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

I shall not open the general subject of the treatment of colour by the later Greeks, or by the Latin poets. But that it continued to be both faint and indefinite down to a very late period, and in a degree which would now be deemed very surprising, we may judge both from the general tenour of the Æneid, and from the remarkable verse of Albinovanus, an Augustan poet, which applied the epithet ‘purpureus’ to snow;

Brachia purpureâ candidiora nive.

Neither do I enter into the question, whether the shadows of white may afford any ground for this epithet: because an answer, drawn from the secrets as it were of science or art, could not avail for the interpretation of the works of a poet, who must describe for the common eye.

So we may note the ‘cervix rosea’ of Horace858, and of Virgil859.

Greek philosophy of colour.

Such examination as I have been able to make would lead me to suppose whatever of this kind was crude or defective in the common ideas of Greece was not without points of correspondence in its philosophy.

The treatise Περὶ χρωμάτων, popularly ascribed to Aristotle, would appear to belong to some other author. It, however, in conformity with Greek ideas860, bases the system of colour not, as we do, upon the prismatic decomposition of light, but upon the four elements; of which it declares air, water, and even earth when dry, to be white, fire to be ξανθὸς or yellow; from the mixtures of these arise all other colours, and σκότος, or black, is the absence of light.

Dr. Prantl, a recent editor of this Treatise, has, in a learned Essay of his own, gathered together the systems of the various Greek writers upon colour; and especially that of Aristotle, from the testimony afforded by his Meteorologica and other works. It exhibits a curious combination of the aim at scientific exactness, with the want of the physical knowledge which is, in such matters, its necessary basis. Its leading ideas appear to be as follows.

If we pass by the mere metaphysical portion of the subject, the basis of colour is laid theoretically in transparency and motion. With the idea of whiteness are associated dryness and heat; and with blackness their counterparts, wet and cold861. The air is white, fire the highest form of white; water is black862, earth the highest negation of colour, and blackest of all. All other colours are treated as intermediate between white and black863. An analogy prevails between the intervals of the principal colours, and those of sound, taste (χυμὸς), and other sensible objects. There are seven colours864: namely,

1. μέλαν black.

2. ξανθὸν gold.

3. λευκὸν white.

4. φοινικοῦν red.

5. ἁλουργὸν violet.

6. πράσινον green.

7. κυανοῦν blue.

The φαιὸν or grey is a mode of black (μέλαν τι); and the ξανθὸν is ingeniously described as having the same relation to light, which richness (λιπαρὸν) has to sweetness (γλυκύ). Red, φοινικοῦν or πορφυροῦν, is light seen through black. This is the most positive colour after ξανθόν; then comes green, and then (ἁλουργὸν) violet865. He proceeds, ἔτι δὲ τὸ πλεῖον οὔκετι φαίνεται; meaning, I suppose, that the κυανοῦν (the same thing is said by Prantl of ὄρφνιον, which he translates brown) is so closely akin to the negative, or blackness, as to be indistinguishable from it. Thus Aristotle appears to treat grey as outside his scale altogether; he gives πορφυροῦν sometimes to red and sometimes to blue866; and ὄρφνιον or brown is wholly omitted. His order likewise varies: for, in different passages, ἁλουργὸν and πράσινον change places.

Nature of our advantage over Homer.

This condition of the philosophy of colour, so many centuries after Homer, and in the mind of such a man as Aristotle, may assist in explaining to us the undeveloped state of Homer’s perceptions in this particular department.

There appears to be a remarkable contrast between such undigested ideas, and the solidity, truth, and firmness of the remains of colour that have come down to us from the ancients. The explanation, I suppose, is, that those, who had to make practical use of colour, did not wait for the construction of a philosophy, but added to their apparatus from time to time all substances which, having come within their knowledge, were found to produce results satisfactory and improving to the eye. And even so Homer, though his organ was little trained in the discrimination of colours, and though he founded himself mainly upon mere modifications of light apart from its decomposition, yet has made very bold and effective use of these limited materials. His figures in no case jar, while they never fail to strike. Nor are we to suppose that we see in this department an exception to that comparative profusion of power which marked his endowments in general, and that he bore, in the particular point, a crippled nature; but rather we are to learn that the perceptions so easy and familiar to us are the results of a slow traditionary growth in knowledge and in the training of the human organ, which commenced long before we took our place in the succession of mankind. We exemplify, even in this apparently simple matter, the old proverbial saying: ‘The dwarf sees further than the giant, for he is lifted on the giant’s shoulders.’

