Homer and His Age Part 5

But we reply, with Mr. Monro, that the Ninth Book is "almost necessary to any Achilleis." The question is, would a late editor or poet know all the details of customary law in such a case as a quarrel between Over-Lord and peer? would a feudal audience have been satisfied with a poem which did not wind the quarrel up in accordance with usage? and would a late poet, in a society no longer feudal, know how to wind it up? Would he find any demand on the part of his audience for a long series of statements, which to a modern seem to interrupt the story?

To ourselves it appears that a feudal audience desired the customary details; to such an audience they were most interesting.

This is a taste which, as has been said, we find in all early poetry and in the sagas; hence the long "runs" of the Celtic sagas, minutely repeated descriptions of customary things. The Icelandic saga-men never weary, though modern readers do, of legal details. For these reasons we reckon the pa.s.sages in Book XIX. about the reconciliation as original, and think they can be nothing else. It is quite natural that, in a feudal society of men who were sticklers for custom, the hearers should insist on having all things done duly and in order--the giving of the gifts and the feast of reconciliation--though the pa.s.sionate Achilles himself desires to fight at once. Odysseus insists that what we may call the regular routine shall be gone through. It is tedious to the modern reader, but it is surely much more probable that a feudal poet thus gratified his peculiar audience (he looked for no other) than that a late poet, with a different kind of audience, thrust the Reconciliation in as an "after-thought." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 317.]

The right thing must be done, Odysseus a.s.sures Achilles, "for I was born first, and know more things." It is not the right thing to fight at once, unfed, and before the solemn sacrifice by the Over-Lord, the prayer, the Oath of Agamemnon, and the reception of the gifts by Achilles; only after these formalities, and after the army has fed, can the host go forth. "I know more than you do; you are a younger man,"

says Odysseus, speaking in accordance with feudal character, at the risk of wearying later unforeseen generations.

This is not criticism inspired by mere "literary feeling," for "literary feeling" is on the side of Achilles, and wishes the story to hurry to his revenge. But ours is [blank s.p.a.ce] criticism; we must think of the poet in relation to his audience and of their demands, which we can estimate by similar demands, vouched for by the supply, in the early national poetry of other peoples and in the Icelandic sagas.

We hear no more of Agamemnon till, in Book XXIII, 35-38, after the slaying of Hector, Achilles "was brought to n.o.ble Agamemnon" (for that, as Odysseus said, was the regular procedure) "by the Achaean chiefs, hardly persuading him thereto, for his heart was wroth for his comrade."

Here they feast, Achilles still full of grief and resentment. He merely goes through the set forms, much against his will. It does appear to us that the later the poet the less he would have known or cared about the forms. An early society is always much interested in forms and in funerals and funeral games, so the poet indulges their taste with the last rites of Patroclus. The last view of Agamemnon is given when, at the end of the games, Achilles courteously presents him with the flowered _lebes_, the prize for hurling the spear, without asking him to compete, since his superior skill is notorious. This act of courtesy is the real reconciliation; previously Achilles had but gone reluctantly through the set forms in such cases provided. Even when Agamemnon offered the gifts of atonement, Achilles said, "Give them, as is customary, or keep them, as you please" (XIX. 146, 148). Achilles, young and pa.s.sionate, cares nothing for the feudal procedure.

This rapid survey seems to justify the conclusion that the poet presents an uniform and historically correct picture of the Over-Lord and of his relations with his peers, a picture which no late editor could have pieced together out of the widely varying _repertoires_ of late strolling reciters. Such reciters would gladly have forgotten, and such an editor would gladly have "cut" the "business" of the reconciliation.

They would also, in a democratic spirit, have degraded the Over-Lord into the tyrant, but throughout, however low Agamemnon may fall, the poet is guided by the knowledge that his right to rule is _jure divino_, that he has qualities, that his responsibilities are crus.h.i.+ng, "I, whom among all men Zeus hath planted for ever among labours, while my breath abides within me, and my limbs move," says the Over-Lord (X.

Sg, go.[sic]). In short, the poet's conception of the Over-Lord is throughout harmonious, is a contemporary conception entertained by a singer who lives among peers that own, and are jealous of, and obey an Over-Lord. The character and situation of Agamemnon are a poetic work of one age, one moment of culture.

