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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Homer and His Age, by Andrew Lang
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Homer and His Age
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+
+Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7972]
+[This file was first posted on June 8, 2003]
+Last Updated: April 9, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOMER AND HIS AGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Moynihan, Lee Dawei, Miranda van de
+Heijning, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HOMER AND HIS AGE
+
+By Andrew Lang
+
+
+[Illustration: ALGONQUINS UNDER SHIELD _Frontispiece_]
+
+
+To R. W. RAPER IN ALL GRATITUDE
+
+
+[Etext Editor's note: Due to unclear typesetting of the original work,
+which contains unidentifiable characters and blank spaces, it has not
+been possible to capture this text completely. Where we have been unable
+to recover the meaning of the text, this has been indicated by the
+annotation [sic] or [blank space]. We hope that in the future a complete
+edition can be found and these gaps can be filled.]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In _Homer and the Epic_, ten or twelve years ago, I examined the
+literary objections to Homeric unity. These objections are chiefly based
+on alleged discrepancies in the narrative, of which no one poet, it
+is supposed, could have been guilty. The critics repose, I venture
+to think, mainly on a fallacy. We may style it the fallacy of "the
+analytical reader." The poet is expected to satisfy a minutely critical
+reader, a personage whom he could not foresee, and whom he did not
+address. Nor are "contradictory instances" examined--that is, as Blass
+has recently reminded his countrymen, Homer is put to a test which
+Goethe could not endure. No long fictitious narrative can satisfy "the
+analytical reader."
+
+The fallacy is that of disregarding the Homeric poet's audience. He
+did not sing for Aristotle or for Aristarchus, or for modern minute
+and reflective inquirers, but for warriors and ladies. He certainly
+satisfied them; but if he does not satisfy microscopic professors, he is
+described as a syndicate of many minstrels, living in many ages.
+
+In the present volume little is said in defence of the poet's
+consistency. Several chapters on that point have been excised. The way
+of living which Homer describes is examined, and an effort is made to
+prove that he depicts the life of a single brief age of culture. The
+investigation is compelled to a tedious minuteness, because the points
+of attack--the alleged discrepancies in descriptions of the various
+details of existence--are so minute as to be all but invisible.
+
+The unity of the Epics is not so important a topic as the methods of
+criticism. They ought to be sober, logical, and self-consistent. When
+these qualities are absent, Homeric criticism may be described, in the
+recent words of Blass, as "a swamp haunted by wandering fires, will o'
+the wisps."
+
+In our country many of the most eminent scholars are no believers in
+separatist criticism. Justly admiring the industry and erudition of the
+separatists, they are unmoved by their arguments, to which they do
+not reply, being convinced in their own minds. But the number and
+perseverance of the separatists make on "the general reader" the
+impression that Homeric unity is chose _jugée_, that _scientia locuta
+est_, and has condemned Homer. This is far from being the case: the
+question is still open; "science" herself is subject to criticism; and
+new materials, accruing yearly, forbid a tame acquiescence in hasty
+theories.
+
+May I say a word to the lovers of poetry who, in reading Homer, feel no
+more doubt than in reading Milton that, on the whole, they are studying
+a work of one age, by one author? Do not let them be driven from their
+natural impression by the statement that Science has decided against
+them. The certainties of the exact sciences are one thing: the opinions
+of Homeric commentators are other and very different things. Among all
+the branches of knowledge which the Homeric critic should have at his
+command, only philology, archaeology, and anthropology can be called
+"sciences"; and they are not exact sciences: they are but skirmishing
+advances towards the true solution of problems prehistoric and
+"proto-historic."
+
+Our knowledge shifts from day to day; on every hand, in regard to almost
+every topic discussed, we find conflict of opinions. There is no certain
+scientific decision, but there is the possibility of working in the
+scientific spirit, with breadth of comparison; consistency of logic;
+economy of conjecture; abstinence from the piling of hypothesis on
+hypothesis.
+
+Nothing can be more hurtful to science than the dogmatic assumption that
+the hypothesis most in fashion is scientific.
+
+Twenty years ago, the philological theory of the Solar Myth was preached
+as "scientific" in the books, primers, and lectures of popular science.
+To-day its place knows it no more. The separatist theories of the
+Homeric poems are not more secure than the Solar Myth, "like a wave
+shall they pass and be passed."
+
+When writing on "The Homeric House" (Chapter X.) I was unacquainted with
+Mr. Percy Gardner's essay, "The Palaces of Homer" (_Journal of Hellenic
+Studies_, vol. iii. pp. 264-282). Mr. Gardner says that Dasent's plan
+of the Scandinavian Hall "offers in most respects not likeness, but a
+striking contrast to the early Greek hall." Mr. Monro, who was not aware
+of the parallel which I had drawn between the Homeric and Icelandic
+houses, accepted it on evidence more recent than that of Sir George
+Dasent. Cf. his _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 490-494.
+
+Mr. R. W. Raper, of Trinity College, Oxford, has read the proof sheets
+of this work with his habitual kindness, but is in no way responsible
+for the arguments. Mr. Walter Leaf has also obliged me by mentioning
+some points as to which I had not completely understood his position,
+and I have tried as far as possible to represent his ideas correctly. I
+have also received assistance from the wide and minute Homeric lore of
+Mr. A. Shewan, of St. Andrews, and have been allowed to consult other
+scholars on various points.
+
+The first portion of the chapter on "Bronze and Iron" appeared in the
+Revue _Archéologique_ for April 1905, and the editor, Monsieur Salomon
+Reinach, obliged me with a note on the bad iron swords of the Celts as
+described by Polybius.
+
+The design of men in three shields of different shapes, from a Dipylon
+vase, is reproduced, with permission, from the British Museum _Guide
+to the Antiquities of the Iron Age_; and the shielded chessmen from
+Catalogue of Scottish Society of Antiquaries. Thanks for the two ships
+with men under shield are offered to the Rev. Mr. Browne, S.J., author
+of _Handbook of Homeric Studies_ (Longmans). For the Mycenaean gold
+corslet I thank Mr. John Murray (Schliemann's Mycenae and Tiryns), and
+for all the other Mycenaean illustrations Messrs. Macmillan and Mr.
+Leaf, publishers and author of Mr. Leaf's edition of the _Iliad_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+
+CHAPTER I: THE HOMERIC AGE
+
+CHAPTER II: HYPOTHESES AS TO THE GROWTH OF THE EPICS
+
+CHAPTER III: HYPOTHESES OF EPIC COMPOSITION
+
+CHAPTER IV: LOOSE FEUDALISM: THE OVER-LORD IN "ILIAD," BOOKS I. AND II.
+
+CHAPTER V: AGAMEMNON IN THE LATER "ILIAD"
+
+CHAPTER VI: ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE "ILIAD"--BURIAL AND CREMATION
+
+CHAPTER VII: HOMERIC ARMOUR
+
+CHAPTER VIII: THE BREASTPLATE
+
+CHAPTER IX: BRONZE AND IRON
+
+CHAPTER X: THE HOMERIC HOUSE
+
+CHAPTER XI: NOTES OF CHANGE IN THE "ODYSSEY"
+
+CHAPTER XII: LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES
+
+CHAPTER XIII: THE "DOLONEIA"--"ILIAD," BOOK X.
+
+CHAPTER XIV: THE INTERPOLATIONS OF NESTOR
+
+CHAPTER XV: THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS
+
+CHAPTER XVI: HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS
+
+CHAPTER XVII: CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
+
+
+ALGONQUINS UNDER SHIELD
+
+THE VASE OF ARISTONOTHOS
+
+DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS
+
+RINGS: SWORDS AND SHIELDS
+
+FRAGMENTS OF WARRIOR VASE
+
+FRAGMENT OF SIEGE VASE
+
+ALGONQUIN CORSLET
+
+GOLD CORSLET
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+THE HOMERIC AGE
+
+The aim of this book is to prove that the Homeric Epics, as wholes, and
+apart from passages gravely suspected in antiquity, present a perfectly
+harmonious picture of the entire life and civilisation of one single
+age. The faint variations in the design are not greater than such as
+mark every moment of culture, for in all there is some movement; in all,
+cases are modified by circumstances. If our contention be true, it will
+follow that the poems themselves, as wholes, are the product of a single
+age, not a mosaic of the work of several changeful centuries.
+
+This must be the case--if the life drawn is harmonious, the picture
+must be the work of a single epoch--for it is not in the nature of early
+uncritical times that later poets should adhere, or even try to adhere,
+to the minute details of law, custom, opinion, dress, weapons, houses,
+and so on, as presented in earlier lays or sagas on the same set
+of subjects. Even less are poets in uncritical times inclined to
+"archaise," either by attempting to draw fancy pictures of the manners
+of the past, or by making researches in graves, or among old votive
+offerings in temples, for the purpose of "preserving local colour." The
+idea of such archaising is peculiar to modern times. To take an instance
+much to the point, Virgil was a learned poet, famous for his antiquarian
+erudition, and professedly imitating and borrowing from Homer. Now, had
+Virgil worked as a man of to-day would work on a poem of Trojan times,
+he would have represented his heroes as using weapons of bronze.
+[Footnote: Looking back at my own poem, _Helen of Troy_ (1883), I find
+that when the metal of a weapon is mentioned the metal is bronze.] No
+such idea of archaising occurred to the learned Virgil. It is "the iron"
+that pierces the head of Remulus (_Aeneid_, IX. 633); it is "the iron"
+that waxes warm in the breast of Antiphates (IX. 701). Virgil's men,
+again, do not wear the great Homeric shield, suspended by a baldric:
+AEneas holds up his buckler (_clipeus_), borne "on his left arm" (X. 26
+i). Homer, familiar with no buckler worn on the left arm, has no such
+description. When the hostile ranks are to be broken, in the _Aeneid_ it
+is "with the iron" (X. 372), and so throughout.
+
+The most erudite ancient poet, in a critical age of iron, does not
+archaise in our modern fashion. He does not follow his model, Homer, in
+his descriptions of shields, swords, and spears. But, according to
+most Homeric critics, the later continuators of the Greek Epics, about
+800-540 B.C., are men living in an age of iron weapons, and of round
+bucklers worn on the left arm. Yet, unlike Virgil, they always give
+their heroes arms of bronze, and, unlike Virgil (as we shall see),
+they do not introduce the buckler worn on the left arm. They adhere
+conscientiously to the use of the vast Mycenaean shield, in their time
+obsolete. Yet, by the theory, in many other respects they innovate
+at will, introducing corslets and greaves, said to be unknown to the
+beginners of the Greek Epics, just as Virgil innovates in bucklers and
+iron weapons. All this theory seems inconsistent, and no ancient poet,
+not even Virgil, is an archaiser of the modern sort.
+
+All attempts to prove that the Homeric poems are the work of several
+centuries appear to rest on a double hypothesis: first, that the later
+contributors to the _ILIAD_ kept a steady eye on the traditions of the
+remote Achaean age of bronze; next, that they innovated as much as they
+pleased.
+
+Poets of an uncritical age do not archaise. This rule is overlooked by
+the critics who represent the Homeric poems as a complex of the work of
+many singers in many ages. For example, Professor Percy Gardner, in his
+very interesting _New chapters in Greek History_ (1892), carries neglect
+of the rule so far as to suppose that the late Homeric poets, being
+aware that the ancient heroes could not ride, or write, or eat boiled
+meat, consciously and purposefully represented them as doing none of
+these things. This they did "on the same principle on which a writer of
+pastoral idylls in our own day would avoid the mention of the telegraph
+or telephone." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 142.] "A writer of our own
+day,"--there is the pervading fallacy! It is only writers of the last
+century who practise this archaeological refinement. The authors of
+_Beowulf_ and the _Nibelungenlied_, of the Chansons de _Geste_ and of
+the Arthurian romances, always describe their antique heroes and the
+details of their life in conformity with the customs, costume, and
+armour of their own much later ages.
+
+But Mr. Leaf, to take another instance, remarks as to the lack of the
+metal lead in the Epics, that it is mentioned in similes only, as though
+the poet were aware the metal was unknown in the heroic age. [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, Note on, xi. 237.] Here the poet is assumed to be a careful
+but ill-informed archaeologist, who wishes to give an accurate
+representation of the past. Lead, in fact, was perfectly familiar to the
+Mycenaean prime. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 73.] The critical
+usage of supposing that the ancients were like the most recent
+moderns--in their archaeological preoccupations--is a survival of the
+uncritical habit which invariably beset old poets and artists. Ancient
+poets, of the uncritical ages, never worked "on the same principle as a
+writer in our day," as regards archaeological precision; at least we are
+acquainted with no example of such accuracy.
+
+Let us take another instance of the critical fallacy. The age of the
+Achaean warriors, who dwelt in the glorious halls of Mycenae, was
+followed, at an interval, by the age represented in the relics found in
+the older tombs outside the Dipylon gate of Athens, an age beginning,
+probably, about 900-850 B.C. The culture of this "Dipylon age," a
+time of geometrical ornaments on vases, and of human figures drawn in
+geometrical forms, lines, and triangles, was quite unlike that of the
+Achaean age in many ways, for example, in mode of burial and in the use
+of iron for weapons. Mr. H. R. Hall, in his learned book, _The Oldest
+Civilisation of Greece_ (1901), supposes the culture described in the
+Homeric poems to be contemporary in Asia with that of this Dipylon
+period in Greece. [Footnote: Op. cit., pp. 49, 222.] He says, "The
+Homeric culture is evidently the culture of the poet's own days; there
+is no attempt to archaise here...." They do not archaise as to the
+details of life, but "the Homeric poets consciously and consistently
+archaised, in regard to the political conditions of continental Greece,"
+in the Achaean times. They give "in all probability a pretty accurate
+description" of the loose feudalism of Mycenaean Greece. [Footnote: Op.
+cit., pp. 223, 225.]
+
+We shall later show that this Homeric picture of a past political and
+social condition of Greece is of vivid and delicate accuracy, that it
+is drawn from the life, not constructed out of historical materials. Mr.
+Hall explains the fact by "the conscious and consistent" archaeological
+precision of the Asiatic poets of the ninth century. Now to any one
+who knows early national poetry, early uncritical art of any kind,
+this theory seems not easily tenable. The difficulty of the theory is
+increased, if we suppose that the Achaeans were the recent conquerors
+of the Mycenaeans. Whether we regard the Achaeans as "Celts," with Mr.
+Ridgeway, victors over an Aryan people, the Pelasgic Mycenaeans; or
+whether, with Mr. Hall, we think that the Achaeans were the Aryan
+conquerors of a non-Aryan people, the makers of the Mycenaean
+civilisation; in the stress of a conquest, followed at no long interval
+by an expulsion at the hands of Dorian invaders, there would be little
+thought of archaising among Achaean poets. [Footnote: Mr. Hall informs
+me that he no longer holds the opinion that the poets archaised.]
+
+A distinction has been made, it is true, between the poet and other
+artists in this respect. Monsieur Perrot says, "The vase-painter
+reproduces what he sees; while the epic poets endeavoured to represent
+a distant past. If Homer gives swords of bronze to his heroes of times
+gone by, it is because he knows that such were the weapons of these
+heroes of long ago. In arming them with bronze he makes use, in his
+way, of what we call 'local colour....' Thus the Homeric poet is a more
+conscientious historian than Virgil!" [Footnote: La _Grète de l'Epopée_,
+Perrot et Chipiez, p. 230.]
+
+Now we contend that old uncritical poets no more sought for antique
+"local colour" than any other artists did. M. Perrot himself says with
+truth, "the _CHANSON DE ROLAND_, and all the _Gestes_ of the same cycle
+explain for us the Iliad and the Odyssey." [Footnote: op. cit., p. 5.]
+But the poet of the _CHANSON DE ROLAND_ accoutres his heroes of old time
+in the costume and armour of his own age, and the later poets of the
+same cycle introduce the innovations of their time; they do not hunt for
+"local colour" in the _CHANSON DE ROLAND_. The very words "local colour"
+are a modern phrase for an idea that never occurred to the artists of
+ancient uncritical ages. The Homeric poets, like the painters of the
+Dipylon period, describe the details of life as they see them with their
+own eyes. Such poets and artists never have the fear of "anachronisms"
+before them. This, indeed, is plain to the critics themselves, for
+they, detect anachronisms as to land tenure, burial, the construction
+of houses, marriage customs, weapons, and armour in the _Iliad_ and
+_Odyssey_. These supposed anachronisms we examine later: if they really
+exist they show that the poets were indifferent to local colour
+and archaeological precision, or were incapable of attaining to
+archaeological accuracy. In fact, such artistic revival of the past in
+its habit as it lived is a purely modern ideal.
+
+We are to show, then, that the Epics, being, as wholes, free from such
+inevitable modifications in the picture of changing details of life as
+uncritical authors always introduce, are the work of the one age which
+they represent. This is the reverse of what has long been, and still is,
+the current theory of Homeric criticism, according to which the Homeric
+poems are, and bear manifest marks of being, a mosaic of the poetry of
+several ages of change.
+
+Till Wolf published his _Prolegomena_ to [blank space] (1795) there was
+little opposition to the old belief that the _ILIAD_ and Odyssey were,
+allowing for interpolations, the work of one, or at most of two, poets.
+After the appearance of Wolfs celebrated book, Homeric critics have
+maintained, generally speaking, that the _ILIAD_ is either a collection
+of short lays disposed in sequence in a late age, or that it contains an
+ancient original "kernel" round which "expansions," made throughout
+some centuries of changeful life, have accrued, and have been at last
+arranged by a literary redactor or editor.
+
+The latter theory is now dominant. It is maintained that the _Iliad_ is
+a work of at least four centuries. Some of the objections to this theory
+were obvious to Wolf himself--more obvious to him than to his followers.
+He was aware, and some of them are not, of the distinction between
+reading the _ILIAD_ as all poetic literature is naturally read, and by
+all authors is meant to be read, for human pleasure, and studying it in
+the spirit of "the analytical reader." As often as he read for pleasure,
+he says, disregarding the purely fanciful "historical conditions" which
+he invented for Homer; as often as he yielded himself to that running
+stream of action and narration; as often as he considered the _harmony_
+of _colour_ and of characters in the Epic, no man could be more angry
+with his own destructive criticism than himself. Wolf ceased to be a
+Wolfian whenever he placed himself at the point of view of the reader or
+the listener, to whom alone every poet makes his appeal.
+
+But he deemed it his duty to place himself at another point of view,
+that of the scientific literary historian, the historian of a period
+concerning whose history he could know nothing. "How could the thing
+be possible?" he asked himself. "How could a long poem like the _Iliad_
+come into existence in the historical circumstances?" [Footnote, exact
+place in paragraph unknown: Preface to Homer, p, xxii., 1794.]. Wolf was
+unaware that he did not know what the historical circumstances were. We
+know how little we know, but we do know more than Wolf. He invented the
+historical circumstances of the supposed poet. They were, he said, like
+those of a man who should build a large ship in an inland place, with no
+sea to launch it upon. The _Iliad_ was the large ship; the sea was the
+public. Homer could have no _readers_, Wolf said, in an age that, like
+the old hermit of Prague, "never saw pen and ink," had no knowledge
+of letters; or, if letters were dimly known, had never applied them
+to literature. In such circumstances no man could have a motive for
+composing a long poem. [Footnote: _Prolegomena to the Iliad_, p. xxvi.]
+
+Yet if the original poet, "Homer," could make "the greater part of the
+songs," as Wolf admitted, what physical impossibility stood in the way
+of his making the whole? Meanwhile, the historical circumstances, as
+conceived of by Wolf, were imaginary. He did not take the circumstances
+of the poet as described in the Odyssey. Here a king or prince has a
+minstrel, honoured as were the minstrels described in the ancient Irish
+books of law. His duty is to entertain the prince and his family and
+guests by singing epic chants after supper, and there is no reason why
+his poetic narratives should be brief, but rather he has an opportunity
+that never occurred again till the literary age of Greece for producing
+a long poem, continued from night to night. In the later age, in the
+Asiatic colonies and in Greece, the rhapsodists, competing for prizes at
+feasts, or reciting to a civic crowd, were limited in time and gave but
+snatches of poetry. It is in this later civic age that a poet without
+readers would have little motive for building Wolfs great ship of song,
+and scant chance of launching it to any profitable purpose. To this
+point we return; but when once critics, following Wolf, had convinced
+themselves that a long early poem was impossible, they soon found
+abundant evidence that it had never existed.
+
+They have discovered discrepancies of which, they say, no one sane poet
+could have been guilty. They have also discovered that the poems had
+not, as Wolf declared, "one 'harmony of colour" (_unus color_). Each
+age, they say, during which the poems were continued, lent its own
+colour. The poets, by their theory, now preserved the genuine tradition
+of things old; cremation, cairn and urn burial; the use of the chariot
+in war; the use of bronze for weapons; a peculiar stage of customary
+law; a peculiar form of semi-feudal society; a peculiar kind of house.
+But again, by a change in the theory, the poets introduced later
+novelties; later forms of defensive armour; later modes of burial; later
+religious and speculative beliefs; a later style of house; an advanced
+stage of law; modernisms in grammar and language.
+
+The usual position of critics in this matter is stated by Helbig; and
+we are to contend that the theory is contradicted by all experience of
+ancient literatures, and is in itself the reverse of consistent. "The
+_artists_ of antiquity," says Helbig, with perfect truth, "had no idea
+of archaeological studies.... They represented legendary scenes in
+conformity with the spirit of their own age, and reproduced the arms and
+implements and costume that they saw around them." [Footnote: _L'Épopée
+Homerique_, p. 5; _Homerische Epos_, p. 4.]
+
+Now a poet is an _artist_, like another, and he, too--no less than the
+vase painter or engraver of gems--in dealing with legends of times past,
+represents (in an uncritical age) the arms, utensils, costume, and the
+religious, geographical, legal, social, and political ideas of his own
+period. We shall later prove that this is true by examples from the
+early mediaeval epic poetry of Europe.
+
+It follows that if the _Iliad_ is absolutely consistent and harmonious
+in its picture of life, and of all the accessories of life, the _Iliad_
+is the work of a single age, of a single stage of culture, the poet
+describing his own environment. But Helbig, on the other hand, citing
+Wilamowitz Moellendorff, declares that the _Iliad_--the work of four
+centuries, he says--maintains its unity of colour by virtue of
+an uninterrupted poetical tradition. [Footnote: _Homerische
+Untersuchungen_, p. 292; _Homerische Epos_, p. I.] If so, the poets must
+have archaeologised, must have kept asking themselves, "Is this or that
+detail true to the past?" which artists in uncritical ages never do,
+as we have been told by Helbig. They must have carefully pondered the
+surviving old Achaean lays, which "were born when the heroes could
+not read, or boil flesh, or back a steed." By carefully observing the
+earliest lays the late poets, in times of changed manners, "could avoid
+anachronisms by the aid of tradition, which gave them a very exact idea
+of the epic heroes." Such is the opinion of Wilamowitz Moellendorff. He
+appears to regard the tradition as keeping the later poets in the old
+way automatically, not consciously, but this, we also learn from Helbig,
+did not occur. The poets often wandered from the way. [Footnote: Helbig,
+_Homerische Epos,_ pp. 2, 3.] Thus old Mycenaean lays, if any existed,
+would describe the old Mycenaean mode of burial. The Homeric poet
+describes something radically different. We vainly ask for proof that
+in any early national literature known to us poets have been true to the
+colour and manners of the remote times in which their heroes moved,
+and of which old minstrels sang. The thing is without example: of this
+proofs shall be offered in abundance.
+
+Meanwhile, the whole theory which regards the _Iliad_ as the work of
+four or five centuries rests on the postulate that poets throughout
+these centuries did what such poets never do, kept true to the details
+of a life remote from their own, and also did not.
+
+For Helbig does not, after all, cleave to his opinion. On the other
+hand, he says that the later poets of the _Iliad_ did not cling to
+tradition. "They allowed themselves to be influenced by their own
+environment: _this influence betrays ITSELF IN THE descriptions of
+DETAILS_.... The rhapsodists," (reciters, supposed to have altered the
+poems at will), "did not fail to interpolate relatively recent elements
+into the oldest parts of the Epic." [Footnote: _Homerische Epos,_ p. 2.]
+
+At this point comes in a complex inconsistency. The Tenth Book of the
+_Iliad_, thinks Helbig--in common with almost all critics--"is one of
+the most recent lays of the _Iliad_." But in this recent lay (say of
+the eighth or seventh century) the poet describes the Thracians as on
+a level of civilisation with the Achaeans, and, indeed, as even more
+luxurious, wealthy, and refined in the matter of good horses, glorious
+armour, and splendid chariots. But, by the time of the Persian
+wars, says Helbig, the Thracians were regarded by the Greeks as rude
+barbarians, and their military equipment was totally un-Greek. They did
+not wear helmets, but caps of fox-skin. They had no body armour; their
+shields were small round bucklers; their weapons were bows and daggers.
+These customs could not, at the time of the Persian wars, be recent
+innovations in Thrace. [Footnote: Herodotus, vii. 75.]
+
+Had the poet of _ILIAD_, Book X., known the Thracians in _this_
+condition, says Helbig, as he was fond of details of costume and arms,
+he would have certainly described their fox-skin caps, bows, bucklers,
+and so forth. He would not here have followed the Epic tradition, which
+represented the Thracians as makers of great swords and as splendidly
+armed charioteers. His audience had met the Thracians in peace and war,
+and would contradict the poet's description of them as heavily armed
+charioteers. It follows, therefore, that the latest poets, such as the
+author of Book X., did not introduce recent details, those of their
+own time, but we have just previously been told that to do so was their
+custom in the description of details.
+
+Now Studniczka [Footnote: _Homerische Epos, pp. 7-11, cf._ Note I;
+_Zeitschrift fur die Oestern Gymnasien_, 1886, p. 195.] explains the
+picture of the Thracians in _Iliad_, Book X., on Helbig's _other_
+principle, namely, that the very late author of the Tenth Book merely
+conforms to the conventional tradition of the Epic, adheres to the model
+set in ancient Achaean, or rather ancient Ionian times, and scrupulously
+preserved by the latest poets--that is, when the latest poets do not
+bring in the new details of their own age. But Helbig will not accept
+his own theory in this case, whence does it follow that the author of
+the Tenth Book must, in his opinion, have lived in Achaean times, and
+described the Thracians as they then were, charioteers, heavily armed,
+not light-clad archers? If this is so, we ask how Helbig can aver that
+the Tenth Book is one of the latest parts of the _Iliad?_
+
+In studying the critics who hold that the _Iliad_ is the growth of
+four centuries--say from the eleventh to the seventh century B.C.--no
+consistency is to be discovered; the earth is never solid beneath our
+feet. We find now that the poets are true to tradition in the details of
+ancient life--now that the poets introduce whatever modern details they
+please. The late poets have now a very exact knowledge of the past; now,
+the late poets know nothing about the past, or, again, some of the poets
+are fond of actual and very minute archaeological research! The theory
+shifts its position as may suit the point to be made at the moment by
+the critic. All is arbitrary, and it is certain that logic demands a
+very different method of inquiry. If Helbig and other critics of his
+way of thinking mean that in the _Iliad_ (1) there are parts of genuine
+antiquity; other parts (2) by poets who, with stern accuracy, copied the
+old modes; other parts (3) by poets who tried to copy but failed; with
+passages (4) by poets who deliberately innovated; and passages (5)
+by poets who drew fanciful pictures of the past "from their inner
+consciousness," while, finally (6), some poets made minute antiquarian
+researches; and if the argument be that the critics can detect these six
+elements, then we are asked to repose unlimited confidence in critical
+powers of discrimination. The critical standard becomes arbitrary and
+subjective.
+
+It is our effort, then, in the following pages to show that the _unus_
+color of Wolf does pervade the Epics, that recent details are not often,
+if ever, interpolated, that the poems harmoniously represent one
+age, and that a brief age, of culture; that this effect cannot, in
+a thoroughly uncritical period, have been deliberately aimed at and
+produced by archaeological learning, or by sedulous copying of poetic
+tradition, or by the scientific labours of an editor of the sixth
+century B.C. We shall endeavour to prove, what we have already
+indicated, that the hypotheses of expansion are not self-consistent,
+or in accordance with what is known of the evolution of early national
+poetry. The strongest part, perhaps, of our argument is to rest on our
+interpretation of archaeological evidence, though we shall not
+neglect the more disputable or less convincing contentions of literary
+criticism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+HYPOTHESES AS TO THE GROWTH OF THE EPICS
+
+A theorist who believes that the Homeric poems are the growth of four
+changeful centuries, must present a definite working hypothesis as to
+how they escaped from certain influences of the late age in which much
+of them is said to have been composed. We must first ask to what manner
+of audiences did the poets sing, in the alleged four centuries of the
+evolution of the Epics. Mr. Leaf, as a champion of the theory of ages
+of "expansion," answers that "the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are essentially,
+and above all, Court poems. They were composed to be sung in the palaces
+of a ruling aristocracy ... the poems are aristocratic and courtly, not
+popular." [Footnote: Companion to the _Iliad_, pp. 2,8. 1892.] They are
+not _Volkspoesie_; they are not ballads. "It is now generally recognised
+that this conception is radically false."
+
+These opinions, in which we heartily agree--there never was such a
+thing as a "popular" Epic--were published fourteen years ago. Mr.
+Leaf, however, would not express them with regard to "our" _Iliad_ and
+Odyssey, because, in his view, a considerable part of the _Iliad_, as
+it stands, was made, not by Court bards in the Achaean courts of Europe,
+not for an audience of noble warriors and dames, but by wandering
+minstrels in the later Ionian colonies of Asia. They did not chant for a
+military aristocracy, but for the enjoyment of town and country folk at
+popular festivals. [Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p. xvi. 1900.] The poems
+were _begun_, indeed, he thinks, for "a wealthy aristocracy living
+on the product of their lands," in European Greece; were begun by
+contemporary court minstrels, but were continued, vastly expanded, and
+altered to taste by wandering singers and reciting rhapsodists, who
+amused the holidays of a commercial, expansive, and bustling Ionian
+democracy. [Footnote: _Companion to the Iliad_, p. II.]
+
+ We must suppose that, on this theory, the later poets pleased a
+commercial democracy by keeping up the tone that had delighted an old
+land-owning military aristocracy. It is not difficult, however, to admit
+this as possible, for the poems continued to be admired in all ages of
+Greece and under every form of society. The real question is, would the
+modern poets be the men to keep up a tone some four or five centuries
+old, and to be true, if they were true, to the details of the heroic
+age? "It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that some part of the
+most primitive _Iliad_ may have been actually sung by the court minstrel
+in the palace whose ruins can still be seen in Mycenae." [Footnote:
+Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. xv.] But, by the expansionist theory, even
+the oldest parts of our _Iliad_ are now full of what we may call quite
+recent Ionian additions, full of late retouches, and full, so to speak,
+of omissions of old parts.
+
+Through four or five centuries, by the hypothesis, every singer who
+could find an audience was treating as much as he knew of a vast body of
+ancient lays exactly as he pleased, adding here, lopping there, altering
+everywhere. Moreover, these were centuries full of change. The ancient
+Achaean palaces were becoming the ruins which we still behold. The
+old art had faded, and then fallen under the disaster of the Dorian
+conquest. A new art, or a recrudescence of earlier art, very crude and
+barbaric, had succeeded, and was beginning to acquire form and vitality.
+The very scene of life was altered: the new singers and listeners dwelt
+on the Eastern side of the Aegean. Knights no longer, as in Europe,
+fought from chariots: war was conducted by infantry, for the most part,
+with mounted auxiliaries. With the disappearance of the war chariot the
+huge Mycenaean shields had vanished or were very rarely used. The early
+vase painters do not, to my knowledge, represent heroes as fighting from
+war chariots. They had lost touch with that method. Fighting men now
+carried relatively small round bucklers, and iron was the metal chiefly
+employed for swords, spears, and arrow points. Would the new poets,
+in deference to tradition, abstain from mentioning cavalry, or small
+bucklers, or iron swords and spears? or would they avoid puzzling their
+hearers by speaking of obsolete and unfamiliar forms of tactics and of
+military equipment? Would they therefore sing of things familiar--of
+iron weapons, small round shields, hoplites, and cavalry? We shall see
+that confused and self-contradictory answers are given by criticism
+to all these questions by scholars who hold that the Epics are not the
+product of one, but of many ages.
+
+There were other changes between the ages of the original minstrel and
+of the late successors who are said to have busied themselves in adding
+to, mutilating, and altering his old poem. Kings and courts had passed
+away; old Ionian myths and religious usages, unknown to the Homeric
+poets, had come out into the light; commerce and pleasure and early
+philosophies were the chief concerns of life. Yet the poems continued to
+be aristocratic in manners; and, in religion and ritual, to be pure from
+recrudescences of savage poetry and superstition, though the Ionians
+"did not drop the more primitive phases of belief which had clung to
+them; these rose to the surface with the rest of the marvellous Ionic
+genius, and many an ancient survival was enshrined in the literature
+or mythology of Athens which had long passed out of all remembrance at
+Mycenas." [Footnote: _Companion to the Iliad_, p. 7.]
+
+Amazing to say, none of these "more primitive phases of belief," none
+of the recrudescent savage magic, was intruded by the late Ionian poets
+into the Iliad which they continued, by the theory. Such phases of
+belief were, indeed, by their time popular, and frequently appeared in
+the Cyclic poems on the Trojan war; continuations of the _ILIAD_, which
+were composed by Ionian authors at the same time as much of the _ILIAD_
+itself (by the theory) was composed. The authors of these Cyclic
+poems--authors contemporary with the makers of much of the
+_ILIAD_--_were_ eminently "un-Homeric" in many respects. [Footnote:
+_Cf_. Monro, _The Cyclic Poets; Odyssey_, vol. ii, pp. 342-384.] They
+had ideas very different from those of the authors of the _Iliad_ and
+_ODYSSEY_, as these ideas have reached us.
+
+Helbig states this curious fact, that the Homeric poems are free from
+many recent or recrudescent ideas common in other Epics composed during
+the later centuries of the supposed four hundred years of Epic growth.
+[Footnote: _Homerische Epos_, p. 3.] Thus a signet ring was mentioned
+in the _Ilias Puma_, and there are no rings in _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_.
+But Helbig does not perceive the insuperable difficulty which here
+encounters his hypothesis. He remarks: "In certain poems which were
+grouping themselves around the _Iliad and _Odyssey, we meet data
+absolutely opposed to the conventional style of the Epic." He gives
+three or four examples of perfectly un-Homeric ideas occurring in Epics
+of the eighth to seventh centuries, B.C., and a large supply of such
+cases can be adduced. But Helbig does not ask how it happened that, if
+poets of these centuries had lost touch with the Epic tradition, and had
+wandered into a new region of thought, as they had, examples of their
+notions do not occur in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. By his theory these
+poems were being added to and altered, even in their oldest portions,
+at the very period when strange fresh, or old and newly revived fancies
+were flourishing. If so, how were the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, unlike the
+Cyclic poems, kept uncontaminated, as they confessedly were, by the new
+romantic ideas?
+
+Here is the real difficulty. Cyclic poets of the eighth and seventh
+centuries had certainly lost touch with the Epic tradition; their poems
+make that an admitted fact. Yet poets of the eighth to seventh centuries
+were, by the theory, busily adding to and altering the ancient lays of
+the _Iliad_. How did _they_ abstain from the new or revived ideas, and
+from the new _genre_ of romance? Are we to believe that one set of late
+Ionian poets--they who added to and altered the Iliad--were true
+to tradition, while another contemporary set of Ionian poets, the
+Cyclics--authors of new Epics on Homeric themes--are known to have quite
+lost touch with the Homeric taste, religion, and ritual? The reply will
+perhaps be a Cyclic poet said, "Here I am going to compose quite a new
+poem about the old heroes. I shall make them do and think and believe as
+I please, without reference to the evidence of the old poems." But, it
+will have to be added, the rhapsodists of 800-540 B.C., and the general
+editor of the latter date, thought, _we_ are continuing an old set of
+lays, and we must be very careful in adhering to manners, customs, and
+beliefs as described by our predecessors. For instance, the old heroes
+had only bronze, no iron,--and then the rhapsodists forgot, and made
+iron a common commodity in the _Iliad_. Again, the rhapsodists knew that
+the ancient heroes had no corslets--the old lays, we learn, never
+spoke of corslets--but they made them wear corslets of much splendour.
+[Footnote: The reader must remember that the view of the late poets
+as careful adherents of tradition in usages and ideas only obtains
+_sometimes_; at others the critics declare that archaeological precision
+is _not_ preserved, and that the Ionic continuators introduced, for
+example, the military gear of their own period into a poem which
+represents much older weapons and equipments.] This theory does not help
+us. In an uncritical age poets could not discern that their genre of
+romance and religion was alien from that of Homer.
+
+To return to the puzzle about the careful and precise continuators
+of the _Iliad_, as contrasted with their heedless contemporaries, the
+authors of the Cyclic poems. How "non-Homeric" the authors of these
+Cyclic poems were, before and after 660 B.C., we illustrate from
+examples of their left hand backslidings and right hand fallings
+off. They introduced (1) The Apotheosis of the Dioscuri, who in Homer
+(_Iliad_, III. 243) are merely dead men (_Cypria_). (2) Story of
+Iphigenia _Cypria_. (3) Story of Palamedes, who is killed when angling
+by Odysseus and Diomede (Cypria).
+
+Homer's heroes never fish, except in stress of dire necessity, in the
+Odyssey, and Homer's own Diomede and Odysseus would never stoop
+to assassinate a companion when engaged in the contemplative man's
+recreation. We here see the heroes in late degraded form as on the
+Attic stage. (4) The Cyclics introduce Helen as daughter of Nemesis,
+and describe the flight of Nemesis from Zeus in various animal forms,
+a Märchen of a sort not popular with Homer; an Ionic Märchen, Mr. Leaf
+would say. There is nothing like this in the Iliad and Odyssey. (5) They
+call the son of Achilles, not Neoptolemus, as Homer does, but Pyrrhus.
+(6) They represent the Achaean army as obtaining supplies through three
+magically gifted maidens, who produce corn, wine, and oil at will, as in
+fairy tales. Another Ionic non-Achaean Märchen! They bring in ghosts of
+heroes dead and buried. Such ghosts, in Homer's opinion, were impossible
+if the dead had been cremated. All these non-Homeric absurdities, save
+the last, are from the Cypria, dated by Sir Richard Jebb about 776 B.C.,
+long before the Odyssey was put into shape, namely, after 660 B. C.
+in his opinion. Yet the alleged late compiler of the Odyssey, in the
+seventh century, never wanders thus from the Homeric standard in taste.
+What a skilled archaeologist he must have been! The author of the Cypria
+knew the Iliad, [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 354.] but his
+knowledge could not keep him true to tradition. (7) In the AEthiopis
+(about 776 B.C.) men are made immortal after death, and are worshipped
+as heroes, an idea foreign to Iliad and Odyssey. (8) There is a savage
+ritual of purification from blood shed by a homicide (compare Eumenides,
+line 273). This is unheard of in Iliad and Odyssey, though familiar to
+Aeschylus. (9) Achilles, after death, is carried to the isle of Leuke.
+(10) The fate of Ilium, in the Cyclic Little _Iliad_, hangs on the
+Palladium, of which nothing is known in _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_. The
+_Little Iliad_ is dated about 700 B.C. (11) The _Nostoi_ mentions
+Molossians, not named by Homer (which is a trifle); it also mentions
+the Asiatic city of Colophon, an Ionian colony, which is not a trivial
+self-betrayal on the part of the poet. He is dated about 750 B.C.
+
+Thus, more than a century before the _Odyssey_ received its final form,
+after 660 B.C., from the hands of one man (according to the theory),
+the other Ionian poets who attempted Epic were betraying themselves as
+non-Homeric on every hand. [Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp.
+347-383.]
+
+Our examples are but a few derived from the brief notices of the Cyclic
+poets' works, as mentioned in ancient literature; these poets probably,
+in fact, betrayed themselves constantly. But their contemporaries, the
+makers of late additions to the _Odyssey_, and the later mosaic worker
+who put it together, never betrayed themselves to anything like the
+fatal extent of anachronism exhibited by the Cyclic poets. How, if the
+true ancient tone, taste, manners, and religion were lost, as the
+Cyclic poets show that they were, did the contemporary Ionian poets or
+rhapsodists know and preserve the old manner?
+
+The best face we can put on the matter is to say that all the Cyclic
+poets were recklessly independent of tradition, while all men who
+botched at the _Iliad_ were very learned, and very careful to maintain
+harmony in their pictures of life and manners, except when they
+introduced changes in burial, bride-price, houses, iron, greaves, and
+corslets, all of them things, by the theory, modern, and when they sang
+in modern grammar.
+
+Yet despite this conscientiousness of theirs, most of the many
+authors of our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ were, by the theory, strolling
+irresponsible rhapsodists, like the later _jongleurs_ of the thirteenth
+and fourteenth centuries in mediaeval France. How could these strollers
+keep their modern Ionian ideas, or their primitive, recrudescent phases
+of belief, out of their lays, as far as they _did_ keep them out, while
+the contemporary authors of the _Cypria_, _The Sack of Ilios_, and other
+Cyclic poets were full of new ideas, legends, and beliefs, or primitive
+notions revived, and, save when revived, quite obviously late and quite
+un-Homeric in any case?
+
+The difficulty is the greater if the Cyclic poems were long poems, with
+one author to each Epic. Such authors were obviously men of ambition;
+they produced serious works _de longue haleine_. It is from them that
+we should naturally expect conservative and studious adhesion to the
+traditional models. From casual strollers like the rhapsodists and
+chanters at festivals, we look for nothing of the sort. _They_ might be
+expected to introduce great feats done by sergeants and privates, so to
+speak--men of the nameless [Greek: laos], the host, the foot men--who
+in Homer are occasionally said to perish of disease or to fall under the
+rain of arrows, but are never distinguished by name. The strollers, it
+might be thought, would also be the very men to introduce fairy tales,
+freaks of primitive Ionian myth, discreditable anecdotes of the princely
+heroes, and references to the Ionian colonies.
+
+But it is not so; the serious, laborious authors of the long Cyclic
+poems do such un-Homeric things as these; the gay, irresponsible
+strolling singers of a lay here and a lay there--lays now incorporated
+in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_--scrupulously avoid such faults. They never
+even introduce a signet ring. These are difficulties in the theory of
+the _Iliad_ as a patchwork by many hands, in many ages, which nobody
+explains; which, indeed, nobody seems to find difficult. Yet the
+difficulty is insuperable. Even if we take refuge with Wilamowitz in the
+idea that the Cyclic and Homeric poems were at first mere protoplasm
+of lays of many ages, and that they were all compiled, say in the sixth
+century, into so many narratives, we come no nearer to explaining
+why the tone, taste, and ideas of two such narratives--Illiad and
+Odyssey--are confessedly distinct from the tone, taste, and ideas of all
+the others. The Cyclic poems are certainly the production of a late and
+changed age? [Footnote: For what manner of audience, if not for readers,
+the Cyclic poems were composed is a mysterious question.] The _Iliad_ is
+not in any degree--save perhaps in a few interpolated passages--touched
+by the influences of that late age. It is not a complex of the work
+of four incompatible centuries, as far as this point is concerned--the
+point of legend, religion, ritual, and conception of heroic character.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+HYPOTHESES OF EPIC COMPOSITION
+
+Whosoever holds that the Homeric poems were evolved out of the lays of
+many men, in many places, during many periods of culture, must present a
+consistent and logical hypothesis as to how they attained their present
+plots and forms. These could not come by accident, even if the plots
+are not good--as all the world held that they were, till after Wolf's
+day--but very bad, as some critics now assert. Still plot and form,
+beyond the power of chance to produce, the poems do possess. Nobody goes
+so far as to deny that; and critics make hypotheses explanatory of
+the fact that a single ancient "kernel" of some 2500 lines, a "kernel"
+altered at will by any one who pleased during four centuries, became a
+constructive whole. If the hypotheses fail to account for the fact, we
+have the more reason to believe that the poems are the work of one age,
+and, mainly, of one man.
+
+In criticising Homeric criticism as it is to-day, we cannot do better
+than begin by examining the theories of Mr. Leaf which are offered by
+him merely as "a working hypothesis." His most erudite work is based on
+a wide knowledge of German Homeric speculation, of the exact science of
+Grammar, of archaeological discoveries, and of manuscripts. [Footnote:
+The Iliad. Macmillan & Co. 1900, 1902.] His volumes are, I doubt not, as
+they certainly deserve to be, on the shelves of every Homeric student,
+old or young, and doubtless their contents reach the higher forms in
+schools, though there is reason to suppose that, about the unity of
+Homer, schoolboys remain conservative.
+
+In this book of more than 1200 pages Mr. Leaf's space is mainly
+devoted to textual criticism, philology, and pure scholarship, but his
+Introductions, Notes, and Appendices also set forth his mature ideas
+about the Homeric problem in general. He has altered some of his
+opinions since the publication of his _Companion to the Iliad_(1892),
+but the main lines of his old system are, except on one crucial point,
+unchanged. His theory we shall try to state and criticise; in general
+outline it is the current theory of separatist critics, and it may
+fairly be treated as a good example of such theories.
+
+The system is to the following effect: Greek tradition, in the classical
+period, regarded the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ as the work of one man,
+Homer, a native of one or other of the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor.
+But the poems show few obvious signs of origin in Asia. They deal with
+dwellers, before the Dorian invasion (which the poet never alludes to),
+on the continent of Europe and in Crete. [Footnote: If the poet sang
+after the tempest of war that came down with the Dorians from the
+north, he would probably have sought a topic in the Achaean exploits and
+sorrows of that period. The Dorians, not the Trojans, would have been
+the foes. The epics of France of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
+dwell, not on the real victories of the remote Charlemagne so much as
+on the disasters of Aliscans and Roncesvaux--defeats at Saracen hands,
+Saracens being the enemies of the twelfth-century poets. No Saracens,
+in fact, fought at Roncesvaux.] The lays are concerned with "good old
+times"; presumably between 1500 and 1100 B.C. Their pictures of the
+details of life harmonise more with what we know of the society of that
+period from the evidence of buildings and recent excavations, than with
+what we know of the life and the much more rude and barbaric art of the
+so-called "Dipylon" period of "geometrical" ornament considerably later.
+In the Dipylon age though the use of iron, even for swords (made on the
+lines of the old bronze sword), was familiar, art was on a most barbaric
+level, not much above the Bed Indian type, as far, at least, as painted
+vases bear witness. The human figure is designed as in Tommy Traddles's
+skeletons; there is, however, some crude but promising idea of
+composition.
+
+The picture of life in the Homeric poems, then, is more like that of,
+say, 1500-1100 B.C. than of, say, 1000-850 B.C. in Mr. Leaf's opinion.
+Certainly Homer describes a wealthy aristocracy, subject to an
+Over-Lord, who rules, by right divine, from "golden Mycenae." We hear of
+no such potentate in Ionia. Homer's accounts of contemporary art seem to
+be inspired by the rich art generally dated about 1500-1200. Yet there
+are "many traces of apparent anachronism," of divergence from the more
+antique picture of life. In these divergences are we to recognise the
+picture of a later development of the ancient existence of 1500-1200
+B.C.? Or have elements of the life of a much later age of Greece (say,
+800-550 B.C.) been consciously or unconsciously introduced by the late
+poets? Here Mr. Leaf recognises a point on which we have insisted,
+and must keep insisting, for it is of the first importance. "It is _a
+priori_ the most probable" supposition that, "in an uncritical age,"
+poets do _not_ "reproduce the circumstances of the old time," but
+"only clothe the old tale in the garb of their own days." Poets in an
+uncritical age always, in our experience, "clothe old tales with the
+garb of their own time," but Mr. Leaf thinks that, in the case of the
+Homeric poems, this idea "is not wholly borne out by the facts."
+
+In fact, Mr. Leaf's hypothesis, like Helbig's, exhibits a come-and-go
+between the theory that his late poets clung close to tradition and so
+kept true to ancient details of life, and the theory that they did quite
+the reverse in many cases. Of this frequent examples will occur. He
+writes, "The Homeric period is certainly later than the shaft tombs"
+(discovered at Mycenae by Dr. Schliemann), "but it does not necessarily
+follow that it is post-Mycenaean. It is quite possible that certain
+notable differences between the poems and the monuments" (of Mycenae)
+"in burial, for instance, and in women's dress may be due to changes
+which arose within the Mycenaean age itself, in that later part of it
+of which our knowledge is defective--almost as defective as it is of
+the subsequent 'Dipylon' period. On the whole, the resemblance to
+the typical Mycenaean culture is more striking than the difference."
+[Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. pp. xiii.-xv. 1900.]
+
+So far Mr. Leaf states precisely the opinion for which we argue. The
+Homeric poems describe an age later than that of the famous tombs--so
+rich in relics--of the Mycenaean acropolis, and earlier than the tombs
+of the Dipylon of Athens. The poems thus spring out of an age of which,
+except from the poems themselves, we know little or nothing, because,
+as is shown later, no cairn burials answering to the frequent Homeric
+descriptions have ever been discovered--so relics corroborating Homeric
+descriptions are to seek. But the age attaches itself in many ways to
+the age of the Mycenaean tombs, while, in our opinion, it stands quite
+apart from the post-Dorian culture.
+
+Where we differ from Mr. Leaf is in believing that the poems, as wholes,
+were composed in that late Mycenaean period of which, from material
+remains, we know very little; that "much new" was not added, as he
+thinks, in "the Ionian development" which lasted perhaps "from the ninth
+century B.C. to the seventh." We cannot agree with Mr. Leaf, when he,
+like Helbig, thinks that much of the detail of the ancient life in the
+poems had early become so "stereotyped" that no continuator, however
+late, dared "intentionally to sap" the type, "though he slipped from
+time to time into involuntary anachronism." Some poets are also asserted
+to indulge in _voluntary_ anachronism when, as Mr. Leaf supposes, they
+equip the ancient warriors with corslets and greaves and other body
+armour of bronze such as, in his opinion, the old heroes never knew,
+such as never were mentioned in the oldest parts or "kernel" of the
+poems. Thus the traditional details of Mycenaean life sometimes are
+regarded as "stereotyped" in poetic tradition; sometimes as subject to
+modern alterations of a sweeping and revolutionary kind.
+
+As to deliberate adherence to tradition by the poets, we have proved
+that the Cyclic epic poets of 800-660 B.C. wandered widely from the
+ancient models. If, then, every minstrel or rhapsodist who, anywhere,
+added at will to the old "kernel" of the _Achilles_ was, so far as he
+was able, as conscientiously precise in his stereotyped archaeological
+details as Mr. Leaf sometimes supposes, the fact is contrary to general
+custom in such cases. When later poets in an uncritical age take up and
+rehandle the poetic themes of their predecessors, they always give to
+the stories "a new costume," as M. Gaston Paris remarks in reference to
+thirteenth century dealings with French epics of the eleventh century.
+But, in the critics' opinion, the late rehandlers of old Achaean lays
+preserved the archaic modes of life, war, costume, weapons, and
+so forth, with conscientious care, except in certain matters to be
+considered later, when they deliberately did the very reverse. Sometimes
+the late poets devoutly follow tradition. Sometimes they deliberately
+innovate. Sometimes they pedantically "archaise," bringing in genuine,
+but by their time forgotten, Mycenaean things, and criticism can detect
+their doings in each case.
+
+Though the late continuators of the _Iliad_ were able, despite
+certain inadvertencies, to keep up for some four centuries in Asia
+the harmonious picture of ancient Achaean life and society in Europe,
+critics can distinguish four separate strata, the work of many different
+ages, in the _Iliad_. Of the first stratum composed in Europe, say about
+1300-1150 B.C. (I give a conjectural date under all reserves), the topic
+was _THE Wrath of ACHILLES_. Of this poem, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, (a)
+the First Book and fifty lines of the Second Book remain intact or,
+perhaps, are a blend of two versions. (b) The _Valour of Agamemnon_ and
+_Defeat of THE Achaeans_. Of this there are portions in Book XI., but
+they were meddled with, altered, and generally doctored, "down to the
+latest period," namely, the age of Pisistratus in Athens, the middle of
+the sixth century B.C. (c) The fight in which, after their defeat, the
+Achaeans try to save the ships from the torch of Hector, and the _Valour
+of Patroclus_ (but some critics do not accept this), with his death
+(XV., XVI. in parts). (d) Some eighty lines on the _ARMING OF ACHILLES_
+(XIX.). (e) Perhaps an incident or two in Books XX., XXI. (f) The
+_Slaying HECTOR_ by Achilles, in Books XXI., XXII. (but some of the learned
+will not admit this, and we shall, unhappily, have to prove that, if Mr.
+Leaf's principles be correct, we really know nothing about the _SLAYING
+OF HECTOR_ in its original form).
+
+Of these six elements only did the original poem consist, Mr. Leaf
+thinks; a rigid critic will reject as original even the _Valour of
+Patroclus_ and the _DEATH OF HECTOR_, but Mr. Leaf refuses to go so far
+as that. The original poem, as detected by him, is really "the work of
+a single poet, perhaps the greatest in all the world's history." If the
+original poet did no more than is here allotted to him, especially if he
+left out the purpose of Zeus and the person of Thetis in Book I., we
+do not quite understand his unapproachable greatness. He must certainly
+have drawn a rather commonplace Achilles, as we shall see, and we
+confess to preferring the _Iliad_ as it stands.
+
+The brief narrative cut out of the mass by Mr. Leaf, then, was the
+genuine old original poem or "kernel." What we commonly call the
+_ILIAD_, on the other hand, is, by his theory, a thing of shreds and
+patches, combined in a manner to be later described. The blend,
+we learn, has none of the masterly unity of the old original poem.
+Meanwhile, as criticism of literary composition is a purely literary
+question, critics who differ from Mr. Leaf have a right to hold that
+the _Iliad_ as it stands contains, and always did contain, a plot of
+masterly perfection. We need not attend here so closely to Mr. Leaf's
+theory in the matter of the First Expansions, (2) and the Second
+Expansions, (3) but the latest Expansions (4) give the account of _The
+EMBASSY_ to _Achilles_ with his refusal of _Agamemnon's APOLOGY_(Book
+IX.), the [blank space] (Book XXIV.), the _RECONCILIATION OF ACHILLES
+AND Agamemnon, AND the FUNERAL Games_ of _Patroclus_ (XXIII.). In all
+these parts of the poem there are, we learn, countless alterations,
+additions, and expansions, with, last of all, many transitional
+passages, "the work of the editor inspired by the statesman," that is,
+of an hypothetical editor who really by the theory made our _ILIAD_,
+being employed to that end by Pistratus about 540 B.C. [Footnote: Leaf,
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. pp. x., xiv. 1900.].
+
+Mr. Leaf and critics who take his general view are enabled to detect
+the patches and tatters of many ages by various tests, for example, by
+discovering discrepancies in the narrative, such as in their opinion
+no one sane poet could make. Other proofs of multiplex authorship are
+discovered by the critic's private sense of what the poem ought to
+be, by his instinctive knowledge of style, by detection of the poet's
+supposed errors in geography, by modernisms and false archaisms in words
+and grammar, and by the presence of many objects, especially weapons and
+armour, which the critic believes to have been unknown to the original
+minstrel.
+
+Thus criticism can pick out the things old, fairly old, late, and quite
+recent, from the mass, evolved through many centuries, which is called
+the _Iliad_.
+
+If the existing _ILIAD_ is a mass of "expansions," added at all sorts of
+dates, in any number of places, during very different stages of culture,
+to a single short old poem of the Mycenaean age, science needs an
+hypothesis which will account for the _ILIAD_ "as it stands." Everybody
+sees the need of the hypothesis, How was the medley of new songs by many
+generations of irresponsible hands codified into a plot which used to
+be reckoned fine? How were the manners, customs, and characters, _unus
+color_, preserved in a fairly coherent and uniform aspect? How was the
+whole Greek world, throughout which all manner of discrepant versions
+and incongruous lays must, by the theory, have been current, induced to
+accept the version which has been bequeathed to us? Why, and for what
+audience or what readers, did somebody, in a late age of brief lyrics
+and of philosophic poems, take the trouble to harmonise the body of
+discrepant wandering lays, and codify them in the _Iliad_?
+
+An hypothesis which will answer all these questions is the first thing
+needful, and hypotheses are produced.
+
+Believers like Mr. Leaf in the development of the _Iliad_ through
+the changing revolutionary centuries, between say 1200 and 600 B.C.,
+consciously stand in need of a working hypothesis which will account,
+above all, for two facts: first, the relatively correct preservation of
+the harmony of the picture of life, of ideas political and religious,
+of the characters of the heroes, of the customary law (such as the
+bride-price in marriage), and of the details as to weapons, implements,
+dress, art, houses, and so forth, when these are not (according to the
+theory) deliberately altered by late poets.
+
+Next, the hypothesis must explain, in Mr. Leafs own words, how a single
+version of the _Iliad_ came to be accepted, "where many rival versions
+must, from the necessity of the case, have once existed side by side."
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. xviii. 1900.]
+
+Three hypotheses have, in fact, been imagined: the first suggests the
+preservation of the original poems in very early written texts; not,
+of course, in "Homer's autograph." This view Mr. Leaf, we shall see,
+discards. The second presents the notion of one old sacred college for
+the maintenance of poetic uniformity. Mr. Leaf rejects this theory,
+while supposing that there were schools for professional reciters.
+
+Last, there is the old hypothesis of Wolf: "Pisistratus" (about 540
+B.C.) "was the first who had the Homeric poems committed to writing, and
+brought into that order in which we now possess them."
+
+This hypothesis, now more than a century old, would, if it rested on
+good evidence, explain how a single version of the various lays came to
+be accepted and received as authorised. The Greek world, by the theory,
+had only in various places various sets of incoherent chants _orally_
+current on the Wrath of The public was everywhere a public of listeners,
+who heard the lays sung on rare occasions at feasts and fairs, or
+whenever a strolling rhapsodist took up his pitch, for a day or two,
+at a street corner. There was, by the theory, no reading public for the
+Homeric poetry. But, by the time of Pisistratus, a reading public was
+coming into existence. The tyrant had the poems collected, edited,
+arranged into a continuous narrative, primarily for the purpose of
+regulating the recitals at the Panathenaic festival. When once they
+were written, copies were made, and the rest of Hellas adopted these for
+their public purposes.
+
+On a small scale we have a case analogous. The old songs of Scotland
+existed, with the airs, partly in human memory, partly in scattered
+broadsheets. The airs were good, but the words were often silly, more
+often they were Fescennine--"more dirt than wit." Burns rewrote the
+words, which were published in handsome volumes, with the old airs, or
+with these airs altered, and his became the authorised versions, while
+the ancient anonymous chants were almost entirely forgotten.
+
+The parallel is fairly close, but there are points of difference. Burns
+was a great lyric poet, whereas we hear of no great epic poet in the
+age of Pisistratus. The old words which Burns's songs superseded were
+wretched doggerel; not such were the ancient Greek heroic lays. The old
+Scottish songs had no sacred historic character; they did not contain
+the history of the various towns and districts of Scotland. The heroic
+lays of Greece were believed, on the other hand, to be a kind of
+Domesday book of ancient principalities, and cities, and worshipped
+heroes. Thus it was much easier for a great poet like Burns to supersede
+with his songs a mass of unconsidered "sculdudery" old lays, in which no
+man or set of men had any interest, than for a mere editor, in the age
+of Pisistratus, to supersede a set of lays cherished, in one shape or
+another, by every State in Greece. This holds good, even if, prior to
+Pisistratus, there existed in Greece no written texts of Homer, and no
+reading public, a point which we shall show reasons for declining to
+concede.
+
+The theory of the edition of Pisistratus, if it rested on valid
+evidence, would explain "how a single version of the poems came to be
+accepted," namely, because the poem was now _written_ for the first
+time, and oral versions fell out of memory. But it would not, of course,
+explain how, before Pisistratus, during four or five centuries of
+change, the new poets and reciters, throughout the Greek world, each
+adding such fresh verses as he pleased, and often introducing such
+modern details of life as he pleased, kept up the harmony of the Homeric
+picture of life, and character, and law, as far as it confessedly
+exists.
+
+To take a single instance: the poems never allude to the personal
+armorial bearings of the heroes. They are unknown to or unnamed by
+Homer, but are very familiar on the shields in seventh century and sixth
+century vases, and AEschylus introduces them with great poetic effect
+in [blank space]. How did late continuators, familiar with the serpents,
+lions, bulls' heads, crabs, doves, and so forth, on the contemporary
+shields, keep such picturesque and attractive details out of their new
+rhapsodies? In mediaeval France, we shall show, the epics (eleventh to
+thirteenth centuries) deal with Charlemagne and his peers of the eighth
+century A.D. But they provide these heroes with the armorial bearings
+which came in during the eleventh to twelfth century A.D. The late
+Homeric rhapsodists avoided such tempting anachronisms.
+
+Wolf's theory, then, explains "how a single version came to be
+accepted." It was the first _WRITTEN_ version; the others died out, like
+the old Scots orally repeated songs, when Burns published new words to
+the airs. But Wolf's theory does not explain the harmony of the picture
+of life, the absence of post-Homeric ideas and ways of living, in the
+first written version, which, practically, is our own version.
+
+In 1892 (_COMPANION TO THE Iliad_) Mr. Leaf adopted a different theory,
+the hypothesis of a Homeric "school" "which busied itself with the
+tradition of the Homeric poetry," for there must have been some central
+authority to preserve the text intact when it could not be preserved in
+writing. Were there no such body to maintain a fixed standard, the poems
+must have ended by varying indefinitely, according to the caprice of
+their various reciters. This is perfectly obvious.
+
+Such a school could keep an eye on anachronisms and excise them; in
+fact, the Maori priests, in an infinitely more barbarous state of
+society, had such schools for the preservation of their ancient hymns in
+purity. The older priests "insisted on a critical and verbatim
+rehearsal of all the ancient lore." Proceedings were sanctioned by human
+sacrifices and many mystic rites. We are not told that new poems were
+produced and criticised; it does not appear that this was the case.
+Pupils attended from three to five years, and then qualified as priests
+or _tohunga_ [Footnote: White, _THE Ancient HISTORY OF THE Maori, VOL._
+i. pp. 8-13.]. Suppose that the Asiatic Greeks, like the Maoris and
+Zuñis, had Poetic Colleges of a sacred kind, admitting new poets, and
+keeping them up to the antique standard in all respects. If this were
+so, the relative rarity of "anachronisms" and of modernisms in language
+in the Homeric poems is explained. But Mr. Leaf has now entirely
+and with a light heart abandoned his theory of a school, which is
+unsupported by evidence, he says.'
+
+"The great problem," he writes, "for those who maintain the gradual
+growth of the poems by a process of crystallisation has been to
+understand how a single version came to be accepted, where many rival
+versions must, from the necessity of the case, have once existed side by
+side. The assumption of a school or guild of singers has been made," and
+Mr. Leaf, in 1892, made the assumption himself: "as some such hypothesis
+we are bound to make in order to explain the possibility of any theory"
+(1892). [Footnote: _COMPANION TO THE Iliad, pp. 20, 21._]
+
+But now (1900) he says, after mentioning "the assumption of a school or
+guild of singers," that "the rare mention of [Greek: Homeridai] in
+Chios gives no support to this hypothesis, which lacks any other
+confirmation." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. xviii. p. xix.] He therefore
+now adopts the Wolfian hypothesis that "an official copy of Homer was
+made in Athens at the time of Solon or Pisistratus," from the rhapsodies
+existing in the memory of reciters. [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. xix.]
+But Mr. Leaf had previously said [Footnote: _COMPANION TO THE Iliad_,
+p. 190.] that "the legend which connects his" (Pisistratus's) "name
+with the Homeric poems is itself probably only conjectural, and of
+late date." Now the evidence for Pisistratus which, in 1892, he thought
+"conjectural and of late date," seems to him a sufficient basis for an
+hypothesis of a Pisistratean editor of the Iliad, while the evidence for
+an Homeric school which appeared to him good enough for an hypothesis in
+1892 is rejected as worthless, though, in each case, the evidence itself
+remains just what it used to be.
+
+This is not very satisfactory, and the Pisistratean hypothesis is much
+less useful to a theorist than the former hypothesis of an Homeric
+school, for the Pisistratean hypothesis cannot explain the harmony of
+the characters and the details in the _Iliad_, nor the absence of
+such glaring anachronisms as the Cyclic poets made, nor the general
+"pre-Odyssean" character of the language and grammar. By the
+Pisistratean hypothesis there was not, what Mr. Leaf in 1892 justly
+deemed essential, a school "to maintain a fixed standard," throughout
+the changes of four centuries, and against the caprice of many
+generations of fresh reciters and irresponsible poets. The hypothesis of
+a school _was_ really that which, of the two, best explained the facts,
+and there is no more valid evidence for the first making and writing
+out of our _Iliad_ under Pisistratus than for the existence of a Homeric
+school.
+
+The evidence for the _Iliad_ edited for Pisistratus is examined in a
+Note at the close of this chapter. Meanwhile Mr. Leaf now revives Wolf's
+old theory to account for the fact that somehow "a single version"
+(of the Homeric poems) "came to be accepted." His present theory, if
+admitted, does account for the acceptation of a single version of the
+poems, the first standard _written_ version, but fails to explain how
+"the caprice of the different reciters" (as he says) did not wander into
+every variety of anachronism in detail and in diction, thus producing
+a chaos which no editor of about 540 A.D. could force into its present
+uniformity.
+
+Such an editor is now postulated by Mr. Leaf. If his editor's edition,
+as being _written_, was accepted by Greece, then we "understand how a
+single version came to be accepted." But we do not understand how
+the editor could possibly introduce a harmony which could only have
+characterised his materials, as Mr. Leaf has justly remarked, if there
+was an Homeric school "to maintain a fixed standard." But now such
+harmony in the picture of life as exists in the poems is left without
+any explanation. We have now, by the theory, a crowd of rhapsodists,
+many generations of uncontrolled wandering men, who, for several
+centuries,
+
+     "Rave, recite, and madden through the land,"
+
+with no written texts, and with no "fixed body to maintain a standard."
+Such men would certainly not adhere strictly to a stereotyped early
+tradition: _that_ we cannot expect from them.
+
+Again, no editor of about 540 B.C. could possibly bring harmony of
+manners, customs, and diction into such of their recitals as he took
+down in writing.
+
+Let us think out the supposed editor's situation. During three centuries
+nine generations of strollers have worked their will on one ancient
+short poem, _The Wrath_ of _Achilles_. This is, in itself, an unexampled
+fact. Poets turn to new topics; they do not, as a rule, for centuries
+embroider one single situation out of the myriads which heroic legend
+affords. Strolling reciters are the least careful of men, each would
+recite in the language and grammar of his day, and introduce the newly
+evolved words and idioms, the new and fashionable manners, costume, and
+weapons of his time. When war chariots became obsolete, he would bring
+in cavalry; when there was no Over-Lord, he would not trouble himself
+to maintain correctly the character and situation of Agamemnon. He would
+speak of coined money, in cases of buying and selling; his European
+geography would often be wrong; he would not ignore the Ionian cities
+of Asia; most weapons would be of iron, not bronze, in his lays. Ionian
+religious ideas could not possibly be excluded, nor changes in customary
+law, civil and criminal. Yet, we think, none of these things occurs in
+Homer.
+
+The editor of the theory had to correct all these anachronisms and
+discrepancies. What a task in an uncritical age! The editor's materials
+would be the lays known to such strollers as happened to be gathered,
+in Athens, perhaps at the Panathenaic festival. The _répertoire_ of each
+stroller would vary indefinitely from those of all the others. One man
+knew this chant, as modified or made by himself; other men knew others,
+equally unsatisfactory.
+
+The editor must first have written down from recitation all the passages
+that he could collect. Then he was obliged to construct a narrative
+sequence containing a plot, which he fashioned by a process of selection
+and rejection; and then he had to combine passages, alter them, add
+as much as he thought fit, remove anachronisms, remove discrepancies,
+accidentally bring in fresh discrepancies (as always happens), weave
+transitional passages, look with an antiquarian eye after the too
+manifest modernisms in language and manners, and so produce the [blank
+space]. That, in the sixth century B.C., any man undertook such a task,
+and succeeded so well as to impose on Aristotle and all the later Greek
+critics, appears to be a theory that could only occur to a modern man of
+letters, who is thinking of the literary conditions of his own time.
+The editor was doing, and doing infinitely better, what Lönnrot, in the
+nineteenth century, tried in vain to achieve for the Finnish _Kalewala_.
+[Footnote: See Comparetti, _The Kalewala_.]
+
+Centuries later than Pisistratus, in a critical age, Apollonius Rhodius
+set about writing an epic of the Homeric times. We know how entirely he
+failed, on all hands, to restore the manner of Homer. The editor of 540
+B.C. was a more scientific man. Can any one who sets before himself the
+nature of the editor's task believe in him and it? To the master-less
+floating jellyfish of old poems and new, Mr. Leaf supposes that "but
+small and unimportant additions were made after the end of the eighth
+century or thereabouts," especially as "the creative and imaginative
+forces of the Ionian race turned to other forms of expression," to
+lyrics and to philosophic poems. But the able Pisistratean editor, after
+all, we find, introduced quantities of new matter into the poems--in the
+middle of the sixth century; that kind of industry, then, did not cease
+towards the end of the eighth century, as we have been told. On the
+other hand, as we shall learn, the editor contributed to the _Iliad_,
+among other things, Nestor's descriptions of his youthful adventures,
+for the purpose of flattering Nestor's descendant, the tyrant
+Pisistratus of Athens.
+
+One hypothesis, the theory of an Homeric school--which would answer our
+question, "How was the harmony of the picture of life in remote ages
+preserved in poems composed in several succeeding ages, and in totally
+altered conditions of life?"--Mr. Leaf, as we know, rejects. We might
+suggest, again, that there were written texts handed down from an early
+period, and preserved in new copies from generation to generation. Mr.
+Leaf states his doubt that there were any such texts. "The poems were
+all this time handed down orally only by tradition among the singers
+(_sic_), who used to wander over Greece reciting them at popular
+festivals. Writing was indeed known through the whole period of epic
+development" (some four centuries at least), "but it is in the highest
+degree unlikely that it was ever employed to form a standard text of the
+Epic or _ANY_ part of it. There can hardly have been any standard text;
+at best there was a continuous tradition of those parts of the poems
+which were especially popular, and the knowledge of which was a valuable
+asset to the professional reciter."
+
+Now we would not contend for the existence of any [blank space] text
+much before 600 B.C., and I understand Mr. Leaf not to deny, now, that
+there may have been texts of the _ODYSSEY_ and _Iliad_ before, say,
+600-540 B.C. If cities and reciters had any ancient texts, then texts
+existed, though not "standard" texts: and by this means the harmony of
+thought, character, and detail in the poems might be preserved. We do
+not think that it is "in the highest degree unlikely" that there were no
+texts. Is this one of the many points on which every savant must rely on
+his own sense of what is "likely"? To this essential point, the almost
+certain existence of written texts, we return in our conclusion.
+
+What we have to account for is not only the relative lack of
+anachronisms in poems supposed to have been made through a period of at
+least four hundred years, but also the harmony of the _CHARACTERS_
+in subtle details. Some of the characters will be dealt with later;
+meanwhile it is plain that Mr. Leaf, when he rejects both the idea
+of written texts prior to 600-540 B.C., and also the idea of a school
+charged with the duty of "maintaining a fixed standard," leaves a
+terrible task to his supposed editor of orally transmitted poems which,
+he says--if unpreserved by text or school--"must have ended by varying
+infinitely according to the caprice of their various reciters."
+[Footnote: _Companion to the Iliad, p. 21._]
+
+On that head there can be no doubt; in the supposed circumstances no
+harmony, no _unus_ color, could have survived in the poems till the days
+of the sixth century editor.
+
+Here, then, is another difficulty in the path of the theory that the
+_Iliad_ is the work of four centuries. If it was, we are not enabled to
+understand how it came to be what it is. No editor could possibly tinker
+it into the whole which we possess; none could steer clear of many
+absurd anachronisms. These are found by critics, but it is our hope to
+prove that they do not exist.
+
+ NOTE
+
+THE LEGEND OF THE MAKING OF THE "ILIAD" UNDER PISISTRATOS
+
+It has been shown in the text that in 1892 Mr. Leaf thought the story
+about the making of the _Iliad_ under Pisistratus, a legend without
+authority, while he regarded the traditions concerning an Homeric school
+as sufficient basis for an hypothesis, "which we are bound to make in
+order to explain the possibility of any theory." In 1900 he entirely
+reversed his position, the school was abandoned, and the story of
+Pisistratus was accepted. One objection to accepting any of the various
+legends about the composing and writing out, for the first time, of the
+_Iliad_, in the sixth century, the age of Pisistratus, was the silence
+of Aristarchus on the subject. He discussed the authenticity of lines
+in the _Iliad_ which, according to the legend, were interpolated for a
+political purpose by Solon or Pisistratus, but, as far as his comments
+have reached us in the scholia, he never said a word about the tradition
+of Athenian interpolation. Now Aristarchus must, at least, have known
+the tradition of the political use of a disputed line, for Aristotle
+writes (_Rhetoric_, i. 15) that the Athenians, early in the sixth
+century, quoted _Iliad_, II. 558, to prove their right to Salamis.
+Aristarchus also discussed _Iliad_, II. 553, 555, to which the Spartans
+appealed on the question of supreme command against Persia (Herodotus,
+vii. 159). Again Aristarchus said nothing, or nothing that has reached
+us, about Athenian interpolation. Once more, Odyssey, II. 631, was said
+by Hereas, a Megarian writer, to have been interpolated by Pisistratus
+(Plutarch.) But "the scholia that represent the teaching of Aristarchus"
+never make any reference to the alleged dealings of Pisistratus with the
+_Iliad_. The silence of Aristarchus, however, affords no safe ground of
+argument to believers or disbelievers in the original edition written
+out by order of Pisistratus.
+
+It can never be proved that the scholiasts did not omit what Aristarchus
+said, though we do not know why they should have done so; and it can
+never be proved that Aristarchus was ignorant of the traditions about
+Pisistratus, or that he thought them unworthy of notice. All is matter
+of conjecture on these points. Mr. Leaf's conversion to belief in the
+story that our _Iliad_ was practically edited and first committed to
+writing under Pisistratus appears to be due to the probability that
+Aristarchus must have known the tradition. But if he did, there is no
+proof that he accepted it as historically authentic. There is not, in
+fact, any proof even that Aristarchus must have known the tradition. He
+had probably read Dieuchidas of Megara, for "Wilamowitz has shown that
+Dieuchidas wrote in the fourth century." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i.
+p. xix.] But, unluckily, we do not know that Dieuchidas stated that the
+_Iliad_ was made and first committed to writing in the sixth century
+B.C. No mortal knows what Dieuchidas said: and, again, what Dieuchidas
+said is not evidence. He wrote as a partisan in a historical dispute.
+
+The story about Pisistratus and his editor, the practical maker of
+the _Iliad_, is interwoven with a legend about an early appeal, in
+the beginning of the sixth century B.C., to Homer as an historical
+authority. The Athenians and Megarians, contending for the possession of
+the island of Salamis, the home of the hero Aias, are said to have laid
+their differences before the Spartans (_cir._ 600-580 B.C.). Each party
+quoted Homer as evidence. Aristotle, who, as we saw, mentions the tale
+(Rhetoric, i. 15), merely says that the Athenians cited _Iliad_,
+II. 558: "Aias led and stationed his men where the phalanxes of the
+Athenians were posted." Aristarchus condemned this line, not (as far
+as evidence goes) because there was a tradition that the Athenians
+had interpolated it to prove their point, but because he thought it
+inconsistent with _Iliad_, III. 230; IV. 251, which, if I may differ
+from so great a critic, it is not; these two passages deal, not with
+the position of the camps, but of the men in the field on a certain
+occasion. But if Aristarchus had thought the tradition of Athenian
+interpolation of II. 558 worthy of notice, he might have mentioned it in
+support of his opinion. Perhaps he did. No reference to his notice has
+reached us. However this may be, Mr. Leaf mainly bases his faith in
+the Pisistratean editor (apparently, we shall see, an Asiatic Greek,
+residing in Athens), on a fragmentary passage of Diogenes Laertius
+(third century A.D.), concerned with the tale of Homer's being cited
+about 600-580 B.C. as an authority for the early ownership of Salamis.
+In this text Diogenes quotes Dieuchidas as saying something about
+Pisistratus in relation to the Homeric poems, but what Dieuchidas really
+said is unknown, for a part has dropped out of the text.
+
+The text of Diogenes Laertius runs thus (Solon, i. 57): "He (Solon)
+decreed that the Homeric poems should be recited by rhapsodists [Greek
+text: ex hypobolaes]" (words of disputed sense), so that where the first
+reciter left off thence should begin his successor. It was rather
+Solon, then, than Pisistratus who brought Homer to light ([Greek text:
+ephotisen]), as Diogenes says in the Fifth Book of his _Megarica_.
+And _the lines_ were _especially these_: "They who held Athens," &c.
+(_Iliad_, II. 546-558), the passage on which the Athenians rested in
+their dispute with the Megarians.
+
+And _what_ "lines were especially these"? Mr. Leaf fills up the gap
+in the sense, after "Pisistratus" thus, "for it was he" (Solon) "who
+interpolated lines in the _Catalogue_, and not Pisistratus." He says:
+"The natural sense of the passage as it stands" (in Diogenes Laertius)
+"is this: It was not Peisistratos, as is generally supposed, but Solon
+_who collected the scattered Homer_ of _his_ day, for he it was who
+interpolated the lines in the _Catalogue of the Ships_".... But Diogenes
+neither says for himself nor quotes from Dieuchidas anything about
+"collecting the scattered Homer of his day." That Pisistratus did so
+is Mr. Leafs theory, but there is not a hint about anybody collecting
+anything in the Greek. Ritschl, indeed, conjecturally supplying the
+gap in the text of Diogenes, invented the words, "Who _collected_ the
+Homeric poems, and inserted some things to please the Athenians." But
+Mr. Leaf rejects that conjecture as "clearly wrong." Then why does he
+adopt, as "the natural sense of the passage," "it was not Peisistratos
+but Solon who _collected_ the scattered Homer of his day?" [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. i. p. xviii.] The testimony of Dieuchidas, as far as we
+can see in the state of the text, "refers," as Mr. Monro says, "to
+the _interpolation_ that has just been mentioned, and need not extend
+further back." "Interpolation is a process that postulates a text in
+which the additional verses can be inserted," whereas, if I understand
+Mr. Leaf, the very first text, in his opinion, was that compiled by the
+editor for Pisistratus. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 400 410,
+especially pp. 408-409.] Mr. Leaf himself dismisses the story of the
+Athenian appeal to Homer for proof of their claim as "a fiction." If,
+so, it does not appear that ancient commentaries on a fiction are of
+any value as proof that Pisistratus produced the earliest edition of
+the _Iliad_. [Footnote: Mr. Leaf adds that, except in one disputed
+line (_Iliad_, II. 558) Aias "is not, in the _Iliad_, encamped next
+the Athenians." His proofs of this odd oversight of the fraudulent
+interpolator, who should have altered the line, are _Iliad_, IV. 327 ff,
+and XII. 681 ff. In the former passage we find Odysseus stationed next
+to the Athenians. But Odysseus would have neighbours on either hand. In
+the second passage we find the Athenians stationed next to the Boeotians
+and Ionians, but the Athenians, too, had neighbours on either side. The
+arrangement was, on the Achaean extreme left, Protesilaus's command (he
+was dead), and that of Aias; then the Boeotians and Ionians, with
+"the picked men of the Athenians"; and then Odysseus, on the
+Boeotolono-Athenian right; or so the Athenians would read the passage.
+The texts must have seemed favourable to the fraudulent Athenian
+interpolator denounced by the Megarians, or he would have altered them.
+Mr. Leaf, however, argues that line 558 of Book II. "cannot be original,
+as is patent from the fact that Aias in the rest of the _Iliad_ is not
+encamped next the Athenians" (see IV. 327; XIII. 681). The Megarians do
+not seem to have seen it, or they would have cited these passages. But
+why argue at all about the Megarian story if it be a fiction? Mr. Leaf
+takes the brief bald mention of Aias in _Iliad_, II. 558 as "a mocking
+cry from Athens over the conquest of the island of the Aiakidai."
+But as, in this same _Catalogue_, Aias is styled "by far the best of
+warriors" after Achilles (II. 768), while there is no more honourable
+mention made of Diomede than that he had "a loud war cry" (II. 568),
+or of Menelaus but that he was also sonorous, and while Nestor, the
+ancestor of Pisistratus, receives not even that amount of praise (line
+601), "the mocking cry from Athens" appears a vain imagination.]
+
+The lines disputed by the Megarians occur in the _Catalogue_, and, as
+to the date and original purpose of the _Catalogue_, the most various
+opinions prevail. In Mr. Leaf's earlier edition of the _Iliad_ (vol. i.
+p. 37), he says that "nothing convincing has been urged to show" that
+the _Catalogue_ is "of late origin." We know, from the story of Solon
+and the Megarians, that the _Catalogue_ "was considered a classical
+work--the Domesday Book of Greece, at a very early date"--say 600-580
+B.C. "It agrees with the poems in being pre-Dorian" (except in lines
+653-670).
+
+"There seems therefore to be no valid reason for doubting that it, like
+the bulk of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, was composed in Achaean times,
+and carried with the emigrants to the coast of Asia Minor...."
+
+In his new edition (vol. ii. p. 86), Mr. Leaf concludes that the
+_Catalogue_ "originally formed an introduction to the whole Cycle," the
+compiling of "the whole Cycle" being of uncertain date, but very late
+indeed, on any theory. The author "studiously preserves an ante-Dorian
+standpoint. It is admitted that there can be little doubt that some of
+the material, at least, is old."
+
+These opinions are very different from those expressed by Mr. Leaf in
+1886. He cannot now give "even an approximate date for the composition
+of the _Catalogue_" which, we conceive, must be the latest thing in
+Homer, if it was composed "for that portion of the whole Cycle which, as
+worked up in a separate poem, was called the _Kypria_" for the _Kypria_
+is obviously a very late performance, done as a prelude to the _Iliad_.
+
+I am unable to imagine how this mutilated passage of Diogenes, even if
+rightly restored, proves that Dieuchidas, a writer of the fourth century
+B.C., alleged that Pisistratus made a collection of scattered Homeric
+poems--in fact, made "a standard text."
+
+The Pisistratean hypothesis "was not so long ago unfashionable, but
+in the last few years a clear reaction has set in," says Mr. Leaf.
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, i. p. XIX.]
+
+The reaction has not affected that celebrated scholar, Dr. Blass, who,
+with Teutonic frankness, calls the Pisistratean edition "an absurd
+legend." [Footnote: Blass, Die _Interpolationen_ in der _Odyssee_,
+pp. I, 2. Halle, 1904.] Meyer says that the Alexandrians rejected the
+Pisistratean story "as a worthless fable," differing here from Mr. Leaf
+and Wilamowitz; and he spurns the legend, saying that it is incredible
+that the whole Greek world would allow the tyrants of Athens to palm off
+a Homer on them. [Footnote: Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, ii. 390,
+391. 1893.]
+
+Mr. T. W. Allen, an eminent textual scholar, treats the Pisistratean
+editor with no higher respect. In an Egyptian papyrus containing a
+fragment of Julius Africanus, a Christian chronologer, Mr. Allen finds
+him talking confidently of the Pisistratidae. They "stitched together
+the rest of the epic," but excised some magical formulae which
+Julius Africanus preserves. Mr. Allen remarks: "The statements about
+Pisistratus belong to a well-established category, that of Homeric
+mythology.... The anecdotes about Pisistratus and the poet himself are
+on a par with Dares, who 'wrote the _Iliad_ before Homer.'" [Footnote:
+_Classical Review_ xviii. 148.]
+
+The editor of Pisistratus is hardly in fashion, though that is of no
+importance. Of importance is the want of evidence for the editor, and,
+as we have shown, the impossible character of the task allotted to him
+by the theory.
+
+As I suppose Mr. Leaf to insinuate, "fashion" has really nothing to do
+with the question. People who disbelieve in written texts must, and
+do, oscillate between the theory of an Homeric "school" and the Wolfian
+theory that Pisistratus, or Solon, or somebody procured the making of
+the first written text at Athens in the sixth century--a theory which
+fails to account for the harmony of the picture of life in the poems,
+and, as Mr. Monro, Grote, Nutzhorn, and many others argue, lacks
+evidence.
+
+As Mr. Monro reasons, and as Blass states the case bluntly, "Solon, or
+Pisistratus, or whoever it was, put a stop, at least as far as Athens
+was concerned, to the mangling of Homer" by the rhapsodists or reciters,
+each anxious to choose a pet passage, and not going through the whole
+_Iliad_ in due sequence. "But the unity existed before the mangling.
+That this has been so long and so stubbornly misunderstood is no credit
+to German scholarship: blind uncritical credulity on one side, limitless
+and arbitrary theorising on the other!" We are not solitary sceptics
+when we decline to accept the theory of Mr. Leaf. It is neither bottomed
+on evidence nor does it account for the facts in the case. That is to
+say, the evidence appeals to Mr. Leaf as valid, but is thought worse
+than inadequate by other great scholars, such as Monro and Blass; while
+the fact of the harmony of the picture of life, preserved through four
+or five centuries, appears to be left without explanation.