Note on the meaning of κύανος and χαλκός

The first impression from the Homeric text is likely to be that κύανος is a metal. For the substantive is mentioned but thrice in Homer; and always in immediate connection with metals.

1. Il. xi. 24. Upon the buckler of Agamemnon there are, with twelve οἶμοι, folds, rims, or plies, of gold, and twenty of tin, ten of κύανος (μέλανος κυάνοιο).

2. Il. xi. 34. On the shield of the king, there were twenty white bosses of tin, and, in the middle, one of κύανος (μέλανος κυάνοιο).

3. Od. vii. 86. The walls of the palace of Alcinous were coated with χαλκὸς within, and round about them there was a cornice or fringe (θριγκὸς) of κύανος.

There is no doubt that, in later Greek at least, the word acquired other significations: such as lapis lazuli, the blue cornflower, the rockbird (also as being blue), and, lastly, a blue dye or lacquer867. But, moreover, it seems impossible to identify the κύανος of Homer with any metal in particular.

Some have asserted the κύανος of Homer to be steel868. But to this there seem to be conclusive objections. It appears very doubtful, whether the Greeks were acquainted with the process of making steel in masses by the immersion of iron in water. The English translation of Beckmann’s History of Inventions ascribes the knowledge of the process to Homer; but apparently in error869. There is no allusion whatever to it: for it is not at all implied by the elementary process of the manufacture of a tool in Od ix. 391-3. It was only by fire that iron could be made malleable at all: and no doubt it was known that by its immersion in water hardness was restored or increased (τὸ γὰρ αὖτε σιδήρου γε κράτος ἐστίν). But we have no trace either of the repetition of the process on the same piece of metal, or of its application to unmanufactured iron, or of a new denomination for iron when thus heated and cooled. On the contrary, in this passage the metal when fully hardened is still declared to be σίδηρος: and we have nowhere in Homer any trace of a relation between κύανος and σίδηρος, except the merely negative one, that neither of them is cast into the furnace for making the Shield of Achilles.

Again, the hardness of iron was such as apparently met all their wishes, and almost of itself constituted a difficulty. Hence it is used along with stones as a symbol of hardness; ἐπεὶ οὔ σφι λίθος χρὼς ἠὲ σίδηρος870. Again, we do not find it worked up with other metals; for example, on the buckler or shield of Agamemnon. As we have seen, it is not used by Vulcan in making the shield of Achilles. The god casts into the fire gold and silver, copper and tin; lead being apparently excluded as too soft, and iron as too hard for working in masses with the other metals. But the idea of hardness is never associated with κύανος; and, if it had been hard like steel, certainly it would not have been a suitable material for the intricate forms of dragons.

Again, the adjective κυάνεος means in colour what is blue and what is deep; and by no means corresponds with the ordinary colour of steel. All this, besides the strength of the negative evidence, seems inconsistent with the idea that κύανος can have been steel.

The Compiler of the Index to Eustathius makes κύανος (in voc.) simply a dark metal. But Millin argues that κύανος without an epithet is tin, and that with the epithet μέλας it is lead. He observes that Pliny871 appears to call tin by the name of plumbum simply, and lead by the name of plumbum nigrum: so that the double use of κύανος and κασσίτερος for tin would be like that of plumbum and stannum for the same metal in Latin. This idea treats the substance as taking its name from the colour: and is so far sustained by the use of the German blei, which I presume is the same word as blau, for lead. But it would be singular that Homer should thus have double names for two metals, which of all classes of objects have perhaps been most commonly designated by single ones. And this hypothesis is not in accordance with the evident meaning of κυάνεος in Homer; since the word indicates a dark and deep hue very far from that of tin, which Homer describes as white. The after use of κύανος is equally adverse to the interpretation suggested.