CHAPTER VI

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE "ILIAD". BURIAL AND CREMATION

In archaeological discoveries we find the most convincing proofs that the _Iliad_, on the whole, is the production of a single age, not the patchwork of several changeful centuries. This may seem an audacious statement, as archaeology has been interpreted of late in such a manner as to demand precisely the opposite verdict. But if we can show, as we think we can, that many recent interpretations of the archaeological evidence are not valid, because they are not consistent, our contention, though unexpected, will be possible. It is that the combined testimony of archaeology and of the Epic proves the _Iliad_ to represent, as regards customs, weapons, and armour, a definite moment of evolution; a period between the age recorded in the art of the Mycenaean shaft graves and the age of early iron swords and the "Dipylon" period.

Before the discoveries of the material remains of the "Mycenzean"

times, the evidence of archaeology was seldom appropriately invoked in discussions of the Homeric question. But in the thirty years since Schliemann explored the buried relics of the Mycenzean Acropolis, his "Grave of Agamemnon," a series of excavations has laid bare the interments, the works of art, and the weapons and ornaments of years long prior to the revolution commonly a.s.sociated with the "Dorian Invasion" of about 1100-1000 B.C. The objects of all sorts which have been found in many sites of Greece and the isles, especially of Cyprus and Crete, in some respects tally closely with Homeric descriptions, in others vary from them widely. Nothing can be less surprising, if the heroes whose legendary feats inspired the poet lived centuries before his time, as Charlemagne and his Paladins lived some three centuries before the composition of the earliest extant _Chansons de Geste_ on their adventures. There was, in such a case, time for much change in the details of life, art, weapons and implements. Taking the relics in the graves of the Mycenaean Acropolis as a starting-point, some things would endure into the age of the poet, some would be modified, some would disappear.

We cannot tell how long previous to his own date the poet supposes the Achaean heroes to have existed. He frequently ascribes to them feats of strength which "no man of such as now are" could perform. This gives no definite period for the interval; he might be speaking of the great grandfathers of his own generation. But when he regards the heroes as closely connected by descent of one or two generations with the G.o.ds, and as in frequent and familiar intercourse with G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, we must suppose that he did not think their period recent. The singers of the _Chansons de Geste_ knew that angels' visits were few and far between at the period, say, of the Norman Conquest; but they allowed angels to appear in epics dealing with the earlier time, almost as freely as G.o.ds intervene in Homer. In short, the Homeric poet undeniably treats the age of his heroes as having already, in the phrase of Thucydides, "won its way to the mythical," and therefore as indefinitely remote.

It is impossible here to discuss in detail the complex problems of Mycenaean chronology. If we place the Mycenaean "bloom-time" from "the seventeenth or sixteenth to the twelfth century B.C.," [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 322.] it is plain that there is s.p.a.ce to spare, between the poet's age and that of his heroes, for the rise of changes in war, weapons, and costume. Indeed, there are traces enough of change even in the objects and art discovered in the bloom-time, as represented by the Mycenaean acropolis itself and by other "Mycenaean" sites. The art of the fragment of a silver vase in a grave, on which a siege is represented, is not the art, the costumes are not the costumes, of the inlaid bronze dagger-blade. The men shown on the vase and the lion-hunters on the dagger both have their hair close cropped, but on the vase they are naked, on the dagger they wear short drawers. On the Vaphio cups, found in a _tholos_ chamber-tomb near Amyclae, the men are "long-haired Achaeans," with heavy, pendent locks, like the man on a pyxis from Knossos, published by Mr. Evans; they are of another period than the close-cropped men of the vase and dagger. [Footnote: _Journal of h.e.l.lenic Studies_, vol. xvi. p. 102.] Two of the men on the silver vase are covered either with s.h.i.+elds of a shape and size elsewhere unknown in Mycenaean art, or with cloaks of an unexampled form. The masonry of the city wall, shown on the vase in the Mycenaean grave, is not the ordinary masonry of Mycenae itself. On the vase the wall is "isodomic," built of cut stones in regular layers. Most of the Mycenaean walls, on the other hand, are of "Cyclopean" style, in large irregular blocks.

Art, good and very bad, exists in many various stages in Mycenaean relics. The drawing of a G.o.d, with a typical Mycenaean s.h.i.+eld in the form of a figure 8, on a painted sarcophagus from Milato in Crete, is more crude and savage than many productions of the Australian aboriginals, [Footnote: _Journal of h.e.l.lenic Studies, vol. xvi. _p._ 174, fig. 50._ Grosse. _Les Debuts de l'Art,_ pp. 124-176.] the thing is on the level of Red Indian work. Meanwhile at Vaphio, Enkomi, Knossos, and elsewhere the art is often excellent.

