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

It was a natural and healthful sign of the state of political society, that slavery was held to be odious. But it was odious on account of its effects on the mind, and not because it entailed cruelty or oppression. There is not, I think, a single passage in the poems which in any degree conveys the impression either of hardship endured, or of resentment felt, by any slave of the period.

As to a peasant proprietary.

Neither, as has been said, is there any thing in Homer, which clearly exhibits to us a peasant-proprietary; or entitles us positively to assert that the land was cultivated to a great extent by small proprietors, each acting independently for himself. On the one hand, as has been remarked, we do not find large numbers of personal retainers and servants about the great men: but, on the other hand, Homer does not paint for us a single picture of the independent peasant. In the similes, in the legends, on the Shield of Achilles, in Ithaca, we hear much of large flocks and herds, of great proprietors, of their harvest-fields and their vineyards, but nothing of the small freeman, with property in land sufficient for his family, and no more. The rural labour, which he shows us in action, is organized on a large scale.

The question, what after all was the actual condition of the Greek people in the age of the Troica, is thus left in great obscurity. It is indeed at once the capital point, and the one of which history, chronicle, and poem commonly take the least notice. Upon the whole it would appear most reasonable, while abstaining from too confident assertion, to suppose,

1. That, as respected primogeniture and the disposition of landed property, society was aristocratically organized.

2. That this aristocratic organization, being founded on military occupation, embraced a rather wide range of greater and of smaller proprietors.

3. That these proprietors, by superior wealth, energy, and influence, led the remainder of the population.

4. That there may have existed a peasant-proprietary class in considerable numbers, neither excluded from political privilege nor exempt from military service, but yet not combined, under ordinary circumstances, by any community of interest or of hardship; led, not unwillingly, by the dominant Achæan race; and by no means forming a social element of such interest or attractiveness, in the view of the Poet, as to claim a marked place or vivid delineation, which it certainly has not received, on his canvass.

5. That the cultivation of the greater estates was carried on by hired labourers and by slaves, between which two classes, for that period, no very broad line of distinction can be drawn.

It is not within the scope of this work to enter largely upon the ‘political economy’ of the Homeric age. But, as being itself an important feature of polity, it cannot be altogether overlooked; and this appears to be the place for referring to it.

Political Economy of the Homeric age.

There has been, of late years, debate and research respecting the name given to the important science, which treats of the creation and distribution of wealth. The phrase ‘political economy,’ which has been established by long usage, cannot be defended on its merits. The name Chrematistic has been devised in its stead; an accurate, but perhaps rather dry definition, which does not, like the names Πολιτικὴ and Ἠθικὴ, and like the exceptionable title it is meant to displace, take the human being, who is the real subject of the science, into view. Homer has provided us beforehand with a word which, as it appears to me, retrenches the phrase ‘economy’ precisely in the point where retrenchment is required. The Ulysses of the Fourteenth Odyssey, in one of his fabulous accounts of himself as a Cretan, states168,

ἔργον δέ μοι οὐ φίλον ἔσκενοὐδ’ οἰκωφελίη, ἥτε τρέφει ἀγλαὰ τέκνα.

And I believe that, were it not too late to change a name, ‘political œcophely’ precisely expresses the idea of the science, which, having its fountain-head in good housekeeping, treats, when it has reached its expansion and maturity, of the ‘Wealth of Nations.’

It was not surprising, that the Greeks of the heroic age should have a name for the business of growing wealthy; for it was one to which Hellenes, as well as Pelasgians, appear to have taken kindly. Of this we find various tokens. Though the spirit of acquisition had not yet reached the point, at which it becomes injurious to the general development of man, we appear to have in the distinguished house of the Pelopids at least one isolated example of its excess. We have the friendly testimony of Nestor, as well as the fierce invective of Achilles169, to show that in Agamemnon it constituted a weakness: and he is distinguished in war from the other great chieftains170, by his habit of forthwith stripping those whom he had slain. But Ulysses also, to whom we may be certain that Homer did not mean in this matter to impute a fault, was, according to Eumæus171, richer than any twenty; and after making every allowance for friendly exaggeration, we cannot doubt that Homer meant us to understand that, in the wealth of those days, he was very opulent. The settlement from time to time of Phœnicians in Greece, and the ready docility of the Hellenes in the art of navigation, are signs to the same effect. The idea of wealth again is deeply involved in the name of ὄλβος, which appears to mean a god-given felicity: and μάκαρ is the epithet in common of the gods, the rich man, and the happy man172. Not that the Greeks of those times were, in a greater degree than ourselves, the slaves of wealth, but that they spoke out in their simplicity, here, as also with other matters, what we keep in the shade; and thus they made a greater show of particular propensities, even while they had less of them in reality.

