Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3

Councils or Assemblies of Olympus.

Since the Assemblies of Olympus grow out of the polytheistic form of the Greek religion, we must treat them as part of its human element, and as a reflection of the heroic life. There will therefore be an analogy perceptible between the relation of Jupiter to the other Immortals in the Olympian Assembly, and that of the Greek Sovereign to all or some of those around him. But as the deities meet in the capacity of rulers, we should seek this analogy rather in the relation between Agamemnon and the kings, or between the local sovereign and his elders (γέροντες), than between either of the two respective heads, and the mass of those whom he ruled. This analogy is in substance sustained by the poems. The sovereignty of Jupiter undoubtedly stands more elevated, among the divinities of Olympus, than that of Agamemnon, or any other of his kings, on earth. It includes more of the element of force, and it approximates more nearly to a positive supremacy. Accordingly, whatever indicates freedom in Olympus will tend a fortiori to show, that the idea of freedom in debate was, at least as among the chiefs, familiar here below. Yet even in Olympus the other chief deities could murmur, argue, and object. The power of Jupiter is exhibited at its zenith in the Assembly of the Eighth Iliad, when he violently threatens all that disobey, and challenges the whole pack to try their strength with him. The vehemence with which he spoke produced the same intimidatory effect upon the gods, as did the great speech of Achilles upon the envoys: and the result upon the minds of the hearers in the two cases respectively, is described in lines which, with the exception of a single word, precisely correspond270. Still, immediately after Jupiter has given the peremptory order not to assist either party, Minerva answers, Well, we will not fight – which she never had done – but we will advise; and this Jupiter at once and cheerfully permits271. But there is more than this. Be the cause what it may, the personal will of Jupiter, fulfilled as to Achilles272, is not fulfilled as to Troy. The Assembly of the Fourth Book is opened with a proposal from him, that Troy shall stand273. From this he recedes, and it is decided that the city shall be destroyed; while the only reservation he makes is not at all on behalf of the Trojans, but simply on behalf of his own freedom to destroy any other city he may mislike, however dear it may chance to be to Juno.

The position of Agamemnon, of which Jupiter is in a great degree a reflection, bears a near resemblance to that of a political leader under free European, and, perhaps it may be said, especially under British, institutions. Its essential elements are, that it is worked in part by accommodation, and in part by influence.

Besides its grand political function, the ἀγορὴ is, as we have seen, in part a judicial body. But the great safeguard of publicity attends the conduct of trials, as well as the discussion of political affairs. The partialities of people who manifest their feelings by visible signs is thus prevented, on the one hand, by the cultivation of habitual self-respect, from passing into fury, and on the other hand, from degenerating into baseness.

It is perhaps worthy of notice, as assisting to indicate the substantive and active nature of the popular interest in public affairs, that where parties were formed in the Assemblies, those who thought together sat together. Such appears to be the intimation of the line in the Eighteenth Iliad (502),

λαοὶ δ’ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἐπήπυον, ἀμφὶς ἀρωγοί.

As the ἀμφὶς ἀρωγοὶ expresses their sentiments, ἀμφοτέρωθεν can hardly signify any thing other than that they sat separately on each side of the Assembly. A similar arrangement seems to be conveyed in the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, where we find that the party of the Suitors remained in a mass (τοὶ δ’ ἀθρόοι αὐτόθι μίμνον, v. 464.) I think this circumstance by no means an unimportant one, as illustrative of the capacity, in which the people attended at the Assemblies for either political or judicial purposes.

Judicial functions of the Assembly.

The place of Assemblies is also the place of judicature. But the supremacy of the political function is indicated by this, that the word ἀγορὴ, which means the Assembly for debate, thus gives its own designation to the place where both functions were conducted. At the same time, we have in the word Themis a clear indication that the original province of government was judicial. For that word in Homer signifies the principles of law, though they were not yet reduced to the fixed forms of after-times; but on the other hand Themis was also a goddess, and she had in that capacity the office of summoning and of dissolving Assemblies274. Thus the older function, as often happens, came in time to be the weaker, and had to yield the precedence to its more vigorous competitor.