In one essential point the poet describes a custom without parallel among the discovered relics of the Mycenaean age--namely, the disposal of the bodies of the dead. They are neither buried with their arms, in stately _tholos_ tombs nor in shaft graves, as 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 almost 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-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 a.s.suredly 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 Mycenae 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 Ocea.n.u.s, did not permit them to be wors.h.i.+pped as potent beings. Only in a pa.s.sage, possibly interpolated, of the _Odyssey_, 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. [Footnote: Odyssey, XI. 298-304.]

These facts are so familiar that we are apt to overlook the strangeness of them in the history of religious evolution. The cult 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 practice, at least, of ghost feeding. [Footnote: Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-Eastern Australia,_ p. 448. There are also traces of propitiation in Western Australia (MS. of Mrs. Bates).] Sometimes, as in many African tribes, ancestor wors.h.i.+p is almost the whole of practical cult. Usually it accompanies polytheism, 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 wors.h.i.+p. 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 wors.h.i.+p, and absence of cairns, is as certainly and definitely an age apart, a peculiar 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 a.s.sarlik (Asia Minor) and in Thera early graves, prove the use of cremation, but also, unlike Homer, of iron weapons. [Footnote: Paton, Journal _of h.e.l.lenic Studies,_ viii. 64_ff_. For other references, cf. Poulsen, _Die Dipylongraben_, p. 2, Notes. Leipzig 1905.] In these graves the ashes are inurned. There are examples of the same usage in Salamis, without iron. In Crete, in graves of the period of geometrical ornament ("Dipylon"), burning is more common than inhumation. Cremation is attested in a _tholos_ or beehive-shaped grave in Argos, where the vases were late Mycenaean. Below this stratum was an older shaft grave, as is usual in _tholos_ interments; it had been plundered? [Footnote: Poulsen, p.2.]

The cause of the marked change from Mycenaean inhumation to Homeric cremation is matter of conjecture. It has been suggested that burning was introduced during the migrations after the Dorian invasion. Men could carry the ashes of their friends to the place where they finally settled. [Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische Epos,_ p.83] The question may, perhaps, be elucidated by excavation, especially in Asia Minor, on the sites of the earliest Greek colonies. At Colophon 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. [Footnote: 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.] 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 haunting the living, but to be wholly set free by burning, and to depart for ever to the House of Hades, powerless 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 afterthought. In Tasmania among the lowest savages, now extinct, were found monuments over cremated 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 'posture. 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?

[Footnote: Ling Roth., _The Tasmanians_, pp. 128-134. Reports of Early Discoverers.] If the usual explanation be correct--burning prevents the return of the dead--how did the Homeric Greeks come to subst.i.tute burning for the wors.h.i.+p 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.

(1)In _Iliad_, VI, 4 I 6 _ff_, 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 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 pa.s.sage, 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. [Footnote: German examples of burning the amis of the cremated dead and then burying them are given by Mr. Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece,_ vol. i. pp. 498, 499.]

(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 [Greek: tarchuchosi] probably a word surviving from an age of embalment. [Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische Epos,_ pp. 55, 56.] 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 h.e.l.lespont," 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) Iliad, IX. 546. Phoenix says that the Calydonian boar "brought many to the mournful pyre." All were cremated.

(4) _Iliad_, XXII 50-55. Andromache in her dirge (the _regret_ of the French mediaeval epics) says that Hector lies unburied by the s.h.i.+ps 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 [Greek: pharos], a large mantle, either white or purple, such as Agamemnon wears in peace (Iliad, II 43), except when, like Eetion and Elpenor in the Odyssey, they are burned in their armour.

In _Iliad,_ XXIII. 69 _ff_., the shadow of the dead unburned Patroclus appears to Achilles in his sleep asking for "his dues of fire." The whole pa.s.sage, with the account of the funeral of Patroclus, must be read carefully, 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 Aeolic epic (Sir Richard Jebb thought the whole pa.s.sage "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 Aeolian epic poetry.

[Footnote: Helbig, _Zu den Homerischen Bestattungsgebrauchen_. Aus den Sitzungsberichten der philos. philol. und histor. Cla.s.se der Kgl. bayer.

