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Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3
The description of Ajax may deserve to be quoted:
And now I look on Ajax Telamon,I may compare him to some spacious building;His body holds vast rooms of entertainment,And lower parts maintain the offices;Only the garret, his exalted head,Useless for wise receipt, is fill’d with lumber.Dryden followed Shakespeare in the portion of this field which he had selected; and cast afresh the subject of Troilus and Cressida. He departed alike from Shakespeare and from Chaucer by making Cressida prove innocent, a supposition, says Scott, no more endurable in the preceding age, than one ‘which should have exhibited Helen chaste, or Hector a coward.’ All the incongruities of Shakespeare’s play are here reproduced, including the mixture of the modern element of love with the Greek and Trojan chivalry; Ajax and Achilles are depressed to one and the same low level.
Ajax and Achilles! two mudwalls of fool,That differ only in degrees of thickness1092,says Thersites; and Ulysses answers in a similar strain. Troilus fairly slays Diomed in single combat, and is then himself slain by Achilles in the crowd. Hector is dispatched, behind the scenes, under the swords of a multitude of men1093.
Racine’s Andromaque and Iphigénie.
A short time before this play of Dryden’s, Racine had taken the characters of the Trojan war in hand. His ‘Andromaque’ and ‘Iphigénie,’ however, afford us no new lights, and might very well have been conceived by a person who had never read a line of Homer, though in various passages there are imitations which must have filtered from the Homeric text. He was content in general to copy the traditions as given by Euripides; and it may provoke a smile to read an apology of one of his editors, Boisjermain, for the manner in which Ulysses is handled in the ‘Iphigénie.’ Appearing, near the outset of the piece, as a personage of very high importance, he notwithstanding plays in the plot a part wholly insignificant, instead of assuming, as he does in Euripides, the important function of urging the slaughter of Iphigenia for the honour and benefit of Greece. Speaking of the critics who blame this arrangement, the editor says, they have failed to observe that Racine has adopted the jealousy and intrigues of Hermione as the prime movers against Iphigenia, and that these produce the same result as might otherwise (forsooth) have been brought about by the reasonings of Ulysses. The work of literary profanation could hardly be carried further: it was not to be thus capriciously bandied about from pillar to post, that Homer constructed his deathless masterpieces. In the ‘Andromaque,’ much as it is praised, we miss, still more egregiously than in the ‘Iphigénie,’ all the simplicity and grandeur of the Greek heroic age, and find ourselves environed by the infinite littleness of merely passionate personal intrigues, which have self only for their pole and centre. Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than to see these archaic Grecian characters dressed in the very last Parisian fashions, with speech and action accordingly. The total want of breadth and depth of character, and of earnestness and resolution, as opposed to mere violence, is such that at parts of the ‘Andromaque’ we are almost compelled to ask, whether we are reading a tragedy or a burlesque? As, for instance, when, with the Sixth Iliad yet lingering upon our mental vision, we hear Andromache say to her confidante,
Tu vois le pouvoir de mes yeux1094;
and when Hermione threatens her pis-aller lover, Orestes, with respect to Pyrrhus,
S’il ne meurt aujourd’hui – je puis l’aimer demain1095.
It is here, too, that we see carried perhaps to the very highest point of exaggeration the misstatement of the relative martial merits and performances of Hector and his adversaries. The Greeks Hermione, herself a Spartan, describes as
Des peuples qui dix ans ont fui devant Hector;Qui cent fois, effrayés de l’absence de l’Achille,Dans leur vaisseaux brûlants ont cherché leur asyle;Et qu’on verroit encore, sans l’appui de son fils,Redemander Hélène aux Troyens impunis1096.It was well that the handling of Homer should cease altogether for a time, when the characters and scenes belonging to his subject had become so thoroughly anti-Homeric, that they only falsified what they ought to have assisted to perpetuate. An interval has followed, during which they have been allowed to repose. It would be hazardous to conjecture, after the failures of so many ages, how far they can hereafter be satisfactorily reproduced. It has been reserved for Goethe, with his vigorous grasp of classical antiquity, to tread regions bordering upon that of the Iliad and Odyssey with the consciousness of a master’s power. In his ‘Iphigenie,’ for example, he has given to his scenes, events, and characters the tone and colouring, with which alone they ought to be invested. And, if the study and investigation of Homer shall henceforward be carried on with a zeal at all proportioned to the advantages of the present age, they cannot fail to accumulate materials, which it may be permitted us to hope that future genius will mould into such forms as, if only they are faithful to the spirit of their original, must alike abound in beauty, truth, and grandeur, and alike avail for the delight and the instruction of mankind.