The most probable interpretation for this difficult word appears to be that which is also in accordance with its subsequent use and description as a colour. From Linton’s ‘Ancient and Modern Colours,’ (p. 21,) it appears that there was a κύανος αὐτοφυὴς, which was a native blue carbonate of copper: and that, according to the express testimony of Dioscorides, this was obtained by the ancients from the copper-mines: κύανος δὲ γεννᾶται μὲν ἐν Κύπρῳ ἐκ τῶν χαλκουργῶν μετάλλων, v. 106. This interpretation would account for our finding κύανος in Homer: for the rarity of its use: for the dark colour and the affinity to πορφύρεος. Such a substance would make a good relief for the cornice in the palace of Alcinous, against the copper-plated walls: and would stand well in the rest of the passages where it appears to be placed in relief with other metals, Il. xviii. 564, xi. 39, and even on the buckler of Agamemnon, xi. 24. For on this buckler, though the serpents, called κυάνεοι, are evidently placed in contrast with the οἶμοι, and though among the οἶμοι there are ten of κύανος, yet, as they are combined with twelve of gold and twenty of tin, the general effect would be one such as we need not suppose Homer to have rejected. This blue carbonate is still found among other copper-ores, but less in our deep mines, than in the shallow ones worked by the ancients. I understand from a gentleman versed in metallurgy, that in its purest form it is crystalline, rarely massive or earthy, of a deep azure, brittle, easily powdered, and thus readily converted to use as a pigment.

I should therefore suppose that the κύανος is not a metal: that the οἶμοι on the buckler mean lines or bands coloured in pigment: and that the boss on the shield is probably a nodule of the substance in its native state. We can thus understand why κύανος is not used either with the gold, silver, χαλκὸς, and tin, in the forge of Vulcan, or with the gold, silver, iron, and χαλκὸς of the chariot of Juno872. We can also understand why, though κύανος is not used in the forge, yet the trench round the vineyard on the shield of Achilles is κυανεή873. This interpretation is also in conformity with the Homeric employment of the adjective κυάνεος.

I understand that there is, in the Museo Borbonico at Naples, a spoon or ladle, with a boss on the end of the handle, which is formed of this native blue carbonate of copper bored through for the purpose.

Of the four significations given to χαλκὸς in Homer (copper, brass, bronze, and iron874), I adhere to the first. It cannot be iron, (1) because it is never mentioned as hard in the same way with it, (2) because it is so much more common, (3) because these metals are expressly distinguished one from the other, as in Il. v. 723.

Neither can the χαλκὸς of Homer be bronze. Not, however, from absolute want of hardness: for I learn from competent authority that very good cutting instruments (not, of course, equal to steel) may be made in a bronze composed of 87½ parts copper, and 12½ parts tin. But for the following reasons:

1. Homer always speaks of it as a pure metal along with other pure metals, even where Vulcan casts it into the furnace to be wrought; Il. xviii. 474.

2. Again, because, although we must not argue too confidently from Homer’s epithets of colour, yet in this case we may lay considerable stress not only on his χαλκὸς ἐρυθρὸς (since the ἐρυθρὸς of Homer leans to brightness), but upon the ἤνοψ and νώροψ, which mean bright and gleaming. These epithets of light would not apply to bronze: nor would Homer plate with bronze the walls of the palace of Alcinous. Neither does it appear likely that he would give us a heaven of bronze among the imposing imagery of battle, Il. xvii. 424.

3. It does not appear that Homer knew anything at all of the fusion or alloying of metals.

We have, then, to conclude that χαλκὸς was copper, hardened by some method; as some think by the agency of water: or else, and more probably, according to a very simple process, by cooling slowly in the air. (See Millin, Minéralogie Homérique, pp. 126-32.)

SECT. V. 875

Homer and some of his Successors in Epic Poetry: in particular, Virgil and Tasso

Milton and Dante in relation to Homer.

The great Epic poets of the world are members of a brotherhood still extremely limited, and, as far as appears, not likely to be enlarged. It may indeed well be disputed, with respect to some of the existing claimants, whether they are or are not entitled to stand upon the Golden Book. There will also be differences of opinion as to the precedence among those, whose right to appear there is universally confessed. Pretensions are sometimes advanced under the influence of temporary or national partialities, which the silent action of the civilized mind of the world after a time effectually puts down. Among these there could be none more obviously untenable, than that set up on behalf of Milton in the celebrated Epigram of Dryden, which seemed to place him at the head of the poets of the world, and made him combine all the great qualities of Homer and of Virgil. Somewhat similar ideas were broached by Cowper in his Table Talk. The lines, as they are less familiarly remembered, may be quoted here:

Ages elapsed ere Homer’s lamp appeared,And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard;To carry Nature lengths unknown before,To give a Milton birth, asked ages more.