+
+Mr. Leaf holds that, in order to organise recitations in due sequence,
+the making of a text, presenting, for the first time, a due sequence,
+was necessary. His opponents hold that the sequence already existed, but
+was endangered by the desultory habits of the rhapsodists. We must here
+judge each for himself; there is no court of final appeal.
+
+I confess to feeling some uncertainty about the correctness of my
+statement of Mr. Leaf's opinions. He and I both think an early Attic
+"recension" probable, or almost certain. But (see' "Conclusion") I
+regard such recension as distinct from the traditional "edition" of
+Pisistratus. Mr. Leaf, I learn, does not regard the "edition" as having
+"made" the _Iliad_; yet his descriptions of the processes and methods
+of his Pisistratean editor correspond to my idea of the "making" of
+our _Iliad_ as it stands. See, for example, Mr. Leaf's Introduction
+to _Iliad_, Book II. He will not even insist on the early Attic as the
+first _written_ text; if it was not, its general acceptance seems
+to remain a puzzle. He discards the idea of one Homeric "school" of
+paramount authority, but presumes that, as recitation was a profession,
+there must have been schools. We do not hear of them or know the
+nature of their teaching. The Beauvais "school" of _jongleurs_ in Lent
+(fourteenth century A.D.) seems to have been a holiday conference of
+strollers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+LOOSE FEUDALISM: THE OVER-LORD IN "ILIAD," BOOKS I. AND II.
+
+We now try to show that the Epics present an historical unity, a
+complete and harmonious picture of an age, in its political, social,
+legal, and religious aspects; in its customs, and in its military
+equipment. A long epic can only present an unity of historical ideas
+if it be the work of one age. Wandering minstrels, living through a
+succession of incompatible ages, civic, commercial, democratic, could
+not preserve, without flaw or failure, the attitude, in the first place,
+of the poet of feudal princes towards an Over-Lord who rules them by
+undisputed right divine, but rules weakly, violently, unjustly, being
+subject to gusts of arrogance, and avarice, and repentance. Late poets
+not living in feudal society, and unfamiliar alike with its customary
+law, its jealousy of the Over-Lord, its conservative respect for his
+consecrated function, would inevitably miss the proper tone, and fail in
+some of the many [blank space] of the feudal situation. This is all the
+more certain, if we accept Mr. Leaf's theory that each poet-rhapsodist's
+_répertoire_ varied from the _répertoires_ of the rest. There could be
+no unity of treatment in their handling of the character and position of
+the Over-Lord and of the customary law that regulates his relations with
+his peers. Again, no editor of 540 B.C. could construct an harmonious
+picture of the Over-Lord in relation to the princes out of the
+fragmentary _répertoires_ of strolling rhapsodists, which now lay before
+him in written versions. If the editor could do this, he was a man of
+Shakespearian genius, and had minute knowledge of a dead society.
+This becomes evident when, in place of examining the _Iliad_ through
+microscopes, looking out for discrepancies, we study it in its large
+lines as a literary whole. The question being, Is the _Iliad_ a
+literary whole or a mere literary mosaic? we must ask "What, taking it
+provisionally as a literary whole, are the qualities of the poet as a
+painter of what we may call feudal society?"
+
+Choosing the part of the Over-Lord Agamemnon, we must not forget that he
+is one of several analogous figures in the national poetry and romance
+of other feudal ages. Of that great analogous figure, Charlemagne,
+and of his relations with his peers in the earlier and later French
+mediaeval epics we shall later speak. Another example is Arthur, in some
+romances "the blameless king," in others _un roi fainéant_.
+
+The parallel Irish case is found in the Irish saga of Diarmaid and
+Grainne. We read Mr. O'Grady's introduction on the position of Eionn Mac
+Cumhail, the legendary Over-Lord of Ireland, the Agamemnon of the Celts.
+"Fionn, like many men in power, is variable; he is at times magnanimous,
+at other times tyrannical and petty. Diarmaid, Oisin, Oscar, and Caoilte
+Mac Rohain are everywhere the [Greek: kaloi kachotoi] of the Fenians;
+of them we never hear anything bad." [Footnote: _Transactions of the
+Ossianic_ Society, vol. iii. p. 39.]
+
+Human nature eternally repeats itself in similar conditions of society,
+French, Norse, Celtic, and Achaean. "We never hear anything bad" of
+Diomede, Odysseus, or Aias, and the evil in Achilles's resentment up to
+a certain point is legal, and not beyond what the poet thinks natural
+and pardonable in his circumstances.
+
+The poet's view of Agamemnon is expressed in the speeches and conduct
+of the peers. In Book I. we see the bullying truculence of Agamemnon,
+wreaked first on the priest of Apollo, Chryses, then in threats against
+the prophet Chalcas, then in menaces against any prince on whom he
+chooses to avenge his loss of fair Chryseis, and, finally, in the
+Seizure of Briseis from Achilles.
+
+This part of the First Book of the _Iliad_ is confessedly original, and
+there is no varying, throughout the Epic, from the strong and delicate
+drawing of an historical situation, and of a complex character.
+Agamemnon is truculent, and eager to assert his authority, but he is
+also possessed of a heavy sense of his responsibilities, which often
+unmans him. He has a legal right to a separate "prize of honour" (geras)
+after each capture of spoil. Considering the wrath of Apollo for the
+wrong done in refusing his priest's offered ransom for his daughter,
+Agamemnon will give her back, "if that is better; rather would I see my
+folks whole than perishing." [Footnote: _Iliad_, I. 115-117.]
+
+Here we note points of feudal law and of kingly character. The giving
+and taking of ransom exists as it did in the Middle Ages; ransom is
+refused, death is dealt, as the war becomes more fierce towards its
+close. Agamemnon has sense enough to waive his right to the girlish
+prize, for the sake of his people, but is not so generous as to demand
+no compensation. But there are no fresh spoils to apportion, and the
+Over-Lord threatens to take the prize of one of his peers, even of
+Achilles.
+
+Thereon Achilles does what was frequently done in the feudal age of
+western Europe, he "renounces his fealty," and will return to Phthia. He
+adds insult, "thou dog-face!" The whole situation, we shall show, recurs
+again and again in the epics of feudal France, the later epics of feudal
+discontent. Agamemnon replies that Achilles may do as he pleases. "I
+have others by my side that shall do me honour, and, above all, Zeus,
+Lord of Counsel" (I. 175). He rules, literally, by divine right, and we
+shall see that, in the French feudal epics, as in Homer, this claim of
+divine right is granted, even in the case of an insolent and cowardly
+Over-Lord. Achilles half draws "his great sword," one of the long,
+ponderous cut-and-thrust bronze swords of which we have actual examples
+from Mycenae and elsewhere. He is restrained by Athene, visible only to
+him. "With words, indeed," she says, "revile him .... hereafter shall
+goodly gifts come to thee, yea, in threefold measure...."
+
+Gifts of atonement for "surquedry," like that of Agamemnon, are given
+and received in the French epics, for example, in the [blank space].
+The _Iliad_ throughout exhibits much interest in such gifts, and in the
+customary law as to their acceptance, and other ritual or etiquette
+of reconciliation. This fact, it will be shown, accounts for a passage
+which critics reject, and which is tedious to our taste, as it probably
+was tedious to the age of the supposed late poets themselves. (Book
+XIX.). But the taste of a feudal audience, as of the audience of the
+Saga men, delighted in "realistic" descriptions of their own customs
+and customary law, as in descriptions of costume and armour. This is
+fortunate for students of customary law and costume, but wearies hearers
+and readers who desire the action to advance. Passages of this kind
+would never be inserted by late poets, who had neither the knowledge of,
+nor any interest in, the subjects.
+
+To return to Achilles, he is now within his right; the moral goddess
+assures him of that, and he is allowed to give the reins to his
+tongue, as he does in passages to which the mediaeval epics offer many
+parallels. In the mediaeval epics, as in Homer, there is no idea of
+recourse to a duel between the Over-Lord and his peer. Achilles accuses
+Agamemnon of drunkenness, greed, and poltroonery. He does not
+return home, but swears by the sceptre that Agamemnon shall rue his
+_outrecuidance_ when Hector slays the host. By the law of the age
+Achilles remains within his right. His violent words are not resented by
+the other peers. They tacitly admit, as Athene admits, that Achilles has
+the right, being so grievously injured, to "renounce his fealty," till
+Agamemnon makes apology and gives gifts of atonement. Such, plainly, is
+the unwritten feudal law, which gives to the Over-Lord the lion's share
+of booty, the initiative in war and council, and the right to command;
+but limits him by the privilege of the peers to renounce their fealty
+under insufferable provocation. In no Book is Agamemnon so direfully
+insulted as in the First, which is admitted to be of the original
+"kernel." Elsewhere the sympathy of the poet occasionally enables him to
+feel the elements of pathos in the position of the over-tasked King of
+Men.
+
+As concerns the apology and the gifts of atonement, the poet has feudal
+customary law and usage clearly before his eyes. He knows exactly what
+is due, and the limits of the rights of Over-Lord and prince, matters
+about which the late Ionian poets could only pick up information by
+a course of study in constitutional history--the last thing they were
+likely to attempt--unless we suppose that they all kept their eyes
+on the "kernel," and that steadily, through centuries, generations of
+strollers worked on the lines laid down in that brief poem.
+
+Thus the poet of Book IX.--one of "the latest expansions,"--thoroughly
+understands the legal and constitutional situation, as between Agamemnon
+and Achilles. Or rather all the poets who collaborated in Book IX.,
+which "had grown by a process of accretion," [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad,
+vol. i. p. 371.] understood the legal situation.
+
+Returning to the poet's conception of Agamemnon, we find in the
+character of Agamemnon himself the key to the difficulties which critics
+discover in the Second Book. The difficulty is that when Zeus, won over
+to the cause of Achilles by Thetis, sends a false Dream to Agamemnon,
+the Dream tells the prince that he shall at once take Troy, and bids him
+summon the host to arms. But Agamemnon, far from doing that, summons
+the host to a peaceful assembly, with the well-known results of
+demoralisation.
+
+Mr. Leaf explains the circumstances on his own theory of expansions
+compiled into a confused whole by a late editor. He thinks that probably
+there were two varying versions even of this earliest Book of the poem.
+In one (A), the story went on from the quarrel between Agamemnon and
+Achilles, to the holding of a general assembly "to consider the altered
+state of affairs." This is the Assembly of Book H, but debate, in
+version A, was opened by Thersites, not by Agamemnon, and Thersites
+proposed instant flight! That was probably the earlier version.
+
+In the other early version (B), after the quarrel between the chiefs,
+the story did not, as in A, go on straight to the Assembly, but Achilles
+appealed to his mother, the fair sea-goddess, as in our Iliad, and she
+obtained from Zeus, as in the actual _Iliad_, his promise to honour
+Achilles by giving victory, in his absence, to the Trojans. The poet of
+version B, in fact, created the beautiful figure of Thetis, so essential
+to the development of the tenderness that underlies the ferocity of
+Achilles. The other and earliest poet, who treated of the Wrath of
+the author of version A, neglected that opportunity with all that it
+involved, and omitted the purpose of Zeus, which is mentioned in the
+fifth line of the Epic. The editor of 540 B.C., seeing good in both
+versions, A and B, "combined his information," and produced Books I. and
+II. of the _ILIAD_ as they stand. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
+47.]
+
+Mr. Leaf suggests that "there is some ground for supposing that the
+oldest version of the Wrath of Achilles did not contain the promise of
+Zeus to Thetis; it was a tale played exclusively on the earthly stage."
+[Footnote: _Ibid_, vol. i. p. xxiii.] In that case the author of the
+oldest form (A) must have been a poet very inferior indeed to the later
+author of B who took up and altered his work. In _his_ version, Book
+I. does not end with the quarrel of the princes, but Achilles receives,
+with all the courtesy of his character, the unwelcome heralds of
+Agamemnon, and sends Briseis with them to the Over-Lord. He then with
+tears appeals to his goddess-mother, Thetis of the Sea, who rose from
+the grey mere like a mist, leaving the sea deeps where she dwelt beside
+her father, the ancient one of the waters. Then sat she face to face
+with her son as he let the tears down fall, and caressed him, saying,
+"Child, wherefore weepest thou, for what sorrow of heart? Hide it
+not, tell it to me; that I may know it as well as thou." Here the poet
+strikes the keynote of the character of Achilles, the deadly in war, the
+fierce in council, who weeps for his lost lady and his wounded honour,
+and cries for help to his mother, as little children cry.
+
+Such is the Achilles of the _Iliad_ throughout and consistently, but
+such he was not to the mind of Mr. Leaf's probably elder poet, the
+author of version A. Thetis, in version B, promises to persuade Zeus to
+honour Achilles by making Agamemnon rue his absence, and, twelve days
+after the quarrel, wins the god's consent.
+
+In Book II. Zeus reflects on his promise, and sends a false Dream to
+beguile Agamemnon, promising that now he shall take Troy. Agamemnon,
+while asleep, is full of hope; but when he wakens he dresses in mufti,
+in a soft doublet, a cloak, and sandals; takes his sword (swords were
+then worn as part of civil costume), and the ancestral sceptre, which he
+wields in peaceful assemblies. Day dawns, and "he bids the heralds...."
+A break here occurs, according to the theory.
+
+Here (_Iliad_, Book II., line 50) the kernel ceases, Mr. Leaf says, and
+the editor of 540 B.C. plays his pranks for a while.
+
+The kernel (or one of the _two_ kernels), we are to take up again at
+Book II., 443-483, and thence "skip" to XI. 56, and now "we have a
+narrative masterly in conception and smooth in execution," [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. i. p. 47.] says Mr. Leaf. This kernel is kernel B,
+probably the later kernel of the pair, that in which Achilles appeals to
+his lady mother, who wins from Zeus the promise to cause Achaean defeat,
+till Achilles is duly honoured. The whole Epic turns on this promise of
+Zeus, as announced in the fifth, sixth, and seventh lines of the very
+first Book. If kernel A is the first kernel, the poet left out the
+essence of the plot he had announced. However, let us first examine
+probable kernel B, reading, as advised, Book II. 1-50, [blank space];
+XI. 56 ff.
+
+We left Agamemnon (though the Dream bade him summon the host to arms)
+dressed in _civil costume_. His ancestral sceptre in his hand, he is
+going to hold a deliberative assembly of the unarmed host. His attire
+proves that fact ([Greek: _prepodaes de ae stolae to epi Boulaen
+exionti_], says the scholiast). Then if we skip, as advised, to II.
+443-483 he bids the heralds call the host not to peaceful council, for
+which his costume is appropriate, but to _war_! The host gathers, "and
+in their midst the lord Agamemnon,"--still in civil costume, with his
+sceptre (he has not changed his attire as far as we are told)--"in face
+and eyes like Zeus; in waist like Ares" (god of war); "in breast like
+Poseidon,"--yet, for all that we are told, entirely unarmed! The host,
+however, were dressed "in innumerable bronze," "war was sweeter to them
+than to depart in their ships to their dear native land,"--so much did
+Athene encourage them.
+
+But nobody had been speaking of flight, in THE KERNEL B: THAT proposal
+was originally made by Thersites, in kernel A, and was attributed to
+Agamemnon in the part of Book II. where the editor blends A and B.
+This part, at present, Mr. Leaf throws aside as a very late piece of
+compilation. Turning next, as directed, to XI. 56, we find the Trojans
+deploying in arms, and the hosts encounter with fury--Agamemnon still,
+for all that appears, in the raiment of peace, and with the sceptre of
+constitutional monarchy. "In he rushed, first of all, and slew Bienor,"
+and many other gentlemen of Troy, not with his sceptre!
+
+Clearly all this is the reverse of "a narrative masterly in conception
+and smooth in execution:" it is an impossible narrative.
+
+Mr. Leaf has attempted to disengage one of two forms of the old original
+poem from the parasitic later growths; he has promised to show us a
+smooth and masterly narrative, and the result is a narrative on which
+no Achasan poet could have ventured. In II. 50 the heralds are bidden
+[Greek: _kurussein_], that is to summon the host--to _what_? To a
+peaceful assembly, as Agamemnon's costume proves, says the next line
+(II. 51), but that is excised by Mr. Leaf, and we go on to II. 443, and
+the reunited passage now reads, "Agamemnon bade the loud heralds" (II.
+50) "call the Achaeans to battle" (II. 443), and they came, in harness,
+but their leader--when did he exchange chiton, cloak, and sceptre for
+helmet, shield, and spear? A host appears in arms; a king who set out
+with sceptre and doublet is found with a spear, in bronze armour: and
+not another word is said about the Dream of Agamemnon.
+
+It is perfectly obvious and certain that the two pieces of the broken
+kernel B do not fit together at all. Nor is this strange, if the kernel
+was really broken and endured the insertion of matter enough to fill
+nine Books (IL-XL). If kernel B really contained Book II., line 50,
+as Mr. Leaf avers, if Agamemnon, as in that line (50) "bade the
+clear-voiced heralds do...." something--what he bade them do was,
+necessarily, as his peaceful costume proves, to summon the peaceful
+assembly which he was to moderate with his sceptre. At such an assembly,
+or at a preliminary council of Chiefs, he would assuredly speak of his
+Dream, as he does in the part excised. Mr. Leaf, if he will not have a
+peaceful assembly as part of kernel B, must begin his excision at the
+middle of line 42, in II., where Agamemnon wakens; and must make him
+dress not in mufti but in armour, and call the host of the Achaeans to
+arm, as the Dream bade him do, and as he does in II. 443. Perhaps we
+should then excise II. 45 2, 45 3, with the reference to the plan of
+retreat, for _THAT_ is part of kernel A where there was no promise of
+Zeus, and no Dream sent to Agamemnon. Then from II. 483, the description
+of the glorious armed aspect of Agamemnon, Mr. Leaf may pass to XI. 56,
+the account of the Trojans under Hector, of the battle, of the prowess
+of Agamemnon, inspired by the Dream which he, contrary to Homeric and
+French epic custom, has very wisely mentioned to nobody--that is, in the
+part not excised.
+
+This appears to be the only method by which Mr. Leaf can restore the
+continuity of his kernel B.
+
+Though Mr. Leaf has failed to fit Book XI. to any point in Book II., of
+course it does not follow that Book XI. cannot be a continuation of the
+original _Wrath_ of _Achilles_ (version B). If so, we understand why
+Agamemnon plucks up heart, in Book XI., and is the chief cause of a
+temporary Trojan reverse. He relies on the Dream sent from Zeus in the
+opening lines of Book II., the Dream which was not in kernel A; the
+Dream which he communicated to nobody; the Dream conveying the promise
+that he should at once take Troy. This is perhaps a tenable theory,
+though Agamemnon had much reason to doubt whether the host would obey
+his command to arm, but an alternative theory of why and wherefore
+Agamemnon does great feats of valour, in Book XI., will later be
+propounded. Note that the events of Books XL.-XVIII., by Mr. Leaf's
+theory, all occur on the very day after Thetis (according to kernel
+B)' [79] obtains from Zeus his promise to honour Achilles by the
+discomfiture of the Achaeans; they have suffered nothing till that
+moment, as far as we learn, from the absence of Achilles and his 2500
+men: allowing for casualties, say 2000.
+
+So far we have traced--from Books I. and II. to Book XI.--the fortunes
+of kernel B, of the supposed later of two versions of the opening of the
+_Iliad_. But there may have been a version (A) probably earlier, we have
+been told, in which Achilles did not appeal to his mother, nor she to
+Zeus, and Zeus did not promise victory to the Trojans, and sent no false
+Dream of success to Agamemnon. What were the fortunes of that oldest
+of all old kernels? In this version (A) Agamemnon, having had no Dream,
+summoned a peaceful assembly to discuss the awkwardness caused by the
+mutiny of Achilles. The host met (_Iliad,_ II. 87-99). Here we pass from
+line 99 to 212-242: Thersites it is who opens the debate, (in version A)
+insults Agamemnon, and advises flight. The army rushed off to launch the
+ships, as in II. 142-210, and were brought back by Odysseus, who made a
+stirring speech, and was well backed by Agamemnon, urging to battle.
+
+Version A appears to us to have been a version that no heroic audience
+would endure. A low person like Thersites opens a debate in an assembly
+called by the Over-Lord; this could not possibly pass unchallenged among
+listeners living in the feudal age. When a prince called an assembly,
+he himself opened the debate, as Achilles does in Book I. 54-67. That
+a lewd fellow, the buffoon and grumbler of the host, of "the people,"
+nameless and silent throughout the Epic, should rush in and open debate
+in an assembly convoked by the Over-Lord, would have been regarded
+by feudal hearers, or by any hearers with feudal traditions, as an
+intolerable poetical license. Thersites would have been at once pulled
+down and beaten; the host would not have rushed to the ships on _his_
+motion. Any feudal audience would know better than to endure such
+an impossibility; they would have asked, "How could Thersites
+speak--without the sceptre?"
+
+As the poem stands, and ought to stand, nobody less than the Over-Lord,
+acting within his right, ([Greek: ae themis esti] II. 73), could suggest
+the flight of the host, and be obeyed.
+
+It is the absolute demoralisation of the host, in consequence of the
+strange test of their Lord, Agamemnon, making a feigned proposal to fly,
+and it is their confused, bewildered return to the assembly under the
+persuasions of Odysseus, urged by Athene, that alone, in the poem, give
+Thersites his unique opportunity to harangue. When the Over-Lord had
+called an assembly the first word, of course, was for to speak, as
+he does in the poem as it stands. That Thersifes should rise in the
+arrogance bred by the recent disorderly and demoralised proceedings is
+one thing; that he should open the debate when excitement was eager to
+hear Agamemnon, and before demoralisation set in, is quite another. We
+never hear again of Thersites, or of any one of the commonalty, daring
+to open his mouth in an assembly. Thersites sees his one chance, the
+chance of a life time, and takes it; because Agamemnon, by means of the
+test--a proposal to flee homewards--which succeeded, it is said, in the
+case of Cortès,--has reduced the host, already discontented, to a mob.
+
+Before Agamemnon thus displayed his ineptitude, as he often does later,
+Thersites had no chance. All this appears sufficiently obvious, if we
+put ourselves at the point of view of the original listeners. Thersites
+merely continues, in full assembly, the mutinous babble which he has
+been pouring out to his neighbours during the confused rush to launch
+the ships and during the return produced by the influence of Odysseus.
+The poet says so himself (_Iliad_, II. 212). "The rest sat down ...
+only Thersites still chattered on." No original poet could manage the
+situation in any other way.
+
+We have now examined Mr. Leaf's two supposed earliest versions of the
+beginning of the _Iliad_. His presumed earlier version (A), with no
+Thetis, no promise of Zeus, and no Dream, and with Thersites opening
+debate, is jejune, unpoetical, and omits the gentler and most winning
+aspect of the character of Achilles, while it could not possibly have
+been accepted by a feudal audience for the reasons already given. His
+presumed later version (B), with Thetis, Zeus, and the false Dream,
+cannot be, or certainly has not been, brought by Mr. Leaf into congruous
+connection with Book XI., and it results in the fighting of the
+_unarmed_ Agamemnon, which no poet could have been so careless as to
+invent. Agamemnon could not go into battle without helmet, shield, and
+spears (the other armour we need not dwell upon here), and Thersites
+could not have opened a debate when the Over-Lord had called the
+Assembly, nor could he have moved the chiefs to prepare for flight,
+unless, as in the actual _Iliad_, they had already been demoralised
+by the result of the feigned proposal of flight by Agamemnon, and its
+effect upon the host. Probably every reader who understands heroic
+society, temper, and manners will, so far, agree with us.
+
+Our own opinion is that the difficulties in the poem are caused partly
+by the poet's conception of the violent, wavering, excitable,
+and unstable character of Agamemnon; partly by some accident, now
+indiscoverable, save by conjecture, which has happened to the text.
+
+The story in the actual _Iliad_ is that Zeus, planning disaster for the
+Achaeans, in accordance with his promise to Thetis, sends a false Dream,
+to tell Agamemnon that he will take Troy instantly. He is bidden by the
+Dream to summon the host to arms. Agamemnon, _still asleep_, "has in his
+mind things not to be fulfilled: Him seemeth that he shall take Priam's
+town that very day" (II. 36, 37). "Then he awoke" (II. 41), and,
+obviously, was no longer so sanguine, once awake!
+
+Being a man crushed by his responsibility, and, as commander-in-chief,
+extremely timid, though personally brave, he disobeys the Dream, dresses
+in civil costume, and summons the host to a _peaceful_ assembly, not
+to war, as the Dream bade him do. Probably he thought that the host was
+disaffected, and wanted to argue with them, in place of commanding.
+
+Here it is that the difficulty comes in, and our perplexity is increased
+by our ignorance of the regular procedure in Homeric times. Was the host
+not in arms and fighting every day, when there was no truce? There seems
+to have been no armistice after the mutiny of Achilles, for we are
+told that, in the period between his mutiny and the day of the Dream of
+Agamemnon, Achilles "was neither going to the Assembly, nor into battle,
+but wasted his heart, abiding there, longing for war and the slogan"
+(I. 489, 492). Thus it seems that war went on, and that assemblies were
+being held, in the absence of Achilles. It appears, however, that the
+fighting was mere skirmishing and raiding, no general onslaught was
+attempted; and from Book II. _73_, 83 it seems to have been a matter
+of doubt, with Agamemnon and Nestor, whether the army would venture a
+pitched battle.
+
+It also appears, from the passage cited (I. 489, 492) that assemblies
+were being regularly held; we are told that Achilles did not attend
+them. Yet, when we come to the assembly (II. 86-100) it seems to have
+been a special and exciting affair, to judge by the brilliant picture
+of the crowds, the confusion, and the cries. Nothing of the sort is
+indicated in the meeting of the assembly in I. _54-5_ 8. Why is there
+so much excitement at the assembly of Book II.? Partly because it was
+summoned _at_ dawn, whereas the usual thing was for the host to meet
+in arms before fighting on the plain or going on raids; assemblies were
+held when the day's work was over. The host, therefore, when summoned
+to an assembly _at dawn_, expects to hear of something out of the
+common--as the mutiny of Achilles suggests--and is excited.
+
+We must ask, then, why does Agamemnon, after the Dream has told him
+merely to summon the host to arm--a thing of daily routine--call a
+deliberative morning assembly, a thing clearly not of routine? If
+Agamemnon is really full of confidence, inspired by the Dream, why does
+he determine, not to do what is customary, call the men to arms, but
+as Jeanne d'Arc said to the Dauphin, to "hold such long and weary
+councils"? Mr. Jevons speaks of Agamemnon's "confidence in the delusive
+dream" as at variance with his proceedings, and would excise II. 35-41,
+"the only lines which represent Agamemnon as confidently believing in
+the Dream." [Footnote: _Journal_ of _Hellenic_ Studies, vol. vii. pp.
+306, 307.] But the poet never once says that Agamemnon, awake, did
+believe confidently in the Dream! Agamemnon dwelt with hope _while_
+asleep; when he wakened--he went and called a peaceful morning assembly,
+though the Dream bade him call to arms. He did not dare to risk his
+authority. This was exactly in keeping with his character. The poet
+should have said, "When he woke, the Dream appeared to him rather poor
+security for success" (saying so in poetic language, of course), and
+then there would be no difficulty in the summoning of an assembly at
+dawn. But either the poet expected us to understand the difference
+between the hopes of Agamemnon sleeping, and the doubts of Agamemnon
+waking to chill realities--an experience common to all of us who
+dream--or some explanatory lines have been dropped out--one or two would
+have cleared up the matter.
+
+If I am right, the poet has not been understood. People have not
+observed that Agamemnon hopes while asleep, and doubts, and acts on his
+doubt, when awake. Thus Mr. Leaf writes: "Elated by the dream, as we are
+led to suppose, Agamemnon summons the army--to lead them into battle?
+Nothing of the sort; he calls them to assembly." [Footnote: _Iliad_,
+vol. ii. p. 46.] But we ought not to have been led to suppose that
+the waking Agamemnon was so elated as the sleeping Agamemnon. He was
+"disillusioned" on waking; his conduct proves it; he did not know what
+to think about the Dream; he did not know how the host would take the
+Dream; he doubted whether they would fight at his command, so he called
+an assembly.
+
+Mr. Jevons very justly cites a parallel case. Grote has remarked that in
+Book VII. of Herodotus, "The dream sent by the Gods to frighten Xerxes
+when about to recede from his project," has "a marked parallel in the
+_Iliad_." Thus Xerxes, after the defection of Artabanus, was despondent,
+like Agamemnon after the mutiny of Achilles, and was about to recede
+from his project. To both a delusive dream is sent urging them to
+proceed. Xerxes calls an assembly, however, and says that he will
+not proceed. Why? Because, says Herodotus, "when day came, he thought
+nothing of his dream." Agamemnon, once awake, thought doubtfully of
+_his_ dream; he called a Privy Council, told the princes about his
+dream--of which Nestor had a very dubious opinion--and said that he
+would try the temper of the army by proposing instant flight: the chiefs
+should restrain the men if they were eager to run away.
+
+Now the epic prose narrative of Herodotus is here clearly based on
+_Iliad_, II., which Herodotus must have understood as I do. But in
+Homer there is no line to say--and one line or two would have been
+enough--that Agamemnon, when awake, doubted, like Xerxes, though
+Agamemnon, when asleep, had been confident. The necessary line, for all
+that we know, still existed in the text used by Herodotus. Homer
+may lose a line as well as Dieuchidas of Megara, or rather Diogenes
+Laertius. Juvenal lost a whole passage, re-discovered by Mr. Winstedt
+in a Bodleian manuscript. If Homer expected modern critics to note the
+delicate distinction between Agamemnon asleep and Agamemnon awake, or to
+understand Agamemnon's character, he expected too much. [Footnote: Cf.
+Jevons, _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol. vii. pp. 306, 307.] The poet
+then treats the situation on these lines: Agamemnon, awake and free from
+illusion, does not obey the dream, does _not_ call the army to war; he
+takes a middle course.
+
+In the whole passage the poet's main motive, as Mr. Monro remarks with
+obvious truth, is "to let his audience become acquainted with the temper
+and spirit of the army as it was affected by the long siege ... and by
+the events of the First Book." [Footnote: Monro, _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
+261.] The poet could not obtain his object if Agamemnon merely gave the
+summons to battle; and he thinks Agamemnon precisely the kind of waverer
+who will call, first the Privy Council of the Chiefs, and then an
+assembly. Herein the homesick host will display its humours, as it does
+with a vengeance. Agamemnon next tells his Dream to the chiefs (if he
+had a dream of this kind he would most certainly tell it), and adds (as
+has been already stated) that he will first test the spirit of the
+army by a feigned proposal of return to Greece, while the chiefs are to
+restrain them if they rush to launch the ships. Nestor hints that there
+is not much good in attending to dreams; however, this is the dream of
+the Over-Lord, who is the favoured of Zeus.
+
+Agamemnon next, addressing the assembly, says that posterity will think
+it a shameful thing that the Achaeans raised the siege of a town with a
+population much smaller than their own army; but allies from many
+cities help the Trojans, and are too strong for him, whether posterity
+understands that or not. "Let us flee with our ships!"
+
+On this the host break up, in a splendid passage of poetry, and rush
+to launch the ships, the passion of _nostalgie_ carrying away even
+the chiefs, it appears--a thing most natural in the circumstances.
+But Athene finds Odysseus in grief: "neither laid he any hand upon his
+ship," as the others did, and she encouraged him to stop the flight.
+This he does, taking the sceptre of Agamemnon from his unnerved hand.
+
+He goes about reminding the princes "have we not heard Agamemnon's real
+intention in council?" (II. 188-197), and rating the common sort. The
+assembly meets again in great confusion; Thersites seizes the chance to
+be insolent, and is beaten by Odysseus. The host then arms for battle.
+
+The poet has thus shown Agamemnon in the colours which he wears
+consistently all through the _Iliad_. He has, as usual, contrasted with
+him Odysseus, the type of a wise and resolute man. This contrast the
+poet maintains without fail throughout. He has shown us the temper of
+the weary, home-sick army, and he has persuaded us that he knows how
+subtle, dangerous, and contagious a thing is military panic. Thus, at
+least, I venture to read the passage, which, thus read, is perfectly
+intelligible. Agamemnon is no personal coward, but the burden of the
+safety of the host overcomes him later, and he keeps suggesting flight
+in the ships, as we shall see. Suppose, then, we read on from II. 40
+thus: "The Dream left him thinking of things not to be, even that on
+this day he shall take the town of Priam.... But he awoke from sleep
+with the divine voice ringing in his ears. (_Then it seemed him that
+some dreams are true and_ some _false, for all do_ not _come through the
+Gate of_ Horn.) So he arose and sat up and did on his soft tunic, and
+his great cloak, and grasped his ancestral sceptre ... and bade the
+clear-voiced heralds summon the Achaeans of the long locks to the
+deliberative assembly." He then, as in II. 53-75 told his Dream to the
+preliminary council, and proposed that he should try the temper of
+the host by proposing flight--which, if it began, the chiefs were to
+restrain--before giving orders to arm. The test of the temper of the
+host acted as it might be expected to act; all rushed to launch the
+ships, and the princes were swept away in the tide of flight, Agamemnon
+himself merely looking on helpless. The panic was contagious; only
+Odysseus escaped its influence, and redeemed the honour of the Achaeans,
+as he did again on a later day.
+
+The passage certainly has its difficulties. But Erhardt expresses the
+proper state of the case, after giving his analysis. "The hearer's
+imagination is so captured, first by the dream, then by the brawling
+assembly, by the rush to the ships, by the intervention of Odysseus, by
+the punishment of Thersites--all these living pictures follow each
+other so fleetly before the eyes that we have scarcely time to make
+objections." [Footnote: _Die Enstehung der Homerische Gedichte_, p.
+29.]. The poet aimed at no more and no less effect than he has
+produced, and no more should be required by any one, except by
+that anachronism--"the analytical reader." _He_ has "time to make
+objections": the poet's audience had none; and he must be criticised
+from their point of view. Homer did not sing for analytical readers,
+for the modern professor; he could not possibly conceive that Time would
+bring such a being into existence.
+
+To return to the character of Agamemnon. In moments of encouragement
+Agamemnon is a valiant fighter, few better spearmen, yet "he attains not
+to the first Three," Achilles, Aias, Diomede. But Agamemnon is unstable
+as water; again and again, as in Book II., the lives and honour of the
+Achaeans are saved in the Over-Lord's despite by one or other of the
+peers. The whole _Iliad_, with consistent uniformity, pursues the scheme
+of character and conduct laid down in the two first Books. It is guided
+at once by feudal allegiance and feudal jealousy, like the _Chansons de
+Geste_ and the early sagas or romances of Ireland. A measure of respect
+for Agamemnon, even of sympathy, is preserved; he is not degraded as the
+kings and princes are often degraded on the Attic stage, and even in the
+Cyclic poems. Would wandering Ionian reciters at fairs have maintained
+this uniformity? Would the tyrant Pisistratus have made his literary man
+take this view?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+AGAMEMNON IN THE LATER "ILIAD"
+
+In the Third Book, Agamemnon receives the compliments due to his
+supremacy, aspect, and valour from the lips of Helen and Priam. There
+are other warriors taller by a head, and Odysseus was shorter than he by
+a head, so Agamemnon was a man of middle stature. He is "beautiful and
+royal" of aspect; "a good king and a mighty spearman," says Helen.
+
+The interrupted duel between Menelaus and Paris follows, and then the
+treacherous wounding of Menelaus by Pandarus. One of Agamemnon's most
+sympathetic characteristics is his intense love of his brother, for
+whose sake he has made the war. He shudders on seeing the arrow wound,
+but consoles Menelaus by the certainty that Troy will fall, for the
+Trojans have broken the solemn oath of truce. Zeus "doth fulfil at last,
+and men make dear amends." But with characteristic inconsistency he
+discourages Menelaus by a picture of many a proud Trojan leaping on
+his tomb, while the host will return home-an idea constantly present to
+Agamemnon's mind. He is always the first to propose flight, though he
+will "return with shame" to Mycenae. Menelaus is of much better cheer:
+"Be of good courage, [blank space] ALL THE HOST OF THE [misprint]"--a
+thing which Agamemnon does habitually, though he is not a personal
+poltroon. As Menelaus has only a slight flesh wound after all, and
+as the Trojans are doomed men, Agamemnon is now "eager for glorious
+battle." He encourages the princes, but, of all men, rebukes Odysseus as
+"last at a fray and first at a feast": such is his insolence, for which
+men detest him.
+
+This is highly characteristic in Agamemnon, who has just been redeemed
+from ruin by Odysseus. Rebuked by Odysseus, he "takes back his word" as
+usual, and goes on to chide Diomede as better at making speeches than at
+fighting! But Diomede made no answer, "having respect to the chiding
+of the revered King." He even rebukes the son of Capaneus for answering
+Agamemnon haughtily. Diomede, however, does not forget; he bides his
+time. He now does the great deeds of his day of valour (Book V.).
+Agamemnon meanwhile encourages the host.
+
+During Books V., VI. Agamemnon's business is "to bid the rest keep
+fighting." When Hector, in Book VII., challenges any Achaean, nobody
+volunteers except Menelaus, who has a strong sense of honour. Agamemnon
+restrains him, and lots are cast: the host pray that the lot may fall
+on Aias, Diomede, or Agamemnon (VII. 179-180). Thus the Over-Lord is
+acknowledged to be a man of his hands, especially good at hurling the
+spear, as we see again in Book XXIII.
+
+A truce is proposed for the burial of the dead, and Paris offers to give
+up the wealth that he brought to Troy, and more, if the Achaeans will
+go home, but Helen he will not give up. We expect Agamemnon to answer as
+becomes him. But no! All are silent, till Diomede rises. They will not
+return, he says, even if Helen be restored, for even a fool knows that
+Troy is doomed, because of the broken oath. The rest shout acquiescence,
+and Agamemnon refuses the compromise. Apparently he would not have
+disdained it, but for Diomede's reply.
+
+On the following day the Trojans have the better in the battle, and
+Agamemnon "has no heart to stand," nor have some of his peers. But
+Diomede has more courage, and finally Agamemnon begins to call to
+the host to fight, but breaks down, weeps, and prays to Zeus "that
+we ourselves at least flee and escape;" he is not an encouraging
+commander-in-chief! Zeus, in pity, sends a favourable omen; Aias fights
+well; night falls, and the Trojans camp on the open plain.
+
+Agamemnon, in floods of tears, calls an assembly, and proposes to
+"return to Argos with dishonour." "Let us flee with our ships to our
+dear native land, for now shall we never take wide-wayed Troy," All are
+silent, till Diomede rises and reminds Agamemnon that "thou saidst I was
+no man of war, but a coward." (In Book V.; we are now in Book IX.) "Zeus
+gave thee the honour of the sceptre above all men, but valour he gave
+thee not.... Go thy way; thy way is before thee, and thy ships stand
+beside the sea. But all the other flowing-haired Achaeans will tarry
+here until we waste Troy."
+
+Nestor advises Agamemnon to set an advanced guard, which that martialist
+had never thought of doing, and to discuss matters over supper. A force
+of 700 men, under Meriones and the son of Nestor, was posted between the
+foss and the wall round the camp; the council met, and Nestor advised
+Agamemnon to approach Achilles with gentle words and gifts of atonement.
+Agamemnon, full of repentance, acknowledges his folly and offers
+enormous atonement. Heralds and three ambassadors are sent; and how
+Achilles received them, with perfect courtesy, but with absolute
+distrust of Agamemnon and refusal of his gifts, sending the message that
+he will fight only when fire comes to his own ships, we know.
+
+Achilles is now entirely in the wrong, and the Over-Lord is once more
+within his right. He has done all, or more than all, that customary
+law demands. In Book IX. Phoenix states the case plainly. "If Agamemnon
+brought thee not gifts, and promised thee more hereafter, ... then
+were I not he that should bid thee cast aside thine anger, and save the
+Argives...." (IX. 515-517). The case so stands that, if Achilles later
+relents and fights, the gifts of atonement will no longer be due to him,
+and he "will not be held in like honour" (IX. 604).
+
+The poet knows intimately, and, like his audience, is keenly interested
+in the details of the customary law. We cannot easily suppose this
+frame of mind and this knowledge in a late poet addressing a late Ionian
+audience.
+
+The ambassadors return to Agamemnon; their evil tidings are received in
+despairing silence. But Diomede bids Agamemnon take heart and fight next
+day, with his host arrayed "before the ships" (IX. 708). This appears to
+counsel defensive war; but, in fact, and for reasons, when it comes to
+fighting they do battle in the open.
+
+The next Book (X.) is almost universally thought a late interpolation;
+an opinion elsewhere discussed (see [blank space]). Let us, then, say
+with Mr. Leaf that the Book begins with "exaggerated despondency" and
+ends with "hasty exultation," in consequence of a brilliant camisade,
+wherein Odysseus and Diomede massacre a Thracian contingent. Our point
+is that the poet carefully (see _The Doloneia_) continues the study of
+Agamemnon in despondency, and later, by his "hasty exultation," preludes
+to the valour which the Over-Lord displays in Book XI.
+
+The poet knows that something in the way of personal valour is due to
+Agamemnon's position; he fights brilliantly, receives a flesh wound,
+retires, and is soon proposing a general flight in his accustomed way.
+When the Trojans, in Book XIV., are attacking the ships, Agamemnon
+remarks that he fears the disaffection of his whole army (XIV. 49, 51),
+and, as for the coming defeat, that he "knew it," even when Zeus helped
+the Greeks. They are all to perish far from Argos. Let them drag the
+ships to the sea, moor them with stones, and fly, "For there is no shame
+in fleeing from ruin, even in the night. Better doth he fare who flees
+from trouble than he that is overtaken." It is now the turn of Odysseus
+again to save the honour of the army. "Be silent, lest some other of the
+Achaeans hear this word, that no man should so much as suffer to pass
+through his mouth.... And now I wholly scorn thy thoughts, such a word
+hast thou uttered." On this Agamemnon instantly repents. "Right sharply
+hast thou touched my heart with thy stern reproof:" he has not even the
+courage of his nervousness.
+
+The combat is now in the hands of Aias and Patroclus, who is slain.
+Agamemnon, who is wounded, does not reappear till Book XIX., when
+Achilles, anxious to fight and avenge Patroclus at once, without
+formalities of reconciliation, professes his desire to let bygones be
+bygones. Agamemnon excuses his insolence to Achilles as an inspiration
+of Ate: a predestined fault--"Not I am the cause, but Zeus and Destiny."
+
+Odysseus, to clinch the reunion and fulfil customary law, advises
+Agamemnon to bring out the gifts of atonement (the gifts prepared in
+Book IX.), after which the right thing is for him to give a feast of
+reconciliation, "that Achilles may have nothing lacking of his right."
+[Footnote: Book XIX. 179, 180.] The case is one which has been provided
+for by customary law in every detail. Mr. Leaf argues that all this part
+must be late, because of the allusion to the gifts offered in Book IX.
+But we reply, with Mr. Monro, that the Ninth Book is "almost necessary
+to any Achilleis." The question is, would a late editor or poet know
+all the details of customary law in such a case as a quarrel between
+Over-Lord and peer? would a feudal audience have been satisfied with
+a poem which did not wind the quarrel up in accordance with usage? and
+would a late poet, in a society no longer feudal, know how to wind it
+up? Would he find any demand on the part of his audience for a long
+series of statements, which to a modern seem to interrupt the story?
+To ourselves it appears that a feudal audience desired the customary
+details; to such an audience they were most interesting.
+
+This is a taste which, as has been said, we find in all early poetry
+and in the sagas; hence the long "runs" of the Celtic sagas, minutely
+repeated descriptions of customary things. The Icelandic saga-men never
+weary, though modern readers do, of legal details. For these reasons we
+reckon the passages in Book XIX. about the reconciliation as original,
+and think they can be nothing else. It is quite natural that, in a
+feudal society of men who were sticklers for custom, the hearers should
+insist on having all things done duly and in order--the giving of the
+gifts and the feast of reconciliation--though the passionate Achilles
+himself desires to fight at once. Odysseus insists that what we may call
+the regular routine shall be gone through. It is tedious to the modern
+reader, but it is surely much more probable that a feudal poet thus
+gratified his peculiar audience (he looked for no other) than that a
+late poet, with a different kind of audience, thrust the Reconciliation
+in as an "after-thought." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 317.]
+The right thing must be done, Odysseus assures Achilles, "for I was
+born first, and know more things." It is not the right thing to fight
+at once, unfed, and before the solemn sacrifice by the Over-Lord,
+the prayer, the Oath of Agamemnon, and the reception of the gifts by
+Achilles; only after these formalities, and after the army has fed, can
+the host go forth. "I know more than you do; you are a younger man,"
+says Odysseus, speaking in accordance with feudal character, at the risk
+of wearying later unforeseen generations.
+
+This is not criticism inspired by mere "literary feeling," for "literary
+feeling" is on the side of Achilles, and wishes the story to hurry to
+his revenge. But ours is [blank space] criticism; we must think of the
+poet in relation to his audience and of their demands, which we can
+estimate by similar demands, vouched for by the supply, in the early
+national poetry of other peoples and in the Icelandic sagas.
+
+We hear no more of Agamemnon till, in Book XXIII, 35-38, after the
+slaying of Hector, Achilles "was brought to noble Agamemnon" (for that,
+as Odysseus said, was the regular procedure) "by the Achaean chiefs,
+hardly persuading him thereto, for his heart was wroth for his comrade."
+Here they feast, Achilles still full of grief and resentment. He merely
+goes through the set forms, much against his will. It does appear to us
+that the later the poet the less he would have known or cared about
+the forms. An early society is always much interested in forms and in
+funerals and funeral games, so the poet indulges their taste with the
+last rites of Patroclus. The last view of Agamemnon is given when,
+at the end of the games, Achilles courteously presents him with the
+flowered _lebes_, the prize for hurling the spear, without asking him to
+compete, since his superior skill is notorious. This act of courtesy is
+the real reconciliation; previously Achilles had but gone reluctantly
+through the set forms in such cases provided. Even when Agamemnon
+offered the gifts of atonement, Achilles said, "Give them, as is
+customary, or keep them, as you please" (XIX. 146, 148). Achilles, young
+and passionate, cares nothing for the feudal procedure.
+
+This rapid survey seems to justify the conclusion that the poet presents
+an uniform and historically correct picture of the Over-Lord and of
+his relations with his peers, a picture which no late editor could
+have pieced together out of the widely varying _repertoires_ of late
+strolling reciters. Such reciters would gladly have forgotten, and such
+an editor would gladly have "cut" the "business" of the reconciliation.
+They would also, in a democratic spirit, have degraded the Over-Lord
+into the tyrant, but throughout, however low Agamemnon may fall, the
+poet is guided by the knowledge that his right to rule is _jure divino_,
+that he has qualities, that his responsibilities are crushing, "I, whom
+among all men Zeus hath planted for ever among labours, while my
+breath abides within me, and my limbs move," says the Over-Lord (X.
+Sg, go.[sic]). In short, the poet's conception of the Over-Lord is
+throughout harmonious, is a contemporary conception entertained by a
+singer who lives among peers that own, and are jealous of, and obey an
+Over-Lord. The character and situation of Agamemnon are a poetic work of
+one age, one moment of culture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE "ILIAD". BURIAL AND CREMATION
+
+In archaeological discoveries we find the most convincing proofs that
+the _Iliad_, on the whole, is the production of a single age, not the
+patchwork of several changeful centuries. This may seem an audacious
+statement, as archaeology has been interpreted of late in such a manner
+as to demand precisely the opposite verdict. But if we can show, as we
+think we can, that many recent interpretations of the archaeological
+evidence are not valid, because they are not consistent, our contention,
+though unexpected, will be possible. It is that the combined testimony
+of archaeology and of the Epic proves the _Iliad_ to represent, as
+regards customs, weapons, and armour, a definite moment of evolution; a
+period between the age recorded in the art of the Mycenaean shaft graves
+and the age of early iron swords and the "Dipylon" period.
+
+Before the discoveries of the material remains of the "Mycenzean"
+times, the evidence of archaeology was seldom appropriately invoked
+in discussions of the Homeric question. But in the thirty years since
+Schliemann explored the buried relics of the Mycenzean Acropolis,
+his "Grave of Agamemnon," a series of excavations has laid bare the
+interments, the works of art, and the weapons and ornaments of years
+long prior to the revolution commonly associated with the "Dorian
+Invasion" of about 1100-1000 B.C. The objects of all sorts which have
+been found in many sites of Greece and the isles, especially of Cyprus
+and Crete, in some respects tally closely with Homeric descriptions,
+in others vary from them widely. Nothing can be less surprising, if the
+heroes whose legendary feats inspired the poet lived centuries before
+his time, as Charlemagne and his Paladins lived some three centuries
+before the composition of the earliest extant _Chansons de Geste_ on
+their adventures. There was, in such a case, time for much change in the
+details of life, art, weapons and implements. Taking the relics in the
+graves of the Mycenaean Acropolis as a starting-point, some things would
+endure into the age of the poet, some would be modified, some would
+disappear.
+
+We cannot tell how long previous to his own date the poet supposes the
+Achaean heroes to have existed. He frequently ascribes to them feats of
+strength which "no man of such as now are" could perform. This gives
+no definite period for the interval; he might be speaking of the great
+grandfathers of his own generation. But when he regards the heroes as
+closely connected by descent of one or two generations with the gods,
+and as in frequent and familiar intercourse with gods and goddesses, we
+must suppose that he did not think their period recent. The singers
+of the _Chansons de Geste_ knew that angels' visits were few and far
+between at the period, say, of the Norman Conquest; but they allowed
+angels to appear in epics dealing with the earlier time, almost as
+freely as gods intervene in Homer. In short, the Homeric poet undeniably
+treats the age of his heroes as having already, in the phrase of
+Thucydides, "won its way to the mythical," and therefore as indefinitely
+remote.
+
+It is impossible here to discuss in detail the complex problems of
+Mycenaean chronology. If we place the Mycenaean "bloom-time" from
+"the seventeenth or sixteenth to the twelfth century B.C.," [Footnote:
+Tsountas and Manatt, p. 322.] it is plain that there is space to spare,
+between the poet's age and that of his heroes, for the rise of changes
+in war, weapons, and costume. Indeed, there are traces enough of change
+even in the objects and art discovered in the bloom-time, as represented
+by the Mycenaean acropolis itself and by other "Mycenaean" sites. The
+art of the fragment of a silver vase in a grave, on which a siege is
+represented, is not the art, the costumes are not the costumes, of
+the inlaid bronze dagger-blade. The men shown on the vase and the
+lion-hunters on the dagger both have their hair close cropped, but on
+the vase they are naked, on the dagger they wear short drawers. On the
+Vaphio cups, found in a _tholos_ chamber-tomb near Amyclae, the men are
+"long-haired Achaeans," with heavy, pendent locks, like the man on a
+pyxis from Knossos, published by Mr. Evans; they are of another period
+than the close-cropped men of the vase and dagger. [Footnote: _Journal
+of Hellenic Studies_, vol. xvi. p. 102.] Two of the men on the silver
+vase are covered either with shields of a shape and size elsewhere
+unknown in Mycenaean art, or with cloaks of an unexampled form. The
+masonry of the city wall, shown on the vase in the Mycenaean grave,
+is not the ordinary masonry of Mycenae itself. On the vase the wall is
+"isodomic," built of cut stones in regular layers. Most of the Mycenaean
+walls, on the other hand, are of "Cyclopean" style, in large irregular
+blocks.
+
+Art, good and very bad, exists in many various stages in Mycenaean
+relics. The drawing of a god, with a typical Mycenaean shield in the
+form of a figure 8, on a painted sarcophagus from Milato in Crete,
+is more crude and savage than many productions of the Australian
+aboriginals, [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xvi. _p._
+174, fig. 50._ Grosse. _Les Debuts de l'Art,_ pp. 124-176.] the thing is
+on the level of Red Indian work. Meanwhile at Vaphio, Enkomi, Knossos,
+and elsewhere the art is often excellent.
+
+In one essential point the poet describes a custom without parallel
+among the discovered relics of the Mycenaean age--namely, the disposal
+of the bodies of the dead. They are neither buried with their arms, in
+stately _tholos_ tombs nor in shaft graves, as at Mycenae: whether
+they be princes or simple oarsmen, they are cremated. A pyre of wood is
+built; on this the warrior's body is laid, the pyre is lighted, the body
+is reduced to ashes, the ashes are placed in a vessel or box of gold,
+wrapped round with precious cloths (no arms are buried, as a general
+rule), and a mound, howe, barrow, or tumulus is raised over all. Usually
+a _stele_ or pillar crowns the edifice. This method is almost uniform,
+and, as far as cremation and the cairn go, is universal in the _Iliad_
+and _Odyssey_ whenever a burial is described. Now this mode of
+interment must be the mode of a single age in Greek civilisation. It is
+confessedly not the method of the Mycenaeans of the shaft grave, or of
+the latter _tholos_ or stone beehive-shaped grave; again, the Mycenaeans
+did not burn the dead; they buried. Once more, the Homeric method is not
+that of the Dipylon period (say 900-750 B.C.) represented by the tombs
+outside the Dipylon gate of Athens. The people of that age now buried,
+now burned, their dead, and did not build cairns over them. Thus the
+Homeric custom comes between the shaft graves and the latter _tholos_
+graves, on the one hand, and the Dipylon custom of burning or burying,
+with sunk or rock-hewn graves, on the other.
+
+The Homeric poets describe the method of their own period. They
+assuredly do not adhere to an older epic tradition of shaft graves or
+_tholos_ graves, though these must have been described in lays of the
+period when such methods of disposal of the dead were in vogue. The
+altar above the shaft-graves in Mycenae proves the cult of ancestors in
+Mycenae; of this cult in the _Iliad_ there is no trace, or only a
+dim trace of survival in the slaughter of animals at the funeral. The
+Homeric way of thinking about the state of the dead, weak, shadowy
+things beyond the river Oceanus, did not permit them to be worshipped
+as potent beings. Only in a passage, possibly interpolated, of the
+_Odyssey_, do we hear that Castor and Polydeuces, brothers of Helen,
+and sons of Tyndareus, through the favour of Zeus have immortality, and
+receive divine honours. [Footnote: Odyssey, XI. 298-304.]
+
+These facts are so familiar that we are apt to overlook the strangeness
+of them in the history of religious evolution. The cult of ancestral
+spirits begins in the lowest barbarism, just above the level of the
+Australian tribes, who, among the Dieri, show some traces of the
+practice, at least, of ghost feeding. [Footnote: Howitt, _Native
+Tribes of South-Eastern Australia,_ p. 448. There are also traces of
+propitiation in Western Australia (MS. of Mrs. Bates).] Sometimes, as in
+many African tribes, ancestor worship is almost the whole of practical
+cult. Usually it accompanies polytheism, existing beside it on a lower
+plane. It was prevalent in the Mycenae of the shaft graves; in Attica
+it was uninterrupted; it is conspicuous in Greece from the ninth century
+onwards. But it is unknown to or ignored by the Homeric poets, though it
+can hardly have died out of folk custom. Consequently, the poems are
+of one age, an age of cremation and of burial in barrows, with no ghost
+worship. Apparently some revolution as regards burial occurred between
+the age of the graves of the Mycenaean acropolis and the age of Homer.
+That age, coming with its form of burning and its absence of the cult
+of the dead, between two epochs of inhumation, ancestor worship, and
+absence of cairns, is as certainly and definitely an age apart, a
+peculiar period, as any epoch can be.
+
+Cremation, with cairn burial of the ashes, is, then, the only form of
+burial mentioned by Homer, and, as far as the poet tells us, the period
+was not one in which iron was used for swords and spears. At Assarlik
+(Asia Minor) and in Thera early graves, prove the use of cremation,
+but also, unlike Homer, of iron weapons. [Footnote: Paton, Journal _of
+Hellenic Studies,_ viii. 64_ff_. For other references, cf. Poulsen, _Die
+Dipylongräben_, p. 2, Notes. Leipzig 1905.] In these graves the ashes
+are inurned. There are examples of the same usage in Salamis, without
+iron. In Crete, in graves of the period of geometrical ornament
+("Dipylon"), burning is more common than inhumation. Cremation is
+attested in a _tholos_ or beehive-shaped grave in Argos, where the vases
+were late Mycenaean. Below this stratum was an older shaft grave, as is
+usual in _tholos_ interments; it had been plundered? [Footnote: Poulsen,
+p.2.]
+
+The cause of the marked change from Mycenaean inhumation to Homeric
+cremation is matter of conjecture. It has been suggested that burning
+was introduced during the migrations after the Dorian invasion. Men
+could carry the ashes of their friends to the place where they finally
+settled. [Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische Epos,_ p.83] The question may,
+perhaps, be elucidated by excavation, especially in Asia Minor, on
+the sites of the earliest Greek colonies. At Colophon are many cairns
+unexplored by science. Mr. Ridgeway, as is well known, attributes the
+introduction of cremation to a conquering northern people, the Achaeans,
+his "Celts." It is certain that cremation and urn burial of the ashes
+prevailed in Britain during the Age of Bronze, and co-existed with
+inhumation in the great cemetery of Hallstatt, surviving into the Age of
+Iron. [Footnote: Cf. _Guide to Antiquities of Early Iron Age,_ British
+Museum, 1905, by Mr. Reginald A. Smith, under direction of Mr. Charles
+H. Read, for a brief account of Hallstatt culture.] Others suppose a
+change in Achaean ideas about the soul; it was no longer believed to
+haunt the grave and grave goods and be capable of haunting the living,
+but to be wholly set free by burning, and to depart for ever to the
+House of Hades, powerless and incapable of hauntings.
+
+It is never easy to decide as to whether a given mode of burial is the
+result of a definite opinion about the condition of the dead, or
+whether the explanation offered by those who practise the method is an
+afterthought. In Tasmania among the lowest savages, now extinct,
+were found monuments over cremated human remains, accompanied with
+"characters crudely marked, similar to those which the aborigines
+tattooed on their forearms." In one such grave was a spear, "for the
+dead man to fight with when he is asleep," as a native explained. Some
+Tasmanian tribes burned the dead and carried the ashes about in amulets;
+others buried in hollow trees; others simply inhumed. Some placed the
+dead in a hollow tree, and cremated the body after lapse of time. Some
+tied the dead up tightly (a common practice with inhumation), and
+then burned him. Some buried the dead in an erect 'posture. The common
+explanation of burning was that it prevented the dead from returning,
+thus it has always been usual to burn the bodies of vampires. Did a race
+so backward hit on an idea unknown to the Mycenaean Greeks?
+[Footnote: Ling Roth., _The Tasmanians_, pp. 128-134. Reports of Early
+Discoverers.] If the usual explanation be correct--burning prevents
+the return of the dead--how did the Homeric Greeks come to substitute
+burning for the worship and feeding of the dead, which had certainly
+prevailed? How did the ancient method return, overlapping and blent with
+the method of cremation, as in the early Dipylon interments? We can
+only say that the Homeric custom is definite and isolated, and that but
+slight variations occur in the methods of Homeric burial.
+
+(1)In _Iliad_, VI, 4 I 6 _ff_, Andromache _SAYS_ that Achilles slew her
+father, "yet he despoiled him not, for his soul had shame of that; but
+he burnt him in his inlaid armour, and raised a barrow over him." We are
+not told that the armour was interred with the ashes of Eetion. This is
+a peculiar case. We always hear in the that the dead are burned, and
+the ashes of princes are placed in a vessel of gold within an artificial
+hillock; but we do not hear, except in this passage, that they are
+burned in their armour, or that it is burned, or that it is buried with
+the ashes of the dead. The invariable practice is for the victor, if he
+can, to despoil the body of the fallen foe; but Achilles for some reason
+spared that indignity in the case of Eetion. [Footnote: German examples
+of burning the amis of the cremated dead and then burying them are given
+by Mr. Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece,_ vol. i. pp. 498, 499.]
+
+(2) _ILIAD,_ VII. 85. Hector, in his challenge to a single combat, makes
+the conditions that the victor shall keep the arms and armour of the
+vanquished, but shall restore his body to his friends. The Trojans
+will burn him, if he falls; if the Achaean falls, the others will do
+something expressed by the word [Greek: tarchuchosi] probably a word
+surviving from an age of embalment. [Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische
+Epos,_ pp. 55, 56.] It has come to mean, generally, to do the funeral
+rites. The hero is to have a barrow or artificial howe or hillock built
+over him, "beside wide Hellespont," a memorial of him, and of Hector's
+valour.
+
+On the River Helmsdale, near Kildonan, on the left bank, there is such
+a hillock which has never, it is believed, been excavated. It preserves
+the memory of its occupant, an early Celtic saint; whether he was
+cremated or not it is impossible to say. But his memory is not lost,
+and the howe, cairn, or hillock, in Homer is desired by the heroes as a
+MEMORIAL.
+
+On the terms proposed by Hector the arms of the dead could not be either
+burned or buried with him.
+
+(3) Iliad, IX. 546. Phoenix says that the Calydonian boar "brought many
+to the mournful pyre." All were cremated.
+
+(4) _Iliad_, XXII 50-55. Andromache in her dirge (the _regret_ of the
+French mediaeval epics) says that Hector lies unburied by the ships and
+naked, but she will burn raiment of his, "delicate and fair, the work of
+women ... to thee no profit, since thou wilt never lie therein, yet this
+shall be honour to thee from the men and women of Troy." Her meaning
+is not very clear, but she seems to imply that if Hector's body were in
+Troy it would be clad in garments before cremation.
+
+Helbig appears to think that to clothe the dead in _garments_ was an
+Ionian, not an ancient epic custom. But in Homer the dead always wear at
+least one garment, the [Greek: pharos], a large mantle, either white or
+purple, such as Agamemnon wears in peace (Iliad, II 43), except when,
+like Eetion and Elpenor in the Odyssey, they are burned in their armour.
+In _Iliad,_ XXIII. 69 _ff_., the shadow of the dead unburned Patroclus
+appears to Achilles in his sleep asking for "his dues of fire." The
+whole passage, with the account of the funeral of Patroclus, must be
+read carefully, and compared with the funeral rites of Hector at the
+end of Book XXIV. Helbig, in an essay of great erudition, though perhaps
+rather fantastic in its generalisations, has contrasted the burials of
+the two heroes. Patroclus is buried, he says, in a true portion of the
+old Aeolic epic (Sir Richard Jebb thought the whole passage "Ionic"),
+though even into this the late Ionian _bearbeiter_ (a spectral figure),
+has introduced his Ionian notions. But the Twenty-fourth Book itself
+is late and Ionian, Helbig says, not genuine early Aeolian epic poetry.
+[Footnote: Helbig, _Zu den Homerischen Bestattungsgebraüchen_. Aus den
+Sitzungsberichten der philos. philol. und histor. Classe der Kgl. bayer.
+Academie der Wissenschaften. 1900. Heft. ii. pp. 199-299.] The burial of
+Patroclus, then, save for Ionian late interpolations, easily detected by
+Helbig, is, he assures us, genuine "kernel," [Footnote: 2 Op. _laud._,
+p. 208.] while Hector's burial "is partly Ionian, and describes the
+destiny of the dead heroes otherwise than as in the old Aeolic epos."
+
+Here Helbig uses that one of his two alternate theories according to
+which the late Ionian poets do not cling to old epic tradition, but
+bring in details of the life of their own date. By Helbig's other
+alternate theory, the late poets cling to the model set in old epic
+tradition in their pictures of details of life.
+
+Disintegrationists differ: far from thinking that the late Ionian poet
+who buried Hector varied from the AEolic minstrel who buried Patroclus
+(in Book XXIII.), Mr. Leaf says that Hector's burial is "almost an
+abstract" of that of Patroclus. [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, XXII Note to
+791.] He adds that Helbig's attempts "to distinguish the older AEolic
+from the newer and more sceptical 'Ionic' faith seem to me visionary."
+[Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii. p. 619. Note 2] Visionary, indeed, they do
+seem, but they are examples of the efforts made to prove that the Iliad
+bears marks of composition continued through several centuries. We must
+remember that, according to Helbig, the Ionians, colonists in a new
+country, "had no use for ghosts." A fresh colony does not produce
+ghosts. "There is hardly an English or Scottish castle without its spook
+(_spuck_). On the other hand, you look in vain for such a thing in the
+United States"--spiritualism apart. [Footnote: Op. _laud._, p. 204.]
+
+This is a hasty generalisation! Helbig will, if he looks, find ghosts
+enough in the literature of North America while still colonial, and in
+Australia, a still more newly settled country, sixty years ago Fisher's
+ghost gave evidence of Fisher's murder, evidence which, as in another
+Australian case, served the ends of justice. [Footnote: See, in _The_
+Valet's Tragedy (A. L.): "Fisher's Ghost."] More recent Australian
+ghosts are familiar to psychical research.
+
+This colonial theory is one of Helbig's too venturous generalisations.
+He studies the ghost, or rather dream-apparition, of Patroclus after
+examining the funeral of Hector; but we shall begin with Patroclus.
+Achilles (XXIII. 4-16) first hails his friend "even in the House of
+Hades" (so he believes that spirits are in Hades), and says that he
+has brought Hector "raw for dogs to devour," and twelve Trojans of good
+family "to slaughter before thy pyre." That night, when Achilles is
+asleep (XXIII. 65) the spirit ([Greek: psyche]) of Patroclus appears to
+him, says that he is forgotten, and begs to be burned at once, that he
+may pass the gates of Hades, for the other spirits drive him off and
+will not let him associate with them "beyond the River," and he wanders
+vaguely along the wide-gated dwelling of Hades. "Give me thy hand, for
+never more again shall I come back from Hades, when ye have given me my
+due of fire." Patroclus, being newly discarnate, does not yet know
+that a spirit cannot take a living man's hand, though, in fact, tactile
+hallucinations are not uncommon in the presence of phantasms of the
+dead. "Lay not my bones apart from thine ... let one coffer" ([Greek:
+soros]) "hide our bones."
+
+ [Greek: Soros], like _larnax_, is a coffin (_Sarg_), or
+what the Americans call a "casket," in the opinion of Helbig: [Footnote:
+OP. _laud_., p.217.] it is an oblong receptacle of the bones and dust.
+Hector was buried in a _larnax_; SO will Achilles and Patroclus be
+when Achilles falls, but the dust of Patroclus is kept, meanwhile, in a
+golden covered cup (phialae) in the quarters of Achilles; it is not laid
+in howe after his cremation (XXIII. 243).
+
+Achilles tries to embrace Patroclus, but fails, like Odysseus with the
+shade of his mother in Hades, in the _ODYSSEY_. He exclaims that "there
+remaineth then even in the House of Hades a spirit and phantom of the
+dead, albeit the life" (or the wits) "be not anywise therein, for all
+night hath the spirit of hapless Patroclus stood over me...."
+
+In this speech Helbig detects the hand of the late Ionian poet. What
+goes before is part of the genuine old Epic, the kernel, done at a time
+when men believed that spooks could take part in the affairs of the
+upper world. Achilles therefore (in his dream), thought that he
+could embrace his friend. It was the sceptical Ionian, in a fresh and
+spookless colony, who knew that he could not; he thinks the ghost a mere
+dream, and introduces his scepticism in XXIII. 99-107. He brought
+in "the ruling ideas of his own period." The ghost, says the Ionian
+_bearbeiter_, is intangible, though in the genuine old epic the ghost
+himself thought otherwise--he being new to the situation and without
+experience. This is the first sample of the critical Ionian spirit,
+later so remarkable in philosophy and natural science, says Helbig.
+[Footnote: Op. laud., pp. 233,234.]
+
+We need not discuss this acute critical theory. The natural
+interpretation of the words of Achilles is obvious; as Mr. Leaf remarks,
+the words are "the cry of sudden personal conviction in a matter which
+has hitherto been lazily accepted as an orthodox dogma." [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 620.] Already, as we have seen, Achilles has made
+promises to Patroclus in the House of Hades, now he exclaims "there
+really is something in the doctrine of a feeble future life."
+
+It is vain to try to discriminate between an old epic belief in
+able-bodied ghosts and an Ionian belief in mere futile _shades_, in
+the Homeric poems. Everywhere the dead are too feeble to be worth
+worshipping after they are burned; but, as Mr. Leaf says with obvious
+truth, and with modern instances, "men are never so inconsistent as in
+their beliefs about the other world." We ourselves hold various beliefs
+simultaneously. The natives of Australia and of Tasmania practise, or
+did practise, every conceivable way of disposing of the dead--burying,
+burning, exposure in trees, carrying about the bodies or parts of them,
+eating the bodies, and so forth. If each such practice corresponded, as
+archaeologists believe, to a different opinion about the soul, then
+all beliefs were held together at once, and this, in fact, is the case.
+There is not now one and now another hard and fast orthodoxy of belief
+about the dead, though now we find ancestor worship prominent and now in
+the shade.
+
+After gifts of hair and the setting up of jars full of oil and honey,
+Achilles has the body laid on the top of the pyre in the centre. Bodies
+of sheep and oxen, two dogs and four horses, are strewed around: why, we
+know not, for the dead is not supposed to need food: the rite may be
+a survival, for there were sacrifices at the burials of the Mycenaean
+shaft graves. Achilles slays also the twelve Trojans, "because of mine
+anger at thy slaying," he says (XXIII. 23). This was his reason, as far
+as he consciously had any reason, not that his friend might have twelve
+thralls in Hades. After the pyre is alit Achilles drenches it all night
+with wine, and, when the flame dies down, the dead hero's bones are
+collected and placed in the covered cup of gold. The circle of the
+barrow is then marked out, stones are set up round it (we see them round
+Highland tumuli), and earth is heaped up; no more is done; the tomb is
+empty; the covered cup holding the ashes is in the hut of Achilles.
+
+We must note another trait. After the body of Patroclus was recovered,
+it was washed, anointed, laid on a bier, and covered from head to foot
+[Greek: heano liti], translated by Helbig, "with a linen sheet" (cf.
+XXIII. 254). The golden cup with the ashes is next wrapped [Greek: heano
+liti]; here Mr. Myers renders the words "with a linen veil." Scottish
+cremation burials of the Bronze Age retain traces of linen wrappings
+of the urn. [Footnote: _Proceedings of the Scottish society of
+Antiquaries_, 1905, p. 552. For other cases, _cf._ Leaf, _Iliad_, XXIV.
+796. Note.] Over all a white [Greek: pharos] (mantle) was spread. In
+_Iliad_, XXIV. 231, twelve [Greek: pharea] with chitons, single cloaks,
+and other articles of dress, are taken to Achilles by Priam as part of
+the ransom of Hector's body. Such is the death-garb of Patroclus; but
+Helbig, looking for Ionian innovations in Book XXIV., finds that the
+death-garb of Hector is not the same as that of Patroclus in Book XXIII.
+One difference is that when the squires of Achilles took the ransom of
+Hector from the waggon of Priam, they left in it two [Greek: pharea] and
+a well-spun chiton. The women washed and anointed Hector's body; they
+clad him in the chiton, and threw one [Greek: pharos] over it; we are
+not told what they did with the other. Perhaps, as Mr. Leaf says, it was
+used as a cover for the bier, perhaps it was not, but was laid under the
+body (Helbig). All we know is that Hector's body was restored to Priam
+in a chiton and a [Greek: pharos], which do not seem to have been
+removed before he was burned; while Patroclus had no chiton in death,
+but a [Greek: pharos] and, apparently, a linen sheet.
+
+To the ordinary reader this does not seem, in the circumstances, a
+strong mark of different ages and different burial customs. Priam did
+not bring any linen sheet--or whatever [Greek: heanos lis] may be--in
+the waggon as part of Hector's ransom; and it neither became Achilles
+to give nor Priam to receive any of Achilles's stuff as death-garb for
+Hector. The squires, therefore, gave back to Priam, to clothe his dead
+son, part of what he had brought; nothing can be more natural, and
+there, we may say, is an end on't. They did what they could in the
+circumstances. But Helbig has observed that, in a Cean inscription of
+the fifth century B.C., there is a sumptuary law, forbidding a corpse to
+wear more than three white garments, a sheet under him, a chiton, and a
+mantle cast over him. [Footnote: op. _laud_., p. 209.] He supposes that
+Hector wore the chiton, and had one [Greek: pharos] over him and the
+other under him, though Homer does not say that. The Laws of Solon also
+confined the dead man to three articles of dress. [Footnote: Plutarch,
+Solon, 21.] In doing so Solon sanctioned an old custom, and that Ionian
+custom, described by the author of Book XXIV., bewrays him, says Helbig,
+for a late Ionian _bearbeiter_, deserting true epic usages and inserting
+those of his own day. But in some Attic Dipylon vases, in the pictures
+of funerals, we see no garments or sheets over the corpses.
+
+Penelope also wove a [Greek: charos] against the burial of old Laertes,
+but surely she ought to have woven for him; on Helbig's showing Hector
+had _two_, Patroclus had only one; Patroclus is in the old epic, Hector
+and Laertes are in the Ionian epics; therefore, Laertes should have had
+two [Greek: charea] but we only hear of one. Penelope had to finish the
+[Greek: charos] and show it; [Footnote: Odyssey, XXIV. 147.] now if she
+wanted to delay her marriage, she should have begun the second [Greek:
+charos] just as necessary as the first, if Hector, with a pair of
+[Greek: charea] represents Ionian usage. But Penelope never thought of
+what, had she read Helbig, she would have seen to be so obvious. She
+thought of no funeral garments for the old man but one shroud [Greek:
+speiron] (Odyssey, II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a
+character of late Ionian, not of genuine old AEolic epic, she should
+have known better. It is manifest that if even the acuteness and vast
+erudition of Helbig can only find such invisible differences as
+these between the manners of the genuine old epic and the late Ionian
+innovations, there is really no difference, beyond such trifles as
+diversify custom in any age.
+
+Hector, when burned and when his ashes have been placed in the casket,
+is laid in a [Greek: kapetos], a ditch or trench (_Iliad_, XV. 356;
+XVIII. 564); but here (XXIV. 797) [Greek: kapetos] is a chamber covered
+with great stones, within the howe, the casket being swathed with purple
+robes, and this was the end. The ghost of Hector would not revisit the
+sun, as ghosts do freely in the Cyclic poems, a proof that the Cyclics
+are later than the Homeric poems. [Footnote: Helbig, op. _laud_., pp.
+240, 241.]
+
+If the burning of the weapons of Eetion and Elpenor are traces of
+another than the _old_ AEolic epic faith, [Footnote: Ibid., p. 253.]
+they are also traces of another than the late _Ionic_ epic faith, for no
+weapons are burned with Hector. In the _Odyssey_ the weapons of Achilles
+are not burned; in the _Iliad_ the armour of Patroclus is not burned.
+No victims of any kind are burned with Hector: possibly the poet was not
+anxious to repeat what he had just described (his last book is already
+a very long book); possibly the Trojans did not slay victims at the
+burning.
+
+The howes or barrows built over the Homeric dead were hillocks high
+enough to be good points of outlook for scouts, as in the case of the
+barrow of AEsyetes (_Iliad_, II. 793) and "the steep mound," the howe of
+lithe Myrine (II. 814). We do not know that women were usually buried
+in howe, but Myrine was a warrior maiden of the Amazons. We know, then,
+minutely what the Homeric mode of burial was, with such variations as
+have been noted. We have burning and howe even in the case of an obscure
+oarsman like Elpenor. It is not probable, however, that every peaceful
+mechanic had a howe all to himself; he may have had a small family
+cairn; he may not have had an expensive cremation.
+
+The interesting fact is that no barrow burial precisely of the Homeric
+kind has ever been discovered in Greek sites. The old Mycenaeans buried
+either in shaft graves or in a stately _tholos_; and in rock chambers,
+later, in the town cemetery: they did not burn the bodies. The people of
+the Dipylon period sometimes cremated, sometimes inhumed, but they built
+no barrow over the dead. [Footnote: _Annal. de l'Inst.,_ 1872, pp. 135,
+147, 167. Plausen, _ut supra_.] The Dipylon was a period of early iron
+swords, made on the lines of not the best type of bronze sword. Now, in
+Mr. Leaf's opinion, our Homeric accounts of burial "are all late; the
+oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii.
+p. 619. Note 2. While Mr. Leaf says that "the oldest parts of the poems
+tell us nothing" of burial, he accepts XXII. 342, 343 as of the oldest
+part. These lines describe cremation, and Mr. Leaf does not think them
+borrowed from the "later" VII. 79, 80, but that VII. 79, 80 are "perhaps
+borrowed" from XXII. 342, 343. It follows that "the oldest parts of the
+poems" do tell us of cremation.] We shall show, however, that Mr. Leaf's
+"kernel" alludes to cremation. What is "late"? In this case it is not
+the Dipylon period, say 900-750 B.C. It is not any later period; one or
+two late barrow burials do not answer to the Homeric descriptions. The
+"late" parts of the poems, therefore, dealing with burials, in Books
+VI., VII., XIX., XXIII., XXIV., and the Odyssey, are of an age not
+in "the Mycenaean prime," not in the Dipylon period, not in any later
+period, say the seventh or sixth centuries B.C., and, necessarily, not
+of any subsequent period. Yet nobody dreams of saying that the poets
+describe a purely fanciful form of interment. They speak of what they
+know in daily life. If it be argued that the late poets preserve, by
+sheer force of epic tradition, a form of burial unknown in their own
+age, we ask, "Why did epic tradition not preserve the burial methods
+of the Mycenaean prime, the shaft grave, or the _tholos_, without
+cremation?"
+
+Mr. Leaf's own conclusion is that the people of Mycenae were "spirit
+worshippers, practising inhumation, and partial mummification;" the
+second fact is dubious. "In the post-Mycenaean 'Dipylon' period, we
+find cremation and sepulture practised side by side. In the interval,
+therefore, two beliefs have come into conflict. [Footnote: All
+conceivable beliefs, we have said, about the dead are apt to coexist.
+For every conceivable and some rather inconceivable contemporary
+Australian modes of dealing with the dead, see Howitt, _Native Tribes of
+South-East Australia_; Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
+Australia_.] It seems that the Homeric poems mark this intermediate
+point...." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 622.] In that case
+the Homeric poems are of one age, or, at least, all of them save "the
+original kernel" are of one age, namely, a period subsequent to the
+Mycenaean prime, but considerably prior to the Dipylon period, which
+exhibits a mixture of custom; cremation and inhumation coexisting,
+without barrows or howes.
+
+We welcome this conclusion, and note that (whatever may be the case
+with the oldest parts of the poems which say nothing about funerals) the
+latest expansions must be of about 1100-1000 B.C. (?). The poem is so
+early that it is prior to hero worship and ancestor worship; or it
+might be more judicious to say that the poem is of an age that did not,
+officially, practise ancestor worship, whatever may have occurred in
+folk-custom. The Homeric age is one which had outgrown ancestor and hero
+worship, and had not, like the age of the Cyclics, relapsed into it.
+_Enfin_, unless we agree with Helbig as to essential variations of
+custom, the poems are the work of one age, and that a brief age, and an
+age of peculiar customs, cremation and barrow burial; and of a religion
+that stood, without spirit worship, between the Mycenzean period and the
+ninth century. That seems as certain as anything in prehistoric times
+can be, unless we are to say, that after the age of shaft graves and
+spirit worship came an age of cremation and of no spirit worship; and
+that late poets consciously and conscientiously preserved the tradition
+of _this_ period into their own ages of hero worship and inhumation,
+though they did not preserve the tradition of the shaft-grave period.
+We cannot accept this theory of adherence to stereotyped poetical
+descriptions, nor can any one consistently adopt it in this case.
+
+The reason is obvious. Mr. Leaf, with many other critics, distinguishes
+several successive periods of "expansion." In the first stratum we have
+the remains of "the original kernel." Among these remains is The Slaying
+of Hector (XXII. 1-404), "with but slight additions." [Footnote: Leaf,
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. p. xi.] In the Slaying of Hector that hero indicates
+cremation as the mode of burial. "Give them my body back again, that
+the Trojans and Trojans' wives grant me my due of fire after my death."
+Perhaps this allusion to cremation, in the "original kernel" in the
+Slaying of Hector, may be dismissed as a late borrowing from Book VII.
+79, 80, where Hector makes conditions that the fallen hero shall be
+restored to his friends when he challenges the Achaeans to a duel. But
+whoever knows the curious economy by way of repetition that marks early
+national epics has a right to regard the allusion to cremation (XXII,
+342,343) as an example of this practice. Compare _La Chancun de
+Williame_, lines 1041-1058 with lines 1140-1134. In both the dinner of
+a knight who has been long deprived of food is described in passages
+containing many identical lines. The poet, having found his formula,
+uses it whenever occasion serves. There are several other examples in
+the same epic. [Footnote: _Romania_, xxxiv. PP. 245, 246.] Repetitions
+in Homer need not indicate late additions; the artifice is part of the
+epic as it is of the ballad manner. If we are right, cremation is the
+mode of burial even in "the original kernel." Hector, moreover, in the
+kernel (XXII. 256-259) makes, before his final fight with Achilles,
+the same proposal as he makes in his challenge to a duel (VII. 85 et
+_seqq_.). The victor shall give back the body of the vanquished to his
+friends, but how the friends are to bury it Hector does not say--in this
+place. When dying, he does say (XXII. 342, 343).
+
+In the kernel and all periods of expansion, funeral rites are described,
+and in all the method is cremation, with a howe or a barrow. Thus the
+method of cremation had come in as early as the "kernel," The Slaying
+of Hector, and as early as the first expansions, and it lasted till the
+period of the latest expansions, such as Books XXIII., XXIV.
+
+But what is the approximate date of the various expansions of the
+original poem? On that point Mr. Leaf gives his opinion. The Making of
+the Arms of Achilles (Books XVIII., XIX. 1-39) is, with the Funeral of
+Patroclus (XXIII. 1-256), in the second set of expansions, and is thus
+two removes later than the original "kernel." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_,
+vol. ii. p. xii.] Now this is the period--the Making of the Shield for
+Achilles is, at least, in touch with the period--of "the eminently free
+and naturalistic treatment which we find in the best Mycenaean work,
+in the dagger blades, in the siege fragment, and notably in the Vaphio
+cups," (which show long-haired men, not men close-cropped, as in the
+daggers and siege fragment). [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p, 606.]
+The poet of the age of the second expansions, then,' is at least
+in touch with the work of the shaft grave and ages. He need not be
+contemporary with that epoch, but "may well have had in his mind the
+work of artists older than himself." It is vaguely possible that he may
+have seen an ancient shield of the Mycenaean prime, and may be inspired
+by that. [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. pp. 606, 607.]
+
+Moreover, and still more remarkable, the ordinary Homeric form of
+cremation and howe-burial is even older than the period which, if not
+contemporary with, is clearly reminiscent of, the art of the shaft
+graves. For, in the period of the first expansions (VII. 1-3 I 2),
+the form of burial is cremation, with a barrow or tumulus. [Footnote:
+_Ibid_., vol. ii. p. xi. and pp. 606, 607.] Thus Mr. Leaf's opinion
+might lead us to the conclusion that the usual Homeric form of burial
+occurs in a period _PRIOR_ to an age in which the poet is apparently
+reminiscent of the work of two early epochs--the epoch of shaft graves
+and that of _THOLOS_ graves. If this be so, cremation and urn burial in
+cairns may be nearly as old as the Mycenaean shaft graves, or as old
+as the _THOLOS_ graves, and they endure into the age of the latest
+expansions.
+
+We must not press, however, opinions founded on the apparent technical
+resemblance of the free style and coloured metal work on the shield of
+Achilles, to the coloured metal work and free design on the daggers
+of the Mycenaean shaft graves. It is enough for us to note that the
+passages concerning burial, from the "kernel" itself, and also from the
+earliest to the latest expansions, are all perfectly harmonious, and of
+a single age--unless we are convinced by Helbig's objections. That age
+must have been brief, indeed, for, before it arrives, the period of
+_tholos_ graves, as at Vaphio, must expire, on one hand, while the
+blending of cremation with inhumation, in the Dipylon age, must have
+been evolved after the cremation age passed, on the other. That brief
+intervening age, however, was the age of the _ILIAD_ and Odyssey. This
+conclusion can only be avoided by alleging that late poets, however
+recent and revolutionary, carefully copied the oldest epic model of
+burial, while they innovated in almost every other point, so we are
+told. We can go no further till we find an unrifled cairn burial
+answering to Homeric descriptions. We have, indeed, in Thessaly, "a
+large tumulus which contained a silver urn with burned remains." But
+the accompanying pottery dated it in the second century B.C. [Footnote:
+Ridgeway, _Early Age Of Greece_, vol. i. p. 491; _Journal of Hellenic
+Studies, vol. xx_. pp. 20-25.] It is possible enough that all tumuli of
+the Homeric period have been robbed by grave plunderers in the course
+of the ages, as the Vikings are said to have robbed the cairns of
+Sutherlandshire, in which they were not likely to find a rich reward
+for their labours. A conspicuous howe invites robbery--the heroes of the
+Saga, like Grettir, occasionally rob a howe--and the fact is unlucky for
+the Homeric archaeologist.