Conclusion.
We have now walked, in the train and in the light of the great Poet of antiquity, through a long, yet, so far at least as he is a party, not a barren circuit. We have begun with his earliest legends, faintly glimmering upon us from the distance of an hundred generations. We have seen the creations of his mind live and move, breathe and almost burn before us, under the power and magic of his art. We have found him to have shaped a great and noble mould of humanity, separate indeed from our experience, but allied through a thousand channels with our sympathies. We have seen the greatness of our race at one and the same time adorned with the simplicity of its childhood, and built up in the strength of its maturity. We have seen it unfold itself in the relations of society and sex, in peace and in war, in things human and things divine; and have examined it under the varied lights of comparison and contrast. We have seen how the memory of that great age, and of its yet greater Poet, has been cherished: how the trust which he bequeathed to mankind has been acknowledged, and yet how imperfectly it has been discharged. We have striven to trace the fate of some among his greatest creations; and having accompanied them down the stream of years even to our own day, it is full time to part. Nemesis must not find me1097,
ἢ νῦν δηθύνοντ’, ἢ ὕστερον αὖθις ἰόντα.
To pass from the study of Homer to the ordinary business of the world is to step out of a palace of enchantments into the cold grey light of a polar day. But the spells, in which this sorcerer deals, have no affinity with that drug from Egypt1098, which drowns the spirit in effeminate indifference: rather they are like the φάρμακον ἐσθλὸν, the remedial specific1099, which, freshening the understanding by contact with the truth and strength of nature, should both improve its vigilance against deceit and danger, and increase its vigour and resolution for the discharge of duty.
1
Page xvii.
2
Merope; by Matthew Arnold, pp. 94, 135.
3
Il. iv. 160-82.
4
Grote’s Hist. Greece, vol. ii. p. 83.
5
Ibid. p. 84.
6
Ibid. p. 102.
7
Ibid. p. 101.
8
Ibid. p. 86.
9
Ibid. pp. 90, 102.
10
Ibid. p. 92.
11
Ibid. p. 95.
12
Grote’s Hist. Greece, vol. ii. pp. 94, 96.
13
Ibid. p. 105.
14
Ar. Eth. Nic. i. 2.
15
Thuc. i. 13.
16
Ar. Pol. III. xiv. xv. V. x.
17
Il. ix. 297.
18
Il. i. 186.
19
Il. ix. 392.
20
Od. xiii. 265.
21
Il. xi. 709, 39, 50.
22
Il. xiii. 685-700.
23
Il. xiii. 701-8.
24
Il. ix. 381.
25
Il. v. 707-10.
26
Thuc. i. 2.
27
B. xii. 8, 4. p. 572.
28
Od. viii. 391. vi. 54.
29
Od. i. 394.
30
Ibid. 386.
31
Od. xvii. 416.
32
Od. xxiv. 179.
33
Od. xxii. 136.
34
See inf. ‘Ilios.’
35
Il. vii. 469.
36
Il. vi. 395-7. 425.
37
There is a nexus of ideas attached to these towns that excites suspicion. It would have been in keeping with the character of Agamemnon to offer them to Achilles, on account of his having already found he could not control them himself. No one of them appears in the Catalogue. Nor do we hear of them in the Nineteenth Book, when the gifts are accepted. It seems, however, just possible that the promise by Menelaus of the hand of his daughter Hermione to Neoptolemus may have been an acquittance of a residue of debt standing over from the original offer of Agamemnon, out of which the seven towns appear to have dropped by consent of all parties.