But in Homer’s time, though they were distinguished, they were not yet divided. On the Shield of Achilles, the work of Themis275 is done in full Assembly: and this probably signifies the custom of the time. But in the Eleventh Iliad, Patroclus passes by the ships of Ulysses276,

ἵνα σφ’ ἀγορή τε θέμις τε

ἤην.

And, in the description of the Cyclopes, the line is yet more clearly drawn; for it is said277,

τοῖσιν δ’ οὔτ’ ἀγοραὶ βουληφόροι, οὔτε θέμιστες.

In that same place, too, the public solemnities of religion were performed: and though in the Greek camp it was doubtless placed at the centre of the line with a view to security, its position most aptly symbolized also its moral centrality, as the very heart of the national life. At the spot where the Assemblies were held were gathered into a focus the religious, as well as the patriotic sentiments of the country.

The fact is, that everywhere in Homer we find the signs of an intense corporate or public life, subsisting and working side by side with that of the individual. And of this corporate life the ἀγορὴ is the proper organ. If a man is to be described as great, he is always great in debate and on the field; if as insignificant and good for nothing, then he is of no account either in battle or in council. The two grand forms of common and public action are taken for the criteria of the individual.

When Homer wished to describe the Cyclopes as living in a state of barbarism, he says, not that they have no kings, or no towns, or no armies, or no country, but that they have no Assemblies, and no administration of justice, which, as we have seen, was the primary function of the Assemblies. And yet all, or nearly all the States had Kings. The lesson to be learned is, that in heroic Greece the King, venerable as was his title, was not the fountainhead of the common life, but only its exponent. The source lay in the community, and the community met in the Agorè. So deeply imbedded is this sentiment in the mind of the Poet, that it seems as if he could not conceive an assemblage of persons having any kind of common function, without their having, so to speak, a common soul too in respect of it.

The common Soul or Τὶς in Homer.

Of this common soul the organ in Homer is the Τὶς or ‘Somebody;’ by no means one of the least remarkable, though he has been one of the least regarded, personages of the poems. The Τὶς of Homer is, I apprehend, what in England we now call public opinion. We constantly find occasions, when the Poet wants to tell us what was the prevailing sentiment among the Greeks of the army. He might have done this didactically, and described at length the importance of popular opinion, and its bearings in each case. He has adopted a method more poetical and less obtrusive. He proceeds dramatically, through the medium of a person, and of a formula:

ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκεν, ἰδὼν ἐς πλήσιον ἄλλον.

It may, however, not seem worthy of remark, considering the amount of common interest among the Greeks, that he should find an organ for it in his Τίς. But when he brings the Greeks and Trojans together in the Pact, though it is only for the purpose of a momentary action, still he makes an integer pro hâc vice of the two nations, and provides them with a common Τὶς (Il. iii. 319):

ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκεν Ἀχαιῶν τε Τρώων τε.

We find another remarkable exemplification in the case of the Suitors in the Odyssey. Dissolute and selfish youths as they are, and competitors with one another for a prize which one only can enjoy, they are nevertheless for the moment banded together in a common interest. They too, therefore, have a collective sentiment, and a ready organ for it in a Τὶς of the Odyssey (Od. ii. 324), who speaks for the body of Suitors:

ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκε νέων ὑπερηνορεόντων.

All these are, in my view, most striking proofs of the tenacious hold, which the principle of a public or corporate life for all aggregations of men had taken upon the mind of Homer, and upon Greece in the heroic age. Nor can I help forming the opinion, that in all probability we may discern in the Homeric Τὶς the primary ancestor of the famous Greek Chorus. It is the function of the Chorus to give utterance to the public sentiment, but in a sense apt, virtuous, and pious. Now this is what the Homeric Τὶς usually does; but of course he does on behalf of the community, what the Chorus does as belonging to the body of actors.

It is then surely a great error, after all we have seen, to conclude that, because the political ideas and practices of those times did not wear the costumes now in fashion, they were without their own real vitality, and powerful moral influence upon the minds and characters of men.

Imperfect organization of the Heroic Polities.