+
+We have now tried to show that, as regards (1) to the absence from
+Homer of new religious and ritual ideas, or of very old ideas revived
+in Ionia, (2) as concerns the clear conception of a loose form of
+feudalism, with an Over-Lord, and (3) in the matter of burial, the
+_Iliad_ and Odyssey are self-consistent, and bear the impress of a
+single and peculiar moment of culture.
+
+The fact, if accepted, is incompatible with the theory that the poets
+both introduced the peculiar conditions of their own later ages and
+also, on other occasions, consciously and consistently "archaised." Not
+only is such archaising inconsistent with the art of an uncritical age,
+but a careful archaiser, with all the resources of Alexandrian criticism
+at his command, could not archaise successfully. We refer to Quintus
+Smyrnaeus, author of the _Post Homerica_, in fourteen books. Quintus
+does his best; but we never observe in him that _naïf_ delight in
+describing weapons and works of art, and details of law and custom which
+are so conspicuous in Homer and in other early poets. He does give us
+Penthesilea's great sword, with a hilt of ivory and silver; but of what
+metal was the blade? We are not told, and the reader of Quintus will
+observe that, though he knows [Greek: chalkos], bronze, as a synonym
+for weapons, he scarcely ever, if ever, says that a sword or spear or
+arrow-head was of bronze--a point on which Homer constantly insists.
+When he names the military metal Quintus usually speaks of iron. He has
+no interest in the constitutional and legal sides of heroic life, so
+attractive to Homer.
+
+Yet Quintus consciously archaises, in a critical age, with Homer as
+his model. Any one who believes that in an uncritical age rhapsodists
+archaised, with such success as the presumed late poets of the _ILIAD_
+must have done, may try his hand in our critical age, at a ballad in the
+style of the Border ballads. If he succeeds in producing nothing that
+will at once mark his work as modern, he will be more successful than
+any poet who has made the experiment, and more successful than the most
+ingenious modern forgers of gems, jewels, and terra-cottas. They seldom
+deceive experts, and, when they do, other experts detect the deceit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+HOMERIC ARMOUR
+
+Tested by their ideas, their picture of political society, and their
+descriptions of burial rites, the presumed authors of the alleged
+expansions of the _Iliad_ all lived in one and the same period of
+culture. But, according to the prevalent critical theory, we read in
+the _Iliad_ not only large "expansions" of many dates, but also briefer
+interpolations inserted by the strolling reciters or rhapsodists. "Until
+the final literary redaction had come," says Mr. Leaf--that is about 540
+B.C.--"we cannot feel sure that any details, even of the oldest work,
+were secure from the touch of the latest poet." [Footnote: Leaf,
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. p. ix.]
+
+Here we are far from Mr. Leaf's own opinion that "the whole scenery of
+the poems, the details of armour, palaces, dress, decoration ... had
+become stereotyped, and formed a foundation which the Epic poet dared
+not intentionally sap...." [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. i. p. xv.] We now
+find [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. ix.] that "the latest poet" saps
+as much as he pleases down to the middle of the sixth century B.C.
+Moreover, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., the supposed
+editor employed by Hsistratus made "constant additions of transitional
+passages," and added many speeches by Nestor, an ancestor of
+Pisistratus.
+
+Did these very late interlopers, down to the sixth century, introduce
+modern details into the picture of life? did they blur the _unus_ color?
+We hope to prove that, if they did so at all, it was but slightly. That
+the poems, however, with a Mycenaean or sub-Mycenaean basis of actual
+custom and usage, contain numerous contaminations from the usage of
+centuries as late as the seventh, is the view of Mr. Leaf, and Reichel
+and his followers. [Footnote: Homerische Waffen. Von Wolfgang Reichel.
+Wien, 1901.]
+
+Reichel's hypothesis is that the heroes of the original poet had no
+defensive armour except the great Mycenaean shields; that the ponderous
+shield made the use of chariots imperatively necessary; that, after the
+Mycenaean age, a small buckler and a corslet superseded the unwieldy
+shield; that chariots were no longer used; that, by the seventh century
+B.C., a warrior could not be thought of without a breastplate; and that
+new poets thrust corslets and greaves into songs both new and old.
+
+How the new poets could conceive of warriors as always in chariots,
+whereas in practice they knew no war chariots, and yet could not
+conceive of them without corslets which the original poet never saw, is
+Reichel's secret. The new poets had in the old lays a plain example to
+follow. They did follow it as to chariots and shields; as to corslets
+and greaves they reversed it. Such is the Reichelian theory.
+
+ THE SHIELD
+
+As regards armour, controversy is waged over the shield, corslet, and
+bronze greaves. In Homer the shield is of leather, plated with bronze,
+and of bronze is the corslet. No shields of bronze plating and no bronze
+corslets have been found in Mycenaean excavations.
+
+We have to ask, do the Homeric descriptions of shields tally with the
+representations of shields in works of art, discovered in the graves
+of Mycenae, Spata in Attica, Vaphio in Sparta, and elsewhere? If the
+descriptions in Homer vary from these relics, to what extent do they
+vary? and do the differences arise from the fact that the poet describes
+consistently what he sees in his own age, or are the variations caused
+by late rhapsodists in the Iron Age, who keep the great obsolete shields
+and bronze weapons, yet introduce the other military gear of their day,
+say 800-600 B.C.--gear unknown to the early singers?
+
+It may be best to inquire, first, what does the poet, or what do
+the poets, say about shields? and, next, to examine the evidence of
+representations of shields in Mycenaean art; always remembering that the
+poet does not pretend to live, and beyond all doubt does not live, in
+the Mycenaean prime, and that the testimony of the tombs is liable to be
+altered by fresh discoveries.
+
+In _Iliad_, II. 388, the shield (_aspis_) is spoken of as "covering a
+man about" ([Greek: _amphibrotae_]), while, in the heat of battle, the
+baldric (_telamon_), or belt of the shield, "shall be wet with sweat."
+The shield, then, is not an Ionian buckler worn on the left arm, but is
+suspended by a belt, and covers a man, or most of him, just as Mycenaean
+shields are suspended by belts shown in works of art, and cover the
+body and legs. This (II. 388) is a general description applying to the
+shields of all men who fight from chariots. Their great shield answers
+to the great mediaeval shield of the knights of the twelfth century, the
+"double targe," worn suspended from the neck by a belt. Such a shield
+covers a mounted knight's body from mouth to stirrup in an ivory
+chessman of the eleventh to twelfth century A.D., [Footnote: _Catalogue
+of Scottish National Antiquities_, p. 375.] so also in the Bayeux
+tapestry, [Footnote: Gautier, _Chanson de Roland_. Seventh edition, pp.
+393, 394.] and on seals. Dismounted men have the same shield (p. 132).
+
+The shield of Menelaus (III. 348) is "equal in all directions," which we
+might conceive to mean, mathematically "circular," as the words do mean
+that. A shield is said to have "circles," and a spear which grazes
+a shield--a shield which was _[Greek: panton eesae]_, "every way
+equal"--rends both circles, the outer circle of bronze, and the inner
+circle of leather (_Iliad_, XX. 273-281). But the passage is not
+unjustly believed to be late; and we cannot rely on it as proof
+that Homer knew circular shields among others. The epithet _[Greek:
+eukuklykos]_, "of good circle," is commonly given to the shields, but
+does not mean that the shield was circular, we are told, but merely that
+it was "made of circular plates." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
+573.] As for the shield of Menelaus, and other shields described in the
+same words, "every way equal," the epithet is not now allowed to mean
+"circular." Mr. Leaf, annotating _Iliad_, I. 306, says that this sense
+is "intolerably mathematical and prosaic," and translates _[Greek:
+panton eesae]_ as "well balanced on every side." Helbig renders the
+epithets in the natural sense, as "circular." [Footnote: Helbig,
+_Homerische Epos_, p. 315; cf., on the other hand, p. 317, Note I.]
+
+To the rendering "circular" it is objected that a circular shield of,
+say, four feet and a half in diameter, would be intolerably heavy and
+superfluously wide, while the shields represented in Mycenaean art are
+not circles, but rather resemble a figure of eight, in some cases, or a
+section of a cylinder, in others, or, again, a door (Fig. 5, p. 130).
+
+What Homer really meant by such epithets as "equal every way," "very
+circular," "of a good circle," cannot be ascertained, since Homeric
+epithets of the shield, which were previously rendered "circular," "of
+good circle," and so on, are now translated in quite other senses, in
+order that Homeric descriptions may be made to tally with Mycenaean
+representations of shields, which are never circular as represented in
+works of art. In this position of affairs we are unable to determine the
+shape, or shapes, of the shields known to Homer.
+
+A scholar's rendering of Homer's epithets applied to the shield is
+obliged to vary with the variations of his theory about the shield.
+Thus, in 1883, Mr. Leaf wrote, "The poet often calls the shield by names
+which seem to imply that it was round, and yet indicates that it was
+large enough to cover the whole body of a man.... In descriptions the
+round shape is always implied." The words which indicated that the
+shield (or one shield) "really looked like a tower, and really reached
+from neck to ankles" (in two or three cases), were "received by the poet
+from the earlier Achaean lays." "But to Homer the warriors appeared as
+using the later small round shield. His belief in the heroic strength of
+the men of old time made it quite natural to speak of them as bearing
+a shield which at once combined the later circular shape and the old
+heroic expanse...." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies, iv. pp._
+283-285.]
+
+Here the Homeric words which naturally mean "circular" or "round" are
+accepted as meaning "round" or "circular." Homer, it is supposed, in
+practice only knows the round shields of the later age, 700 B.C., so he
+calls shields "round," but, obedient to tradition, he conceives of them
+as very large.
+
+But, after the appearance of Reichel's speculations, the Homeric words
+for "round" and "circular" have been explained as meaning something
+else, and Mr. Leaf, in place of maintaining that Homer knew no shields
+but round shields, now writes (1900), "The small circular shield of
+later times...is equally unknown to Homer, with a very few curious
+exceptions," which Reichel discovered--erroneously, as we shall later
+try to show. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 575.]
+
+Thus does science fluctuate! Now Homer knows in practice none but light
+round bucklers, dating from about 700 B.C.; again, he does not know
+them at all, though they were habitually used in the period at which
+the later parts of his Epic were composed. We shall have to ask, how
+did small round bucklers come to be unknown to late poets who saw them
+constantly?
+
+Some scholars, then, believe that the old original poet always described
+Mycenaean shields, which are of various shapes, but never circular in
+Mycenaean art. If there are any circular shields in the poems, these,
+they say, must have been introduced by poets accustomed, in a much later
+age, to seeing circular bucklers. Therefore Homeric words, hitherto
+understood as meaning "circular," must now mean something else--even if
+the reasoning seems circular.
+
+Other scholars believe that the poet in real life saw various types of
+shields in use, and that some of them were survivals of the Mycenaean
+shields, semi-cylindrical, or shaped like figures of 8, or like a
+door; others were circular; and these scholars presume that Homer meant
+"circular" when he said "circular." Neither school will convert the
+other, and we cannot decide between them. We do not pretend to be
+certain as to whether the original poet saw shields of various types,
+including the round shape, in use, though that is possible, or whether
+he saw only the Mycenaean types.
+
+As regards size, Homer certainly describes, in several cases, shields
+very much larger than most which we know for certain to have been common
+after, say, 700 B.C. He speaks of shields reaching from neck to ankles,
+and "covering the body of a man about." Whether he was also familiar
+with smaller shields of various types is uncertain; he does not
+explicitly say that any small bucklers were used by the chiefs, nor
+does he explicitly say that all shields were of the largest type. It is
+possible that at the time when the Epic was composed various types of
+shield were being tried, while the vast ancient shield was far from
+obsolete.
+
+To return to the _size_ of the shield. In a feigned tale of Odysseus
+(Odyssey, XIV. 474-477), men in a wintry ambush place their shields over
+their shoulders, as they lie on the ground, to be a protection against
+snow. But any sort of shield, large or small, would protect the
+shoulders of men in a recumbent position. Quite a large shield may seem
+to be indicated in _Iliad_, XIII. 400-405, where Idomeneus curls up his
+whole person behind his shield; he was "hidden" by it. Yet, as any
+one can see by experiment, a man who crouched low would be protected
+entirely by a Highland targe of less than thirty inches in diameter, so
+nothing about the size of the shield is ascertained in this passage. On
+a black-figured vase in the British Museum (B, 325) the entire body of
+a crouching warrior is defended by a large Boeotian buckler, oval, and
+with _échancrures_ in the sides. The same remark applies to _Z&ad_[sic],
+XXII. 273-275. Hector watches the spear of Achilles as it flies; he
+crouches, and the spear flies over him. Robert takes this as an "old
+Mycenaean" dodge--to duck down to the bottom of the shield. [Footnote:
+_Studien zur Ilias_, p. 21.] The avoidance by ducking can be managed
+with no shield, or with a common Highland targe, which would cover a
+man in a crouching posture, as when Glenbucket's targe was peppered by
+bullets at Clifton (746), and Cluny shouted "What the devil is this?"
+the assailants firing unexpectedly from a ditch. A few moments of
+experiment, we repeat, prove that a round targe can protect a man in
+Hector's attitude, and that the Homeric texts here throw no light on the
+_size_ of the shield.
+
+The shield of Hector was of black bull's-hide, and as large and long as
+any represented in Mycenaean art, so that, as he walked, the rim knocked
+against his neck and ankles. The shape is not mentioned. Despite its
+size, he _walked_ under it from the plain and field of battle into Troy
+(_Iliad_, VI. 116-118). This must be remembered, as Reichel [Footnote:
+Reichel, 38, 39. Father Browne (_Handbook_, p. 230) writes, "In
+_Odyssey_, XIV 475, Odysseus says he slept within the shield." He says
+"under arms" (_Odyssey_, XIV. 474, but _cf_. XIV. 479).] maintains that
+a man could not walk under shield, or only for a short way; wherefore
+the war chariot was invented, he says, to carry the fighting man from
+point to point (Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 573). Mr. Leaf elaborates
+these points: "Why did not the Homeric heroes ride? Because no man could
+carry such a shield on horseback." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 573.]
+We reply that men could and did carry such shields on horseback, as
+we know on the evidence of works of art and poetry of the eleventh to
+twelfth centuries A.D. Mr. Ridgeway has explained the introduction
+of chariots as the result of horses too small to carry a heavy and
+heavily-armed man as a cavalier.
+
+The shield ([Greek: aspis]), we are told by followers of Reichel, was
+only worn by princes who could afford to keep chariots, charioteers,
+and squires of the body to arm and disarm them. But this can scarcely
+be true, for all the comrades of Diomede had the shield ([Greek: aspis],
+_Iliad_, X. 152), and the whole host of Pandarus of Troy, a noted
+bowman, were shield-bearers ([Greek: aspistaon laon], _Iliad_, IV.
+90), and some of them held their shields ([Greek: sakae]) in front of
+Pandarus when he took a treacherous shot at Menelaus (IV. 113). The
+whole host could not have chariots and squires, we may presume, so the
+chariot was not indispensable to the _écuyer_ or shield-bearing man.
+
+The objections to this conjecture of Reichel are conspicuous, as we now
+prove.
+
+No Mycenaean work of art shows us a shielded man in a chariot; the men
+with the monstrous shields are always depicted on foot. The only modern
+peoples who, to our knowledge, used a leather shield of the Mycenaean
+size and even of a Mycenaean shape had no horses and chariots, as
+we shall show. The ancient Eastern peoples, such as the Khita and
+Egyptians, who fought from chariots, carried _small_ shields of various
+forms, as in the well-known picture of a battle between the Khita, armed
+with spears, and the bowmen of Rameses II, who kill horse and man with
+arrows from their chariots, and carry no spears; while the Khita, who
+have no bows, merely spears, are shot down as they advance. [Footnote:
+Maspero, _Hist. Ancienne_, ii. p. 225.]. Egyptians and Khita, who fight
+from chariots, use _small_ bucklers, whence it follows that war chariots
+were not invented, or, at least, were not retained in use, for the
+purpose of giving mobility to men wearing gigantic shields, under which
+they could not hurry from point to point. War chariots did not cease to
+be used in Egypt, when men used small shields.
+
+Moreover, Homeric warriors can make marches under shield, while there is
+no mention of chariots to carry them to the point where they are to
+lie in ambush (Odyssey, XIV. 470-510). If the shield was so heavy as
+to render a chariot necessary, would Homer make Hector trudge a
+considerable distance under shield, while Achilles, under shield,
+sprints thrice round the whole circumference of Troy? Helbig notices
+several other cases of long runs under shield. Either Reichel is wrong,
+when he said that the huge shield made the use of the war chariot
+necessary, or the poet is "late"; he is a man who never saw a large
+shield like Hector's, and, though he speaks of such shields, he thinks
+that men could walk and run under them. When men did walk or run under
+shield, or ride, if they ever rode, they would hang it over the left
+side, like the lion-hunters on the famous inlaid dagger of Mycenae,
+[Footnote: For the chariots, _cf_. Reichel, _Homerische Waffen_,
+120_ff_. Wien, 1901.] or the warrior on the chessman referred to above
+(p. 111).
+
+Aias, again, the big, brave, stupid Porthos of the _Iliad_, has the
+largest shield of all, "like a tower" (this shield cannot have been
+circular), and is recognised by his shield. But he never enters a
+chariot, and, like Odysseus, has none of his own, because both men come
+from rugged islands, unfit for chariot driving. Odysseus has plenty
+of shields in his house in Ithaca, as we learn from the account of the
+battle with the Wooers in the _Odyssey;_ yet, in Ithaca, as at Troy, he
+kept no chariot. Here, then, we have nations who fight from chariots,
+yet use small shields, and heroes who wear enormous shields, yet never
+own a chariot. Clearly, the great shield cannot have been the cause of
+the use of the war chariot, as in the theory of Reichel.
+
+Aias and his shield we meet in _Iliad_, VII. 206-220. "He clothed
+himself upon his flesh in _all_ his armour" ([Greek: teuchea]), to quote
+Mr. Leaf's translation; but the poet only _describes_ his shield:
+his "towerlike shield of bronze, with sevenfold ox-hide, that Tychius
+wrought him cunningly; Tychius, the best of curriers, that had his home
+in Hyle, who made for him his glancing shield of sevenfold hides of
+stalwart bulls, and overlaid the seven with bronze."
+
+The shield known to Homer then is, in this case, so tall as to resemble
+a tower, and has bronze plating over bull's hide. By tradition from an
+age of leather shields the Currier is still the shield-maker, though now
+the shield has metal plating. It is fairly clear that Greek tradition
+regarded the shield of Aias as of the kind which covered the body from
+chin to ankles, and resembled a bellying sail, or an umbrella unfurled,
+and drawn in at the sides in the middle, so as to offer the semblance
+of two bellies, or of one, pinched in at or near the centre. This is
+probable, because the coins of Salamis, where Aias was worshipped as a
+local hero of great influence, display this shield as the badge of the
+AEginetan dynasty, claiming descent from Aias. The shield is bossed,
+or bellied out, with two half-moons cut in the centre, representing the
+_waist_, or pinched--in part, of the ancient Mycenaean shield; the same
+device occurs on a Mycenaean ring from AEgina in the British Museum.
+[Footnote: Evans, _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xiii. 213-216.]
+
+In a duel with Aias the spear of Hector pierced the bronze and six
+layers of hide on his shield, but stuck in the seventh. The spear of
+Aias went through the circular (or "every way balanced") huge shield
+of Hector, and through his corslet and _chiton_, but Hector had doubled
+himself up laterally ([Greek: eklinthae], VII. 254), and was not
+wounded. The next stroke of Aias pierced his shield, and wounded his
+neck; Hector replied with a boulder that lighted on the centre of the
+shield of Aias, "on the boss," whether that means a mere ornament or
+knob, or whether it was the genuine boss--which is disputed. Aias broke
+in the shield of Hector with another stone; and the gentle and joyous
+passage of arms was stopped.
+
+The shield of Agamemnon was of the kind that "cover all the body of
+a man," and was "every way equal," or "circular." It was plated
+with twelve circles of bronze, and had twenty [Greek: omphaloi], or
+ornamental knobs of tin, and the centre was of black cyanus (XI.
+31-34). There was also a head of the Gorgon, with Fear and Panic. The
+description is not intelligible, and I do not discuss it.
+
+A man could be stabbed in the middle of the belly, "under his shield"
+(XI. 424-425), not an easy thing to do, if shields covered the whole
+body to the feet; but, when a hero was leaping from his chariot (as in
+this case), no doubt a spear could be pushed up under the shield.
+The ancient Irish romances tell of a _gae bulg_, a spear held in the
+warrior's toes, and jerked up under the shield of his enemy! Shields
+could be held up on high, in an attack on a wall garrisoned by archers
+(XII. 139), the great Norman shield, also, could be thus lifted.
+
+The Locrians, light armed infantry, had no shields, nor bronze helmets,
+nor spears, but slings and bows (XIII. 714). Mr. Leaf suspects that this
+is a piece of "false archaism," but we do not think that early poets
+in an uncritical age are ever archaeologists, good or bad. The poet is
+aware that some men have larger, some smaller shields, just as some have
+longer and some shorter spears (XIV. 370-377); but this does not prove
+that the shields were of different types. A tall man might inherit the
+shield of a short father, or _versa_.
+
+A man in turning to fly might trip on the rim of his shield, which
+proves how large it was: "it reached to his feet." This accident of
+tripping occurred to Periphetes of Mycenae, but it might have happened
+to Hector, whose shield reached from neck to ankles. [Footnote: _Iliad_,
+XV. 645-646.]
+
+Achilles must have been a large man, for he knew nobody whose armour
+would fit him when he lost his own (though his armour fitted Patroclus),
+he could, however, make shift with the tower-like shield of Aias, he
+said.
+
+[Illustration 1: "THE VASE OF ARISTONOTHOS"]
+
+The evidence of the Iliad, then, is mainly to the effect that the heroes
+carried huge shields, suspended by belts, covering the body and legs. If
+Homer means, by the epithets already cited, "of good circle" and "every
+way equal," that some shields of these vast dimensions were circular, we
+have one example in early Greek art which corroborates his description.
+This is "the vase of Aristonothos," signed by that painter, and supposed
+to be of the seventh century (Fig. 1). On one side, the companions of
+Odysseus are boring out the eye of the Cyclops; on the other, a galley
+is being rowed to the attack of a ship. On the raised deck of the
+galley stand three warriors, helmeted and bearing spears. The artist has
+represented their shields as covering their right sides, probably for
+the purpose of showing their devices or blazons. _Their_ shields are
+small round bucklers. On the ship are three warriors whose shields,
+though circular, _cover THE BODY from CHIN TO ANKLES_, as in Homer. One
+shield bears a bull's head; the next has three crosses; the third blazon
+is a crab. [Footnote: Mon. _dell_. Inst., is. pl. 4.]
+
+Such personal armorial bearings are never mentioned by Homer. It is
+not usually safe to argue, from his silence, that he is ignorant of
+anything. He never mentions seals or signet rings, yet they cannot but
+have been familiar to his time. Odysseus does not seal the chest with
+the Phaeacian presents; he ties it up with a cunning knot; there are
+no rings named among the things wrought by Hephaestus, nor among the
+offerings of the Wooers of Penelope. [Footnote: Helbig citing Odyssey,
+VIII. 445-448; _Iliad_, XVIII. 401; Odyssey, xviii. 292-301.]
+
+But, if we are to admit that Homer knew not rings and seals, which
+lasted to the latest Mycenaean times, through the Dipylon age, to the
+very late AEginetan treasure (800 B.C.) in the British Museum, and
+appear again in the earliest dawn of the classical age and in a Cyclic
+poem, it is plain that all the expansionists lived in one, and that a
+most peculiar _ringless_ age. This view suits our argument to a wish,
+but it is not credible that rings and seals and engraved stones, so very
+common in Mycenaean and later times, should have vanished wholly in the
+Homeric time. The poet never mentions them, just as Shakespeare never
+mentions a thing so familiar to him as tobacco. How often are finger
+rings mentioned in the whole mass of Attic tragic poetry? We remember no
+example, and instances are certainly rare: Liddell and Scott give none.
+Yet the tragedians were, of course, familiar with rings and seals.
+
+Manifestly, we cannot say that Homer knew no seals, because he mentions
+none; but armorial blazons on shields could be ignored by no poet of
+war, if they existed.
+
+Meanwhile, the shields of the warriors on the vase, being circular and
+covering body and legs, answer most closely to Homer's descriptions.
+Helbig is reduced to suggest, first, that these shields are worn by men
+aboard ship, as if warriors had one sort of shield when aboard ship and
+another when fighting on land, and as if the men in the other vessel
+were not equally engaged in a sea fight. No evidence in favour of such
+difference of practice, by sea and land, is offered. Again, Helbig does
+not trust the artist, in this case, though the artist is usually trusted
+to draw what he sees; and why should he give the men in the other ship
+or boat small bucklers, genuine, while bedecking the warriors in the
+adverse vessel with large, purely imaginary shields? [Footnote:
+Helbig, _Das Homerische Epos_, ii. pp. 313-314.] It is not in the least
+"probable," as Helbig suggests, that the artist is shirking the trouble
+of drawing the figure.
+
+Reichel supposes that round bucklers were novelties when the vase was
+painted (seventh century), and that the artist did not understand how
+to depict them. [Footnote: _Homerische Waffen_, p. 47.] But he depicted
+them very well as regards the men in the galley, save that, for obvious
+aesthetic reasons, he chose to assume that the men in the galley were
+left-handed and wore their shields on their right arms, his desire
+being to display the blazons of both parties. [Footnote: See the same
+arrangement in a Dipylon vase. Baumeister, _Denkmaler_, iii. p. 1945.]
+We thus see, if the artist may be trusted, that shields, which both
+"reached to the feet" and were circular, existed in his time (the
+seventh century), so that possibly they may have existed in Homer's
+time and survived into the age of small bucklers. Tyrtaeus (late seventh
+century), as Helbig remarks, speaks of "a _wide_ shield, covering
+thighs, shins, breast, and shoulders." [Footnote: _Tyrtaeus_, xi. 23;
+Helbig, _Das Homerische Epos_, ii. p. 315, Note 2.]
+
+Nothing can be more like the large shields of the vase of Aristonothos.
+Thus the huge circular shield seems to have been a practicable shield
+in actual use. If so, when Homer spoke of large circular shields he may
+have meant large circular shields. On the Dodwell pyxis of 650 to 620
+B.C., a man wears an oval shield, covering him from the base of the neck
+to the ankles. He wears it on his left arm. [Footnote: Walters, _Ancient
+Pottery_, p. 316.]
+
+Of shields certainly small and light, worn by the chiefs, there is not
+a notice in the _Iliad_, unless there be a hint to that effect in
+the accounts of heroes running, walking considerable distances, and
+"stepping lightly" under shields, supposed, by the critics, to be of
+crushing weight. In such passages the poet may be carried away by his
+own _verve_, or the heroes of ancient times may be deemed capable of
+exertions beyond those of the poet's contemporaries, as he often tells
+us that, in fact, the old heroes were. A poet is not a scientific
+military writer; and in the epic poetry of all other early races very
+gross exaggeration is permitted, as in the [blank space] the old Celtic
+romances, and, of course, the huge epics of India. In Homer "the skill
+of the poet makes things impossible convincing," Aristotle says; and it
+is a critical error to insist on taking Homer absolutely and always _au
+pied de la lettre_. He seems, undeniably, to have large body-covering
+shields present to his mind as in common use.
+
+Small shields of the Greek historic period are "unknown to Homer," Mr.
+Leaf says, "with a very few curious exceptions," [Footnote: _Iliad_,
+vol. i. p. 575.] detected by Reichel in Book X. 15 [Footnote: _Ibid,_
+vol. i. p. 569, fig. 2.], where Diomede's men sleep with their heads
+resting on their shields, whereas a big-bellied Mycenaean shield
+rises, he says, too high for a pillow. But some Mycenzean shields were
+perfectly flat; while, again, nothing could be more comfortable, as a
+head-rest, than the hollow between the upper and lower bulges of
+the Mycenzean huge shield. The Zulu wooden head-rest is of the same
+character. Thus this passage in Book X. does not prove that small
+circular shields were known to Homer, nor does X. 5 13. 526-530, an
+obscure text in which it is uncertain whether Diomede and Odysseus ride
+or drive the horses of Rhesus. They _could_ ride, as every one must
+see, even though equipped with great body-covering shields. True, the
+shielded hero could neither put his shield at his back nor in front of
+him when he rode; but he could hang it sidewise, when it would cover his
+left side, as in the early Middle Ages (1060-1160 A.D.).
+
+The taking of the shield from a man's shoulders (XI. 374) does not prove
+the shield to be small; the shield hung by the belt (_telamon_) from
+the shoulder. [Footnote: On the other side, see Reichel, _Homerische
+Waffen_, pp. 40-44. Wien, 1901. We have replied to his arguments above.]
+
+So far we have the results that Homer seems most familiar with vast
+body-covering shields; that such shields were suspended by a baldric,
+not worn on the left arm; that they were made of layers of hide, plated
+with bronze, and that such a shield as Aias wore must have been tall,
+doubtless oblong, "like a tower," possibly it was semi-cylindrical.
+Whether the epithets denoting roundness refer to circular shields or to
+the double _targe_, g-shaped, of Mycenaean times is uncertain.
+
+We thus come to a puzzle of unusual magnitude. If Homer does not know
+small circular shields, but refers always to huge shields, whereas,
+from the eighth century B.C. onwards, such shields were not in use
+(disregarding Tyrtaeus, and the vase of Aristonothos on which they
+appear conspicuously, and the Dodwell pyxis), where are we? Either
+we have a harmonious picture of war from a very ancient date of large
+shields, or late poets did not introduce the light round buckler of
+their own period. Meanwhile they are accused of introducing the bronze
+corslets and other defensive armour of their own period. Defensive
+armour was unknown, we are told, in the Mycenaean prime, which, if true,
+does not affect the question. Homer did not live in or describe the
+Mycenaean prime, with its stone arrow-tips. Why did the late poets act
+so inconsistently? Why were they ignorant of small circular shields,
+which they saw every day? Or why, if they knew them, did they not
+introduce them in the poems, which, we are told, they were filling with
+non-Mycenaean greaves and corslets?
+
+This is one of the dilemmas which constantly arise to confront the
+advocates of the theory that the _Iliad_ is a patchwork of many
+generations. "Late" poets, if really late, certainly in every-day
+life knew small parrying bucklers worn on the left arm, and huge
+body-covering shields perhaps they rarely saw in use. They also knew,
+and the original poet, we are told, did not know bronze corslets and
+greaves. The theory of critics is that late poets introduced the bronze
+corslets and greaves with which they were familiar into the poems,
+but scrupulously abstained from alluding to the equally familiar small
+shields. Why are they so recklessly anachronistic and "up-to-date"
+with the corslets and greaves, and so staunchly but inconsistently
+conservative about keeping the huge shields?
+
+Mr. Leaf explains thus: "The groundwork of the Epos is Mycenaean, in the
+arrangement of the house, in the prevalence of copper" (as compared with
+iron), "and, as Reichel has shown, in armour. Yet in many points the
+poems are certainly later than the prime, at least, of the Mycenaean
+age"--which we are the last to deny. "Is it that the poets are
+deliberately trying to present the conditions of an age anterior to
+their own? or are they depicting the circumstances by which they are
+surrounded--circumstances which slowly change during the period of the
+development of the Epos? Cauer decides for the latter alternative, _the
+only one which is really conceivable_ [Footnote: Then how is the alleged
+archaeology of the poet of Book X. conceivable?] in an age whose views
+are in many ways so naïve as the poems themselves prove them to have
+been." [Footnote: _Classical Review, ix. pp. 463, 464._]
+
+Here we entirely side with Mr. Leaf. No poet, no painter, no sculptor,
+in a naïf, uncritical age, ever represents in art anything but what he
+sees daily in costume, customs, weapons, armour, and ways of life.
+Mr. Leaf, however, on the other hand, occasionally chides pieces of
+deliberate archaeological pedantry in the poets, in spite of his opinion
+that they are always "depicting the circumstances by which they are
+surrounded." But as huge man-covering shields are _not_ among the
+circumstances by which the supposed late poets were surrounded, why
+do they depict them? Here Mr. Leaf corrects himself, and his argument
+departs from the statement that only one theory is "conceivable,"
+namely, that the poets depict their own surroundings, and we are
+introduced to a new proposition. "Or rather we must recognise everywhere
+a compromise between two opposing principles: the singer, on the one
+hand, has to be conservatively tenacious of the old material which
+serves as the substance of his song; on the other hand, he has to be
+vivid and actual in the contributions which he himself makes to the
+common stock." [Footnote: _Ibid._, ix. pp. 463, 464.]
+
+The conduct of such singers is so weirdly inconsistent as not to be
+easily credible. But probably they went further, for "it is possible
+that the allusions" to the corslet "may have been introduced in the
+course of successive modernisation such as the oldest parts of the
+_Iliad_ seem in many cases to have passed through. But, in fact,
+_Iliad_, XI. 234 is the only mention of a corslet in any of the oldest
+strata, so far as we can distinguish them, and here Reichel translates
+_thorex_ 'shield.'" [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 578.] Mr.
+Leaf's statement we understand to mean that, when the singer or reciter
+was delivering an ANCIENT lay he did not introduce any of the military
+gear--light round bucklers, greaves, and corslets--with which his
+audience were familiar. But when the singer delivers a new lay, which
+he himself has added to "the kernel," then he is "vivid and actual," and
+speaks of greaves and corslets, though he still cleaves in his new lay
+to the obsolete chariot, the enormous shield, and, in an age of iron, to
+weapons of bronze. He is a sadly inconsistent new poet!
+
+Meanwhile, sixteen allusions to the corslet "can be cut out," as
+probably "some or all these are additions to the text made at a time
+when it seemed absurd to think of a man in full armour without a
+corslet." [Footnote: _Ibid_, vol. i. p. 577.] Thus the reciters, after
+all, did not spare "the old material" in the matter of corslets. The
+late singers have thus been "conservatively tenacious" in clinging to
+chariots, weapons of bronze, and obsolete enormous shields, while
+they have also been "vivid and actual" and "up to date" in the way
+of introducing everywhere bronze corslets, greaves, and other armour
+unknown, by the theory, in "the old material which is the substance of
+their song." By the way, they have not even spared the shield of the
+old material, for it was of leather or wood (we have no trace of metal
+plating on the old Mycenaean shields), and the singer, while retaining
+the size of it, has added a plating of bronze, which we have every
+reason to suppose that Mycenaean shields of the prime did not present to
+the stone-headed arrow.
+
+This theory of singers, who are at once "conservatively tenacious" of
+the old and impudently radical in pushing in the new, appears to us
+to be logically untenable. We have, in Chapter I, observed the same
+inconsistency in Helbig, and shall have occasion to remark again on its
+presence in the work of that great archaeologist. The inconsistency is
+inseparable from theories of expansion through several centuries. "Many
+a method," says Mr. Leaf, "has been proposed which, up to a certain
+point, seemed irresistible, but there has always been a residuum which
+returned to plague the inventor." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. X.]
+This is very true, and our explanation is that no method which starts
+from the hypothesis that the poems are the product of several centuries
+will work. The "residuum" is the element which cannot be fitted into any
+such hypothesis. But try the hypothesis that the poems are the product
+of a single age, and all is harmonious. There is no baffling "residuum."
+The poet describes the details of a definite age, not that of the
+Mycenaean bloom, not that of 900-600 A.D.
+
+We cannot, then, suppose that many generations of irresponsible reciters
+at fairs and public festivals conservatively adhered to the huge size of
+the shield, while altering its material; and also that the same men, for
+the sake of being "actual" and up to date, dragged bronze corslets and
+greaves not only into new lays, but into passages of lays by old
+poets who had never heard of such things. Consequently, the poetic
+descriptions of arms and armour must be explained on some other theory.
+If the poet, again, as others suppose--Mr. Ridgeway for one--knew such
+bronze-covered circular shields as are common in central and western
+Europe of the Bronze Age, why did he sometimes represent them as
+extending from neck to ankles, whereas the known bronze circular shields
+are not of more than 2 feet 2 inches to 2 feet 6 inches in diameter?
+[Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece, vol. i pp. 453, 471._] Such
+a shield, without the wood or leather, weighed 5 lbs. 2 ozs., [Footnote:
+_Ibid., vol._ i. p. 462.] and a strong man might walk or run under it.
+Homer's shields would be twice as heavy, at least, though, even then,
+not too heavy for a Hector, or an Aias, or Achilles. I do not see that
+the round bronze shields of Limerick, Yetholm, Beith, Lincolnshire, and
+Tarquinii, cited by Mr. Ridgeway, answer to Homer's descriptions of huge
+shields. They are too small. But it is perfectly possible, or rather
+highly probable, that in the poet's day shields of various sizes and
+patterns coexisted.
+
+ ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SHIELDS
+
+Turning to archaeological evidence, we find no remains in the graves of
+the Mycenaean prime of the bronze which covered the ox-hides of Homeric
+shields, though we do find gold ornaments supposed to have been attached
+to shields. There is no evidence that the Mycenaean shield was plated
+with bronze. But if we judge from their shape, as represented in works
+of Mycenaean art, some of the Mycenaean shields were not of wood, but of
+hide. In works of art, such as engraved rings and a bronze dagger (Fig.
+2) with pictures inlaid in other metals, the shield, covering the whole
+body, is of the form of a bellying sail, or a huge umbrella "up," and
+pinched at both sides near the centre: or is like a door, or a section
+of a cylinder; only one sort of shield resembles a big-bellied figure
+of 8. Ivory models of shields indicate the same figure. [Footnote:
+Schuchardt, _Schliemann's Excavations_, p. 192.] A gold necklet found
+at Enkomi, in Cyprus, consists of a line of models of this Mycenaean
+shield. [Footnote: _Excavations in Cyprus_, pl. vii. fig. 604. A. S.
+Murray, 1900.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 2. DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
+
+There also exists a set of small Mycenaean relics called Palladia, found
+at Mycenae, Spata and in the earliest strata of the Acropolis at Athens.
+They resemble "two circles joined together so as to intersect one
+another slightly," or "a long oval pinched in at the middle." They vary
+in size from six inches to half an inch, and are of ivory, glazed ware,
+or glass. Several such shields are engraved on Mycenaean gems; one,
+in gold, is attached to a silver vase. The ornamentation shown on them
+occurs, too, on Mycenaean shields in works of art; in short,
+these little objects are representations in miniature of the big
+double-bellied Mycenaean shield. Mr. Ernest Gardner concludes that these
+objects are the "schematised" reductions of an armed human figure, only
+the shield which covered the whole body is left. They are talismans
+symbolising an armed divinity, Pallas or another. A Dipylon vase (Fig.
+3) shows a man with a shield, possibly evolved out of this kind, much
+scooped out at the waist, and reaching from neck to knees. The shield
+covers his side, not his back or front. [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic
+Studies_, vol. xiii. pp. 21-24.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
+
+One may guess that the original pinch at the waist of the Mycenaean
+shield was evolved later into the two deep scoops to enable the warrior
+to use his arms more freely, while the shield, hanging from his neck by
+a belt, covered the front of his body. Fig. 4 shows shields of 1060-1160
+A.D. equally designed to cover body and legs. Men wore shields, if we
+believe the artists of Mycenae, when lion-hunting, a sport in which
+speed of foot is desirable; so they cannot have been very weighty.
+The shield then was hung over one side, and running was not so very
+difficult as if it hung over back or front (_cf._ Fig. 5). The shields
+sometimes reach only from the shoulders to the calf of the leg.
+[Footnote: Reichel, p. 3, fig. 5, Grave III. at Mycenae.] The wearer of
+the largest kind could only be got at by a sword-stab over the rim into
+the throat [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 2, fig. 2.] (Fig. 5). Some shields of
+this shape were quite small, if an engraved rock-crystal is evidence;
+here the shield is not half so high as an adjacent goat, but it may be a
+mere decoration to fill the field of the gem. [Footnote: Reichel, p. 3,
+fig. 7.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 5. RINGS: SWORDS AND SHIELDS]
+
+Other shields, covering the body from neck to feet, were sections of
+cylinders; several of these are represented on engraved Mycenaean ring
+stones or on the gold; the wearer was protected in front and flank
+[Footnote: _Ibid._, p. 4, fig II, 12; p. I, fig I.] (Fig. 5).
+
+In a "maze of buildings" outside the precincts of the graves of Mycenae,
+Dr. Schliemann found fragments of vases much less ancient than the
+contents of the sepulchres. There was a large amphora, the "Warrior
+Vase" (Fig. 6). The men wear apparently a close-fitting coat of mail
+over a chiton, which reaches with its fringes half down the thigh. The
+shield is circular, with a half-moon cut out at the bottom. The art is
+infantile. Other warriors carry long oval shields reaching, at least,
+from neck to shin. [Footnote: Schuchardt, _Schliemann's_ Excavations,
+pp. 279-285.] They wear round leather caps, their enemies have helmets.
+On a Mycenaean painted _stele_, apparently of the same relatively late
+period, the costume is similar, and the shield--oval--reaches from neck
+to knee. [Footnote: Ridgeway, vol. i. p. 314.] The Homeric shields do
+not answer to the smaller of these late and ugly representations, while,
+in their bronze plating, Homeric shields seem to differ from the leather
+shields of the Mycenaean prime.
+
+Finally, at Enkomi, near Salamis, in Cyprus, an ivory carving (in the
+British Museum) shows a fighting man whose perfectly circular shield
+reaches from neck to knee; this is one of several figures in which Mr.
+Arthur Evans finds "a most valuable illustration of the typical Homeric
+armour." [Footnote: _Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxx.
+pp. 209-214, figs. 5, 6, 9._] The shield, however, is not so huge as
+those of Aias, Hector, and Periphetes.
+
+I can only conclude that Homer describes intermediate types of shield,
+as large as the Mycenaean but plated with bronze, for a reason to be
+given later. This kind of shield, the kind known to Homer, was not the
+invention of late poets living in an age of circular bucklers, worn on
+the left arm, and these supposed late poets never introduce into the
+epics such bucklers.
+
+What manner of military needs prompted the invention of the great
+Mycenaean shields which, by Homer's time, were differentiated by the
+addition of metal plating?
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 6. FRAGMENTS OF WARRIOR VASE]
+
+The process of evolution of the huge Mycenaean shields, and of the
+Homeric shields covering the body from chin to ankles, can easily be
+traced. The nature of the attack expected may be inferred from the
+nature of the defence employed. Body-covering shields were, obviously,
+at first, _defences against showers of arrows_ tipped with stone. "In
+the earlier Mycenaean times the arrow-head of obsidian alone appears,"
+as in Mycenaean Grave IV. In the upper strata of Mycenae and in the
+later tombs the arrow-head is usually of bronze. [Footnote: Tsountas and
+Manatt, p. 206.] No man going into battle naked, without body armour,
+like the Mycenaeans (if they had none), could protect himself with
+a small shield, or even with a round buckler of twenty-six inches in
+diameter, against the rain of shafts. In a fight, on the other hand,
+where man singled out man, and spears were the missiles, and when the
+warriors had body armour, or even when they had not, a small
+shield sufficed; as we see among the spear-throwing Zulus and the
+spear-throwing aborigines of Australia (unacquainted with bows and
+arrows), who mainly use shields scarcely broader than a bat. On the
+other hand, the archers of the Algonquins in their wars with the
+Iroquois, about 1610, used clubs and tomahawks but no spears, no
+missiles but arrows, and their leather shield was precisely the [Greek:
+amphibrotae aspis] of Homer, "covering the whole of a man." It is
+curious to see, in contemporary drawings (1620), Mycenaean shields on
+Red Indian shoulders!
+
+In Champlain's sketches of fights between French and Algonquins against
+Iroquois (1610-1620), we see the Algonquins outside the Iroquois
+stockade, which is defended by archers, sheltering under huge shields
+shaped like the Mycenaean "tower" shield, though less cylindrical; in
+fact, more like the shield of the fallen hunter depicted on the dagger
+of Mycenae. These Algonquin shields partially cover the sides as well as
+the front of the warrior, who stoops behind them, resting the lower rim
+of the shield on the ground. The shields are oblong and rounded at the
+top, much like that of Achilles [Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii p. 605] in
+Mr. Leaf's restoration? The sides curve inward. Another shield, oval in
+shape and flat, appears to have been suspended from the neck, and covers
+an Iroquois brave from chin to feet. The Red Indian shields, like those
+of Mycenae, were made of leather; usually of buffalo hide, [Footnote:
+_Les Voyages de Sr. de Champlain_, Paris, 1620, f. 22: "rondache de
+cuir bouili, qui est d'un animal, comme le boufle."] good against
+stone-tipped arrows. The braves are naked, like the unshielded archers
+on the Mycenaean silver vase fragment representing a siege (Fig. 7). The
+description of the Algonquin shields by Champlain, when compared
+with his drawings, suggests that we cannot always take artistic
+representations as exact. In his designs only a few Algonquins and one
+Iroquois carry the huge shields; the unshielded men are stark naked, as
+on the Mycenaean silver vase. But in his text Champlain says that the
+Iroquois, like the Algonquins, "carried arrow-proof shields" and "a
+sort of armour woven of cotton thread"--Homer's [Greek: linothoraex]
+(_Iliad_, II. 259, 850). These facts appear in only one of Champlain's
+drawings [Footnote: Dix's _Champlain_, p. 113. Appleton, New York, 1903.
+Laverdière's _Champlain_, vol. iv., plate opposite p. 85 (1870).] (Fig.
+8).
+
+These Iroquois and Algonquin shields are the armour of men exposed, not
+to spears, but to a hail of flint-tipped arrows. As spears came in for
+missiles in Greek warfare, arrows did not wholly go out, but the noble
+warriors preferred spear and sword. [Footnote: Cf. Archilochus, 3.] Mr.
+Ridgeway erroneously says that "no Achaean warrior employs the bow for
+war." [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i. 301.] Teucer, frequently, and
+Meriones use the bow; like Pandarus and Paris, on the Trojan side, they
+resort to bow or spear, as occasion serves. Odysseus, in _Iliad_, Book
+X., is armed with the bow and arrows of Meriones when acting as a spy;
+in the _Odyssey_ his skill as an archer is notorious, but he would not
+pretend to equal famous bowmen of an older generation, such as Heracles
+and Eurytus of OEchalia, whose bow he possessed but did not take to
+Troy. Philoctetes is his master in archery. [Footnote: Odyssey, VIII.
+219-222.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 7. FRAGMENT OF SIEGE VASE]
+
+The bow, however, was little esteemed by Greek warriors who desired to
+come to handstrokes, just as it was despised, to their frequent ruin, by
+the Scots in the old wars with England. Dupplin, Falkirk, Halidon Hill
+and many another field proved the error.
+
+There was much need in Homeric warfare for protection against heavy
+showers of arrows. Mr. Monro is hardly correct when he says that, in
+Homer, "we do not hear of _BODIES_ of archers, of arrows darkening the
+air, as in descriptions of oriental warfare." [Footnote: _Ibid._,
+vol. ii. 305.] These precise phrases are not used by Homer; but,
+nevertheless, arrows are flying thick in his battle pieces. The effects
+are not often noticed, because, in Homer, helmet, shield, corslet,
+_zoster_, and greaves, as a rule prevent the shafts from harming
+the well-born, well-armed chiefs; the nameless host, however, fall
+frequently. When Hector came forward for a parley (_Iliad_, III.
+79), the Achaens "kept shooting at him with arrows," which he took
+unconcernedly. Teucer shoots nine men in _Iliad_, VIII. 297-304. In
+XI. _85_ the shafts ([Greek: belea]) showered and the common soldiers
+fell--[misprint] being arrows as well as thrown spears. [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, IV. 465; XVI. 668, 678.] Agamemnon and Achilles are as likely,
+they say, to be hit by arrow as by spear (XI. 191; XXI. 13). Machaon is
+wounded by an arrow. Patroclus meets Eurypylus limping, with an arrow in
+his thigh--archer unknown. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XI. 809, 810.] Meriones,
+though an Achaean paladin, sends a bronze-headed arrow through the body
+of Harpalion (XIII. _650_). The light-armed Locrians are all bowmen and
+slingers (XIII. 716). Acamas taunts the Argives as "bowmen" (XIV.
+479). "The war-cry rose on both sides, and the arrows leaped from the
+bowstrings" (XV. 313). Manifestly the arrows are always on the wing,
+hence the need for the huge Homeric and Mycenaean shields. Therefore,
+as the Achaeans in Homer wore but flimsy corslets (this we are going to
+prove), the great body-covering shield of the Mycenaean prime did not
+go out of vogue in Homer's time, when bronze had superseded stone
+arrow-heads, but was strengthened by bronze plating over the leather.
+In a later age the bow was more and more neglected in Greek warfare, and
+consequently large shields went out, after the close of the Mycenaean
+age, and round parrying bucklers came into use.
+
+The Greeks appear never to have been great archers, for some vases show
+even the old heroes employing the "primary release," the arrow nock
+is held between the thumb and forefinger--an ineffectual release.
+[Footnote: C. J. Longman, _Archery_. Badminton Series.] The archers in
+early Greek art often stoop or kneel, unlike the erect archers of old
+England; the bow is usually small--a child's weapon; the string is often
+drawn only to the breast, as by Pandarus in the _Iliad_ (IV. i 23). By
+730 B.C. the release with three fingers, our western release, had become
+known. [Footnote: Leaf _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 585.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 8.--ALGONQUIN CORSLET. From Laverdiere, _Oeuvres de
+Champlain_, vol. iv. fol. 4. Quebec, 1870.]
+
+The course of evolution seems to be: (1) the Mycenaean prime of much
+archery, no body armour (?); huge leather "man-covering" shields are
+used, like those of the Algonquins; (2) the same shields strengthened
+with metal, light body armour-thin corslets--and archery is frequent,
+but somewhat despised (the Homeric age); (3) the parrying shield of
+the latest Mycenaean age (infantry with body armour); (4) the Ionian
+hoplites, with body armour and small circular bucklers.
+
+It appears, then, that the monstrous Mycenaean shield is a survival of
+an age when bows and arrows played the same great part as they did in
+the wars of the Algonquins and Iroquois. The celebrated picture of a
+siege on a silver vase, of which fragments were found in Grave IV.,
+shows archers skirmishing; there is an archer in the lion hunt on the
+dagger blade; thirty-five obsidian arrow-heads were discovered in Grave
+IV., while "in the upper strata of Mycenae and in the later tombs the
+arrow-head is usually of bronze, though instances of obsidian still
+occur." In 1895 Dr. Tsountas found twenty arrow-heads of bronze, ten in
+each bundle, in a Mycenaean chamber tomb. Messrs. Tsountas and Manatt
+say, "In the Acropolis graves at Mycenae... the spear-heads were but
+few... arrow-heads, on the contrary, are comparatively abundant."
+They infer that "picked men used shield and spear; the rank and file
+doubtless fought simply with bow and sling." [Footnote: Tsountas and
+Manatt, zog. [sic]]. The great Mycenaean shield was obviously evolved
+as a defence against arrows and sling-stones flying too freely to be
+parried with a small buckler. What other purpose could it have served?
+But other defensive armour was needed, and was evolved, by Homer's men,
+as also, we shall see, by the Algonquins and Iroquois. The Algonquins
+and Iroquois thus prove that men who thought their huge shields very
+efficient, yet felt the desirableness of the protection afforded by
+corslets, for they wore, in addition to their shields, such corslets as
+they were able to manufacture, made of cotton, and corresponding to
+the Homeric [Greek: linothoraex]. [Footnote: In the interior of some
+shields, perhaps of all, were two [Greek: kanones] (VIII 193; XIII.
+407). These have been understood as meaning a brace through which the
+left arm went, and another brace which the left hand grasped. Herodotus
+says that the Carians first used shield grips, and that previously
+shields were suspended by belts from the neck and left shoulder
+(Herodotus, i. 171). It would be interesting to know how he learned
+these facts-perhaps from Homer; but certainly the Homeric shield is
+often described as suspended by a belt. Mr. Leaf used to explain the
+[Greek: kanones] (XIII. 407) as "serving to attach the two ends of the
+baldrick to the shield" (_Hellenic_ Society's _Journal_, iv. 291), as
+does Mr. Ridgeway. But now he thinks that they were two pieces of wood,
+crossing each other, and making the framework on which the leather of
+the shield was stretched. The hero could grasp the cross-bar, at the
+centre of gravity, in his left hand, rest the lower rim of the shield on
+the ground, and crouch behind it (XI. 593; XIII 157). In neither passage
+cited is anything said about resting the lower rim "on the ground,"
+and in the second passage the warrior is actually advancing. In this
+attitude, however-grounding the lower rim of the great body-covering
+shield, and crouching behind it--we see Algonquin warriors of about 1610
+in Champlain's drawings of Red Indian warfare.]
+
+Mr. Leaf, indeed, when reviewing Reichel, says that "the use of the
+Mycenaean shield is inconsistent with that of the metal breastplate;
+'the shield' covers the wearer in a way which makes a breastplate an
+useless encumbrance; or rather, it is ignorance of the breastplate which
+alone can explain the use of such frightfully cumbrous gear as the huge
+shield." [Footnote: _Classical Review_, ix. p. 55. 1895.]
+
+But the Algonquins and Iroquois wore such breastplates as they could
+manufacture, though they also used shields of great size, suspended, in
+Mycenaean fashion, from the neck and shoulder by a _telamon_ or belt.
+The knights of the eleventh century A.D., in addition to very large
+shields, wore ponderous hauberks or byrnies, as we shall prove
+presently. As this combination of great shield with corslet was common
+and natural, we cannot agree with Mr. Leaf when he says, "it follows
+that the Homeric warriors wore no metal breastplate, and that all
+the passages where the [Greek: thoraes] is mentioned are either later
+interpolations or refer to some other sort of armour," which, _ex
+hypothesi_, would itself be superfluous, given the body-covering shield.
+
+Shields never make corslets superfluous when men can manufacture
+corslets.
+
+The facts speak for themselves: the largest shields are not exclusive,
+so to speak, of corslets; the Homeric warriors used both, just as did
+Red Indians and the mediaeval chivalry of Europe. The use of the aspis
+in Homer, therefore, throws no suspicion on the concomitant use of the
+corslet. The really surprising fact would be if late poets, who knew
+only small round bucklers, never introduced them into the poems, but
+always spoke of enormous shields, while they at the same time did
+introduce corslets, unknown to the early poems which they continued.
+Clearly Reichel's theory is ill inspired and inconsistent. This becomes
+plain as soon as we trace the evolution of shields and corslets in
+ages when the bow played a great part in war. The Homeric bronze-plated
+shield and bronze corslet are defences of a given moment in military
+evolution; they are improvements on the large leather shield of
+Mycenaean art, but, as the arrows still fly in clouds, the time for the
+small parrying buckler has not yet come.
+
+By the age of the Dipylon vases with human figures, the shield had been
+developed into forms unknown to Homer. In Fig. 3 (p. 131) we see one
+warrior with a fantastic shield, slim at the waist, with horns, as
+it were, above and below; the greater part of the shield is expended
+uselessly, covering nothing in particular. In form this targe seems to
+be a burlesque parody of the figure of a Mycenaean shield. The next
+man has a short oblong shield, rather broad for its length--perhaps a
+reduction of the Mycenaean door-shaped shield. The third warrior has a
+round buckler. All these shields are manifestly post-Homeric; the first
+type is the most common in the Dipylon art; the third survived in the
+eighth-century buckler.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 9.-GOLD CORSLET]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+THE BREASTPLATE
+
+No "practicable" breastplates, hauberks, corslets, or any things of the
+kind have so far been discovered in graves of the Mycenaean prime. A
+corpse in Grave V. at Mycenae had, however, a golden breastplate,
+with oval bosses representing the nipples and with prettily interlaced
+spirals all over the remainder of the gold (Fig. 9). Another corpse
+had a plain gold breastplate with the nipples indicated. [Footnote:
+Schuchardt, _Schliemann's_ Excavations, pp. 254-257, fig. 256.]
+These decorative corslets of gold were probably funereal symbols of
+practicable breastplates of bronze, but no such pieces of armour are
+worn by the fighting-men on the gems and other works of art of Mycenae,
+and none are found in Mycenaean graves. But does this prove anything?
+Leg-guards, broad metal bands clasping the leg below the knee, are found
+in the Mycenaean shaft graves, but are never represented in Mycenaean
+art. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 575.] Meanwhile, bronze
+corslets are very frequently mentioned in the "rarely alluded to," says
+Mr. Leaf, [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 576.] but this must be a
+slip of the pen. Connected with the breastplate or _thorex_ ([Greek:
+thoraex]) is the verb [Greek: thoraesso, thoraessethai], which means "to
+arm," or "equip" in general.
+
+The Achaeans are constantly styled in the _ILIAD_ and in the _ODYSSEY_
+"_chalkochitones_," "with bronze chitons." epics have therefore boldly
+argued that by "bronze chitons" the poet pleasantly alludes to shields.
+But as the Mycenaeans seem scarcely to have worn any _CHITONS_ in
+battle, as far as we are aware from their art, and are not known to have
+had any bronze shields, the argument evaporates, as Mr. Ridgeway has
+pointed out. Nothing can be less like a _chiton_ or smock, loose or
+tight, than either the double-bellied huge shield, the tower-shaped
+cylindrical shield, or the flat, doorlike shield, covering body and legs
+in Mycenaean art. "The bronze _chiton_," says Helbig, "is only a poetic
+phrase for the corslet."
+
+Reichel and Mr. Leaf, however, think that "bronze chitoned" is probably
+"a picturesque expression... and refers to the bronze-covered shield."
+[Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, i. 578.] The breastplate covered the upper
+part of the _chiton_, and so might be called a "bronze _chiton_," above
+all, if it had been evolved, as corselets usually have been, out of
+a real _chiton_, interwoven with small plates or rings of bronze. The
+process of evolution might be from a padded linen _chiton_ ([Greek:
+linothooraes]) worn by Teucer, and on the Trojan side by Amphius (as
+by nervous Protestants during Oates's "Popish Plot"), to a leathern
+_chiton_, strengthened by rings, or studs, or scales of bronze, and
+thence to plates. [Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i.
+pp. 309, 310.] Here, in this armoured _chiton_, would be an object that
+a poet might readily call "a _chiton_ of bronze." But that, if he lived
+in the Mycenaean age, when, so far as art shows, _CHITONS_ were not worn
+at all, or very little, and scarcely ever in battle, and when we know
+nothing of bronze-plating on shields, the poet should constantly call a
+monstrous double-bellied leather shield, or any other Mycemean type of
+shield, "a _bronze chiton_," seems almost unthinkable. "A leather cloak"
+would be a better term for such shields, if cloaks were in fashion.
+
+According to Mr. Myres (1899) the "stock line" in the _Iliad_, about
+piercing a [Greek: poludaidalos thoraex] or corslet, was inserted "to
+satisfy the practical criticisms of a corslet-wearing age," the age of
+the later poets, the Age of Iron. But why did not such practical critics
+object to the constant presence in the poems of bronze weapons, in their
+age out of date, if they objected to the absence from the poems of the
+corslets with which they were familiar? Mr. Myres supposes that the line
+about the [Greek: poludaidalos] corslet was already old, but had merely
+meant "many-glittering body clothing"--garments set with the golden
+discs and other ornaments found in Mycemean graves. The bronze corslet,
+he says, would not be "many glittering," but would reflect "a single
+star of light." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies._ 1899] Now,
+first, even if the star were a single star, it would be as "many
+glittering" when the warrior was in rapid and changeful motion as the
+star that danced when Beatrix was born. Secondly, if the contemporary
+corslets of the Iron Age were NOT "many glittering," practical
+corslet-wearing critics would ask the poet, "why do you call corslets
+'many glittering'?" Thirdly, [Greek: poludaidalos] may surely be
+translated "a thing of much art," and Greek corslets were incised with
+ornamental designs. Thus Messrs. Hogarth and Bosanquet report "a very
+remarkable 'Mycemean' bronze breastplate" from Crete, which "shows four
+female draped figures, the two central ones holding a wreath over a
+bird, below which is a sacred tree. The two outer figures are apparently
+dancing. It is probably a ritual scene, and may help to elucidate the
+nature of early AEgean cults." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies,
+vol. xx_. p. 322. 1899.] Here, [Greek: poludaidalos]--if that word means
+"artistically wrought." Helbig thinks the Epics silent about the gold
+spangles on dresses. [Footnote: Helbig, p. 71.]
+
+Mr. Myres applauds Reichel's theory that [blank space] first meant
+a man's chest. If _thorex_ means a man's breast, then _THOREX_ in a
+secondary sense, one thinks, would mean "breastplate," as waist of a
+woman means, first, her waist; next, her blouse (American). But Mr.
+Myres and Reichel say that the secondary sense of _THOREX_ is not
+breastplate but "body clothing," as if a man were all breast, or wore
+only a breast covering, whereas Mycenaean art shows men wearing nothing
+on their breasts, merely drawers or loin-cloths, which could not be
+called _THOREX_, as they cover the antipodes of the breast.
+
+The verb [Greek: thoraesestai], the theory runs on, merely meant "to
+put on body clothing," which Mycenaeans in works of art, if correctly
+represented, do not usually put on; they fought naked or in bathing
+drawers. Surely we might as well argue that a "waistcoat" might come
+to mean "body clothing in general," as that a word for the male breast
+became, first, a synonym for the covering of the male buttocks and for
+apparel in general, and, next, for a bronze breastplate. These arguments
+appear rather unconvincing, [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_,
+vol. xx. pp. 149, 150.] nor does Mycenaean art instruct us that men went
+into battle dressed in body clothing which was thickly set with many
+glittering gold ornaments, and was called "a many-glittering _thorex_."
+
+Further, if we follow Reichel and Mr. Leaf, the Mycenaeans wore
+_chitons_ and called them _chitons_. They also used bronze-plated
+shields, though of this we have no evidence. Taking the bronze-plated
+(?) shield to stand poetically for the _chiton_, the poet spoke of "_the
+bronze-chitoned Achaeans_" But, if we follow Mr. Myres, the Mycenaeans
+also applied the word _thorex_ to body clothing at large, in place of
+the word _chiton_; and when a warrior was transfixed by a spear, they
+said that his "many-glittering, gold-studded _thorex_," that is, his
+body clothing in general, was pierced. It does seem simpler to hold
+that _chiton_ meant _chiton_; that _thorex_ meant, first, "breast," then
+"breastplate," whether of linen, or plaited leather, or bronze, and
+that to pierce a man through his [Greek: poludaidalos thoraex] meant to
+pierce him through his handsome corslet. No mortal ever dreamt that this
+was so till Reichel tried to make out that the original poet describes
+no armour except the large Mycenaean shield and the _mitrê_, and that
+all corslets in the poems were of much later introduction. Possibly they
+were, but they had plenty of time wherein to be evolved long before the
+eighth century, Reichel's date for corslets.
+
+The argument is that a man with a large shield needs no body armour, or
+uses the shield because he has no body armour.
+
+But the possession and use of a large shield did not in the Middle Ages,
+or among the Iroquois and Algonquins, make men dispense with corslets,
+even when the shield was worn, as in Homer, slung round the neck by a
+_telamon_ (_guige_ in Old French), belt, or baldric.
+
+We turn to a French _Chanson de Geste--La Chancun de Willem_--of the
+twelfth century A.D., to judge by the handwriting. One of the heroes,
+Girard, having failed to rescue Vivien in battle, throws down his
+weapons and armour, blaming each piece for having failed him. Down
+goes the heavy lance; down goes the ponderous shield, suspended by a
+_telamon: "Ohitarge grant cume peises al col_!" down goes the plated
+byrnie, "_Ohi grant broine cum me vas apesant_" [Footnote: _La Chancun
+de Willame_, lines 716-726.]
+
+The mediaeval warrior has a heavy byrnie as well as a great shield
+suspended from his neck. It will be remarked also that the Algonquins
+and Iroquois of the beginning of the seventeenth century, as described
+by Champlain, give us the whole line of Mycenaean evolution of armour up
+to a certain point. Not only had they arrow-proof, body-covering shields
+of buffalo hide, but, when Champlain used his arquebus against the
+Iroquois in battle, "they were struck amazed that two of their number
+should have been killed so promptly, seeing that they wore a sort of
+armour, woven of cotton thread, and carried arrow-proof shields."
+We have already alluded to this passage, but must add that Parkman,
+describing from French archives a battle of Illinois against Iroquois
+in 1680, speaks of "corslets of tough twigs interwoven with cordage."
+[Footnote: _Discovery of the Great IV_, [misprint] 1869.] Golden, in his
+_Five Nations_, writes of the Red Indians as wearing "a kind of cuirass
+made of pieces of wood joined together." [Footnote: Dix, _Champlion_
+[misprint]]
+
+To the kindness of Mr. Hill Tout I also owe a description of the armour
+of the Indian tribes of north-west America, from a work of his own.
+He says: "For protective purposes in warfare they employed shields
+and coat-armour. The shields varied in form and material from tribe to
+tribe. Among the Interior Salish they were commonly made of wood, which
+was afterwards covered with hide. Sometimes they consisted of several
+thicknesses of hide only. The hides most commonly used were those of the
+elk, buffalo, or bear. After the advent of the Hudson's Bay Co. some of
+the Indians used to beat out the large copper kettles they obtained from
+the traders and make polished circular shields of these. In some centres
+long rectangular shields, made from a single or double hide, were
+employed. These were often from 4 to 5 feet in length and from 3 to
+4 feet in width--large enough to cover the whole body. Among the
+Déné tribes (Sikanis) the shield was generally made of closely-woven
+wicker-work, and was of an ovaloid form (exact size not given).
+
+"The coat armour was _everywhere used_, and varied in form and style in
+almost every centre. There were two ways in which this was most commonly
+made. One of these was the slatted cuirass or corslet, which was formed
+of a series of narrow slats of wood set side by side vertically and
+fastened in place by interfacings of raw hide. It went all round the
+body, being hung from the shoulders with straps. The other was a kind
+of shirt of double or treble elk hide, fastened at the side with thongs.
+Another kind of armour, less common than that just described, was the
+long elk-hide tunic, which reached to and even _below the knees and was
+sleeved to the elbow."_
+
+Mr. Hill Tout's minute description, with the other facts cited, leaves
+no doubt that even in an early stage, as in later stages of culture, the
+use of the great shield does not exclude the use of such body armour
+as the means of the warriors enable them to construct. To take another
+instance, Pausanias describes the corslets of the neolithic Sarmatae,
+which he saw dedicated in the temple of Asclepius at Athens. Corslets
+these bowmen and users of the lasso possessed, though they did not use
+the metals. They fashioned very elegant corslets out of horses' hoofs,
+cutting them into scales like those of a pine cone, and sewing them on
+to cloth. [Footnote: Pausanias, i. 211. [misprint] 6.]
+
+Certain small, thin, perforated discs of stone found in Scotland have
+been ingeniously explained as plates to be strung together on a garment
+of cloth, a neolithic _chiton_. However this may be, since Iroquois and
+Algonquins and Déné had some sort of woven, or plaited, or wooden, or
+buff corslet, in addition to their great shields, we may suppose that
+the Achaeans would not be less inventive. They would pass from the
+[Greek: linothoraex] (answering to the cotton corslet of the Iroquois)
+to a sort of jack or _jaseran_ with rings, scales, or plates, and thence
+to bronze-plate corslets, represented only by the golden breastplates of
+the Mycenaean grave. Even if the Mycenaeans did not evolve the corslet,
+there is no reason why, in the Homeric times, it should not have been
+evolved.
+
+For linen corslets, such as Homer mentions, in actual use and
+represented in works of art we consult Mr. Leaf on _The Armour_
+of _Homeric_ Heroes.' He finds Memnon in a white corslet, on a
+black-figured vase in the British Museum. There is another white
+corsleted [Footnote: _Journal_ of _Hellenic_ Studies, vol. iv. pp.
+82, 83, 85.] Memnon figured in the _Vases Peints_ of the Duc de Luynes
+(plate xii.). Mr. Leaf suggests that the white colour represents "a
+corslet not of metal but of linen," and cites _Iliad_, II. 529, 5
+30. "Xenophon mentions linen corslets as being worn by the Chalybes"
+(_Anabasis_, iv. 15). Two linen corslets, sent from Egypt to Sparta by
+King Amasis, are recorded by Herodotus (ii. 182; iii. 47). The corslets
+were of linen, embroidered in cotton and gold. Such a piece of armour
+or attire might easily develop into the [Greek: streptos chitoon] of
+_Iliad_, V. 113, in which Aristarchus appears to have recognised chain
+or scale armour; but we find no such object represented in Mycenaean
+art, which, of course, does not depict Homeric armour or costume, and
+it seems probable that the bronze corslets mentioned by Homer were plate
+armour. The linen corslet lasted into the early sixth century B.C. In
+the poem called _Stasiotica_, Alcaeus (_No_. 5) speaks of his helmets,
+bronze greaves and corslets of linen ([Choorakes te neoi linoo]) as a
+defence against arrows.
+
+Meanwhile a "bronze _chiton_" or corslet would turn spent arrows and
+spent spears, and be very useful to a warrior whose shield left him
+exposed to shafts shot or spears thrown from a distance. Again, such
+a bronze _chiton_ might stop a spear of which the impetus was spent in
+penetrating the shield. But Homeric corslets did not, as a rule, avail
+to keep out a spear driven by the hand at close quarters, or powerfully
+thrown from a short distance. Even the later Greek corslets do not look
+as if they could resist a heavy spear wielded by a strong hand.
+
+I proceed to show that the Homeric corslet did not avail against a
+spear at close quarters, but could turn an arrow point (once), and could
+sometimes turn a spear which had perforated a shield. So far, and not
+further, the Homeric corslet was serviceable. But if a warrior's breast
+or back was not covered by the shield, and received a thrust at close
+quarters, the corslet was pierced more easily than the pad of paper
+which was said to have been used as secret armour in a duel by the
+Master of Sinclair (1708). [Footnote: _Proceedings in Court Marshal held
+upon John, Master of Sinclair_. Sir Walter Scott. Roxburghe Club.
+(Date of event, 1708.)] It is desirable to prove this feebleness of the
+corslet, because the poet often says that a man was smitten with
+the spear in breast or back when unprotected by the shield, without
+mentioning the corslet, whence it is argued by the critics that corslets
+were not worn when the original lays were fashioned, and that they have
+only been sporadically introduced, in an after age when the corslet was
+universal, by "modernising" later rhapsodists aiming at the up-to-date.
+
+A weak point is the argument that Homer says back or breast was pierced,
+without mentioning the corslet, whence it follows that he knew no
+corslets. Quintus Smyrnaeus does the same thing. Of course, Quintus
+knew all about corslets, yet (Book I. 248, 256, 257) he makes his heroes
+drive spear or sword through breast or belly without mentioning the
+resistance of the corslet, even when (I. 144, 594) he has assured
+us that the victim was wearing a corslet. These facts are not due
+to inconsistent interpolation of corslets into the work of this
+post-Christian poet Quintus. [Footnote: I find a similar omission in the
+_Chanson de Roland_.]
+
+Corslets, in Homer, are flimsy; that of Lycaon, worn by Paris, is
+pierced by a spear which has also perforated his shield, though the
+spear came only from the weak hand of Menelaus (_Iliad_, III. 357, 358).
+The arrow of Pandarus whistles through the corslet of Menelaus (IV.
+136). The same archer pierces with an arrow the corslet of Diomede (V.
+99, 100). The corslet of Diomede, however, avails to stop a spear which
+has traversed his shield (V. 281). The spear of Idomeneus pierces
+the corslet of Othryoneus, and the spear of Antilochus perforates the
+corslet of a charioteer (XIII. 371, 397). A few lines later Diomede's
+spear reaches the midriff of Hypsenor. No corslet is here mentioned, but
+neither is the shield mentioned (this constantly occurs), and we cannot
+argue that Hypsenor wore no corslet, unless we are also to contend that
+he wore no shield, or a small shield. Idomeneus drives his spear through
+the "_bronze chiton_" of Alcathöus (XIII. 439, 440). Mr. Leaf reckons
+these lines "probably an interpolation to turn the linen _chiton_, the
+rending of which is the sign of triumph, into a bronze corslet." But we
+ask why, if an editor or rhapsodist went through the _Iliad_ introducing
+corslets, he so often left them out, where the critics detect their
+absence because they are not mentioned?
+
+The spear of Idomeneus pierces another feeble corslet over the victim's
+belly (XIII. 506-508). It is quite a surprise when a corslet does for
+once avail to turn an arrow (XIII. 586-587). But Aias drives his spear
+through the corslet of Phorcys, into his belly (XVII 311-312). Thus the
+corslet scarcely ever, by itself, protects a hero; it never protects
+him against an unspent spear; even when his shield stands between his
+corslet and the spear both are sometimes perforated. Yet occasionally
+the corslet saves a man when the spear has gone through the shield. The
+poet, therefore, sometimes gives us a man pierced in a part which the
+corslet covers, without mentioning the flimsy article that could not
+keep out a spear.
+
+Reichel himself came to see, before his regretted death, that he could
+not explain away the _thorex_ or corslet, on his original lines, as a
+mere general name for "a piece of armour"; and he inclined to think that
+jacks, with metal plates sewn on, did exist before the Ionian corslet.
+[Footnote: _Homerische Waffen_, pp. 93-94. 1901.] The gold breastplates
+of the Mycenaean graves pointed in this direction. But his general
+argument is that corslets were interpolated into the old lays by poets
+of a corslet-wearing age; and Mr. Leaf holds that corslets may have
+filtered in, "during the course of successive modernisation, such as the
+oldest parts of the _Iliad_ seem in many cases to have passed through,"
+[Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, i. p. 578.] though the new poets were, for all
+that, "conservatively tenacious of the old material." We have already
+pointed out the difficulty.
+
+The poets who did not introduce the new small bucklers with which they
+were familiar, did stuff the _Iliad_ full of corslets unknown, by
+the theory, to the original poet, but familiar to rhapsodists living
+centuries later. Why, if they were bent on modernising, did they not
+modernise the shields? and how, if they modernised unconsciously, as all
+uncritical poets do, did the shield fail to be unconsciously "brought up
+to date"? It seems probable that Homer lived at a period when both huge
+shield and rather feeble corslet were in vogue.
+
+We shall now examine some of the passages in which Mr. Leaf, mainly
+following Reichel, raises difficulties about corslets. We do not know
+their mechanism; they were composed of [Greek: guala], presumed to be a
+backplate and a breastplate. The word _gualon_ appears to mean a hollow,
+or the converse, something convex. We cannot understand the mechanism
+(see a young man putting on a corslet, on an amphora by Euthymides.
+Walter, vol. ii. p. 176); but, if late poets, familiar with such
+corslets, did not understand how they worked, they were very dull men.
+When their descriptions puzzle us, that is more probably because we are
+not at the point of view than because poets interpolated mentions of
+pieces of armour which they did not understand, and therefore cannot
+have been familiar with, and, in that case, would not introduce.
+
+Mr. Leaf starts with a passage in the _Iliad_ (III. 357-360)--it recurs
+in another case: "Through the bright shield went the ponderous
+spear, and through the inwrought" (very artfully wrought), [Greek:
+poludaidalou] "breastplate it pressed on, and straight beside his flank
+it rent the tunic, but he swerved and escaped black death." Mr.
+Leaf says, "It is obvious that, after a spear has passed through a
+breastplate, there is no longer any possibility for the wearer to bend
+aside and so to avoid the point...." But I suppose that the wearer, by a
+motion very natural, doubled up sideways, so to speak, and so the spear
+merely grazed his flesh. That is what I suppose the poet to intend.
+The more he knew of corslets, the less would he mention an impossible
+circumstance in connection with a corslet.
+
+Again, in many cases the late poets, by the theory--though it is they
+who bring the corslets in--leave the corslets out! A man without shield,
+helmet, and spear calls himself "naked." Why did not these late poets,
+it is asked, make him take off his corslet, if he had one, as well as
+his shield? The case occurs in XXII. 111-113,124-125. Hector thinks of
+laying aside helmet, spear, and shield, and of parleying with Achilles.
+"But then he will slay me naked," that is, unarmed. "He still had his
+corslet," the critics say, "so how could he be naked? or, if he had
+no corslet, this is a passage uncontaminated by the late poets of the
+corslet age." Now certainly Hector _was_ wearing a corslet, which he
+had taken from Patroclus: that is the essence of the story. He would,
+however, be "naked" or unprotected if he laid aside helmet, spear, and
+shield, because Achilles could hit him in the head or neck (as he did),
+or lightly drive the spear through the corslet, which, we have proved,
+was no sound defence against a spear at close quarters, though useful
+against chance arrows, and occasionally against spears spent by
+traversing the shield.
+
+We next learn that no corslet occurs in the _Odyssey_, or in _Iliad_,
+Book X., called "very late": Mr. Leaf suggests that it is of the seventh
+century B.C. But if the Odyssey and Iliad, Book X., are really very
+late, their authors and interpolators were perfectly familiar
+with Ionian corslets. Why did they leave corslets out, while their
+predecessors and contemporaries were introducing them all up and down
+the _Iliad_? In fact, in Book X, no prince is regularly equipped; they
+have been called up to deliberate in the dead of night, and when two go
+as spies they wear casual borrowed gear. It is more important that no
+corslet is mentioned in Nestor's arms in his tent. But are we to explain
+this, and the absence of mention of corslets in the Odyssey (where there
+is little about regular fighting), on the ground that the author of
+_Iliad_, Book X., and all the many authors and editors of the
+_Odyssey_ happened to be profound archaeologists, and, unlike their
+contemporaries, the later poets and interpolators of the _Iliad_, had
+formed the theory that corslets were not known at the time of the siege
+of Troy and therefore must not be mentioned? This is quite incredible.
+No hypothesis can be more improbable. We cannot imagine late Ionian
+rhapsodists listening to the _Iliad_, and saying, "These poets of the
+_Iliad_ are all wrong: at the date of the Mycenaean prime, as every
+educated man knows, corslets were not yet in fashion. So we must have no
+corslets in the _Odyssey_?"
+
+A modern critic, who thinks this possible, is bringing the practice
+of archaising poets of the late nineteenth century into the minds of
+rhapsodists of the eighth century before Christ. Artists of the middle
+of the sixteenth century always depict Jeanne d'Arc in the armour and
+costume of their own time, wholly unlike those of 1430. This is the
+regular rule. Late rhapsodists would not delve in the archaeology of the
+Mycenaean prime. Indeed, one does not see how they could discover, in
+Asia, that corslets were not worn, five centuries earlier, on the other
+side of the sea.
+
+We are told that Aias and some other heroes are never spoken of as
+wearing corslets. But Aias certainly did put on a set of pieces of
+armour, and did not trust to his shield alone, tower-like as it was. The
+description runs thus: The Achaeans have disarmed, before the duel of
+Aias and Hector. Aias draws the lucky lot; he is to 'meet Hector, and
+bids the others pray to Zeus "while I clothe me in my armour of battle."
+While they prayed, Aias "arrayed himself in flashing bronze. And when
+he had now clothed upon his flesh _all_ his pieces of armour" ([Greek:
+panta teuchae]) "he went forth to fight." If Aias wore only a shield, as
+on Mr. Leaf's hypothesis, he could sling it on before the Achaeans could
+breathe a _pater noster_. His sword he would not have taken off; swords
+were always worn. What, then, are "all his pieces of armour"? (VII. 193,
+206).
+
+Carl Robert cites passages in which the [Greek: teuchea], taken from
+the shoulders, include corslets, and are late and Ionian, with other
+passages which are Mycenaean, with no corslet involved. He adds about
+twenty more passages in which [Greek: teuchea] include corslets. Among
+these references two are from the _Doloneia_ (X. 254, 272), where
+Reichel finds no mention of corslets. How Robert can tell [Greek:
+teuchea], which mean corslets, from [Greek: teuchea], which exclude
+corslets, is not obvious. But, at all events, he does see corslets, as
+in VII. 122, where Reichel sees none, [Footnote: Robert, _Studien zur
+Ilias_, pp. 20-21.] and he is obviously right.
+
+It is a strong point with Mr. Leaf that "we never hear of the corslet in
+the case of Aias...." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 576.] Robert,
+however, like ourselves, detects the corslet among "_al_ the [Greek:
+teuchea]" which Aias puts on for his duel with Hector (Iliad, VII. 193,
+206-207).
+
+In the same Book (VII. 101-103, 122) the same difficulty occurs.
+Menelaus offers to fight Hector, and says, "I will put on my harness"
+[Greek: thooraxomai], and does "put on his fair pieces of armour"
+[Greek: teuchea kala], Agamemnon forbids him to fight, and his friends
+"joyfully take his pieces of armour" [Greek: teuchea] "from his
+shoulders" (_Iliad_, VII. 206-207). They take off pieces of armour, in
+the plural, and a shield cannot be spoken of in the plural; while the
+sword would not be taken off--it was worn even in peaceful costume.
+
+Idomeneus is never named as wearing a corslet, but he remarks that he
+has plenty of corslets (XIII. 264); and in this and many cases opponents
+of corslets prove their case by cutting out the lines which disprove it.
+Anything may be demonstrated if we may excise whatever passage does
+not suit our hypothesis. It is impossible to argue against this logical
+device, especially when the critic, not satisfied with a clean cut,
+supposes that some late enthusiast for corslets altered the prayer of
+Thetis to Hephaestus for the very purpose of dragging in a corslet.
+[Footnote: Leaf, Note to _Iliad_, xviii. 460, 461.] If there is no
+objection to a line except that a corslet occurs in it, where is the
+logic in excising the line because one happens to think that corslets
+are later than the oldest parts of the _Iliad_?
+
+Another plan is to maintain that if the poet does not in any case
+mention a corslet, there was no corslet. Thus in V. 99, an arrow strikes
+Diomede "hard by the right shoulder, the plate of the corslet." Thirteen
+lines later (V. 112, 113) "Sthenelus drew the swift shaft right through
+out of Diomede's shoulder, and the blood darted up through the pliant
+_chiton_." We do not know what the word here translated "pliant" [Greek:
+streptos] means, and Aristarchus seems to have thought it was "a coat of
+mail, chain, or scale armour." If so, here is the corslet, but in this
+case, if a corslet or jack with intertwisted small plates or scales or
+rings of bronze be meant, _gualon_ cannot mean a large "plate," as
+it does. Mr. Ridgeway says, "It seems certain that [Greek: streptos
+chitoon] means, as Aristarchus held, a shirt of mail." [Footnote: _Early
+Age of Greece_, vol. i. p, 306.] Mr. Leaf says just the reverse. As
+usual, we come to a deadlock; a clash of learned opinion. But any one
+can see that, in the space of thirteen lines, no poet or interpolator
+who wrote V. i 12, i 13 could forget that Diomede was said to be wearing
+a corslet in V. 99; and even if the poet could forget, which is out of
+the question, the editor of 540 B.C. was simply defrauding his employer,
+Piaistratus, if he did not bring a remedy for the stupid fault of the
+poet. When this or that hero is not specifically said to be wearing a
+corslet, it is usually because the poet has no occasion to mention it,
+though, as we have seen, a man is occasionally smitten, in the midriff,
+say, without any remark on the flimsy piece of mail.
+
+That corslets are usually taken for granted as present by the poet,
+even when they are not explicitly named, seems certain. He constantly
+represents the heroes as "stripping the pieces of mail" [Greek:
+teuchea], when they have time and opportunity, from fallen foes. If only
+the shield is taken, if there is nothing else in the way of bronze body
+armour to take, why have we the plural, [Greek: teuchea]? The corslet,
+as well as the shield, must be intended. The stripping is usually "from
+the shoulders," and it is "from his shoulders" that Hector hopes to
+strip the corslet of Diomede (Iliad, VIII. 195) in a passage, to be
+sure, which the critics think interpolated. However this may be, the
+stripping of the (same Greek characters), cannot be the mere seizure of
+the shield, but must refer to other pieces of armour: "all the pieces
+of armour." So other pieces of defensive armour besides the shield are
+throughout taken for granted. If they were not there they could not be
+stripped. It is the chitons that Agamemnon does something to, in the
+case of two fallen foes (_Iliad_, XI. 100), and Aristarchus thought that
+these _chitons_ were corslets. But the passage is obscure. In _Iliad_,
+XI. 373, when Diomede strips helmet from head, shield from shoulder,
+corslet from breast of Agastrophus, Reichel was for excising the
+corslet, because it was not mentioned when the hero was struck on the
+hip joint. I do not see that an inefficient corslet would protect the
+hip joint. To do that, in our eighteenth century cavalry armour, was the
+business of a _zoster_, as may be seen in a portrait of the Chevalier de
+St. George in youth. It is a thick ribbed _zoster_ that protects the hip
+joints of the king.
+
+Finally, Mr. Evans observes that the western invaders of Egypt, under
+Rameses III, are armed, on the monuments, with cuirasses formed of a
+succession of plates, "horizontal, or rising in a double curve," while
+the Enkomi ivories, already referred to, corroborate the existence
+of corslet, _zoster_, and _zoma_ as articles of defensive armour.
+[Footnote: _Journal of Anthropological Institute_, xxx. p. 213.] "Recent
+discoveries," says Mr. Evans, "thus supply a double corroboration of the
+Homeric tradition which carries back the use of the round shield and the
+cuirass or [Greek: thoraex] to the earlier epic period... With such
+a representation before us, a series of Homeric passages on which Dr.