38
Il. xi. 20.
39
Il. xxiii. 296.
40
Od. ii. 324, 331, et alibi. The epithet is, I think, exactly rendered by another word very difficult to translate into English, the Italian prepotenti.
41
I need hardly express my dissent from the account given of the βασιλεὺς and ἄναξ in the note on Grote’s History of Greece, vol. II. p. 84. There is no race in Troas called βασιλεύτατον. Every βασιλεὺς was an ἄναξ; but many an ἄναξ was not a βασιλεύς. It is true that an ἄναξ might be ἄναξ either of freemen or of slaves; but so he might of houses (Od. i. 397), of fishes (Il. xiii. 28), or of dogs (Od. xvii. 318).
42
Il. xvi. 386.
43
Od. i. 391-3.
44
Il. ix. 155.
45
Od. ii. 230-4.
46
Od. v. 8-12.
47
Od. xviii. 83-6 and 114.
48
Od. xxi. 308.
49
Od. xx. 382, 3.
50
Hesiod Ἔργ. i. 39. 258. cf. 262.
51
Il. xviii. 556.
52
Hes. Theog. 80-97.
53
Thuc. i. 13.
54
Il. i. 231.
55
Il. iii. 179.
56
Od. ii. 47.
57
Hesiod. Ἔργ. 17-24.
58
The title is stated to have been applied in Attica even to the decennial archons. Tittmann, Griechische Staatsverfassungen, b. ii. p. 70.
59
Il. ii. 205.
60
Il. ii. 101.
61
Il. ix. 334.
62
Il. ii. 53 et alibi.
63
Il. xix. 309. ii. 86.
64
Il. ii. 487, 493. xx. 303.
65
Il. ii. 404, and vii. 327. On the force of Παναχαιοὶ, see Achæis, or Ethnology, p. 420.
66
Il. ii. 188.
67
Il. vii. 167-70.
68
Il. x. 175, connected with 195.
69
Il. x. 196, 7.
70
Il. ix. 607.
71
Il. ii. 736, 7. vii. 167. xi. 819.
72
Il. xvii. 51. ii. 673.
73
Il. xxiv. 631.
74
Il. ii. 674. Od. xvi. 175. Il. iii. 224, 169, 226, and Od. xi. 469.
75
Hist. vol. ii. p. 87.
76
Il. xvii. 225.
77
Il. ix. 394.
78
Il. xvii. 520. Od. xii. 83.
79
Il. ii. 660.
80
Nor is it applied in the Odyssey to any bodies more numerous than the thirteen ‘kings’ of Scheria, Od. v. 378; and to them in the character of kings.
81
Od. i. 386.
82
Il. xxiii. 653.
83
Il. x. 352.
84
Il. xxiii. 750.
85
Il. xxiii. 670.
86
Il. ix. 186.
87
Od. xviii. 366-75.
88
Od. xix. 500-2.
89
In Od. xxii. 417, he applies to Euryclea for the information, which he had before declined. This is after the trial of the Bow: the other was before it was proposed, and when the Chief probably reckoned on having himself more time for observation than proved to be the case.
90
Il. i. 334.
91
Il. ix. 197.
92
Il. xxiv. 486.
93
Od. ii. 33, 5.
94
Od. viii. 159. and seqq.
95
Il. iv. 231 and seqq.
96
Od. i. 40.
97
Il. x. 32.
98
ὅ τοι γενεῇ πατρώϊόν ἐστιν, Od. i. 387.
99
Od. i. 396. ii. 182.
100
Od. i. 396.
101
Od. ii. 82.
102
Od. xi. 254, 6.
103
Od. xi. 281.
104
Od. iii. 36.
105
Od. iii. 402. Il. vi. 242-50.
106
Od. iii. 439-46 and 454.
107
Il. xv. 204-7.