But this great master is also subject to undue depreciation, as well as flattered by extravagant worship. I myself have been assured in a company composed of Professors of a German University, who were ardent admirers of Shakespeare, that within the sphere of their knowledge Milton was only regarded as of equal rank with Klopstock. It is not, I trust, either national vanity or religious prejudice, nor is it the mere wonder inspired by the wide range of his attainments and performances, which makes England claim that he should be numbered in the first class of epic poets; in that class of which Homer is the head, distinguished before all competitors by a clear and even a vast superiority.

It would be difficult to institute any satisfactory comparison between Milton and Homer; so different, so wanting in points of contact, are the characters partly of the men, and even much more of their works. Perhaps the greatest and the most pervading merit of the Iliad is, its fidelity and vividness as a mirror of man and of the visible sphere in which he lived, with its infinitely varied imagery both actual and ideal. But that which most excites our admiration in Milton is the elasticity and force of genius, by which he has travelled beyond the human sphere, and bodied forth to us new worlds in the unknown, peopled with inhabitants who must be so immeasurably different from our own race. Homer’s task was one, which admitted of and received what we may call a perfect accomplishment; Milton’s was an undertaking beyond the strength of man, incapable of anything more than faint adumbration, and one of which, the more elevated the spectator’s point of view, the more keenly he must find certain defects glare upon him. The poems of Milton give us reason to think that his conceptions of character were masculine and powerful; but the subject did not admit of their being effectually tested. For his nearest approaches to perfection in his art, we must look beyond his epics.

A comparison between Milton and Dante would be somewhat more practicable, but it would not accord with the composition of the group, which I shall here attempt to present, and which has Homer for its centre. On the other hand, Dante might, far better than Milton, be compared with Homer; for while he is in the Purgatorio and Paradiso far more heavenly than Milton, he is also throughout the Divina Commedia truly and profoundly human. He is incessantly conversant with the nature and the life of man; and though for the most part he draws us, as Flaxman has drawn him, in outline only, yet by the strength and depth of his touch he has produced figures, for example, Francesca and Ugolino, that have as largely become the common property of mankind, if not as Achilles and Ulysses, yet as Lear and Hamlet. Still the theological basis, and the extra-terrene theatre, of Dante’s poem remove him to a great distance from Homer, from whom he seems to have derived little, and with whom we may therefore feel assured he could have been but little acquainted.

The poets, whom it is most natural to compare with Homer, are those who have supplied us in the greatest abundance with points of contact between their own orbits and his, and who at the same time are such manifest children of genius as to entitle them to the honour of being worsted in such a conflict. These conditions I presume to be most clearly fulfilled by Virgil and Tasso; and we may begin with the elder of the pair.

Perhaps Chapman has gone too far when he says ‘Virgil hath nothing of his own, but only elocution; his invention, matter, and form, being all Homer’s876.’ Yet no small part of this sweeping proposition can undoubtedly be made good.

With an extraordinary amount of admitted imitation and of obvious similarity on the surface, the Æneid stands, as to almost every fundamental particular, in the strongest contrast with the Iliad. As to metre, figures, names, places, persons and times, the two works, where they do not actually concur, stand in as near relations one to another, as seem to be attainable without absolute identity of subject; yet it may be doubted whether any two great poems can be named, which are so profoundly discordant upon almost every point that touches their interior spirit; upon everything that relates to the truth of our nature, to the laws of thought and action, and to veracity in the management of the higher subjects, such as history, morality, polity, and religion.

Contrast between form and spirit in the Æneid.

The immense powers of Virgil as a poet had been demonstrated before he wrote the Æneid. He had shown their full splendour in the Georgics; though the ἦθος, or (so to speak) the heart, even of that great work was touched with paralysis by his Epicurean and self-centring philosophy. The Æneid does not bear a fainter impression of his genius. The wonderfully sustained beauty and majesty of its verse, the imposing splendour of its most elaborate delineations, the power of the author in unfolding, when he strives to do it, the resources of passion, and even perhaps the skill which he has shown in the general construction of his plot, cannot be too highly praised. But while its general nature as an epic (for the epic poem is preeminently ethical) brought its defects into fuller view, the particular object he proposed to himself was fatal to the attainment of the very highest excellence. While Homer sang for national glory, the poem of Virgil is toned throughout to a spirit of courtierlike adulation. No muse, however vigorous, can maintain an upright gait under so base a burden.