+Reichel... has exhausted his powers of destructive criticism, becomes
+readily intelligible." [Footnote: Ibid., p. 214.]
+
+Homer, then, describes armour _later_ than that of the Mycenaean prime,
+when, as far as works of art show, only a huge leathern shield was
+carried, though the gold breastplates of the corpses in the grave
+suggest that corslets existed. Homer's men, on the other hand, have,
+at least in certain cases quoted above, large bronze-plated shields and
+bronze cuirasses of no great resisting power, perhaps in various stages
+of evolution, from the byrnie with scales or small plates of bronze to
+the breastplate and backplate, though the plates for breast and back
+certainly appear to be usually worn.
+
+It seems that some critics cannot divest themselves of the idea that
+"the original poet" of the "kernel" was contemporary with them who slept
+in the shaft graves of Mycenae, covered with golden ornaments, and that
+for body armour he only knew their monstrous shields. Mr. Leaf writes:
+"The armour of Homeric heroes corresponds closely to that of the
+Mykenaean age as we learn it from the monuments. The heroes wore no
+breastplate; their only defensive armour was the enormous Mykenaean
+shield...."
+
+This is only true if we excise all the passages which contradict the
+statement, and go on with Mr. Leaf to say, "by the seventh century B.C.,
+or thereabouts, the idea of a panoply without a breastplate had become
+absurd. By that time the epic poems had almost ceased to grow; but they
+still admitted a few minor episodes in which the round shield" (where
+(?) "and corslet played a part, as well as the interpolation of a certain
+number of lines and couplets in which the new armament was mechanically
+introduced into narratives which originally knew nothing of it."
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 568.]
+
+On the other hand, Mr. Leaf says that "the small circular shield of
+later times is unknown to Homer," with "a very few curious exceptions,"
+in which the shields are not said to be small or circular. [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. i. p, 575.]
+
+Surely this is rather arbitrary dealing! We start from our theory that
+the original poet described the armour of "the monuments" though
+_they_ are "of the prime," while he professedly lived long after the
+prime--lived in an age when there must have been changes in military
+equipment. We then cut out, as of the seventh century, whatever passages
+do not suit our theory. Anybody can prove anything by this method. We
+might say that the siege scene on the Mycenaean silver vase represents
+the Mycenaean prime, and that, as there is but one jersey among
+eight men otherwise stark naked, we must cut out seven-eighths of the
+_chitons_ in the _Iliad_, these having been interpolated by late poets
+who did not run about with nothing on. We might call the whole poem
+late, because the authors know nothing of the Mycenaean bathing-drawers
+so common on the "monuments." The argument compels Mr. Leaf to assume
+that a shield can be called [Greek: teuchea] in the plural, so, in
+_Iliad_, VII. 122, when the squires of Menelaus "take the [Greek:
+teuchea] from his shoulders," we are assured that "the shield (aspis)
+was for the chiefs alone" (we have seen that all the host of Pandarus
+wore shields), "for those who could keep a chariot to carry them, and
+squires to assist them in taking off this ponderous defence" (see VII
+122). [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 583.]
+
+We do "see VII. 122," and find that not a _single_ shield, but pieces of
+gear in the plural number were taken off Menelaus. The feeblest warrior
+without any assistance could stoop his head and put it through the belt
+of his shield, as an angler takes off his fishing creel, and there he
+was, totally disarmed. No squire was needed to disarm him, any more
+than to disarm Girard in the _Chancun de Willame_. Nobody explains why
+a shield is spoken of as a number of things, in the plural, and that
+constantly, and in lines where, if the poet means a shield, prosody
+permits him to _say_ a shield, [Greek: therapontes ap oopoon aspid
+elonto].
+
+It really does appear that Reichel's logic, his power of visualising
+simple things and processes, and his knowledge of the evolution
+of defensive armour everywhere, were not equal to his industry and
+classical erudition. Homer seems to describe what he saw: shields, often
+of great size, made of leather, plated with bronze, and suspended by
+belts; and, for body armour, feeble bronze corslets and _zosters_. There
+is nothing inconsistent in all this: there was no more reason why an
+Homeric warrior should not wear a corslet as well as a shield than there
+was reason why a mediaeval knight who carried a _targe_ should not also
+wear a hauberk, or why an Iroquois with a shield should not also
+wear his cotton or wicker-work armour. Defensive gear kept pace with
+offensive weapons. A big leather shield could keep out stone-tipped
+arrows; but as bronze-tipped arrows came in and also heavy
+bronze-pointed spears, defensive armour was necessarily strengthened;
+the shield was plated with bronze, and, if it did not exist before, the
+bronze corslet was developed.
+
+To keep out stone-tipped arrows was the business of the Mycenaean wooden
+or leather shield. "Bronze arrow-heads, so common in the _Iliad_,
+are never found," says Schuchardt, speaking of Schliemann's Mycenaean
+excavations. [Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 237.]
+
+There was thus, as far as arrows went, no reason why Mycenaean shields
+should be plated with bronze. If the piece of wood in Grave V. was a
+shield, as seems probable, what has become of its bronze plates, if it
+had any? [Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 269] Gold ornaments, which could only
+belong to shields, [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 237.] were found, but bronze
+shield plates never. The inference is certain. The Mycenaean shields
+of the prime were originally wooden or leather defences against
+stone-headed arrows. Homer's shields are bronze-plated shields to keep
+out bronze-headed or even, perhaps, iron-pointed arrows of primitive
+construction (IV. 123). Homer describes armour based on Mycenaean lines
+but developed and advanced as the means of attack improved.
+
+Where everything is so natural it seems fantastic to explain the
+circumstances by the theory that poets in a late age sometimes did
+and sometimes did not interpolate the military gear of four centuries
+posterior to the things known by the original singer. These rhapsodists,
+we reiterate, are now said to be anxiously conservative of Mycenaean
+detail and even to be deeply learned archaeologists. [Footnote: Leaf,
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 629.] At other times they are said to introduce
+recklessly part of the military gear of their own age, the corslets,
+while sternly excluding the bucklers. All depends on what the theory of
+very late developments of the Epic may happen to demand at this or that
+moment.
+
+Again, Mr. Leaf informs us that "the first rhapsodies were born in the
+bronze age, in the day of the ponderous Mycenaean shield; the last in
+the iron age, when men armed themselves with breastplate and light round
+buckler." [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. x.] We cannot guess how he
+found these things out, for corslets are as common in one "rhapsody" as
+in another when circumstances call for the mention of corslets, and
+are entirely unnamed in the Odyssey (save that the Achaeans are
+"bronze-chitoned"), while the Odyssey is alleged to be much later than
+the _Iliad_. As for "the iron age," no "rhapsodist" introduces so
+much as one iron spear point. It is argued that he speaks of bronze in
+deference to tradition. Then why does he scout tradition in the matter
+of greaves and corslets, while he sometimes actually goes behind
+tradition to find Mycenaean things unknown to the original poets?
+
+These theories appear too strangely inconsistent; really these theories
+cannot possibly be accepted. The late poets, of the theory, are in
+the iron age, and are, of course, familiar with iron weapons; yet, in
+conservative deference to tradition, they keep them absolutely out of
+their rhapsodies. They are equally familiar with bronze corslets, so,
+reckless this time of tradition, they thrust them even into rhapsodies
+which are centuries older than their own day. They are no less familiar
+with small bucklers, yet they say nothing about them and cling to
+the traditional body-covering shield. The source of the inconsistent
+theories which we have been examining is easily discovered. The scholars
+who hold these opinions see that several things in the Homeric picture
+of life are based on Mycenaean facts; for example, the size of the
+shields and their suspension by baldrics. But the scholars also do
+steadfastly believe, following the Wolfian tradition, that there could
+be no _long_ epic in the early period. Therefore the greater part, much
+the greater part of the _Iliad_, must necessarily, they say, be the work
+of continuators through several centuries. Critics are fortified in
+this belief by the discovery of inconsistencies in the Epic, which,
+they assume, can only be explained as the result of a compilation of the
+patchwork of ages. But as, on this theory, many men in many lands and
+ages made the Epic, their contributions cannot but be marked by the
+inevitable changes in manners, customs, beliefs, implements, laws,
+weapons, and so on, which could not but arise in the long process of
+time. Yet traces of change in law, religion, manners, and customs are
+scarcely, if at all, to be detected; whence it logically follows that a
+dozen generations of irresponsible minstrels and vagrant reciters were
+learned, conscientious, and staunchly conservative of the archaic tone.
+Their erudite conservatism, for example, induced them, in deference to
+the traditions of the bronze age, to describe all weapons as of bronze,
+though many of the poets were living in an age of weapons of iron. It
+also prompted them to describe all shields as made on the far-away old
+Mycenaean model, though they were themselves used to small circular
+bucklers, with a bracer and a grip, worn on the left arm.
+
+But at this point the learning and conservatism of the late poets
+deserted them, and into their new lays, also into the old lays, they
+eagerly introduced many unwarrantable corslets and greaves--things of
+the ninth to seventh centuries. We shall find Helbig stating, on the
+same page, that in the matter of usages "the epic poets shunned, as far
+as possible, all that was recent," and also that for fear of puzzling
+their military audiences they did the reverse: "they probably kept
+account of the arms and armour of their own day." [Footnote: La
+_Question Mycénienne_, p. 50. _Cf_. Note I.] Now the late poets, on
+this showing, must have puzzled warriors who used iron weapons by always
+speaking of bronze weapons. They pleased the critical warriors, on the
+other hand, by introducing the corslets and greaves which every military
+man of their late age possessed. But, again, the poets startled an
+audience which used light bucklers, worn on the left arm, by talking of
+enormous _targes_, slung round the neck.
+
+All these inconsistencies of theory follow from the assumption that the
+_Iliad_ _must_ be a hotch-potch of many ages. If we assume that, on the
+whole, it is the work of one age, we see that the poet describes the
+usages which obtained in his own day. The dead are cremated, not, as in
+the Mycenaean prime, inhumed. The shield has been strengthened to meet
+bronze, not stone-tipped, arrows by bronze plates. Corslets and greaves
+have been elaborated. Bronze, however, is still the metal for swords and
+spears, and even occasionally for tools and implements, though these are
+often of iron. In short, we have in Homer a picture of a transitional
+age of culture; we have not a medley of old and new, of obsolete and
+modern. The poets do not describe inhumation, as they should do, if they
+are conservative archaeologists. In that case, though they burn, they
+would have made their heroes bury their dead, as they did at Mycenas.
+They do not introduce iron swords and spears, as they must do, if, being
+late poets, they keep in touch with the armament of their time. If they
+speak of huge shields only because they are conservative archaeologists,
+then, on the other hand, they speak of corslets and greaves because they
+are also reckless innovators.
+
+They cannot be both at once. They are depicting a single age, a single
+"moment in culture." That age is certainly sundered from the Mycenaean
+prime by the century or two in which changing ideas led to the
+superseding of burial by burning, or it is sundered from the Mycenaean
+prime by a foreign conquest, a revolution, and the years in which the
+foreign conquerors acquired the language of their subjects.
+
+In either alternative, and one or other must be actual, there was time
+enough for many changes in the culture of the Mycenaean prime to be
+evolved. These changes, we say, are represented by the descriptions of
+culture in the Iliad. That hypothesis explains, simply and readily, all
+the facts. The other hypothesis, that the _Iliad_ was begun near the
+Mycenaean prime and was continued throughout four or five centuries,
+cannot, first, explain how the _Iliad_ was _composed_, and, next,
+it wanders among apparent contradictories and through a maze of
+inconsistencies.
+
+
+
+ THE ZOSTER, ZOMA, AND MITRE
+
+ We are far from contending that it is always possible to
+understand Homer's descriptions of defensive armour. But as we have
+never seen the actual objects, perhaps the poet's phrases were clear
+enough to his audience and are only difficult to us. I do not, for
+example, profess to be sure of what happened when Pandarus shot at
+Menelaus. The arrow lighted "where the golden buckles of the _zoster_
+were clasped, and the doubled breastplate met them. So the bitter arrow
+alighted upon the firm _zoster_; through the wrought _zoster_ it sped,
+and through the curiously wrought breastplate it pressed on, and through
+the _mitre_ he wore to shield his flesh, a barrier against darts; and
+this best shielded him, yet it passed on even through this," and grazed
+the hero's flesh (_Iliad_, IV. I 32 seq.). Menelaus next says that "the
+glistering _zoster_ in front stayed the dart, and the _zoma_ beneath,
+and the _mitrê_ that the coppersmiths fashioned" (IV. 185-187). Then the
+surgeon, Machaon, "loosed the glistering _zoster_ and the _zoma_, and
+the _mitrê_ beneath that the coppersmiths fashioned" (IV. 215, 216).
+
+Reading as a mere student of poetry I take this to mean that the corslet
+was of two pieces, fastening in the middle of the back and the middle of
+the front of a man (though Mr. Monro thinks that the plates met and the
+_zoster_ was buckled at the side); that the _zoster_, a mailed belt,
+buckled just above the place where the plates of the corslet met; that
+the arrow went through the meeting-place of the belt buckles, through
+the place where the plates of the corslet met, and then through the
+_mitrê_, a piece of bronze armour worn under the corslet, though the
+nature of this _mitrê_ and of the _zoma_ I do not know. Was the _mitrê_
+a separate article or a continuation of the breastplate, lower down,
+struck by a dropping arrow?
+
+In 1883 Mr. Leaf wrote: "I take it that the _zoma_ means the waist of
+the cuirass which is covered by the _zoster_, and has the upper edge
+of the _mitrê_ or plated apron beneath it fastened round the warrior's
+body. ... This view is strongly supported by all the archaic vase
+paintings I have been able to find." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic
+studies, vol. iv. pp. 74,75_.] We see a "corslet with a projecting rim";
+that rim is called zoma and holds the _zoster_. "The hips and upper
+part of the thighs were protected either by a belt of leather, sometimes
+plated, called the _mitrê_, or else only by the lower part of the
+_chiton_, and this corresponds exactly with Homeric description."
+[Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic_ Studies, _pp. 76, 77_.]
+
+At this time, in days before Reichel, Mr. Leaf believed in bronze
+corslets, whether of plates or plated jacks; he also believed, we have
+seen, that the huge shields, as of Aias, were survivals in poetry;
+that "Homer" saw small round bucklers in use, and supposed that the old
+warriors were muscular enough to wear circular shields as great as those
+in the vase of Aristonothos, already described. [Footnote: _Ibid., vol.
+iv p. 285_.]
+
+On the corslet, as we have seen, Mr. Leaf now writes as a disciple of
+Reichel. But as to the _mitrê_, he rejects Helbig's and Mr. Ridgeway's
+opinion that it was a band of metal a foot wide in front and very narrow
+behind. Such things have been found in Euboea and in Italy. Mr. Ridgeway
+mentions examples from Bologna, Corneto, Este, Hallstatt, and Hungary.
+[Footnote: _Early Age of Greece, p. 31 I_.] The _zoster_ is now, in
+Mr. Leaf's opinion, a "girdle" "holding up the waist-cloth (_zoma_), so
+characteristic of Mycenaean dress!" Reichel's arguments against corslets
+"militate just as strongly against the presence of such a _mitrê_, which
+is, in fact, just the lower half of a corslet.... The conclusion is that
+the metallic _mitrê_ is just as much an intruder into the armament
+of the _Epos_ as the corslet." The process of evolution was, Mr.
+Leaf suggests, first, the abandonment of the huge shield, with the
+introduction of small round bucklers in its place. Then, second, a man
+naturally felt very unprotected, and put on "the metallic _mitrê_" of
+Helbig (which covered a foot of him in front and three inches behind).
+"Only as technical skill improved could the final stage, that of the
+elaborate cuirass, be attained."
+
+This appears to us an improbable sequence of processes. While arrows
+were flying thick, as they do fly in the _Iliad_, men would not reject
+body-covering shields for small bucklers while they were still wholly
+destitute of body armour. Nor would men arm only their stomachs when,
+if they had skill enough to make a metallic _mitrê_, they could not have
+been so unskilled as to be unable to make corslets of some more or
+less serviceable type. Probably they began with huge shields, added the
+_linothorex_ (like the Iroquois cotton _thorex_), and next, as a rule,
+superseded that with the bronze _thorex_, while retaining the huge
+shield, because the bronze _thorex_ was so inadequate to its purpose of
+defence. Then, when archery ceased to be of so much importance as coming
+to the shock with heavy spears, and as the bronze _thorex_ really could
+sometimes keep out an arrow, they reduced the size of their shields, and
+retained surface enough for parrying spears and meeting point and edge
+of the sword. That appears to be a natural set of sequences, but I
+cannot pretend to guess how the corslet fastened or what the _mitrê_ and
+_zoster_ really were, beyond being guards of the stomach and lower part
+of the trunk.
+
+
+
+ HELMETS, GREAVES, SPEARS
+
+ No helmets of metal, such as Homer mentions, have been found in
+Mycenaean graves. A quantity of boars' teeth, sixty in all, were
+discovered in Grave V. and may have adorned and strengthened leather
+caps, now mouldered into dust. An ivory head from Mycenae shows a
+conical cap set with what may be boars' tusks, with a band of the same
+round the chin, and an earpiece which was perhaps of bronze? Spata and
+the graves of the lower town of Mycenae and the Enkomi ivories show
+similar headgear. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, pp. 196, 197.]
+
+This kind of cap set with boars' tusks is described in _Iliad_, Book X.,
+in the account of the hasty arraying of two spies in the night of terror
+after the defeat and retreat to the ships. The Trojan spy, Dolon, also
+wears a leather cap. The three spies put on no corslets, as far as we
+can affirm, their object being to remain inconspicuous and unburdened
+with glittering bronze greaves and corslets. The Trojan camp was
+brilliantly lit up with fires, and there may have been a moon, so the
+less bronze the better. In these circumstances alone the heroes of the
+Iliad are unequipped, certainly, with bronze helmets, corslets,
+and bronze greaves. [Dislocated Footnote: Evans, _Journal of the
+Anthropological Institute, xxx. pp._ 209-215.] [Footnote: _Iliad, X._
+255-265.]
+
+The author of Book X. is now regarded as a precise archaeologist, who
+knew that corslets and bronze helmets were not used in Agamemnon's time,
+but that leather caps with boars' tusks were in fashion; while again, as
+we shall see, he is said to know nothing about heroic costume (cf. The
+_Doloneia_). As a fact, he has to describe an incident which occurs
+nowhere else in Homer, though it may often have occurred in practice--a
+hurried council during a demoralised night, and the hasty arraying of
+two spies, who wish to be lightfooted and inconspicuous. The author's
+evidence as to the leather cap and its garnishing of boars' tusks
+testifies to a survival of such gear in an age of bronze battle-helmets,
+not to his own minute antiquarian research.
+
+
+
+ GREAVES
+
+ Bronze greaves are not found, so far, in Mycenaean tombs in
+Greece, and Reichel argued that the original Homer knew none. The
+greaves, [Greek: kunmides] "were gaiters of stuff or leather"; the one
+mention of bronze greaves is stuff and nonsense interpolated (VII. 41).
+But why did men who were interpolating bronze corslets freely introduce
+bronze so seldom, if at all, as the material of greaves?
+
+Bronze greaves, however, have been found in a Cypro-Mycenaean grave at
+Enkomi (Tomb XV.), _accompanied_ by _an early type_ of _bronze_ dagger,
+while bronze greaves adorned with Mycenaean ornament are discovered in
+the Balkan peninsula at Glassinavç. [Footnote: Evans, _Journal of the
+Anthropological Institute,_ pp. 214, 215, figs. 10, 11.] Thus all Homer's
+description of arms is here corroborated by archaeology, and cannot be
+cut out by what Mr. Evans calls "the Procrustean method" of Dr. Reichel.
+
+A curious feature about the spear may be noticed. In Book X. while the
+men of Diomede slept, "their spears were driven into the ground erect
+on the spikes of the butts" (X. 153). Aristotle mentions that this was
+still the usage of the Illyrians in his day. [Footnote: _Poctica_,
+25.] Though the word for the spike in the butt (_sauroter_) does not
+elsewhere occur in the _Iliad_, the practice of sticking the spears
+erect in the ground during a truce is mentioned in III. 135: "They lean
+upon their shields" (clearly large high shields), "and the tall spears
+are planted by their sides." No butt-spikes have been found in graves of
+the Mycenaean prime. The _sauroter_ was still used, or still existed, in
+the days of Herodotus. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 205; Ridgeway,
+vol. i. pp. 306, 307.]
+
+On the whole, Homer does not offer a medley of the military gear of
+four centuries--that view we hope to have shown to be a mass of
+inconsistencies--but describes a state of military equipment in advance
+of that of the most famous Mycenaean graves, but other than that of the
+late "warrior vase." He is also very familiar with some uses of iron, of
+which, as we shall see, scarcely any has been found in Mycenaean graves
+of the central period, save in the shape of rings. Homer never mentions
+rings of any metal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+BRONZE AND IRON
+
+Taking the Iliad and Odyssey just as they have reached us they give,
+with the exception of one line, an entirely harmonious account of the
+contemporary uses of bronze and iron. Bronze is employed in the making
+of weapons and armour (with cups, ornaments, &c.); iron is employed
+(and bronze is also used) in the making of tools and implements, such
+as knives, axes, adzes, axles of a chariot (that of Hera; mortals use
+an axle tree of oak), and the various implements of agricultural and
+pastoral life. Meanwhile, iron is a substance perfectly familiar to the
+poets; it is far indeed from being a priceless rarity (it is impossible
+to trace Homeric stages of advance in knowledge of iron), and it yields
+epithets indicating strength, permanence, and stubborn endurance. These
+epithets are more frequent in the Odyssey and the "later" Books of the
+Iliad than in the "earlier" Books of the Iliad; but, as articles made
+of iron, the Odyssey happens to mention only one set of axes, which is
+spoken of ten times--axes and adzes as a class--and "iron bonds," where
+"iron" probably means "strong," "not to be broken." [Footnote: In these
+circumstances, it is curious that Mr. Monro should have written thus:
+"In Homer, as is well known, iron is rarely mentioned in comparison
+with bronze, but the proportion is greater in the Odyssey (25 iron, 80
+bronze) than in the Iliad" (23 iron, 279 bronze).--Monro, Odyssey, vol.
+ii. p. 339. These statistics obviously do not prove that, at the date
+of the composition of the Odyssey, the use of iron was becoming more
+common, or that the use of bronze was becoming more rare, than when the
+_Iliad_ was put together. Bronze is, in the poems, the military metal:
+the _Iliad_ is a military poem, while the _Odyssey_ is an epic of peace;
+consequently the _Iliad_ is much more copious in references to bronze
+than the _Odyssey_ has any occasion to be. Wives are far more frequently
+mentioned in the Odyssey than in the _Iliad_, but nobody will argue that
+therefore marriage had recently come more into vogue. Again, the method
+of counting up references to iron in the Odyssey is quite misleading,
+when we remember that ten out of the twenty references are only _one_
+reference to one and the same set of iron tools-axes. Mr. Monro also
+proposed to leave six references to iron in the _Iliad_ out of the
+reckoning, "as all of them are in lines which can be omitted without
+detriment to the sense." Most of the six are in a recurrent epic formula
+descriptive of a wealthy man, who possesses iron, as well as bronze,
+gold, and women. The existence of the formula proves familiarity with
+iron, and to excise it merely because it contradicts a theory is purely
+arbitrary.--Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 339.]. The statement of facts
+given here is much akin to Helbig's account of the uses of bronze and
+iron in Homer. [Footnote: Helbig, _Das Homerischi Epos_, pp. 330, 331.
+_1887_.] Helbig writes: "It is notable that in the Epic there is much
+more frequent mention of iron _implements_ than of iron _weapons of
+war_." He then gives examples, which we produce later, and especially
+remarks on what Achilles says when he offers a mass of iron as a prize
+in the funeral games of Patroclus. The iron, says Achilles, will serve
+for the purposes of the ploughman and shepherd, "a surprising speech
+from the son of Peleus, from whom we rather expect an allusion to the
+military uses of the metal." Of course, if iron weapons were not in
+vogue while iron was the metal for tools and implements, the words of
+Achilles are appropriate and intelligible.
+
+The facts being as we and Helbig agree in stating them, we suppose that
+the Homeric poets sing of the usages of their own time. It is an age
+when iron, though quite familiar, is not yet employed for armour, or
+for swords or spears, which must be of excellent temper, without great
+weight in proportion to their length and size. Iron is only employed in
+Homer for some knives, which are never said to be used in battle
+(not even for dealing the final stab, like the mediaeval poniard, the
+_miséricorde_), for axes, which have a short cutting edge, and may be
+thick and weighty behind the edge, and for the rough implements of the
+shepherd and ploughman, such as tips of ploughshares, of goads, and so
+forth.
+
+As far as archaeological excavations and discoveries enlighten us, these
+relative uses of bronze and iron did not exist in the ages of Mycenaean
+culture which are represented in the _tholos_ of Vaphio and the graves,
+earlier and later, of Mycenae. Even in the later Mycenaean graves iron
+is found only in the form of finger rings (iron rings were common in
+late Greece). [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, pp. 72, 146, 165.] Iron
+was scarce in the Cypro-Mycenaean graves of Enkomi. A small knife with
+a carved handle had left traces of an iron blade. A couple of lumps
+of iron, one of them apparently the head of a club, were found
+in Schliemann's "Burned City" at Hissarlik; for the rest, swords,
+spear-heads, knives, and axes are all of bronze in the age called
+"Mycenaean." But we do not know whether iron _implements_ may not yet
+be found in the sepulchres of _Thetes_, and other poor and landless
+men. The latest discoveries in Minoan graves in Crete exhibit tools of
+bronze.
+
+Iron, we repeat, is in the poems a perfectly familiar metal. Ownership
+of "bronze, gold, and iron, which requires much labour" (in the
+smithying or smelting), appears regularly in the recurrent epic formula
+for describing a man of wealth. [Footnote: _Iliad_, VI. 48; IX. 365-366;
+X. 379; XI. 133; _Odyssey_, XIV. 324; XXI. 10.] Iron, bronze, slaves,
+and hides are bartered for sea-borne wine at the siege of Troy?
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, VII. 472-475.] Athene, disguised as Mentes, is
+carrying a cargo of iron to Temesa (Tamasus in Cyprus?), to barter for
+copper. The poets are certainly not describing an age in which only a
+man of wealth might indulge in the rare and extravagant luxury of an
+iron ring: iron was a common commodity, like cattle, hides, slaves,
+bronze, and other such matters. Common as it was, Homer never once
+mentions its use for defensive armour, or for swords and spears.
+
+Only in two cases does Homer describe any weapon as of iron. There is to
+be sure the "iron," the knife with which Antilochus fears Achilles will
+cut his own throat. [Footnote: _Iliad_ XVIII. 34.] But no knife is ever
+used as a weapon of war: knives are employed in cutting the throats of
+victims (see _Iliad_, III. 271 and XXIII. 30); the knife is said to be
+of iron, in this last passage; also Patroclus uses the knife to cut the
+arrow-head out of the flesh of a wounded friend. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XI.
+844.] It is the _knife_ of Achilles that is called "the iron," and on
+"the iron" perish the cattle in _Iliad_, XXIII. 30. Mr. Leaf says that
+by "the usual use, the metal" (iron) "is confined to tools of small
+size." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, xxiii. 30, Note.] This is incorrect;
+the Odyssey speaks of _great axes_ habitually made of iron. [Footnote:
+Odyssey, IX. 391.] But we do find a knife of bronze, that of Agamemnon,
+used in sacrificing victims; at least so I infer from Iliad, III.
+271-292.
+
+The only two specimens of _weapons_ named by Homer as of iron are one
+arrow-head, used by Pandarus, [Footnote: _Iliad_, IV. 123.] and one
+mace, borne, before Nestor's time, by Areithöus. To fight with an iron
+mace was an amiable and apparently unique eccentricity of Areithbus, and
+caused his death. On account of his peculiar practice he was named "The
+Mace man." [Footnote: Iliad, VII. 141.] The case is mentioned by Nestor
+as curious and unusual.
+
+ Mr. Leaf gets rid of this solitary iron _casse tête_ in a
+pleasant way. Since he wrote his _Companion to the Iliad_, 1902, he has
+become converted, as we saw, to the theory, demolished by Mr. Monro,
+Nutzhorn, and Grote, and denounced by Blass, that the origin of our
+Homer is a text edited by some literary retainer of Pisistratus of
+Athens (about 560-540 B.C.). The editor arranged current lays, "altered"
+freely, and "wrote in" as much as he pleased. Probably he wrote this
+passage in which Nestor describes the man of the iron mace, for "the
+tales of Nestor's youthful exploits, all of which bear the mark of late
+work, are introduced with no special applicability to the context, but
+rather with the intention of glorifying the ancestor of Pisistratus."
+[Footnote: Iliad (1900), VII. 149, Note.] If Pisistratus was pleased
+with the ancestral portrait, nobody has a right to interfere, but we
+need hardly linger over this hypothesis (cf. pp. 281-288).
+
+ Iron axes are offered as prizes by Achilles, [Footnote: Iliad,
+XXIII. 850.] and we have the iron axes of Odysseus, who shot an arrow
+through the apertures in the blades, at the close of the Odyssey.
+But all these axes, as we shall show, were not weapons, but _peaceful
+implements_.
+
+ As a matter of certain fact the swords and spears of Homer's
+warriors are invariably said by the poet to be of bronze, not of iron,
+in cases where the metal of the weapons is specified.
+
+Except for an arrow-head (to which we shall return) and the one iron
+mace, noted as an eccentricity, no weapon in Homer is ever said to be of
+iron.
+
+The richest men use swords of bronze. Not one chooses to indulge in a
+sword said to be of iron. The god, Hephaestus, makes a bronze sword for
+Achilles, whose own bronze sword was lent to Patroclus, and lost by
+him to Hector. [Footnote: _Iliad_ XVI. 136; XIX. 372-373.] This bronze
+sword, at least, Achilles uses, after receiving the divine armour of the
+god. The sword of Paris is of bronze, as is the sword of Odysseus in the
+Odyssey. [Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 334-335] Bronze is the sword which he
+brought from Troy, and bronze is the sword presented to him by Euryalus
+in Phaeacia, and bronze is the spear with which he fought under the
+walls of Ilios. [Footnote: _Odyssey_, X. 162, 261-262] There are other
+examples of bronze swords, while spears are invariably said to be of
+bronze, when the metal of the spear is specified.
+
+Here we are on the ground of solid certainty: we see that the Homeric
+warrior has regularly spear and sword of bronze. If any man used a spear
+or sword of iron, Homer never once mentions the fact. If the poets,
+in an age of iron weapons, always spoke of bronze, out of deference to
+tradition, they must have puzzled their iron-using military patrons.
+
+Thus, as regards weapons, the Homeric heroes are in the age of bronze,
+like them who slept in the tombs of the Mycenaean age. When Homer speaks
+of the use of cutting instruments of iron, he is always concerned,
+except in the two cases given, not with [blank space] but with
+_implements_, which really were of iron. The wheelwright fells a tree
+"with the iron," that is, with an axe; Antilochus fears that Achilles
+"will cut his own throat with the iron," that is, with his knife, a
+thing never used in battle; the cattle struggle when slain with "the
+iron," that is, the butcher's knife; and Odysseus shoots "through
+the iron," that is, through the holes in the blade of the iron axes.
+[Footnote: For this peculiar kind of Mycenaean axe with holes in the
+blade, see the design of a bronze example from Vaphio in Tsountas and
+Manatt, _The Mycenaean Age_, p. 207, fig. 94.] Thus Homer never says
+that this or that was done "with the iron" in the case of any but one
+weapon of war. Pandarus "drew the bow-string to his breast and to the
+bow." [Footnote: Iliad, W. 123.] Whoever wrote that line was writing
+in an age, we may think, when arrow-heads were commonly of iron; but in
+Homer, when the metal of the arrow-head is mentioned, except, in this
+one case, it is always bronze. The iron arrow-tip of Pandarus was of an
+early type, the shaft did not run into the socket of the arrow-head; the
+tang of the arrow-head, on the other hand, entered the shaft, and was
+whipped on with sinew. [_Iliad_, IV. 151.] Pretty primitive this method,
+still the iron is an advance on the uniform bronze of Homer. The line
+about Pandarus and the iron arrow-head may really be early enough, for
+the arrow-head is of a primitive kind--socketless--and primitive is
+the attitude of the archer: he "drew the arrow to his breast." On the
+Mycenaean silver bowl, representing a siege, the archers draw to the
+breast, in the primitive style, as does the archer on the bronze dagger
+with a representation of a lion hunt. The Assyrians and Khita drew
+to the ear, as the monuments prove, and so does the "Cypro-Mycenaean"
+archer of the ivory draught-box from Enkomi. [Footnote: Evans,
+Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxx. p. 210.] In
+these circumstances we cannot deny that the poet may have known iron
+arrow-heads.
+
+We now take the case of axes. We never hear from Homer of the use of
+an iron axe in battle, and warlike use of an axe only occurs twice. In
+_Iliad_, XV. 711, in a battle at and on the ships, "they were fighting
+with sharp axes and battle-axes" ([Greek text: axinai]) "and with great
+swords, and spears armed at butt and tip." At and on the ships, men
+would set hand to whatever tool of cutting edge was accessible. Seiler
+thinks that only the Trojans used the battle-axe; perhaps for damaging
+the ships: he follows the scholiast. [Greek text: Axinae], however,
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, XIII. 611.] may perhaps be rendered "battle-axe," as
+a Trojan, Peisandros, fights with an [Greek text: Axinae], and this is
+the only place in the _Iliad_, except XV. 711, where the thing is said
+to be used as a weapon. But it is not an _iron_ axe; it is "of fine
+bronze." Only one bronze _battle-axe_, according to Dr. Joseph Anderson,
+is known to have been found in Scotland, though there are many bronze
+heads of axes which were tools.
+
+Axes ([Greek text: pelekeis]) were _implements_, tools of the carpenter,
+woodcutter, shipwright, and so on; they were not weapons of war of the
+Achaeans.
+
+As implements they are, with very rare exceptions, of iron. The
+wheelwright fells trees "with the gleaming iron," iron being a synonym
+for axe and for knife. [Footnote: _Iliad_, IV. 485] In _Iliad_, XIII.
+391, the shipwrights cut timber with axes. In _Iliad_, XXIII. 114,
+woodcutters' axes are employed in tree-felling, but the results are
+said to be produced [Greek text: tanaaekei chalcho], "by the long-edged
+bronze," where the word [Greek text: tanaaekaes] is borrowed from the
+usual epithet of swords; "the long edge" is quite inappropriate to a
+woodcutter's axe. On Calypso's isle Calypso gives to Odysseus a bronze
+axe for his raft-making. Butcher's work is done with an axe. [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, XVII. 520; Odyssey, III. 442-449.] The axes offered by Achilles
+as a prize for archers and the axes through which Odysseus shot are
+_implements_ of iron. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XXIII. 850; Odyssey, XXI. 3,
+81, 97.]
+
+In the Odyssey, when the poet describes the process of tempering iron,
+we read, "as when a smith dips a great axe or an adze in chill water,
+for thus men temper iron." [Footnote: Odyssey, IX. 391-393.] He is not
+using iron to make a sword or spear, but a tool-adze or axe. The poet is
+perfectly consistent. There are also examples both of bronze axes
+and, apparently, of bronze knives. Thus, though the woodcutter's or
+carpenter's axe is of bronze in two passages cited, iron is the usual
+material of the axe or adze. Again we saw, when Achilles gives a mass of
+iron as a prize in the games, he does not mean the armourer to fashion
+it into sword or spear, but says that it will serve the shepherd or
+ploughman for domestic implements, [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_ (1902),
+XXIII. line 30, Note.] so that the men need not, on an upland farm, go
+to the city for iron implements. In commenting upon this Mr. Leaf is
+scarcely at the proper point of view. He says, [Footnote: _Iliad_,
+XXIII. 835, Note.] "the idea of a state of things when the ploughman and
+shepherd forge their own tools from a lump of raw iron has a suspicious
+appearance of a deliberate attempt to represent from the inner
+consciousness an archaic state of civilisation. In Homeric times the
+[Greek: chalceus] is already specialised as a worker in metals...."
+However, Homer does not say that the ploughman and shepherd "forge their
+own tools." A Homeric chief, far from a town, would have his own smithy,
+just as the laird of Runraurie (now Urrard) had his smithy at the
+time of the battle of Killicrankie (1689). Mackay's forces left their
+_impedimenta_ "at the laird's smithy," says an eye-witness. [Footnote:
+Napier's _Life_ Of _Dundee_, iii. p. 724.]
+
+The idea of a late Homeric poet trying to reconstruct from his fancy
+a prehistoric state of civilisation is out of the question. Even
+historical novelists of the eighteenth century A.D. scarcely attempted
+such an effort.
+
+This was the regular state of things in the Highlands during the
+eighteenth century, when many chiefs, and most of the clans, lived far
+from any town. But these rural smiths did not make sword-blades, which
+Prince Charles, as late as 1750, bought on the Continent. The
+Andrea Ferrara-marked broadsword blades of the clans were of foreign
+manufacture. The Highland smiths did such rough iron work as was needed
+for rural purposes. Perhaps the Homeric chief may have sometimes been
+a craftsman like the heroes of the Sagas, great sword-smiths. Odysseus
+himself, notably an excellent carpenter, may have been as good a
+sword-smith, but every hero was not so accomplished.
+
+In searching with microscopes for Homeric discrepancies and
+interpolations, critics are apt to forget the ways of old rural society.
+
+The Homeric poems, whether composed in one age or throughout five
+centuries, are thus entirely uniform in allotting bronze as the
+material for all sorts of warlike gear, down to the solitary battle-axe
+mentioned; and iron as the usual metal for heavy tools, knives,
+carpenters' axes, adzes, and agricultural implements, with the rare
+exceptions which we have cited in the case of bronze knives and axes.
+Either this distinction--iron for tools and implements; bronze for
+armour, swords, and spears--prevailed throughout the period of the
+Homeric poets or poet; or the poets invented such a stage of culture; or
+poets, some centuries later, deliberately kept bronze for weapons only,
+while introducing iron for implements. In that case they were showing
+archaeological conscientiousness in following the presumed earlier poets
+of the bronze age, the age of the Mycenaean graves.
+
+Now early poets are never studious archaeologists. Examining the [blank
+space] certainly based on old lays and legends which survive in
+the Edda, we find that the poets of the _Nibelungenlied_ introduce
+chivalrous and Christian manners. They do not archaeologise. The poets
+of the French _Chansons de Geste_ (eleventh to thirteenth centuries)
+bring their own weapons, and even armorial bearings, into the 'remote
+age of Charlemagne, which they know from legends and _cantilènes_.
+Again, the later _remanieurs_ of the earliest _Chansons de Geste_
+modernise the details of these poems. But, _per impossibile_, and
+for the sake of argument, suppose that the later interpolators and
+continuators of the Homeric lays were antiquarian precisians, or, on
+the other hand, "deliberately attempted to reproduce from their inner
+consciousness an archaic state of civilisation." Suppose that, though
+they lived in an age of iron weapons, they knew, as Hesiod knew, that
+the old heroes "had warlike gear of bronze, and ploughed with bronze,
+and there was no black iron." [Footnote: Hesiod, _Works and Days_, pp.
+250, 251.] In that case, why did the later interpolating poets introduce
+iron as the special material of tools and implements, knives and axes,
+in an age when they knew that there was no iron? Savants such as, by
+this theory, the later poets of the full-blown age of iron were, they
+must have known that the knives and axes of the old heroes were made of
+bronze. In old votive offerings in temples and in any Mycenaean graves
+which might be opened, the learned poets of 800-600 B.C. saw with their
+eyes knives and axes of bronze. [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i.
+413-416.] The knife of Agamemnon ([Greek: machaira]), which hangs from
+his girdle, beside his sword, [Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 271; XIX. 252.]
+corresponds to the knives found in Grave IV. at Mycenae; the handles of
+these dirks have a ring for suspension. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt,
+p. 204.] But these knives, in Mycenaean graves, are of bronze, and of
+bronze are the axes in the Mycenaean deposits and the dagger of Enkomi.
+[Footnote: _Ibid._, pp. 145, 207, 208, 256. _Evans, Journal of the
+Anthropological Institute_, vol xxx. p, 214.]
+
+Why, then, did the late poetic interpolators, who knew that the spears
+and swords of the old warriors were of bronze, and who describe them as
+of bronze, not know that their knives and axes were also of bronze? Why
+did they describe the old knives and axes as of iron, while Hesiod knew,
+and could have told them--did tell them, in fact--that they were of
+bronze? Clearly the theory that Homeric poets were archaeological
+precisians is impossible. They describe arms as of bronze, tools usually
+as of iron, because they see them to be such in practice.
+
+The poems, in fact, depict a very extraordinary condition of affairs,
+such as no poets could invent and adhere to with uniformity. We are
+accustomed in archaeology to seeing the bronze sword pass by a gradual
+transition into the iron sword; but, in Homer, people with abundance of
+iron never, in any one specified case, use iron sword blades or spears.
+The greatest chiefs, men said to be rich in gold and iron, always use
+swords and spears of _bronze_ in _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.
+
+The usual process of transition from bronze to iron swords, in a
+prehistoric European age, is traced by Mr. Ridgeway at Hallstatt, "in
+the heart of the Austrian Alps," where a thousand old graves have been
+explored. The swords pass from bronze to iron with bronze hilts, and,
+finally, are wholly of iron. Weapons of bronze are fitted with
+iron edges. Axes of iron were much more common than axes of bronze.
+[Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i. 413-416.] The axes were fashioned
+in the old shapes of the age of bronze, were not of the _bipennis_
+Mycenaean model--the double axe--nor of the shape of the letter D, very
+thick, with two round apertures in the blade, like the bronze axe of
+Vaphio. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. 176.] Probably the axes
+through which Odysseus shot an arrow were of this kind, as Mr. Monro,
+and, much earlier, Mr. Butcher and I have argued. [Footnote: _Ibid_.
+(1901), vol. ii. Book XIX. line 572. Note. Butcher and Lang, Odyssey,
+Appendix (1891).]
+
+At Hallstatt there was the _normal_ evolution from bronze swords and
+axes to iron swords and axes. Why, then, had Homer's men in his time not
+made this step, seeing that they were familiar with the use of iron? Why
+do they use bronze for swords and spears, iron for tools? The obvious
+answer is that they could temper bronze for military purposes much
+better than they could temper iron. Now Mr. Ridgeway quotes Polybius
+(ii. 30; ii. 33) for the truly execrable quality of the iron of the
+Celtic invaders of Italy as late as 225 B.C. Their swords were as bad
+as, or worse than, British bayonets; they _always_ "doubled up." "Their
+long iron swords were easily bent, and could only give one downward
+stroke with any effect; but after this the edges got so turned and the
+blades so bent that, unless they had time to straighten them with
+the foot against the ground, they could not deliver a second blow."
+[Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. 408.] If the heroes in Homer's
+time possessed iron as badly tempered as that of the Celts of 225 B.C.,
+they had every reason to prefer, as they did, excellent bronze for all
+their military weapons, while reserving iron for pacific purposes. A
+woodcutter's axe might have any amount of weight and thickness of iron
+behind the edge; not so a sword blade or a spear point. [Footnote:
+Monsieur Salomon Reinach suggests to me that the story of Polybius may
+be a myth. Swords and spear-heads in graves are often found doubled up;
+possibly they are thus made dead, like the owner, and their spirits are
+thus set free to be of use to his spirit. Finding doubled up iron swords
+in Celtic graves, the Romans, M. Beinach suggests, may have explained
+their useless condition by the theory that they doubled up in battle,
+leaving their owners easy victims, and this myth was accepted as fact
+by Polybius. But he was not addicted to myth, nor very remote from the
+events which he chronicles. Again, though bronze grave-weapons in our
+Museum are often doubled up, the myth is not told of the warriors of the
+age of bronze. We later give examples of the doubling up, in battle, of
+Scandinavian iron swords as late as 1000 A.D.]
+
+In the _Iliad_ we hear of swords breaking at the hilt in dealing a
+stroke at shield or helmet, a thing most incident to bronze swords,
+especially of the early type, with a thin bronze tang inserted in a
+hilt of wood, ivory, or amber, or with a slight shelf of the bronze hilt
+riveted with three nails on to the bronze blade.
+
+Lycaon struck Peneleos on the socket of his helmet crest, "and his sword
+brake at the hilt." [Footnote: _Iliad_, XVI. 339.] The sword of Menelaus
+broke into three or four pieces when he smote the helmet ridge of Paris.
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 349, 380.] Iron of the Celtic sort described by
+Polybius would have bent, not broken. There is no doubt on that head:
+if Polybius is not romancing, the Celtic sword of 225 B.C. doubled up at
+every stroke, like a piece of hoop iron. But Mr. Leaf tells us that, "by
+primitive modes of smelting," iron is made "hard and brittle, like cast
+iron." If so, it would be even less trustworthy for a sword than bronze.
+[Footnote: _Iliad_ (1900), Book VI, line 48, Note.] Perhaps the Celts
+of 225 B.C. did not smelt iron by primitive methods, but discovered some
+process for making it not hard and brittle, but flabby.
+
+The swords of the Mycenaean graves, we know, were all of bronze, and,
+in three intaglios on rings from the graves, the point, not the edge, is
+used, [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 199.] once against a lion, once
+over the rim of a shield which covers the whole body of an enemy, and
+once at too close quarters to permit the use of the edge. It does not
+follow from these three cases (as critics argue) that no bronze sword
+could be used for a swashing blow, and there are just half as many
+thrusts as strokes with the bronze sword in the _Iliad_. [Footnote:
+Twenty-four cuts to eleven lunges, in the _Iliad_.] As the poet
+constantly dwells on the "long edge" of the _bronze_ swords and makes
+heroes use both point and edge, how can we argue that Homeric swords
+were of iron and ill fitted to give point? The Highlanders at Clifton
+(1746) were obliged, contrary to their common practice, to use the point
+against Cumberland's dragoons. They, like the Achaeans, had heavy cut
+and thrust swords, but theirs were of steel.
+
+If the Achaeans had thoroughly excellent bronze, and had iron as bad as
+that of the Celts a thousand years later, their preference for bronze
+over iron for weapons is explained. In Homer the fighters do not very
+often come to sword strokes; they fight mainly with the spear, except
+in pursuit, now and then. But when they do strike, they cleave heads and
+cut off arms. They could not do this with bronze rapiers, such as those
+with which men give point over the rim of the shield on two Mycenaean
+gems. But Mr. Myres writes, "From the shaft graves (of Mycenae) onwards
+there are two types of swords in the Mycenaean world--one an exaggerated
+dagger riveted into the front end of the hilt, the other with a flat
+flanged tang running the whole length of the hilt, and covered on either
+face by ornamental grip plates riveted on. This sword, though still of
+bronze, can deal a very effective cut; and, as the Mycenaeans had no
+armour for body or head," (?) "the danger of breaking or bending the
+sword on a cuirass or helmet did not arise." [Footnote: _Classical
+Review_, xvi. 72.] The danger did exist in Homer's time, as we have
+seen. But a bronze sword, published by Tsountas and Manatt (_Mycenaean
+Age_, p. 199, fig. 88), is emphatically meant to give both point and
+edge, having a solid handle--a continuation of the blade--and a very
+broad blade, coming to a very fine point. Even in Grave V. at Mycenae,
+we have a sword blade so massive at the top that it was certainly
+capable of a swashing blow. [Footnote: Schuchardt, _Schliemann's
+Excavations_, p. _265, fig._ 269.] The sword of the charioteer on the
+_stêlê_ of Grave V. is equally good for cut and thrust. A pleasanter cut
+and thrust bronze sword than the one found at Ialysus no gentleman could
+wish to handle. [Footnote: Furtwängler und Loeschke, _Myk. Va._ Taf.
+D.] Homer, in any case, says that his heroes used bronze swords, well
+adapted to strike. If his age had really good bronze, and iron as bad as
+that of the Celts of Polybius, a thousand years later, their preference
+of bronze over iron for weapons needs no explanation. If their iron
+was not so bad as that of the Celts, their military conservatism might
+retain bronze for weapons, while in civil life they often used iron for
+implements.
+
+The uniform evidence of the Homeric poems can only be explained on the
+supposition that men had plenty of iron; but, while they used it for
+implements, did not yet, with a natural conservatism, trust life and
+victory to iron spears and swords. Unluckily, we cannot test the
+temper of the earliest known iron swords found in Greece, for rust hath
+consumed them, and I know not that the temper of the Mycenaean bronze
+swords has been tested against helmets of bronze. I can thus give no
+evidence from experiment.
+
+There is just one line in Homer which disregards the distinction--iron
+for implements, bronze for weapons; it is in _Odyssey_, XVI. 294; XIX.
+13. Telemachus is told to remove the warlike harness of Odysseus from
+the hall, lest the wooers use it in the coming fray. He is to explain
+the removal by saying that it has been done, "Lest you fall to strife in
+your cups, and harm each other, and shame the feast, and _this_ wooing;
+_for iron of himself draweth a man to him_." The proverb is manifestly
+of an age when iron was almost universally used for weapons, and thus
+was, as in Thucydides, synonymous with all warlike gear; but throughout
+the poems no single article of warlike gear is of iron except one
+eccentric mace and one arrow-head of primitive type. The line in the
+Odyssey must therefore be a very late addition; it may be removed
+without injuring the sense of the passage in which it occurs. [Footnote:
+This fact, in itself, is of course no proof of interpolation. _Cf._
+Helbig, _op_. cit., p. 331. He thinks the line very late.] If, on the
+other hand, the line be as old as the oldest parts of the poem, the
+author for once forgets his usual antiquarian precision.
+
+We are thus led to the conclusion that either there was in early Greece
+an age when weapons were all of bronze while implements were often
+of iron, or that the poet, or crowd of poets, invented that state of
+things. Now early poets never invent in this way; singing to an audience
+of warriors, critical on such a point, they speak of what the warriors
+know to be actual, except when, in a recognised form of decorative
+exaggeration, they introduce
+
+     "Masts of the beaten gold
+      And sails of taffetie."
+
+Our theory is, then, that in the age when the Homeric poems were
+composed, iron, though well known, was on its probation. Men of the
+sword preferred bronze for all their military purposes, just as
+fifteenth-century soldiers found the long-bow and cross-bow much more
+effective than guns, or as the Duke of Wellington forbade the arming of
+all our men with rifles in place of muskets ... for reasons not devoid
+of plausibility.
+
+Sir John Evans supposes that, in the seventh century, the Carian and
+Ionian invaders of Egypt were still using offensive arms of bronze, not
+of iron. [Footnote: Ancient _Bronze Implements_, p. 8 (1881), citing
+Herodotus, ii. c. 112. Sir John is not sure that Achaean spear-heads
+were not of copper, for they twice double up against a shield. _Iliad_,
+III. 348; VII. 259; Evans, p. 13.] Sir John remarks that "for a
+considerable time after the Homeric period, bronze remained in use for
+offensive weapons," especially for "spears, lances, and arrows."
+Hesiod, quite unlike his contemporaries, the "later" poets of Iliad
+and _Odyssey_, gives to Heracles an iron helmet and sword. [Footnote:
+_Scutum Herculis_, pp. 122-138.] Hesiod knew better, but was not a
+consistent archaiser. Sir John thinks that as early as 500 or even 600
+B.C. iron and steel were in common use for weapons in Greece, but
+not yet had they altogether superseded bronze battle-axes and spears.
+[Footnote: Evans, p. 18.] By Sir John's showing, iron for offensive
+weapons superseded bronze very slowly indeed in Greece; and, if my
+argument be correct, it had not done so when the Homeric poems were
+composed. Iron merely served for utensils, and the poems reflect that
+stage of transition which no poet could dream of inventing.
+
+These pages had been written before my attention was directed to M.
+Bérard's book, _Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssée_ (Paris, 1902). M. Bérard
+has anticipated and rather outrun my ideas. "I might almost say," he
+remarks, "that iron is the popular metal, native and rustic... the
+shepherd and ploughman can extract and work it without going to the
+town." The chief's smith could work iron, if he had iron to work, and
+this iron Achilles gave as a prize. "With rustic methods of working it
+iron is always impure; it has 'straws' in it, and is brittle. It may be
+the metal for peace and for implements. In our fields we see the reaper
+sit down and repair his sickle. In war is needed a metal less hard,
+perhaps, but more tough and not so easily broken. You cannot sit down
+in the field of battle, as in a field of barley, to beat your sword
+straight...." [Footnote: Bérard, i. 435.]
+
+So the Celts found, if we believe Polybius.
+
+On the other hand, iron swords did supersede bronze swords in the long
+run. Apparently they had not done so in the age of the poet, but iron
+had certainly ceased to be "a precious metal"; knives and woodcutters'
+axes are never made of a metal that is precious and rare. I am thus led,
+on a general view, to suppose that the poems took shape when iron was
+very well known, but was not yet, as in the "Dipylon" period in Crete,
+commonly used by sword-smiths.
+
+The ideas here stated are not unlike those of Paul Cauer. [Footnote:
+_Grundfrager des Homerkritik,_ pp. 183-187. Leipsic, 1895.] I do not,
+however, find the mentions of iron useful as a test of "early" and
+"late" lays, which it is his theory that they are. Thus he says:--
+
+(1) Iron is often mentioned as part of a man's personal property, while
+we are not told how he means to use it. It is named with bronze, gold,
+and girls. The poet has no definite picture before his eyes; he is vague
+about iron. But, we reply, his picture of iron in these passages is
+neither more nor less definite than his mental picture of the other
+commodities. He calls iron "hard to smithy," "grey," "dark-hued"; he
+knows, in fact, all about it. He does not tell us what the owner is
+going to do with the gold and the bronze and the girls, any more than he
+tells us what is to be done with the iron. Such information was rather
+in the nature of a luxury than a necessity. Every hearer knew the uses
+of all four commodities. This does not seem to have occurred to Cauer.
+
+(2) Iron is spoken of as an emblem of hard things, as, to take a modern
+example, in Mr. Swinburne's "armed and iron maidenhood "--said of
+Atalanta. Hearts are "iron," strength is "iron," flesh is not "iron," an
+"iron" noise goes up to the heaven of bronze. It may not follow, Cauer
+thinks, from these phrases that iron was used in any way. Men are
+supposed to marvel at its strange properties; it was "new and rare." I
+see no ground for this inference.
+
+(3) We have the "iron gates" of Tartarus, and the "iron bonds" in which
+Odysseus was possibly lying; it does not follow that chains or gates
+were made of iron any more than that gates were of chrysoprase in the
+days of St. John.
+
+(4) Next, we have mention of implements, not weapons, of iron--a
+remarkable trait of culture. Greek ploughs and axes were made of iron
+before spears and swords were of iron.
+
+(5) We have mention of iron weapons, namely, the unique iron mace of
+Areithous and the solitary iron arrow-head of Pandarus, and what Cauer
+calls the iron swords (more probably knives) of Achilles and others. It
+is objected to the "iron" of Achilles that Antilochus fears he will cut
+his throat with it on hearing of the death of Patroclus, while there
+is no other mention of suicide in the _Iliad_. It does not follow that
+suicide was unheard of; indeed, Achilles may be thinking of suicide
+presently, in XIII. 98, when he says to his mother: "Let me die at once,
+since it was not my lot to succour my comrade."
+
+(6) We have the iron-making spoken of in Book IX. 393 of the _Odyssey_.
+
+It does not appear to us that the use of iron as an epithet bespeaks
+an age when iron was a mysterious thing, known mainly by reputation,
+"a costly possession." The epithets "iron strength," and so on, may as
+readily be used in our own age or any other. If iron were at first a
+"precious" metal, it is odd that Homeric men first used it, as Cauer
+sees that they did, to make points to ploughshares and "tools of
+agriculture and handiwork." "Then people took to working iron for
+weapons." Just so, but we cannot divide the _Iliad_ into earlier and
+later portions in proportion to the various mentions of iron in various
+Books. These statistics are of no value for separatist purposes. It is
+impossible to believe that men when they spoke of "iron strength," "iron
+hearts," "grey iron," "iron hard to smithy," did so because iron was,
+first, an almost unknown legendary mineral, next, "a precious metal,"
+then the metal of drudgery, and finally the metal of weapons.
+
+The real point of interest is, as Cauer sees, that domestic preceded
+military uses of iron among the Achaeans. He seems, however, to think
+that the confinement of the use of bronze to weapons is a matter of
+traditional style. [Footnote: "Nur die Sprache der Dichter hielt an dem
+Gebrauch der Bronze fest, die in den Jahrhunderten, während deren der
+Epische Stil erwachsen war, allein geherrscht hatte."] But, in the early
+days of the waxing epics, tools as well as weapons were, as in Homer
+they occasionally are, of bronze. Why, then, do the supposed late
+continuators represent tools, not weapons, as of iron? Why do they not
+cleave to the traditional term--bronze--in the case of tools, as the
+same men do in the case of weapons?
+
+Helbig offers an apparently untenable explanation of this fact. He has
+proposed an interpretation of the uses of bronze and iron in the poems
+entirely different from that which I offer. [Footnote: _Sur la Question
+Mycénienne_. 1896.] Unfortunately, one can scarcely criticise his theory
+without entering again into the whole question of the construction
+of the Epics. He thinks that the origin of the poems dates from "the
+Mycenaean period," and that the later continuators of the poems retained
+the traditions of that remote age. Thus they thrice call Mycenae
+"golden," though, in the changed economic conditions of their own
+period, Mycenae could no longer be "golden"; and I presume that, if
+possible, the city would have issued a papyrus currency without a
+metallic basis. However this may be, "in the description of customs
+the epic poets did their best to avoid everything modern." Here we
+have again that unprecedented phenomenon--early poets who are
+archaeologically precise.
+
+We have first to suppose that the kernel of the _Iliad_ originated in
+the Mycenaean age, the age of bronze. We are next to believe that this
+kernel was expanded into the actual Epic in later and changed times,
+but that the later poets adhered in their descriptions to the Mycenaean
+standard, avoiding "everything modern." That poets of an uncritical
+period, when treating of the themes of ancient legend or song, carefully
+avoid everything modern is an opinion not warranted by the usage of
+the authors of the _Chansons de Geste_, of _Beowulf_, and of the
+_Nibelungenlied_. These poets, we must repeat, invariably introduce
+in their chants concerning ancient days the customs, costume, armour,
+religion, and weapons of their own time. Dr. Helbig supposes that the
+late Greek poets, however, who added to the _Iliad_, carefully avoided
+doing what other poets of uncritical ages have always done. [Footnote:
+_La Question Mycénienne_, p. 50.]
+
+This is his position in his text (p. 50). In his note 1 to page 50,
+however, he occupies the precisely contrary position. "The epic poems
+were chanted, as a rule, in the houses of more or less warlike chiefs.
+It is, then, _à priori_ probable that the later poets took into account
+the _contemporary_ military state of things. Their audience would have
+been much perturbed (_bien chequés_) if they had heard the poet mention
+nothing but arms and forms of attack and defence to which they were
+unaccustomed." If so, when iron weapons came in the poets would
+substitute iron for bronze, in lays new and old, but they never do.
+However, this is Helbig's opinion in his note. But in his text he says
+that the poets, carefully avoiding the contemporary, "the modern," make
+the heroes fight, not on horseback, but from chariots. Their listeners,
+according to his note, must have been _bien chequés_, for there came a
+time when _they_ were not accustomed to war chariots.
+
+Thus the poets who, in Dr. Helbig's text, "avoid as far as possible all
+that is modern," in his note, on the same page, "take account of the
+contemporary state of things," and are as modern as possible where
+weapons _are_ concerned. Their audience would be sadly put out (_bien
+chequés_) "if they heard talk only of arms ... to which they were
+unaccustomed"; talk of large suspended shields, of uncorsleted heroes,
+and of bronze weapons. They had to endure it, whether they liked it or
+not, _teste_ Reichel. Dr. Helbig seems to speak correctly in his note;
+in his text his contradictory opinion appears to be wrong. Experience
+teaches us that the poets of an uncritical age--Shakespeare, for
+example--introduce the weapons of their own period into works dealing
+with remote ages. Hamlet uses the Elizabethan rapier.
+
+In his argument on bronze and iron, unluckily, Dr. Helbig deserts the
+judicious opinions of his note for the opposite theory of his text.
+His late poets, in the age of iron, always say that the weapons of the
+heroes are made of bronze. [Footnote: _Op. laud_., p. 51.] They thus,
+"as far as possible avoid what is modern." But, of course, warriors
+of the age of iron, when they heard the poet talk only of weapons of
+bronze, "_aurient été bien choqués_" (as Dr. Helbig truly says in his
+note), on hearing of nothing but "_armes auxquels ils n'étaient pas
+habitués,_"--arms always of bronze.
+
+Though Dr. Helbig in his text is of the opposite opinion, I must agree
+entirely with the view which he states so clearly in his note. It
+follows that if a poet speaks invariably of weapons of bronze, he is
+living in an age when weapons are made of no other material. In his
+text, however, Dr. Helbig maintains that the poets of later ages "as far
+as possible avoid everything modern," and, therefore, mention none but
+bronze weapons. But, as he has pointed out, they do mention iron tools
+and implements. Why do they desert the traditional bronze? Because "it
+occasionally happened that a poet, when thinking of an entirely new
+subject, wholly emancipated himself from traditional forms," [Footnote:
+_Op. laud_., pp. 51, 52]
+
+The examples given in proof are the offer by Achilles of a lump of iron
+as the prize for archery--the iron, as we saw, being destined for the
+manufacture of pastoral and agricultural implements, in which Dr. Helbig
+includes the lances of shepherds and ploughmen, though the poet never
+says that they were of iron. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XXIII. 826, 835;
+Odyssey, XIV. 531; XIII. 225.] There are also the axes through which
+Odysseus shoots his arrow. [Footnote: _Odyssey_, XIX. 587; XXI. 3, X,
+97, 114, 127, 138; XXIV. 168, 177; cf. XXI. 61.] "The poet here treated
+an entirely new subject, in the development of which he had perfect
+liberty." So he speaks freely of iron. "But," we exclaim, "tools and
+implements, axes and knives, are not a perfectly new subject!" They were
+extremely familiar to the age of bronze, the Mycenaean age. Examples of
+bronze tools, arrow-heads, and implements are discovered in excavations
+on Mycenaean sites. There was nothing new about bronze tools and
+implements. Men had bronze tips to their ploughshares, bronze knives,
+bronze axes, bronze arrow-heads before they used iron.
+
+Perhaps we are to understand that feats of archery, non-military
+contests in bowmanship, are _un sujet à fait nouveau_: a theme so very
+modern that a poet, in singing of it, could let himself go, and dare to
+speak of iron implements. But where was the novelty? All peoples who use
+the bow in war practise archery in time of peace. The poet, moreover,
+speaks of bronze tools, axes and knives, in other parts of the _Iliad_;
+neither tools nor bronze tools constitute _un sujet tout à fait
+nouveau_. There was nothing new in shooting with a bow and nothing new
+in the existence of axes. Bows and axes were as familiar to the age
+of stone and to the age of bronze as to the age of iron. Dr. Helbig's
+explanation, therefore, explains nothing, and, unless a better
+explanation is offered, we return to the theory, rejected by Dr. Helbig,
+that implements and tools were often, not always, of iron, while weapons
+were of bronze in the age of the poet. Dr. Helbig rejects this opinion.
+He writes: "We cannot in any way admit that, at a period when the socks
+of the plough, the lance points of shepherds" (which the poet never
+describes as of iron), "and axe-heads were of iron, warriors still used
+weapons of bronze." [Footnote: op. _laud._, p. 53.] But it is logically
+possible to admit that this was the real state of affairs, while it is
+logically impossible to admit that bows and tools were "new subjects";
+and that late poets, when they sang of military gear, "_tenaient
+compte de l'armement contemporain,_" carefully avoiding the peril of
+bewildering their hearers by speaking of antiquated arms, and, at the
+same time, spoke of nothing but antiquated arms--weapons of bronze--and
+of war chariots, to fighting men who did not use war chariots and did
+use weapons of iron.
+
+These logical contradictions beset all arguments in which it is
+maintained that "the late poets" are anxious archaisers, and at the same
+time are eagerly introducing the armour and equipment of their own age.
+The critics are in the same quandary as to iron and bronze as traps them
+in the case of large shields, small bucklers, greaves, and corslets.
+They are obliged to assign contradictory attitudes to their "late
+poets." It does not seem possible to admit that a poet, who often
+describes axes as of iron in various passages, does so in his account of
+a peaceful contest in bowmanship, because contests in bowmanship are _UN
+sujet TOUT à FAIT NOUVEAU;_ and so he feels at liberty to describe axes
+as of iron, while he adheres to bronze as the metal for weapons. He, or
+one of the Odyssean poets, had already asserted (Odyssey, IX. 391) that
+iron _was_ the metal for adzes and axes.
+
+Dr. Helbig's argument [Footnote: _La Question Mycénienne_, p. 54.] does
+not explain the facts. The bow of Eurytus and the uses to which Odysseus
+is to put it have been in the poet's mind all through the conduct of his
+plot, and there is nothing to suggest that the exploit of bowmanship is
+a very new lay, tacked on to the Odyssey.
+
+After writing this chapter, I observed that my opinion had been
+anticipated by S. H. Naber. [Footnote: _Quaestiones Homericae_, p.
+60. Amsterdam. Van der Post, 1897.] "Quod Herodoti diserto testimonio
+novimus, Homeri restate ferruminatio nondum inventa erat necdum bene
+noverant mortales, uti opinor, _acuere_ ferrum. Hinc pauperes homines
+ubi possunt, ferro utuntur; sed in plerisque rebus turn domi turn
+militiae imprimis coguntur uti aere...."
+
+The theory of Mr. Ridgeway as to the relative uses of iron and bronze is
+not, by myself, very easily to be understood. "The Homeric warrior ...
+has regularly, as we have seen, spear and sword of iron." [Footnote:
+_Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. p. 301.] As no spear or sword of iron is
+ever mentioned in the _Iliad_ or Odyssey, as both weapons are always
+of bronze when the metal is specified, I have not "seen" that they are
+"regularly," or ever, of iron. In proof, Mr. Ridgeway cites the axes
+and knives already mentioned--which are not spears or swords, and are
+sometimes of bronze. He also quotes the line in the Odyssey, "Iron of
+itself doth attract a man." But if this line is genuine and original,
+it does not apply to the state of things in the _Iliad_, while it
+contradicts the whole Odyssey, in which swords and spears are _ALWAYS_
+of bronze when their metal is mentioned. If the line reveals the true
+state of things, then throughout the Odyssey, if not throughout the
+_Iliad_, the poets when they invariably speak of bronze swords and
+spears invariably say what they do not mean. If they do this, how are
+we to know when they mean what they say, and of what value can their
+evidence on points of culture be reckoned? They may always be retaining
+traditional terms as to usages and customs in an age when these are
+obsolete.
+
+If the Achaeans were, as in Mr. Ridgeway's theory, a northern
+people--"Celts"--who conquered with iron weapons a Pelasgian
+bronze-using Mycenaean people, it is not credible to me that Achaean or
+Pelasgian poets habitually used the traditional Pelasgian term for the
+metal of weapons, namely, bronze, in songs chanted before victors who
+had won their triumph with iron. The traditional phrase of a conquered
+bronze-using race could not thus survive and flourish in the poetry of
+an outlandish iron-using race of conquerors.
+
+Mr. Ridgeway cites the Odyssey, wherein we are told that "Euryalus,
+the Phaeacian, presented to Odysseus a bronze sword, though, as we have
+seen" (Mr. Ridgeway has seen), "the usual material for all such weapons
+is iron. But the Phoeacians both belonged to the older race and lived in
+a remote island, and therefore swords of bronze may well have continued
+in use in such out-of-the-world places long after iron swords were in
+use everywhere else in Greece. The man who could not afford iron had to
+be satisfied with bronze." [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, p. 305.]
+Here the poet is allowed to mean what he says. The Phaeacian sword is
+really of bronze, with silver studs, probably on the hilt (Odyssey,
+VIII. 401-407), which was of ivory. The "out-of-the-world" islanders
+could afford ivory, not iron. But when the same poet tells us that
+the sword which Odysseus brought from Troy was "a great silver-studded
+bronze sword" (Odyssey, X. 261, 262), then Mr. Ridgeway does not allow
+the poet to mean what he says. The poet is now using an epic formula
+older than the age of iron swords.
+
+That Mr. Ridgeway adopts Helbig's theory--the poet says "bronze," by a
+survival of the diction of the bronze age, when he means iron--I infer
+from the following passage: "_Chalkos_ is the name for the older metal,
+of which cutting weapons were made, and it thus lingered in many phrases
+of the Epic dialect; 'to smite with the _chalkos_' was equivalent to our
+phrase 'to smite with the steel.'" [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i.
+295.] But we certainly do smite with the steel, while the question is,
+"_DID_ Homer's men smite with the iron?" Homer says not; he does not
+merely use "an epic phrase" "to smite with the _CHALKOS_," but he
+carefully describes swords, spears, and usually arrow-heads as being
+of bronze (_CHALKOS_), while axes, adzes, and knives are frequently
+described by him as of iron.
+
+Mr. Ridgeway has an illustrative argument with some one, who says: "The
+dress and weapons of the Saxons given in the lay of _Beowulf_ fitted
+exactly the bronze weapons in England, for they had shields, and spears,
+and battle-axes, and swords." If you pointed out to him that the Saxon
+poem spoke of these weapons as made of iron, he would say, "I admit
+that it is a difficulty, but the resemblances are so many that the
+discrepancies may be jettisoned." [Footnote: _Ridgeway,_ i. 83, 84.]
+
+Now, if the supposed controversialist were a Homeric critic, he would
+not admit any difficulty. He would say, "Yes; in _Beowulf_ the
+weapons are said to be of iron, but that is the work of the Christian
+_remanieur,_ or _bearbeiter,_ who introduced all the Christian morality
+into the old heathen lay, and who also, not to puzzle his iron-using
+audience, changed the bronze into iron weapons."
+
+We may prove anything if we argue, now that the poets retain the
+tradition of obsolete things, now that they modernise as much as they
+please. Into this method of reasoning, after duly considering it, I
+am unable to come with enthusiasm, being wedded to the belief that the
+poets say what they mean. Were it otherwise, did they not mean what
+they say, their evidence would be of no value; they might be dealing
+throughout in terms for things which were unrepresented in their own
+age. To prove this possible, it would be necessary to adduce convincing
+and sufficient examples of early national poets who habitually use
+the terminology of an age long prior to their own in descriptions of
+objects, customs, and usages. Meanwhile, it is obvious that my whole
+argument has no archaeological support. We may find "Mycenaean" corslets
+and greaves, but they are not in cremation burials. No Homeric cairn
+with Homeric contents has ever been discovered; and if we did find
+examples of Homeric cairns, it appears, from the poems, that they would
+very seldom contain the arms of the dead.
+
+Nowhere, again, do we find graves containing bronze swords and iron axes
+and adzes. I know nothing nearer in discoveries to my supposed age
+of bronze weapons and iron tools than a grave of the early iron and
+geometrical ornament age of Crete--a _tholos_ tomb, with a bronze
+spear-head and a set of iron tools, among others a double axe and a
+pick of iron. But these were in company with iron swords? To myself the
+crowning mystery is, what has become of the Homeric tumuli with their
+contents? One can but say that only within the last thirty years have we
+found, or, finding, have recognised Mycenaean burial records. As to the
+badness of the iron of the North for military purposes, and the probable
+badness of all early iron weapons, we have testimony two thousand years
+later than Homer and some twelve hundred years later than Polybius.
+In the Eyrbyggja Saga (Morris and Maguússon, chap, xxiv.) we read that
+Steinthor "was girt with a sword that was cunningly wrought; the hilts
+were white with silver, and the grip wrapped round with the same, but
+the strings thereof were gilded." This was a splendid sword, described
+with the Homeric delight in such things; but the battle-cry arises, and
+then "the fair-wrought sword bit not when it smote armour, and Steinthor
+must _straighten it under_ his _foot._" Messrs. Morris and Maguússon add
+in a note: "This is a very common experience in Scandinavian weapons,
+and for the first time heard of at the battle of Aquae Sextiae between
+Marius and the Teutons." [Footnote: The reference is erroneous.] "In the
+North weapon-smiths who knew how to forge tempered or steel-laminated
+weapons were, if not unknown, at least very rare." When such skill was
+unknown or rare in Homer's time, nothing was more natural than that
+bronze should hold its own, as the metal for swords and spears, after
+iron was commonly used for axes and ploughshares.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+THE HOMERIC HOUSE
+
+If the Homeric poems be, as we maintain, the work of a peculiar age, the
+Homeric house will also, in all likelihood, be peculiar. It will not
+be the Hellenic house of classical times. Manifestly the dwelling of a
+military-prince in the heroic age would be evolved to meet his needs,
+which were not the needs of later Hellenic citizens. In time of peace
+the later Greeks are weaponless men, not surrounded by and entertaining
+throngs of armed retainers, like the Homeric chief. The women of later
+Greece, moreover, are in the background of life, dwelling in the women's
+chambers, behind those of the men, in seclusion. The Homeric women also,
+at least in the house of Odysseus, have their separate chambers, which
+the men seem not to enter except on invitation, though the ladies freely
+honour by their presence the hall of the warriors. The circumstances,
+however, were peculiar--Penelope being unprotected in the absence of her
+lord.
+
+The whole domestic situation in the Homeric poems--the free equality
+of the women, the military conditions, the life of the chiefs and
+retainers--closely resembles, allowing for differences of climate, that
+of the rich landowners of early Iceland as described in the sagas. There
+can be no doubt that the house of the Icelandic chief was analogous to
+the house of the Homeric prince. Societies remarkably similar in mode
+of life were accommodated in dwellings similarly arranged. Though
+the Icelanders owned no Over-Lord, and, indeed, left their native
+Scandinavia to escape the sway of Harold Fairhair, yet each wealthy and
+powerful chief lived in the manner of a Homeric "king." His lands and
+thralls, horses and cattle, occupied his attention when he did not
+chance to be on Viking adventure--"bearing bane to alien men." He
+always carried sword and spear, and often had occasion to use them.
+He entertained many guests, and needed a large hall and ample sleeping
+accommodation for strangers and servants. His women were as free and as
+much respected as the ladies in Homer; and for a husband to slap a wife
+was to run the risk of her deadly feud. Thus, far away in the frosts of
+the north, the life of the chief was like that of the Homeric prince,
+and their houses were alike.
+
+It is our intention to use this parallel in the discussion of the
+Homeric house. All Icelandic chiefs' houses in the tenth and eleventh
+centuries were not precisely uniform in structure and accommodation,
+and saga writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, living
+more comfortably than their forefathers, sometimes confuse matters by
+introducing the arrangements of their own into the tale of past times.
+But, in any case, one Icelandic house of the tenth or eleventh century
+might differ from another in certain details. It is not safe, therefore,
+to argue that difference of detail in Homer's accounts of various houses
+means that the varying descriptions were composed in different ages. In
+the _Odyssey_ the plot demands that the poet must enter into domestic
+details much more freely than he ever has occasion to do in the Iliad.
+He may mention upper chambers freely, for example; it will not follow
+that in the _Iliad_ upper chambers do not exist because they are only
+mentioned twice in that Epic.
+
+It is even more important to note that in the house of Odysseus we have
+an unparalleled domestic situation. The lady of the house is beset by
+more than a hundred wooers--"sorning" on her, in the old Scots legal
+phrase--making it impossible for her to inhabit her own hall, and
+desirable to keep the women as much as possible apart from the men. Thus
+the Homeric house of which we know most, that of Odysseus, is a house in
+a most abnormal condition.
+
+For the sake of brevity we omit the old theory that the Homeric
+house was practically that of historical Greece, with the men's hall
+approached by a door from the courtyard; while a door at the upper end
+of the men's hall yields direct access to the quarters where the women
+dwelt apart, at the rear of the men's hall.
+
+That opinion has not survived the essay by Mr. J. L. Myres on the "Plan
+of the Homeric House." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol.
+XX, 128-150.] Quite apart from arguments that rest on the ground plans
+of palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns, Mr. Myres has proved, by an exact
+reading of the poet's words, that the descriptions in the _Odyssey_
+cannot be made intelligible on the theory that the poet has in his mind
+a house of the Hellenic pattern. But in his essay he hardly touches on
+any Homeric house except that of Odysseus, in which the circumstances
+were unusual. A later critic, Ferdinand Noack, has demonstrated that
+we must take other Homeric houses into consideration. [Footnote:
+_Homerische Paläste_. Teubner. Leipzig, 1903.] The prae-Mycenaean
+house is, according to Mr. Myres, on the whole of the same plan as the
+Hellenic house of historic days; between these comes the Mycenaean and
+Homeric house; "so that the Mycenaean house stands out _as an intrusive
+phenomenon_, of comparatively late arrival _and short of duration_..."
+[Footnote: Myres, _Journal_ of _Hellenic_ Studies, vol. xx. p. 149.]
+Noack goes further; he draws a line between the Mycenaean houses on one
+hand and the houses described by Homer on the other; while he thinks
+that the "_late_ Homeric house," that of the closing Books of the
+Odyssey, is widely sundered from the Homeric house of the _Iliad_
+and from the houses of Menelaus and Alcinous in earlier Books of the
+_Odyssey._ [Footnote: Noack, p. 73.]
+
+In this case the Iliadic and earlier Odyssean houses are those of a
+single definite age, neither Mycenaean of the prime, nor Hellenic--a
+fact which entirely suits our argument. But it is not so certain, that
+the house of Odysseus is severed from the other Homeric houses by the
+later addition of an upper storey, as Noack supposes, and of women's
+quarters, and of separate sleeping chambers for the heads of the family.
+
+The _Iliad,_ save in two passages, and earlier Books of the _Odyssey_
+may not mention upper storeys because they have no occasion, or only
+rare occasion, to do so; and some houses may have had upper sleeping
+chambers while others of the same period had not, as we shall prove from
+the Icelandic parallel.
+
+Mr. Myres's idea of the Homeric house, or, at least, of the house of
+Odysseus, is that the women had a _meguron,_ or common hall, apart from
+that of the men, with other chambers. These did not lie to the direct
+rear of the men's hall, nor were they entered by a door that opened in
+the back wall of the men's hall. Penelope has a chamber, in which
+she sleeps and does woman's work, upstairs; her connubial chamber,
+unoccupied during her lord's absence, is certainly on the ground floor.
+The women's rooms are severed from the men's hall by a courtyard; in
+the courtyard are chambers. Telemachus has his [Greek: Thalamos], or
+chamber, in the men's courtyard. All this appears plain from the poet's
+words; and Mr. Myres corroborates, by the ground plans of the palaces
+of Tiryns and Mycenae, a point on which Mr. Monro had doubts, as regards
+Tiryns, while he accepted it for Mycenae. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, ii.
+497; _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xx. 136.]
+
+Noack [Footnote: Noack, p. 39.] does not, however, agree.
+
+There appears to be no doubt that in the centre of the great halls of
+Tiryns and of Mycenae, as of the houses in Homer, was the hearth, with
+two tall pillars on each side, supporting a _louvre_ higher than the
+rest of the roof, and permitting some, at least, of the smoke of
+the fire to escape. Beside the fire were the seats of the master and
+mistress of the house, of the minstrel, and of honoured guests. The
+place of honour was not on a dais at the inmost end of the hall, like
+the high table in college halls. Mr. Myres holds that in the Homeric
+house the [Greek: prodomos], or "forehouse," was a chamber, and was not
+identical with the [Greek: aethousa], or portico, though he admits that
+the two words "are used indifferently to describe the sleeping place of
+a guest." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xx. 144, 155.] This
+was the case at Tiryns; and in the house of the father of Phoenix,
+in the _Iliad_, the _prodomos_, or forehouse, and the _aethousa_, or
+portico, are certainly separate things (Iliad, IX. 473). Noack does not
+accept the Tiryns evidence for the Homeric house.
+
+On Mr. Myres's showing, the women in the house of Odysseus had distinct
+and separate quarters into which no man goes uninvited. Odysseus when at
+home has, with his wife, a separate bedroom; and in his absence Penelope
+sleeps upstairs, where there are several chambers for various purposes.
+
+Granting that all this is so, how do the pictures of the house given in
+the final part of the _Odyssey_ compare with those in the [Blank space]
+and with the accounts of the dwellings of Menelaus and Alcinous in the
+Odyssey? Noack argues that the house of Odysseus is unlike the other
+Homeric houses, because in these, he reasons, the women have no separate
+quarters, and the lord and lady of the house sleep in the great hall,
+and have no other bedroom, while there are no upper chambers in the
+houses of the _Iliad_, except in two passages dismissed as "late."
+
+If all this be so, then the Homeric period, as regards houses and
+domestic life, belongs to an age apart, not truly Mycenaean, and still
+less later Hellenic.
+
+It must be remembered that Noack regards the Odyssey as a composite and
+in parts very late mosaic (a view on which I have said what I think
+in _Homer and the Epic_). According to this theory (Kirchhoff is the
+exponent of a popular form thereof) the first Book of the Odyssey
+belongs to "the latest stratum," and is the "copy" of the general
+"worker-up," whether he was the editor employed by Pisistratus or a
+laborious amateur. This theory is opposed by Sittl, who makes his point
+by cutting out, as interpolations, whatever passages do not suit his
+ideas, and do suit Kirchhoff's--this is the regular method of Homeric
+criticism. The whole cruise of Telemachus (Book IV.) is also regarded
+as a late addition: on this point English scholars hitherto have been
+of the opposite opinion. [Footnote: Cf. Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii.
+313-317.]
+
+The method of all parties is to regard repetitions of phrases as
+examples of borrowing, except, of course, in the case of the earliest
+poet from whom the others pilfer, and in other cases of prae-Homeric
+surviving epic formulae. Critics then dispute as to which recurrent
+passage is the earlier, deciding, of course, as may happen to suit
+their own general theory. In our opinion these passages are traditional
+formulae, as in our own old ballads and in the _Chansons de Geste_, and
+Noack also takes this view every now and then. They may well be older,
+in many cases, than _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_; or the poet, having found
+his own formula, economically used it wherever similar circumstances
+occurred. Such passages, so considered, are no tests of earlier
+composition in one place, of later composition in another.
+
+We now look into Noack's theory of the Homeric house. Where do the
+lord and lady sleep? _Not_, he says, as Odysseus and Penelope do (when
+Odysseus is at home), in a separate chamber (_thalamos_) on the ground
+floor, nor, like Gunnar and Halgerda (Njal's Saga), in an upper chamber.
+They sleep _mucho domou_; that is, not in a separate recess in the
+_house_, but in a recess of the great hall or _megaron_. Thus, in
+the hall of Alcinous, the whole space runs from the threshold to the
+_muchos_, the innermost part (_Odyssey_, VII. 87-96). In the hall of
+Odysseus, the Wooers retreat to the _muchos_, "the innermost part of the
+hall" (_Odyssey_, XXII. 270). "The _muchos_, in Homer, never denotes
+a separate chamber." [Footnote: Noack, p. 45. _Cf_. Monro, Note to
+Odyssey, XXII. 270.]
+
+In Odyssey, XI. 373, Alcinous says it is not yet time to sleep _ev
+megaro_, "in the hall." Alcinous and Arete, his wife, sleep "in the
+recess of the lofty _domos_," that is, in the recess of the _hall_, not
+of "the house" (Odyssey, VII. 346). The same words are used of Helen and
+Menelaus (Odyssey, IV. 304). But when Menelaus goes forth next morning,
+he goes _ek thalamoio_, "out of his _chamber_" (_Odyssey_, IV. 310). But
+this, says Noack, is a mere borrowing of Odyssey, II 2-5, where the same
+words are used of Telemachus, leaving his chamber, which undeniably was
+a separate chamber in the court: Eurycleia lighted him thither at night
+(Odyssey, I. 428). In Odyssey, IV. 121, Helen enters the hall "from her
+fragrant, lofty chamber," so she _had_ a chamber, not in the hall. But,
+says Noack, this verse "is not original." The late poet of _Odyssey_,
+IV. has cribbed it from the early poet who composed _Odyssey, XIX. 53._
+In that passage Penelope "comes from her chamber, like Artemis or golden
+Aphrodite." Penelope _had_ a chamber--being "a lone lorn woman," who
+could not sleep in a hall where the Wooers sat up late drinking--and
+the latest poet transfers this chamber to Helen. But however late and
+larcenous he may have been, the poet of IV. 121 certainly did not crib
+the words of the poet of XIX. 53, for he says, "Helen came out of
+her _fragrant, high-roofed_ chamber." The _hall_ was not precisely
+"fragrant"! However, Noack supposes that the late poet of Book IV. let
+Helen have a chamber apart, to lead up to the striking scene of her
+entry to the hall where her guests are sitting. May Helen not even have
+a boudoir? In _Odyssey_, IV. 263, Helen speaks remorsefully of having
+abandoned her "chamber," and husband, and child, with Paris; but the
+late poet says this, according to Noack, because he finds that he is
+in for a chamber, so to speak, at all events, as a result of his having
+previously cribbed the word "chamber" from Odyssey, XIX. 53. Otherwise,
+we presume Helen would have said that she regretted having left "the
+recess of the lofty hall" where she really did sleep. [Footnote: Noack,
+pp. 47-48]
+
+The merit of this method of arguing may be left to the judgment of the
+reader, who will remark that wedded pairs are not described as leaving
+the hall when they go to bed; they sleep in "a recess of the lofty
+house," the innermost part. Is this the same as the "recess of the
+_hall_" or is it an innermost part of the _house?_ Who can be certain?