But, even more than from particular signs, I estimate the capacity of the Homeric Greeks for acquisition from the state of facts in the poems. Here we observe a remarkable temperance, and even a detestation of excess, in all the enjoyments of the senses, combined with the possession, not only of a rude abundance in meat, corn, and wine, but with the principle of ornament, largely, though inartificially, established in their greater houses and gardens; with considerable stores of the precious as well as the useful metals, and of fine raiment; and with the possession of somewhat rich works of art, both in metal and embroidery. This picture seems to belong to a stage, although a very early one, in a process of rapid advance to material wealth and prosperity. The wealth and the simplicity of manners, taken together, would seem to imply that they had not yet had time to be corrupted by it, and consequently that, by their energy and prudence, they had gathered it promptly and with ease.

The precious metals not a measure of value.

The commercial intercourse of the age, however, was still an intercourse of barter. There can hardly be a stronger sign of the rudeness of trading relations, than the Homeric use of the word χρεῖος. It signifies both the obligation to pay a debt regularly contracted for value received (Od. iii. 367), and the liability to sustain retaliation after an act of rapine (Il. xi. 686, 8). The possession of the precious metals was probably confined to a very few. Both these, and iron, which apparently stood next to them in value, formed prizes at the Games; in which, speaking generally, only kings and chiefs took part. A certain approximation had been made towards the use of them as money, that is, as the measure of value for other commodities. For, as they were divided into fixed quantities, those quantities were in all likelihood certified by some mark or stamp upon them. Nor do we ever find mere unwrought gold and silver estimated or priced in any other commodity. The arms of Glaucus are indeed ἑκατομβοῖα173, and they are χρύσεα. But this means gilded or adorned with gold; an object made of gold would with Homer be παγχρύσεος. Such are the θύσανοι, the gold drops or tassels of Minerva’s Ægis; each of which is worth an hundred oxen. Thus gold, when manufactured, even if not when in mass, had its value expressed in oxen174.

It is possible that gold and silver may, to a limited extent, have been used as a standard, or as a medium of exchange. The payment of the judge’s fee in the Eighteenth Iliad suggests, though it does not absolutely require, this supposition. Like writing in the Homeric age, like printing when it was executed from a mould among the Ancients, the practice may have existed essentially, but in a form and on a scale that deprived it of importance, by limiting its extent.

Oxen in some degree a measure of value.

The arms of Glaucus and Diomed, and the drops of Minerva’s Ægis, are, as we have seen, valued or priced in oxen. The tripod, which was the first prize for the wrestlers of the Twenty-third Book, was valued at twelve oxen: the captive woman, who was the second, accomplished in works of industry, was worth four175.

But Laertes gave for Euryclea no less than twenty oxen, or rather the value of twenty oxen (ἐεικοσάβοια δ’ ἔδωκεν, Od. i. 431). We need not ascribe the difference in costliness to the superior merit of Euryclea; but we may presume the explanation to be, that Laertes, in time of peace, paid for Euryclea the high price of an importing market; whereas the Greeks, in a state of war before Troy, had probably more captives than they knew how to feed. They were, at any rate, in the country of production: and the price was low accordingly.

When we find it said that a woman slave was estimated at four oxen, we are not enabled at once to judge from such a statement whether oxen were a measure of value, or whether the meaning simply was, that a man, who wanted such a slave, would give four oxen for her. But the case of Euryclea clears up this point. For what Laertes gave was not the twenty oxen, but something equal to them, something in return for which they could ordinarily be had. Again, Lycaon brought Achilles the value of a hundred oxen, a hundred oxen’s worth176. In this case, then, oxen are used as a medium for the expression of value.