Catalogue in the Iliad and in the Æneid.

And yet, in regard to its external form, the Æneid is perhaps, as a whole, the most majestic poem that the European mind has in any age produced. We often hear of the lofty march of the Iliad; but though its versification is always appropriate and therefore never mean, it only rises into stateliness, or into a high-pitched sublimity, when Homer has occasion to brace his energies for an effort. He is invariably true to his own conception of the bard877, as one who should win and delight the soul of the hearer; and so, when he has strung himself, like a bow, for some great passage of his action, ‘has brought the string to the breast, the iron to the wood,’ and has hit his mark, straightway he unbends himself again. Thus he ushers in with true grandeur the marshalling of the Greek army in the Second Book, partly by the invocation of the Muses, and partly by an assemblage of no less than six consecutive similes, which describe respectively the flash of the Greek arms, the resounding tramp, the swarming numbers, the settling down of the ranks as they form the line, the busy marshalling by the commanders, the majesty of Agamemnon preeminent among them878. Having done this, he sets himself about the Catalogue, with no contempt indeed of poetical embellishment by epithets, and with an occasional relief by short legends, but still in the main as a matter of business, historical, geographical, and topographical. And thus he proceeds, with perfect tranquillity, for near three hundred lines, until his work is done. We then find that he has given us, together with a most minute account of the forces, a living map of the territories occupied by the Greek races of the age. But Virgil, in his imitation of the Homeric Catalogue (upon which there will be further occasion to comment hereafter, with reference to other matters), has pursued a course quite different. Waiving Homer’s gorgeous introduction, which pours from a single point a broad stream of splendour over the whole, Virgil with vast, and indeed rather painful, effort, carries us through his long-drawn list at a laboriously-sustained elevation. To vary the wearisome task, he uses every diversity of turn that language and grammar can supply879. He passes from nominative to vocative, and from vocative to nominative. Somebody was present, and then somebody was not absent. Arms and accoutrements are got up as minutely, as if he had been a careful master of costumes dressing a new drama for the stage. That we may never be let down for a moment, he distributes here and there the similes, which Homer accumulated at the opening, and introduces, between the accounts of military contingents, legends of twenty or more lines. Upon the whole, the level of his verse through the Catalogue, instead of being, like Homer’s, decidedly lower, is even higher than is usual with him. There is not in it, I think, a single verse approaching to the sermo pedestris. His reader misses that tranquillizing relief so agreeable in Homer, which varies as it were the play of the muscles, and freshens the faculties for a return to higher efforts. Virgil seems to treat us, as horses at a certain stage of their decline are treated by experienced drivers, who keep them going from fear that, if they once let them stop or slacken, they will be unable to get up their pace again. He never unbends his bow. But a table-land may be as flat, and even wearisome, as a plain; and the ornaments in the Æneid frequently are not, and indeed could hardly be, more ornamental than the passages which they purport to embellish.

The difference of the two Catalogues cannot be more clearly exhibited than by comparing Homer’s description of the very first contingent, that from Bœotia880, with Virgil’s opening paragraph about Mezentius; or Homer’s last and nearly simplest, on the Magnesians881, with the description of Camilla, (certainly a description of remarkable beauty,) with which is closed the glittering procession of the Italian army in the Æneid.

The sustained stateliness of diction, metre, and rhythm in the Æneid is a feat, and an astounding feat; but it is more like the performance of a trained athlete, between trick and strength, than the grandeur of free and simple Nature, such as it is seen in the ancient warrior, in Diomed or Achilles; or in Homer, the ancient warrior’s only bard. Different persons will, according to their temperaments, be apt to treat this augustness of diction as a merit or a fault: all, however, must acknowledge it to be a wonder. In this respect Virgil has been followed with no ordinary power, but yet not equalled, by Tasso. And the impression, created in this respect by the Æneid as it stands, must be heightened when we remember that it is still an unfinished poem, and that the author had at his decease by no means brought it, and the later books of it in particular, up to what he considered the proper standard.