108
Od. xiii. 141.
109
Od. xiv. 74. 94.
110
Il. xviii. 498.
111
Il. ii. 204.
112
Il. i. 237.
113
Il. ix. 98.
114
Il. xviii. 506.
115
Il. xvi. 386.
116
Il. iii. 179.
117
Il. vi. 207.
118
Od. xiv. 98.
119
Il. xii. 310-28.
120
Gen. xliii. 11.
121
Il. vii. 467-75.
122
Od. vii. 8-11.
123
Il. xviii. 508.
124
Od. xvii. 68.
125
Il. vii. 313.
126
Il. ix. 70.
127
Od. vii. 49, 108.
128
Ibid. 73.
129
Il. ix. 155.
130
Il. x. 239.
131
Thuc. i. 9.
132
Od. iv. 584.
133
Od. ix. 263.
134
Il. ii. 303-7. 339-41.
135
Ibid. 308, 322.
136
Il. iv. 169-72.
137
Od. vii. 77.
138
Il. ix. 356-63, 417-20.
139
Il. iv. 415-8.
140
Il. i. 117.
141
Il. vi. 45-62.
142
Il. iv. 473-9.
143
Il. ix. 459.
144
Il. xxii. 485. Od. xxiv. 434.
145
Od. xi. 85.
146
Od. iv. 10-12.
147
Od. xvii. 383.
148
Il. vi. 314.
149
Od. iii. 267.
150
Od. xvii. 263. xxiv. 439.
151
Od. xix. 135.
152
Od. viii. 161.
153
Od. i. 183.
154
Od. xxiv.
155
Hist. Greece ii. p. 84.
156
Od. xvi. 248, 253, also δαιτρὸς, Od. i. 141. There were likewise in Scheria nine αἰσυμνῆται, who made arrangements for the dance. These were public officers (δήμιοι) and may fairly be rendered ‘masters of the ceremonies.’ (Od. viii. 258.)
157
Od. xiv. 449-52.
158
Od. xxiv. 498.
159
Od. xvii. 320-3.
160
Od. xi. 489-91.
161
Od. xiii. 223.
162
Il. i. 321.
163
Il. xxiv. 396-400.
164
Od. ii. 17.
165
Ibid. 474.
166
Od. xxiv. 387. 497.
167
Il. ii. 110.
168
Od. xiv. 222.
169
Il. ix. 70-73, 330-3. i. 121.
170
Il. xi. 100, 110.
171
Od. xiv. 96-104.
172
The gods, Il. i. 599 et alibi. The rich man, Il. xi. 68. Od. i. 217. The happy man, Od. vi. 158. xi. 482. Il. iii. 182. xxiv. 377.
173
Il. vi. 236.
174
Il. ii. 448, 9.
175
Il. xxiii. 702-5.
176
Il. xxi. 79.
177
Od. xxii. 57-9.
178
Agam. 37.
179
Il. xxiii. 740-51.
180
Pol. iii. 14. 5.
181
Vid. Achæis or Ethnology, p. 574.
182
Even the instance, in Il. xiii. 211, of a nameless person who had simply been wounded is a rare, if not indeed the single, exception.
183
Il. xiii. 685.
184
Il. ii. 333.
185
Il. xviii. 509, 13, 20.
186
Il. i. 226.
187
Il. xiii. 276-86.
188
Od. iv. 277-88.
189
Il. xxiii. 791.
190
Il. ii. 408-9.
191
Il. ix. 10. 89.
192
Il. x. 195.
193
Il. i. 54. xix. 41.
194
Il. vii. 344, 382.
195
Il. iii. 146-53.
196
Il. xviii. 506.
197
Od. ii. 14.
198
Od. xxi. 21.
199
Il. iv. 329-63.
200
Ibid. 385-418.
201
Il. ix. 37.
202
Cf. Od. xi. 512.
203
Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. 95, 97.
204
Grote ii. 104.
205
Il. ix. 30.
206
Ibid. 50.
207
Il. ix. 79.