In a passage of the Odyssey, we find that the Suitors, when they try to make terms with Ulysses in his wrath, promise as follows by the mouth of Eurymachus177;

τιμὴν ἀμφὶς ἄγοντες ἐεικοσάβοιον ἕκαστος,χαλκόν τε χρυσόν τ’ ἀποδώσομεν, εἰσόκε σὸν κῆρἰανθῇ.

This has been rendered as a double engagement to pay the oxen and the metals. It seems to me, from the construction of the passage, as if it would be more properly understood to be a declaration, that they would each of them bring him a compensation of the value of twenty oxen in gold, and in copper. If Eurymachus had meant to express the restoration of the live stock of Ulysses, it is not likely that he would have spoken of oxen only, especially in the goat-feeding and swine-feeding Ithaca.

There is another passage in the poems, which seems to carry a similar testimony one point further. When Euneus sends ships with wine to the Greek camp, the Greeks pay him for his wine, some with copper, some with iron, some with hides, some with slaves, and some with oxen. Slaves, as we have seen, would probably be redundant in the camp. The same would be eminently the case with respect to hides; since they would be redundantly supplied by the animals continually slaughtered for the subsistence of the army. Even as to the metals, we need not feel surprise at the passage; for they were acquired largely by spoil, and not greatly needed by the force, since wear and tear scarcely constitute an element in the question of supply for those times. But it is certainly more startling that any of the Greeks should have sold oxen to the crews of Euneus. Neither in that age nor in this would any merchants carry away oxen from a vast and crowded camp, where they would be certain to be in the highest demand. I therefore presume the meaning to be as follows; that those particular Greeks, who happened to have more oxen than they wanted at the moment, sold them to the people of the ships; and that the people of the ships took these oxen, in exchange for wine, not intending to carry them away, but to sell them again, perhaps against hides or slaves on the spot, as the live cattle would be certain to find a ready and advantageous market among other Greeks of the army.

Oxen therefore, in that age, seem to have come nearer, than any other commodity, to the discharge of the functions now performed by the precious metals: for they were both used to express value, and probably purchased not for use only, but also with a view to re-sale. Thus the Homeric evidence, with respect to them, is in conformity with the testimony of Æschylus in the Agamemnon, who seems to represent the ox as the first sign imprinted upon money178.

The precious metals themselves were much employed for both personal ornament and for art. This was, no doubt, their proper and established application; and when they are stored, they are stored in common with other metals not of the same class, and with a view, in all likelihood, to manufacture.

Relative scarcity of metals.

It appears clear, from the Homeric poems, that silver was more rare than gold. It is used, when used at all, in smaller quantities: and it much more rarely appears in the accounts of stored-up wealth. A like inference may be drawn, perhaps, from the books of Moses; and it corresponds with the anticipations we should reasonably form from the fact that gold is found in a native state, and, even when mixed with other material, is more readily fitted for use. The extensive employment of silver only arrives, when society is more advanced, and when the use of money is more familiar and minute. Payments in the precious metals on a somewhat large scale precede those for smaller transactions. We are not however to infer, from the greater rarity of silver, that it was more valuable than gold: the value depending, not on the comparative quantities only, but upon the compound ratio of the quantities as compared with the demand. It would however appear from a passage in the account of the funeral games, that gold, if not silver, was then much less esteemed than it now is. For, while a silver bowl was the first prize of the foot-race, a large and fat ox (perhaps worth three ordinary ones) was the second, and a half talent of gold was only the third179.

The position of iron, however, relatively to the other metals, was very different in the heroic age from what it now is: and probably its great rarity was due, like that of silver, to the difficulty of bringing the metal into a state fit for use; which could more readily be effected with copper, with tin, or with κύανος, in whatever sense it is to be interpreted. Iron, however, would appear to have been more valuable than these metals; greatly more valuable, in particular, than copper, which is now worth from fifteen to twenty times as much as iron. A mass of crude iron is produced at the funeral games as a prize; and iron made into axe-heads forms another. No other metal, below the rank of gold and silver, is ever similarly employed in an unmanufactured state. —

Let us now turn to a brief view of the polity and organization of the army.

We perceive the organization of the Greek communities in a double form: both as a community, properly so called, in time of peace, a picture supplied by the Odyssey; and likewise as an army, according to the delineations of the Iliad.