But, on the other hand, in repelling these unsound and injurious notions, we must beware of assuming too much of external resemblance between the heroic age and the centuries either of modern Christendom or even of historic Greece and Rome. All the determinate forms of public right are the growth of long time, of dearbought experience, and of proved necessity. Right and force are supplements to one another; but the proportions, in which they are to be mingled, are subject to no fixed rule. If the existence of rights, both popular and regal, in the heroic age is certain, their indeterminateness is glaring and conspicuous. But the shape they bore, notwithstanding the looseness of its outline, was quite adequate to the needs of the time. We must not, in connection with the heroic age, think of public life as a profession, of a standing mass of public affairs, of legislation eternally in arrear, of a complex machinery of government. There were no regular regencies in Greece during the Trojan war. There was no Assembly in Ithaca during the long absence of Ulysses278, before the one called by Telemachus, and reported in the Second Book of the Odyssey. We have seen, however, in what way this lack of machinery told upon the state of Greece by encouraging faction, and engendering revolution. The strain of the Trojan expedition was too great for a system so artless and inorganic. The state of Ithaca in the Odyssey is politically a state almost of anarchy; though the symptoms of that disease were milder by far then, than they could now be. The condition of the island shows us what its polity had been, rather than what it was. But for all ordinary occasions it had sufficed. For Assemblies met only when they had something to do; and rarely indeed would such junctures arrive. Infractions of social order and social rights, which now more commonly take place by fraud, were then due almost wholly to violence. And violence, from its nature, could hardly be the subject of appeal to the Assembly: as a general rule, it required to be repaid on the instant, and in the same coin. Judicial questions would not often be of such commanding interest, as to divide a people into two opinions; nor the parties to them wealthy enough to pay two talents to the successful judge. Great controversies, affecting allegiance and the succession, must of necessity in all ages be rare; and of a disputed succession in Greece the poems can hardly be said to offer us an instance. We find, however, in the last Book of the Odyssey, that, according to the ideas of that period, when a question as to the sovereignty did arise, the people needed no instructor as to the first measure they were to take. They repaired, as if by a common and instinctive impulse, to the Agorè; in which lay deposited their civil rights and their old traditions, like the gems of the wealth of Greece in the shrine of the Archer Apollo279.

II. ILIOS.

THE TROJANS COMPARED AND CONTRASTED WITH THE GREEKS

We have perhaps been accustomed to contemplate the Trojans too exclusively, either as enemies of the Greeks, or else as constituting, together with them, one homogeneous chapter of antiquity, which we might be content to examine as a whole, without taking notice of specific differences. Let us now endeavour to inquire what were the relations, other than those of mere antagonism in the war, between the two nations; what points they embraced, and what affinities or discords they disclose. The direct signs of kindred between Troy and Greece have already been considered; but the examination into points of contrast and resemblance as respects religion, polity, and character, will assist us in judging how far a key to those affinities and discords is to be found in the different interfusion and proportion, in the two cases, of ethnical elements which they possessed in common.

We have seen in another place280 that the Greeks, or Achæans, and the Trojans, were akin by the Hellic element, which appears to establish a connection chiefly as regarded the royal house, and other ruling houses, of Troy. On the other hand it has seemed clear, from many sources, that the main affinity between the bulk of the two nations was Pelasgian. As respects the ethnological question, the supposition most consonant to the evidence as a whole appears to me to be, that in Troas we find Hellic families, possessed of dominion over a Pelasgian people: in Greece we find Hellic tribes, placed in dominant juxtaposition with Pelasgic tribes, of prior occupancy; constituting, as is probable, whole classes of the community, and mingling with and powerfully modifying the aggregate composition so as to produce a mixed result; while in Troy, though the ruling houses are probably a different order, and there may be found here and there the tokens of this influence, yet the general face of society, and the substance of manners and institutions, are Pelasgian. It will be recollected, that even in Greece we trace two forms of Hellic diffusion. Sometimes the descendants of the Helli appear as single families, like the Æolids; sometimes as races, like the Achæans. The state of facts here supposed as to Troy is in accordance with the former class of indications within Greece itself.

Upon the footing supplied by these assumptions, I shall treat the comparison of the two countries as to religion, policy, social usages, and moral ideas and practice.