208
Ibid. 97.
209
Il. xix. 182.
210
Grote’s Hist. vol. ii. pp. 90, 2.
211
He uses the epithet for battle in Il. iv. 225, 6. 124, 7. 113, 8. 448, 12. 325, 13. 270, 14. 155, and 24. 391.
212
Il. ix. 438-43.
213
Od. ii. 150.
214
Od. viii. 170-3.
215
Od. viii. 166-85.
216
Il. ii. 212.
217
Od. iii. 23, 124.
218
Il. iii. 213.
219
Il. iii. 150.
220
Il. i. 248.
221
Il. iii. 216, 23.
222
Il. xi. 122-42.
223
Od. xxii. 310-25.
224
The version of Voss is very accurate, but, I think, lifeless. The version of Cowper is at this point not satisfactory: he weakens, by exaggerating, the delicate expression μεμήλῃ:
Look thou forth at early dawn,And, if such spectacle delight thee aught,Thou shalt behold me cleaving with my prows, &c.The version of Pope simply omits the line!
Tomorrow we the favouring gods implore:Then shall you see our parting vessels crowned,And hear with oars the Hellespont resound.225
Il. ix. 340.
226
Il. i. 106-244.
227
Il. ix. 387.
228
Il. i. 127.
229
ii. 227.
230
Il. i. 121-9.
231
Ibid. 149-71.
232
Ibid. 225.
233
Ibid. 231.
234
Ibid. 239.
235
Il. ii. 213.
236
φολκός. See Buttmann, Liddell and Scott. Commonly rendered ‘squinting.’
237
Il. ii. 214-19.
238
Ibid. 275, 220.
239
Il. ix. 198.
240
In 237 he appears to follow what Achilles had said i. 170.
241
Il. ii. 241, 2.
242
Il. ii. 229-31.
243
xxi. 40, 79. xxii. 44.
244
246-56.
245
Grote’s Hist. Greece, vol. ii. 95, 6.
246
Ibid. pp. 96, 98.
247
Il. ii. 198.
248
Ibid. 190, 200.
249
vv. 271-8.
250
Il. ii. 270.
251
Il. xviii. 502.
252
Il. vii. 381.
253
Sup. p. 100.
254
Od. iii. 139.
255
Od. ii. 212.
256
Od. ii. 239-41.
257
Griech. Staatsv. b. ii. p. 57.
258
Od. ii. 257. Il. i. 305.
259
Od. vii. 151.
260
Od. vii. 189-94, 317.
261
Od. viii. 7-15.
262
The number deserves remark. Fifty, as we know from the Catalogue, was a regular ship’s crew of rowers. What were the two? Probably a commander, and a steersman. The dual is used in both the places where the numbers are mentioned (κρινάσθων, ver. 36, κρινθέντε, 48, βήτην, 49). There are other passages where the dual extends beyond the number two, to three and four. See Nitzsch, in loc. But the use of it here with so large a number is remarkable, and may be best explained by supposing that it refers to the δύω, who were the principal men of the crew, and that the fifty are not regarded as forming part of the subject of the verb. If this be so, the passage shows us in a very simple form the rudimentary nautical order of the Greek ships.
263
Od. viii. 38.
264
Od. viii. 158-64.
265
Od. viii. 157.
266
Probably the strictly proper name of the Assembly, as distinguished from the place of meeting, is ἄγυρις or πανήγυρις (as Od. iii. 131), but the name common to the two prevails.
267
Od. xxiv. 463.
268
Od. xxiv. 546.
269
Besides all the particulars which have been cited, we have incidental notices scattered about the poems, which tend exactly in the same direction. For example, when Chryses prays for the restitution of his daughter, his petition is addressed principally to the two Atridæ, but it is likewise addressed to the whole body of Ἀχαιοὶ (Il. i. 15), that is, either to the entire army, or at any rate to all the kings; or, to all the members of the Achæan race. This we may compare with the application of the prayer of Ulysses in Scheria to the king and people.
