword (swords were then worn as part of civil costume), and the ancestral sceptre, which he wields in peaceful a.s.semblies. Day dawns, and "he bids the heralds...."

A break here occurs, according to the theory.

Here (_Iliad_, Book II., line 50) the kernel ceases, Mr. Leaf says, and the editor of 540 B.C. plays his pranks for a while.

The kernel (or one of the _two_ kernels), we are to take up again at Book II., 443-483, and thence "skip" to XI. 56, and now "we have a narrative masterly in conception and smooth in execution," [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 47.] says Mr. Leaf. This kernel is kernel B, probably the later kernel of the pair, that in which Achilles appeals to his lady mother, who wins from Zeus the promise to cause Achaean defeat, till Achilles is duly honoured. The whole Epic turns on this promise of Zeus, as announced in the fifth, sixth, and seventh lines of the very first Book. If kernel A is the first kernel, the poet left out the essence of the plot he had announced. However, let us first examine probable kernel B, reading, as advised, Book II. 1-50, [blank s.p.a.ce]; XI. 56 ff.

We left Agamemnon (though the Dream bade him summon the host to arms) dressed in _civil costume_. His ancestral sceptre in his hand, he is going to hold a deliberative a.s.sembly of the unarmed host. His attire proves that fact ([Greek: _prepodaes de ae stolae to epi Boulaen exionti_], says the scholiast). Then if we skip, as advised, to II.

443-483 he bids the heralds call the host not to peaceful council, for which his costume is appropriate, but to _war_! The host gathers, "and in their midst the lord Agamemnon,"--still in civil costume, with his sceptre (he has not changed his attire as far as we are told)--"in face and eyes like Zeus; in waist like Ares" (G.o.d of war); "in breast like Poseidon,"--yet, for all that we are told, entirely unarmed! The host, however, were dressed "in innumerable bronze," "war was sweeter to them than to depart in their s.h.i.+ps to their dear native land,"--so much did Athene encourage them.

But n.o.body had been speaking of flight, in THE KERNEL B: THAT proposal was originally made by Thersites, in kernel A, and was attributed to Agamemnon in the part of Book II. where the editor blends A and B.

This part, at present, Mr. Leaf throws aside as a very late piece of compilation. Turning next, as directed, to XI. 56, we find the Trojans deploying in arms, and the hosts encounter with fury--Agamemnon still, for all that appears, in the raiment of peace, and with the sceptre of const.i.tutional monarchy. "In he rushed, first of all, and slew Bienor,"

and many other gentlemen of Troy, not with his sceptre!

Clearly all this is the reverse of "a narrative masterly in conception and smooth in execution:" it is an impossible narrative.

Mr. Leaf has attempted to disengage one of two forms of the old original poem from the parasitic later growths; he has promised to show us a smooth and masterly narrative, and the result is a narrative on which no Achasan poet could have ventured. In II. 50 the heralds are bidden [Greek: _kurussein_], that is to summon the host--to _what_? To a peaceful a.s.sembly, as Agamemnon's costume proves, says the next line (II. 51), but that is excised by Mr. Leaf, and we go on to II. 443, and the reunited pa.s.sage now reads, "Agamemnon bade the loud heralds" (II.

50) "call the Achaeans to battle" (II. 443), and they came, in harness, but their leader--when did he exchange chiton, cloak, and sceptre for helmet, s.h.i.+eld, and spear? A host appears in arms; a king who set out with sceptre and doublet is found with a spear, in bronze armour: and not another word is said about the Dream of Agamemnon.

It is perfectly obvious and certain that the two pieces of the broken kernel B do not fit together at all. Nor is this strange, if the kernel was really broken and endured the insertion of matter enough to fill nine Books (IL-XL). If kernel B really contained Book II., line 50, as Mr. Leaf avers, if Agamemnon, as in that line (50) "bade the clear-voiced heralds do...." something--what he bade them do was, necessarily, as his peaceful costume proves, to summon the peaceful a.s.sembly which he was to moderate with his sceptre. At such an a.s.sembly, or at a preliminary council of Chiefs, he would a.s.suredly speak of his Dream, as he does in the part excised. Mr. Leaf, if he will not have a peaceful a.s.sembly as part of kernel B, must begin his excision at the middle of line 42, in II., where Agamemnon wakens; and must make him dress not in mufti but in armour, and call the host of the Achaeans to arm, as the Dream bade him do, and as he does in II. 443. Perhaps we should then excise II. 45 2, 45 3, with the reference to the plan of retreat, for _THAT_ is part of kernel A where there was no promise of Zeus, and no Dream sent to Agamemnon. Then from II. 483, the description of the glorious armed aspect of Agamemnon, Mr. Leaf may pa.s.s to XI. 56, the account of the Trojans under Hector, of the battle, of the prowess of Agamemnon, inspired by the Dream which he, contrary to Homeric and French epic custom, has very wisely mentioned to n.o.body--that is, in the part not excised.

This appears to be the only method by which Mr. Leaf can restore the continuity of his kernel B.