We have already been obliged, in considering the respective shares of the Hellenic and Pelasgian factors in the compound Greek character, to anticipate in some degree the conclusions with regard to the religion of the Trojans in its general character, which I will now proceed more fully to explain and illustrate.

We have found three conspicuous deities, of worship apparently supreme and universal: Jupiter, Minerva, and Apollo. After these comes Neptune, of a more doubtful position when we pass out of the Hellenic and Phœnician circles; and Latona with Diana, who, doubtless from the vantage ground of early tradition, take rank alike with an Hellenic and a Pelasgian people. We have also supposed Ceres to be of immemorial standing as a deity of the Pelasgians; and Venus to have made great way among them.

Greek names of deities found also in Troas.

Passing on from the consideration of Pelasgian religion at large, it will now be requisite to show, with particular reference to Troy, how far we find the names of the Greek divinities recognised there; nor must we omit to consider, in what degree identity of name implies identity of person and function.

1. Jupiter had a τέμενος, or portion of consecrated land, on Mount Gargarus; and there Onetor was his priest281. He is, with the Trojans as with the Greeks, the first and greatest of the gods282. He himself attests their abundant liberality in sacrifices offered to himself283. The Greek Jupiter is Olympian; the Trojan Jupiter is Jupiter of Ida. Except as to abode, there is no difference to be discerned between the features of the two.

2. We have no direct indication, in the Iliad, of the worship of Neptune by the Trojans. But the legend of his employment under Laomedon must be taken to imply that his divinity was acknowledged in that country: confirmed as it is by his sharing with Jupiter and Apollo the destruction of the Greek rampart after the conclusion of the war284.

3. In the case of Juno, I have elsewhere noticed285 the three passages, which alone appear to establish a faint connection between her and the Trojans.

4. Minerva had a temple on Pergamus; and was served there by a priestess, Theano; who, as the wife of Antenor, was of the very next rank to Priam and his house. The goddess is addressed, on the occasion of the procession of the Sixth Book, in a strain which seems to acknowledge her possession of supreme power286: the defender of cities, excellent among goddesses, she is entreated to have pity on Troy, to break the lance of Diomed, and to grant that he himself may fall.

5. Apollo would appear to be the favourite among the great deities of the country. He, like Minerva, has a temple in the citadel287. Chryses is his priest at Chryse, and there too he has a temple. He is the special protector of Cilla and of Tenedos288. With Minerva, he is indicated as the recipient of supreme honour289. The Lycian name, so prevalent in Troas, establishes a special connection with him. In the Iliad, he seems to be the ordinary and immediate Providence to the Trojan chiefs, as Minerva is to the Greek ones. At the same time, he carries no sign of exclusive nationalism; he bears no hatred to the Greeks; but, after the restitution and propitiation, he at once accepts the prayer, and stays the pestilence290.

6. Latona must have been known among the Trojans; because Homer has represented her as contending on the Trojan side in the war of the gods, and as engaged in tending the wounded Æneas within the temple of Apollo on Pergamus.

7. The same reasons apply also to Diana: and we moreover find, that she instructed the Trojan Scamandrius in the huntsman’s art291.

8. Venus is eminently Trojan. Her relation to this people is marked by her favour towards Paris: her passion for Anchises: her sending a personal ornament as a marriage gift to Andromache; her ministerial charge over the body of Hector (Il. xxiii. 184-7); her being chosen as the model to which Trojan beauties are compared, while Diana is the favourite standard for the Greek woman. It is also marked by her zealous, though feeble, partizanship in favour of Troy among the Immortals: and by the biting taunts of Pallas, of Helen, and of Diomed292.

9. Vulcan is not only known, but has a cult in Troy: for Dares is his priest, and is a person of great wealth and consideration; one of whose sons he delivers from death in battle, to comfort the old man in his decline293.