Academie der Wissenschaften. 1900. Heft. ii. pp. 199-299.] The burial of Patroclus, then, save for Ionian late interpolations, easily detected by Helbig, is, he a.s.sures us, genuine "kernel," [Footnote: 2 Op. _laud._, p. 208.] while Hector's burial "is partly Ionian, and describes the destiny of the dead heroes otherwise than as in the old Aeolic 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 AEolic minstrel who buried Patroclus (in Book XXIII.), Mr. Leaf says that Hector's burial is "almost an abstract" of that of Patroclus. [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, XXII Note to 791.] He adds that Helbig's attempts "to distinguish the older AEolic from the newer and more sceptical 'Ionic' faith seem to me visionary."

[Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii. p. 619. Note 2] 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 Helbig, the Ionians, 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. [Footnote: Op. _laud._, p. 204.]

This is a hasty generalisation! Helbig will, if he 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. [Footnote: See, in _The_ Valet's Tragedy (A. L.): "Fisher's Ghost."] More recent Australian ghosts are familiar to psychical research.

This colonial theory is one of Helbig's too venturous generalisations.

He studies the ghost, or rather dream-apparition, of Patroclus after examining the funeral of Hector; but we shall begin with Patroclus.

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 ([Greek: psyche]) of Patroclus appears to him, says that he is forgotten, and begs to be burned at once, that he may pa.s.s the gates of Hades, for the other spirits drive him off and will not let him a.s.sociate 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" ([Greek: soros]) "hide our bones."

[Greek: Soros], like _larnax_, is a coffin (_Sarg_), or what the Americans call a "casket," in the opinion of Helbig: [Footnote: OP. _laud_., p.217.] 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 (phialae) in the quarters of Achilles; it is not laid in howe after his cremation (XXIII. 243).

Achilles tries to embrace Patroclus, but fails, like 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 _bearbeiter_, 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.

[Footnote: Op. laud., pp. 233,234.]

We need not discuss this acute critical theory. The natural interpretation of the words of Achilles is obvious; as Mr. Leaf remarks, the words are "the cry of sudden personal conviction in a matter which has. .h.i.therto been lazily accepted as an orthodox dogma." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 620.] 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 _shades_, in the Homeric poems. Everywhere the dead are too feeble to be worth wors.h.i.+pping 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 ourselves hold various beliefs simultaneously. The natives of Australia and of Tasmania practise, or did practise, every conceivable way of disposing of the dead--burying, 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 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 [Greek: heano liti], translated by Helbig, "with a linen sheet" (cf.

XXIII. 254). The golden cup with the ashes is next wrapped [Greek: heano liti]; 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. [Footnote: _Proceedings of the Scottish society of Antiquaries_, 1905, p. 552. For other cases, _cf._ Leaf, _Iliad_, XXIV.

796. Note.] Over all a white [Greek: pharos] (mantle) was spread. In _Iliad_, XXIV. 231, twelve [Greek: pharea] 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 [Greek: pharea] and a well-spun chiton. The women washed and anointed Hector's body; they clad him in the chiton, and threw one [Greek: pharos] 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 [Greek: pharos], which do not seem to have been removed before he was burned; while Patroclus had no chiton in death, but a [Greek: pharos] and, apparently, a linen sheet.

To the ordinary reader this does not seem, in the circ.u.mstances, a strong mark of different ages and different burial customs. Priam did not bring any linen sheet--or whatever [Greek: heanos lis] 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 circ.u.mstances. 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. [Footnote: op. _laud_., p. 209.] He supposes that Hector wore the chiton, and had one [Greek: pharos] 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. [Footnote: Plutarch, Solon, 21.] In doing so Solon sanctioned an old custom, and that Ionian custom, described by the author of Book XXIV., bewrays him, says Helbig, for a late Ionian _bearbeiter_, 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 [Greek: charos] against the burial of old Laertes, but surely she ought to have woven 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 [Greek: charea] but we only hear of one. Penelope had to finish the [Greek: charos] and show it; [Footnote: Odyssey, XXIV. 147.] now if she wanted to delay her marriage, she should have begun the second [Greek: charos] just as necessary as the first, if Hector, with a pair of [Greek: charea] 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 [Greek: speiron] (Odyssey, II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a character of late Ionian, not of genuine old AEolic 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.