+
+The bridal chamber, built so cunningly, with the trunk of a tree for the
+support of the bed, by Odysseus (odyssey, XXIII. 177-204), is, according
+to Noack, an exception, a solitary freak of Odysseus. But we may reply
+that the _thalamos_, the separate chamber, is no freak; the freak, by
+knowledge of which Odysseus proves his identity, is the use of the tree
+in the construction of the bed. [blank space] was highly original.
+
+That separate chambers are needed for grown-up children, _BECAUSE_ the
+parents sleep in the hall, is no strong argument. If the parents had a
+separate chamber, the young people, unless they slept in the hall, would
+still need their own. The girls, of course, could not sleep in the hall;
+and, in the absence of both Penelope and Odysseus from the hall, ever
+since Telemachus was a baby, Telemachus could have slept there. But it
+will be replied that the Wooers did not beset the hall, and Penelope
+did not retire to a separate chamber, till Telemachus was a big boy of
+sixteen. Noack argues that he had a separate chamber, though the hall
+was free, _tradition_. [Footnote: Noack, p. 49.]
+
+Where does Noack think that, in a normal Homeric house, the girls of
+the family slept? _They_ could not sleep in the hall, and on the two
+occasions when the _Iliad_ has to mention the chambers of the young
+ladies they are "upper chambers," as is natural. But as Noack wants
+to prove the house of Odysseus, with its upper chambers, to be a late
+peculiar house, he, of course, expunges the two mentions of girls' upper
+chambers in the _Odyssey_. The process is simple and easy.
+
+We find (_Iliad_, XVII. 36) that a son, wedding in his father's and
+mother's life-time, has a _thalamos_ built for him, and a _muchos_
+in the _THALAMOS_, where he leaves his wife when he goes to war. This
+dwelling of grown-up married children, as in the case of the sons of
+Priam, has a _thalamos_, or _doma_, and a courtyard--is a house, in fact
+(_Iliad_, VI. 3 16). Here we seem to distinguish the bed-chamber
+from the _doma_, which is the hall. Noack objects that when Odysseus
+fumigates his house, after slaying the Wooers, he thus treats the
+_megaron_, _AND_ the _doma_, _AND_ the courtyard. Therefore, Noack
+argues, the _megaron_, or hall, is one thing; the _doma_ is another. Mr.
+Monro writes, "_doma_ usually means _megaron_," and he supposes a
+slip from another reading, _thalamon_ for _megaron_, which is not
+satisfactory. But if _doma_ here be not equivalent to _megaron_, what
+room can it possibly be? Who was killed in another place? what place
+therefore needed purification except the hall and courtyard? No other
+places needed purifying; there is therefore clearly a defect in the
+lines which cannot be used in the argument.
+
+Noack, in any case, maintains that Paris has but one place to live in
+by day and to sleep in by night--his [Greek: talamos]. There he sleeps,
+eats, and polishes his weapons and armour. There Hector finds him
+looking to his gear; Helen and the maids are all there (_Iliad,_ VI.
+321-323). Is this quite certain? Are Helen and the maids in the [Greek:
+talamos], where Paris is polishing his corslet and looking to his bow,
+or in an adjacent room? If not in another room, why, when Hector is in
+the room talking to Paris, does Helen ask him to "come in"? (_Iliad,_
+VI. 354). He is in, is there another room whence she can hear him?
+
+The minuteness of these inquiries is tedious!
+
+In _Iliad,_ III. 125, Iris finds Helen "in the hall" weaving. She
+summons her to come to Priam on the gate. Helen dresses in outdoor
+costume, and goes forth "from the chamber," [Greek: talamos] (III.
+141-142). Are hall and chamber the same room, or did not Helen dress "in
+the chamber"? In the same Book (III. 174) she repents having left
+the [Greek: talamos] of Menelaus, not his hall: the passage is not a
+repetition in words of her speech in the Odyssey.
+
+The gods, of course, are lodged like men. When we find that Zeus has
+really a separate sleeping chamber, built by Hephaestus, as Odysseus has
+(_Iliad,_ XIV. 166-167), we are told that this is a late interpolation.
+Mr. Leaf, who has a high opinion of this scene, "the Beguiling of
+Zeus," places it in the "second expansions"; he finds no "late Odyssean"
+elements in the language. In _Iliad,_ I. 608-611, Zeus "departed to his
+couch"; he seems not to have stayed and slept in the hall.
+
+Here a quaint problem occurs. Of all late things in the Odyssey the
+latest is said to be the song of Demodocus about the loves of Ares
+and Aphrodite in the house of Hephaestus. [Footnote: Odyssey, VIII.
+266-300.] We shall show that this opinion is far from certainly correct.
+Hephaestus sets a snare round the bed in his [Greek: talamos] and
+catches the guilty lovers. _Now_, was his [Greek: talamos] or bedroom,
+also his dining-room? If so, the author of the song, though so "late,"
+knows what Noack knows, and what the poets who assign sleeping chambers
+to wedded folks do not know, namely, that neither married gods nor
+married men have separate bedrooms. This is plain, for he makes
+Hephaestus stand at the front door of his house, and shout to the gods
+to come and see the sinful lovers. [Footnote: Ibid., VI. 304-305] They
+all come and look on _from the front door_ (_Odyssey_, VII. 325), which
+leads into the [Greek: megaron], the hall. If the lovers are in bed in
+the hall, then hall and bedroom are all one, and the terribly late poet
+who made this lay knows it, though the late poets of the _Odyssey_ and
+_Iliad_ do not.
+
+It would appear that the author of the lay is not "late," as we shall
+prove in another case.
+
+Noack, then, will not allow man or god to have a separate wedding
+chamber, nor women, before the late parts of the _Odyssey_, to have
+separate quarters, except in the house of Odysseus. Women's chambers
+do not exist in the Homeric house. [Footnote: Noack, p. 50.] If so, how
+remote is the true Homeric house from the house of historical Greece!
+
+As for upper chambers, those of the daughter of the house (_Iliad,_ II.
+514; XVI. 184), both passages are "late," as we saw (Noack, p.[blank
+space]). In the _Odyssey_ Penelope both sleeps and works at the shroud
+in an upper chamber. But the whole arrangement of upper chambers as
+women's apartments is as late, says Noack, as the time of the poets and
+"redactors" (whoever they may have been) of the Odyssey, XXI., XXII.,
+XXIII. [Footnote: Noack, p. 68.] At the earliest these Books are said to
+be of the eighth century B.C. Here the late poets have their innings at
+last, and do modernise the Homeric house.
+
+To prove the absence of upper rooms in the _Iliad_ we have to abolish
+II. 514, where Astyoche meets her divine lover in her upper chamber, and
+XVI. 184, where Polymêlê celebrates her amour with Hermes "in the upper
+chambers." The places where these two passages occur, _Catalogue_ (Book
+II.) and the _Catalogue_ of the _Myrmidons_ (Book XVI.) are, indeed,
+both called "late," but the author of the latter knows the early law of
+bride-price, which is supposed to be unknown to the authors of "late"
+passages in the Odyssey (XVI. 190).
+
+Stated briefly, such are the ideas of Noack. They leave us, at least,
+with permission to hold that the whole of the Epics, except Books XXI.,
+XXII., and XXIII. of the Odyssey, bear, as regards the house, the marks
+of a distinct peculiar age, coming between the period of Mycenae and
+Tiryns on one hand and the eighth century B.C. on the other.
+
+This is the point for which we have contended, and this suits our
+argument very well, though we are sorry to see that Odyssey, Books XXI.,
+XXII., and XXIII., are no older than the eighth century B.C. But we have
+not been quite convinced that Helen had not her separate chamber, that
+Zeus had not his separate chamber, and that the upper chambers of the
+daughters of the house in the Iliad are "late." Where, if not in upper
+chambers, did the young princesses repose? Again, the marked separation
+of the women in the house of Odysseus may be the result of Penelope's
+care in unusual circumstances, though she certainly would not build
+a separate hall for them. There are over a hundred handsome young
+scoundrels in her house all day long and deep into the night; she would,
+vainly, do her best to keep her girls apart.
+
+It stands to reason that young girls of princely families would have
+bedrooms in the house, not in the courtyard-bedrooms out of the way of
+enterprising young men. What safer place could be found for them than in
+upper chambers, as in the Iliad? But, if their lovers were gods, we
+know that none "can see a god coming or going against his will." The
+arrangements of houses may and do vary in different cases in the same
+age.
+
+As examples we turn to the parallel afforded by the Icelandic sagas and
+their pictures of houses of the eleventh century B.C. The present author
+long ago pointed out the parallel of the houses in the sagas and in
+Homer. [Footnote: _The_ House. Butcher and Lang. Translation of the
+Odyssey.] He took his facts from Dasent's translation of the Njal Saga
+(1861, vol. i. pp. xcviii., ciii., with diagrams). As far as he is
+aware, no critic looked into the matter till Mr. Monro (1901), being
+apparently unacquainted with Dasent's researches, found similar lore in
+works by Dr. Valtyr Gudmundsson [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii.
+pp. 491-495; _cf_. Gudmundsson, _Der Islandske Bottg i Fristats Tiden_,
+1894; _cf_. Dasent, _Oxford_ Essays, 1858.] The roof of the hall is
+supported by four rows of columns, the two inner rows are taller, and
+between them is the hearth, with seats of honour for the chief guests
+and the lord. The fire was in a kind of trench down the hall; and in
+very cold weather, we learn from Dasent, long fires could be lit through
+the extent of the hall. The chief had a raised seat; the guests sat on
+benches. The high seats were at the centre; not till later times on the
+dais, as in a college hall. The tables were relatively small, and, as in
+Homer, could be removed after a meal. The part of the hall with the
+dais in later days was partitioned off as a _stofa_ or parlour. In early
+times cooking was done in the hall.
+
+Dr. Gudmundsson, if I understand him, varies from Dasent in some
+respects. I quote an abstract of his statement.
+
+"About the year 1000 houses generally consisted of, at least, four
+rooms; often a fifth was added, the so-called bath-room. The oldest form
+for houses was that of one long line or row of separate rooms united by
+wooden or clay corridors or partitions, and each covered with a roof.
+Later, this was considered unpractical, and they began building some of
+the houses or rooms behind the others, which facilitated the access from
+one to another, and diminished the number of outer doors and corridors."
+
+"Towards the latter part of the tenth century the _skaal_ was used as
+common sleeping-room for the whole family, including servants and serfs;
+it was fitted up in the same way as the hall. Like this, it was divided
+in three naves by rows of wooden pillars; the middle floor was lower
+than that of the two side naves. In these were placed the so-called
+_saet_ or bed-places, not running the whole length of the [blank space]
+from gable to gable, but sideways, filling about a third part. Each
+_saet_ was enclosed by broad, strong planks joined into the pillars, but
+not nailed on, so they might easily be taken out. These planks, called
+_SATTESTOKKE_, could also be turned sideways and used as benches during
+the day; they were often beautifully carved, and consequently highly
+valued."
+
+"When settling abroad the people took away with them these planks, and
+put them up in their new home as a symbol of domestic happiness. The
+_saet_ was occupied by the servants of the farm as sleeping-rooms;
+generally it was screened by hangings and low panels, which partitioned
+it off like huge separate boxes, used as beds."
+
+"All beds were filled with hay or straw; servants and serfs slept on
+this without any bedclothes, sometimes a sleeping-bag was used, or
+they covered themselves with deerskins or a mantle. The family had
+bed-clothes, but only in very wealthy houses were they also provided
+for the servants. Moveable beds were extremely rare, but are sometimes
+mentioned. Generally two people slept in each bed."
+
+"In the further end of the _skaal_, facing the door, opened out one or
+several small bedrooms, destined for the husband with wife and children,
+besides other members of the family, including guests of a higher
+standing. These small dormitories were separated by partitions of planks
+into bedrooms with one or several beds, and shut away from the outer
+_SKAAL_ either by a sliding-door in the wall or by an ordinary door
+shutting with a hasp. Sometimes only a hanging covered the opening."
+
+"In some farms were found underground passages, leading from the
+master's bedside to an outside house, or even as far as a wood or
+another sheltered place in the neighbourhood, to enable the inhabitants
+to save themselves during a night attack. For the same reason each man
+had his arms suspended over his bed."
+
+"_Ildhus_ or fire-house was the kitchen, often used besides as a
+sleeping-room when the farms were very small. This was quite abolished
+after the year 1000."
+
+"_Buret_ was the provision house."
+
+"The bathroom was heated from a stone oven; the stones were heated
+red-hot and cold water thrown upon them, which developed a quantity
+of vapour. As the heat and the steam mounted, the people--men and
+women--crawled up to a shelf under the roof and remained there as in a
+Turkish bath."
+
+"In large and wealthy houses there was also a women's room, with a
+fireplace built low down in the middle, as in the hall, where the women
+used to sit with their handiwork all day. The men were allowed to come
+in and talk to them, also beggar-women and other vagabonds, who brought
+them the news from other places. Towards evening and for meals all
+assembled together in the hall."
+
+On this showing, people did not sleep in cabins partitioned off the
+dining-hall, but in the _skaale_; and two similar and similarly situated
+rooms, one the common dining-hall, the other the common sleeping-hall,
+have been confused by writers on the sagas. [Footnote: Gudmundsson, p,
+14, Note I.] Can there be a similar confusion in the uses of _megaron_,
+_doma_, and _domos_?
+
+In the Eyrbyggja Saga we have descriptions of the "fire-hall," _skáli_
+or _eldhús_. "The fire-hall was the common sleeping-room in Icelandic
+homesteads." Guests and strangers slept there; not in the portico, as in
+Homer. "Here were the lock-beds." There were butteries; one of these
+was reached by a ladder. The walls were panelled. [Footnote: _The Ere
+Dwellers_, p. 145.] Thorgunna had a "berth," apparently partitioned
+off, in the hall. [Footnote: _Ibid_., 137-140.] As in Homer the hall was
+entered from the courtyard, in which were separate rooms for stores
+and other purposes. In the courtyard also, in the houses of Gunnar of
+Lithend and Gisli at Hawkdale, and doubtless in other cases, were the
+_dyngfur_, or ladies' chambers, their "bowers" (_Thalamos_, like that of
+Telemachus in the courtyard), where they sat spinning and gossiping. The
+_dyngja_ was originally called _búr_, our "bower"; the ballads say "in
+bower and hall." In the ballad of _MARGARET_, her parents are said to
+put her in the way of deadly sin by building her a bower, apparently
+separate from the main building; she would have been safer in an upper
+chamber, though, even there, not safe--at least, if a god wooed her! It
+does not appear that all houses had these chambers for ladies apart from
+the main building. You did not enter the main hall in Iceland from
+the court directly in front, but by the "man's door" at the west
+side, whence you walked through the porch or outer hall (_prodomos_,
+_aithonsa_), in the centre of which, to the right, were the doors of the
+hall. The women entered by the women's door, at the eastern extremity.
+
+Guests did not sleep, as in Homer, in the _prodomos_, or the
+portico--the climate did not permit it--but in one or other hall. The
+hall was wainscotted; the walls were hung with shields and weapons,
+like the hall of Odysseus. The heads of the family usually slept in the
+aisles, in chambers entered through the wainscot of the hall. Such a
+chamber might be called _muchos_; it was private from the hall though
+under the same roof. It appears not improbable that some Homeric halls
+had sleeping places of this kind; such a _muchos_ in Iceland seems to
+have had windows. [Footnote: Story of Burnt _Njal_, i. 242.]
+
+ Gunnar himself, however, slept with his wife, Halegerda, in an
+upper chamber; his mother, who lived with him, also had a room upstairs.
+
+In Njal's house, too, there was an upper chamber, wherein the foes of
+Njal threw fire. [Footnote:_Ibid_., ii. 173.] But Njal and Bergthora,
+his wife, when all hope was ended, went into their own bride-chamber
+in the separate aisle of the hall "and gave over their souls into God's
+hand." Under a hide they lay; and when men raised up the hide, after the
+fire had done its work, "they were unburnt under it. All praised God for
+that, and thought it was a _GREAT_ token." In this house was a weaving
+room for the women. [Footnote:_Ibid_, ii. 195.]
+
+It thus appears that Icelandic houses of the heroic age, as regards
+structural arrangements, were practically identical with the house of
+Odysseus, allowing for a separate sleeping-hall, while the differences
+between that and other Homeric houses may be no more than the
+differences between various Icelandic dwellings. The parents might sleep
+in bedchambers off the hall or in upper chambers. Ladies might have
+bowers in the courtyard or might have none. The [Greek: laurae]--each
+passage outside the hall--yielded sleeping rooms for servants; and there
+were store-rooms behind the passage at the top end of the hall, as well
+as separate chambers for stores in the courtyard. Mr. Leaf judiciously
+reconstructs the Homeric house in its "public rooms," of which we hear
+most, while he leaves the residential portion with "details and limits
+probably very variable." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. 586-589, with
+diagram based on the palace of Tiryns.]
+
+Given variability, which is natural and to be expected, and given the
+absence of detail about the "residential portion" of other houses than
+that of Odysseus in the poems, it does not seem to us that this house
+is conspicuously "late," still less that it is the house of historical
+Greece. Manifestly, in all respects it more resembles the houses of Njal
+and Gunnar of Lithend in the heroic age of Iceland.
+
+In the house, as in the uses of iron and bronze, the weapons, armour,
+relations of the sexes, customary laws, and everything else, Homer
+gives us an harmonious picture of a single and peculiar age. We find no
+stronger mark of change than in the Odyssean house, if that be changed,
+which we show reason to doubt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+NOTES OF CHANGE IN THE "ODYSSEY"
+
+If the Homeric descriptions of details of life contain anachronisms,
+points of detail inserted in later progressive ages, these must be
+peculiarly conspicuous in the Odyssey. Longinus regarded it as the work
+of Homer's advanced life, the sunset of his genius, and nobody denies
+that it assumes the existence of the _Iliad_ and is posterior to that
+epic. In the Odyssey, then, we are to look, if anywhere, for indications
+of a changed society. That the language of the _Odyssey_, and of four
+Books of the _Iliad_ (IX., X., XXIII., XXIV.), exhibits signs of change
+is a critical commonplace, but the language is matter for a separate
+discussion; we are here concerned with the ideas, manners, customary
+laws, weapons, implements, and so forth of the Epics.
+
+Taking as a text Mr. Monro's essay, _The Relation of the Odyssey to the
+Iliad_, [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 324, _seqq_.] we examine
+the notes of difference which he finds between the twin Epics. As to
+the passages in which he discovers "borrowing or close imitation of
+passages" in the _Iliad_ by the poet of the _Odyssey_, we shall not
+dwell on the matter, because we know so little about the laws regulating
+the repetition of epic formulae. It is tempting, indeed, to criticise
+Mr. Monro's list of twenty-four Odyssean "borrowings," and we might
+arrive at some curious results. For example, we could show that the
+_Klôthes_, the spinning women who "spae" the fate of each new-born
+child, are not later, but, as less abstract, are if anything earlier
+than "the simple _Aisa_ of the _Iliad_." [Footnote: _Odyssey_, VII. 197;
+_Iliad_, xx. 127.] But our proof would require an excursion into
+the beliefs of savage and barbaric peoples who have their _Klôthes_,
+spae-women attending each birth, but who are not known to have developed
+the idea of _Aisa_ or Fate.
+
+We might also urge that "to send a spear through the back of a stag" is
+not, as Mr. Monro thought, "an improbable feat," and that a man wounded
+to death as Leiocritus was wounded, would not, as Mr. Monro argued,
+fall backwards. He supposes that the poet of the _Odyssey_ borrowed
+the forward fall from a passage in the _Iliad_, where the fall is in
+keeping. But, to make good our proof, it might be necessary to spear a
+human being in the same way as Leiocritus was speared. [Footnote: Monro,
+odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 239, 230.]
+
+The repetitions of the Epic, at all events, are not the result of the
+weakness of a poet who had to steal his expressions like a schoolboy.
+They have some other cause than the indolence or inefficiency of a
+_cento_--making undergraduate. Indeed, a poet who used the many terms in
+the _Odyssey_ which do not occur in the _Iliad_ was not constrained to
+borrow from any predecessor.
+
+It is needless to dwell on the Odyssean novelties in vocabulary, which
+were naturally employed by a poet who had to sing of peace, not of
+war, and whose epic, as Aristotle says, is "ethical," not military. The
+poet's rich vocabulary is appropriate to his novel subject, that is all.
+
+Coming to Religion (I) we find Mr. Leaf assigning to his original
+_Achilleis_--"the kernel"--the very same religious ideas as Mr. Monro
+takes to be marks of "lateness" and of advance when he finds them in the
+Odyssey!
+
+In the original oldest part of the _Iliad_, says Mr. Leaf, "the gods
+show themselves just so much as to let us know what are the powers which
+control mankind from heaven.... Their interference is such as becomes
+the rulers of the world, not partisans in the battle." [Footnote: Leaf,
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. pp. xii., xiii.] It is the later poets of the _Iliad_,
+in Mr. Leaf's view, who introduce the meddlesome, undignified, and
+extremely unsportsmanlike gods. The original early poet of the _Iliad_
+had the nobler religious conceptions.
+
+In that case--the _Odyssey_ being later than the original kernel of the
+Iliad--the _Odyssey_ ought to give us gods as undignified and unworthy
+as those exhibited by the later continuators of the _Iliad_.
+
+But the reverse is the case. The gods behave fairly well in Book XXIV.
+of the _Iliad_, which, we are to believe, is the latest, or nearly the
+latest, portion. They are all wroth with the abominable behaviour of
+Achilles to dead Hector (XXIV. 134). They console and protect Priam. As
+for the _Odyssey_, Mr. Monro finds that in this late Epic the gods
+are just what Mr. Leaf proclaims them to have been in his old original
+kernel. "There is now an Olympian concert that carries on something like
+a moral government of the world. It is very different in the _Iliad_...."
+[Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, ii. 335.]
+
+But it was not very different; it was just the same, in Mr. Leaf's
+genuine old original germ of the _Iliad_. In fact, the gods are "very
+much like you and me." When their _ichor_ is up, they misbehave as we
+do when our blood is up, during the fury of war. When Hector is dead and
+when the war is over, the gods give play to their higher nature, as
+men do. There is no difference of religious conception to sever the
+_Odyssey_ from the later but not from the original parts of the _Iliad_.
+It is all an affair of the circumstances in each case.
+
+The _Odyssey_ is calmer, more reflective, more _religious_ than the
+_Iliad_, being a poem of peace. The _Iliad_, a poem of war, is more
+_mythological_ than the _Odyssey_: the gods in the _Iliad_ are excited,
+like the men, by the great war and behave accordingly. That neither
+gods nor men show any real sense of the moral weakness of Agamemnon
+or Achilles, or of the moral superiority of Hector, is an unacceptable
+statement. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 336.] Even Achilles
+and Agamemnon are judged by men and by the poet according to their own
+standard of ethics and of customary law. There is really no doubt on
+this point. Too much (2) is made of the supposed different views of
+Olympus--a mountain in Thessaly in the _Iliad_; a snowless, windless,
+supra-mundane place in _Odyssey_, V. 41-47. [Footnote: _Ibid_., ii.
+396.] Of the Odyssean passage Mr. Merry justly says, "the actual
+description is not irreconcilable with the general Homeric picture of
+Olympus." It is "an idealised mountain," and conceptions of it vary,
+with the variations which are essential to and inseparable from all
+mythological ideas. As Mr. Leaf says, [Footnote: Note to _Iliad_, V.
+750.] "heaven, _ouranos_ and Olympus, if not identical, are at least
+closely connected." In V. 753, the poet "regarded the summit of Olympus
+as a half-way stage between heaven and earth," thus "departing from the
+oldest Homeric tradition, which made the earthly mountain Olympus, and
+not any aerial region, the dwelling of the gods." But precisely the same
+confusion of mythical ideas occurs among a people so backward as the
+Australian south-eastern tribes, whose All Father is now seated on a
+hill-top and now "above the sky." In _ILIAD_, VIII. 25, 26, the poet is
+again said to have "entirely lost the real Epic conception of Olympus
+as a mountain in Thessaly," and to "follow the later conception, which
+removed it from earth to heaven." In _Iliad_, XI. 184, "from heaven"
+means "from the summit of Olympus, which, though Homer does not identify
+it with _oupavos_, still, as a mountain, reached into heaven" (Leaf).
+The poet of Iliad, XI. 184, says plainly that Zeus descended "_from_
+heaven" to Mount Ida. In fact, all that is said of Olympus, of heaven,
+of the home of the gods, is poetical, is mythical, and so is necessarily
+subject to the variations of conception inseparable from mythology. This
+is certain if there be any certainty in mythological science, and here
+no hard and fast line can be drawn between _ODYSSEY_ and _Iliad_.
+
+(3) The next point of difference is that, "we hear no more of Iris as
+the messenger of Zeus;" in the Odyssey, "the agent of the will of Zeus
+is now Hermes, as in the Twenty-fourth Book of the _Iliad_," a late
+"Odyssean" Book. But what does that matter, seeing that _ILIAD_, Book
+VIII, is declared to be one of the latest additions; yet in Book VIII.
+Iris, not Hermes, is the messenger (VIII. 409-425). If in late times
+Hermes, not Iris, is the messenger, why, in a very "late" Book (VIII.)
+is Iris the messenger, not Hermes? _Iliad_, Book XXIII., is also a late
+"Odyssean" Book, but here Iris goes on her messages (XXIII. 199) moved
+merely by the prayers of Achilles. In the late Odyssean Book (XXIV.)
+of the _Iliad_, Iris runs on messages from Zeus both to Priam and to
+Achilles. If Iris, in "Odyssean" times, had resigned office and been
+succeeded by Hermes, why did Achilles pray, not to Hermes, but to Iris?
+There is nothing in the argument about Hermes and Iris. There is nothing
+in the facts but the variability of mythical and poetical conceptions.
+Moreover, the conception of Iris as the messenger certainly existed
+through the age of the Odyssey, and later. In the Odyssey the beggar
+man is called "Irus," a male Iris, because he carries messages; and Iris
+does her usual duty as messenger in the Homeric Hymns, as well as in the
+so-called late Odyssean Books of the _Iliad_. The poet of the Odyssey
+knew all about Iris; there had arisen no change of belief; he merely
+employed Hermes as messenger, not of the one god, but of the divine
+Assembly.
+
+(4) Another difference is that in the _Iliad_ the wife of Hephaestus is
+one of the Graces; in the Odyssey she is Aphrodite. [Footnote: Monro,
+_Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 336.] This is one of the inconsistencies which
+are the essence of mythology. Mr. Leaf points out that when Hephaestus
+is about exercising his craft, in making arms for Achilles, Charis "is
+made wife of Hephaestus by a more transparent allegory than we find
+elsewhere in Homer," whereas, when Aphrodite appears in a comic song
+by Demodocus (Odyssey, VIII. 266-366), "that passage is later and
+un-Homeric." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 246.]
+
+Of this we do not accept the doctrine that the lay is un-Homeric. The
+difference comes to no more than _that;_ the accustomed discrepancy
+of mythology, of story-telling about the gods. But as to the lay of
+Demodocus being un-Homeric and late, the poet at least knows the regular
+Homeric practice of the bride-price, and its return by the bride's
+father to the husband of an adulterous wife (Odyssey, VIII. 318, 319).
+The poet of this lay, which Mr. Merry defends as Homeric, was intimately
+familiar with Homeric customary law. Now, according to Paul Cauer, as we
+shall see, other "Odyssean" poets were living in an age of changed
+law, later than that of the author of the lay of Demodocus. All these
+so-called differences between _Iliad_ and Odyssey do not point to the
+fact that the _Odyssey_ belongs to a late and changed period of culture,
+of belief and customs. There is nothing in the evidence to prove that
+contention.
+
+There (5) are two references to local oracles in the _Odyssey,_ that of
+Dodona (XIV. 327; XIX. 296) and that of Pytho (VIII. 80). This is the
+old name of Delphi. Pytho occurs in _Iliad,_ IX. 404, as a very rich
+temple of Apollo--the oracle is not named, but the oracle brought in the
+treasures. Achilles (XVI. 233) prays to Pelasgian Zeus of Dodona, whose
+priests were thickly tabued, but says nothing of the oracle of Dodona.
+Neither when in leaguer round Troy, nor when wandering in fairy lands
+forlorn, had the Achaeans or Odysseus much to do with the local oracles
+of Greece; perhaps not, in Homer's time, so important as they were
+later, and little indeed is said about them in either Epic.
+
+(6) "The geographical knowledge shown in the Odyssey goes beyond that of
+the _Iliad_ ... especially in regard to Egypt and Sicily." But a poet
+of a widely wandering hero of Western Greece has naturally more occasion
+than the poet of a fixed army in Asia to show geographical knowledge.
+Egyptian Thebes is named, in _ILIAD_, IX., as a city very rich,
+especially in chariots; while in the _ODYSSEY_ the poet has occasion
+to show more knowledge of the way to Egypt and of Viking descents from
+Crete on the coast (Odyssey, III. 300; IV. 351; XIV. 257; XVII. 426).
+Archaeology shows that the Mycenaean age was in close commercial
+relation with Egypt, and that the Mycenaean civilisation extended
+to most Mediterranean lands and islands, and to Italy and Sicily.
+[Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, i. 69.] There is nothing
+suspicious, as "late," in the mention of Sicily by Odysseus in Ithaca
+(Odyssey, XX. 383; XXIV. 307). In the same way, if the poet of a western
+poem does not dilate on the Troad and the people of Asia Minor as
+the poet of the _ILIAD_ does, that is simply because the scene of the
+_ILIAD_ is in Asia and the scene of the Odyssey is in the west, when it
+is not in No Man's land. From the same cause the poet of sea-faring has
+more occasion to speak of the Phoenicians, great sea-farers, than the
+poet of the Trojan leaguer.
+
+(7) We know so little about land tenure in Homeric times--and, indeed,
+early land tenure is a subject so complex and obscure that it is not
+easy to prove advance towards separate property in the _Odyssey_--beyond
+what was the rule in the time of the _ILIAD_. In the Making of the Arms
+(XVIII. 541-549) we find many men ploughing a field, and this may have
+been a common field. But in what sense? Many ploughs were at work at
+once on a Scottish runrig field, and each farmer had his own strip on
+several common fields, but each farmer held by rent, or by rent and
+services, from the laird. These common fields were not common property.
+In XII. 422 we have "a common field," and men measuring a strip and
+quarrelling about the marking-stones, across the "baulk," but it does
+not follow that they are owners; they may be tenants. Such quarrels were
+common in Scotland when the runrig system of common fields, each man
+with his strip, prevailed. [Footnote: Grey Graham, _Social Life in
+Scotland in the Eighteenth Century_, i. 157.]
+
+A man had a [Greek: klaeros] or lot (_ILIAD_, XV. 448), but what was
+a "lot"? At first, probably, a share in land periodically shifted-&
+_partage noir_ of the Russian peasants. Kings and men who deserve
+public gratitude receive a [Greek: temenos] a piece of public land, as
+Bellerophon did from the Lycians (VI. 194). In the case of Melager such
+an estate is offered to him, but by whom? Not by the people at large,
+but by the [Greek: gerontes] (IX. 574).
+
+Who are the [Greek: gerontes]? They are not ordinary men of the people;
+they are, in fact, the gentry. In an age so advanced from tribal
+conditions as is the Homeric time--far advanced beyond ancient tribal
+Scotland or Ireland--we conceive that, as in these countries during the
+tribal period, the [Greek: gerontes] (in Celtic, the _Flaith_) held
+in POSSESSION, if not in accordance with the letter of the law, as
+property, much more land than a single "lot." The Irish tribal freeman
+had a right to a "lot," redistributed by rotation. Wealth consisted of
+cattle; and a _bogire_, a man of many kine, let _them_ out to tenants.
+Such a rich man, a _flatha_, would, in accordance with human nature, use
+his influence with kineless dependents to acquire in possession several
+lots, avoid the partition, and keep the lots in possession though not
+legally in property. Such men were the Irish _flaith_, gentry under the
+_RI_, or king, his [Greek: gerontes], each with his _ciniod_, or near
+kinsmen, to back his cause.
+
+"_Flaith_ seems clearly to mean land-owners," or squires, says Sir James
+Ramsay. [Footnote: _Foundations of England_, i. 16, Note 4.] If land,
+contrary to the tribal ideal, came into private hands in early Ireland,
+we can hardly suppose that, in the more advanced and settled Homeric
+society, no man but the king held land equivalent in extent to a
+number of "lots." The [Greek: gerontes], the gentry, the chariot-owning
+warriors, of whom there are hundreds not of kingly rank in Homer (as in
+Ireland there were many _flaith_ to one _Ri_) probably, in an informal
+but tight grip, held considerable lands. When we note their position in
+the _Iliad_, high above the nameless host, can we imagine that they
+did not hold more land than the simple, perhaps periodically shifting,
+"lot"? There were "lotless" men (Odyssey, XL 490), lotless _freemen_,
+and what had become of their lots? Had they not fallen into the hands of
+the [Greek: gerontes] or the _flaith_?
+
+Mr. Ridgeway in a very able essay [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic
+Studies_, vi. 319-339.] holds different opinions. He points out that
+among a man's possessions, in the _Iliad_, we hear only of personal
+property and live stock. It is in one passage only in the Odyssey (XIV.
+211) that we meet with men holding several lots of land; but _they_, we
+remark, occur in Cretean isle, as we know, of very advanced civilisation
+from of old.
+
+Mr. Ridgeway also asks whether the lotless men may not be "outsiders,"
+such as are attached to certain villages of Central and Southern India;
+[Footnote: Maine, _Village Communities_, P. 127.] or they may answer to
+the _Fuidhir_, or "broken men," of early Ireland, fugitives from one
+to another tribe. They would be "settled on the waste lands of a
+community." If so, they would not be lotless; they would have new lots.
+[Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vi. 322, 323.]
+
+Laertes, though a king, is supposed to have won his farm by his own
+labours from the waste (Odyssey, XXIV. 207). Mr. Monro says, "the land
+having thus been won from the wastes (the [Greek: gae aklaeros te
+kai aktitos] of _H., Ven._ 123), was a [Greek: temenos] or separate
+possession of Laertes." The passage is in the rejected conclusion of the
+Odyssey; and if any man might go and squat in the waste, any man might
+have a lot, or better than one lot. In _Iliad_, XXIII. 832-835, Achilles
+says that his offered prize of iron will be useful to a man "whose rich
+fields are very remote from any town," Teucer and Meriones compete for
+the prize: probably they had such rich remote fields, not each a mere
+lot in a common field. These remote fields they are supposed to hold in
+perpetuity, apart from the _temenos_, which, in Mr. Ridgeway's opinion,
+reverted, on the death of each holder, to the community, save where
+kingship was hereditary. Now, if [Greek: klaeros] had come to mean "a
+lot of land," as we say "a building lot," obviously men like Teucer and
+Meriones had many lots, rich fields, which at death might sometimes pass
+to their heirs. Thus there was separate landed property in the _Iliad_;
+but the passage is denounced, though not by Mr. Ridgeway, as "late."
+
+The absence of enclosures ([Greek: herkos arouraes]) proves nothing
+about absence of several property in land. In Scotland the laird's lands
+were unenclosed till deep in the eighteenth century.
+
+My own case for land in private possession, in Homeric times, rests
+mainly on human nature in such an advanced society. Such possession as
+I plead for is in accordance with human nature, in a society so
+distinguished by degrees of wealth as is the Homeric.
+
+Unless we are able to suppose that all the gentry of the _Iliad_ held
+no "rich fields remote from towns," each having but one rotatory lot
+apiece, there is no difference in Iliadic and Odyssean land tenure,
+though we get clearer lights on it in the _Odyssey_.
+
+The position of the man of several lots may have been indefensible,
+if the ideal of tribal law were ever made real, but wealth in growing
+societies universally tends to override such law. Mr. Keller [Footnote:
+Homeric Society, p. 192. 1902.] justly warns us against the attempt
+"to apply universally certain fixed rules of property development. The
+passages in Homer upon which opinions diverge most are isolated ones,
+occurring in similes and fragmentary descriptions. Under such conditions
+the formulation of theories or the attempt rigorously to classify can be
+little more than an intellectual exercise."
+
+We have not the materials for a scientific knowledge of Homeric real
+property; and, with all our materials in Irish law books, how hard it
+is for us to understand the early state of such affairs in Ireland! But
+does any one seriously suppose that the knightly class of the _Iliad_,
+the chariot-driving gentlemen, held no more land--legally or by
+permitted custom--than the two Homeric swains who vituperate each other
+across a baulk about the right to a few feet of a strip of a runrig
+field? Whosoever can believe that may also believe that the practice
+of adding "lot" to "lot" began in the period between the finished
+composition of the _Iliad_ (or of the parts of it which allude to land
+tenure) and the beginning of the _Odyssey_ (or of the parts of it which
+refer to land tenure). The inference is that, though the fact is not
+explicitly stated in the _Iliad_, there were men who held more "lots"
+than one in Iliadic times as well as in the Odyssean times, when, in a
+solitary passage of the Odyssey, we do hear of such men in Crete. But
+whosoever has pored over early European land tenures knows how dim our
+knowledge is, and will not rush to employ his lore in discriminating
+between the date of the _Iliad_ and the date of the Odyssey.
+
+Not much proof of change in institutions between Iliadic and Odyssean
+times can be extracted from two passages about the ethna, or bride-price
+of Penelope. The rule in both _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ is that the wooer
+gives a bride-price to the father of the bride, ethna. This was the rule
+known even to that painfully late and un-Homeric poet who made the Song
+of Demodocus about the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. In that song the
+injured husband, Hephaestus, claims back the bride-price which he had
+paid to the father of his wife, Zeus. [Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 318.]
+This is the accepted custom throughout the _Odyssey_ (VI. 159; XVI. 77;
+XX. 335; XXI. 162; XV. 17, &c.). So far there is no change of manners,
+no introduction of the later practice, a dowry given with the bride,
+in place of a bride-price given to the father by the bridegroom. But
+Penelope was neither maid, wife, nor widow; her husband's fate, alive
+or dead, was uncertain, and her son was so anxious to get her out of the
+house that he says he offered gifts _with_ her (XX. 342). In the same
+way, to buy back the goodwill of Achilles, Agamemnon offers to give him
+his daughter without bride-price, and to add great gifts (_Iliad_, IX.
+l47)--the term for the gifts is [Greek: mailia]. People, of course,
+could make their own bargain; take as much for their daughter as they
+could get, or let the gifts go from husband to bride, and then return
+to the husband's home with her (as in Germany in the time of Tacitus,
+_Germania_, 18), or do that, and throw in more gifts. But in Odyssey,
+II. 53, Telemachus says that the Wooers shrink from going to the house
+of Penelope's father, Icarius, who would endow (?) his daughter ([Greek:
+eednoosaito]) And again (_Odyssey_, I. 277; II. 196), her father's folk
+will furnish a bridal feast, and "array the [Greek: heedna], many, such
+as should accompany a dear daughter." Some critics think that the gifts
+here are _dowry_, a later institution than bride-price; others, that the
+father of the dear daughter merely chose to be generous, and returned
+the bride-price, or its equivalent, in whole or part. [Footnote: Merry,
+Odyssey, vol. i. p. 50. Note to Book I 277.] If the former view
+be correct, these passages in Odyssey, I., II. are later than the
+exceedingly "late" song of Demodocus. If the latter theory be correct
+the father is merely showing goodwill, and doing as the Germans did when
+they were in a stage of culture much earlier than the Homeric.
+
+The position of Penelope is very unstable and legally perplexing. Has
+her father her marriage? has her son her marriage? is she not perhaps
+still a married woman with a living husband? Telemachus would give much
+to have her off his hands, but he refuses to send her to her father's
+house, where the old man might be ready enough to return the bride-price
+to her new husband, and get rid of her with honour. For if Telemachus
+sends his mother away against her will he will have to pay a heavy fine
+to her father, and to thole his mother's curse, and lose his character
+among men (odyssey, II. 130-138). The Icelanders of the saga period gave
+dowries with their daughters. But when Njal wanted Hildigunna for his
+foster-son, Hauskuld, he offered to give [Greek: hedna]. "I will lay
+down as much money as will seem fitting to thy niece and thyself," he
+says to Flosi, "if thou wilt think of making this match." [Footnote:
+Story of _Burnt Njal_, ii. p. 81.]
+
+Circumstances alter cases, and we must be hard pressed to discover signs
+of change of manners in the Odyssey as compared with the _Iliad_ if we
+have to rely on a solitary mention of "men of many lots" in Crete,
+and on the perplexed proposals for the second marriage of Penelope.
+[Footnote: For the alleged "alteration of old customs" see Cauer,
+_Grundfragen der Homerkritik_, pp. 193-194.] We must not be told that
+the many other supposed signs of change, Iris, Olympus, and the rest,
+have "cumulative weight." If we have disposed of each individual
+supposed note of change in beliefs and manners in its turn, then these
+proofs have, in each case, no individual weight and, cumulatively, are
+not more ponderous than a feather.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES
+
+The great strength of the theory that the poems are the work of several
+ages is the existence in them of various strata of languages, earlier
+and later.
+
+Not to speak of differences of vocabulary, Mr. Monro and Mr. Leaf, with
+many scholars, detect two strata of earlier and later _grammar_ in Iliad
+and Odyssey. In the _Iliad_ four or five Books are infected by "the
+later grammar," while the Odyssey in general seems to be contaminated.
+Mr. Leafs words are: "When we regard the Epos in large masses, we see
+that we can roughly arrange the inconsistent elements towards one end or
+the other of a line of development both linguistic and historical. The
+main division, that of _Iliad_ and Odyssey, shows a distinct advance
+along this line; and the distinction is still more marked if we group
+with the _Odyssey_ four Books of the _Iliad_ whose Odyssean physiognomy
+is well marked. Taking as our main guide the dissection of the plot as
+shown in its episodes, we find that marks of lateness, though nowhere
+entirely absent, group themselves most numerously in the later additions
+..." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. X.] We are here concerned with
+_linguistic_ examples of "lateness." The "four Books whose Odyssean
+physiognomy" and language seem "well marked," are IX., X., XXIII., XXIV.
+Here Mr. Leaf, Mr. Monro, and many authorities are agreed. But to these
+four Odyssean Books of the _Iliad_ Mr. Leaf adds _Iliad_, XI. 664-772:
+"probably a later addition," says Mr. Monro. "It is notably Odyssean in
+character," says Mr. Leaf; and the author "is ignorant of the geography
+of the Western Peloponnesus. No doubt the author was an Asiatic Greek."
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. 465-466. Note on Book XI. 756.] The
+value of this discovery is elsewhere discussed (see _The Interpolations
+of Nestor_).
+
+The Odyssean notes in this passage of a hundred lines (_Iliad_, XI.
+670-762) are the occurrence of "a purely Odyssean word" (677), an Attic
+form of an epic word, and a "forbidden trochaic caesura in the fourth
+foot"; an Odyssean word for carving meat, applied in a _non_-Odyssean
+sense (688), a verb for "insulting," not elsewhere found in the _Iliad_
+(though the noun is in the _Iliad_) (695), an Odyssean epithet of the
+sun, "four times in the _Odyssey_" (735). It is also possible that there
+is an allusion to a four-horse chariot (699).
+
+These are the proofs of Odyssean lateness.
+
+The real difficulty about Odyssean words and grammar in the _Iliad_
+is that, if they were in vigorous poetic existence down to the time of
+Pisistratus (as the Odysseanism of the Asiatic editor proves that they
+were), and if every rhapsodist could add to and alter the materials at
+the disposal of the Pisistratean editor at will, we are not told how the
+fashionable Odysseanisms were kept, on the whole, out of twenty Books of
+the Iliad.
+
+This is a point on which we cannot insist too strongly, as an argument
+against the theory that, till the middle of the sixth century B.C., the
+_Iliad_ scarcely survived save in the memory of strolling rhapsodists.
+If that were so, all the Books of the _Iliad_ would, in the course
+of recitation of old and composition of new passages, be equally
+contaminated with late Odyssean linguistic style. It could not be
+otherwise; all the Books would be equally modified in passing through
+the lips of modern reciters and composers. Therefore, if twenty out
+of twenty-four Books are pure, or pure in the main, from Odysseanisms,
+while four are deeply stained with them, the twenty must not only be
+earlier than the four, but must have been specially preserved, and kept
+uncontaminated, in some manner inconsistent with the theory that all
+alike scarcely existed save in the memory or invention of late strolling
+reciters.
+
+How the twenty Books relatively pure "in grammatical forms, in syntax,
+and in vocabulary," could be kept thus clean without the aid of written
+texts, I am unable to imagine. If left merely to human memory and at
+the mercy of reciters and new poets, they would have become stained with
+"the defining article"--and, indeed, an employment of the article which
+startles grammarians, appears even in the eleventh line of the First
+Book of the _Iliad_? [Footnote (exact placing uncertain): Cf. Monro and
+Leaf, on Iliad, I. 11-12.]
+
+ Left merely to human memory and the human voice, the twenty more
+or less innocent Books would have abounded, like the Odyssey, in
+[Greek: amphi] with the dative meaning "about," and with [Greek: ex] "in
+consequence of," and "the extension of the use of [Greek: ei] clauses
+as final and objective clauses," and similar marks of lateness, so
+interesting to grammarians. [Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, ii. pp.
+331-333.] But the twenty Books are almost, or quite, inoffensive in
+these respects.
+
+Now, even in ages of writing, it has been found difficult or impossible
+to keep linguistic novelties and novelties of metre out of old epics. We
+later refer (_Archaeology of the Epic_) to the _Chancun de Willame_,
+of which an unknown benefactor printed two hundred copies in 1903.
+Mr. Raymond Weeks, in _Romania_, describes _Willame_ as taking a place
+beside the _Chanson de Roland_ in the earliest rank of _Chansons de
+Geste_. If the text can be entirely restored, the poem will appear
+as "the most primitive" of French epics of the eleventh and twelfth
+centuries. But it has passed from copy to copy in the course of
+generations. The methods of versification change, and, after line 2647,
+"there are traces of change in the language. The word _ço_, followed
+by a vowel, hitherto frequent, never again reappears. The vowel _i_,
+of _li_, nominative masculine of the article" (_li Reis_, "the king"),
+"never occurs in the text after line 2647. Up to that point it is elided
+or not at pleasure.... There is a progressive tendency towards hiatus.
+After line 1980 the system of assonance changes. _An_ and en have
+been kept distinct hitherto; this ceases to be the case." [Footnote:
+_Romania_, xxxiv. pp. 240-246.]
+
+The poem is also notable, like the _Iliad_, for textual repetition of
+passages, but that is common to all early poetry, which many Homeric
+critics appear not to understand. In this example we see how apt
+novelties in grammar and metre are to steal into even written copies of
+epics, composed in and handed down through uncritical ages; and we are
+confirmed in the opinion that the relatively pure and orthodox grammar
+and metre of the twenty Books must have been preserved by written texts
+carefully 'executed. The other four Books, if equally old, were less
+fortunate. Their grammar and metre, we learn, belong to a later stratum
+of language.
+
+These opinions of grammarians are not compatible with the hypothesis
+that _all_ of the _Iliad_, even the "earliest" parts, are loaded with
+interpolations, forced in at different places and in any age from 1000
+B.C. to 540 B.C.; for if that theory were true, the whole of the _Iliad_
+would equally be infected with the later Odyssean grammar. According to
+Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb, it is not.
+
+But suppose, on the other hand, that the later Odyssean grammar abounds
+all through the whole _Iliad_, then that grammar is not more Odyssean
+than it is Iliadic. The alleged distinction of early Iliadic grammar,
+late Odyssean grammar, in that case vanishes. Mr. Leaf is more keen than
+Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb in detecting late grammar in the _Iliad_
+beyond the bounds of Books IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. But he does not carry
+these discoveries so far as to make the late grammar no less Iliadic
+than Odyssean. In Book VIII. of the _Iliad_, which he thinks was only
+made for the purpose of introducing Book IX., [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol.
+i. p. 332. 1900.] we ought to find the late Odyssean grammar just as
+much as we do in Book IX., for it is of the very same date, and probably
+by one or more of the same authors as Book IX. But we do not find the
+Odyssean grammar in Book VIII.
+
+Mr. Leaf says, "The peculiar character" of Book VIII. "is easily
+understood, when we recognise the fact that Book VIII. is intended to
+serve only as a means for the introduction of Book IX...." which is
+"late" and "Odyssean." Then Book VIII., intended to introduce Book IX.,
+must be at least as late as Book IX. and might be expected to be at
+least as Odyssean, indeed one would think it could not be otherwise. Yet
+it is not so.
+
+Mr. Leaf's theory has thus to face the difficulty that while the whole
+_Iliad_, by his view, for more than four centuries, was stuffed with
+late interpolations, in the course of oral recital through all
+Greek lands, and was crammed with original "copy" by a sycophant of
+Pisistratus about 540 B.C., the late grammar concentrated itself in
+only some four Books. Till some reasonable answer is given to this
+question--how did twenty Books of the Iliad preserve so creditably
+the ancient grammar through centuries of change, and of recitation by
+rhapsodists who used the Odyssean grammar, which infected the four other
+Books, and the whole of the _Odyssey?_--it seems hardly worth while to
+discuss this linguistic test.
+
+Any scholar who looks at these pages knows all about the proofs of
+grammar of a late date in the _Odyssey_ and the four contaminated Books
+of the _Iliad_. But it may be well to give a few specimens, for the
+enlightenment of less learned readers of Homer.
+
+The use of [Greek: amfi], with the dative, meaning "about," when
+_thinking_ or _speaking_ "about" Odysseus or anything else, is peculiar
+to the _Odyssey_. But how has it not crept into the four Odyssean
+contaminated Books of the _Iliad_?
+
+ [Greek: peri], with the genitive, "follows verbs meaning to speak
+or know _about_ a person," but only in the _Odyssey_. What preposition
+follows such verbs in the _Iliad_?
+
+Here, again, we ask: how did the contaminated Books of the _Iliad_
+escape the stain of [Greek: peri], with the genitive, after verbs
+meaning to speak or know? What phrase do they use in the _Iliad_ for
+speaking or asking _about_ anybody? [Footnote (exact placing uncertain):
+Monro, Homeric _Grammar_. See Index, under _Iliad_, p. 339.]
+
+ [Greek: meta], with the genitive, meaning "among" or "with,"
+comes twice in the Odyssey (X. 320; XVI. 140) and thrice in the _Iliad_
+(XIII. 700; XXI. 458; XXIV. 400); but all these passages in the _Iliad_
+are disposed of as "late" parts of the poem.
+
+ [Greek: epi], with the accusative, meaning _towards_ a
+person, comes often in the _Iliad_; once in the Odyssey. But it comes
+four times in _Iliad_, Book X., which almost every critic scouts as very
+"late" indeed. If so, why does the "late" _Odyssey_ not deal in this
+grammatical usage so common in the "late" Book X. of the _Iliad_?
+
+ [Greek: epi], with the accusative, "meaning _extent_
+(without _motion_)," is chiefly found in the _Odyssey_, and in the
+Iliad, IX., X., XXIV. On consulting grammarians one thinks that there is
+not much in this.
+
+ [Greek: proti] with the dative, meaning "in addition to," occurs
+only once (_Odyssey, X. 68_). If it occurs only once, there is little to
+be learned from the circumstance.
+
+ [Greek: ana] with the genitive, is only in _Odyssey_, only
+thrice, always of going on board a ship. There are not many ship-farings
+in the _Iliad_. Odysseus and his men are not described as going on board
+their ship, in so many words, in _Iliad_, Book I. The usage occurs in
+the poem where the incidents of seafaring occur frequently, as is to be
+expected? It is not worth while to persevere with these tithes of mint
+and cummin. If "Neglect of Position" be commoner--like "Hiatus in the
+Bucolic Diaeresis"--in the _Odyssey_ and in _Iliad_, XXIII., XXIV., why
+do the failings not beset _Iliad_, IX., X., these being such extremely
+"late" books? As to the later use of the Article in the _Odyssey_ and
+the Odyssean Books of the _Iliad_, it appears to us that Book I. of the
+_Iliad_ uses the article as it is used in Book X.; but on this topic we
+must refer to a special treatise on the language of _Iliad_, Book X.,
+which is promised.
+
+Turning to the vocabulary: "words expressive of civilisation" are bound
+to be more frequent, as they are, in the Odyssey, a poem of peaceful
+life, than in a poem about an army in action, like the _Iliad_. Out of
+all this no clue to the distance of years dividing the two poems can be
+found. As to words concerning religion, the same holds good. The Odyssey
+is more frequently _religious_ (see the case of Eumaeus) than the
+_Iliad_.
+
+In morals the term [Greek: dikaios] is more used in the _Odyssey_, also
+[Greek: atemistos] ("just" and "lawless"). But that is partly because
+the Odyssey has to contrast civilised ("just") with wild outlandish
+people--Cyclopes and Laestrygons, who are "lawless." The _Iliad_ has no
+occasion to touch on savages; but, as the [Greek: hybris] of the Wooers
+is a standing topic in the Odyssey (an ethical poem, says Aristotle),
+the word [Greek: hybris] is of frequent occurrence in the _Odyssey_,
+in just the same sense as it bears in _Iliad_, I 214--the insolence
+of Agamemnon. Yet when Achilles has occasion to speak of Agamemnon's
+insolence in _Iliad_, Book IX., he does not use the _word_ [Greek:
+hybris], though Book IX. is so very "late" and "Odyssean." It would be
+easy to go through the words for moral ideas in the _Odyssey_, and
+to show that they occur in the numerous moral situations which do not
+arise, or arise much less frequently, in the _Iliad_. There is not
+difference enough in the moral standard of the two poems to justify us
+in assuming that centuries of ethical progress had intervened between
+their dates of composition. If the _Iliad_, again, were really, like the
+_Odyssey_, a thing of growth through several centuries, which overlapped
+the centuries in which the _Odyssey_ grew, the moral ideas of the
+_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ would necessarily be much the same, would be
+indistinguishable. But, as a matter of fact, it would be easy to show
+that the moral standard of the _Iliad_ is higher, in many places,
+than the moral standard of the _Odyssey_; and that, therefore, by the
+critical hypothesis, the _Iliad_ is the later poem of the twain. For
+example, the behaviour of Achilles is most obnoxious to the moralist in
+_Iliad_, Book IX., where he refuses gifts of conciliation. But by the
+critical hypothesis this is not the fault of the _Iliad_, for Book IX.
+is declared to be "late," and of the same date as late parts of the
+_Odyssey_. Achilles is not less open to moral reproach in his abominable
+cruelty and impiety, as shown in his sacrifice of prisoners of war and
+his treatment of dead Hector, in _Iliad_, XXIII., XXIV. But these Books
+also are said to be as late as the _Odyssey_.
+
+The solitary "realistic" or "naturalistic" passage in Homer, with which
+a lover of modern "problem novels" feels happy and at home, is the story
+of Phoenix, about his seduction of his father's mistress at the
+request of his mother. What a charming situation! But that occurs in an
+"Odyssean" Book of the _Iliad_, Book IX.; and thus Odyssean seems lower,
+not more advanced, than Iliadic taste in morals. To be sure, the poet
+disapproves of all these immoralities.
+
+In the Odyssey the hero, to the delight of Athene, lies often and freely
+and with glee. The Achilles of the _Iliad_ hates a liar "like the gates
+of Hades"; but he says so in an "Odyssean" Book (Book IX.), so there
+were obviously different standards in Odyssean ethics.
+
+As to the Odyssey being the work of "a milder age," consider the hanging
+of Penelope's maids and the abominable torture of Melanthius. There is
+no torturing in the [blank space] for the _Iliad_ happens not to deal
+with treacherous thralls.
+
+_Enfin_, there is no appreciable moral advance in the _ODYSSEY_ on the
+moral standard of the _ILIAD_. It is rather the other way. Odysseus, in
+the _ODYSSEY_, tries to procure poison for his arrow-heads. The person
+to whom he applies is too moral to oblige him. We never learn that
+a hero of the _Iliad_ would use poisoned arrows. The poet himself
+obviously disapproves; in both poems the poet is always on the side of
+morality and of the highest ethical standard of his age. The standard in
+both Epics is the same; in both some heroes fall short of the standard.
+
+To return to linguistic tests, it is hard indeed to discover what Mr.
+Leaf's opinion of the value of linguistic tests of lateness really is.
+"It is on such fundamental discrepancies"--as he has found in Books IX.,
+XVI.--"that we can depend, _AND ON THESE ALONE_, when we come to dissect
+the _ILIAD_ ... Some critics have attempted to base their analysis on
+evidences from language, but I do not think they are sufficient to
+bear the super-structure which has been raised on them." [Footnote:
+_Companion,_ p. 25.]
+
+He goes on, still placing a low value on linguistic tests alone, to say:
+"It is on the broad grounds of the construction and motives of the poem,
+_AND NOT ON ANY MERELY linguistic CONSIDERATIONS_, that a decision must
+be sought." [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. x.]
+
+But he contradicts these comfortable words when he comes to "the latest
+expansions," such as Books XXIII., XXIV. "The latest expansions are
+thoroughly in the spirit of those which precede, _them ON ACCOUNT OF
+linguistic EVIDENCE,_ which definitely classes them with the _ODYSSEY_
+rather than the rest of the _ILIAD_." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p.
+xiv.]
+
+Now as Mr. Leaf has told us that we must depend on "fundamental
+discrepancies," "on these alone," when we want to dissect the _ILIAD;_
+as he has told us that linguistic tests alone are "not sufficient to
+bear the superstructure," &c., how can we lop off two Books "only on
+account of linguistic evidence"? It would appear that on this point,
+as on others, Mr. Leaf has entirely changed his mind. But, even in the
+_Companion_ (p. 388), he had amputated Book XXIV. for no "fundamental
+discrepancy," but because of "its close kinship to the _ODYSSEY_, as in
+the whole language of the Book."
+
+Here, as in many other passages, if we are to account for discrepancies
+by the theory of multiplex authorship, we must decide that Mr. Leaf's
+books are the work of several critics, not of one critic only. But there
+is excellent evidence to prove that here we would be mistaken.
+
+Confessedly and regretfully no grammarian, I remain unable, in face of
+what seem contradictory assertions about the value of linguistic tests,
+to ascertain what they are really worth, and what, if anything, they
+really prove.
+
+Mr. Monro allows much for "the long insensible influence of Attic
+recitation upon the Homeric text;" ... "many Attic peculiarities may
+be noted" (so much so that Aristarchus thought Homer must have been
+an Athenian!). "The poems suffered a gradual and unsystematic because
+generally unconscious process of modernising, the chief agents in
+which were the rhapsodists" (reciters in a later democratic age), "who
+wandered over all parts of Greece, and were likely to be influenced by
+all the chief forms of literature." [Footnote: Monro, _Homeric Grammar_,
+pp 394-396. 1891]
+
+Then, wherefore insist so much on tests of language?
+
+Mr. Monro was not only a great grammarian; he had a keen appreciation
+of poetry. Thus he was conspicuously uneasy in his hypothesis, based on
+words and grammar, that the two last Books of the _Iliad_ are by a late
+hand. After quoting Shelley's remark that, in these two Books, "Homer
+truly begins to be himself," Mr. Monro writes, "in face of such
+testimony can we say that the Book in which the climax is reached, in
+which the last discords of the _Iliad_ are dissolved in chivalrous pity
+and regret, is not the work of the original poet, but of some Homerid or
+rhapsodist?"
+
+Mr. Monro, with a struggle, finally voted for grammar, and other
+indications of lateness, against Shelley and against his own sense of
+poetry. In a letter to me of May 1905, Mr. Monro sketched a theory that
+Book IX. (without which he said that he deemed an _Achilleis_ hardly
+possible) might be a _remanié_ representative of an earlier lay to the
+same general effect. Some Greek Shakespeare, then, treated an older poem
+on the theme of Book IX. as Shakespeare treated old plays, namely, as a
+canvas to work over with a master's hand. Probably Mr. Monro would
+not have gone _so_ far in the case of Book XXIV., _The Repentance_ of
+Achilles. He thought it in too keen contrast with the brutality of Book
+XXII. (obviously forgetting that in Book XXIV. Achilles is infinitely
+more brutal than in Book XXII.), and thought it inconsistent with the
+refusal of Achilles to grant burial at the prayer of the dying Hector,
+and with his criminal treatment of the dead body of his chivalrous
+enemy. But in Book XXIV. his ferocity is increased. Mr. Leaf shares
+Mr. Monro's view; but Mr. Leaf thinks that a Greek audience forgave
+Achilles, because he was doing "the will of heaven," and "fighting the
+great fight of Hellenism against barbarism." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad,_
+vol.-ii. p. 429. 1902.] But the Achzeans were not Puritans of the
+sixteenth century! Moreover, the Trojans are as "Hellenic" as the
+Achzeans. They converse, clearly, in the same language. They worship
+the same gods. The Achzeans cannot regard them (unless on account of the
+breach of truce, by no Trojan, but an ally) as the Covenanters regarded
+"malignants," their name for loyal cavaliers, whom they also styled
+"Amalekites," and treated as Samuel treated Agag. The Achaeans to whom
+Homer sang had none of this sanguinary Pharisaism.
+
+Others must decide on the exact value and import of Odyssean grammar
+as a test of lateness, and must estimate the probable amount of time
+required for the development of such linguistic differences as they find
+in the _Odyssey_ and _Iliad_. In undertaking this task they may compare
+the literary language of America as it was before 1860 and as it is now.
+The language of English literature has also been greatly modified in
+the last forty years, but our times are actively progressive in many
+directions; linguistic variations might arise more slowly in the Greece
+of the Epics. We have already shown, in the more appropriate instance
+of the _Chancun de Willame_, that considerable varieties in diction and
+metre occur in a single MS. of that poem, a MS. written probably within
+less than a century of the date of the poem's composition.
+
+We can also trace, in _remaniements_ of the _Chanson DE ROLAND_,
+comparatively rapid and quite revolutionary variations from the
+oldest--the Oxford--manuscript. Rhyme is substituted for assonance;
+the process entails frequent modernisations, and yet the basis of
+thirteenth-century texts continues to be the version of the eleventh
+century. It may be worth the while of scholars to consider these
+parallels carefully, as regards the language and prosody of the Odyssean
+Books of the _Iliad_, and to ask themselves whether the processes of
+alteration in the course of transmission, which we know to have occurred
+in the history of the Old French, may not also have affected the
+_ILIAD_, though why the effect is mainly confined to four Books remains
+a puzzle. It is enough for us to have shown that if Odyssean varies from
+Iliadic language, in all other respects the two poems bear the marks
+of the same age. Meanwhile, a Homeric scholar so eminent as Mr. T. W.
+Allen, says that "the linguistic attack upon their age" (that of the
+Homeric poems) "may be said to have at last definitely failed, and
+archaeology has erected an apparently indestructible buttress for their
+defence." [Footnote: _Classical Review, May_ 1906, p. 194.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+THE "DOLONEIA"
+
+"ILIAD," BOOK X.
+
+Of all Books in the [blank space] Book X., called the _Doloneia_,
+is most generally scouted and rejected. The Book, in fact, could be
+omitted, and only a minutely analytic reader would perceive the lacuna.
+He would remark that in Iliad, IX. 65-84, certain military preparations
+are made which, if we suppress Book X., lead up to nothing, and that
+in _Iliad_, XIV. 9-11, we find Nestor with the shield of his son,
+Thrasymedes, while Thrasymedes has his father's shield, a fact not
+explained, though the poet certainly meant something by it. The
+explanation in both cases is found in Book X., which may also be thought
+to explain why the Achaeans, so disconsolate in Book IX., and why
+Agamemnon, so demoralised, so gaily assume the offensive in Book
+XI. Some ancient critics, Scholiast T and Eustathius, attributed the
+_DOLONEIA_ to Homer, but supposed it to have been a separate composition
+of his added to the _Iliad_ by Pisistratus. This merely proves that
+they did not find any necessity for the existence of the _DOLONEIA_. Mr.
+Allen, who thinks that "it always held its present place," says, "the
+_DOLONEIA_ is persistently written down." [Footnote: _Classical Review_,
+May 1906, p. 194]
+
+To understand the problem of the _DOLONEIA_, we must make a summary of
+its contents. In Book IX. 65-84, at the end of the disastrous fighting
+of Book VIII, the Achaeans, by Nestor's advice, station an advanced
+guard of "_the young men_" between the fosse and wall; 700 youths are
+posted there, under Meriones, the squire of Idomeneus, and Thrasymedes,
+the son of Nestor. All this is preparation for Book X., as Mr. Leaf
+remarks, [Footnote: _Companion_, p. 174.] though in any case an advanced
+guard was needed. Their business is to remain awake, under arms, in case
+the Trojans, who are encamped on the plain, attempt a night attack. At
+their station the young men will be under arms till dawn; they light
+fires and cook their provisions; the Trojans also surround their own
+watchfires.
+
+The Achaean chiefs then hold council, and Agamemnon sends the embassy
+to Achilles. The envoys bring back his bitter answer; and all men go to
+sleep in their huts, deeply discouraged, as even Odysseus avowed.
+
+Here the Tenth Book begins, and it is manifest that the poet is
+thoroughly well acquainted with the Ninth Book. Without the arrangements
+made in the Ninth Book, and without the despairing situation of that
+Book, his lay is impossible. It will be seen that critics suppose him,
+alternately, to have "quite failed to realise the conditions of life of
+the heroes of whom he sang" (that is, if certain lines are genuine), and
+also to be a peculiarly learned archaeologist and a valuable authority
+on weapons. He is addicted to introducing fanciful "touches of heroic
+simplicity," says Mr. Leaf, and is altogether a puzzling personage to
+the critics.
+
+The Book opens with the picture of Agamemnon, sleepless from anxiety,
+while the other chiefs, save Menelaus, are sleeping. He "hears the music
+of the joyous Trojan pipes and flutes" and sees the reflected glow
+of their camp-fires, we must suppose, for he could not see the fires
+themselves through the new wall of his own camp, as critics very wisely
+remark. He tears out his hair before Zeus; no one else does so, in the
+_Iliad_, but no one else is Agamemnon, alone and in despair.
+
+He rises to consult Nestor, throwing a lion's skin over his _chiton_,
+and grasping a spear. Much noise is made about the furs, such as this
+lion's pelt, which the heroes, in Book X., throw about their shoulders
+when suddenly aroused. That sportsmen like the heroes should keep the
+pelts of animals slain by them for use as coverlets, and should throw on
+one of the pelts when aroused in a hurry, is a marvellous thing to the
+critics. They know that fleeces were used for coverlets of beds (IX.
+661), and pelts of wild animals, slain by Anchises, cover his bed in the
+Hymn to Aphrodite.
+
+But the facts do not enlighten critics. Yet no facts could be more
+natural. A scientific critic, moreover, never reflects that the poet is
+dealing with an unexampled situation--heroes wakened and called into
+the cold air in a night of dread, but not called to battle. Thus Reichel
+says: "The poet knows so little about true heroic costume that he drapes
+the princes in skins of lions and panthers, like giants.... But about a
+corslet he never thinks." [Footnote: Reichel, p.70.]
+
+The simple explanation is that the poet has not hitherto had to tell
+us about men who are called up, not to fight, on a night that must have
+been chilly. In war they do not wear skins, though Paris, in archer's
+equipment, wears a pard's skin (III. 17). Naturally, the men throw over
+themselves their fur coverlets; but Nestor, a chilly veteran, prefers a
+_chiton_ and a wide, double-folded, fleecy purple cloak. The cloak lay
+ready to his hand, for such cloaks were used as blankets (XXIV.
+646; Odyssey, III. 349, 351; IV. 299; II. 189). We hear more of such
+bed-coverings in the Odyssey than in the merely because in the _ODYSSEY_
+we have more references to beds and to people in bed. That a sportsman
+may have (as many folk have now) a fur coverlet, and may throw it over
+him as a kind of dressing-gown or "bed-gown," is a simple circumstance
+which bewilders the critical mind and perplexed Reichel.
+
+If the poet knew so little as Reichel supposed his omission of corslets
+is explained. Living in an age of corslets (seventh century), he, being
+a literary man, knew nothing about corslets, or, as he is also an acute
+archaeologist, he knew too much; he knew that they were not worn in
+the Mycenaean prime, so he did not introduce them. The science of this
+remarkable ignoramus, in _this_ view, accounts for his being aware that
+pelts of animals were in vogue as coverlets, just as fur dressing-gowns
+were worn in the sixteenth century, and he introduces them precisely as
+he leaves corslets out, because he knows that pelts of fur were in use,
+and that, in the Mycenaean prime, corslets were not worn.
+
+In speaking to Nestor, Agamemnon awakens sympathy: "Me, of all the
+Achaeans, Zeus has set in toil and labour ceaselessly." They are almost
+the very words of Charlemagne in the _Chanson de Roland: "Deus, Dist li
+Reis, si peneuse est ma vie."_ The author of the _Doloneia_ consistently
+conforms to the character of Agamemnon as drawn in the rest of the
+_Iliad_. He is over-anxious; he is demoralising in his fits of gloom,
+but all the burden of the host hangs on him--sipeneuse _est ma via_.
+
+To turn to higher things. Menelaus, too, was awake, anxious about the
+Argives, who risked their lives in his cause alone. He got up, put on a
+pard's skin and a bronze helmet (here the poet forgets, what he ought
+to have known, that no bronze helmets have been found in the Mycenaean
+graves). Menelaus takes a spear, and goes to look for Agamemnon, whom he
+finds arming himself beside his ship. He discovers that Agamemnon means
+to get Nestor to go and speak to the advanced guard, as his son is their
+commander, and they will obey Nestor. Agamemnon's pride has fallen very
+low! He tells Menelaus to waken the other chief with all possible formal
+courtesy, for, brutally rude when in high heart, at present Agamemnon
+cowers to everybody. He himself finds Nestor in bed, his _shield_, two
+spears, and helmet beside him, also his glittering _zoster_. His corslet
+is not named; perhaps the poet knew that the _zoster_, or broad metallic
+belt, had been evolved, but that the corslet had not been invented; or
+perhaps he "knows so little about the costume of the heroes" that he
+is unaware of the existence of corslets. Nestor asks Agamemnon what he
+wants; and Agamemnon says that his is a toilsome life, that he cannot
+sleep, that his knees tremble, and that he wants Nestor to come and
+visit the outposts.
+
+There is really nothing absurd in this. Napoleon often visited his
+outposts in the night before Waterloo, and Cromwell rode along his lines
+all through the night before Dunbar, biting his lips till the blood
+dropped on his linen bands. In all three cases hostile armies were
+arrayed within striking distance of each other, and the generals were
+careworn.
+
+Nestor admits that it is an anxious night, and rather blames Menelaus
+for not rousing the other chiefs; but Agamemnon explains and defends his
+brother. Nestor then puts on the comfortable cloak already described,
+and picks up a spear, [blank space] _in HIS QUARTERS_.
+
+As for Odysseus, he merely throws a shield over his shoulders. The
+company of Diomede are sleeping with their heads on their shields.
+Thence Reichel (see "The Shield") infers that the late poet of Book X.
+gave them small Ionian round bucklers; but it has been shown that no
+such inference is legitimate. Their spears were erect by their sides,
+fixed in the ground by the _sauroter_, or butt-spike, used by the men of
+the late "warrior vase" found at Mycenae. To arrange the spears thus,
+we have seen, was a point of drill that, in Aristotle's time, survived
+among the Illyrians. [Footnote: _Poetics_, XXV.] The practice is also
+alluded to in _Iliad_, III 135. During a truce "the tall spears are
+planted by their sides." The poet, whether ignorant or learned, knew
+that point of war, later obsolete in Greece, but still extant in
+Illyria.
+
+Nestor aroused Diomede, whose night apparel was the pelt of a lion; he
+took his spear, and they came to the outposts, where the men were awake,
+and kept a keen watch on all movements among the Trojans. Nestor praised
+them, and the princes, taking Nestor's son, Thrasymedes, and Meriones
+with them, went out into the open in view of the Trojan camp, sat down,
+and held a consultation.
+
+Nestor asked if any one would volunteer to go as a spy among the Trojans
+and pick up intelligence. His reward will be "a black ewe with her lamb
+at her foot," from their chiefs--"nothing like her for value"--and he
+will be remembered in songs at feasts, _or_ will be admitted to feasts
+and wine parties of the chiefs. [Footnote: Leaf, Note on X. 215.] The
+proposal is very odd; what do the princes want with black ewes, while
+at feasts they always have honoured places? Can Nestor be thinking of
+sending out any brave swift-footed young member of the outpost party, to
+whom the reward would be appropriate?
+
+After silence, Diomede volunteers to go, with a comrade, though this
+kind of work is very seldom undertaken in any army of any age by a
+chief, and by his remark about admission to wine parties it is clear
+that Nestor was not thinking of a princely spy. Many others volunteer,
+but Agamemnon bids Diomede choose his own companion, with a very broad
+hint not to take Menelaus. _HIS_ death, Agamemnon knows, would mean the
+disgraceful return of the host to Greece; besides he is, throughout the
+_ILIAD_, deeply attached to his brother.
+
+The poet of Book X., however late, knows the _ILIAD_ well, for he keeps
+up the uniform treatment of the character of the Over-Lord. As he knows
+the _ILIAD_ well, how can he be ignorant of the conditions of life
+of the heroes? How can he dream of "introducing a note of heroic
+simplicity" (Mr. Leaf's phrase), when he must be as well aware as we are
+of the way in which the heroes lived? We cannot explain the black ewes,
+if meant as a princely reward, but we do not know everything about
+Homeric life.
+
+Diomede chooses Odysseus, "whom Pallas Athene loveth"; she was also the
+patroness of Diomede himself, in Books V., VI.
+
+As they are unarmed--all of the chiefs hastily aroused were unarmed,
+save for a spear there or a sword here--Thrasymedes gives to Diomede his
+two-edged sword, _his_ shield, and "a helm of bull's hide, without horns
+or crest, that is called a skull-cap (knap-skull), and keeps the heads
+of strong young men." All the advanced guard were young men, as we saw
+in Book IX. 77. Obviously, Thrasymedes must then send back to camp,
+though we are not told it, for another shield, sword, and helmet, as he
+is to lie all night under arms. We shall hear of the shield later.
+
+Meriones, who is an archer (XIII. 650), lends to Odysseus his bow and
+quiver and a sword. He also gives him "a helm made of leather; and with
+many a thong it was stiffly wrought within, while without the white
+teeth of a boar of flashing tusks were arrayed, thick set on either side
+well and cunningly... ." Here Reichel perceives that the ignorant poet
+is describing a piece of ancient headgear represented in Mycenaean art,
+while the boars' teeth were found by Schliemann, to the number of
+sixty, in Grave IV. at Mycenae. Each of them had "the reverse side
+cut perfectly flat, and with the borings to attach them to some other
+object." They were "in a veritable funereal armoury." The manner of
+setting the tusks on the cap is shown on an ivory head of a warrior from
+Mycenae. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, 196-197.]
+
+Reichel recognises that the poet's description in Book X. is excellent,
+"_ebenso klar als eingehend_." He publishes another ivory head from
+Spata, with the same helmet set with boars' tusks. [Footnote: Reichel,
+pp. 102-104] Mr. Leaf decides that this description by the poet, wholly
+ignorant of heroic costume, as Reichel thinks him, must be "another
+instance of the archaic and archaeologising tendency so notable in Book
+X." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 629.]
+
+At the same time, according to Reichel and Mr. Leaf, the poet of Book
+X. introduces the small round Ionian buckler, thus showing his utter
+ignorance of the great Mycenaean shield. The ignorance was most unusual
+and quite inexcusable, for any one who reads the rest of the _Iliad_
+(which the poet of Book X. knew well) is aware that the Homeric shields
+were huge, often covering body and legs. This fact the poet of Book X.
+did not know, in Reichel's opinion. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
+575]
+
+How are we to understand this poet? He is such an erudite archaeologist
+that, in the seventh century, he knows and carefully describes a helmet
+of the Mycenaean prime. Did he excavate it? and had the leather interior
+lasted with the felt cap through seven centuries? Or did he see a sample
+in an old temple of the Mycenaean prime, or in a museum of his own
+period? Or had he heard of it in a lost Mycenaean poem? Yet, careful
+as he was, so pedantic that he must have puzzled his seventh-century
+audience, who never saw such caps, the poet knew nothing of the shields
+and costumes of the heroes, though he might have found out all that is
+known about them in the then existing Iliadic lays with which he was
+perfectly familiar--see his portrait of Agamemnon. He was well aware
+that corslets were, in Homeric poetry, anachronisms, for he gave
+Nestor none; yet he fully believed, in his ignorance, that small Ionian
+bucklers loveth; (which need the aid of corslets badly) were the only
+wear among the heroes!
+
+Criticism has, as we often observe, no right to throw the first stone
+at the inconsistencies of Homer. As we cannot possibly believe that one
+poet knew so much which his contemporaries did not know (and how, in the
+seventh century, could he know it?), and that he also knew so little,
+knew nothing in fact, we take our own view. The poet of Book X. sings
+of _a_ fresh topic, a confused night of dread; of young men wearing the
+headgear which, he says, young men _do_ wear; of pelts of fur such as
+suddenly wakened men, roused, but not roused for battle, would be likely
+to throw over their bodies against the chill air. He describes things of
+his own day; things with which he is familiar. He is said to "take quite
+a peculiar delight in the minute description of dress and weapons."
+[Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 423.] We do not observe that he
+does describe weapons or shields minutely; but Homer always loves to
+describe weapons and costume--scores of examples prove it--and here he
+happens to be describing such costume as he nowhere else has occasion to
+mention. By an accident of archaeological discovery, we find that
+there were such caps set with boars' tusks as he introduces. They had
+survived, for young men on night duty, into the poet's age. We really
+cannot believe that a poet of the seventh century had made excavations
+in Mycenaean graves. If he did and put the results into his lay, his
+audience--not wearing boars' tusks--would have asked, "What nonsense is
+the man talking?"
+
+Erhardt, remarking on the furs which the heroes throw over their
+shoulders when aroused, says that this kind of wrap is very late. It
+was Peisander who, in the second half of the seventh century, clothed
+Herakles in a lion's skin. Peisander brought this costume into
+poetry, and the author of the _Doloneia_ knew no better than to follow
+Peisander. [Footnote: _Die Enstehung der Homerischen Gedichte_, pp.
+163-164.] The poet of the _Doloneia_ was thus much better acquainted
+with Peisander than with the Homeric lays, which could have taught
+him that a hero would never wear a fur coverlet when aroused--not to
+fight--from slumber. Yet he knew about leathern caps set with boars'
+tusks. He must have been an erudite excavator, but, in literature, a
+reader only of recent minor poetry.
+
+Having procured arms, without corslets (_with_ corslets, according to
+Carl Robert)--whether, if they had none, because the poet knew that
+corslets were anachronisms, or because spies usually go as lightly
+burdened as possible--Odysseus and Diomede approach the Trojan camp. The
+hour is the darkest hour before dawn. They hear, but do not see, a heron
+sent by Athene as an omen, and pray to the goddess, with promise of
+sacrifice.
+
+In the Trojan camp Hector has called a council, and asked for a
+volunteer spy to seek intelligence among the Achaeans. He offers no
+black ewes as a reward, but the best horses of the enemy. This allures
+Dolon, son of a rich Trojan, "an only son among five sisters," a
+poltroon, a weak lad, ugly, but swift of foot, and an enthusiastic lover
+of horses. He asks for the steeds of Achilles, which Hector swears to
+give him; and to be lightly clad he takes merely spear and bow and a cap
+of ferret skin, with the pelt of a wolf for covering. Odysseus sees him
+approach; he and Diomede lie down among the dead till Dolon passes, then
+they chase him towards the Achaean camp and catch him. He offers ransom,
+which before these last days of the war was often accepted. Odysseus
+replies evasively, and asks for information. Dolon, thinking that
+the bitterness of death is past, explains that only the Trojans have
+watch-fires; the allies, more careless, have none. At the extreme flank
+of the host sleep the newly arrived Thracians, under their king, Rhesus,
+who has golden armour, and "the fairest horses that ever I beheld" (the
+ruling passion for horses is strong in Dolon), "and the greatest, whiter
+than snow, and for speed like the winds."
+
+Having learned all that he needs to know, Diomede ruthlessly slays
+Dolon. Odysseus thanks Athene, and hides the poor spoils of the dead,
+marking the place. They then creep into the dark camp of the sleeping
+Thracians, and as Diomede slays them Odysseus drags each body aside, to
+leave a clear path for the horses, that they may not plunge and tremble
+when they are led forth, "for they were not yet used to dead men." No
+line in Homer shows more intimate knowledge and realisation of horses
+and of war. Odysseus drives the horses of Rhesus out of the camp with
+the bow of Meriones; he has forgotten to take the whip from the chariot.
+Diomede, having slain King Rhesus asleep, thinks whether he shall lift
+out the chariot (war chariots were very light) or drag it by the pole;
+but Athene warns him to be going. He "springs upon the steeds," and they
+make for their camp. It is not clearly indicated whether they ride or
+drive (X., 5 I 3, 527-528, 541); but, suppose that they ride, are we
+to conclude that the fact proves "lateness"? The heroes always drive
+in Homer, but it is inconceivable that they could not ride in cases of
+necessity, as here, if Diomede has thought it wiser not to bring out the
+chariot and harness the horses. Riding is mentioned in _Iliad_, XV.
+679, in a simile; again, in a simile, _Odyssey_, V. 37 I. It is not the
+custom for heroes to ride; the chariot is used in war and in travelling,
+but, when there are horses and no chariot, men could not be so imbecile
+as not to mount the horses, nor could the poet be so pedantic as not to
+make them do so.
+
+The shields would cause no difficulty; they would be slung sideways,
+like the shields of knights in the early Middle Ages. The pair, picking
+up Dolon's spoils as they pass, hurry back to the chiefs, where Nestor
+welcomes them. The others laugh and are encouraged (to encourage them
+and his audience is the aim of the poet); while the pair go to Diomede's
+quarters, wash off the blood and sweat from their limbs in the sea, and
+then "enter the polished baths," common in the _Odyssey_, unnamed in
+the Iliad. But on no other occasion in the Iliad are we admitted to view
+this part of heroic toilette. Nowhere else, in fact, do we accompany a
+hero to his quarters and his tub after the day's work is over. Achilles,
+however, refuses to wash, after fighting, in his grief for Patroclus,
+though plenty of water was being heated for the purpose, and it is to be
+presumed that a bath was ready for the water (_Iliad_, XXIII. 40). See,
+too, for Hector's bath, XXII. 444.
+
+The two heroes then refresh themselves; breakfast, in fact, and drink,
+as is natural. By this time the dawn must have been in the sky, and in
+Book XI. men are stirring with the dawn. Such is the story of Book X.
+The reader may decide as to whether it is "_Very_ late; barely
+Homeric," or a late and deliberate piece of burlesque, [Footnote: Henry,
+_Classical Review_. March 1906.] or whether it is very Homeric, though
+the whole set of situations--a night of terror, an anxious chief, a
+nocturnal adventure--are unexampled in the poem.
+
+The poet's audience of warriors must have been familiar with such
+situations, and must have appreciated the humorous, ruthless treatment
+of Dolon, the spoiled only brother of five sisters. Mr. Monro admitted
+that Dolon is Shakespearian, but added, "too Shakespearian for Homer."
+One may as well say that Agincourt, in Henry V., is "too Homeric for
+Shakespeare."
+
+Mr. Monro argued that "the Tenth Book comes in awkwardly after the
+Ninth." Nitzsche thinks just the reverse. The patriotic warrior audience
+would delight in the _Doloneia_ after the anguish of Book IX.; would
+laugh with Odysseus at the close of his adventure, and rejoice with the
+other Achaeans (X. 505).
+
+"The introductory part of the Book is cumbrous," says Mr. Monro. To
+us it is, if we wish to get straight to the adventure, just as the
+customary delays in Book XIX., before Achilles is allowed to fight, are
+tedious to us. But the poet's audience did not necessarily share our
+tastes, and might take pleasure (as I do) in the curious details of the
+opening of Book X. The poet was thinking of his audience, not of modern
+professors.
+
+"We hear no more of Rhesus and his Thracians." Of Rhesus there was
+no more to hear, and his people probably went home, like Glenbuckie's
+Stewarts after the mysterious death of their chief in Amprior's house of
+Leny before Prestonpans (1745). Glenbuckie was mysteriously pistolled
+in the night. "The style and tone is unlike that of the Iliad ... It
+is rather akin to comedy of a rough farcical kind." But it was time for
+"comic relief." If the story of Dolon be comic, it is comic with the
+practical humour of the sagas. In an isolated nocturnal adventure
+and massacre we cannot expect the style of an heroic battle under the
+sunlight. Is the poet not to be allowed to be various, and is the scene
+of the Porter in _Macbeth_, "in style and tone," like the rest of the
+drama? (_Macbeth_, Act ii. sc. 3). Here, of course, Shakespeare indulges
+infinitely more in "comedy of a rough practical kind" than does the
+author of the _Doloneia_.