10. Mars. Of this deity it would seem, that he has been given by Homer to the Pelasgians, mainly because of his so strongly marked Thracian character, and his want of recognition among the Hellenes, who had a higher deity of war in Minerva. I have touched elsewhere upon his equivocal position as between the two parties to the war. It corresponds with that of the Thracians, who appear to form a point of intersection, so to speak, for the Hellic and Pelasgian races. Those of the plain of Adrianople are, like the Pelasgi, horse-breeders, dwelling in a fertile country: the ruder portion are among the mountains to the north and west.

11. Mercury. One sign only of the ordinary agency of this deity in Troas is exhibited; he gives abundant increase to the flocks of Phorbas294.

12. Earth (Γαῖα) would appear to have been recognised as an object of distinct worship in Troas: for when Menelaus proposes the Pact, he invites the Trojans to sacrifice a black lamb to her, and a white one to the Sun; while the Greeks will on their part offer up a lamb to Jupiter. The proposal is at once accepted; and the heralds are sent by Hector to the city for the lambs295, which seems to be conclusive as to the acknowledgment of these two deities in Troy.

13. The Sun. Besides that the passage last quoted for Earth is also conclusive for the Sun, we have another token of his relation to Troy, in the unwillingness with which he closes the day, when with his setting is to end the glory of Hector and of his country296.

We have thus gone through the list of the greater Greek deities, and have found them all acknowledged in Troas, with the following exceptions: 1. of Ceres, whom we may however suspect, from her Pelasgian character, to have been worshipped there under some name or form; 2. of Aidoneus; and 3. of Persephone. These exceptions will be further noticed.

Again, among the thirteen who have been identified as objects of Trojan worship, we find one, namely, Γαῖα, of whom we can hardly say that she was worshipped in Greece; though she was invoked, as by Agamemnon in the Nineteenth Book, and by Althea in the Ninth, to add a more solemn sanction to oaths.

14. Together with her, we may take notice of a fourteenth deity, apparently of great consideration in Troy, namely, the River Scamander. He bears a marked sign of ancient worship, in having a divine appellation, Xanthus, as well as his terrestrial one, Scamander. He had an ἀρήτηρ, by name Dolopion. To him, according to the speech of Achilles, the Trojans sacrificed live horses. He enters into the division of parties among the gods about the war, and fights vigorously against Achilles, until he is at length put down by Hephæstus, or Vulcan. As a purely local deity, however, he has of course no place in the Greek mythology.

15. Though we have no direct mention of the translation of Tithonus by Ἠὼς, or Aurora, yet, as Homer gives Tithonus a place both in the genealogy of the Dardanidæ, and likewise by the side of Aurora, we may consider that, by thus recognising the translation, he also points out Aurora as an acknowledged member of the supernatural order in Troas.

Several among these names call for more particular notice: especially those of Vulcan, Earth, and Scamander.

Worship of Vulcan in Troas.

The case of Vulcan, and his place in Troy, may serve to remind us of a proposition somewhat general in its application; this namely, that, in classifying the Trojan divinities, Homer need not have intended to imply that the same name must in all cases carry exactly the same attributes. We must here bear in mind, that probably all, certainly almost all, of the properly Olympian gods, were Greek copies modified from Oriental or from traditive originals. But as these conceptions were propagated in different quarters, each country would probably add or take away, or otherwise alter, in conformity with its own ruling tendencies. Hence when we find a Vulcan in Greece, and a Vulcan in Troas, it by no means follows, that each of them presented the same features and attributes. If Homer believed them to be derived from a common original in Egypt or elsewhere, that would be a good and valid reason for his describing them by the same name, though the Trojan Vulcan might not present all the Hellenic traits, nor vice versâ. In some cases, such as those of Jupiter, Apollo, Minerva, Diana, and Venus, there is such a correspondence of attributes entering into the portraiture of the respective deities in the two countries, that their identity, at least so far as the evidence goes, seems quite unimpaired and unequivocal. But we have no means of showing from the poems, that the Trojan Hephæstus corresponded with the Greek one. Indeed when we find no mention of his being actually worshipped in Greece, and at the same time learn that he had a priest in Troas, the presumption arises, that different conceptions of him prevailed in the two countries. Again, there is nowhere assigned to him as a Greek deity any such exercise of power, as that by which he saves Idæus, a son of his priest Dares, from imminent death on the field of battle.