Mode of government of the army.

The differences are worth noting: but they do not seem to touch fundamental principles. Agamemnon governed the army by the ordinary political instruments, not by the rules of military discipline. Aristotle180 quotes from the Iliad of his own day and place, and as proceeding from the mouth of Agamemnon, the words,

πὰρ γὰρ ἐμοὶ θάνατος·

and Grote founds upon this citation the remark, that ‘the Alexandrian critics effaced many traces of the old manners.’ But was this really a trace of the old manners? Is there a single passage now remaining of the Iliad, a single thought, a single word, which at all corresponds with the idea that Agamemnon had in his own hands, in the shape of a defined prerogative, the power of capital punishment? Aristotle certainly accepts the passage, and contrasts this military power of Agamemnon with the restraints upon him in the peaceful sphere of the ἀγορή; but I am by no means sure that English institutions do not afford us the aid of far more powerful analogies for appreciating the real political spirit of the Homeric poems, than any that even Aristotle could draw in his own day from the orientalizing government of Alexander. I do not, however, so much question the passage, as the construction put upon it. The prerogatives of the Greek kings were founded in general duty and feeling, not in law. When Ulysses belaboured Thersites, it was not in the exercise of a determinate right, but in obedience to the dictates of general prudence, which, upon a high emergency, the general sense approved. Doubtless, if Agamemnon had caught a runaway from the ranks, he might have slain him; but is it supposed that Ulysses might not? What was the meaning of the advice of Nestor, to put the poltroons in the middle of the ranks, but that their comrades about them should spear them if they should try to run? There is no criminal justice, in the proper sense of the term, though there is civil justice, in either of the Homeric poems; the wrongs of man to man are adjusted or requited by the latter form of remedy, but the ideas on which the former rests were unknown: there is no king’s peace, more than there is a king’s highway: the sanctions of force are added upon occasion to the general authority of office by those who bear it, according to the suggestions of their common sense. Had it been otherwise, Ulysses would never have put the wretched women in his household, who could not, like the Suitors their paramours, be politically formidable, to a death, which fully entitled him to say with the Agamemnon of the citation, πὰρ γὰρ ἐμοὶ θάνατος. The general reverence for rank and station, the safeguard of publicity, and the influence of persuasion, are the usual and sufficient instruments for governing the army, even as they governed the civil societies of Greece. In the Assembly of the army, the quarrel with Achilles takes place: in the Assembly arises the tumultuary impulse to return home: in the Assembly, that impulse having been checked, it is deliberately resolved to see what they can do by fighting: in the Assembly it is determined to ask a truce for burials, and to erect the rampart: in the nocturnal Assembly that Council is appointed to sit, which sends the abortive mission to Achilles. Every great measure affecting the whole body is, as we shall find, adopted in the Assembly: and, finally, it is here that Agamemnon explicitly confesses and laments his fault, and that the reconciliation with Achilles is ratified.

We may therefore take the polity, so to speak, of the Greek army into a common view with that of the Ithacan ἀγορή; but first it will be well to sketch its military organization.

Its military composition.

Next to the βασιλῆες came the ἔξοχοι ἄνδρες (Il. ii. 188), or ἀριστῆες, of the Greek army. They are pretty clearly distinguished from the kings in the speech of Achilles (ix. 334); when, after describing the niggardliness of Agamemnon with respect to booty, he goes on to say, which I understand to mean, he gave to these two classes prizes different, i. e. proportioned to their respective stations.

ἄλλα δ’ ἀριστήεσσι δίδου γέρα καὶ βασιλεῦσιν·

The language of the Catalogue pointedly marks the same distinction in other words. At the beginning, the Poet invites the Muses to tell him (ver. 487),

οἵτινες ἡγεμόνες Δαναῶν καὶ κοίρανοι ἦσαν,

and at the close he says (ver. 760),

οὗτοι ἄρ’ ἡγεμόνες Δαναῶν καὶ κοίρανοι ἦσαν.

These two verses appear to be in evident correspondence with each other: and if so, we may the more confidently rely on the language as carefully chosen to describe the two classes, first the kings as κοίρανοι (cf. Il. ii. 204, 207), and, secondly, the ἀριστῆες as ἡγεμόνες.