+
+The humour and the cruelty do not exceed what is exhibited in many of
+the _gabes_, or insulting boasts of heroes over dead foes in other parts
+of the _Iliad_; such as the taunting comparison of a warrior falling
+from his chariot to a diver after oysters, or as "one of the Argives
+hath caught the spear in his flesh, and leaning thereon for a staff,
+methinks that he will go down within the house of Hades" (XIV. 455-457).
+The _Iliad_, like the sagas, is rich in this extremely practical humour.
+
+Mr. Leaf says that the Book "must have been composed before the _Iliad_
+had reached its present form, for it cannot have been meant to follow
+on Book IX. It is rather another case of a parallel rival to that Book,
+coupled with it only in the final literary redaction," which Mr. Leaf
+dates in the middle of the sixth century. "The Book must have been
+composed before the _Iliad_ had reached its present form," [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. i. p. 424.] It is not easy to understand this decision;
+for, as Mr. Leaf had previously written, about Book IX. 60-68, "the
+posting of the watch is at least not necessary to the story, and it has
+a suspicious air of being merely a preparation for the next Book, which
+is much later, and which turns entirely upon a visit to the sentinels."
+[Footnote: _Companion,_ p.174.]
+
+Now a military audience would not have pardoned the poet of Book IX. if,
+in the circumstances of defeat, with a confident enemy encamped within
+striking distance, he had not made the Achaeans throw forth their
+outposts. The thing was inevitable and is not suspicious; but the poet
+purposely makes the advanced guard consist of young men under Nestor's
+son and Meriones. He needs them for Book X. Therefore the poet of Book
+IX. is the poet of Book X. preparing his effect in advance; or the poet
+of Book X. is a man who cleverly takes advantage of Book IX., or he
+composed his poem of "a night of terror and adventure," "in the air,"
+and the editor of 540 B.C., having heard it recited and copied it out,
+went back to Book IX. and inserted the advanced guard, under Thrasymedes
+and Meriones, to lead up to Book X.
+
+On Mr. Leafs present theory, [Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p.424.] Book X.,
+we presume, was meant, not to follow Book IX., but to follow the end of
+Book VII, being an alternative to Book VIII. (composed, he says, to
+lead up to Book IX.) and Book IX. But Book VII. closes with the Achaean
+refusal of the compromise offered by Paris--the restoration of the
+property but not of the wife of Menelaus. The Trojans and Achaeans feast
+all night; the Trojans feast in the city. There is therefore no place
+here for Book X. after Book VII, and the Achaeans cannot roam about
+all night, as they are feasting; nor can Agamemnon be in the state of
+anxiety exhibited by him in Book X.
+
+Book X. could not exist without Book IX., and _must_ have been "meant
+to follow on it." Mr. Leaf sees that, in his preface to Book IX.,
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 371.] "The placing of sentinels" (in Book
+IX. 80, 84) "is needed as an introduction to Book X. but has nothing to
+do with this Book" (IX.). But, we have said, it was inevitable, given
+the new situation in Book IX. (an Achaean repulse, and the enemy camped
+in front), that an advanced guard must be placed, even if there proved
+to be no need of their services. We presume that Mr. Leaf's literary
+editor, finding that Book X. existed and that the advanced guard was
+a necessity of its action, went back to Book IX. and introduced
+an advanced guard of young men, with its captains, Thrasymedes and
+Meriones. Even after this the editor had much to do, if Book IX.
+originally exhibited Agamemnon as not in terror and despair, as it now
+does.
+
+We need not throw the burden of all this work on the editor. As Mr.
+Leaf elsewhere writes, in a different mind, the Tenth Book "is obviously
+adapted to its present place in the _Iliad_, for it assumes a moment
+when Achilles is absent from the field, and when the Greeks are in deep
+dejection from a recent defeat. These conditions are exactly fulfilled
+by the situation at the end of Book IX." [Footnote: _Companion_, p.
+190.]
+
+This is certainly the case. The Tenth Book could not exist without the
+Ninth; yet Mr. Leaf's new opinion is that it "cannot have been meant to
+follow on Book IX." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 424.] He was better
+inspired when he held the precisely opposite opinion.
+
+Dr. Adolf Kiene [Footnote: Die _Epen des Homer, Zweiter Theil,_ pp.
+90-94. Hanover, 1884.] accepts Book XI. as originally composed to fill
+its present place in the _Iliad._ He points out the despondency of the
+chiefs after receiving the reply of Achilles, and supposes that even
+Diomede (IX. 708) only urges Agamemnon to "array before the ships thy
+folk and horsemen," for defensive battle. But, encouraged by the success
+of the night adventure, Agamemnon next day assumes the offensive. To
+consider thus is perhaps to consider too curiously. But it is clear
+that the Achaeans have been much encouraged by the events of Book X.,
+especially Agamemnon, whose character, as Kiene observes, is very subtly
+and consistently treated, and "lies near the poet's heart." This is the
+point which we keep urging. Agamemnon's care for Menelaus is strictly
+preserved in Book X.
+
+Nitzsche (I 897) writes, "Between Book IX. and Book XI there is a gap;
+that gap the _Doloneia_ fills: it must have been composed to be part of
+the _ILIAD_." But he thinks that the _Doloneia_ has taken the place
+of an earlier lay which filled the gap. [Footnote: Die _Echtheit der
+Doloneia,_ p. 32. Programme des K. K. Staats Gymnasium zu Marburg,
+1877.] That the Book is never referred to later in the _Iliad_, even
+if it be true, is no great argument against its authenticity. For when
+later references are made to Book IX., they are dismissed as clever late
+interpolations. If the horses of Rhesus took part, as they do not, in
+the sports at the funeral of Patroclus, the passage would be called a
+clever interpolation: in fact, Diomede had better horses, divine horses
+to run. However, it is certainly remarkable that the interpolation was
+not made by one of the interpolators of critical theory.
+
+Meanwhile there is, we think, a reference to Book X. in Book XIV.
+[Footnote: This was pointed out to me by Mr. Shewan, to whose great
+knowledge of Homer I am here much indebted.]
+
+In _Iliad_, XIV. 9-11, we read that Nestor, in his quarters with the
+wounded Machaon, on the day following the night of Dolon's death, hears
+the cry of battle and goes out to see what is happening. "He took the
+well-wrought shield of his son, horse-taming Thrasymedes, which was
+lying in the hut, all glistening with bronze, but _the son had the
+shield of his father_."
+
+Why had Thrasymedes the shield of his father? At about 3 A.M. before
+dawn the shield of Nestor was lying beside him in his own bedroom (Book
+X. 76), and at the same moment his son Thrasymedes _was_ on outpost
+duty, and had his own shield with him (Book IX. 81).
+
+When, then, did father and son exchange shields, and why? Mr. Leaf says,
+"It is useless to inquire why father and son had thus changed shields,
+as the scholiasts of course do."
+
+The scholiasts merely babble. Homer, of course, meant _something_ by
+this exchange of shields, which occurred late in the night of Book IX.
+or very early in the following day, that of Books XI-XVI.
+
+Let us follow again the sequence of events. On the night before the
+day when Nestor had Thrasymedes' shield and Thrasymedes had Nestor's,
+Thrasymedes was sent out, with shield and all, in command of one of the
+seven companies of an advanced guard, posted between fosse and wall, in
+case of a camisade by the Trojans, who were encamped on the plain (IX.
+81). With him in command were Meriones and five other young men less
+notable. They had supplies with them and whatever was needed: they
+cooked supper in bivouac.
+
+In the _Doloneia_ the wakeful princes, after inspecting the advanced
+guard, go forward within view of the Trojan ranks and consult. With
+them they take Nestor's son, Thrasymedes, and Meriones (X. 196). The
+two young men, being on active service, are armed; the princes are not.
+Diomede, having been suddenly roused out of sleep, with no intention to
+fight, merely threw on his dressing-gown, a lion's skin. Nestor wore a
+thick, double, purple dressing-gown. Odysseus had cast his shield about
+his shoulders. It was decided that Odysseus and Diomede should enter the
+Trojan camp and "prove a jeopardy." Diomede had no weapon but his spear;
+so Thrasymedes, who is armed as we saw, lends him his bull's-hide
+cap, "that keeps the heads of stalwart youths," his sword (for that of
+Diomede "was left at the ships"), and his shield.
+
+Diomede and Odysseus successfully achieve their adventure and return to
+the chiefs, where they talk with Nestor; and then they go to Diomede's
+hut and drink. The outposts remain, of course, at their stations.
+
+Meanwhile, Thrasymedes, having lent his shield to Diomede, has none of
+his own. Naturally, as he was to pass the night under arms, he would
+send to his father's quarters for the old man's shield, a sword, and a
+helmet. He would remain at his post (his men had provisions) till the
+general _reveillez_ at dawn, and would then breakfast at his post and go
+into the fray. Nestor, therefore, missing his shield, would send round
+to Diomede's quarters for the shield of Thrasymedes, which had been lent
+overnight to Diomede, would take it into the fight, and would bring it
+back to his own hut when he carried the wounded Machaon thither out of
+the battle. When he arms to go out and seek for information, he picks up
+the shield of Thrasymedes.
+
+Nothing can be more obvious; the poet, being a man of imagination, not
+a professor, sees it all, and casually mentions that the son had the
+father's and the father had the son's shield. His audience, men of the
+sword, see the case as clearly as the poet does: only we moderns and the
+scholiasts, almost as modern as ourselves, are puzzled.
+
+It may also be argued, though we lay no stress on it, that in Book XI.
+312, when Agamemnon has been wounded, we find Odysseus and Diomede alone
+together, without their contingents, because they have not separated
+since they breakfasted together, after returning from the adventure of
+Book X., and thus they have come rather late to the field. They find
+the Achaeans demoralised by the wounding of Agamemnon, and they make
+a stand. "What ails us," asks Odysseus, "that we forget our impetuous
+valour?" The passage appears to take up the companionship of Odysseus
+and Diomede, who were left breakfasting together at the end of Book X.
+and are not mentioned till we meet them again in this scene of Book XI.,
+as if they had just come on the field.
+
+As to the linguistic tests of lateness "there are exceptionally
+numerous traces of later formation," says Mr. Monro; while Fick, tout
+_contraire,_ writes, "clumsy Ionisms are not common, and, as a rule,
+occur in these parts which on older grounds show themselves to be late
+interpolations." "The cases of agreement" (between Fick and Mr. Monro),
+"are few, and the passages thus condemned are not more numerous in the
+_Doloneia_ than in any average book." [Footnote: Jevons, _Journal of
+Hellenic Studies_, vii. p. 302.] The six examples of "a post-Homeric
+use of the article" do not seem so very post-Homeric to an ordinary
+intelligence--parallels occur in Book I.--and "Perfects in [Greek: ka]
+from derivative verbs" do not destroy the impression of antiquity and
+unity which is left by the treatment of character; by the celebrated
+cap with boars' tusks, which no human being could archaeologically
+reconstruct in the seventh century; and by the Homeric vigour in such
+touches as the horses unused to dead men. As the _Iliad_ certainly
+passed through centuries in which its language could not but be affected
+by linguistic changes, as it could not escape from _remaniements_,
+consciously or unconsciously introduced by reciters and copyists, the
+linguistic objections are not strongly felt by us. An unphilological
+reader of Homer notes that Duntzer thinks the _Doloneia_ "older than the
+oldest portion of the Odyssey," while Gemoll thinks that the author of
+the _Doloneia_. was familiar with the _Odyssey_. [Footnote: Duntzer,
+_Homer. Abhanglungen_, p. 324. Gemoll, _Hermes_, xv. 557 ff.]
+
+Meanwhile, one thing seems plain to us: when the author of Book IX.
+posted the guards under Thrasymedes, he was deliberately leading up
+to Book X.; while the casual remark in Book XIV. about the exchange of
+shields between father and son, Nestor and Thrasymedes, glances back at
+Book X. and possibly refers to some lost and more explicit statement.
+
+It is not always remembered that, if things could drop into the
+interpolations, things could also drop out of the _ILIAD,_ causing
+_lacunae_, during the dark backward of its early existence.
+
+If the _Doloneia_ be "barely Homeric," as Father Browne holds, this
+opinion was not shared by the listeners or readers of the sixth century.
+The vase painters often illustrate the _Doloneia;_ but it does not
+follow that "the story was fresh" because it was "popular," as Mr.
+Leaf suggests, and "was treated as public property in a different way"
+(namely, in a comic way) "from the consecrated early legends" (_Iliad,_
+II 424, 425). The sixth century vase painters illustrated many passages
+in Homer, not the _Doloneia_ alone. The "comic way" was the ruthless
+humour of two strong warriors capturing one weak coward. Much later,
+wild caricature was applied in vase painting to the most romantic scenes
+in the Odyssey, which were "consecrated" enough.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+THE INTERPOLATIONS OF NESTOR
+
+That several of the passages in which Nestor speaks are very late
+interpolations, meant to glorify Pisistratus, himself of Nestor's line,
+is a critical opinion to which we have more than once alluded. The first
+example is in _Iliad,_ II. 530-568. This passage "is meant at once
+to present Nestor as the leading counsellor of the Greek army, and to
+introduce the coming _Catalogue_." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad,_ vol. i. p.
+70.] Now the _Catalogue_ "originally formed an introduction to the whole
+Cycle." [Footnote: Ibid., vol. i. p. 87.] But, to repeat an earlier
+observation, surely the whole Cycle was much later than the period of
+Pisistratus and his sons; that is, the compilation of the Homeric and
+Cyclic poems into one body of verse, named "The Cycle," is believed to
+have been much later.
+
+It is objected that Nestor's advice in this passage, "Separate thy
+warriors by tribes and clans" ([Greek: phyla, phraetras]), "is out of
+place in the last year of the war"; but this suggestion for military
+reorganisation may be admitted as a mere piece of poetical perspective,
+like Helen's description of the Achaean chiefs in Book III, or Nestor
+may wish to return to an obsolete system of clan regiments. The
+Athenians had "tribes" and "clans," political institutions, and Nestor's
+advice is noted as a touch of late Attic influence; but about the nature
+and origin of these social divisions we know so little that it is vain
+to argue about them. The advice of Nestor is an appeal to the clan
+spirit--a very serviceable military spirit, as the Highlanders have
+often proved--but we have no information as to whether it existed in
+Achaean times. Nestor speaks as the aged Lochiel spoke to Claverhouse
+before Killiecrankie. Did the Athenian army of the sixth century
+fight in clan regiments? The device seems to belong to an earlier
+civilisation, whether it survived in sixth century Athens or not. It is,
+of course, notorious that tribes and clans are most flourishing among
+the most backward people, though they were welded into the constitution
+of Athens. The passage, therefore, cannot with any certainty be
+dismissed as very late, for the words for "tribe" and "clan" could
+not be novel Athenian inventions, the institutions designated being of
+prehistoric origin.
+
+Nestor shows his tactics again in IV. 303-309, offers his "inopportune
+tactical lucubrations, doubtless under Athenian (Pisistratean)
+influence." The poet is here denied a sense of humour. That a veteran
+military Polonius should talk as inopportunely about tactics as Dugald
+Dalgetty does about the sconce of Drumsnab is an essential part of the
+humour of the character of Nestor. This is what Nestor's critics do
+not see; the inopportune nature of his tactical remarks is the point
+of them, just as in the case of the laird of Drumthwacket, "that should
+be." Scott knew little of Homer, but coincided in the Nestorian humour
+by mere congruity of genius. The Pisistratidze must have been humourless
+if they did not see that the poet smiled as he composed Nestor's
+speeches, glorifying old deeds of his own and old ways of fighting. He
+arrays his Pylians with chariots in front, footmen in the rear. In the
+[blank space] the princely heroes dismounted to fight, the chariots
+following close behind them. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XI. 48-56.] In the same
+way during the Hundred Years' War the English knights dismounted and
+defeated the French chivalry till, under Jeanne d'Arc and La Hire, the
+French learned the lesson, and imitated the English practice. On
+the other hand, Egyptian wall-paintings show the Egyptian chariotry
+advancing in neat lines and serried squadrons. According to Nestor
+these had of old been the Achaean tactics, and he preferred the old way.
+Nestor's advice in Book IV. is _not_ to dismount or break the line of
+chariots; these, he says, were the old tactics: "Even so is the far
+better way; thus, moreover, did men of old time lay low cities and
+walls." There was to be no rushing of individuals from the ranks, no
+dismounting. Nestor's were not the tactics of the heroes--they usually
+dismount and do single valiances; but Nestor, commanding his local
+contingent, recommends the methods of the old school, [Greek: hoi
+pretoroi]. What can be more natural and characteristic?
+
+The poet's meaning seems quite clear. He is not flattering Pisistratus,
+but, with quiet humour, offers the portrait of a vain, worthy veteran.
+It is difficult to see how this point can be missed; it never was missed
+before Nestor's speeches seemed serviceable to the Pisistratean theory
+of the composition of the _ILIAD_. In his first edition Mr. Leaf
+regarded the interpolations as intended "to glorify Nestor" without
+reference to Pisistratus, whom Mr. Leaf did not then recognise as the
+master of a sycophantic editor. The passages are really meant to display
+the old man's habit of glorifying himself and past times. Pisistratus
+could not feel flattered by passages intended to exhibit his ancestor as
+a conceited and inopportune old babbler. I ventured in 1896 to suggest
+that the interpolator was trying to please Pisistratus, but this was
+said in a spirit of mockery.
+
+Of all the characters in Homer that of Nestor is most familiar to the
+unlearned world, merely because Nestor's is a "character part," very
+broadly drawn.
+
+The third interpolation of flattery to Pisistratus in the person of
+Nestor is found in VII. 125-160. The Achaean chiefs are loath to accept
+the challenge of Hector to single combat. Only Menelaus rises and arms
+himself, moved by the strong sense of honour which distinguishes a
+warrior notoriously deficient in bodily strength. Agamemnon refuses
+to let him fight; the other peers make no movement, and Nestor rebukes
+them. It is entirely in nature that he should fall back on his memory
+of a similar situation in his youth; when the Arcadian champion,
+Ereuthalion, challenged any prince of the Pylians, and when "no man
+plucked up heart" to meet him except Nestor himself. Had there never
+been any Pisistratus, any poet who created the part of a worthy and
+wordy veteran must have made Nestor speak just as he does speak.
+Ereuthalion "was the tallest and strongest of men that I have slain!"
+and Nestor, being what he is, offers copious and interesting details
+about the armour of Ereuthalion and about its former owners. The passage
+is like those in which the Icelandic sagamen dwelt lovingly on the
+history of a good sword, or the Maoris on the old possessors of an
+ancient jade _patu_. An objection is now taken to Nestor's geography: he
+is said not to know the towns and burns of his own country. He speaks
+of the swift stream Keladon, the streams of Iardanus, and the walls of
+Pheia. Pheia "is no doubt the same as Pheai" [Footnote: Monro, Note on
+Odyssey, XV. 297.] (Odyssey, XV. 297), "but that was a maritime town not
+near Arkadia. There is nothing known of a Keladon or Iardanus anywhere
+near it." Now Didymus (Schol. A) "is said to have read [Greek: Phaeraes]
+for [Greek: Pheias]," following Pherekydes. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_,
+vol. i. 308.] M. Victor Bérard, who has made an elaborate study of Elian
+topography, says that "Pheia is a cape, not a town," and adopts the
+reading "Phera," the [Greek: Pherae] of the journey of Telemachus,
+in the Odyssey. He thinks that the [Greek: Pherae] of Nestor is the
+Aliphera of Polybius, and believes that the topography of Nestor and of
+the journey of Telemachus is correct. The Keladon is now the river or
+burn of Saint Isidore; the Iardanus is at the foot of Mount Kaiapha.
+Keladon has obviously the same sense as the Gaelic Altgarbh, "the rough
+and brawling stream." Iardanus is also a stream in Crete, and Mr. Leaf
+thinks it Semitic--"_Yarden_, from yarad to flow"; but the Semites did
+not give the _Yar_ to the _Yarrow_ nor to the Australian _Yarra Yarra_.
+
+The country, says M. Bérard, is a network of rivers, burns, and
+rivulets; and we cannot have any certainty, we may add, as the same
+river and burn names recur in many parts of the same country; [Footnote:
+Bérard, _Les Phéniciens et L'Odyssée,_ 108-113, 1902] many of them, in
+England, are plainly prae-Celtic.
+
+While the correct geography may, on this showing, be that of Homer, we
+cannot give up Homer's claim to Nestor's speech. As to Nestor's tale
+about the armour of Ereuthalion, it is manifest that the first owner of
+the armour of Ereuthalion, namely Are'ithous, "the Maceman," so called
+because he had the singularity of fighting with an iron _casse-tête,_
+as Nestor explains (VII. 138-140), was a famous character in legendary
+history. He appears "as Prince Areithous, the Maceman," father (or
+grand-father?) of an Areithous slain by Hector (VII. 8-10). In Greece,
+it was not unusual for the grandson to bear the grandfather's name,
+and, if the Maceman was grand-father of Hector's victim, there is no
+chronological difficulty. The chronological difficulty, in any case, if
+Hector's victim is the son of the Maceman, is not at all beyond a poetic
+narrator's possibility of error in genealogy. If Nestor's speech is a
+late interpolation, if its late author borrowed his vivid account of the
+Maceman and his _casse-tête_ from the mere word "maceman" in VII. 9, he
+must be credited with a lively poetic imagination.
+
+Few or none of these reminiscences of Nestor are really "inapplicable to
+the context." Here the context demands encouragement for heroes who shun
+a challenge. Nestor mentions an "applicable" and apposite instance of
+similar want of courage, and, as his character demands, he is the hero
+of his own story. His brag, or _gabe,_ about "he was the tallest and
+strongest of all the men I ever slew," is deliciously in keeping, and
+reminds us of the college don who said of the Czar, "he is the nicest
+emperor I ever met." The poet is sketching an innocent vanity; he is not
+flattering Pisistratus.
+
+The next case is the long narrative of Nestor to the hurried Patroclus,
+who has been sent by Achilles to bring news of the wounded Machaon (XI.
+604-702). Nestor on this occasion has useful advice to give, namely,
+that Achilles, if he will not fight, should send his men, under
+Patroclus, to turn the tide of Trojan victory. But the poet wishes to
+provide an interval of time and of yet more dire disaster before the
+return of Patroclus to Achilles. By an obvious literary artifice he
+makes Nestor detain the reluctant Patroclus with a long story of his own
+early feats of arms. It is a story of a "hot-trod," so called in Border
+law; the Eleians had driven a _creagh_ of cattle from the Pylians, who
+pursued, and Nestor killed the Eleian leader, Itymoneus. The speech is
+an Achaean parallel to the Border ballad of "Jamie Telfer of the Fair
+Dodhead," in editing which Scott has been accused of making a singular
+and most obvious and puzzling blunder in the topography of his own
+sheriffdom of the Forest. On Scott's showing the scene of the raid is in
+upper Ettrickdale, not, as critics aver, in upper Teviotdale; thus the
+narrative of the ballad would be impossible. [Footnote: In fact both
+sites on the two Dodburns are impossible; the fault lay with the
+ballad-maker, not with Scott.]
+
+The Pisistratean editor is accused of a similar error. "No doubt he was
+an Asiatic Greek, completely ignorant of the Peloponnesus." [Footnote:
+_Iliad_. Note to XI. 756, and to the _Catalogue_, II. 615-617.] It
+is something to know that Pisistratus employed an editor, or that his
+editor employed a collaborator who was an Asiatic Greek!
+
+Meanwhile, nothing is less secure than arguments based on the
+_Catalogue_. We have already shown how Mr. Leaf's opinions as to the
+date and historical merits of the _Catalogue_ have widely varied, while
+M. Bérard appears to have vindicated the topography of Nestor. Of the
+_Catalogue_ Mr. Allen writes, "As a table, according to regions, of
+Agamemnon's forces it bears every mark of venerable antiquity," showing
+"a state of things which never recurred in later history, and which no
+one had any interest to invent, or even the means for inventing." He
+makes a vigorous defence of the _Catalogue,_ as regards the dominion of
+Achilles, against Mr. Leaf. [Footnote: _Classical Review,_ May 1906, pp.
+x94-201.] Into the details we need not go, but it is not questions of
+Homeric topography, obscure as they are, that can shake our faith in the
+humorous portrait of old Nestor, or make us suppose that the sympathetic
+mockery of the poet is the sycophantic adulation of the editor to his
+statesman employer, Pisistratus. If any question may be left to literary
+discrimination it is the authentic originality of the portrayal of
+Nestor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS
+
+Though comparison is the method of Science, the comparative study of the
+national poetry of warlike aristocracies, its conditions of growth and
+decadence, has been much neglected by Homeric critics. Sir Richard Jebb
+touched on the theme, and, after devoting four pages to a sketch of
+Sanskrit, Finnish, Persian, and early Teutonic heroic poetry and _SAGA,_
+decided that "in our country, as in others, we fail to find any true
+parallel to the case of the Homeric poems. These poems must be
+studied in themselves, without looking for aid, in this sense, to
+the comparative method." [Footnote: _Homer_, p. 135.] Part of this
+conclusion seems to us rather hasty. In a brief manual Sir Richard
+had not space for a thorough comparative study of old heroic poetry
+at large. His quoted sources are: for India, Lassen; for France, Mr.
+Saintsbury's Short History of _FRENCH LITERATURE_ (sixteen pages on
+this topic), and a work unknown to me, by "M. Paul"; for Iceland he only
+quoted _THE Encyclopedia BRITANNICA_ (Mr. Edmund Gosse); for Germany,
+Lachmann and Bartsch; for the Finnish _Kalewala,_ the _ENCYCLOPEDIA
+BRITANNICA_ (Mr. Sime and Mr. Keltie); and for England, a _PRIMER OF
+ENGLISH LITERATURE_ by Mr. Stopford Brooke.
+
+These sources appear less than adequate, and Celtic heroic romance is
+entirely omitted. A much deeper and wider comparative criticism of early
+heroic national poetry is needed, before any one has a right to say that
+the study cannot aid our critical examination of the Homeric problem.
+Many peoples have passed through a stage of culture closely analogous to
+that of Achaean society as described in the _Iliad_ and Odyssey. Every
+society of this kind has had its ruling military class, its ancient
+legends, and its minstrels who on these legends have based their songs.
+The similarity of human nature under similar conditions makes it certain
+that comparison will discover useful parallels between the poetry of
+societies separated in time and space but practically identical in
+culture. It is not much to the credit of modern criticism that a topic
+so rich and interesting has been, at least in England, almost entirely
+neglected by Homeric scholars.
+
+Meanwhile, it is perfectly correct to say, as Sir Richard observes, that
+"we fail to find any true parallel to the case of the Homeric poems,"
+for we nowhere find the legends of an heroic age handled by a very great
+poet--the greatest of all poets--except in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.
+But, on the other hand, the critics refuse to believe that, in the
+_Iliad_ and _Odyssey,_ we possess the heroic Achaean legends handled by
+one great poet. They find a composite by many hands, good and bad, and
+of many ages, they say; sometimes the whole composition and part of the
+poems are ascribed to a late _littérateur_. Now to that supposed state
+of things we do find several "true parallels," in Germany, in Finland,
+in Ireland. But the results of work by these many hands in many ages are
+anything but "a true parallel" to the results which lie before us in
+the _Iliad_ and _ODYSSEY_. Where the processes of composite authorship
+throughout many _AGES_ certainly occur, as in Germany and Ireland, there
+we find no true parallel to the Homeric poems. It follows that, in all
+probability, no such processes as the critics postulate produced the
+_Iliad_ and Odyssey, for where the processes existed, beyond doubt they
+failed egregiously to produce the results.
+
+Sir Richard's argument would have been logical if many efforts by many
+hands, in many ages, in England, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, and Germany
+did actually produce true parallels to the Achaean epics. They did not,
+and why not? Simply because these other races had no Homer. All the
+other necessary conditions were present, the legendary material, the
+heroic society, the Court minstrels, all--except the great poet. In
+all the countries mentioned, except Finland, there existed military
+aristocracies with their courts, castles, and minstrels, while the
+minstrels had rich material in legendary history and in myth, and
+_Märchen_, and old songs. But none of the minstrels was adequate to the
+production of an English, German, or Irish _ILIAD_ or _ODYSSEY_, or even
+of a true artistic equivalent in France.
+
+We have tried to show that the critics, rejecting a Homer, have been
+unable to advance any adequate hypothesis to account for the existence
+of the _ILIAD_ and _ODYSSEY_. Now we see that, where such conditions of
+production as they postulate existed but where there was no great epic
+genius, they can find no true parallels to the Epics. Their logic thus
+breaks down at both ends.
+
+It may be replied that in non-Greek lands one condition found in Greek
+society failed: the succession of a reading age to an age of heroic
+listeners. But this is not so. In France and Germany an age of readers
+duly began, but they did not mainly read copies of the old heroic poems.
+They turned to lyric poetry, as in Greece, and they recast the heroic
+songs into modern and popular forms in verse and prose, when they took
+any notice of the old heroic poems at all.
+
+One merit of the Greek epics is a picture of "a certain phase of early
+civilisation," and that picture is "a naturally harmonious whole," with
+"unity of impression," says Sir Richard Jebb. [Footnote: Homer, p. 37.]
+Certainly we can find no true parallel, on an Homeric scale, to this
+"harmonious picture" in the epics of Germany and England or in the
+early literature of Ireland. Sir Richard, for England, omits notice of
+_Beowulf_; but we know that _Beowulf_, a long heroic poem, is a mass of
+anachronisms--a heathen legend in a Christian setting. The hero, that
+great heathen champion, has his epic filled full of Christian allusions
+and Christian morals, because the clerical redactor, in Christian
+England, could not but intrude these things into old pagan legends
+evolved by the continental ancestors of our race. He had no "painful
+anxiety," like the supposed Ionic continuators of the Achaean poems
+(when they are not said to have done precisely the reverse), to preserve
+harmony of ancient ideas. Such archaeological anxieties are purely
+modern.
+
+If we take the _Nibelungenlied_, [Footnote: See chapter on the
+_Nibelungenlied_ in Homer _AND the Epic_, pp. 382-404.] we find that
+it is a thing of many rehandlings, even in existing manuscripts. For
+example, the Greeks clung to the hexameter in Homer. Not so did the
+Germans adhere to old metres. The poem that, in the oldest MS., is
+written in assonances, in later MSS. is reduced to regular rhymes and is
+retouched in many essential respects. The matter of the _Nibelungenlied_
+is of heathen origin. We see the real state of heathen affairs in the
+Icelandic versions of the same tale, for the Icelanders were peculiar in
+preserving ancient lays; and, when these were woven into a prose saga,
+the archaic and heathen features were retained. Had the post-Christian
+prose author of the _Volsunga_ been a great poet, we might find in
+his work a true parallel to the _Iliad_. But, though he preserves the
+harmony of his picture of pre-Christian princely life (save in the
+savage beginnings of his story), he is not a poet; so the true parallel
+to the Greek epic fails, noble as is the saga in many passages. In the
+German _Nibelungenlied_ all is modernised; the characters are Christian,
+the manners are chivalrous, and _Märchen_ older than Homer are forced
+into a wandering mediaeval chronicle-poem. The Germans, in short, had no
+early poet of genius, and therefore could not produce a true parallel
+to _ILIAD_ or Odyssey. The mediaeval poets, of course, never dreamed
+of archaeological anxiety, as the supposed Ionian continuators are
+sometimes said to have done, any more than did the French and late Welsh
+handlers of the ancient Celtic Arthurian materials. The late
+German _bearbeiter_ of the _Nibelungenlied_ has no idea of unity of
+plot--_enfin_, Germany, having excellent and ancient legendary material
+for an epic, but producing no parallel to _ILIAD_ and Odyssey, only
+proves how absolutely essential a Homer was to the Greek epics.
+
+"If any inference could properly be drawn from the Edda" (the Icelandic
+collection of heroic lays), says Sir Richard Jebb, "it would be that
+short separate poems on cognate subjects can long exist as a collection
+_without_ coalescing into such an artistic whole as the Iliad or the
+Odyssey." [Footnote: Homer, p. 33.]
+
+It is our own argument that Sir Richard states. "Short separate poems
+on cognate subjects" can certainly co-exist for long anywhere, but they
+cannot automatically and they cannot by aid of an editor become a long
+epic. Nobody can stitch and vamp them into a poem like the _ILIAD_ or
+Odyssey. To produce a poem like either of these a great poetic genius
+must arise, and fuse the ancient materials, as Hephaestus fused copper
+and tin, and then cast the mass into a mould of his own making. A small
+poet may reduce the legends and lays into a very inartistic whole, a
+very inharmonious whole, as in the _Nibelungenlied_, but a controlling
+poet, not a mere redactor or editor, is needed to perform even that
+feat.
+
+Where a man who is not a poet undertakes to produce the coalescence,
+as Dr. Lönnrot (1835-1849) did in the case of the peasant, not courtly,
+lays of Finland, he "fails to prove that mere combining and editing can
+form an artistic whole out of originally distinct songs, even though
+concerned with closely related themes," says Sir Richard Jebb.
+[Footnote: Homer, p. 134-135.]
+
+This is perfectly true; much as Lönnrot botched and vamped the Finnish
+lays he made no epic out of them. But, as it is true, how did the late
+Athenian drudge of Pisistratus succeed where Lönnrot failed? "In the
+dovetailing of the _ODYSSEY_ we see the work of one mind," says Sir
+Richard. [Footnote: Homer, p. 129.] This mind cannot have been the
+property of any one but a great poet, obviously, as the _Odyssey_ is
+confessedly "an artistic whole." Consequently the disintegrators of the
+Odyssey, when they are logical, are reduced to averring that the poem is
+an exceedingly inartistic whole, a whole not artistic at all. While Mr.
+Leaf calls it "a model of skilful construction," Wilamowitz Mollendorff
+denounces it as the work of "a slenderly-gifted botcher," of about 650
+B.C., a century previous to Mr. Leaf's Athenian editor.
+
+Thus we come, after all, to a crisis in which mere literary appreciation
+is the only test of the truth about a work of literature. The Odyssey is
+an admirable piece of artistic composition, or it is the very reverse.
+Blass, Mr. Leaf, Sir Richard Jebb, and the opinion of the ages declare
+that the composition is excellent. A crowd of German critics and Father
+Browne, S.J., hold that the composition is feeble. The criterion is the
+literary taste of each party to the dispute. Kirchhoff and Wilamowitz
+Möllendorff see a late bad patchwork, where Mr. Leaf, Sir Richard
+Jebb, Blass, Wolf, and the verdict of all mankind see a masterpiece of
+excellent construction. The world has judged: the _Odyssey_ is a
+marvel of construction: therefore is not the work of a late botcher of
+disparate materials, but of a great early poet. Yet Sir Richard Jebb,
+while recognising the _Odyssey_ as "an artistic whole" and an harmonious
+picture, and recognising Lönnrot's failure "to prove that mere combining
+and editing can form an artistic whole out of originally distinct
+songs, even though concerned with closely related themes," thinks that
+Kirchhoff has made the essence of his theory of late combination of
+distinct strata of poetical material from different sources and periods,
+in the _Odyssey_, "in the highest degree probable." [Footnote: Homer, p.
+131.]
+
+It is, of course, possible that Mr. Leaf, who has not edited the
+_Odyssey,_ may now, in deference to his belief in the Pisistratean
+editor, have changed his opinion of the merits of the poem. If the
+_Odyssey,_ like the _Iliad_, was, till about 540 B.C., a chaos of
+lays of all ages, variously known in various _répertoires_ of the
+rhapsodists, and patched up by the Pisistratean editor, then of two
+things one--either Mr. Leaf abides by his enthusiastic belief in the
+excellency of the composition, or he does not. If he does still believe
+that the composition of the _Odyssey_ is a masterpiece, then the
+Pisistratean editor was a great master of construction. If he now, on
+the other hand, agrees with Wilamowitz Möllendorff that the _Odyssey_ is
+cobbler's work, then his literary opinions are unstable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS
+
+Sir Richard Jebb remarks, with truth, that "before any definite solution
+of the Homeric problem could derive scientific support from such
+analogies" (with epics of other peoples), "it would be necessary to show
+that the particular conditions under which the Homeric poems appear in
+early Greece had been reproduced with sufficient closeness elsewhere."
+[Footnote: Homer, pp. 131, 132.] Now we can show that the particular
+conditions under which the Homeric poems confessedly arose were
+"reproduced with sufficient closeness elsewhere," except that no really
+great poet was elsewhere present.
+
+This occurred among the Germanic aristocracy, "the Franks of France,"
+in the eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth centuries of our era. The
+closeness of the whole parallel, allowing for the admitted absence in
+France of a very great and truly artistic poet, is astonishing.
+
+We have first, in France, answering to the Achaean aristocracy, the
+Frankish noblesse of warriors dwelling in princely courts and strong
+castles, dominating an older population, owing a practically doubtful
+fealty to an Over-Lord, the King, passing their days in the chace, in
+private war, or in revolt against the Over-Lord, and, for all
+literary entertainment, depending on the recitations of epic poems by
+_jongleurs_, who in some cases are of gentle birth, and are the authors
+of the poems which they recite.
+
+"This national poetry," says M. Gaston Paris, "was born and mainly
+developed among the warlike class, princes, lords, and their courts....
+At first, no doubt, some of these men of the sword themselves composed
+and chanted lays" (like Achilles), "but soon there arose a special class
+of poets ... They went from court to court, from castle ... Later,
+when the townsfolk began to be interested in their chants, they sank
+a degree, and took their stand in public open places ..." [Footnote:
+_Literature Française au Moyen Age_, pp. 36, 37. 1898.]
+
+In the _Iliad_ we hear of no minstrels in camp: in the _Odyssey_ a
+prince has a minstrel among his retainers--Demodocus, at the court of
+Phaeacia; Phemius, in the house of Odysseus. In Ionia, when princes had
+passed away, rhapsodists recited for gain in marketplaces and at fairs.
+The parallel with France is so far complete.
+
+The French national epics, like those of the Achaeans, deal mainly
+with legends of a long past legendary age. To the French authors the
+greatness and the fortunes of the Emperor Charles and other heroic heads
+of great Houses provide a theme. The topics of song are his wars, and
+the prowess and the quarrels of his peers with the Emperor and among
+themselves. These are seen magnified through a mist of legend; Saracens
+are substituted for Gascon foes, and the great Charles, so nobly
+venerable a figure in the oldest French epic (the _Chanson de Roland,
+circ._ 1050-1070 in its earliest extant form), is more degraded, in
+the later epics, than Agamemnon himself. The "machinery" of the gods
+in Homer is replaced by the machinery of angels, but the machinery
+of dreams is in vogue, as in the Iliad and _Odyssey_. The sources are
+traditional and legendary.
+
+We know that brief early lays of Charles and other heroes had existed,
+and they may have been familiar to the French epic poets, but they were
+not merely patched into the epics. The form of verse is not ballad-like,
+but a series of _laisses_ of decasyllabic lines, each _laisse_
+presenting one assonance, not rhyme. As time went on, rhyme and
+Alexandrine lines were introduced, and the old epics were expanded,
+altered, condensed, _remaniés_, with progressive changes in taste,
+metre, language, manners, and ways of life.
+
+Finally, an age of Cyclic poems began; authors took new characters, whom
+they attached by false genealogies to the older heroes, and they chanted
+the adventures of the sons of the former heroes, like the Cyclic poet
+who sang of the son of Odysseus by Circe. All these conditions are
+undeniably "true parallels" to "the conditions under which the Homeric
+poems appeared." The only obvious point of difference vanishes if we
+admit, with Sir Richard Jebb and M. Salomon Reinach, the possibility of
+the existence of written texts in the Greece of the early iron age.
+
+We do not mean texts prepared for a _reading_ public. In France such a
+public, demanding texts for reading, did not arise till the decadence of
+the epic. The oldest French texts of their epics are small volumes,
+each page containing some thirty lines in one column. Such volumes were
+carried about by the _jongleurs_, who chanted their own or other men's
+verses. They were not in the hands of readers. [Footnote: _Épopées
+Françaises_, Léon Gautier, vol. i. pp. 226-228. 1878.]
+
+An example of an author-reciter, Jendeus de Brie (he was the maker
+of the first version of the _Bataille Loquifer_, twelfth century) is
+instructive. Of Jendeus de Brie it is said that "he wrote the poem,
+kept it very carefully, taught it to no man, made much gain out of it in
+Sicily where he sojourned, and left it to his son when he died." Similar
+statements are made in _Renaus de Montauban_ (the existing late version
+is of the thirteenth century) about Huon de Villeneuve, who would not
+part with his poem for horses or furs, or for any price, and about other
+poets. [Footnote: _Épopées Françaises, Léon Gautier_, vol. i. p. 215,
+Note I.]
+
+These early _jongleurs_ were men of position and distinction; their
+theme was the _gestes_ of princes; they were not under the ban
+with which the Church pursued vulgar strollers, men like the Greek
+rhapsodists. Pindar's story that Homer wrote the _Cypria_ [Footnote:
+_Pindari Opera_, vol. iii. p. 654. Boeckh.] and gave the copy, as the
+dowry of his daughter, to Stasinus who married her, could only have
+arisen in Greece in circumstances exactly like those of Jendeus de Brie.
+Jendeus lived on his poem by reciting it, and left it to his son when he
+died. The story of Homer and Stasinus could only have been invented in
+an age when the possession of the solitary text of a poem was a source
+of maintenance to the poet. This condition of things could not exist,
+either when there were no written texts or when such texts were
+multiplied to serve the wants of a reading public.
+
+Again, a poet in the fortunate position of Jendeus would not teach his
+Epic in a "school" of reciters unless he were extremely well paid. In
+later years, after his death, his poem came, through copies good or bad,
+into circulation.
+
+Late, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we hear of a "school"
+of _jongleurs_ at Beauvais. In Lent they might not ply their profession,
+so they gathered at Beauvais, where they could learn _cantilenae_, new
+lays. [Footnote: _Épopées Françaises_, Léon Gautier, vol. ii. pp. 174,
+175.] But by that time the epic was decadent and dying?
+
+The audiences of the _jongleurs_, too, were no longer, by that time,
+what they had been. The rich and great, now, had library copies of the
+epics; not small _jongleurs'_ copies, but folios, richly illuminated
+and bound, with two or three columns of matter on each page. [Footnote:
+Ibid., vol. i. p. 228. See, too, photographs of an illuminated,
+double-columned library copy in _La Chancun de Willame_., London, 1903.]
+
+The age of recitations from a text in princely halls was ending or
+ended; the age of a reading public was begun. The earlier condition of
+the _jongleur_ who was his own poet, and carefully guarded his copyright
+in spite of all temptations to permit the copying of his MS., is
+regarded by Sir Richard Jebb as quite a possible feature of early
+Greece. He thinks that there was "no wide circulation of writings
+by numerous copies for a reading public" before the end of the fifth
+century B.C. As Greek mercenaries could write, and write well, in the
+seventh to sixth centuries, I incline to think that there may then, and
+earlier, have been a reading public. However, long before that a man
+might commit his poems to writing. "Wolf allows that some men did, as
+early at least as 776 B.C. The verses might never be read by anybody
+except himself" (the author) "or those to whom he privately bequeathed
+them" (as Jendeus de Brie bequeathed his poem to his son), "but his end
+would have been gained." [Footnote: _Homer_, p. 113.]
+
+Recent discoveries as to the very early date of linear non-Phoenician
+writing in Crete of course increase the probability of this opinion,
+which is corroborated by the story of the _Cypria_, given as a dowry
+with the author's daughter. Thus "the particular conditions under which
+the Homeric poems appeared" "been reproduced with sufficient closeness"
+in every respect, with surprising closeness, in the France of the
+eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The social conditions are the same;
+the legendary materials are of identical character; the method of
+publication by recitation is identical; the cyclic decadence occurs in
+both cases, the _monomanie cyclique_. In the Greece of Homer we have the
+four necessary conditions of the epic, as found by M. Léon Gautier in
+mediaeval France. We have:--
+
+(1) An uncritical age confusing history by legend.
+
+(2) We have a national _milieu_ with religious uniformity.
+
+(3) We have poems dealing with--
+
+ "Old unhappy far-off things
+ And battles long ago."
+
+(4) We have representative heroes, the Over-Lord, and his peers or
+paladins. [Footnote: _Épopées Françaises_, Léon Gautier, vol. i. pp.
+6-9]
+
+It may be added that in Greece, as in France, some poets adapt into the
+adventures of their heroes world-old _Märchen_, as in the Odyssey, and
+in the cycle of the parents of Charles.
+
+In the French, as in the Greek epics, we have such early traits
+of poetry as the textual repetition of speeches, and the recurring
+epithets, "swift-footed Achilles," "Charles of the white beard,"
+"blameless heroes" (however blamable). Ladies, however old, are always
+"of the clear face." Thus the technical manners of the French and Greek
+epics are closely parallel; they only differ in the exquisite art of
+Homer, to which no approach is made by the French poets.
+
+The French authors of epic, even more than Homer, abound in episodes
+much more distracting than those of the _Iliad_. Of blood and wounds, of
+course, both the French and the Greek are profuse: they were writing for
+men of the sword, not for modern critics. Indeed, the battle pieces of
+France almost translate those of Homer. The Achaean "does on his goodly
+corslet"; the French knight "_sur ses espalles son halberc li colad_."
+The Achaean, with his great sword, shears off an arm at the shoulder.
+The French knight--
+
+"_Trenchad le braz, Parmi leschine sun grant espee li passe_."
+
+The huge shield of Aias becomes _cele grant targe duble_ in France, and
+the warriors boast over their slain in France, as in the _Iliad_. In
+France, as in Greece, a favourite epic theme was "The Wrath" of a hero,
+of Achilles, of Roland, of Ganelon, of Odysseus and Achilles wrangling
+at a feast to the joy of Agamemnon, "glad that the bravest of his peers
+were at strife." [Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 75-7s [sic].]
+
+Of all the many parallels between the Greek and French epics, the most
+extraordinary is the coincidence between Charles with his peers and
+Agamemnon with his princes. The same historical conditions occurred, at
+an interval of more than two thousand years. Agamemnon is the Bretwalda,
+the Over-Lord, as Mr. Freeman used to say, of the Achaeans: he is the
+suzerain. Charles in the French epics holds the same position, but the
+French poets regard him in different lights. In the earliest epic, the
+_Chanson_ de Roland, a divinity doth hedge the famous Emperor, whom
+Jeanne d'Arc styled "St. Charlemagne." He was, in fact, a man of
+thirty-seven at the date of the disaster of Roncesvaux, where Roland
+fell (778 A.D.). But in the tradition that has reached the poet of the
+_chanson_ he is a white-bearded warrior, as vigorous as he is venerable.
+As he rules by advice of his council, he bids them deliberate on the
+proposals of the Paynim King, Marsile--to accept or refuse them. Roland,
+the counterpart of Achilles in all respects (Oliver is his Patroclus),
+is for refusing: Ganelon appears to have the rest with him when he
+speaks in favour of peace and return to France out of Spain. So, in
+the _Iliad_ (II.), the Achaeans lend a ready ear to Agamemnon when he
+proposes the abandonment of the siege of Troy. Each host, French and
+Achaean, is heartily homesick.
+
+Ganelon's advice prevailing, it is necessary to send an envoy to the
+Saracen court. It is a dangerous mission; other envoys have been sent
+and been murdered. The Peers, however, volunteer, beginning with the
+aged Naismes, the Nestor of the Franks. His offer is not accepted,
+nor are those of Oliver, Roland, and Turpin. Roland then proposes that
+Ganelon shall be sent; and hence arises the Wrath of Ganelon, which was
+the ruin of Roland and the peers who stood by him. The warriors attack
+each other in speeches of Homeric fury. Charles preserves his dignity,
+and Ganelon departs on his mission. He deliberately sells himself,
+and seals the fate of the peers whom he detests: the surprise of the
+rearguard under Roland, the deadly battle, and the revenge of Charles
+make up the rest of the poem. Not even in victory is Charles allowed
+repose; the trumpet again summons him to war. He is of those whom Heaven
+has called to endless combat--
+
+     "Their whole lives long to be winding
+      Skeins of grievous wars, till every soul of them perish,"
+
+in the words of Diomede.
+
+Such is the picture of the imperial Charles in one of the oldest of the
+French epics. The heart of the poet is with the aged, but unbroken and
+truly imperial, figure of St. Charlemagne--wise, just, and brave, a true
+"shepherd of the people," regarded as the conqueror of all the known
+kingdoms of the world. He is, among his fierce paladins, like "the
+conscience of a knight among his warring members." "The greatness of
+Charlemagne has entered even into his name;" but as time went on and
+the feudal princes began the long struggle against the French king, the
+poets gratified their patrons by degrading the character of the Emperor.
+They created a second type of Charles, and it is the second type that on
+the whole most resembles the Agamemnon of the _Iliad._
+
+We ask why the widely ruling lord of golden Mycenae is so skilfully
+and persistently represented as respectable, indeed, by reason of his
+office, but detestable, on the whole, in character?
+
+The answer is that just as the second type of Charles is the result of
+feudal jealousies of the king, so the character of Agamemnon reflects
+the princely hatreds of what we may call the feudal age of Greece. The
+masterly portrait of Agamemnon could only have been designed to win
+the sympathies of feudal listeners, princes with an Over-Lord whom they
+cannot repudiate, for whose office they have a traditional reverence,
+but whose power they submit to with no good will, and whose person and
+character some of them can barely tolerate.
+
+ [blank space] _an historical unity._ The poem deals with
+what may be called a feudal society, and the attitudes of the Achaean
+Bretwalda and of his peers are, from beginning to end of the _Iliad_ and
+in every Book of it, those of the peers and king in the later _Chansons
+de Geste_.
+
+Returning to the decadent Charles of the French epics, we lay no stress
+on the story of his incest with his sister, Gilain, "whence sprang
+Roland." The House of Thyestes, whence Agamemnon sprang, is marked by
+even blacker legends. The scandal is mythical, like the same scandal
+about the King Arthur, who in romance is so much inferior to his
+knights, a reflection of feudal jealousies and hatreds. In places the
+reproaches hurled by the peers at Charles read like paraphrases of those
+which the Achaean princes cast at Agamemnon. Even Naismes, the Nestor of
+the French epics, cries: "It is for you that we have left our lands and
+fiefs, our fair wives and our children ... But, by the Apostle to whom
+they pray in Rome, were it not that we should be guilty before God we
+would go back to sweet France, and thin would be your host." [Footnote:
+_Chevalerie Ogier_, 1510-1529. _Épopées Françaises_, Léon Gautier, vol.
+iii. pp. 156-157.] In the lines quoted we seem to hear the voice of the
+angered Achilles: "We came not hither in our own quarrel, thou shameless
+one, but to please thee! But now go I back to Phthia with my ships--the
+better part." [Footnote: _Iliad_, I. 158-169.]
+
+Agamemnon answers that Zeus is on his side, just as even the angry
+Naismes admits that duty to God demands obedience to Charles. There
+cannot be parallels more close and true than these, between poems born
+at a distance from each other of more than two thousand years, but born
+in similar historical conditions.
+
+In Guide _Bourgogne,_ a poem of the twelfth century, Ogier cries, "They
+say that Charlemagne is the conqueror of kingdoms: they lie, it is
+Roland who conquers them with Oliver, Naismes of the long beard, and
+myself. As to Charles, he eats." Compare Achilles to Agamemnon, "Thou,
+heavy with wine, with dog's eyes and heart of deer, never hast thou
+dared to arm thee for war with the host ..." [Footnote: _Iliad_, I. 227,
+228. _Gui de Bourgogne_, pp. 37-41.] It is Achilles or Roland who stakes
+his life in war and captures cities; it is Agamemnon or Charles who
+camps by the wine. Charles, in the _Chanson de Saisnes_, abases himself
+before Herapois, even more abjectly than Agamemnon in his offer of
+atonement to Achilles. [Footnote: _Épopées Françaises_, Léon Gautier,
+vol. iii. p. 158.] Charles is as arrogant as Agamemnon: he strikes
+Roland with his glove, for an uncommanded victory, and then he loses
+heart and weeps as copiously as the penitent Agamemnon often does when
+he rues his arrogance. [Footnote: _Entrée en Espagne_.]
+
+The poet of the _Iliad_ is a great and sober artist. He does not make
+Agamemnon endure the lowest disgraces which the latest French epic poets
+heap on Charles. But we see how close is the parallel between Agamemnon
+and the Charles of the decadent type. Both characters are reflections of
+feudal jealousy of the Over-Lord; both reflect real antique historical
+conditions, and these were the conditions of the Achaeans in Europe, not
+of the Ionians in Asia.
+
+The treatment of Agamemnon's character is harmonious throughout. It
+is not as if in "the original poem" Agamemnon were revered like St.
+Charlemagne in the _Chanson de Roland_, and in the "later" parts of the
+_Iliad_ were reduced to the contemptible estate of the Charles of the
+decadent _Chanson de Geste_. In the _Iliad_ Agamemnon's character is
+consistently presented from beginning to end, presented, I think, as it
+could only be by a great poet of the feudal Achaean society in Europe.
+The Ionians--"democratic to the core," says Mr. Leaf--would either have
+taken no interest in the figure of the Over-Lord, or would have utterly
+degraded him below the level of the Charles of the latest _Chansons_. Or
+the late rhapsodists, in their irresponsible lays, would have presented
+a wavering and worthless portrait.
+
+The conditions under which the _Chansons_ arose were truly parallel
+to the conditions under which the Homeric poems arose, and the poems,
+French and Achaean, are also true parallels, except in genius. The
+French have no Homer: _cared vate sacro_. It follows that a Homer was
+necessary to the evolution of the Greek epics.
+
+It may, perhaps, be replied to this argument that our _Iliad_ is only
+a very late _remaniement_, like the fourteenth century _Chansons de
+Geste_, of something much earlier and nobler. But in France, in the age
+of _remaniement_, even the versification had changed from assonance to
+rhyme, from the decasyllabic line to the Alexandrine in the decadence,
+while a plentiful lack of seriousness and a love of purely fanciful
+adventures in fairyland take the place of the austere spirit of war.
+Ladies "in a coming on humour" abound, and Charles is involved with his
+Paladins in _gauloiseries_ of a Rabelaisian cast. The French language
+has become a new thing through and through, and manners and weapons are
+of a new sort; but the high seriousness of the _Iliad_ is maintained
+throughout, except in the burlesque battle of the gods: the
+versification is the stately hexameter, linguistic alterations are
+present, extant, but inconspicuous. That the armour and weapons are
+uniform in character throughout we have tried to prove, while the state
+of society and of religion is certainly throughout harmonious. Our
+parallel, then, between the French and the Greek national epics appears
+as perfect as such a thing can be, surprisingly perfect, while the great
+point of difference in degree of art is accounted for by the existence
+of an Achaean poet of supreme genius. Not such, certainly, were the
+composers of the Cyclic poems, men contemporary with the supposed later
+poets of the _Iliad_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+The conclusion at which we arrive is that the _Iliad_, as a whole, is
+the work of one age. That it has reached us without interpolations and
+_lacunae_ and _remaniements_ perhaps no person of ordinary sense will
+allege. But that the mass of the Epic is of one age appears to be a
+natural inference from the breakdown of the hypotheses which attempt to
+explain it as a late mosaic. We have also endeavoured to prove, quite
+apart from the failure of theories of expansion and compilation, that
+the _Iliad_ presents an historical unity, unity of character, unity of
+customary law, and unity in its archaeology. If we are right, we must
+have an opinion as to how the Epic was preserved.
+
+If we had evidence for an Homeric school, we might imagine that the Epic
+was composed by dint of memory, and preserved, like the Sanskrit Hymns
+of the Rig Veda, and the Hymns of the Maoris, the Zuñis, and other
+peoples in the lower or middle stage of barbarism, by the exertions and
+teaching of schools. But religious hymns and mythical hymns--the care
+of a priesthood--are one thing; a great secular epic is another. Priests
+will not devote themselves from age to age to its conservation. It
+cannot be conserved, with its unity of tone and character, and, on the
+whole, even of language, by generations of paid strollers, who recite
+new lays of their own, as well as any old lays that they may remember,
+which they alter at pleasure.
+
+We are thus driven back to the theory of early written texts, not
+intended to meet the wants of a reading public, but for the use of the
+poet himself and of those to whom he may bequeath his work. That this
+has been a method in which orally published epics were composed and
+preserved in a non-reading age we have proved in our chapter on the
+French Chansons _de Geste_. Unhappily, the argument that what was done
+in mediaeval France might be done in sub-Mycenaean Greece, is based
+on probabilities, and these are differently estimated by critics of
+different schools. All seems to depend on each individual's sense
+of what is "likely." In that case science has nothing to make in the
+matter. Nitzsche thought that writing might go back to the time of
+Homer. Mr. Monro thought it "probable enough that writing, even if known
+at the time of Homer, was not used for literary purposes." [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. i. p. xxxv.] Sir Richard Jebb, as we saw, took a much more
+favourable view of the probability of early written texts. M. Salomon
+Reinach, arguing from the linear written clay tablets of Knossos and
+from a Knossian cup with writing on it in ink, thinks that there
+may have existed whole "Minoan" libraries--manuscripts executed on
+perishable materials, palm leaves, papyrus, or parchment. [Footnote:
+_L'Anthropologie_, vol. xv, pp. 292, 293.] Mr. Leaf, while admitting
+that "writing was known in some form through the whole period of epic
+development," holds that "it is in the highest degree unlikely that it
+was ever employed to form a standard text of the Epic or any portion of
+it.... At best there was a continuous tradition of those portions of the
+poems which were especially popular ..." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i.
+pp. xvi., xvii.] Father Browne dates the employment of writing for the
+preservation of the Epic "from the sixth century onwards." [Footnote:
+_Handbook of Homeric Study_, p. 134.] He also says that "it is difficult
+to suppose that the Mycenaeans, who were certainly in contact with this
+form of writing" (the Cretan linear), "should not have used it much
+more freely than our direct evidence warrants us in asserting." He then
+mentions the Knossian cup "with writing inscribed on it apparently in
+pen and ink ... The conclusion is that ordinary writing was in use, but
+that the materials, probably palm leaves, have disappeared." [Footnote:
+_Ibid_., pp. 258, 259.]
+
+Why it should be unlikely that a people confessedly familiar with
+writing used it for the preservation of literature, when we know that
+even the Red Indians preserve their songs by means of pictographs, while
+West African tribes use incised characters, is certainly not obvious.
+Many sorts of prae-Phoenician writing were current during the Mycenaean
+age in Asia, Egypt, Assyria, and in Cyprus. As these other peoples used
+writing of their own sort for literary purposes, it is not easy to
+see why the Cretans, for example, should not have done the same thing.
+Indeed, Father Browne supposes that the Mycenaeans used "ordinary
+writing," and used it freely. Nevertheless, the Epic was not written,
+he says, till the sixth century B.C. Cauer, indeed, remarks that "the
+Finnish epic" existed unwritten till Lbnnrot, its Pisistratus,
+first collected it from oral recitation. [Footnote: _Grundfragen der
+Homerkritik_, p. 94.] But there is not, and never was, any "Finnish
+epic." There were cosmogonic songs, as among the Maoris and Zuñis--songs
+of the beginnings of things; there were magical songs, songs of
+weddings, a song based on the same popular tale that underlies the
+legend of the Argonauts. There were songs of the Culture Hero, songs of
+burial and feast, and of labour. Lönnrot collected these, and tried by
+interpolations to make an epic out of them; but the point, as Comparetti
+has proved, is that he failed. There is no Finnish epic, only a mass of
+_Volkslieder._ Cauer's other argument, that the German popular tales,
+Grimm's tales, were unwritten till 1812, is as remote from the point at
+issue. Nothing can be less like an epic than a volume of _Märchen._
+
+As usual we are driven back upon a literary judgment. Is the _Iliad_ a
+patchwork of metrical _Märchen_ or is it an epic nobly constructed? If
+it is the former, writing was not needed; if it is the latter, in the
+absence of Homeric guilds or colleges, only writing can account for its
+preservation.
+
+It is impossible to argue against a critic's subjective sense of what
+is likely. Possibly that sense is born of the feeling that the Cretan
+linear script, for example, or the Cyprian syllabary, looks very odd
+and outlandish. The critic's imagination boggles at the idea of an
+epic written in such scripts. In that case his is not the scientific
+imagination; he is checked merely by the unfamiliar. Or his sense of
+unlikelihood may be a subconscious survival of Wolf's opinion, formed
+by him at a time when the existence of the many scripts of the old world
+was unknown.
+
+Our own sense of probability leads us to the conclusion that, in an age
+when people could write, people wrote down the Epic. If they applied
+their art to literature, then the preservation of the Epic is explained.
+Written first in a prae-Phoenician script, it continued to be written
+in the Greek adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet. There was not yet,
+probably, a reading public, but there were a few clerkly men.
+
+That the Cretans, at least, could write long before the age of Homer,
+Mr. Arthur Evans has demonstrated by his discoveries. Prom my remote
+undergraduate days I was of the opinion which he has proved to be
+correct, starting, like him, from what I knew about savage pictographs.
+[Footnote: Cretan _Pictographs_ and _Prae-Phoenician_ Script. London,
+1905. Annual of British _School_ of Athens, 1900-1901, p. 10. Journal of
+_Hellenic Studies,_ 1897, pp. 327-395.]
+
+M. Reinach and Mr. Evans have pointed out that in this matter tradition
+joins hands with discovery. Diodorus Siculus, speaking of the Cretan
+Zeus and probably on Cretan authority, says: "As to those who hold that
+the Syrians invented letters, from whom the Phoenicians received them
+and handed them on to the Greeks, ... and that for this reason the
+Greeks call letters 'Phoenician,' some reply that the Phoenicians did
+not [blank space] letters, but merely modified (transposed 3) the forms
+of the letters, and that most men use this form of script, and thus
+letters came to be styled 'Phoenician.'" [Footnote: Diodorus Siculus, v.
+74. _L'Anthropologie,_ vol. xi. pp. 497-502.] In fact, the alphabet is
+a collection of signs of palaeolithic antiquity and of vast diffusion.
+[Footnote: Origins of the Alphabet. A. L. Fortnightly Review, 1904, pp.
+634-645]
+
+Thus the use of writing for the conservation of the Epic cannot seem
+to me to be unlikely, but rather probable; and here one must leave the
+question, as the subjective element plays so great a part in every man's
+sense of what is likely or unlikely. That writing cannot have been used
+for this literary purpose, that the thing is impossible, nobody will now
+assert.
+
+My supposition is, then, that the text of the Epic existed in AEgean
+script till Greece adapted to her own tongue the "Phoenician letters,"
+which I think she did not later than the ninth to eighth centuries; "at
+the beginning of the ninth century," says Professor Bury. [Footnote:
+_History of Greece_, vol. i. p. 78. 1902.] This may seem an audaciously
+early date, but when we find vases of the eighth to seventh centuries
+bearing inscriptions, we may infer that a knowledge of reading and
+writing was reasonably common. When such a humble class of hirelings
+or slaves as the pot-painters can sign their work, expecting their
+signatures to be read, reading and writing must be very common
+accomplishments among the more fortunate classes.
+
+If Mr. Gardner is right in dating a number of incised inscriptions on
+early pottery at Naucratis before the middle of the seventh century,
+we reach the same conclusion. In fact, if these inscriptions be of a
+century earlier than the Abu Simbel inscriptions, of date 590 B.C., we
+reach 690 B.C. Wherefore, as writing does not become common in a moment,
+it must have existed in the eighth century B.C. We are not dealing here
+with a special learned class, but with ordinary persons who could write.
+[Footnote: _The Early Ionic Alphabet: Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol.
+vii. pp. 220-239. Roberts, _Introduction to Greek Epigraphy_, pp. 31,
+151, 159, 164, 165-167]
+
+Interesting for our purpose is the verse incised on a Dipylon vase,
+found at Athens in 1880. It is of an ordinary cream-jug shape, with a
+neck, a handle, a spout, and a round belly. On the neck, within a zigzag
+"geometrical" pattern, is a doe, feeding, and a tall water-fowl. On the
+shoulder is scratched with a point, in very antique Attic characters
+running from right to left, [Greek: os nun orchaeston panton hatalotata
+pais ei, tou tode]. "This is the jug of him who is the most delicately
+sportive of all dancers of our time." The jug is attributed to the
+eighth century. [Footnote: Walters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol.
+ii. p, 243; Kretschmer, _Griechischen Vasen inschriften_, p. 110, 1894,
+of the seventh century. H. von Rohden, _Denkmaler_, iii. pp. 1945, 1946:
+"Probably dating from the seventh century." Roberts, op. cit., vol. i.
+p. 74, "at least as far back as the seventh century," p. 75.]
+
+Taking the vase, with Mr. Walters, as of the eighth century, I do not
+suppose that the amateur who gave it to a dancer and scratched the
+hexameter was of a later generation than the jug itself. The vase may
+have cost him sixpence: he would give his friend a _new_ vase; it is
+improbable that old jugs were sold at curiosity shops in these days, and
+given by amateurs to artists. The inscription proves that, in the eighth
+to seventh centuries, at a time of very archaic characters (the Alpha is
+lying down on its side, the aspirate is an oblong with closed ends and
+a stroke across the middle, and the Iota is curved at each end), people
+could write with ease, and would put verse into writing. The general
+accomplishment of reading is taken for granted.
+
+Reading is also taken for granted by the Gortyn (Cretan) inscription of
+twelve columns long, _boustro-phedon_ (running alternately from left to
+right, and from right to left). In this inscribed code of laws, incised
+on stone, money is not mentioned in the more ancient part, but fines and
+prices are calculated in "chalders" and "bolls" ([Greek: lebaetes] and
+[Greek: tripodes]), as in Scotland when coin was scarce indeed. Whether
+the law contemplated the value of the vessels themselves, or, as in
+Scotland, of their contents in grain, I know not. The later inscriptions
+deal with coined money. If coin came in about 650 B.C., the older parts
+of the inscription may easily be of 700 B.C.
+
+The Gortyn inscription implies the power of writing out a long code
+of laws, and it implies that persons about to go to law could read the
+public inscription, as we can read a proclamation posted up on a wall,
+or could have it read to them. [Footnote: Roberts, vol. i. pp. 52-55.]
+
+The alphabets inscribed on vases of the seventh century (Abecedaria),
+with "the archaic Greek forms of every one of the twenty-two Phoenician
+letters arranged precisely in the received Semitic order," were, one
+supposes, gifts for boys and girls who were learning to read, just like
+our English alphabets on gingerbread. [Footnote: For Abecedaria, cf.
+Roberts, vol. i. pp. 16-21.]
+
+Among inscriptions on tombstones of the end of the seventh century,
+there is the epitaph of a daughter of a potter. [Footnote: Roberts, vol.
+i. p. 76.] These writings testify to the general knowledge of reading,
+just as much as our epitaphs testify to the same state of education. The
+Athenian potter's daughter of the seventh century B.C. had her epitaph,
+but the grave-stones of highlanders, chiefs or commoners, were usually
+uninscribed till about the end of the eighteenth century, in deference
+to custom, itself arising from the illiteracy of the highlanders in
+times past. [Footnote: Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen_, ii. p. 426.
+1888.] I find no difficulty, therefore, in supposing that there were
+some Greek readers and writers in the eighth century, and that primary
+education was common in the seventh. In these circumstances my sense of
+the probable is not revolted by the idea of a written epic, in [blank
+space] characters, even in the eighth century, but the notion that there
+was no such thing till the middle of the sixth century seems highly
+improbable. All the conditions were present which make for the
+composition and preservation of literary works in written texts. That
+there were many early written copies of Homer in the eighth century I am
+not inclined to believe. The Greeks were early a people who could read,
+but were not a reading people. Setting newspapers aside, there is no
+such thing as a reading _people_.
+
+The Greeks preferred to listen to recitations, but my hypothesis is that
+the rhapsodists who recited had texts, like the _jongleurs_' books
+of their epics in France, and that they occasionally, for definite
+purposes, interpolated matter into their texts. There were also texts,
+known in later times as "city texts" ([Greek: ai kata poleis]), which
+Aristarchus knew, but he did not adopt the various readings. [Footnote:
+Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p, 435.]
+
+Athens had a text in Solon's time, if he entered the decree that the
+whole Epic should be recited in due order, every five years, at the
+Panathenaic festival. [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. 395.] "This
+implies the possession of a complete text." [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii.
+p. 403.]
+
+Cauer remarks that the possibility of "interpolation" "began only after
+the fixing of the text by Pisistratus." [Footnote: _Grundfragen_, p.
+205.] But surely if every poet and reciter could thrust any new lines
+which he chose to make into any old lays which he happened to know, that
+was interpolation, whether he had a book of the words or had none. Such
+interpolations would fill the orally recited lays which the supposed
+Pisistratean editor must have written down from recitation before he
+began his colossal task of making the _Iliad_ out of them. If, on the
+other hand, reciters had books of the words, they could interpolate at
+pleasure into _them_, and such books may have been among the materials
+used in the construction of a text for the Athenian book market. But if
+our theory be right, there must always have been a few copies of better
+texts than those of the late reciters' books, and the effort of the
+editors for the book market would be to keep the parts in which most
+manuscripts were agreed.
+
+But how did Athens, or any other city, come to possess a text? One
+can only conjecture; but my conjecture is that there had always been
+texts--copied out in successive generations--in the hands of the
+curious; for example, in the hands of the Cyclic poets, who knew our
+_Iliad_ as the late French Cyclic poets knew the earlier _Chansons de
+Geste_. They certainly knew it, for they avoided interference with
+it; they worked at epics which led up to it, as in the _Cypria;_ they
+borrowed _motifs_ from hints and references in the _Iliad_, [Footnote:
+Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 350, 351.] and they carried on the story
+from the death of Hector, in the _AEthiopis_ of Arctinus of Miletus.
+This epic ended with the death of Achilles, when _The Little Iliad_
+produced the tale to the bringing in of the wooden horse. Arctinus goes
+on with his _Sack_ of _Ilios_, others wrote of _The Return_ of _the
+Heroes,_ and the _Telegonia_ is a sequel to the Odyssey. The authors of
+these poems knew the _Iliad_, then, as a whole, and how could they have
+known it thus if it only existed in the casual _repertoire_ of strolling
+reciters? The Cyclic poets more probably had texts of Homer, and
+themselves wrote their own poems--how it paid, whether they recited them
+and collected rewards or not, is, of course, unknown.
+
+The Cyclic poems, to quote Sir Richard Jebb, "help to fix the lowest
+limit for the age of the Homeric poems. [Footnote: _Homer_, pp. 151,
+154.] The earliest Cyclic poems, dating from about 776 B.C., presuppose
+the _Iliad_, being planned to introduce or continue it.... It would
+appear, then, that the _Iliad_ must have existed in something like its
+present compass as early as 800 B.C.; indeed a considerably earlier date
+will seem probable, if due time is allowed for the poem to have grown
+into such fame as would incite the effort to continue it and to prelude
+to it."
+
+Sir Richard then takes the point on which we have already insisted,
+namely, that the Cyclic poets of the eighth century B.C. live in an
+age of ideas, religions, ritual, and so forth which are absent from the
+_Iliad_ [Footnote: Homer, pp. 154, 155.]
+
+Thus the _Iliad_ existed with its characteristics that are prior to 800
+B.C., and in its present compass, and was renowned before 800 B.C. As
+it could not possibly have thus existed in the _repertoire_ of
+irresponsible strolling minstrels and reciters, and as there is no
+evidence for a college, school, or guild which preserved the Epic by
+a system of mnemonic teaching, while no one can deny at least the
+possibility of written texts, we are driven to the hypothesis that
+written texts there were, whence descended, for example, the text of
+Athens.
+
+We can scarcely suppose, however, that such texts were perfect in all
+respects, for we know how, several centuries later, in a reading age,
+papyrus fragments of the _Iliad_ display unwarrantable interpolation.
+[Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 422-426.] But Plato's frequent
+quotations, of course made at an earlier date, show that "whatever
+interpolated texts of Homer were then current, the copy from which
+Plato quoted was not one of them." [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 429] Plato had
+something much better.
+
+When a reading public for Homer arose--and, from the evidences of the
+widespread early knowledge of reading, such a small public may have come
+into existence sooner than is commonly supposed--Athens was the centre
+of the book trade. To Athens must be due the prae-Alexandrian Vulgate,
+or prevalent text, practically the same as our own. Some person or
+persons must have made that text--not by taking down from recitation
+all the lays which they could collect, as Herd, Scott, Mrs. Brown,
+and others collected much of the _Border Minstrelsy_, and not by then
+tacking the lays into a newly-composed whole. They must have done their
+best with such texts as were accessible to them, and among these were
+probably the copies used by reciters and rhapsodists, answering to the
+MS. books of the mediaeval _jongleurs._
+
+Mr. Jevons has justly and acutely remarked that "we do not know, and
+there is no external evidence of any description which leads us to
+suppose, that the _Iliad_ was ever expanded" (_J. H. S_, vii. 291-308).
+
+That it was expanded is a mere hypothesis based on the idea that "if
+there was an _Iliad_ at all in the ninth century, its length must
+have been such as was compatible with the conditions of an oral
+delivery,"--"a poem or poems short enough to be recited at a single
+sitting."
+
+But we have proved, with Mr. Jevons and Blass, and by the analogy of the
+Chansons that, given a court audience (and a court audience is granted),
+there were no such narrow limits imposed on the length of a poem orally
+recited from night to night.
+
+The length of the _Iliad_ yields, therefore, no argument for expansions
+throughout several centuries. That theory, suggested by the notion
+that the original poem _MUST_ have been short, is next supposed to be
+warranted by the inconsistencies and discrepancies. But we argue that
+these are only visible, as a rule, to "the analytical reader," for whom
+the poet certainly was not composing; that they occur in all long
+works of fictitious narrative; that the discrepancies often are not
+discrepancies; and, finally, that they are not nearly so glaring as the
+inconsistencies in the theories of each separatist critic. A theory,
+in such matter as this, is itself an explanatory myth, or the plot of
+a story which the critic invents to account for the facts in the case.
+These critical plots, we have shown, do not account for the facts of the
+case, for the critics do not excel in constructing plots. They wander
+into unperceived self-contradictions which they would not pardon in the
+poet. These contradictions are visible to "the analytical reader," who
+concludes that a very early poet may have been, though Homer seldom is,
+as inconsistent as a modern critic.
+
+Meanwhile, though we have no external evidence that the _Iliad_ was
+ever expanded--that it was expanded is an explanatory myth of the
+critics--"we do know, on good evidence," says Mr. Jevons, "that the
+_Iliad_ was rhapsodised." The rhapsodists were men, as a rule, of one
+day recitations, though at a prolonged festival at Athens there was time
+for the whole _Iliad_ to be recited. "They chose for recitation such
+incidents as could be readily detached, were interesting in themselves,
+and did not take too long to recite." Mr. Jevons suggests that the many
+brief poems collected in the Homeric hymns are invocations which the
+rhapsodists preluded to their recitals. The practice seems to have been
+for the rhapsodist first to pay his reverence to the god, "to begin from
+the god," at whose festival the recitation was being given (the short
+proems collected in the Hymns pay this reverence), "and then proceed
+with his rhapsody"--with his selected passage from the _Iliad_,
+"Beginning with thee" (the god of the festival), "I will go on
+to another lay," that is, to his selection from the Epic. Another
+conclusion of the proem often is, "I will be mindful both of thee and
+of another lay," meaning, says Mr. Jevons, that "the local deity will
+figure in the recitation from Homer which the rhapsodist is about to
+deliver."
+
+These explanations, at all events, yield good sense. The invocation of
+Athene (Hymns, XI., XXVIII.) would serve as the proem of invocation to
+the recital of _Iliad_, V., VI. 1-311, the day of valour of Diomede,
+spurred on by the wanton rebuke of Agamemnon, and aided by Athene. The
+invocation of Hephaestus (Hymn XX.), would prelude to a recital of the
+_Making of the Awns of Achilles_, and so on.
+
+But the rhapsodist may be reciting at a festival of Dionysus, about whom
+there is practically nothing said in the _Iliad_; for it is a proof of
+the antiquity of the _Iliad_ that, when it was composed, Dionysus had
+not been raised to the Olympian peerage, being still a folk-god only.
+The rhapsodist, at a feast of Dionysus in later times, has to introduce
+the god into his recitation. The god is not in his text, but he adds
+him. [Footnote:_Ibid_., VI. 130-141]
+
+Why should any mortal have made this interpolation? Mr. Jevons's theory
+supplies the answer. The rhapsodist added the passages to suit the
+Dionysus feast, at which he was reciting.
+
+The same explanation is offered for the long story of the _Birth_
+of [blank space] which Agamemnon tells in his speech of apology and
+reconciliation. [Footnote:_Ibid_., XIX. 136.] There is an invocation to
+Heracles (Hymns, XV.), and the author may have added this speech to his
+rhapsody of the Reconciliation, recited at a feast of Heracles. Perhaps
+the remark of Mr. Leaf offers the real explanation of the presence of
+this long story in the speech of Agamemnon: "Many speakers with a bad
+case take refuge in telling stories." Agamemnon shows, says Mr. Leaf,
+"the peevish nervousness of a man who feels that he has been in the
+wrong," and who follows a frank speaker like Achilles, only eager for
+Agamemnon to give the word to form and charge. So Agamemnon takes refuge
+in a long story, throwing the blame of his conduct on Destiny.
+
+We do not need, then, the theory of a rhapsodist's interpolation, but it
+is quite plausible in itself.
+
+Local heroes, as well as gods, had their feasts in post-Homeric times,
+and a reciter at a feast of AEneas, or of his mother, Aphrodite, may
+have foisted in the very futile discourse of Achilles and AEneas,
+[Footnote:_Ibid_., XX. 213-250.] with its reference to Erichthonius, an
+Athenian hero.
+
+In other cases the rhapsodist rounded off his selected passage by a few
+lines, as in _Iliad_, XIII. 656-659, where a hero is brought to follow
+his son's dead body to the grave, though the father had been killed
+in _V. 576_. "It is really such a slip as is often made by authors who
+write," says Mr. Leaf; and, in _Esmond_, Thackeray makes similar
+errors. The passage in XVI. 69-80, about which so much is said, as if it
+contradicted Book IX. (_The Embassy to Achilles_), is also, Mr. Jevons
+thinks, to be explained as "inserted by a rhapsodist wishing to make
+his extract complete in itself." Another example--the confusion in the
+beginning of Book II.--we have already discussed (see Chapter IV.), and
+do not think that any explanation is needed, when we understand that
+Agamemnon, once wide-awake, had no confidence in his dream. However, Mr.
+Jevons thinks that rhapsodists, anxious to recite straight on from the
+dream to the battle, added II. 35-41, "the only lines which represent
+Agamemnon as believing confidently in his dream." We have argued that he
+only believed _till he awoke_, and then, as always, wavered.
+
+Thus, in our way of looking at these things, interpolations by
+rhapsodists are not often needed as explanations of difficulties. Still,
+granted that the rhapsodists, like the _jongleurs_, had texts, and that
+these were studied by the makers of the Vulgate, interpolations and
+errors might creep in by this way. As to changes in language, "a
+poetical dialect... is liable to be gradually modified by the influence
+of the ever-changing colloquial speech. And, in the early times, when
+writing was little used, this influence would be especially operative."
+[Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 461.]
+
+To conclude, the hypothesis of a school of mnemonic teaching of the
+_Iliad_ would account for the preservation of so long a poem in an age
+destitute of writing, when memory would be well cultivated. There may
+have been such schools. We only lack evidence for their existence. But
+against the hypothesis of the existence of early texts, there is nothing
+except the feeling of some critics that it is not likely. "They are
+dangerous guides, the feelings."
+
+In any case the opinion that the _Iliad_ was a whole, centuries before
+Pisistratus, is the hypothesis which is by far the least fertile in
+difficulties, and, consequently, in inconsistent solutions of the
+problems which the theory of expansion first raises, and then, like an
+unskilled magician, fails to lay.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Homer and His Age, by Andrew Lang
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Homer and his Age, by Andrew Lang
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
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+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+               text-align: right;}
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Homer and His Age, by Andrew Lang
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Homer and His Age
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+
+Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7972]
+[This file was first posted on June 8, 2003]
+Last Updated: April 9, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOMER AND HIS AGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Moynihan, Lee Dawei, Miranda van de
+Heijning, David Widger, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      HOMER AND HIS AGE
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Andrew Lang
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      To R. W. RAPER IN ALL GRATITUDE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Etext Editor's note: Due to unclear typesetting of the original work,
+      which contains unidentifiable characters and blank spaces, it has not been
+      possible to capture this text completely. Where we have been unable to
+      recover the meaning of the text, this has been indicated by the annotation
+      {sic} or {blank space}. We hope that in the future a complete edition can
+      be found and these gaps can be filled.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In <i>Homer and the Epic</i>, ten or twelve years ago, I examined the
+      literary objections to Homeric unity. These objections are chiefly based
+      on alleged discrepancies in the narrative, of which no one poet, it is
+      supposed, could have been guilty. The critics repose, I venture to think,
+      mainly on a fallacy. We may style it the fallacy of "the analytical
+      reader." The poet is expected to satisfy a minutely critical reader, a
+      personage whom he could not foresee, and whom he did not address. Nor are
+      "contradictory instances" examined&mdash;that is, as Blass has recently
+      reminded his countrymen, Homer is put to a test which Goethe could not
+      endure. No long fictitious narrative can satisfy "the analytical reader."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fallacy is that of disregarding the Homeric poet's audience. He did
+      not sing for Aristotle or for Aristarchus, or for modern minute and
+      reflective inquirers, but for warriors and ladies. He certainly satisfied
+      them; but if he does not satisfy microscopic professors, he is described
+      as a syndicate of many minstrels, living in many ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the present volume little is said in defence of the poet's consistency.
+      Several chapters on that point have been excised. The way of living which
+      Homer describes is examined, and an effort is made to prove that he
+      depicts the life of a single brief age of culture. The investigation is
+      compelled to a tedious minuteness, because the points of attack&mdash;the
+      alleged discrepancies in descriptions of the various details of existence&mdash;are
+      so minute as to be all but invisible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unity of the Epics is not so important a topic as the methods of
+      criticism. They ought to be sober, logical, and self-consistent. When
+      these qualities are absent, Homeric criticism may be described, in the
+      recent words of Blass, as "a swamp haunted by wandering fires, will o' the
+      wisps."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In our country many of the most eminent scholars are no believers in
+      separatist criticism. Justly admiring the industry and erudition of the
+      separatists, they are unmoved by their arguments, to which they do not
+      reply, being convinced in their own minds. But the number and perseverance
+      of the separatists make on "the general reader" the impression that
+      Homeric unity is chose <i>jugée</i>, that <i>scientia locuta est</i>, and
+      has condemned Homer. This is far from being the case: the question is
+      still open; "science" herself is subject to criticism; and new materials,
+      accruing yearly, forbid a tame acquiescence in hasty theories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      May I say a word to the lovers of poetry who, in reading Homer, feel no
+      more doubt than in reading Milton that, on the whole, they are studying a
+      work of one age, by one author? Do not let them be driven from their
+      natural impression by the statement that Science has decided against them.
+      The certainties of the exact sciences are one thing: the opinions of
+      Homeric commentators are other and very different things. Among all the
+      branches of knowledge which the Homeric critic should have at his command,
+      only philology, archaeology, and anthropology can be called "sciences";
+      and they are not exact sciences: they are but skirmishing advances towards
+      the true solution of problems prehistoric and "proto-historic."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our knowledge shifts from day to day; on every hand, in regard to almost
+      every topic discussed, we find conflict of opinions. There is no certain
+      scientific decision, but there is the possibility of working in the
+      scientific spirit, with breadth of comparison; consistency of logic;
+      economy of conjecture; abstinence from the piling of hypothesis on
+      hypothesis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing can be more hurtful to science than the dogmatic assumption that
+      the hypothesis most in fashion is scientific.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twenty years ago, the philological theory of the Solar Myth was preached
+      as "scientific" in the books, primers, and lectures of popular science.
+      To-day its place knows it no more. The separatist theories of the Homeric
+      poems are not more secure than the Solar Myth, "like a wave shall they
+      pass and be passed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When writing on "The Homeric House" (Chapter X.) I was unacquainted with
+      Mr. Percy Gardner's essay, "The Palaces of Homer" (<i>Journal of Hellenic
+      Studies</i>, vol. iii. pp. 264-282). Mr. Gardner says that Dasent's plan
+      of the Scandinavian Hall "offers in most respects not likeness, but a
+      striking contrast to the early Greek hall." Mr. Monro, who was not aware
+      of the parallel which I had drawn between the Homeric and Icelandic
+      houses, accepted it on evidence more recent than that of Sir George
+      Dasent. Cf. his <i>Odyssey</i>, vol. ii. pp. 490-494.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. R. W. Raper, of Trinity College, Oxford, has read the proof sheets of
+      this work with his habitual kindness, but is in no way responsible for the
+      arguments. Mr. Walter Leaf has also obliged me by mentioning some points
+      as to which I had not completely understood his position, and I have tried
+      as far as possible to represent his ideas correctly. I have also received
+      assistance from the wide and minute Homeric lore of Mr. A. Shewan, of St.