This class, it is probable, consisted,

First, of the leaders of the minor and less significant contingents.

Secondly, of lieutenants, or those who are named in the Catalogue as holding inferior commands under the great leaders (such as Meriones, Sthenelus, and Euryalus).

But, below the ἡγεμόνες of the Catalogue, there would appear to have been several grades of minor officers, in command of smaller subdivisions of the army. These would seem to have been described by a general name, ἡγεμόνες. When Nestor (ii. 362) advises the distribution of the army according to φῦλα and φρήτραι, it will, he says, have the advantage of showing not only which of the soldiers, but which of the officers were good, and which bad. Probably therefore there were officers of each φῦλον, if not even, under these, of each φρήτρη.

Of the Greeks nine are named in Il. xi. 301-3, who were slain by Hector at once, before he went among the privates (πληθύς). Of these nine no one is mentioned in any other part of the poem; and since at the same time they are expressly declared to be ἡγεμόνες, we may safely look upon them as examples of the class of minor or secondary officers. From their names, which have a strong Hellenic colour181, we may venture at least to conjecture, that this class was chiefly Achæan, or of Achæan rank, and that the Pelasgian blood of the army was principally among the common soldiers.

The maritime order of the armament, which required a commander for each vessel, necessarily involved the existence of a class of what we may call subaltern officers.

When Helen describes the chieftains to Priam from the tower, of whom Idomeneus is one, she proceeds (Il. iii. 231);

ἀμφὶ δέ μιν Κρητῶν ἀγοὶ ἠγερέθονται.

Again, when Achilles went with fifty ships to Troy, he divided his 2500 men under five ἡγεμόνες, whom he appointed to give the word of command (σημαίνειν) under him. The force thus arranged formed five στίχες or ranks, Il. xvi. 168-72: and here the private persons are expressly called ἑταῖροι (ver. 170). Most probably these ἀγοὶ of the Cretans, and these five Myrmidon leaders, are to be considered as belonging to a class below the ἀριστῆες, yet above the subalterns.

Lastly, we have to notice the privates, so to speak, of the Greek army, who are called by the several names of λαὸς (Il. ii. 191. i. 54), δῆμος (ii. 198), and πληθὺς (ii. 278).

In their military character they are indeed a mass of atoms, undistinguishable from one another, but yet distinguished by their silence and order, which was founded probably on confidence in their leaders.

The descriptions of fighting men.

No private or nameless182 person of the Greek army, however, on any occasion performs any feat, either great or small: these are always achieved by the men of birth and station: and the three designations we have mentioned, the only ones which are used to designate the whole mass of the soldiery, represent them to us as a community bearing arms, rather than as an army in any sense that is technical or professional.

All these were entitled to attend the ἀγορὴ, or Assembly, if they pleased. And accordingly, on the first Assembly that Achilles attended after renouncing his wrath, we find that, from the great interest of the occasion, even those persons were present who did not usually appear: namely, the pilots of the ships, and others who probably had charge of them while ashore, together with those who managed the provisioning of the force (ταμίαι), or, in our language, the commissariat (Il. xix. 42-5).

In their strictly military capacity they were, however, divided into

1. ἱππῆες, who fought in chariots, commonly (Il. xxiii. 334-40) with two horses. When there were three (xvi. 467-75), the outrunner was called παρήορος. The chariot of Hector was drawn by four horses (viii. 185), but we have no such case among the Greeks. Two persons went in each chariot; of whom the inferior (ἠνίοχος) drove, and the superior (παρέβασκε) stood by him free to fight. But probably none of these ἱππῆες were of the mere πληθὺς of the army, or common soldiery.

2. ἀσπισταί, the heavy-armed, of the σταδίη ὑσμίνη. These use the longer spear, the axe, the sword, or the stone.

3. ἀκοντίσται, using the lighter spear (Il. xv. 709. xxiii. 622. Od. xviii. 261).

4. τοξόται (Il. ii. 720. iii. 79).

Again, the men are distinguished by epithets according to merit; each being ἔξοχος, μεσήεις, or χερειότερος (Il. xii. 269), or even κακός; and with the last-named the precaution is taken to place them in the midst of their comrades.