+      Andrews, and have been allowed to consult other scholars on various
+      points.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first portion of the chapter on "Bronze and Iron" appeared in the
+      Revue <i>Archéologique</i> for April 1905, and the editor, Monsieur
+      Salomon Reinach, obliged me with a note on the bad iron swords of the
+      Celts as described by Polybius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The design of men in three shields of different shapes, from a Dipylon
+      vase, is reproduced, with permission, from the British Museum <i>Guide to
+      the Antiquities of the Iron Age</i>; and the shielded chessmen from
+      Catalogue of Scottish Society of Antiquaries. Thanks for the two ships
+      with men under shield are offered to the Rev. Mr. Browne, S.J., author of
+      <i>Handbook of Homeric Studies</i> (Longmans). For the Mycenaean gold
+      corslet I thank Mr. John Murray (Schliemann's Mycenae and Tiryns), and for
+      all the other Mycenaean illustrations Messrs. Macmillan and Mr. Leaf,
+      publishers and author of Mr. Leaf's edition of the <i>Iliad</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_TOC"> DETAILED CONTENTS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_NOTE"> NOTES OF CHANGE IN THE "ODYSSEY" </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_CONC"> CONCLUSION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_TOC" id="link2H_TOC">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DETAILED CONTENTS:
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      CHAPTER I: THE HOMERIC AGE <br /> CHAPTER II: HYPOTHESES AS TO THE GROWTH
+      OF THE EPICS <br /> CHAPTER III: HYPOTHESES OF EPIC COMPOSITION <br />
+      CHAPTER IV: LOOSE FEUDALISM: THE OVER-LORD IN "ILIAD," BOOKS I. AND II.
+      <br /> CHAPTER V: AGAMEMNON IN THE LATER "ILIAD" <br /> CHAPTER VI:
+      ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE "ILIAD"&mdash;BURIAL AND CREMATION <br /> CHAPTER VII:
+      HOMERIC ARMOUR <br /> CHAPTER VIII: THE BREASTPLATE <br /> CHAPTER IX:
+      BRONZE AND IRON <br /> CHAPTER X: THE HOMERIC HOUSE <br /> CHAPTER XI: NOTES
+      OF CHANGE IN THE "ODYSSEY" <br /> CHAPTER XII: LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS
+      DATES <br /> CHAPTER XIII: THE "DOLONEIA"&mdash;"ILIAD," BOOK X. <br />
+      CHAPTER XIV: THE INTERPOLATIONS OF NESTOR <br /> CHAPTER XV: THE
+      COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS <br /> CHAPTER XVI: HOMER AND THE FRENCH
+      MEDIAEVAL EPICS <br /> CHAPTER XVII: CONCLUSION <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_LIST" id="link2H_LIST">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (not available in this file):
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ALGONQUINS UNDER SHIELD
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      THE VASE OF ARISTONOTHOS
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      RINGS: SWORDS AND SHIELDS
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      FRAGMENTS OF WARRIOR VASE
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      FRAGMENT OF SIEGE VASE
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      ALGONQUIN CORSLET
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      GOLD CORSLET
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE HOMERIC AGE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The aim of this book is to prove that the Homeric Epics, as wholes, and
+      apart from passages gravely suspected in antiquity, present a perfectly
+      harmonious picture of the entire life and civilisation of one single age.
+      The faint variations in the design are not greater than such as mark every
+      moment of culture, for in all there is some movement; in all, cases are
+      modified by circumstances. If our contention be true, it will follow that
+      the poems themselves, as wholes, are the product of a single age, not a
+      mosaic of the work of several changeful centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This must be the case&mdash;if the life drawn is harmonious, the picture
+      must be the work of a single epoch&mdash;for it is not in the nature of
+      early uncritical times that later poets should adhere, or even try to
+      adhere, to the minute details of law, custom, opinion, dress, weapons,
+      houses, and so on, as presented in earlier lays or sagas on the same set
+      of subjects. Even less are poets in uncritical times inclined to
+      "archaise," either by attempting to draw fancy pictures of the manners of
+      the past, or by making researches in graves, or among old votive offerings
+      in temples, for the purpose of "preserving local colour." The idea of such
+      archaising is peculiar to modern times. To take an instance much to the
+      point, Virgil was a learned poet, famous for his antiquarian erudition,
+      and professedly imitating and borrowing from Homer. Now, had Virgil worked
+      as a man of to-day would work on a poem of Trojan times, he would have
+      represented his heroes as using weapons of bronze. {Footnote: Looking back
+      at my own poem, <i>Helen of Troy</i> (1883), I find that when the metal of
+      a weapon is mentioned the metal is bronze.} No such idea of archaising
+      occurred to the learned Virgil. It is "the iron" that pierces the head of
+      Remulus (<i>Aeneid</i>, IX. 633); it is "the iron" that waxes warm in the
+      breast of Antiphates (IX. 701). Virgil's men, again, do not wear the great
+      Homeric shield, suspended by a baldric: AEneas holds up his buckler (<i>clipeus</i>),
+      borne "on his left arm" (X. 26 i). Homer, familiar with no buckler worn on
+      the left arm, has no such description. When the hostile ranks are to be
+      broken, in the <i>Aeneid</i> it is "with the iron" (X. 372), and so
+      throughout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most erudite ancient poet, in a critical age of iron, does not
+      archaise in our modern fashion. He does not follow his model, Homer, in
+      his descriptions of shields, swords, and spears. But, according to most
+      Homeric critics, the later continuators of the Greek Epics, about 800-540
+      B.C., are men living in an age of iron weapons, and of round bucklers worn
+      on the left arm. Yet, unlike Virgil, they always give their heroes arms of
+      bronze, and, unlike Virgil (as we shall see), they do not introduce the
+      buckler worn on the left arm. They adhere conscientiously to the use of
+      the vast Mycenaean shield, in their time obsolete. Yet, by the theory, in
+      many other respects they innovate at will, introducing corslets and
+      greaves, said to be unknown to the beginners of the Greek Epics, just as
+      Virgil innovates in bucklers and iron weapons. All this theory seems
+      inconsistent, and no ancient poet, not even Virgil, is an archaiser of the
+      modern sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All attempts to prove that the Homeric poems are the work of several
+      centuries appear to rest on a double hypothesis: first, that the later
+      contributors to the <i>ILIAD</i> kept a steady eye on the traditions of
+      the remote Achaean age of bronze; next, that they innovated as much as
+      they pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poets of an uncritical age do not archaise. This rule is overlooked by the
+      critics who represent the Homeric poems as a complex of the work of many
+      singers in many ages. For example, Professor Percy Gardner, in his very
+      interesting <i>New chapters in Greek History</i> (1892), carries neglect
+      of the rule so far as to suppose that the late Homeric poets, being aware
+      that the ancient heroes could not ride, or write, or eat boiled meat,
+      consciously and purposefully represented them as doing none of these
+      things. This they did "on the same principle on which a writer of pastoral
+      idylls in our own day would avoid the mention of the telegraph or
+      telephone." {Footnote: <i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 142.} "A writer of our own
+      day,"&mdash;there is the pervading fallacy! It is only writers of the last
+      century who practise this archaeological refinement. The authors of <i>Beowulf</i>
+      and the <i>Nibelungenlied</i>, of the Chansons de <i>Geste</i> and of the
+      Arthurian romances, always describe their antique heroes and the details
+      of their life in conformity with the customs, costume, and armour of their
+      own much later ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Leaf, to take another instance, remarks as to the lack of the
+      metal lead in the Epics, that it is mentioned in similes only, as though
+      the poet were aware the metal was unknown in the heroic age. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      Note on, xi. 237.} Here the poet is assumed to be a careful but
+      ill-informed archaeologist, who wishes to give an accurate representation
+      of the past. Lead, in fact, was perfectly familiar to the Mycenaean prime.
+      {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 73.} The critical usage of supposing
+      that the ancients were like the most recent moderns&mdash;in their
+      archaeological preoccupations&mdash;is a survival of the uncritical habit
+      which invariably beset old poets and artists. Ancient poets, of the
+      uncritical ages, never worked "on the same principle as a writer in our
+      day," as regards archaeological precision; at least we are acquainted with
+      no example of such accuracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us take another instance of the critical fallacy. The age of the
+      Achaean warriors, who dwelt in the glorious halls of Mycenae, was
+      followed, at an interval, by the age represented in the relics found in
+      the older tombs outside the Dipylon gate of Athens, an age beginning,
+      probably, about 900-850 B.C. The culture of this "Dipylon age," a time of
+      geometrical ornaments on vases, and of human figures drawn in geometrical
+      forms, lines, and triangles, was quite unlike that of the Achaean age in
+      many ways, for example, in mode of burial and in the use of iron for
+      weapons. Mr. H. R. Hall, in his learned book, <i>The Oldest Civilisation
+      of Greece</i> (1901), supposes the culture described in the Homeric poems
+      to be contemporary in Asia with that of this Dipylon period in Greece.
+      {Footnote: Op. cit., pp. 49, 222.} He says, "The Homeric culture is
+      evidently the culture of the poet's own days; there is no attempt to
+      archaise here...." They do not archaise as to the details of life, but
+      "the Homeric poets consciously and consistently archaised, in regard to
+      the political conditions of continental Greece," in the Achaean times.
+      They give "in all probability a pretty accurate description" of the loose
+      feudalism of Mycenaean Greece. {Footnote: Op. cit., pp. 223, 225.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall later show that this Homeric picture of a past political and
+      social condition of Greece is of vivid and delicate accuracy, that it is
+      drawn from the life, not constructed out of historical materials. Mr. Hall
+      explains the fact by "the conscious and consistent" archaeological
+      precision of the Asiatic poets of the ninth century. Now to any one who
+      knows early national poetry, early uncritical art of any kind, this theory
+      seems not easily tenable. The difficulty of the theory is increased, if we
+      suppose that the Achaeans were the recent conquerors of the Mycenaeans.
+      Whether we regard the Achaeans as "Celts," with Mr. Ridgeway, victors over
+      an Aryan people, the Pelasgic Mycenaeans; or whether, with Mr. Hall, we
+      think that the Achaeans were the Aryan conquerors of a non-Aryan people,
+      the makers of the Mycenaean civilisation; in the stress of a conquest,
+      followed at no long interval by an expulsion at the hands of Dorian
+      invaders, there would be little thought of archaising among Achaean poets.
+      {Footnote: Mr. Hall informs me that he no longer holds the opinion that
+      the poets archaised.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A distinction has been made, it is true, between the poet and other
+      artists in this respect. Monsieur Perrot says, "The vase-painter
+      reproduces what he sees; while the epic poets endeavoured to represent a
+      distant past. If Homer gives swords of bronze to his heroes of times gone
+      by, it is because he knows that such were the weapons of these heroes of
+      long ago. In arming them with bronze he makes use, in his way, of what we
+      call 'local colour....' Thus the Homeric poet is a more conscientious
+      historian than Virgil!" {Footnote: La <i>Grète de l'Epopée</i>, Perrot et
+      Chipiez, p. 230.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now we contend that old uncritical poets no more sought for antique "local
+      colour" than any other artists did. M. Perrot himself says with truth,
+      "the <i>CHANSON DE ROLAND</i>, and all the <i>Gestes</i> of the same cycle
+      explain for us the Iliad and the Odyssey." {Footnote: op. cit., p. 5.} But
+      the poet of the <i>CHANSON DE ROLAND</i> accoutres his heroes of old time
+      in the costume and armour of his own age, and the later poets of the same
+      cycle introduce the innovations of their time; they do not hunt for "local
+      colour" in the <i>CHANSON DE ROLAND</i>. The very words "local colour" are
+      a modern phrase for an idea that never occurred to the artists of ancient
+      uncritical ages. The Homeric poets, like the painters of the Dipylon
+      period, describe the details of life as they see them with their own eyes.
+      Such poets and artists never have the fear of "anachronisms" before them.
+      This, indeed, is plain to the critics themselves, for they, detect
+      anachronisms as to land tenure, burial, the construction of houses,
+      marriage customs, weapons, and armour in the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>.
+      These supposed anachronisms we examine later: if they really exist they
+      show that the poets were indifferent to local colour and archaeological
+      precision, or were incapable of attaining to archaeological accuracy. In
+      fact, such artistic revival of the past in its habit as it lived is a
+      purely modern ideal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are to show, then, that the Epics, being, as wholes, free from such
+      inevitable modifications in the picture of changing details of life as
+      uncritical authors always introduce, are the work of the one age which
+      they represent. This is the reverse of what has long been, and still is,
+      the current theory of Homeric criticism, according to which the Homeric
+      poems are, and bear manifest marks of being, a mosaic of the poetry of
+      several ages of change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Till Wolf published his <i>Prolegomena</i> to {blank space} (1795) there
+      was little opposition to the old belief that the <i>ILIAD</i> and Odyssey
+      were, allowing for interpolations, the work of one, or at most of two,
+      poets. After the appearance of Wolfs celebrated book, Homeric critics have
+      maintained, generally speaking, that the <i>ILIAD</i> is either a
+      collection of short lays disposed in sequence in a late age, or that it
+      contains an ancient original "kernel" round which "expansions," made
+      throughout some centuries of changeful life, have accrued, and have been
+      at last arranged by a literary redactor or editor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter theory is now dominant. It is maintained that the <i>Iliad</i>
+      is a work of at least four centuries. Some of the objections to this
+      theory were obvious to Wolf himself&mdash;more obvious to him than to his
+      followers. He was aware, and some of them are not, of the distinction
+      between reading the <i>ILIAD</i> as all poetic literature is naturally
+      read, and by all authors is meant to be read, for human pleasure, and
+      studying it in the spirit of "the analytical reader." As often as he read
+      for pleasure, he says, disregarding the purely fanciful "historical
+      conditions" which he invented for Homer; as often as he yielded himself to
+      that running stream of action and narration; as often as he considered the
+      <i>harmony</i> of <i>colour</i> and of characters in the Epic, no man
+      could be more angry with his own destructive criticism than himself. Wolf
+      ceased to be a Wolfian whenever he placed himself at the point of view of
+      the reader or the listener, to whom alone every poet makes his appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he deemed it his duty to place himself at another point of view, that
+      of the scientific literary historian, the historian of a period concerning
+      whose history he could know nothing. "How could the thing be possible?" he
+      asked himself. "How could a long poem like the <i>Iliad</i> come into
+      existence in the historical circumstances?" {Footnote, exact place in
+      paragraph unknown: Preface to Homer, p, xxii., 1794.}. Wolf was unaware
+      that he did not know what the historical circumstances were. We know how
+      little we know, but we do know more than Wolf. He invented the historical
+      circumstances of the supposed poet. They were, he said, like those of a
+      man who should build a large ship in an inland place, with no sea to
+      launch it upon. The <i>Iliad</i> was the large ship; the sea was the
+      public. Homer could have no <i>readers</i>, Wolf said, in an age that,
+      like the old hermit of Prague, "never saw pen and ink," had no knowledge
+      of letters; or, if letters were dimly known, had never applied them to
+      literature. In such circumstances no man could have a motive for composing
+      a long poem. {Footnote: <i>Prolegomena to the Iliad</i>, p. xxvi.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet if the original poet, "Homer," could make "the greater part of the
+      songs," as Wolf admitted, what physical impossibility stood in the way of
+      his making the whole? Meanwhile, the historical circumstances, as
+      conceived of by Wolf, were imaginary. He did not take the circumstances of
+      the poet as described in the Odyssey. Here a king or prince has a
+      minstrel, honoured as were the minstrels described in the ancient Irish
+      books of law. His duty is to entertain the prince and his family and
+      guests by singing epic chants after supper, and there is no reason why his
+      poetic narratives should be brief, but rather he has an opportunity that
+      never occurred again till the literary age of Greece for producing a long
+      poem, continued from night to night. In the later age, in the Asiatic
+      colonies and in Greece, the rhapsodists, competing for prizes at feasts,
+      or reciting to a civic crowd, were limited in time and gave but snatches
+      of poetry. It is in this later civic age that a poet without readers would
+      have little motive for building Wolfs great ship of song, and scant chance
+      of launching it to any profitable purpose. To this point we return; but
+      when once critics, following Wolf, had convinced themselves that a long
+      early poem was impossible, they soon found abundant evidence that it had
+      never existed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They have discovered discrepancies of which, they say, no one sane poet
+      could have been guilty. They have also discovered that the poems had not,
+      as Wolf declared, "one 'harmony of colour" (<i>unus color</i>). Each age,
+      they say, during which the poems were continued, lent its own colour. The
+      poets, by their theory, now preserved the genuine tradition of things old;
+      cremation, cairn and urn burial; the use of the chariot in war; the use of
+      bronze for weapons; a peculiar stage of customary law; a peculiar form of
+      semi-feudal society; a peculiar kind of house. But again, by a change in
+      the theory, the poets introduced later novelties; later forms of defensive
+      armour; later modes of burial; later religious and speculative beliefs; a
+      later style of house; an advanced stage of law; modernisms in grammar and
+      language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The usual position of critics in this matter is stated by Helbig; and we
+      are to contend that the theory is contradicted by all experience of
+      ancient literatures, and is in itself the reverse of consistent. "The <i>artists</i>
+      of antiquity," says Helbig, with perfect truth, "had no idea of
+      archaeological studies.... They represented legendary scenes in conformity
+      with the spirit of their own age, and reproduced the arms and implements
+      and costume that they saw around them." {Footnote: <i>L'Épopée Homerique</i>,
+      p. 5; <i>Homerische Epos</i>, p. 4.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now a poet is an <i>artist</i>, like another, and he, too&mdash;no less
+      than the vase painter or engraver of gems&mdash;in dealing with legends of
+      times past, represents (in an uncritical age) the arms, utensils, costume,
+      and the religious, geographical, legal, social, and political ideas of his
+      own period. We shall later prove that this is true by examples from the
+      early mediaeval epic poetry of Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It follows that if the <i>Iliad</i> is absolutely consistent and
+      harmonious in its picture of life, and of all the accessories of life, the
+      <i>Iliad</i> is the work of a single age, of a single stage of culture,
+      the poet describing his own environment. But Helbig, on the other hand,
+      citing Wilamowitz Moellendorff, declares that the <i>Iliad</i>&mdash;the
+      work of four centuries, he says&mdash;maintains its unity of colour by
+      virtue of an uninterrupted poetical tradition. {Footnote: <i>Homerische
+      Untersuchungen</i>, p. 292; <i>Homerische Epos</i>, p. I.} If so, the
+      poets must have archaeologised, must have kept asking themselves, "Is this
+      or that detail true to the past?" which artists in uncritical ages never
+      do, as we have been told by Helbig. They must have carefully pondered the
+      surviving old Achaean lays, which "were born when the heroes could not
+      read, or boil flesh, or back a steed." By carefully observing the earliest
+      lays the late poets, in times of changed manners, "could avoid
+      anachronisms by the aid of tradition, which gave them a very exact idea of
+      the epic heroes." Such is the opinion of Wilamowitz Moellendorff. He
+      appears to regard the tradition as keeping the later poets in the old way
+      automatically, not consciously, but this, we also learn from Helbig, did
+      not occur. The poets often wandered from the way. {Footnote: Helbig, <i>Homerische
+      Epos,</i> pp. 2, 3.} Thus old Mycenaean lays, if any existed, would
+      describe the old Mycenaean mode of burial. The Homeric poet describes
+      something radically different. We vainly ask for proof that in any early
+      national literature known to us poets have been true to the colour and
+      manners of the remote times in which their heroes moved, and of which old
+      minstrels sang. The thing is without example: of this proofs shall be
+      offered in abundance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, the whole theory which regards the <i>Iliad</i> as the work of
+      four or five centuries rests on the postulate that poets throughout these
+      centuries did what such poets never do, kept true to the details of a life
+      remote from their own, and also did not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Helbig does not, after all, cleave to his opinion. On the other hand,
+      he says that the later poets of the <i>Iliad</i> did not cling to
+      tradition. "They allowed themselves to be influenced by their own
+      environment: <i>this influence betrays ITSELF IN THE descriptions of
+      DETAILS</i>.... The rhapsodists," (reciters, supposed to have altered the
+      poems at will), "did not fail to interpolate relatively recent elements
+      into the oldest parts of the Epic." {Footnote: <i>Homerische Epos,</i> p.
+      2.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point comes in a complex inconsistency. The Tenth Book of the <i>Iliad</i>,
+      thinks Helbig&mdash;in common with almost all critics&mdash;"is one of the
+      most recent lays of the <i>Iliad</i>." But in this recent lay (say of the
+      eighth or seventh century) the poet describes the Thracians as on a level
+      of civilisation with the Achaeans, and, indeed, as even more luxurious,
+      wealthy, and refined in the matter of good horses, glorious armour, and
+      splendid chariots. But, by the time of the Persian wars, says Helbig, the
+      Thracians were regarded by the Greeks as rude barbarians, and their
+      military equipment was totally un-Greek. They did not wear helmets, but
+      caps of fox-skin. They had no body armour; their shields were small round
+      bucklers; their weapons were bows and daggers. These customs could not, at
+      the time of the Persian wars, be recent innovations in Thrace. {Footnote:
+      Herodotus, vii. 75.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the poet of <i>ILIAD</i>, Book X., known the Thracians in <i>this</i>
+      condition, says Helbig, as he was fond of details of costume and arms, he
+      would have certainly described their fox-skin caps, bows, bucklers, and so
+      forth. He would not here have followed the Epic tradition, which
+      represented the Thracians as makers of great swords and as splendidly
+      armed charioteers. His audience had met the Thracians in peace and war,
+      and would contradict the poet's description of them as heavily armed
+      charioteers. It follows, therefore, that the latest poets, such as the
+      author of Book X., did not introduce recent details, those of their own
+      time, but we have just previously been told that to do so was their custom
+      in the description of details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Studniczka {Footnote: <i>Homerische Epos, pp. 7-11, cf.</i> Note I; <i>Zeitschrift
+      fur die Oestern Gymnasien</i>, 1886, p. 195.} explains the picture of the
+      Thracians in <i>Iliad</i>, Book X., on Helbig's <i>other</i> principle,
+      namely, that the very late author of the Tenth Book merely conforms to the
+      conventional tradition of the Epic, adheres to the model set in ancient
+      Achaean, or rather ancient Ionian times, and scrupulously preserved by the
+      latest poets&mdash;that is, when the latest poets do not bring in the new
+      details of their own age. But Helbig will not accept his own theory in
+      this case, whence does it follow that the author of the Tenth Book must,
+      in his opinion, have lived in Achaean times, and described the Thracians
+      as they then were, charioteers, heavily armed, not light-clad archers? If
+      this is so, we ask how Helbig can aver that the Tenth Book is one of the
+      latest parts of the <i>Iliad?</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In studying the critics who hold that the <i>Iliad</i> is the growth of
+      four centuries&mdash;say from the eleventh to the seventh century B.C.&mdash;no
+      consistency is to be discovered; the earth is never solid beneath our
+      feet. We find now that the poets are true to tradition in the details of
+      ancient life&mdash;now that the poets introduce whatever modern details
+      they please. The late poets have now a very exact knowledge of the past;
+      now, the late poets know nothing about the past, or, again, some of the
+      poets are fond of actual and very minute archaeological research! The
+      theory shifts its position as may suit the point to be made at the moment
+      by the critic. All is arbitrary, and it is certain that logic demands a
+      very different method of inquiry. If Helbig and other critics of his way
+      of thinking mean that in the <i>Iliad</i> (1) there are parts of genuine
+      antiquity; other parts (2) by poets who, with stern accuracy, copied the
+      old modes; other parts (3) by poets who tried to copy but failed; with
+      passages (4) by poets who deliberately innovated; and passages (5) by
+      poets who drew fanciful pictures of the past "from their inner
+      consciousness," while, finally (6), some poets made minute antiquarian
+      researches; and if the argument be that the critics can detect these six
+      elements, then we are asked to repose unlimited confidence in critical
+      powers of discrimination. The critical standard becomes arbitrary and
+      subjective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is our effort, then, in the following pages to show that the <i>unus</i>
+      color of Wolf does pervade the Epics, that recent details are not often,
+      if ever, interpolated, that the poems harmoniously represent one age, and
+      that a brief age, of culture; that this effect cannot, in a thoroughly
+      uncritical period, have been deliberately aimed at and produced by
+      archaeological learning, or by sedulous copying of poetic tradition, or by
+      the scientific labours of an editor of the sixth century B.C. We shall
+      endeavour to prove, what we have already indicated, that the hypotheses of
+      expansion are not self-consistent, or in accordance with what is known of
+      the evolution of early national poetry. The strongest part, perhaps, of
+      our argument is to rest on our interpretation of archaeological evidence,
+      though we shall not neglect the more disputable or less convincing
+      contentions of literary criticism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HYPOTHESES AS TO THE GROWTH OF THE EPICS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A theorist who believes that the Homeric poems are the growth of four
+      changeful centuries, must present a definite working hypothesis as to how
+      they escaped from certain influences of the late age in which much of them
+      is said to have been composed. We must first ask to what manner of
+      audiences did the poets sing, in the alleged four centuries of the
+      evolution of the Epics. Mr. Leaf, as a champion of the theory of ages of
+      "expansion," answers that "the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i> are
+      essentially, and above all, Court poems. They were composed to be sung in
+      the palaces of a ruling aristocracy ... the poems are aristocratic and
+      courtly, not popular." {Footnote: Companion to the <i>Iliad</i>, pp. 2,8.
+      1892.} They are not <i>Volkspoesie</i>; they are not ballads. "It is now
+      generally recognised that this conception is radically false."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+These opinions, in which we heartily agree&mdash;there never was such a
+thing as a "popular" Epic&mdash;were published fourteen years ago. Mr.
+Leaf, however, would not express them with regard to "our" <i>Iliad</i> and
+Odyssey, because, in his view, a considerable part of the <i>Iliad</i>, as
+it stands, was made, not by Court bards in the Achaean courts of Europe,
+not for an audience of noble warriors and dames, but by wandering
+minstrels in the later Ionian colonies of Asia. They did not chant for a
+military aristocracy, but for the enjoyment of town and country folk at
+popular festivals. {Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p. xvi. 1900.} The poems
+were <i>begun</i>, indeed, he thinks, for "a wealthy aristocracy living
+on the product of their lands," in European Greece; were begun by
+contemporary court minstrels, but were continued, vastly expanded, and
+altered to taste by wandering singers and reciting rhapsodists, who
+amused the holidays of a commercial, expansive, and bustling Ionian
+democracy. {Footnote: <i>Companion to the Iliad</i>, p. II.}
+
+ We must suppose that, on this theory, the later poets pleased a
+commercial democracy by keeping up the tone that had delighted an old
+land-owning military aristocracy. It is not difficult, however, to admit
+this as possible, for the poems continued to be admired in all ages of
+Greece and under every form of society. The real question is, would the
+modern poets be the men to keep up a tone some four or five centuries
+old, and to be true, if they were true, to the details of the heroic
+age? "It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that some part of the
+most primitive <i>Iliad</i> may have been actually sung by the court minstrel
+in the palace whose ruins can still be seen in Mycenae." {Footnote:
+Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. xv.} But, by the expansionist theory, even
+the oldest parts of our <i>Iliad</i> are now full of what we may call quite
+recent Ionian additions, full of late retouches, and full, so to speak,
+of omissions of old parts.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Through four or five centuries, by the hypothesis, every singer who could
+      find an audience was treating as much as he knew of a vast body of ancient
+      lays exactly as he pleased, adding here, lopping there, altering
+      everywhere. Moreover, these were centuries full of change. The ancient
+      Achaean palaces were becoming the ruins which we still behold. The old art
+      had faded, and then fallen under the disaster of the Dorian conquest. A
+      new art, or a recrudescence of earlier art, very crude and barbaric, had
+      succeeded, and was beginning to acquire form and vitality. The very scene
+      of life was altered: the new singers and listeners dwelt on the Eastern
+      side of the Aegean. Knights no longer, as in Europe, fought from chariots:
+      war was conducted by infantry, for the most part, with mounted
+      auxiliaries. With the disappearance of the war chariot the huge Mycenaean
+      shields had vanished or were very rarely used. The early vase painters do
+      not, to my knowledge, represent heroes as fighting from war chariots. They
+      had lost touch with that method. Fighting men now carried relatively small
+      round bucklers, and iron was the metal chiefly employed for swords,
+      spears, and arrow points. Would the new poets, in deference to tradition,
+      abstain from mentioning cavalry, or small bucklers, or iron swords and
+      spears? or would they avoid puzzling their hearers by speaking of obsolete
+      and unfamiliar forms of tactics and of military equipment? Would they
+      therefore sing of things familiar&mdash;of iron weapons, small round
+      shields, hoplites, and cavalry? We shall see that confused and
+      self-contradictory answers are given by criticism to all these questions
+      by scholars who hold that the Epics are not the product of one, but of
+      many ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were other changes between the ages of the original minstrel and of
+      the late successors who are said to have busied themselves in adding to,
+      mutilating, and altering his old poem. Kings and courts had passed away;
+      old Ionian myths and religious usages, unknown to the Homeric poets, had
+      come out into the light; commerce and pleasure and early philosophies were
+      the chief concerns of life. Yet the poems continued to be aristocratic in
+      manners; and, in religion and ritual, to be pure from recrudescences of
+      savage poetry and superstition, though the Ionians "did not drop the more
+      primitive phases of belief which had clung to them; these rose to the
+      surface with the rest of the marvellous Ionic genius, and many an ancient
+      survival was enshrined in the literature or mythology of Athens which had
+      long passed out of all remembrance at Mycenas." {Footnote: <i>Companion to
+      the Iliad</i>, p. 7.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amazing to say, none of these "more primitive phases of belief," none of
+      the recrudescent savage magic, was intruded by the late Ionian poets into
+      the Iliad which they continued, by the theory. Such phases of belief were,
+      indeed, by their time popular, and frequently appeared in the Cyclic poems
+      on the Trojan war; continuations of the <i>ILIAD</i>, which were composed
+      by Ionian authors at the same time as much of the <i>ILIAD</i> itself (by
+      the theory) was composed. The authors of these Cyclic poems&mdash;authors
+      contemporary with the makers of much of the <i>ILIAD</i>&mdash;<i>were</i>
+      eminently "un-Homeric" in many respects. {Footnote: <i>Cf</i>. Monro, <i>The
+      Cyclic Poets; Odyssey</i>, vol. ii, pp. 342-384.} They had ideas very
+      different from those of the authors of the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>ODYSSEY</i>,
+      as these ideas have reached us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helbig states this curious fact, that the Homeric poems are free from many
+      recent or recrudescent ideas common in other Epics composed during the
+      later centuries of the supposed four hundred years of Epic growth.
+      {Footnote: <i>Homerische Epos</i>, p. 3.} Thus a signet ring was mentioned
+      in the <i>Ilias Puma</i>, and there are no rings in <i>Iliad</i> or <i>Odyssey</i>.
+      But Helbig does not perceive the insuperable difficulty which here
+      encounters his hypothesis. He remarks: "In certain poems which were
+      grouping themselves around the <i>Iliad and </i>Odyssey, we meet data
+      absolutely opposed to the conventional style of the Epic." He gives three
+      or four examples of perfectly un-Homeric ideas occurring in Epics of the
+      eighth to seventh centuries, B.C., and a large supply of such cases can be
+      adduced. But Helbig does not ask how it happened that, if poets of these
+      centuries had lost touch with the Epic tradition, and had wandered into a
+      new region of thought, as they had, examples of their notions do not occur
+      in the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>. By his theory these poems were
+      being added to and altered, even in their oldest portions, at the very
+      period when strange fresh, or old and newly revived fancies were
+      flourishing. If so, how were the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>, unlike
+      the Cyclic poems, kept uncontaminated, as they confessedly were, by the
+      new romantic ideas?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is the real difficulty. Cyclic poets of the eighth and seventh
+      centuries had certainly lost touch with the Epic tradition; their poems
+      make that an admitted fact. Yet poets of the eighth to seventh centuries
+      were, by the theory, busily adding to and altering the ancient lays of the
+      <i>Iliad</i>. How did <i>they</i> abstain from the new or revived ideas,
+      and from the new <i>genre</i> of romance? Are we to believe that one set
+      of late Ionian poets&mdash;they who added to and altered the Iliad&mdash;were
+      true to tradition, while another contemporary set of Ionian poets, the
+      Cyclics&mdash;authors of new Epics on Homeric themes&mdash;are known to
+      have quite lost touch with the Homeric taste, religion, and ritual? The
+      reply will perhaps be a Cyclic poet said, "Here I am going to compose
+      quite a new poem about the old heroes. I shall make them do and think and
+      believe as I please, without reference to the evidence of the old poems."
+      But, it will have to be added, the rhapsodists of 800-540 B.C., and the
+      general editor of the latter date, thought, <i>we</i> are continuing an
+      old set of lays, and we must be very careful in adhering to manners,
+      customs, and beliefs as described by our predecessors. For instance, the
+      old heroes had only bronze, no iron,&mdash;and then the rhapsodists
+      forgot, and made iron a common commodity in the <i>Iliad</i>. Again, the
+      rhapsodists knew that the ancient heroes had no corslets&mdash;the old
+      lays, we learn, never spoke of corslets&mdash;but they made them wear
+      corslets of much splendour. {Footnote: The reader must remember that the
+      view of the late poets as careful adherents of tradition in usages and
+      ideas only obtains <i>sometimes</i>; at others the critics declare that
+      archaeological precision is <i>not</i> preserved, and that the Ionic
+      continuators introduced, for example, the military gear of their own
+      period into a poem which represents much older weapons and equipments.}
+      This theory does not help us. In an uncritical age poets could not discern
+      that their genre of romance and religion was alien from that of Homer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To return to the puzzle about the careful and precise continuators of the
+      <i>Iliad</i>, as contrasted with their heedless contemporaries, the
+      authors of the Cyclic poems. How "non-Homeric" the authors of these Cyclic
+      poems were, before and after 660 B.C., we illustrate from examples of
+      their left hand backslidings and right hand fallings off. They introduced
+      (1) The Apotheosis of the Dioscuri, who in Homer (<i>Iliad</i>, III. 243)
+      are merely dead men (<i>Cypria</i>). (2) Story of Iphigenia <i>Cypria</i>.
+      (3) Story of Palamedes, who is killed when angling by Odysseus and Diomede
+      (Cypria).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Homer's heroes never fish, except in stress of dire necessity, in the
+      Odyssey, and Homer's own Diomede and Odysseus would never stoop to
+      assassinate a companion when engaged in the contemplative man's
+      recreation. We here see the heroes in late degraded form as on the Attic
+      stage. (4) The Cyclics introduce Helen as daughter of Nemesis, and
+      describe the flight of Nemesis from Zeus in various animal forms, a
+      Märchen of a sort not popular with Homer; an Ionic Märchen, Mr. Leaf would
+      say. There is nothing like this in the Iliad and Odyssey. (5) They call
+      the son of Achilles, not Neoptolemus, as Homer does, but Pyrrhus. (6) They
+      represent the Achaean army as obtaining supplies through three magically
+      gifted maidens, who produce corn, wine, and oil at will, as in fairy
+      tales. Another Ionic non-Achaean Märchen! They bring in ghosts of heroes
+      dead and buried. Such ghosts, in Homer's opinion, were impossible if the
+      dead had been cremated. All these non-Homeric absurdities, save the last,
+      are from the Cypria, dated by Sir Richard Jebb about 776 B.C., long before
+      the Odyssey was put into shape, namely, after 660 B. C. in his opinion.
+      Yet the alleged late compiler of the Odyssey, in the seventh century,
+      never wanders thus from the Homeric standard in taste. What a skilled
+      archaeologist he must have been! The author of the Cypria knew the Iliad,
+      {Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 354.} but his knowledge could not
+      keep him true to tradition. (7) In the AEthiopis (about 776 B.C.) men are
+      made immortal after death, and are worshipped as heroes, an idea foreign
+      to Iliad and Odyssey. (8) There is a savage ritual of purification from
+      blood shed by a homicide (compare Eumenides, line 273). This is unheard of
+      in Iliad and Odyssey, though familiar to Aeschylus. (9) Achilles, after
+      death, is carried to the isle of Leuke. (10) The fate of Ilium, in the
+      Cyclic Little <i>Iliad</i>, hangs on the Palladium, of which nothing is
+      known in <i>Iliad</i> or <i>Odyssey</i>. The <i>Little Iliad</i> is dated
+      about 700 B.C. (11) The <i>Nostoi</i> mentions Molossians, not named by
+      Homer (which is a trifle); it also mentions the Asiatic city of Colophon,
+      an Ionian colony, which is not a trivial self-betrayal on the part of the
+      poet. He is dated about 750 B.C.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, more than a century before the <i>Odyssey</i> received its final
+      form, after 660 B.C., from the hands of one man (according to the theory),
+      the other Ionian poets who attempted Epic were betraying themselves as
+      non-Homeric on every hand. {Footnote: Monro, <i>Odyssey</i>, vol. ii. pp.
+      347-383.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our examples are but a few derived from the brief notices of the Cyclic
+      poets' works, as mentioned in ancient literature; these poets probably, in
+      fact, betrayed themselves constantly. But their contemporaries, the makers
+      of late additions to the <i>Odyssey</i>, and the later mosaic worker who
+      put it together, never betrayed themselves to anything like the fatal
+      extent of anachronism exhibited by the Cyclic poets. How, if the true
+      ancient tone, taste, manners, and religion were lost, as the Cyclic poets
+      show that they were, did the contemporary Ionian poets or rhapsodists know
+      and preserve the old manner?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The best face we can put on the matter is to say that all the Cyclic poets
+      were recklessly independent of tradition, while all men who botched at the
+      <i>Iliad</i> were very learned, and very careful to maintain harmony in
+      their pictures of life and manners, except when they introduced changes in
+      burial, bride-price, houses, iron, greaves, and corslets, all of them
+      things, by the theory, modern, and when they sang in modern grammar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet despite this conscientiousness of theirs, most of the many authors of
+      our <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i> were, by the theory, strolling
+      irresponsible rhapsodists, like the later <i>jongleurs</i> of the
+      thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in mediaeval France. How could these
+      strollers keep their modern Ionian ideas, or their primitive, recrudescent
+      phases of belief, out of their lays, as far as they <i>did</i> keep them
+      out, while the contemporary authors of the <i>Cypria</i>, <i>The Sack of
+      Ilios</i>, and other Cyclic poets were full of new ideas, legends, and
+      beliefs, or primitive notions revived, and, save when revived, quite
+      obviously late and quite un-Homeric in any case?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The difficulty is the greater if the Cyclic poems were long poems, with
+      one author to each Epic. Such authors were obviously men of ambition; they
+      produced serious works <i>de longue haleine</i>. It is from them that we
+      should naturally expect conservative and studious adhesion to the
+      traditional models. From casual strollers like the rhapsodists and
+      chanters at festivals, we look for nothing of the sort. <i>They</i> might
+      be expected to introduce great feats done by sergeants and privates, so to
+      speak&mdash;men of the nameless {Greek: laos}, the host, the foot men&mdash;who
+      in Homer are occasionally said to perish of disease or to fall under the
+      rain of arrows, but are never distinguished by name. The strollers, it
+      might be thought, would also be the very men to introduce fairy tales,
+      freaks of primitive Ionian myth, discreditable anecdotes of the princely
+      heroes, and references to the Ionian colonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is not so; the serious, laborious authors of the long Cyclic poems
+      do such un-Homeric things as these; the gay, irresponsible strolling
+      singers of a lay here and a lay there&mdash;lays now incorporated in the
+      <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>&mdash;scrupulously avoid such faults. They
+      never even introduce a signet ring. These are difficulties in the theory
+      of the <i>Iliad</i> as a patchwork by many hands, in many ages, which
+      nobody explains; which, indeed, nobody seems to find difficult. Yet the
+      difficulty is insuperable. Even if we take refuge with Wilamowitz in the
+      idea that the Cyclic and Homeric poems were at first mere protoplasm of
+      lays of many ages, and that they were all compiled, say in the sixth
+      century, into so many narratives, we come no nearer to explaining why the
+      tone, taste, and ideas of two such narratives&mdash;Illiad and Odyssey&mdash;are
+      confessedly distinct from the tone, taste, and ideas of all the others.
+      The Cyclic poems are certainly the production of a late and changed age?
+      {Footnote: For what manner of audience, if not for readers, the Cyclic
+      poems were composed is a mysterious question.} The <i>Iliad</i> is not in
+      any degree&mdash;save perhaps in a few interpolated passages&mdash;touched
+      by the influences of that late age. It is not a complex of the work of
+      four incompatible centuries, as far as this point is concerned&mdash;the
+      point of legend, religion, ritual, and conception of heroic character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HYPOTHESES OF EPIC COMPOSITION
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Whosoever holds that the Homeric poems were evolved out of the lays of
+      many men, in many places, during many periods of culture, must present a
+      consistent and logical hypothesis as to how they attained their present
+      plots and forms. These could not come by accident, even if the plots are
+      not good&mdash;as all the world held that they were, till after Wolf's day&mdash;but
+      very bad, as some critics now assert. Still plot and form, beyond the
+      power of chance to produce, the poems do possess. Nobody goes so far as to
+      deny that; and critics make hypotheses explanatory of the fact that a
+      single ancient "kernel" of some 2500 lines, a "kernel" altered at will by
+      any one who pleased during four centuries, became a constructive whole. If
+      the hypotheses fail to account for the fact, we have the more reason to
+      believe that the poems are the work of one age, and, mainly, of one man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In criticising Homeric criticism as it is to-day, we cannot do better than
+      begin by examining the theories of Mr. Leaf which are offered by him
+      merely as "a working hypothesis." His most erudite work is based on a wide
+      knowledge of German Homeric speculation, of the exact science of Grammar,
+      of archaeological discoveries, and of manuscripts. {Footnote: The Iliad.
+      Macmillan &amp; Co. 1900, 1902.} His volumes are, I doubt not, as they
+      certainly deserve to be, on the shelves of every Homeric student, old or
+      young, and doubtless their contents reach the higher forms in schools,
+      though there is reason to suppose that, about the unity of Homer,
+      schoolboys remain conservative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this book of more than 1200 pages Mr. Leaf's space is mainly devoted to
+      textual criticism, philology, and pure scholarship, but his Introductions,
+      Notes, and Appendices also set forth his mature ideas about the Homeric
+      problem in general. He has altered some of his opinions since the
+      publication of his <i>Companion to the Iliad</i>(1892), but the main lines
+      of his old system are, except on one crucial point, unchanged. His theory
+      we shall try to state and criticise; in general outline it is the current
+      theory of separatist critics, and it may fairly be treated as a good
+      example of such theories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The system is to the following effect: Greek tradition, in the classical
+      period, regarded the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i> as the work of one
+      man, Homer, a native of one or other of the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor.
+      But the poems show few obvious signs of origin in Asia. They deal with
+      dwellers, before the Dorian invasion (which the poet never alludes to), on
+      the continent of Europe and in Crete. {Footnote: If the poet sang after
+      the tempest of war that came down with the Dorians from the north, he
+      would probably have sought a topic in the Achaean exploits and sorrows of
+      that period. The Dorians, not the Trojans, would have been the foes. The
+      epics of France of the eleventh and twelfth centuries dwell, not on the
+      real victories of the remote Charlemagne so much as on the disasters of
+      Aliscans and Roncesvaux&mdash;defeats at Saracen hands, Saracens being the
+      enemies of the twelfth-century poets. No Saracens, in fact, fought at
+      Roncesvaux.} The lays are concerned with "good old times"; presumably
+      between 1500 and 1100 B.C. Their pictures of the details of life harmonise
+      more with what we know of the society of that period from the evidence of
+      buildings and recent excavations, than with what we know of the life and
+      the much more rude and barbaric art of the so-called "Dipylon" period of
+      "geometrical" ornament considerably later. In the Dipylon age though the
+      use of iron, even for swords (made on the lines of the old bronze sword),
+      was familiar, art was on a most barbaric level, not much above the Bed
+      Indian type, as far, at least, as painted vases bear witness. The human
+      figure is designed as in Tommy Traddles's skeletons; there is, however,
+      some crude but promising idea of composition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The picture of life in the Homeric poems, then, is more like that of, say,
+      1500-1100 B.C. than of, say, 1000-850 B.C. in Mr. Leaf's opinion.
+      Certainly Homer describes a wealthy aristocracy, subject to an Over-Lord,
+      who rules, by right divine, from "golden Mycenae." We hear of no such
+      potentate in Ionia. Homer's accounts of contemporary art seem to be
+      inspired by the rich art generally dated about 1500-1200. Yet there are
+      "many traces of apparent anachronism," of divergence from the more antique
+      picture of life. In these divergences are we to recognise the picture of a
+      later development of the ancient existence of 1500-1200 B.C.? Or have
+      elements of the life of a much later age of Greece (say, 800-550 B.C.)
+      been consciously or unconsciously introduced by the late poets? Here Mr.
+      Leaf recognises a point on which we have insisted, and must keep
+      insisting, for it is of the first importance. "It is <i>a priori</i> the
+      most probable" supposition that, "in an uncritical age," poets do <i>not</i>
+      "reproduce the circumstances of the old time," but "only clothe the old
+      tale in the garb of their own days." Poets in an uncritical age always, in
+      our experience, "clothe old tales with the garb of their own time," but
+      Mr. Leaf thinks that, in the case of the Homeric poems, this idea "is not
+      wholly borne out by the facts."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, Mr. Leaf's hypothesis, like Helbig's, exhibits a come-and-go
+      between the theory that his late poets clung close to tradition and so
+      kept true to ancient details of life, and the theory that they did quite
+      the reverse in many cases. Of this frequent examples will occur. He
+      writes, "The Homeric period is certainly later than the shaft tombs"
+      (discovered at Mycenae by Dr. Schliemann), "but it does not necessarily
+      follow that it is post-Mycenaean. It is quite possible that certain
+      notable differences between the poems and the monuments" (of Mycenae) "in
+      burial, for instance, and in women's dress may be due to changes which
+      arose within the Mycenaean age itself, in that later part of it of which
+      our knowledge is defective&mdash;almost as defective as it is of the
+      subsequent 'Dipylon' period. On the whole, the resemblance to the typical
+      Mycenaean culture is more striking than the difference." {Footnote: Leaf,
+      Iliad, vol. i. pp. xiii.-xv. 1900.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far Mr. Leaf states precisely the opinion for which we argue. The
+      Homeric poems describe an age later than that of the famous tombs&mdash;so
+      rich in relics&mdash;of the Mycenaean acropolis, and earlier than the
+      tombs of the Dipylon of Athens. The poems thus spring out of an age of
+      which, except from the poems themselves, we know little or nothing,
+      because, as is shown later, no cairn burials answering to the frequent
+      Homeric descriptions have ever been discovered&mdash;so relics
+      corroborating Homeric descriptions are to seek. But the age attaches
+      itself in many ways to the age of the Mycenaean tombs, while, in our
+      opinion, it stands quite apart from the post-Dorian culture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where we differ from Mr. Leaf is in believing that the poems, as wholes,
+      were composed in that late Mycenaean period of which, from material
+      remains, we know very little; that "much new" was not added, as he thinks,
+      in "the Ionian development" which lasted perhaps "from the ninth century
+      B.C. to the seventh." We cannot agree with Mr. Leaf, when he, like Helbig,
+      thinks that much of the detail of the ancient life in the poems had early
+      become so "stereotyped" that no continuator, however late, dared
+      "intentionally to sap" the type, "though he slipped from time to time into
+      involuntary anachronism." Some poets are also asserted to indulge in <i>voluntary</i>
+      anachronism when, as Mr. Leaf supposes, they equip the ancient warriors
+      with corslets and greaves and other body armour of bronze such as, in his
+      opinion, the old heroes never knew, such as never were mentioned in the
+      oldest parts or "kernel" of the poems. Thus the traditional details of
+      Mycenaean life sometimes are regarded as "stereotyped" in poetic
+      tradition; sometimes as subject to modern alterations of a sweeping and
+      revolutionary kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to deliberate adherence to tradition by the poets, we have proved that
+      the Cyclic epic poets of 800-660 B.C. wandered widely from the ancient
+      models. If, then, every minstrel or rhapsodist who, anywhere, added at
+      will to the old "kernel" of the <i>Achilles</i> was, so far as he was
+      able, as conscientiously precise in his stereotyped archaeological details
+      as Mr. Leaf sometimes supposes, the fact is contrary to general custom in
+      such cases. When later poets in an uncritical age take up and rehandle the
+      poetic themes of their predecessors, they always give to the stories "a
+      new costume," as M. Gaston Paris remarks in reference to thirteenth
+      century dealings with French epics of the eleventh century. But, in the
+      critics' opinion, the late rehandlers of old Achaean lays preserved the
+      archaic modes of life, war, costume, weapons, and so forth, with
+      conscientious care, except in certain matters to be considered later, when
+      they deliberately did the very reverse. Sometimes the late poets devoutly
+      follow tradition. Sometimes they deliberately innovate. Sometimes they
+      pedantically "archaise," bringing in genuine, but by their time forgotten,
+      Mycenaean things, and criticism can detect their doings in each case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the late continuators of the <i>Iliad</i> were able, despite
+      certain inadvertencies, to keep up for some four centuries in Asia the
+      harmonious picture of ancient Achaean life and society in Europe, critics
+      can distinguish four separate strata, the work of many different ages, in
+      the <i>Iliad</i>. Of the first stratum composed in Europe, say about
+      1300-1150 B.C. (I give a conjectural date under all reserves), the topic
+      was <i>THE Wrath of ACHILLES</i>. Of this poem, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, (a)
+      the First Book and fifty lines of the Second Book remain intact or,
+      perhaps, are a blend of two versions. (b) The <i>Valour of Agamemnon</i>
+      and <i>Defeat of THE Achaeans</i>. Of this there are portions in Book XI.,
+      but they were meddled with, altered, and generally doctored, "down to the
+      latest period," namely, the age of Pisistratus in Athens, the middle of
+      the sixth century B.C. (c) The fight in which, after their defeat, the
+      Achaeans try to save the ships from the torch of Hector, and the <i>Valour
+      of Patroclus</i> (but some critics do not accept this), with his death
+      (XV., XVI. in parts). (d) Some eighty lines on the <i>ARMING OF ACHILLES</i>
+      (XIX.). (e) Perhaps an incident or two in Books XX., XXI. (f) The <i>Slaying
+      HECTOR</i> by Achilles, in Books XXI., XXII. (but some of the learned will
+      not admit this, and we shall, unhappily, have to prove that, if Mr. Leaf's
+      principles be correct, we really know nothing about the <i>SLAYING OF
+      HECTOR</i> in its original form).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of these six elements only did the original poem consist, Mr. Leaf thinks;
+      a rigid critic will reject as original even the <i>Valour of Patroclus</i>
+      and the <i>DEATH OF HECTOR</i>, but Mr. Leaf refuses to go so far as that.
+      The original poem, as detected by him, is really "the work of a single
+      poet, perhaps the greatest in all the world's history." If the original
+      poet did no more than is here allotted to him, especially if he left out
+      the purpose of Zeus and the person of Thetis in Book I., we do not quite
+      understand his unapproachable greatness. He must certainly have drawn a
+      rather commonplace Achilles, as we shall see, and we confess to preferring
+      the <i>Iliad</i> as it stands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brief narrative cut out of the mass by Mr. Leaf, then, was the genuine
+      old original poem or "kernel." What we commonly call the <i>ILIAD</i>, on
+      the other hand, is, by his theory, a thing of shreds and patches, combined
+      in a manner to be later described. The blend, we learn, has none of the
+      masterly unity of the old original poem. Meanwhile, as criticism of
+      literary composition is a purely literary question, critics who differ
+      from Mr. Leaf have a right to hold that the <i>Iliad</i> as it stands
+      contains, and always did contain, a plot of masterly perfection. We need
+      not attend here so closely to Mr. Leaf's theory in the matter of the First
+      Expansions, (2) and the Second Expansions, (3) but the latest Expansions
+      (4) give the account of <i>The EMBASSY</i> to <i>Achilles</i> with his
+      refusal of <i>Agamemnon's APOLOGY</i>(Book IX.), the {blank space} (Book
+      XXIV.), the <i>RECONCILIATION OF ACHILLES AND Agamemnon, AND the FUNERAL
+      Games</i> of <i>Patroclus</i> (XXIII.). In all these parts of the poem
+      there are, we learn, countless alterations, additions, and expansions,
+      with, last of all, many transitional passages, "the work of the editor
+      inspired by the statesman," that is, of an hypothetical editor who really
+      by the theory made our <i>ILIAD</i>, being employed to that end by
+      Pistratus about 540 B.C. {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. ii. pp. x.,
+      xiv. 1900.}.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf and critics who take his general view are enabled to detect the
+      patches and tatters of many ages by various tests, for example, by
+      discovering discrepancies in the narrative, such as in their opinion no
+      one sane poet could make. Other proofs of multiplex authorship are
+      discovered by the critic's private sense of what the poem ought to be, by
+      his instinctive knowledge of style, by detection of the poet's supposed
+      errors in geography, by modernisms and false archaisms in words and
+      grammar, and by the presence of many objects, especially weapons and
+      armour, which the critic believes to have been unknown to the original
+      minstrel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus criticism can pick out the things old, fairly old, late, and quite
+      recent, from the mass, evolved through many centuries, which is called the
+      <i>Iliad</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the existing <i>ILIAD</i> is a mass of "expansions," added at all sorts
+      of dates, in any number of places, during very different stages of
+      culture, to a single short old poem of the Mycenaean age, science needs an
+      hypothesis which will account for the <i>ILIAD</i> "as it stands."
+      Everybody sees the need of the hypothesis, How was the medley of new songs
+      by many generations of irresponsible hands codified into a plot which used
+      to be reckoned fine? How were the manners, customs, and characters, <i>unus
+      color</i>, preserved in a fairly coherent and uniform aspect? How was the
+      whole Greek world, throughout which all manner of discrepant versions and
+      incongruous lays must, by the theory, have been current, induced to accept
+      the version which has been bequeathed to us? Why, and for what audience or
+      what readers, did somebody, in a late age of brief lyrics and of
+      philosophic poems, take the trouble to harmonise the body of discrepant
+      wandering lays, and codify them in the <i>Iliad</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hypothesis which will answer all these questions is the first thing
+      needful, and hypotheses are produced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Believers like Mr. Leaf in the development of the <i>Iliad</i> through the
+      changing revolutionary centuries, between say 1200 and 600 B.C.,
+      consciously stand in need of a working hypothesis which will account,
+      above all, for two facts: first, the relatively correct preservation of
+      the harmony of the picture of life, of ideas political and religious, of
+      the characters of the heroes, of the customary law (such as the
+      bride-price in marriage), and of the details as to weapons, implements,
+      dress, art, houses, and so forth, when these are not (according to the
+      theory) deliberately altered by late poets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next, the hypothesis must explain, in Mr. Leafs own words, how a single
+      version of the <i>Iliad</i> came to be accepted, "where many rival
+      versions must, from the necessity of the case, have once existed side by
+      side." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. xviii. 1900.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three hypotheses have, in fact, been imagined: the first suggests the
+      preservation of the original poems in very early written texts; not, of
+      course, in "Homer's autograph." This view Mr. Leaf, we shall see,
+      discards. The second presents the notion of one old sacred college for the
+      maintenance of poetic uniformity. Mr. Leaf rejects this theory, while
+      supposing that there were schools for professional reciters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Last, there is the old hypothesis of Wolf: "Pisistratus" (about 540 B.C.)
+      "was the first who had the Homeric poems committed to writing, and brought
+      into that order in which we now possess them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This hypothesis, now more than a century old, would, if it rested on good
+      evidence, explain how a single version of the various lays came to be
+      accepted and received as authorised. The Greek world, by the theory, had
+      only in various places various sets of incoherent chants <i>orally</i>
+      current on the Wrath of The public was everywhere a public of listeners,
+      who heard the lays sung on rare occasions at feasts and fairs, or whenever
+      a strolling rhapsodist took up his pitch, for a day or two, at a street
+      corner. There was, by the theory, no reading public for the Homeric
+      poetry. But, by the time of Pisistratus, a reading public was coming into
+      existence. The tyrant had the poems collected, edited, arranged into a
+      continuous narrative, primarily for the purpose of regulating the recitals
+      at the Panathenaic festival. When once they were written, copies were
+      made, and the rest of Hellas adopted these for their public purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a small scale we have a case analogous. The old songs of Scotland
+      existed, with the airs, partly in human memory, partly in scattered
+      broadsheets. The airs were good, but the words were often silly, more
+      often they were Fescennine&mdash;"more dirt than wit." Burns rewrote the
+      words, which were published in handsome volumes, with the old airs, or
+      with these airs altered, and his became the authorised versions, while the
+      ancient anonymous chants were almost entirely forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parallel is fairly close, but there are points of difference. Burns
+      was a great lyric poet, whereas we hear of no great epic poet in the age
+      of Pisistratus. The old words which Burns's songs superseded were wretched
+      doggerel; not such were the ancient Greek heroic lays. The old Scottish
+      songs had no sacred historic character; they did not contain the history
+      of the various towns and districts of Scotland. The heroic lays of Greece
+      were believed, on the other hand, to be a kind of Domesday book of ancient
+      principalities, and cities, and worshipped heroes. Thus it was much easier
+      for a great poet like Burns to supersede with his songs a mass of
+      unconsidered "sculdudery" old lays, in which no man or set of men had any
+      interest, than for a mere editor, in the age of Pisistratus, to supersede
+      a set of lays cherished, in one shape or another, by every State in
+      Greece. This holds good, even if, prior to Pisistratus, there existed in
+      Greece no written texts of Homer, and no reading public, a point which we
+      shall show reasons for declining to concede.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theory of the edition of Pisistratus, if it rested on valid evidence,
+      would explain "how a single version of the poems came to be accepted,"
+      namely, because the poem was now <i>written</i> for the first time, and
+      oral versions fell out of memory. But it would not, of course, explain
+      how, before Pisistratus, during four or five centuries of change, the new
+      poets and reciters, throughout the Greek world, each adding such fresh
+      verses as he pleased, and often introducing such modern details of life as
+      he pleased, kept up the harmony of the Homeric picture of life, and
+      character, and law, as far as it confessedly exists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To take a single instance: the poems never allude to the personal armorial
+      bearings of the heroes. They are unknown to or unnamed by Homer, but are
+      very familiar on the shields in seventh century and sixth century vases,
+      and AEschylus introduces them with great poetic effect in {blank space}.
+      How did late continuators, familiar with the serpents, lions, bulls'
+      heads, crabs, doves, and so forth, on the contemporary shields, keep such
+      picturesque and attractive details out of their new rhapsodies? In
+      mediaeval France, we shall show, the epics (eleventh to thirteenth
+      centuries) deal with Charlemagne and his peers of the eighth century A.D.
+      But they provide these heroes with the armorial bearings which came in
+      during the eleventh to twelfth century A.D. The late Homeric rhapsodists
+      avoided such tempting anachronisms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolf's theory, then, explains "how a single version came to be accepted."
+      It was the first <i>WRITTEN</i> version; the others died out, like the old
+      Scots orally repeated songs, when Burns published new words to the airs.
+      But Wolf's theory does not explain the harmony of the picture of life, the
+      absence of post-Homeric ideas and ways of living, in the first written
+      version, which, practically, is our own version.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1892 (<i>COMPANION TO THE Iliad</i>) Mr. Leaf adopted a different
+      theory, the hypothesis of a Homeric "school" "which busied itself with the
+      tradition of the Homeric poetry," for there must have been some central
+      authority to preserve the text intact when it could not be preserved in
+      writing. Were there no such body to maintain a fixed standard, the poems
+      must have ended by varying indefinitely, according to the caprice of their
+      various reciters. This is perfectly obvious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a school could keep an eye on anachronisms and excise them; in fact,
+      the Maori priests, in an infinitely more barbarous state of society, had
+      such schools for the preservation of their ancient hymns in purity. The
+      older priests "insisted on a critical and verbatim rehearsal of all the
+      ancient lore." Proceedings were sanctioned by human sacrifices and many
+      mystic rites. We are not told that new poems were produced and criticised;
+      it does not appear that this was the case. Pupils attended from three to
+      five years, and then qualified as priests or <i>tohunga</i> {Footnote:
+      White, <i>THE Ancient HISTORY OF THE Maori, VOL.</i> i. pp. 8-13.}.
+      Suppose that the Asiatic Greeks, like the Maoris and Zuñis, had Poetic
+      Colleges of a sacred kind, admitting new poets, and keeping them up to the
+      antique standard in all respects. If this were so, the relative rarity of
+      "anachronisms" and of modernisms in language in the Homeric poems is
+      explained. But Mr. Leaf has now entirely and with a light heart abandoned
+      his theory of a school, which is unsupported by evidence, he says.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The great problem," he writes, "for those who maintain the gradual growth
+      of the poems by a process of crystallisation has been to understand how a
+      single version came to be accepted, where many rival versions must, from
+      the necessity of the case, have once existed side by side. The assumption
+      of a school or guild of singers has been made," and Mr. Leaf, in 1892,
+      made the assumption himself: "as some such hypothesis we are bound to make
+      in order to explain the possibility of any theory" (1892). {Footnote: <i>COMPANION
+      TO THE Iliad, pp. 20, 21.</i>}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now (1900) he says, after mentioning "the assumption of a school or
+      guild of singers," that "the rare mention of {Greek: Homeridai} in Chios
+      gives no support to this hypothesis, which lacks any other confirmation."
+      {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. xviii. p. xix.} He therefore now adopts
+      the Wolfian hypothesis that "an official copy of Homer was made in Athens
+      at the time of Solon or Pisistratus," from the rhapsodies existing in the
+      memory of reciters. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. xix.} But Mr. Leaf
+      had previously said {Footnote: <i>COMPANION TO THE Iliad</i>, p. 190.}
+      that "the legend which connects his" (Pisistratus's) "name with the
+      Homeric poems is itself probably only conjectural, and of late date." Now
+      the evidence for Pisistratus which, in 1892, he thought "conjectural and
+      of late date," seems to him a sufficient basis for an hypothesis of a
+      Pisistratean editor of the Iliad, while the evidence for an Homeric school
+      which appeared to him good enough for an hypothesis in 1892 is rejected as
+      worthless, though, in each case, the evidence itself remains just what it
+      used to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is not very satisfactory, and the Pisistratean hypothesis is much
+      less useful to a theorist than the former hypothesis of an Homeric school,
+      for the Pisistratean hypothesis cannot explain the harmony of the
+      characters and the details in the <i>Iliad</i>, nor the absence of such
+      glaring anachronisms as the Cyclic poets made, nor the general
+      "pre-Odyssean" character of the language and grammar. By the Pisistratean
+      hypothesis there was not, what Mr. Leaf in 1892 justly deemed essential, a
+      school "to maintain a fixed standard," throughout the changes of four
+      centuries, and against the caprice of many generations of fresh reciters
+      and irresponsible poets. The hypothesis of a school <i>was</i> really that
+      which, of the two, best explained the facts, and there is no more valid
+      evidence for the first making and writing out of our <i>Iliad</i> under
+      Pisistratus than for the existence of a Homeric school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evidence for the <i>Iliad</i> edited for Pisistratus is examined in a
+      Note at the close of this chapter. Meanwhile Mr. Leaf now revives Wolf's
+      old theory to account for the fact that somehow "a single version" (of the
+      Homeric poems) "came to be accepted." His present theory, if admitted,
+      does account for the acceptation of a single version of the poems, the
+      first standard <i>written</i> version, but fails to explain how "the
+      caprice of the different reciters" (as he says) did not wander into every
+      variety of anachronism in detail and in diction, thus producing a chaos
+      which no editor of about 540 A.D. could force into its present uniformity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such an editor is now postulated by Mr. Leaf. If his editor's edition, as
+      being <i>written</i>, was accepted by Greece, then we "understand how a
+      single version came to be accepted." But we do not understand how the
+      editor could possibly introduce a harmony which could only have
+      characterised his materials, as Mr. Leaf has justly remarked, if there was
+      an Homeric school "to maintain a fixed standard." But now such harmony in
+      the picture of life as exists in the poems is left without any
+      explanation. We have now, by the theory, a crowd of rhapsodists, many
+      generations of uncontrolled wandering men, who, for several centuries,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Rave, recite, and madden through the land,"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      with no written texts, and with no "fixed body to maintain a standard."
+      Such men would certainly not adhere strictly to a stereotyped early
+      tradition: <i>that</i> we cannot expect from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, no editor of about 540 B.C. could possibly bring harmony of
+      manners, customs, and diction into such of their recitals as he took down
+      in writing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us think out the supposed editor's situation. During three centuries
+      nine generations of strollers have worked their will on one ancient short
+      poem, <i>The Wrath</i> of <i>Achilles</i>. This is, in itself, an
+      unexampled fact. Poets turn to new topics; they do not, as a rule, for
+      centuries embroider one single situation out of the myriads which heroic
+      legend affords. Strolling reciters are the least careful of men, each
+      would recite in the language and grammar of his day, and introduce the
+      newly evolved words and idioms, the new and fashionable manners, costume,
+      and weapons of his time. When war chariots became obsolete, he would bring
+      in cavalry; when there was no Over-Lord, he would not trouble himself to
+      maintain correctly the character and situation of Agamemnon. He would
+      speak of coined money, in cases of buying and selling; his European
+      geography would often be wrong; he would not ignore the Ionian cities of
+      Asia; most weapons would be of iron, not bronze, in his lays. Ionian
+      religious ideas could not possibly be excluded, nor changes in customary
+      law, civil and criminal. Yet, we think, none of these things occurs in
+      Homer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The editor of the theory had to correct all these anachronisms and
+      discrepancies. What a task in an uncritical age! The editor's materials
+      would be the lays known to such strollers as happened to be gathered, in
+      Athens, perhaps at the Panathenaic festival. The <i>répertoire</i> of each
+      stroller would vary indefinitely from those of all the others. One man
+      knew this chant, as modified or made by himself; other men knew others,
+      equally unsatisfactory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The editor must first have written down from recitation all the passages
+      that he could collect. Then he was obliged to construct a narrative
+      sequence containing a plot, which he fashioned by a process of selection
+      and rejection; and then he had to combine passages, alter them, add as
+      much as he thought fit, remove anachronisms, remove discrepancies,
+      accidentally bring in fresh discrepancies (as always happens), weave
+      transitional passages, look with an antiquarian eye after the too manifest
+      modernisms in language and manners, and so produce the {blank space}.
+      That, in the sixth century B.C., any man undertook such a task, and
+      succeeded so well as to impose on Aristotle and all the later Greek
+      critics, appears to be a theory that could only occur to a modern man of
+      letters, who is thinking of the literary conditions of his own time. The
+      editor was doing, and doing infinitely better, what Lönnrot, in the
+      nineteenth century, tried in vain to achieve for the Finnish <i>Kalewala</i>.
+      {Footnote: See Comparetti, <i>The Kalewala</i>.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Centuries later than Pisistratus, in a critical age, Apollonius Rhodius
+      set about writing an epic of the Homeric times. We know how entirely he
+      failed, on all hands, to restore the manner of Homer. The editor of 540
+      B.C. was a more scientific man. Can any one who sets before himself the
+      nature of the editor's task believe in him and it? To the master-less
+      floating jellyfish of old poems and new, Mr. Leaf supposes that "but small
+      and unimportant additions were made after the end of the eighth century or
+      thereabouts," especially as "the creative and imaginative forces of the
+      Ionian race turned to other forms of expression," to lyrics and to
+      philosophic poems. But the able Pisistratean editor, after all, we find,
+      introduced quantities of new matter into the poems&mdash;in the middle of
+      the sixth century; that kind of industry, then, did not cease towards the
+      end of the eighth century, as we have been told. On the other hand, as we
+      shall learn, the editor contributed to the <i>Iliad</i>, among other
+      things, Nestor's descriptions of his youthful adventures, for the purpose
+      of flattering Nestor's descendant, the tyrant Pisistratus of Athens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One hypothesis, the theory of an Homeric school&mdash;which would answer
+      our question, "How was the harmony of the picture of life in remote ages
+      preserved in poems composed in several succeeding ages, and in totally
+      altered conditions of life?"&mdash;Mr. Leaf, as we know, rejects. We might
+      suggest, again, that there were written texts handed down from an early
+      period, and preserved in new copies from generation to generation. Mr.
+      Leaf states his doubt that there were any such texts. "The poems were all
+      this time handed down orally only by tradition among the singers (<i>sic</i>),
+      who used to wander over Greece reciting them at popular festivals. Writing
+      was indeed known through the whole period of epic development" (some four
+      centuries at least), "but it is in the highest degree unlikely that it was
+      ever employed to form a standard text of the Epic or <i>ANY</i> part of
+      it. There can hardly have been any standard text; at best there was a
+      continuous tradition of those parts of the poems which were especially
+      popular, and the knowledge of which was a valuable asset to the
+      professional reciter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now we would not contend for the existence of any {blank space} text much
+      before 600 B.C., and I understand Mr. Leaf not to deny, now, that there
+      may have been texts of the <i>ODYSSEY</i> and <i>Iliad</i> before, say,
+      600-540 B.C. If cities and reciters had any ancient texts, then texts
+      existed, though not "standard" texts: and by this means the harmony of
+      thought, character, and detail in the poems might be preserved. We do not
+      think that it is "in the highest degree unlikely" that there were no
+      texts. Is this one of the many points on which every savant must rely on
+      his own sense of what is "likely"? To this essential point, the almost
+      certain existence of written texts, we return in our conclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What we have to account for is not only the relative lack of anachronisms
+      in poems supposed to have been made through a period of at least four
+      hundred years, but also the harmony of the <i>CHARACTERS</i> in subtle
+      details. Some of the characters will be dealt with later; meanwhile it is
+      plain that Mr. Leaf, when he rejects both the idea of written texts prior
+      to 600-540 B.C., and also the idea of a school charged with the duty of
+      "maintaining a fixed standard," leaves a terrible task to his supposed
+      editor of orally transmitted poems which, he says&mdash;if unpreserved by
+      text or school&mdash;"must have ended by varying infinitely according to
+      the caprice of their various reciters." {Footnote: <i>Companion to the
+      Iliad, p. 21.</i>}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that head there can be no doubt; in the supposed circumstances no
+      harmony, no <i>unus</i> color, could have survived in the poems till the
+      days of the sixth century editor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, then, is another difficulty in the path of the theory that the <i>Iliad</i>
+      is the work of four centuries. If it was, we are not enabled to understand
+      how it came to be what it is. No editor could possibly tinker it into the
+      whole which we possess; none could steer clear of many absurd
+      anachronisms. These are found by critics, but it is our hope to prove that
+      they do not exist.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ NOTE
+</pre>
+    <h3>
+      THE LEGEND OF THE MAKING OF THE "ILIAD" UNDER PISISTRATOS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It has been shown in the text that in 1892 Mr. Leaf thought the story
+      about the making of the <i>Iliad</i> under Pisistratus, a legend without
+      authority, while he regarded the traditions concerning an Homeric school
+      as sufficient basis for an hypothesis, "which we are bound to make in
+      order to explain the possibility of any theory." In 1900 he entirely
+      reversed his position, the school was abandoned, and the story of
+      Pisistratus was accepted. One objection to accepting any of the various
+      legends about the composing and writing out, for the first time, of the <i>Iliad</i>,
+      in the sixth century, the age of Pisistratus, was the silence of
+      Aristarchus on the subject. He discussed the authenticity of lines in the
+      <i>Iliad</i> which, according to the legend, were interpolated for a
+      political purpose by Solon or Pisistratus, but, as far as his comments
+      have reached us in the scholia, he never said a word about the tradition
+      of Athenian interpolation. Now Aristarchus must, at least, have known the
+      tradition of the political use of a disputed line, for Aristotle writes (<i>Rhetoric</i>,
+      i. 15) that the Athenians, early in the sixth century, quoted <i>Iliad</i>,
+      II. 558, to prove their right to Salamis. Aristarchus also discussed <i>Iliad</i>,
+      II. 553, 555, to which the Spartans appealed on the question of supreme
+      command against Persia (Herodotus, vii. 159). Again Aristarchus said
+      nothing, or nothing that has reached us, about Athenian interpolation.
+      Once more, Odyssey, II. 631, was said by Hereas, a Megarian writer, to
+      have been interpolated by Pisistratus (Plutarch.) But "the scholia that
+      represent the teaching of Aristarchus" never make any reference to the
+      alleged dealings of Pisistratus with the <i>Iliad</i>. The silence of
+      Aristarchus, however, affords no safe ground of argument to believers or
+      disbelievers in the original edition written out by order of Pisistratus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It can never be proved that the scholiasts did not omit what Aristarchus
+      said, though we do not know why they should have done so; and it can never
+      be proved that Aristarchus was ignorant of the traditions about
+      Pisistratus, or that he thought them unworthy of notice. All is matter of
+      conjecture on these points. Mr. Leaf's conversion to belief in the story
+      that our <i>Iliad</i> was practically edited and first committed to
+      writing under Pisistratus appears to be due to the probability that
+      Aristarchus must have known the tradition. But if he did, there is no
+      proof that he accepted it as historically authentic. There is not, in
+      fact, any proof even that Aristarchus must have known the tradition. He
+      had probably read Dieuchidas of Megara, for "Wilamowitz has shown that
+      Dieuchidas wrote in the fourth century." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i.
+      p. xix.} But, unluckily, we do not know that Dieuchidas stated that the <i>Iliad</i>
+      was made and first committed to writing in the sixth century B.C. No
+      mortal knows what Dieuchidas said: and, again, what Dieuchidas said is not
+      evidence. He wrote as a partisan in a historical dispute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story about Pisistratus and his editor, the practical maker of the <i>Iliad</i>,
+      is interwoven with a legend about an early appeal, in the beginning of the
+      sixth century B.C., to Homer as an historical authority. The Athenians and
+      Megarians, contending for the possession of the island of Salamis, the
+      home of the hero Aias, are said to have laid their differences before the
+      Spartans (<i>cir.</i> 600-580 B.C.). Each party quoted Homer as evidence.
+      Aristotle, who, as we saw, mentions the tale (Rhetoric, i. 15), merely
+      says that the Athenians cited <i>Iliad</i>, II. 558: "Aias led and
+      stationed his men where the phalanxes of the Athenians were posted."
+      Aristarchus condemned this line, not (as far as evidence goes) because
+      there was a tradition that the Athenians had interpolated it to prove
+      their point, but because he thought it inconsistent with <i>Iliad</i>,
+      III. 230; IV. 251, which, if I may differ from so great a critic, it is
+      not; these two passages deal, not with the position of the camps, but of
+      the men in the field on a certain occasion. But if Aristarchus had thought
+      the tradition of Athenian interpolation of II. 558 worthy of notice, he
+      might have mentioned it in support of his opinion. Perhaps he did. No
+      reference to his notice has reached us. However this may be, Mr. Leaf
+      mainly bases his faith in the Pisistratean editor (apparently, we shall
+      see, an Asiatic Greek, residing in Athens), on a fragmentary passage of
+      Diogenes Laertius (third century A.D.), concerned with the tale of Homer's
+      being cited about 600-580 B.C. as an authority for the early ownership of
+      Salamis. In this text Diogenes quotes Dieuchidas as saying something about
+      Pisistratus in relation to the Homeric poems, but what Dieuchidas really
+      said is unknown, for a part has dropped out of the text.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The text of Diogenes Laertius runs thus (Solon, i. 57): "He (Solon)
+      decreed that the Homeric poems should be recited by rhapsodists {Greek
+      text: ex hypobolaes}" (words of disputed sense), so that where the first
+      reciter left off thence should begin his successor. It was rather Solon,
+      then, than Pisistratus who brought Homer to light ({Greek text:
+      ephotisen}), as Diogenes says in the Fifth Book of his <i>Megarica</i>.
+      And <i>the lines</i> were <i>especially these</i>: "They who held Athens,"
+      &amp;c. (<i>Iliad</i>, II. 546-558), the passage on which the Athenians
+      rested in their dispute with the Megarians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And <i>what</i> "lines were especially these"? Mr. Leaf fills up the gap
+      in the sense, after "Pisistratus" thus, "for it was he" (Solon) "who
+      interpolated lines in the <i>Catalogue</i>, and not Pisistratus." He says:
+      "The natural sense of the passage as it stands" (in Diogenes Laertius) "is
+      this: It was not Peisistratos, as is generally supposed, but Solon <i>who
+      collected the scattered Homer</i> of <i>his</i> day, for he it was who
+      interpolated the lines in the <i>Catalogue of the Ships</i>".... But
+      Diogenes neither says for himself nor quotes from Dieuchidas anything
+      about "collecting the scattered Homer of his day." That Pisistratus did so
+      is Mr. Leafs theory, but there is not a hint about anybody collecting
+      anything in the Greek. Ritschl, indeed, conjecturally supplying the gap in
+      the text of Diogenes, invented the words, "Who <i>collected</i> the
+      Homeric poems, and inserted some things to please the Athenians." But Mr.
+      Leaf rejects that conjecture as "clearly wrong." Then why does he adopt,
+      as "the natural sense of the passage," "it was not Peisistratos but Solon
+      who <i>collected</i> the scattered Homer of his day?" {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      vol. i. p. xviii.} The testimony of Dieuchidas, as far as we can see in
+      the state of the text, "refers," as Mr. Monro says, "to the <i>interpolation</i>
+      that has just been mentioned, and need not extend further back."
+      "Interpolation is a process that postulates a text in which the additional
+      verses can be inserted," whereas, if I understand Mr. Leaf, the very first
+      text, in his opinion, was that compiled by the editor for Pisistratus.
+      {Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 400 410, especially pp. 408-409.}
+      Mr. Leaf himself dismisses the story of the Athenian appeal to Homer for
+      proof of their claim as "a fiction." If, so, it does not appear that
+      ancient commentaries on a fiction are of any value as proof that
+      Pisistratus produced the earliest edition of the <i>Iliad</i>. {Footnote:
+      Mr. Leaf adds that, except in one disputed line (<i>Iliad</i>, II. 558)
+      Aias "is not, in the <i>Iliad</i>, encamped next the Athenians." His
+      proofs of this odd oversight of the fraudulent interpolator, who should
+      have altered the line, are <i>Iliad</i>, IV. 327 ff, and XII. 681 ff. In
+      the former passage we find Odysseus stationed next to the Athenians. But
+      Odysseus would have neighbours on either hand. In the second passage we
+      find the Athenians stationed next to the Boeotians and Ionians, but the
+      Athenians, too, had neighbours on either side. The arrangement was, on the
+      Achaean extreme left, Protesilaus's command (he was dead), and that of
+      Aias; then the Boeotians and Ionians, with "the picked men of the
+      Athenians"; and then Odysseus, on the Boeotolono-Athenian right; or so the
+      Athenians would read the passage. The texts must have seemed favourable to
+      the fraudulent Athenian interpolator denounced by the Megarians, or he
+      would have altered them. Mr. Leaf, however, argues that line 558 of Book
+      II. "cannot be original, as is patent from the fact that Aias in the rest
+      of the <i>Iliad</i> is not encamped next the Athenians" (see IV. 327;
+      XIII. 681). The Megarians do not seem to have seen it, or they would have
+      cited these passages. But why argue at all about the Megarian story if it
+      be a fiction? Mr. Leaf takes the brief bald mention of Aias in <i>Iliad</i>,
+      II. 558 as "a mocking cry from Athens over the conquest of the island of
+      the Aiakidai." But as, in this same <i>Catalogue</i>, Aias is styled "by
+      far the best of warriors" after Achilles (II. 768), while there is no more
+      honourable mention made of Diomede than that he had "a loud war cry" (II.
+      568), or of Menelaus but that he was also sonorous, and while Nestor, the
+      ancestor of Pisistratus, receives not even that amount of praise (line
+      601), "the mocking cry from Athens" appears a vain imagination.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lines disputed by the Megarians occur in the <i>Catalogue</i>, and, as
+      to the date and original purpose of the <i>Catalogue</i>, the most various
+      opinions prevail. In Mr. Leaf's earlier edition of the <i>Iliad</i> (vol.
+      i. p. 37), he says that "nothing convincing has been urged to show" that
+      the <i>Catalogue</i> is "of late origin." We know, from the story of Solon
+      and the Megarians, that the <i>Catalogue</i> "was considered a classical
+      work&mdash;the Domesday Book of Greece, at a very early date"&mdash;say
+      600-580 B.C. "It agrees with the poems in being pre-Dorian" (except in
+      lines 653-670).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There seems therefore to be no valid reason for doubting that it, like
+      the bulk of the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>, was composed in Achaean
+      times, and carried with the emigrants to the coast of Asia Minor...."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his new edition (vol. ii. p. 86), Mr. Leaf concludes that the <i>Catalogue</i>
+      "originally formed an introduction to the whole Cycle," the compiling of
+      "the whole Cycle" being of uncertain date, but very late indeed, on any
+      theory. The author "studiously preserves an ante-Dorian standpoint. It is
+      admitted that there can be little doubt that some of the material, at
+      least, is old."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These opinions are very different from those expressed by Mr. Leaf in
+      1886. He cannot now give "even an approximate date for the composition of
+      the <i>Catalogue</i>" which, we conceive, must be the latest thing in
+      Homer, if it was composed "for that portion of the whole Cycle which, as
+      worked up in a separate poem, was called the <i>Kypria</i>" for the <i>Kypria</i>
+      is obviously a very late performance, done as a prelude to the <i>Iliad</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am unable to imagine how this mutilated passage of Diogenes, even if
+      rightly restored, proves that Dieuchidas, a writer of the fourth century
+      B.C., alleged that Pisistratus made a collection of scattered Homeric
+      poems&mdash;in fact, made "a standard text."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Pisistratean hypothesis "was not so long ago unfashionable, but in the
+      last few years a clear reaction has set in," says Mr. Leaf. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      i. p. XIX.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reaction has not affected that celebrated scholar, Dr. Blass, who,
+      with Teutonic frankness, calls the Pisistratean edition "an absurd
+      legend." {Footnote: Blass, Die <i>Interpolationen</i> in der <i>Odyssee</i>,
+      pp. I, 2. Halle, 1904.} Meyer says that the Alexandrians rejected the
+      Pisistratean story "as a worthless fable," differing here from Mr. Leaf
+      and Wilamowitz; and he spurns the legend, saying that it is incredible
+      that the whole Greek world would allow the tyrants of Athens to palm off a
+      Homer on them. {Footnote: Meyer, <i>Geschichte des Alterthums</i>, ii.
+      390, 391. 1893.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. T. W. Allen, an eminent textual scholar, treats the Pisistratean
+      editor with no higher respect. In an Egyptian papyrus containing a
+      fragment of Julius Africanus, a Christian chronologer, Mr. Allen finds him
+      talking confidently of the Pisistratidae. They "stitched together the rest
+      of the epic," but excised some magical formulae which Julius Africanus
+      preserves. Mr. Allen remarks: "The statements about Pisistratus belong to
+      a well-established category, that of Homeric mythology.... The anecdotes
+      about Pisistratus and the poet himself are on a par with Dares, who 'wrote
+      the <i>Iliad</i> before Homer.'" {Footnote: <i>Classical Review</i> xviii.
+      148.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The editor of Pisistratus is hardly in fashion, though that is of no
+      importance. Of importance is the want of evidence for the editor, and, as
+      we have shown, the impossible character of the task allotted to him by the
+      theory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I suppose Mr. Leaf to insinuate, "fashion" has really nothing to do
+      with the question. People who disbelieve in written texts must, and do,
+      oscillate between the theory of an Homeric "school" and the Wolfian theory
+      that Pisistratus, or Solon, or somebody procured the making of the first
+      written text at Athens in the sixth century&mdash;a theory which fails to
+      account for the harmony of the picture of life in the poems, and, as Mr.
+      Monro, Grote, Nutzhorn, and many others argue, lacks evidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Mr. Monro reasons, and as Blass states the case bluntly, "Solon, or
+      Pisistratus, or whoever it was, put a stop, at least as far as Athens was
+      concerned, to the mangling of Homer" by the rhapsodists or reciters, each
+      anxious to choose a pet passage, and not going through the whole <i>Iliad</i>
+      in due sequence. "But the unity existed before the mangling. That this has
+      been so long and so stubbornly misunderstood is no credit to German
+      scholarship: blind uncritical credulity on one side, limitless and
+      arbitrary theorising on the other!" We are not solitary sceptics when we
+      decline to accept the theory of Mr. Leaf. It is neither bottomed on
+      evidence nor does it account for the facts in the case. That is to say,
+      the evidence appeals to Mr. Leaf as valid, but is thought worse than
+      inadequate by other great scholars, such as Monro and Blass; while the
+      fact of the harmony of the picture of life, preserved through four or five
+      centuries, appears to be left without explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf holds that, in order to organise recitations in due sequence, the
+      making of a text, presenting, for the first time, a due sequence, was
+      necessary. His opponents hold that the sequence already existed, but was
+      endangered by the desultory habits of the rhapsodists. We must here judge
+      each for himself; there is no court of final appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I confess to feeling some uncertainty about the correctness of my
+      statement of Mr. Leaf's opinions. He and I both think an early Attic
+      "recension" probable, or almost certain. But (see' "Conclusion") I regard
+      such recension as distinct from the traditional "edition" of Pisistratus.
+      Mr. Leaf, I learn, does not regard the "edition" as having "made" the <i>Iliad</i>;
+      yet his descriptions of the processes and methods of his Pisistratean
+      editor correspond to my idea of the "making" of our <i>Iliad</i> as it
+      stands. See, for example, Mr. Leaf's Introduction to <i>Iliad</i>, Book
+      II. He will not even insist on the early Attic as the first <i>written</i>
+      text; if it was not, its general acceptance seems to remain a puzzle. He
+      discards the idea of one Homeric "school" of paramount authority, but
+      presumes that, as recitation was a profession, there must have been
+      schools. We do not hear of them or know the nature of their teaching. The
+      Beauvais "school" of <i>jongleurs</i> in Lent (fourteenth century A.D.)
+      seems to have been a holiday conference of strollers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      LOOSE FEUDALISM: THE OVER-LORD IN "ILIAD," BOOKS I. AND II.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      We now try to show that the Epics present an historical unity, a complete
+      and harmonious picture of an age, in its political, social, legal, and
+      religious aspects; in its customs, and in its military equipment. A long
+      epic can only present an unity of historical ideas if it be the work of
+      one age. Wandering minstrels, living through a succession of incompatible
+      ages, civic, commercial, democratic, could not preserve, without flaw or
+      failure, the attitude, in the first place, of the poet of feudal princes
+      towards an Over-Lord who rules them by undisputed right divine, but rules
+      weakly, violently, unjustly, being subject to gusts of arrogance, and
+      avarice, and repentance. Late poets not living in feudal society, and
+      unfamiliar alike with its customary law, its jealousy of the Over-Lord,
+      its conservative respect for his consecrated function, would inevitably
+      miss the proper tone, and fail in some of the many {blank space} of the
+      feudal situation. This is all the more certain, if we accept Mr. Leaf's
+      theory that each poet-rhapsodist's <i>répertoire</i> varied from the <i>répertoires</i>
+      of the rest. There could be no unity of treatment in their handling of the
+      character and position of the Over-Lord and of the customary law that
+      regulates his relations with his peers. Again, no editor of 540 B.C. could
+      construct an harmonious picture of the Over-Lord in relation to the
+      princes out of the fragmentary <i>répertoires</i> of strolling
+      rhapsodists, which now lay before him in written versions. If the editor
+      could do this, he was a man of Shakespearian genius, and had minute
+      knowledge of a dead society. This becomes evident when, in place of
+      examining the <i>Iliad</i> through microscopes, looking out for
+      discrepancies, we study it in its large lines as a literary whole. The
+      question being, Is the <i>Iliad</i> a literary whole or a mere literary
+      mosaic? we must ask "What, taking it provisionally as a literary whole,
+      are the qualities of the poet as a painter of what we may call feudal
+      society?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Choosing the part of the Over-Lord Agamemnon, we must not forget that he
+      is one of several analogous figures in the national poetry and romance of
+      other feudal ages. Of that great analogous figure, Charlemagne, and of his
+      relations with his peers in the earlier and later French mediaeval epics
+      we shall later speak. Another example is Arthur, in some romances "the
+      blameless king," in others <i>un roi fainéant</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parallel Irish case is found in the Irish saga of Diarmaid and
+      Grainne. We read Mr. O'Grady's introduction on the position of Eionn Mac
+      Cumhail, the legendary Over-Lord of Ireland, the Agamemnon of the Celts.
+      "Fionn, like many men in power, is variable; he is at times magnanimous,
+      at other times tyrannical and petty. Diarmaid, Oisin, Oscar, and Caoilte
+      Mac Rohain are everywhere the {Greek: kaloi kachotoi} of the Fenians; of
+      them we never hear anything bad." {Footnote: <i>Transactions of the
+      Ossianic</i> Society, vol. iii. p. 39.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Human nature eternally repeats itself in similar conditions of society,
+      French, Norse, Celtic, and Achaean. "We never hear anything bad" of
+      Diomede, Odysseus, or Aias, and the evil in Achilles's resentment up to a
+      certain point is legal, and not beyond what the poet thinks natural and
+      pardonable in his circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet's view of Agamemnon is expressed in the speeches and conduct of
+      the peers. In Book I. we see the bullying truculence of Agamemnon, wreaked
+      first on the priest of Apollo, Chryses, then in threats against the
+      prophet Chalcas, then in menaces against any prince on whom he chooses to
+      avenge his loss of fair Chryseis, and, finally, in the Seizure of Briseis
+      from Achilles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This part of the First Book of the <i>Iliad</i> is confessedly original,
+      and there is no varying, throughout the Epic, from the strong and delicate
+      drawing of an historical situation, and of a complex character. Agamemnon
+      is truculent, and eager to assert his authority, but he is also possessed
+      of a heavy sense of his responsibilities, which often unmans him. He has a
+      legal right to a separate "prize of honour" (geras) after each capture of
+      spoil. Considering the wrath of Apollo for the wrong done in refusing his
+      priest's offered ransom for his daughter, Agamemnon will give her back,
+      "if that is better; rather would I see my folks whole than perishing."
+      {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, I. 115-117.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here we note points of feudal law and of kingly character. The giving and
+      taking of ransom exists as it did in the Middle Ages; ransom is refused,
+      death is dealt, as the war becomes more fierce towards its close.
+      Agamemnon has sense enough to waive his right to the girlish prize, for
+      the sake of his people, but is not so generous as to demand no
+      compensation. But there are no fresh spoils to apportion, and the
+      Over-Lord threatens to take the prize of one of his peers, even of
+      Achilles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereon Achilles does what was frequently done in the feudal age of
+      western Europe, he "renounces his fealty," and will return to Phthia. He
+      adds insult, "thou dog-face!" The whole situation, we shall show, recurs
+      again and again in the epics of feudal France, the later epics of feudal
+      discontent. Agamemnon replies that Achilles may do as he pleases. "I have
+      others by my side that shall do me honour, and, above all, Zeus, Lord of
+      Counsel" (I. 175). He rules, literally, by divine right, and we shall see
+      that, in the French feudal epics, as in Homer, this claim of divine right
+      is granted, even in the case of an insolent and cowardly Over-Lord.
+      Achilles half draws "his great sword," one of the long, ponderous
+      cut-and-thrust bronze swords of which we have actual examples from Mycenae
+      and elsewhere. He is restrained by Athene, visible only to him. "With
+      words, indeed," she says, "revile him .... hereafter shall goodly gifts
+      come to thee, yea, in threefold measure...."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gifts of atonement for "surquedry," like that of Agamemnon, are given and
+      received in the French epics, for example, in the {blank space}. The <i>Iliad</i>
+      throughout exhibits much interest in such gifts, and in the customary law
+      as to their acceptance, and other ritual or etiquette of reconciliation.
+      This fact, it will be shown, accounts for a passage which critics reject,
+      and which is tedious to our taste, as it probably was tedious to the age
+      of the supposed late poets themselves. (Book XIX.). But the taste of a
+      feudal audience, as of the audience of the Saga men, delighted in
+      "realistic" descriptions of their own customs and customary law, as in
+      descriptions of costume and armour. This is fortunate for students of
+      customary law and costume, but wearies hearers and readers who desire the
+      action to advance. Passages of this kind would never be inserted by late
+      poets, who had neither the knowledge of, nor any interest in, the
+      subjects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To return to Achilles, he is now within his right; the moral goddess
+      assures him of that, and he is allowed to give the reins to his tongue, as
+      he does in passages to which the mediaeval epics offer many parallels. In
+      the mediaeval epics, as in Homer, there is no idea of recourse to a duel
+      between the Over-Lord and his peer. Achilles accuses Agamemnon of
+      drunkenness, greed, and poltroonery. He does not return home, but swears
+      by the sceptre that Agamemnon shall rue his <i>outrecuidance</i> when
+      Hector slays the host. By the law of the age Achilles remains within his
+      right. His violent words are not resented by the other peers. They tacitly
+      admit, as Athene admits, that Achilles has the right, being so grievously
+      injured, to "renounce his fealty," till Agamemnon makes apology and gives
+      gifts of atonement. Such, plainly, is the unwritten feudal law, which
+      gives to the Over-Lord the lion's share of booty, the initiative in war
+      and council, and the right to command; but limits him by the privilege of
+      the peers to renounce their fealty under insufferable provocation. In no
+      Book is Agamemnon so direfully insulted as in the First, which is admitted
+      to be of the original "kernel." Elsewhere the sympathy of the poet
+      occasionally enables him to feel the elements of pathos in the position of
+      the over-tasked King of Men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As concerns the apology and the gifts of atonement, the poet has feudal
+      customary law and usage clearly before his eyes. He knows exactly what is
+      due, and the limits of the rights of Over-Lord and prince, matters about
+      which the late Ionian poets could only pick up information by a course of
+      study in constitutional history&mdash;the last thing they were likely to
+      attempt&mdash;unless we suppose that they all kept their eyes on the
+      "kernel," and that steadily, through centuries, generations of strollers
+      worked on the lines laid down in that brief poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the poet of Book IX.&mdash;one of "the latest expansions,"&mdash;thoroughly
+      understands the legal and constitutional situation, as between Agamemnon
+      and Achilles. Or rather all the poets who collaborated in Book IX., which
+      "had grown by a process of accretion," {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p.
+      371.} understood the legal situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Returning to the poet's conception of Agamemnon, we find in the character
+      of Agamemnon himself the key to the difficulties which critics discover in
+      the Second Book. The difficulty is that when Zeus, won over to the cause
+      of Achilles by Thetis, sends a false Dream to Agamemnon, the Dream tells
+      the prince that he shall at once take Troy, and bids him summon the host
+      to arms. But Agamemnon, far from doing that, summons the host to a
+      peaceful assembly, with the well-known results of demoralisation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf explains the circumstances on his own theory of expansions
+      compiled into a confused whole by a late editor. He thinks that probably
+      there were two varying versions even of this earliest Book of the poem. In
+      one (A), the story went on from the quarrel between Agamemnon and
+      Achilles, to the holding of a general assembly "to consider the altered
+      state of affairs." This is the Assembly of Book H, but debate, in version
+      A, was opened by Thersites, not by Agamemnon, and Thersites proposed
+      instant flight! That was probably the earlier version.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the other early version (B), after the quarrel between the chiefs, the
+      story did not, as in A, go on straight to the Assembly, but Achilles
+      appealed to his mother, the fair sea-goddess, as in our Iliad, and she
+      obtained from Zeus, as in the actual <i>Iliad</i>, his promise to honour
+      Achilles by giving victory, in his absence, to the Trojans. The poet of
+      version B, in fact, created the beautiful figure of Thetis, so essential
+      to the development of the tenderness that underlies the ferocity of
+      Achilles. The other and earliest poet, who treated of the Wrath of the
+      author of version A, neglected that opportunity with all that it involved,
+      and omitted the purpose of Zeus, which is mentioned in the fifth line of
+      the Epic. The editor of 540 B.C., seeing good in both versions, A and B,
+      "combined his information," and produced Books I. and II. of the <i>ILIAD</i>
+      as they stand. {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 47.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf suggests that "there is some ground for supposing that the oldest
+      version of the Wrath of Achilles did not contain the promise of Zeus to
+      Thetis; it was a tale played exclusively on the earthly stage." {Footnote:
+      <i>Ibid</i>, vol. i. p. xxiii.} In that case the author of the oldest form
+      (A) must have been a poet very inferior indeed to the later author of B
+      who took up and altered his work. In <i>his</i> version, Book I. does not
+      end with the quarrel of the princes, but Achilles receives, with all the
+      courtesy of his character, the unwelcome heralds of Agamemnon, and sends
+      Briseis with them to the Over-Lord. He then with tears appeals to his
+      goddess-mother, Thetis of the Sea, who rose from the grey mere like a
+      mist, leaving the sea deeps where she dwelt beside her father, the ancient
+      one of the waters. Then sat she face to face with her son as he let the
+      tears down fall, and caressed him, saying, "Child, wherefore weepest thou,
+      for what sorrow of heart? Hide it not, tell it to me; that I may know it
+      as well as thou." Here the poet strikes the keynote of the character of
+      Achilles, the deadly in war, the fierce in council, who weeps for his lost
+      lady and his wounded honour, and cries for help to his mother, as little
+      children cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such is the Achilles of the <i>Iliad</i> throughout and consistently, but
+      such he was not to the mind of Mr. Leaf's probably elder poet, the author
+      of version A. Thetis, in version B, promises to persuade Zeus to honour
+      Achilles by making Agamemnon rue his absence, and, twelve days after the
+      quarrel, wins the god's consent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Book II. Zeus reflects on his promise, and sends a false Dream to
+      beguile Agamemnon, promising that now he shall take Troy. Agamemnon, while
+      asleep, is full of hope; but when he wakens he dresses in mufti, in a soft
+      doublet, a cloak, and sandals; takes his sword (swords were then worn as
+      part of civil costume), and the ancestral sceptre, which he wields in
+      peaceful assemblies. Day dawns, and "he bids the heralds...." A break here
+      occurs, according to the theory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here (<i>Iliad</i>, Book II., line 50) the kernel ceases, Mr. Leaf says,
+      and the editor of 540 B.C. plays his pranks for a while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kernel (or one of the <i>two</i> kernels), we are to take up again at
+      Book II., 443-483, and thence "skip" to XI. 56, and now "we have a
+      narrative masterly in conception and smooth in execution," {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      vol. i. p. 47.} says Mr. Leaf. This kernel is kernel B, probably the later
+      kernel of the pair, that in which Achilles appeals to his lady mother, who
+      wins from Zeus the promise to cause Achaean defeat, till Achilles is duly
+      honoured. The whole Epic turns on this promise of Zeus, as announced in
+      the fifth, sixth, and seventh lines of the very first Book. If kernel A is
+      the first kernel, the poet left out the essence of the plot he had
+      announced. However, let us first examine probable kernel B, reading, as
+      advised, Book II. 1-50, {blank space}; XI. 56 ff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We left Agamemnon (though the Dream bade him summon the host to arms)
+      dressed in <i>civil costume</i>. His ancestral sceptre in his hand, he is
+      going to hold a deliberative assembly of the unarmed host. His attire
+      proves that fact ({Greek: <i>prepodaes de ae stolae to epi Boulaen exionti</i>},
+      says the scholiast). Then if we skip, as advised, to II. 443-483 he bids
+      the heralds call the host not to peaceful council, for which his costume
+      is appropriate, but to <i>war</i>! The host gathers, "and in their midst
+      the lord Agamemnon,"&mdash;still in civil costume, with his sceptre (he
+      has not changed his attire as far as we are told)&mdash;"in face and eyes
+      like Zeus; in waist like Ares" (god of war); "in breast like Poseidon,"&mdash;yet,
+      for all that we are told, entirely unarmed! The host, however, were
+      dressed "in innumerable bronze," "war was sweeter to them than to depart
+      in their ships to their dear native land,"&mdash;so much did Athene
+      encourage them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But nobody had been speaking of flight, in THE KERNEL B: THAT proposal was
+      originally made by Thersites, in kernel A, and was attributed to Agamemnon
+      in the part of Book II. where the editor blends A and B. This part, at
+      present, Mr. Leaf throws aside as a very late piece of compilation.
+      Turning next, as directed, to XI. 56, we find the Trojans deploying in
+      arms, and the hosts encounter with fury&mdash;Agamemnon still, for all
+      that appears, in the raiment of peace, and with the sceptre of
+      constitutional monarchy. "In he rushed, first of all, and slew Bienor,"
+      and many other gentlemen of Troy, not with his sceptre!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clearly all this is the reverse of "a narrative masterly in conception and
+      smooth in execution:" it is an impossible narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf has attempted to disengage one of two forms of the old original
+      poem from the parasitic later growths; he has promised to show us a smooth
+      and masterly narrative, and the result is a narrative on which no Achasan
+      poet could have ventured. In II. 50 the heralds are bidden {Greek: <i>kurussein</i>},
+      that is to summon the host&mdash;to <i>what</i>? To a peaceful assembly,
+      as Agamemnon's costume proves, says the next line (II. 51), but that is
+      excised by Mr. Leaf, and we go on to II. 443, and the reunited passage now
+      reads, "Agamemnon bade the loud heralds" (II. 50) "call the Achaeans to
+      battle" (II. 443), and they came, in harness, but their leader&mdash;when
+      did he exchange chiton, cloak, and sceptre for helmet, shield, and spear?
+      A host appears in arms; a king who set out with sceptre and doublet is
+      found with a spear, in bronze armour: and not another word is said about
+      the Dream of Agamemnon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is perfectly obvious and certain that the two pieces of the broken
+      kernel B do not fit together at all. Nor is this strange, if the kernel
+      was really broken and endured the insertion of matter enough to fill nine
+      Books (IL-XL). If kernel B really contained Book II., line 50, as Mr. Leaf
+      avers, if Agamemnon, as in that line (50) "bade the clear-voiced heralds
+      do...." something&mdash;what he bade them do was, necessarily, as his
+      peaceful costume proves, to summon the peaceful assembly which he was to
+      moderate with his sceptre. At such an assembly, or at a preliminary
+      council of Chiefs, he would assuredly speak of his Dream, as he does in
+      the part excised. Mr. Leaf, if he will not have a peaceful assembly as
+      part of kernel B, must begin his excision at the middle of line 42, in
+      II., where Agamemnon wakens; and must make him dress not in mufti but in
+      armour, and call the host of the Achaeans to arm, as the Dream bade him
+      do, and as he does in II. 443. Perhaps we should then excise II. 45 2, 45
+      3, with the reference to the plan of retreat, for <i>THAT</i> is part of
+      kernel A where there was no promise of Zeus, and no Dream sent to
+      Agamemnon. Then from II. 483, the description of the glorious armed aspect
+      of Agamemnon, Mr. Leaf may pass to XI. 56, the account of the Trojans
+      under Hector, of the battle, of the prowess of Agamemnon, inspired by the
+      Dream which he, contrary to Homeric and French epic custom, has very
+      wisely mentioned to nobody&mdash;that is, in the part not excised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This appears to be the only method by which Mr. Leaf can restore the
+      continuity of his kernel B.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Mr. Leaf has failed to fit Book XI. to any point in Book II., of
+      course it does not follow that Book XI. cannot be a continuation of the
+      original <i>Wrath</i> of <i>Achilles</i> (version B). If so, we understand
+      why Agamemnon plucks up heart, in Book XI., and is the chief cause of a
+      temporary Trojan reverse. He relies on the Dream sent from Zeus in the
+      opening lines of Book II., the Dream which was not in kernel A; the Dream
+      which he communicated to nobody; the Dream conveying the promise that he
+      should at once take Troy. This is perhaps a tenable theory, though
+      Agamemnon had much reason to doubt whether the host would obey his command
+      to arm, but an alternative theory of why and wherefore Agamemnon does
+      great feats of valour, in Book XI., will later be propounded. Note that
+      the events of Books XL.-XVIII., by Mr. Leaf's theory, all occur on the
+      very day after Thetis (according to kernel B)' {79} obtains from Zeus his
+      promise to honour Achilles by the discomfiture of the Achaeans; they have
+      suffered nothing till that moment, as far as we learn, from the absence of
+      Achilles and his 2500 men: allowing for casualties, say 2000.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far we have traced&mdash;from Books I. and II. to Book XI.&mdash;the
+      fortunes of kernel B, of the supposed later of two versions of the opening
+      of the <i>Iliad</i>. But there may have been a version (A) probably
+      earlier, we have been told, in which Achilles did not appeal to his
+      mother, nor she to Zeus, and Zeus did not promise victory to the Trojans,
+      and sent no false Dream of success to Agamemnon. What were the fortunes of
+      that oldest of all old kernels? In this version (A) Agamemnon, having had
+      no Dream, summoned a peaceful assembly to discuss the awkwardness caused
+      by the mutiny of Achilles. The host met (<i>Iliad,</i> II. 87-99). Here we
+      pass from line 99 to 212-242: Thersites it is who opens the debate, (in
+      version A) insults Agamemnon, and advises flight. The army rushed off to
+      launch the ships, as in II. 142-210, and were brought back by Odysseus,
+      who made a stirring speech, and was well backed by Agamemnon, urging to
+      battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Version A appears to us to have been a version that no heroic audience
+      would endure. A low person like Thersites opens a debate in an assembly
+      called by the Over-Lord; this could not possibly pass unchallenged among
+      listeners living in the feudal age. When a prince called an assembly, he
+      himself opened the debate, as Achilles does in Book I. 54-67. That a lewd
+      fellow, the buffoon and grumbler of the host, of "the people," nameless
+      and silent throughout the Epic, should rush in and open debate in an
+      assembly convoked by the Over-Lord, would have been regarded by feudal
+      hearers, or by any hearers with feudal traditions, as an intolerable
+      poetical license. Thersites would have been at once pulled down and
+      beaten; the host would not have rushed to the ships on <i>his</i> motion.
+      Any feudal audience would know better than to endure such an
+      impossibility; they would have asked, "How could Thersites speak&mdash;without
+      the sceptre?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the poem stands, and ought to stand, nobody less than the Over-Lord,
+      acting within his right, ({Greek: ae themis esti} II. 73), could suggest
+      the flight of the host, and be obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the absolute demoralisation of the host, in consequence of the
+      strange test of their Lord, Agamemnon, making a feigned proposal to fly,
+      and it is their confused, bewildered return to the assembly under the
+      persuasions of Odysseus, urged by Athene, that alone, in the poem, give
+      Thersites his unique opportunity to harangue. When the Over-Lord had
+      called an assembly the first word, of course, was for to speak, as he does
+      in the poem as it stands. That Thersifes should rise in the arrogance bred
+      by the recent disorderly and demoralised proceedings is one thing; that he
+      should open the debate when excitement was eager to hear Agamemnon, and
+      before demoralisation set in, is quite another. We never hear again of
+      Thersites, or of any one of the commonalty, daring to open his mouth in an
+      assembly. Thersites sees his one chance, the chance of a life time, and
+      takes it; because Agamemnon, by means of the test&mdash;a proposal to flee
+      homewards&mdash;which succeeded, it is said, in the case of Cortès,&mdash;has
+      reduced the host, already discontented, to a mob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Agamemnon thus displayed his ineptitude, as he often does later,
+      Thersites had no chance. All this appears sufficiently obvious, if we put
+      ourselves at the point of view of the original listeners. Thersites merely
+      continues, in full assembly, the mutinous babble which he has been pouring
+      out to his neighbours during the confused rush to launch the ships and
+      during the return produced by the influence of Odysseus. The poet says so
+      himself (<i>Iliad</i>, II. 212). "The rest sat down ... only Thersites
+      still chattered on." No original poet could manage the situation in any
+      other way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have now examined Mr. Leaf's two supposed earliest versions of the
+      beginning of the <i>Iliad</i>. His presumed earlier version (A), with no
+      Thetis, no promise of Zeus, and no Dream, and with Thersites opening
+      debate, is jejune, unpoetical, and omits the gentler and most winning
+      aspect of the character of Achilles, while it could not possibly have been
+      accepted by a feudal audience for the reasons already given. His presumed
+      later version (B), with Thetis, Zeus, and the false Dream, cannot be, or
+      certainly has not been, brought by Mr. Leaf into congruous connection with
+      Book XI., and it results in the fighting of the <i>unarmed</i> Agamemnon,
+      which no poet could have been so careless as to invent. Agamemnon could
+      not go into battle without helmet, shield, and spears (the other armour we
+      need not dwell upon here), and Thersites could not have opened a debate
+      when the Over-Lord had called the Assembly, nor could he have moved the
+      chiefs to prepare for flight, unless, as in the actual <i>Iliad</i>, they
+      had already been demoralised by the result of the feigned proposal of
+      flight by Agamemnon, and its effect upon the host. Probably every reader
+      who understands heroic society, temper, and manners will, so far, agree
+      with us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our own opinion is that the difficulties in the poem are caused partly by
+      the poet's conception of the violent, wavering, excitable, and unstable
+      character of Agamemnon; partly by some accident, now indiscoverable, save
+      by conjecture, which has happened to the text.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story in the actual <i>Iliad</i> is that Zeus, planning disaster for
+      the Achaeans, in accordance with his promise to Thetis, sends a false
+      Dream, to tell Agamemnon that he will take Troy instantly. He is bidden by
+      the Dream to summon the host to arms. Agamemnon, <i>still asleep</i>, "has
+      in his mind things not to be fulfilled: Him seemeth that he shall take
+      Priam's town that very day" (II. 36, 37). "Then he awoke" (II. 41), and,
+      obviously, was no longer so sanguine, once awake!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being a man crushed by his responsibility, and, as commander-in-chief,
+      extremely timid, though personally brave, he disobeys the Dream, dresses
+      in civil costume, and summons the host to a <i>peaceful</i> assembly, not
+      to war, as the Dream bade him do. Probably he thought that the host was
+      disaffected, and wanted to argue with them, in place of commanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here it is that the difficulty comes in, and our perplexity is increased
+      by our ignorance of the regular procedure in Homeric times. Was the host
+      not in arms and fighting every day, when there was no truce? There seems
+      to have been no armistice after the mutiny of Achilles, for we are told
+      that, in the period between his mutiny and the day of the Dream of
+      Agamemnon, Achilles "was neither going to the Assembly, nor into battle,
+      but wasted his heart, abiding there, longing for war and the slogan" (I.
+      489, 492). Thus it seems that war went on, and that assemblies were being
+      held, in the absence of Achilles. It appears, however, that the fighting
+      was mere skirmishing and raiding, no general onslaught was attempted; and
+      from Book II. <i>73</i>, 83 it seems to have been a matter of doubt, with
+      Agamemnon and Nestor, whether the army would venture a pitched battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It also appears, from the passage cited (I. 489, 492) that assemblies were
+      being regularly held; we are told that Achilles did not attend them. Yet,
+      when we come to the assembly (II. 86-100) it seems to have been a special
+      and exciting affair, to judge by the brilliant picture of the crowds, the
+      confusion, and the cries. Nothing of the sort is indicated in the meeting
+      of the assembly in I. <i>54-5</i> 8. Why is there so much excitement at
+      the assembly of Book II.? Partly because it was summoned <i>at</i> dawn,
+      whereas the usual thing was for the host to meet in arms before fighting
+      on the plain or going on raids; assemblies were held when the day's work
+      was over. The host, therefore, when summoned to an assembly <i>at dawn</i>,
+      expects to hear of something out of the common&mdash;as the mutiny of
+      Achilles suggests&mdash;and is excited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must ask, then, why does Agamemnon, after the Dream has told him merely
+      to summon the host to arm&mdash;a thing of daily routine&mdash;call a
+      deliberative morning assembly, a thing clearly not of routine? If
+      Agamemnon is really full of confidence, inspired by the Dream, why does he
+      determine, not to do what is customary, call the men to arms, but as
+      Jeanne d'Arc said to the Dauphin, to "hold such long and weary councils"?
+      Mr. Jevons speaks of Agamemnon's "confidence in the delusive dream" as at
+      variance with his proceedings, and would excise II. 35-41, "the only lines
+      which represent Agamemnon as confidently believing in the Dream."
+      {Footnote: <i>Journal</i> of <i>Hellenic</i> Studies, vol. vii. pp. 306,
+      307.} But the poet never once says that Agamemnon, awake, did believe
+      confidently in the Dream! Agamemnon dwelt with hope <i>while</i> asleep;
+      when he wakened&mdash;he went and called a peaceful morning assembly,
+      though the Dream bade him call to arms. He did not dare to risk his
+      authority. This was exactly in keeping with his character. The poet should
+      have said, "When he woke, the Dream appeared to him rather poor security
+      for success" (saying so in poetic language, of course), and then there
+      would be no difficulty in the summoning of an assembly at dawn. But either
+      the poet expected us to understand the difference between the hopes of
+      Agamemnon sleeping, and the doubts of Agamemnon waking to chill realities&mdash;an
+      experience common to all of us who dream&mdash;or some explanatory lines
+      have been dropped out&mdash;one or two would have cleared up the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I am right, the poet has not been understood. People have not observed
+      that Agamemnon hopes while asleep, and doubts, and acts on his doubt, when
+      awake. Thus Mr. Leaf writes: "Elated by the dream, as we are led to
+      suppose, Agamemnon summons the army&mdash;to lead them into battle?
+      Nothing of the sort; he calls them to assembly." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      vol. ii. p. 46.} But we ought not to have been led to suppose that the
+      waking Agamemnon was so elated as the sleeping Agamemnon. He was
+      "disillusioned" on waking; his conduct proves it; he did not know what to
+      think about the Dream; he did not know how the host would take the Dream;
+      he doubted whether they would fight at his command, so he called an
+      assembly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jevons very justly cites a parallel case. Grote has remarked that in
+      Book VII. of Herodotus, "The dream sent by the Gods to frighten Xerxes
+      when about to recede from his project," has "a marked parallel in the <i>Iliad</i>."
+      Thus Xerxes, after the defection of Artabanus, was despondent, like
+      Agamemnon after the mutiny of Achilles, and was about to recede from his
+      project. To both a delusive dream is sent urging them to proceed. Xerxes
+      calls an assembly, however, and says that he will not proceed. Why?
+      Because, says Herodotus, "when day came, he thought nothing of his dream."
+      Agamemnon, once awake, thought doubtfully of <i>his</i> dream; he called a
+      Privy Council, told the princes about his dream&mdash;of which Nestor had
+      a very dubious opinion&mdash;and said that he would try the temper of the
+      army by proposing instant flight: the chiefs should restrain the men if
+      they were eager to run away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the epic prose narrative of Herodotus is here clearly based on <i>Iliad</i>,
+      II., which Herodotus must have understood as I do. But in Homer there is
+      no line to say&mdash;and one line or two would have been enough&mdash;that
+      Agamemnon, when awake, doubted, like Xerxes, though Agamemnon, when
+      asleep, had been confident. The necessary line, for all that we know,
+      still existed in the text used by Herodotus. Homer may lose a line as well
+      as Dieuchidas of Megara, or rather Diogenes Laertius. Juvenal lost a whole
+      passage, re-discovered by Mr. Winstedt in a Bodleian manuscript. If Homer
+      expected modern critics to note the delicate distinction between Agamemnon
+      asleep and Agamemnon awake, or to understand Agamemnon's character, he
+      expected too much. {Footnote: Cf. Jevons, <i>Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>,
+      vol. vii. pp. 306, 307.} The poet then treats the situation on these
+      lines: Agamemnon, awake and free from illusion, does not obey the dream,
+      does <i>not</i> call the army to war; he takes a middle course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the whole passage the poet's main motive, as Mr. Monro remarks with
+      obvious truth, is "to let his audience become acquainted with the temper
+      and spirit of the army as it was affected by the long siege ... and by the
+      events of the First Book." {Footnote: Monro, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p.
+      261.} The poet could not obtain his object if Agamemnon merely gave the
+      summons to battle; and he thinks Agamemnon precisely the kind of waverer
+      who will call, first the Privy Council of the Chiefs, and then an
+      assembly. Herein the homesick host will display its humours, as it does
+      with a vengeance. Agamemnon next tells his Dream to the chiefs (if he had
+      a dream of this kind he would most certainly tell it), and adds (as has
+      been already stated) that he will first test the spirit of the army by a
+      feigned proposal of return to Greece, while the chiefs are to restrain
+      them if they rush to launch the ships. Nestor hints that there is not much
+      good in attending to dreams; however, this is the dream of the Over-Lord,
+      who is the favoured of Zeus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agamemnon next, addressing the assembly, says that posterity will think it
+      a shameful thing that the Achaeans raised the siege of a town with a
+      population much smaller than their own army; but allies from many cities
+      help the Trojans, and are too strong for him, whether posterity
+      understands that or not. "Let us flee with our ships!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this the host break up, in a splendid passage of poetry, and rush to
+      launch the ships, the passion of <i>nostalgie</i> carrying away even the
+      chiefs, it appears&mdash;a thing most natural in the circumstances. But
+      Athene finds Odysseus in grief: "neither laid he any hand upon his ship,"
+      as the others did, and she encouraged him to stop the flight. This he
+      does, taking the sceptre of Agamemnon from his unnerved hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He goes about reminding the princes "have we not heard Agamemnon's real
+      intention in council?" (II. 188-197), and rating the common sort. The
+      assembly meets again in great confusion; Thersites seizes the chance to be
+      insolent, and is beaten by Odysseus. The host then arms for battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet has thus shown Agamemnon in the colours which he wears
+      consistently all through the <i>Iliad</i>. He has, as usual, contrasted
+      with him Odysseus, the type of a wise and resolute man. This contrast the
+      poet maintains without fail throughout. He has shown us the temper of the
+      weary, home-sick army, and he has persuaded us that he knows how subtle,
+      dangerous, and contagious a thing is military panic. Thus, at least, I
+      venture to read the passage, which, thus read, is perfectly intelligible.
+      Agamemnon is no personal coward, but the burden of the safety of the host
+      overcomes him later, and he keeps suggesting flight in the ships, as we
+      shall see. Suppose, then, we read on from II. 40 thus: "The Dream left him
+      thinking of things not to be, even that on this day he shall take the town
+      of Priam.... But he awoke from sleep with the divine voice ringing in his
+      ears. (<i>Then it seemed him that some dreams are true and</i> some <i>false,
+      for all do</i> not <i>come through the Gate of</i> Horn.) So he arose and
+      sat up and did on his soft tunic, and his great cloak, and grasped his
+      ancestral sceptre ... and bade the clear-voiced heralds summon the
+      Achaeans of the long locks to the deliberative assembly." He then, as in
+      II. 53-75 told his Dream to the preliminary council, and proposed that he
+      should try the temper of the host by proposing flight&mdash;which, if it
+      began, the chiefs were to restrain&mdash;before giving orders to arm. The
+      test of the temper of the host acted as it might be expected to act; all
+      rushed to launch the ships, and the princes were swept away in the tide of
+      flight, Agamemnon himself merely looking on helpless. The panic was
+      contagious; only Odysseus escaped its influence, and redeemed the honour
+      of the Achaeans, as he did again on a later day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The passage certainly has its difficulties. But Erhardt expresses the
+      proper state of the case, after giving his analysis. "The hearer's
+      imagination is so captured, first by the dream, then by the brawling
+      assembly, by the rush to the ships, by the intervention of Odysseus, by
+      the punishment of Thersites&mdash;all these living pictures follow each
+      other so fleetly before the eyes that we have scarcely time to make
+      objections." {Footnote: <i>Die Enstehung der Homerische Gedichte</i>, p.
+      29.}. The poet aimed at no more and no less effect than he has produced,
+      and no more should be required by any one, except by that anachronism&mdash;"the
+      analytical reader." <i>He</i> has "time to make objections": the poet's
+      audience had none; and he must be criticised from their point of view.
+      Homer did not sing for analytical readers, for the modern professor; he
+      could not possibly conceive that Time would bring such a being into
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To return to the character of Agamemnon. In moments of encouragement
+      Agamemnon is a valiant fighter, few better spearmen, yet "he attains not
+      to the first Three," Achilles, Aias, Diomede. But Agamemnon is unstable as
+      water; again and again, as in Book II., the lives and honour of the
+      Achaeans are saved in the Over-Lord's despite by one or other of the
+      peers. The whole <i>Iliad</i>, with consistent uniformity, pursues the
+      scheme of character and conduct laid down in the two first Books. It is
+      guided at once by feudal allegiance and feudal jealousy, like the <i>Chansons
+      de Geste</i> and the early sagas or romances of Ireland. A measure of
+      respect for Agamemnon, even of sympathy, is preserved; he is not degraded
+      as the kings and princes are often degraded on the Attic stage, and even
+      in the Cyclic poems. Would wandering Ionian reciters at fairs have
+      maintained this uniformity? Would the tyrant Pisistratus have made his
+      literary man take this view?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AGAMEMNON IN THE LATER "ILIAD"
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In the Third Book, Agamemnon receives the compliments due to his
+      supremacy, aspect, and valour from the lips of Helen and Priam. There are
+      other warriors taller by a head, and Odysseus was shorter than he by a
+      head, so Agamemnon was a man of middle stature. He is "beautiful and
+      royal" of aspect; "a good king and a mighty spearman," says Helen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interrupted duel between Menelaus and Paris follows, and then the
+      treacherous wounding of Menelaus by Pandarus. One of Agamemnon's most
+      sympathetic characteristics is his intense love of his brother, for whose
+      sake he has made the war. He shudders on seeing the arrow wound, but
+      consoles Menelaus by the certainty that Troy will fall, for the Trojans
+      have broken the solemn oath of truce. Zeus "doth fulfil at last, and men
+      make dear amends." But with characteristic inconsistency he discourages
+      Menelaus by a picture of many a proud Trojan leaping on his tomb, while
+      the host will return home-an idea constantly present to Agamemnon's mind.
+      He is always the first to propose flight, though he will "return with
+      shame" to Mycenae. Menelaus is of much better cheer: "Be of good courage,
+      {blank space} ALL THE HOST OF THE {misprint}"&mdash;a thing which
+      Agamemnon does habitually, though he is not a personal poltroon. As
+      Menelaus has only a slight flesh wound after all, and as the Trojans are
+      doomed men, Agamemnon is now "eager for glorious battle." He encourages
+      the princes, but, of all men, rebukes Odysseus as "last at a fray and
+      first at a feast": such is his insolence, for which men detest him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is highly characteristic in Agamemnon, who has just been redeemed
+      from ruin by Odysseus. Rebuked by Odysseus, he "takes back his word" as
+      usual, and goes on to chide Diomede as better at making speeches than at
+      fighting! But Diomede made no answer, "having respect to the chiding of
+      the revered King." He even rebukes the son of Capaneus for answering
+      Agamemnon haughtily. Diomede, however, does not forget; he bides his time.
+      He now does the great deeds of his day of valour (Book V.). Agamemnon
+      meanwhile encourages the host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During Books V., VI. Agamemnon's business is "to bid the rest keep
+      fighting." When Hector, in Book VII., challenges any Achaean, nobody
+      volunteers except Menelaus, who has a strong sense of honour. Agamemnon
+      restrains him, and lots are cast: the host pray that the lot may fall on
+      Aias, Diomede, or Agamemnon (VII. 179-180). Thus the Over-Lord is
+      acknowledged to be a man of his hands, especially good at hurling the
+      spear, as we see again in Book XXIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A truce is proposed for the burial of the dead, and Paris offers to give
+      up the wealth that he brought to Troy, and more, if the Achaeans will go
+      home, but Helen he will not give up. We expect Agamemnon to answer as
+      becomes him. But no! All are silent, till Diomede rises. They will not
+      return, he says, even if Helen be restored, for even a fool knows that
+      Troy is doomed, because of the broken oath. The rest shout acquiescence,
+      and Agamemnon refuses the compromise. Apparently he would not have
+      disdained it, but for Diomede's reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the following day the Trojans have the better in the battle, and
+      Agamemnon "has no heart to stand," nor have some of his peers. But Diomede
+      has more courage, and finally Agamemnon begins to call to the host to
+      fight, but breaks down, weeps, and prays to Zeus "that we ourselves at
+      least flee and escape;" he is not an encouraging commander-in-chief! Zeus,
+      in pity, sends a favourable omen; Aias fights well; night falls, and the
+      Trojans camp on the open plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agamemnon, in floods of tears, calls an assembly, and proposes to "return
+      to Argos with dishonour." "Let us flee with our ships to our dear native
+      land, for now shall we never take wide-wayed Troy," All are silent, till
+      Diomede rises and reminds Agamemnon that "thou saidst I was no man of war,
+      but a coward." (In Book V.; we are now in Book IX.) "Zeus gave thee the
+      honour of the sceptre above all men, but valour he gave thee not.... Go
+      thy way; thy way is before thee, and thy ships stand beside the sea. But
+      all the other flowing-haired Achaeans will tarry here until we waste
+      Troy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nestor advises Agamemnon to set an advanced guard, which that martialist
+      had never thought of doing, and to discuss matters over supper. A force of
+      700 men, under Meriones and the son of Nestor, was posted between the foss
+      and the wall round the camp; the council met, and Nestor advised Agamemnon
+      to approach Achilles with gentle words and gifts of atonement. Agamemnon,
+      full of repentance, acknowledges his folly and offers enormous atonement.
+      Heralds and three ambassadors are sent; and how Achilles received them,
+      with perfect courtesy, but with absolute distrust of Agamemnon and refusal
+      of his gifts, sending the message that he will fight only when fire comes
+      to his own ships, we know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Achilles is now entirely in the wrong, and the Over-Lord is once more
+      within his right. He has done all, or more than all, that customary law
+      demands. In Book IX. Phoenix states the case plainly. "If Agamemnon
+      brought thee not gifts, and promised thee more hereafter, ... then were I
+      not he that should bid thee cast aside thine anger, and save the
+      Argives...." (IX. 515-517). The case so stands that, if Achilles later
+      relents and fights, the gifts of atonement will no longer be due to him,
+      and he "will not be held in like honour" (IX. 604).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet knows intimately, and, like his audience, is keenly interested in
+      the details of the customary law. We cannot easily suppose this frame of
+      mind and this knowledge in a late poet addressing a late Ionian audience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ambassadors return to Agamemnon; their evil tidings are received in
+      despairing silence. But Diomede bids Agamemnon take heart and fight next
+      day, with his host arrayed "before the ships" (IX. 708). This appears to
+      counsel defensive war; but, in fact, and for reasons, when it comes to
+      fighting they do battle in the open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next Book (X.) is almost universally thought a late interpolation; an
+      opinion elsewhere discussed (see {blank space}). Let us, then, say with
+      Mr. Leaf that the Book begins with "exaggerated despondency" and ends with
+      "hasty exultation," in consequence of a brilliant camisade, wherein
+      Odysseus and Diomede massacre a Thracian contingent. Our point is that the
+      poet carefully (see <i>The Doloneia</i>) continues the study of Agamemnon
+      in despondency, and later, by his "hasty exultation," preludes to the
+      valour which the Over-Lord displays in Book XI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet knows that something in the way of personal valour is due to
+      Agamemnon's position; he fights brilliantly, receives a flesh wound,
+      retires, and is soon proposing a general flight in his accustomed way.
+      When the Trojans, in Book XIV., are attacking the ships, Agamemnon remarks
+      that he fears the disaffection of his whole army (XIV. 49, 51), and, as
+      for the coming defeat, that he "knew it," even when Zeus helped the
+      Greeks. They are all to perish far from Argos. Let them drag the ships to
+      the sea, moor them with stones, and fly, "For there is no shame in fleeing
+      from ruin, even in the night. Better doth he fare who flees from trouble
+      than he that is overtaken." It is now the turn of Odysseus again to save
+      the honour of the army. "Be silent, lest some other of the Achaeans hear
+      this word, that no man should so much as suffer to pass through his
+      mouth.... And now I wholly scorn thy thoughts, such a word hast thou
+      uttered." On this Agamemnon instantly repents. "Right sharply hast thou
+      touched my heart with thy stern reproof:" he has not even the courage of
+      his nervousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The combat is now in the hands of Aias and Patroclus, who is slain.
+      Agamemnon, who is wounded, does not reappear till Book XIX., when
+      Achilles, anxious to fight and avenge Patroclus at once, without
+      formalities of reconciliation, professes his desire to let bygones be
+      bygones. Agamemnon excuses his insolence to Achilles as an inspiration of
+      Ate: a predestined fault&mdash;"Not I am the cause, but Zeus and Destiny."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Odysseus, to clinch the reunion and fulfil customary law, advises
+      Agamemnon to bring out the gifts of atonement (the gifts prepared in Book
+      IX.), after which the right thing is for him to give a feast of
+      reconciliation, "that Achilles may have nothing lacking of his right."
+      {Footnote: Book XIX. 179, 180.} The case is one which has been provided
+      for by customary law in every detail. Mr. Leaf argues that all this part
+      must be late, because of the allusion to the gifts offered in Book IX. But
+      we reply, with Mr. Monro, that the Ninth Book is "almost necessary to any
+      Achilleis." The question is, would a late editor or poet know all the
+      details of customary law in such a case as a quarrel between Over-Lord and
+      peer? would a feudal audience have been satisfied with a poem which did
+      not wind the quarrel up in accordance with usage? and would a late poet,
+      in a society no longer feudal, know how to wind it up? Would he find any
+      demand on the part of his audience for a long series of statements, which
+      to a modern seem to interrupt the story? To ourselves it appears that a
+      feudal audience desired the customary details; to such an audience they
+      were most interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a taste which, as has been said, we find in all early poetry and
+      in the sagas; hence the long "runs" of the Celtic sagas, minutely repeated
+      descriptions of customary things. The Icelandic saga-men never weary,
+      though modern readers do, of legal details. For these reasons we reckon
+      the passages in Book XIX. about the reconciliation as original, and think
+      they can be nothing else. It is quite natural that, in a feudal society of
+      men who were sticklers for custom, the hearers should insist on having all
+      things done duly and in order&mdash;the giving of the gifts and the feast
+      of reconciliation&mdash;though the passionate Achilles himself desires to
+      fight at once. Odysseus insists that what we may call the regular routine
+      shall be gone through. It is tedious to the modern reader, but it is
+      surely much more probable that a feudal poet thus gratified his peculiar
+      audience (he looked for no other) than that a late poet, with a different
+      kind of audience, thrust the Reconciliation in as an "after-thought."
+      {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. ii. p. 317.} The right thing must be
+      done, Odysseus assures Achilles, "for I was born first, and know more
+      things." It is not the right thing to fight at once, unfed, and before the
+      solemn sacrifice by the Over-Lord, the prayer, the Oath of Agamemnon, and
+      the reception of the gifts by Achilles; only after these formalities, and
+      after the army has fed, can the host go forth. "I know more than you do;
+      you are a younger man," says Odysseus, speaking in accordance with feudal
+      character, at the risk of wearying later unforeseen generations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is not criticism inspired by mere "literary feeling," for "literary
+      feeling" is on the side of Achilles, and wishes the story to hurry to his
+      revenge. But ours is {blank space} criticism; we must think of the poet in
+      relation to his audience and of their demands, which we can estimate by
+      similar demands, vouched for by the supply, in the early national poetry
+      of other peoples and in the Icelandic sagas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We hear no more of Agamemnon till, in Book XXIII, 35-38, after the slaying
+      of Hector, Achilles "was brought to noble Agamemnon" (for that, as
+      Odysseus said, was the regular procedure) "by the Achaean chiefs, hardly
+      persuading him thereto, for his heart was wroth for his comrade." Here
+      they feast, Achilles still full of grief and resentment. He merely goes
+      through the set forms, much against his will. It does appear to us that
+      the later the poet the less he would have known or cared about the forms.
+      An early society is always much interested in forms and in funerals and
+      funeral games, so the poet indulges their taste with the last rites of
+      Patroclus. The last view of Agamemnon is given when, at the end of the
+      games, Achilles courteously presents him with the flowered <i>lebes</i>,
+      the prize for hurling the spear, without asking him to compete, since his
+      superior skill is notorious. This act of courtesy is the real
+      reconciliation; previously Achilles had but gone reluctantly through the
+      set forms in such cases provided. Even when Agamemnon offered the gifts of
+      atonement, Achilles said, "Give them, as is customary, or keep them, as
+      you please" (XIX. 146, 148). Achilles, young and passionate, cares nothing
+      for the feudal procedure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This rapid survey seems to justify the conclusion that the poet presents
+      an uniform and historically correct picture of the Over-Lord and of his
+      relations with his peers, a picture which no late editor could have pieced
+      together out of the widely varying <i>repertoires</i> of late strolling
+      reciters. Such reciters would gladly have forgotten, and such an editor
+      would gladly have "cut" the "business" of the reconciliation. They would
+      also, in a democratic spirit, have degraded the Over-Lord into the tyrant,
+      but throughout, however low Agamemnon may fall, the poet is guided by the
+      knowledge that his right to rule is <i>jure divino</i>, that he has
+      qualities, that his responsibilities are crushing, "I, whom among all men
+      Zeus hath planted for ever among labours, while my breath abides within
+      me, and my limbs move," says the Over-Lord (X. Sg, go.{sic}). In short,
+      the poet's conception of the Over-Lord is throughout harmonious, is a
+      contemporary conception entertained by a singer who lives among peers that
+      own, and are jealous of, and obey an Over-Lord. The character and
+      situation of Agamemnon are a poetic work of one age, one moment of
+      culture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE "ILIAD". BURIAL AND CREMATION
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In archaeological discoveries we find the most convincing proofs that the
+      <i>Iliad</i>, on the whole, is the production of a single age, not the
+      patchwork of several changeful centuries. This may seem an audacious
+      statement, as archaeology has been interpreted of late in such a manner as
+      to demand precisely the opposite verdict. But if we can show, as we think
+      we can, that many recent interpretations of the archaeological evidence
+      are not valid, because they are not consistent, our contention, though
+      unexpected, will be possible. It is that the combined testimony of
+      archaeology and of the Epic proves the <i>Iliad</i> to represent, as
+      regards customs, weapons, and armour, a definite moment of evolution; a
+      period between the age recorded in the art of the Mycenaean shaft graves
+      and the age of early iron swords and the "Dipylon" period.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the discoveries of the material remains of the "Mycenzean" times,
+      the evidence of archaeology was seldom appropriately invoked in
+      discussions of the Homeric question. But in the thirty years since
+      Schliemann explored the buried relics of the Mycenzean Acropolis, his
+      "Grave of Agamemnon," a series of excavations has laid bare the
+      interments, the works of art, and the weapons and ornaments of years long
+      prior to the revolution commonly associated with the "Dorian Invasion" of
+      about 1100-1000 B.C. The objects of all sorts which have been found in
+      many sites of Greece and the isles, especially of Cyprus and Crete, in
+      some respects tally closely with Homeric descriptions, in others vary from
+      them widely. Nothing can be less surprising, if the heroes whose legendary
+      feats inspired the poet lived centuries before his time, as Charlemagne
+      and his Paladins lived some three centuries before the composition of the
+      earliest extant <i>Chansons de Geste</i> on their adventures. There was,
+      in such a case, time for much change in the details of life, art, weapons
+      and implements. Taking the relics in the graves of the Mycenaean Acropolis
+      as a starting-point, some things would endure into the age of the poet,
+      some would be modified, some would disappear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We cannot tell how long previous to his own date the poet supposes the
+      Achaean heroes to have existed. He frequently ascribes to them feats of
+      strength which "no man of such as now are" could perform. This gives no
+      definite period for the interval; he might be speaking of the great
+      grandfathers of his own generation. But when he regards the heroes as
+      closely connected by descent of one or two generations with the gods, and
+      as in frequent and familiar intercourse with gods and goddesses, we must
+      suppose that he did not think their period recent. The singers of the <i>Chansons
+      de Geste</i> knew that angels' visits were few and far between at the
+      period, say, of the Norman Conquest; but they allowed angels to appear in
+      epics dealing with the earlier time, almost as freely as gods intervene in
+      Homer. In short, the Homeric poet undeniably treats the age of his heroes
+      as having already, in the phrase of Thucydides, "won its way to the
+      mythical," and therefore as indefinitely remote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is impossible here to discuss in detail the complex problems of
+      Mycenaean chronology. If we place the Mycenaean "bloom-time" from "the
+      seventeenth or sixteenth to the twelfth century B.C.," {Footnote: Tsountas
+      and Manatt, p. 322.} it is plain that there is space to spare, between the
+      poet's age and that of his heroes, for the rise of changes in war,
+      weapons, and costume. Indeed, there are traces enough of change even in
+      the objects and art discovered in the bloom-time, as represented by the
+      Mycenaean acropolis itself and by other "Mycenaean" sites. The art of the
+      fragment of a silver vase in a grave, on which a siege is represented, is
+      not the art, the costumes are not the costumes, of the inlaid bronze
+      dagger-blade. The men shown on the vase and the lion-hunters on the dagger
+      both have their hair close cropped, but on the vase they are naked, on the
+      dagger they wear short drawers. On the Vaphio cups, found in a <i>tholos</i>
+      chamber-tomb near Amyclae, the men are "long-haired Achaeans," with heavy,
+      pendent locks, like the man on a pyxis from Knossos, published by Mr.
+      Evans; they are of another period than the close-cropped men of the vase
+      and dagger. {Footnote: <i>Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>, vol. xvi. p.
+      102.} Two of the men on the silver vase are covered either with shields of
+      a shape and size elsewhere unknown in Mycenaean art, or with cloaks of an
+      unexampled form. The masonry of the city wall, shown on the vase in the
+      Mycenaean grave, is not the ordinary masonry of Mycenae itself. On the
+      vase the wall is "isodomic," built of cut stones in regular layers. Most
+      of the Mycenaean walls, on the other hand, are of "Cyclopean" style, in
+      large irregular blocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Art, good and very bad, exists in many various stages in Mycenaean relics.
+      The drawing of a god, with a typical Mycenaean shield in the form of a
+      figure 8, on a painted sarcophagus from Milato in Crete, is more crude and
+      savage than many productions of the Australian aboriginals, {Footnote: <i>Journal
+      of Hellenic Studies, vol. xvi. </i>p.<i> 174, fig. 50.</i> Grosse. <i>Les
+      Debuts de l'Art,</i> pp. 124-176.} the thing is on the level of Red Indian
+      work. Meanwhile at Vaphio, Enkomi, Knossos, and elsewhere the art is often
+      excellent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one essential point the poet describes a custom without parallel among
+      the discovered relics of the Mycenaean age&mdash;namely, the disposal of
+      the bodies of the dead. They are neither buried with their arms, in
+      stately <i>tholos</i> tombs nor in shaft graves, as at Mycenae: whether
+      they be princes or simple oarsmen, they are cremated. A pyre of wood is
+      built; on this the warrior's body is laid, the pyre is lighted, the body
+      is reduced to ashes, the ashes are placed in a vessel or box of gold,
+      wrapped round with precious cloths (no arms are buried, as a general
+      rule), and a mound, howe, barrow, or tumulus is raised over all. Usually a
+      <i>stele</i> or pillar crowns the edifice. This method is almost uniform,
+      and, as far as cremation and the cairn go, is universal in the <i>Iliad</i>
+      and <i>Odyssey</i> whenever a burial is described. Now this mode of
+      interment must be the mode of a single age in Greek civilisation. It is
+      confessedly not the method of the Mycenaeans of the shaft grave, or of the
+      latter <i>tholos</i> or stone beehive-shaped grave; again, the Mycenaeans
+      did not burn the dead; they buried. Once more, the Homeric method is not
+      that of the Dipylon period (say 900-750 B.C.) represented by the tombs
+      outside the Dipylon gate of Athens. The people of that age now buried, now
+      burned, their dead, and did not build cairns over them. Thus the Homeric
+      custom comes between the shaft graves and the latter <i>tholos</i> graves,
+      on the one hand, and the Dipylon custom of burning or burying, with sunk
+      or rock-hewn graves, on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Homeric poets describe the method of their own period. They assuredly
+      do not adhere to an older epic tradition of shaft graves or <i>tholos</i>
+      graves, though these must have been described in lays of the period when
+      such methods of disposal of the dead were in vogue. The altar above the
+      shaft-graves in Mycenae proves the cult of ancestors in Mycenae; of this
+      cult in the <i>Iliad</i> there is no trace, or only a dim trace of
+      survival in the slaughter of animals at the funeral. The Homeric way of
+      thinking about the state of the dead, weak, shadowy things beyond the
+      river Oceanus, did not permit them to be worshipped as potent beings. Only
+      in a passage, possibly interpolated, of the <i>Odyssey</i>, do we hear
+      that Castor and Polydeuces, brothers of Helen, and sons of Tyndareus,
+      through the favour of Zeus have immortality, and receive divine honours.
+      {Footnote: Odyssey, XI. 298-304.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These facts are so familiar that we are apt to overlook the strangeness of
+      them in the history of religious evolution. The cult of ancestral spirits
+      begins in the lowest barbarism, just above the level of the Australian
+      tribes, who, among the Dieri, show some traces of the practice, at least,
+      of ghost feeding. {Footnote: Howitt, <i>Native Tribes of South-Eastern
+      Australia,</i> p. 448. There are also traces of propitiation in Western
+      Australia (MS. of Mrs. Bates).} Sometimes, as in many African tribes,
+      ancestor worship is almost the whole of practical cult. Usually it
+      accompanies polytheism, existing beside it on a lower plane. It was
+      prevalent in the Mycenae of the shaft graves; in Attica it was
+      uninterrupted; it is conspicuous in Greece from the ninth century onwards.
+      But it is unknown to or ignored by the Homeric poets, though it can hardly
+      have died out of folk custom. Consequently, the poems are of one age, an
+      age of cremation and of burial in barrows, with no ghost worship.
+      Apparently some revolution as regards burial occurred between the age of
+      the graves of the Mycenaean acropolis and the age of Homer. That age,
+      coming with its form of burning and its absence of the cult of the dead,
+      between two epochs of inhumation, ancestor worship, and absence of cairns,
+      is as certainly and definitely an age apart, a peculiar period, as any
+      epoch can be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cremation, with cairn burial of the ashes, is, then, the only form of
+      burial mentioned by Homer, and, as far as the poet tells us, the period
+      was not one in which iron was used for swords and spears. At Assarlik
+      (Asia Minor) and in Thera early graves, prove the use of cremation, but
+      also, unlike Homer, of iron weapons. {Footnote: Paton, Journal <i>of
+      Hellenic Studies,</i> viii. 64<i>ff</i>. For other references, cf.
+      Poulsen, <i>Die Dipylongräben</i>, p. 2, Notes. Leipzig 1905.} In these
+      graves the ashes are inurned. There are examples of the same usage in
+      Salamis, without iron. In Crete, in graves of the period of geometrical
+      ornament ("Dipylon"), burning is more common than inhumation. Cremation is
+      attested in a <i>tholos</i> or beehive-shaped grave in Argos, where the
+      vases were late Mycenaean. Below this stratum was an older shaft grave, as
+      is usual in <i>tholos</i> interments; it had been plundered? {Footnote:
+      Poulsen, p.2.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cause of the marked change from Mycenaean inhumation to Homeric
+      cremation is matter of conjecture. It has been suggested that burning was
+      introduced during the migrations after the Dorian invasion. Men could
+      carry the ashes of their friends to the place where they finally settled.
+      {Footnote: Helbig, <i>Homerische Epos,</i> p.83} The question may,
+      perhaps, be elucidated by excavation, especially in Asia Minor, on the
+      sites of the earliest Greek colonies. At Colophon are many cairns
+      unexplored by science. Mr. Ridgeway, as is well known, attributes the
+      introduction of cremation to a conquering northern people, the Achaeans,
+      his "Celts." It is certain that cremation and urn burial of the ashes
+      prevailed in Britain during the Age of Bronze, and co-existed with
+      inhumation in the great cemetery of Hallstatt, surviving into the Age of
+      Iron. {Footnote: Cf. <i>Guide to Antiquities of Early Iron Age,</i>
+      British Museum, 1905, by Mr. Reginald A. Smith, under direction of Mr.
+      Charles H. Read, for a brief account of Hallstatt culture.} Others suppose
+      a change in Achaean ideas about the soul; it was no longer believed to
+      haunt the grave and grave goods and be capable of haunting the living, but
+      to be wholly set free by burning, and to depart for ever to the House of
+      Hades, powerless and incapable of hauntings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is never easy to decide as to whether a given mode of burial is the
+      result of a definite opinion about the condition of the dead, or whether
+      the explanation offered by those who practise the method is an
+      afterthought. In Tasmania among the lowest savages, now extinct, were
+      found monuments over cremated human remains, accompanied with "characters
+      crudely marked, similar to those which the aborigines tattooed on their
+      forearms." In one such grave was a spear, "for the dead man to fight with
+      when he is asleep," as a native explained. Some Tasmanian tribes burned
+      the dead and carried the ashes about in amulets; others buried in hollow
+      trees; others simply inhumed. Some placed the dead in a hollow tree, and
+      cremated the body after lapse of time. Some tied the dead up tightly (a
+      common practice with inhumation), and then burned him. Some buried the
+      dead in an erect 'posture. The common explanation of burning was that it
+      prevented the dead from returning, thus it has always been usual to burn
+      the bodies of vampires. Did a race so backward hit on an idea unknown to
+      the Mycenaean Greeks? {Footnote: Ling Roth., <i>The Tasmanians</i>, pp.
+      128-134. Reports of Early Discoverers.} If the usual explanation be
+      correct&mdash;burning prevents the return of the dead&mdash;how did the
+      Homeric Greeks come to substitute burning for the worship and feeding of
+      the dead, which had certainly prevailed? How did the ancient method
+      return, overlapping and blent with the method of cremation, as in the
+      early Dipylon interments? We can only say that the Homeric custom is
+      definite and isolated, and that but slight variations occur in the methods
+      of Homeric burial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (1)In <i>Iliad</i>, VI, 4 I 6 <i>ff</i>, Andromache <i>SAYS</i> that
+      Achilles slew her father, "yet he despoiled him not, for his soul had
+      shame of that; but he burnt him in his inlaid armour, and raised a barrow
+      over him." We are not told that the armour was interred with the ashes of
+      Eetion. This is a peculiar case. We always hear in the that the dead are
+      burned, and the ashes of princes are placed in a vessel of gold within an
+      artificial hillock; but we do not hear, except in this passage, that they
+      are burned in their armour, or that it is burned, or that it is buried
+      with the ashes of the dead. The invariable practice is for the victor, if
+      he can, to despoil the body of the fallen foe; but Achilles for some
+      reason spared that indignity in the case of Eetion. {Footnote: German
+      examples of burning the amis of the cremated dead and then burying them
+      are given by Mr. Ridgeway, <i>Early Age of Greece,</i> vol. i. pp. 498,
+      499.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (2) <i>ILIAD,</i> VII. 85. Hector, in his challenge to a single combat,
+      makes the conditions that the victor shall keep the arms and armour of the
+      vanquished, but shall restore his body to his friends. The Trojans will
+      burn him, if he falls; if the Achaean falls, the others will do something
+      expressed by the word {Greek: tarchuchosi} probably a word surviving from
+      an age of embalment. {Footnote: Helbig, <i>Homerische Epos,</i> pp. 55,
+      56.} It has come to mean, generally, to do the funeral rites. The hero is
+      to have a barrow or artificial howe or hillock built over him, "beside
+      wide Hellespont," a memorial of him, and of Hector's valour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the River Helmsdale, near Kildonan, on the left bank, there is such a
+      hillock which has never, it is believed, been excavated. It preserves the
+      memory of its occupant, an early Celtic saint; whether he was cremated or
+      not it is impossible to say. But his memory is not lost, and the howe,
+      cairn, or hillock, in Homer is desired by the heroes as a MEMORIAL.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the terms proposed by Hector the arms of the dead could not be either
+      burned or buried with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (3) Iliad, IX. 546. Phoenix says that the Calydonian boar "brought many to
+      the mournful pyre." All were cremated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (4) <i>Iliad</i>, XXII 50-55. Andromache in her dirge (the <i>regret</i>
+      of the French mediaeval epics) says that Hector lies unburied by the ships
+      and naked, but she will burn raiment of his, "delicate and fair, the work
+      of women ... to thee no profit, since thou wilt never lie therein, yet
+      this shall be honour to thee from the men and women of Troy." Her meaning
+      is not very clear, but she seems to imply that if Hector's body were in
+      Troy it would be clad in garments before cremation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helbig appears to think that to clothe the dead in <i>garments</i> was an
+      Ionian, not an ancient epic custom. But in Homer the dead always wear at
+      least one garment, the {Greek: pharos}, a large mantle, either white or
+      purple, such as Agamemnon wears in peace (Iliad, II 43), except when, like
+      Eetion and Elpenor in the Odyssey, they are burned in their armour. In <i>Iliad,</i>
+      XXIII. 69 <i>ff</i>., the shadow of the dead unburned Patroclus appears to
+      Achilles in his sleep asking for "his dues of fire." The whole passage,
+      with the account of the funeral of Patroclus, must be read carefully, and
+      compared with the funeral rites of Hector at the end of Book XXIV. Helbig,
+      in an essay of great erudition, though perhaps rather fantastic in its
+      generalisations, has contrasted the burials of the two heroes. Patroclus
+      is buried, he says, in a true portion of the old Aeolic epic (Sir Richard
+      Jebb thought the whole passage "Ionic"), though even into this the late
+      Ionian <i>bearbeiter</i> (a spectral figure), has introduced his Ionian
+      notions. But the Twenty-fourth Book itself is late and Ionian, Helbig
+      says, not genuine early Aeolian epic poetry. {Footnote: Helbig, <i>Zu den
+      Homerischen Bestattungsgebraüchen</i>. Aus den Sitzungsberichten der
+      philos. philol. und histor. Classe der Kgl. bayer. Academie der
+      Wissenschaften. 1900. Heft. ii. pp. 199-299.} The burial of Patroclus,
+      then, save for Ionian late interpolations, easily detected by Helbig, is,
+      he assures us, genuine "kernel," {Footnote: 2 Op. <i>laud.</i>, p. 208.}
+      while Hector's burial "is partly Ionian, and describes the destiny of the
+      dead heroes otherwise than as in the old Aeolic epos."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Helbig uses that one of his two alternate theories according to which
+      the late Ionian poets do not cling to old epic tradition, but bring in
+      details of the life of their own date. By Helbig's other alternate theory,
+      the late poets cling to the model set in old epic tradition in their
+      pictures of details of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Disintegrationists differ: far from thinking that the late Ionian poet who
+      buried Hector varied from the AEolic minstrel who buried Patroclus (in
+      Book XXIII.), Mr. Leaf says that Hector's burial is "almost an abstract"
+      of that of Patroclus. {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, XXII Note to 791.} He adds
+      that Helbig's attempts "to distinguish the older AEolic from the newer and
+      more sceptical 'Ionic' faith seem to me visionary." {Footnote: Iliad, vol.
+      ii. p. 619. Note 2} Visionary, indeed, they do seem, but they are examples
+      of the efforts made to prove that the Iliad bears marks of composition
+      continued through several centuries. We must remember that, according to
+      Helbig, the Ionians, colonists in a new country, "had no use for ghosts."
+      A fresh colony does not produce ghosts. "There is hardly an English or
+      Scottish castle without its spook (<i>spuck</i>). On the other hand, you
+      look in vain for such a thing in the United States"&mdash;spiritualism
+      apart. {Footnote: Op. <i>laud.</i>, p. 204.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a hasty generalisation! Helbig will, if he looks, find ghosts
+      enough in the literature of North America while still colonial, and in
+      Australia, a still more newly settled country, sixty years ago Fisher's
+      ghost gave evidence of Fisher's murder, evidence which, as in another
+      Australian case, served the ends of justice. {Footnote: See, in <i>The</i>
+      Valet's Tragedy (A. L.): "Fisher's Ghost."} More recent Australian ghosts
+      are familiar to psychical research.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+This colonial theory is one of Helbig's too venturous generalisations.
+He studies the ghost, or rather dream-apparition, of Patroclus after
+examining the funeral of Hector; but we shall begin with Patroclus.
+Achilles (XXIII. 4-16) first hails his friend "even in the House of
+Hades" (so he believes that spirits are in Hades), and says that he
+has brought Hector "raw for dogs to devour," and twelve Trojans of good
+family "to slaughter before thy pyre." That night, when Achilles is
+asleep (XXIII. 65) the spirit ({Greek: psyche}) of Patroclus appears to
+him, says that he is forgotten, and begs to be burned at once, that he
+may pass the gates of Hades, for the other spirits drive him off and
+will not let him associate with them "beyond the River," and he wanders
+vaguely along the wide-gated dwelling of Hades. "Give me thy hand, for
+never more again shall I come back from Hades, when ye have given me my
+due of fire." Patroclus, being newly discarnate, does not yet know
+that a spirit cannot take a living man's hand, though, in fact, tactile
+hallucinations are not uncommon in the presence of phantasms of the
+dead. "Lay not my bones apart from thine ... let one coffer" ({Greek:
+soros}) "hide our bones."
+
+ {Greek: Soros}, like <i>larnax</i>, is a coffin (<i>Sarg</i>), or
+what the Americans call a "casket," in the opinion of Helbig: {Footnote:
+OP. <i>laud</i>., p.217.} it is an oblong receptacle of the bones and dust.
+Hector was buried in a <i>larnax</i>; SO will Achilles and Patroclus be
+when Achilles falls, but the dust of Patroclus is kept, meanwhile, in a
+golden covered cup (phialae) in the quarters of Achilles; it is not laid
+in howe after his cremation (XXIII. 243).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Achilles tries to embrace Patroclus, but fails, like Odysseus with the
+      shade of his mother in Hades, in the <i>ODYSSEY</i>. He exclaims that
+      "there remaineth then even in the House of Hades a spirit and phantom of
+      the dead, albeit the life" (or the wits) "be not anywise therein, for all
+      night hath the spirit of hapless Patroclus stood over me...."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this speech Helbig detects the hand of the late Ionian poet. What goes
+      before is part of the genuine old Epic, the kernel, done at a time when
+      men believed that spooks could take part in the affairs of the upper
+      world. Achilles therefore (in his dream), thought that he could embrace
+      his friend. It was the sceptical Ionian, in a fresh and spookless colony,
+      who knew that he could not; he thinks the ghost a mere dream, and
+      introduces his scepticism in XXIII. 99-107. He brought in "the ruling
+      ideas of his own period." The ghost, says the Ionian <i>bearbeiter</i>, is
+      intangible, though in the genuine old epic the ghost himself thought
+      otherwise&mdash;he being new to the situation and without experience. This
+      is the first sample of the critical Ionian spirit, later so remarkable in
+      philosophy and natural science, says Helbig. {Footnote: Op. laud., pp.
+      233,234.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We need not discuss this acute critical theory. The natural interpretation
+      of the words of Achilles is obvious; as Mr. Leaf remarks, the words are
+      "the cry of sudden personal conviction in a matter which has hitherto been
+      lazily accepted as an orthodox dogma." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. ii.
+      p. 620.} Already, as we have seen, Achilles has made promises to Patroclus
+      in the House of Hades, now he exclaims "there really is something in the
+      doctrine of a feeble future life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is vain to try to discriminate between an old epic belief in
+      able-bodied ghosts and an Ionian belief in mere futile <i>shades</i>, in
+      the Homeric poems. Everywhere the dead are too feeble to be worth
+      worshipping after they are burned; but, as Mr. Leaf says with obvious
+      truth, and with modern instances, "men are never so inconsistent as in
+      their beliefs about the other world." We ourselves hold various beliefs
+      simultaneously. The natives of Australia and of Tasmania practise, or did
+      practise, every conceivable way of disposing of the dead&mdash;burying,
+      burning, exposure in trees, carrying about the bodies or parts of them,
+      eating the bodies, and so forth. If each such practice corresponded, as
+      archaeologists believe, to a different opinion about the soul, then all
+      beliefs were held together at once, and this, in fact, is the case. There
+      is not now one and now another hard and fast orthodoxy of belief about the
+      dead, though now we find ancestor worship prominent and now in the shade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After gifts of hair and the setting up of jars full of oil and honey,
+      Achilles has the body laid on the top of the pyre in the centre. Bodies of
+      sheep and oxen, two dogs and four horses, are strewed around: why, we know
+      not, for the dead is not supposed to need food: the rite may be a
+      survival, for there were sacrifices at the burials of the Mycenaean shaft
+      graves. Achilles slays also the twelve Trojans, "because of mine anger at
+      thy slaying," he says (XXIII. 23). This was his reason, as far as he
+      consciously had any reason, not that his friend might have twelve thralls
+      in Hades. After the pyre is alit Achilles drenches it all night with wine,
+      and, when the flame dies down, the dead hero's bones are collected and
+      placed in the covered cup of gold. The circle of the barrow is then marked
+      out, stones are set up round it (we see them round Highland tumuli), and
+      earth is heaped up; no more is done; the tomb is empty; the covered cup
+      holding the ashes is in the hut of Achilles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must note another trait. After the body of Patroclus was recovered, it
+      was washed, anointed, laid on a bier, and covered from head to foot
+      {Greek: heano liti}, translated by Helbig, "with a linen sheet" (cf.
+      XXIII. 254). The golden cup with the ashes is next wrapped {Greek: heano
+      liti}; here Mr. Myers renders the words "with a linen veil." Scottish
+      cremation burials of the Bronze Age retain traces of linen wrappings of
+      the urn. {Footnote: <i>Proceedings of the Scottish society of Antiquaries</i>,
+      1905, p. 552. For other cases, <i>cf.</i> Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, XXIV. 796.
+      Note.} Over all a white {Greek: pharos} (mantle) was spread. In <i>Iliad</i>,
+      XXIV. 231, twelve {Greek: pharea} with chitons, single cloaks, and other
+      articles of dress, are taken to Achilles by Priam as part of the ransom of
+      Hector's body. Such is the death-garb of Patroclus; but Helbig, looking
+      for Ionian innovations in Book XXIV., finds that the death-garb of Hector
+      is not the same as that of Patroclus in Book XXIII. One difference is that
+      when the squires of Achilles took the ransom of Hector from the waggon of
+      Priam, they left in it two {Greek: pharea} and a well-spun chiton. The
+      women washed and anointed Hector's body; they clad him in the chiton, and
+      threw one {Greek: pharos} over it; we are not told what they did with the
+      other. Perhaps, as Mr. Leaf says, it was used as a cover for the bier,
+      perhaps it was not, but was laid under the body (Helbig). All we know is
+      that Hector's body was restored to Priam in a chiton and a {Greek:
+      pharos}, which do not seem to have been removed before he was burned;
+      while Patroclus had no chiton in death, but a {Greek: pharos} and,
+      apparently, a linen sheet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the ordinary reader this does not seem, in the circumstances, a strong
+      mark of different ages and different burial customs. Priam did not bring
+      any linen sheet&mdash;or whatever {Greek: heanos lis} may be&mdash;in the
+      waggon as part of Hector's ransom; and it neither became Achilles to give
+      nor Priam to receive any of Achilles's stuff as death-garb for Hector. The
+      squires, therefore, gave back to Priam, to clothe his dead son, part of
+      what he had brought; nothing can be more natural, and there, we may say,
+      is an end on't. They did what they could in the circumstances. But Helbig
+      has observed that, in a Cean inscription of the fifth century B.C., there
+      is a sumptuary law, forbidding a corpse to wear more than three white
+      garments, a sheet under him, a chiton, and a mantle cast over him.
+      {Footnote: op. <i>laud</i>., p. 209.} He supposes that Hector wore the
+      chiton, and had one {Greek: pharos} over him and the other under him,
+      though Homer does not say that. The Laws of Solon also confined the dead
+      man to three articles of dress. {Footnote: Plutarch, Solon, 21.} In doing
+      so Solon sanctioned an old custom, and that Ionian custom, described by
+      the author of Book XXIV., bewrays him, says Helbig, for a late Ionian <i>bearbeiter</i>,
+      deserting true epic usages and inserting those of his own day. But in some
+      Attic Dipylon vases, in the pictures of funerals, we see no garments or
+      sheets over the corpses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Penelope also wove a {Greek: charos} against the burial of old Laertes,
+      but surely she ought to have woven for him; on Helbig's showing Hector had
+      <i>two</i>, Patroclus had only one; Patroclus is in the old epic, Hector
+      and Laertes are in the Ionian epics; therefore, Laertes should have had
+      two {Greek: charea} but we only hear of one. Penelope had to finish the
+      {Greek: charos} and show it; {Footnote: Odyssey, XXIV. 147.} now if she
+      wanted to delay her marriage, she should have begun the second {Greek:
+      charos} just as necessary as the first, if Hector, with a pair of {Greek:
+      charea} represents Ionian usage. But Penelope never thought of what, had
+      she read Helbig, she would have seen to be so obvious. She thought of no
+      funeral garments for the old man but one shroud {Greek: speiron} (Odyssey,
+      II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a character of late Ionian,
+      not of genuine old AEolic epic, she should have known better. It is
+      manifest that if even the acuteness and vast erudition of Helbig can only
+      find such invisible differences as these between the manners of the
+      genuine old epic and the late Ionian innovations, there is really no
+      difference, beyond such trifles as diversify custom in any age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hector, when burned and when his ashes have been placed in the casket, is
+      laid in a {Greek: kapetos}, a ditch or trench (<i>Iliad</i>, XV. 356;
+      XVIII. 564); but here (XXIV. 797) {Greek: kapetos} is a chamber covered
+      with great stones, within the howe, the casket being swathed with purple
+      robes, and this was the end. The ghost of Hector would not revisit the
+      sun, as ghosts do freely in the Cyclic poems, a proof that the Cyclics are
+      later than the Homeric poems. {Footnote: Helbig, op. <i>laud</i>., pp.
+      240, 241.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the burning of the weapons of Eetion and Elpenor are traces of another
+      than the <i>old</i> AEolic epic faith, {Footnote: Ibid., p. 253.} they are
+      also traces of another than the late <i>Ionic</i> epic faith, for no
+      weapons are burned with Hector. In the <i>Odyssey</i> the weapons of
+      Achilles are not burned; in the <i>Iliad</i> the armour of Patroclus is
+      not burned. No victims of any kind are burned with Hector: possibly the
+      poet was not anxious to repeat what he had just described (his last book
+      is already a very long book); possibly the Trojans did not slay victims at
+      the burning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The howes or barrows built over the Homeric dead were hillocks high enough
+      to be good points of outlook for scouts, as in the case of the barrow of
+      AEsyetes (<i>Iliad</i>, II. 793) and "the steep mound," the howe of lithe
+      Myrine (II. 814). We do not know that women were usually buried in howe,
+      but Myrine was a warrior maiden of the Amazons. We know, then, minutely
+      what the Homeric mode of burial was, with such variations as have been
+      noted. We have burning and howe even in the case of an obscure oarsman
+      like Elpenor. It is not probable, however, that every peaceful mechanic
+      had a howe all to himself; he may have had a small family cairn; he may
+      not have had an expensive cremation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interesting fact is that no barrow burial precisely of the Homeric
+      kind has ever been discovered in Greek sites. The old Mycenaeans buried
+      either in shaft graves or in a stately <i>tholos</i>; and in rock
+      chambers, later, in the town cemetery: they did not burn the bodies. The
+      people of the Dipylon period sometimes cremated, sometimes inhumed, but
+      they built no barrow over the dead. {Footnote: <i>Annal. de l'Inst.,</i>
+      1872, pp. 135, 147, 167. Plausen, <i>ut supra</i>.} The Dipylon was a
+      period of early iron swords, made on the lines of not the best type of
+      bronze sword. Now, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, our Homeric accounts of burial
+      "are all late; the oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing." {Footnote:
+      <i>Iliad</i>, vol. ii. p. 619. Note 2. While Mr. Leaf says that "the
+      oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing" of burial, he accepts XXII.
+      342, 343 as of the oldest part. These lines describe cremation, and Mr.
+      Leaf does not think them borrowed from the "later" VII. 79, 80, but that
+      VII. 79, 80 are "perhaps borrowed" from XXII. 342, 343. It follows that
+      "the oldest parts of the poems" do tell us of cremation.} We shall show,
+      however, that Mr. Leaf's "kernel" alludes to cremation. What is "late"? In
+      this case it is not the Dipylon period, say 900-750 B.C. It is not any
+      later period; one or two late barrow burials do not answer to the Homeric
+      descriptions. The "late" parts of the poems, therefore, dealing with
+      burials, in Books VI., VII., XIX., XXIII., XXIV., and the Odyssey, are of
+      an age not in "the Mycenaean prime," not in the Dipylon period, not in any
+      later period, say the seventh or sixth centuries B.C., and, necessarily,
+      not of any subsequent period. Yet nobody dreams of saying that the poets
+      describe a purely fanciful form of interment. They speak of what they know
+      in daily life. If it be argued that the late poets preserve, by sheer
+      force of epic tradition, a form of burial unknown in their own age, we
+      ask, "Why did epic tradition not preserve the burial methods of the
+      Mycenaean prime, the shaft grave, or the <i>tholos</i>, without
+      cremation?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf's own conclusion is that the people of Mycenae were "spirit
+      worshippers, practising inhumation, and partial mummification;" the second
+      fact is dubious. "In the post-Mycenaean 'Dipylon' period, we find
+      cremation and sepulture practised side by side. In the interval,
+      therefore, two beliefs have come into conflict. {Footnote: All conceivable
+      beliefs, we have said, about the dead are apt to coexist. For every
+      conceivable and some rather inconceivable contemporary Australian modes of
+      dealing with the dead, see Howitt, <i>Native Tribes of South-East
+      Australia</i>; Spencer and Gillen, <i>Northern Tribes of Central Australia</i>.}
+      It seems that the Homeric poems mark this intermediate point...."
+      {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. ii. p. 622.} In that case the Homeric
+      poems are of one age, or, at least, all of them save "the original kernel"
+      are of one age, namely, a period subsequent to the Mycenaean prime, but
+      considerably prior to the Dipylon period, which exhibits a mixture of
+      custom; cremation and inhumation coexisting, without barrows or howes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We welcome this conclusion, and note that (whatever may be the case with
+      the oldest parts of the poems which say nothing about funerals) the latest
+      expansions must be of about 1100-1000 B.C. (?). The poem is so early that
+      it is prior to hero worship and ancestor worship; or it might be more
+      judicious to say that the poem is of an age that did not, officially,
+      practise ancestor worship, whatever may have occurred in folk-custom. The
+      Homeric age is one which had outgrown ancestor and hero worship, and had
+      not, like the age of the Cyclics, relapsed into it. <i>Enfin</i>, unless
+      we agree with Helbig as to essential variations of custom, the poems are
+      the work of one age, and that a brief age, and an age of peculiar customs,
+      cremation and barrow burial; and of a religion that stood, without spirit
+      worship, between the Mycenzean period and the ninth century. That seems as
+      certain as anything in prehistoric times can be, unless we are to say,
+      that after the age of shaft graves and spirit worship came an age of
+      cremation and of no spirit worship; and that late poets consciously and
+      conscientiously preserved the tradition of <i>this</i> period into their
+      own ages of hero worship and inhumation, though they did not preserve the
+      tradition of the shaft-grave period. We cannot accept this theory of
+      adherence to stereotyped poetical descriptions, nor can any one
+      consistently adopt it in this case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason is obvious. Mr. Leaf, with many other critics, distinguishes
+      several successive periods of "expansion." In the first stratum we have
+      the remains of "the original kernel." Among these remains is The Slaying
+      of Hector (XXII. 1-404), "with but slight additions." {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>,
+      vol. ii. p. xi.} In the Slaying of Hector that hero indicates cremation as
+      the mode of burial. "Give them my body back again, that the Trojans and
+      Trojans' wives grant me my due of fire after my death." Perhaps this
+      allusion to cremation, in the "original kernel" in the Slaying of Hector,
+      may be dismissed as a late borrowing from Book VII. 79, 80, where Hector
+      makes conditions that the fallen hero shall be restored to his friends
+      when he challenges the Achaeans to a duel. But whoever knows the curious
+      economy by way of repetition that marks early national epics has a right
+      to regard the allusion to cremation (XXII, 342,343) as an example of this
+      practice. Compare <i>La Chancun de Williame</i>, lines 1041-1058 with
+      lines 1140-1134. In both the dinner of a knight who has been long deprived
+      of food is described in passages containing many identical lines. The
+      poet, having found his formula, uses it whenever occasion serves. There
+      are several other examples in the same epic. {Footnote: <i>Romania</i>,
+      xxxiv. PP. 245, 246.} Repetitions in Homer need not indicate late
+      additions; the artifice is part of the epic as it is of the ballad manner.
+      If we are right, cremation is the mode of burial even in "the original
+      kernel." Hector, moreover, in the kernel (XXII. 256-259) makes, before his
+      final fight with Achilles, the same proposal as he makes in his challenge
+      to a duel (VII. 85 et <i>seqq</i>.). The victor shall give back the body
+      of the vanquished to his friends, but how the friends are to bury it
+      Hector does not say&mdash;in this place. When dying, he does say (XXII.
+      342, 343).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the kernel and all periods of expansion, funeral rites are described,
+      and in all the method is cremation, with a howe or a barrow. Thus the
+      method of cremation had come in as early as the "kernel," The Slaying of
+      Hector, and as early as the first expansions, and it lasted till the
+      period of the latest expansions, such as Books XXIII., XXIV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what is the approximate date of the various expansions of the original
+      poem? On that point Mr. Leaf gives his opinion. The Making of the Arms of
+      Achilles (Books XVIII., XIX. 1-39) is, with the Funeral of Patroclus
+      (XXIII. 1-256), in the second set of expansions, and is thus two removes
+      later than the original "kernel." {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. ii.
+      p. xii.} Now this is the period&mdash;the Making of the Shield for
+      Achilles is, at least, in touch with the period&mdash;of "the eminently
+      free and naturalistic treatment which we find in the best Mycenaean work,
+      in the dagger blades, in the siege fragment, and notably in the Vaphio
+      cups," (which show long-haired men, not men close-cropped, as in the
+      daggers and siege fragment). {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. ii. p,
+      606.} The poet of the age of the second expansions, then,' is at least in
+      touch with the work of the shaft grave and ages. He need not be
+      contemporary with that epoch, but "may well have had in his mind the work
+      of artists older than himself." It is vaguely possible that he may have
+      seen an ancient shield of the Mycenaean prime, and may be inspired by
+      that. {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>., vol. ii. pp. 606, 607.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moreover, and still more remarkable, the ordinary Homeric form of
+      cremation and howe-burial is even older than the period which, if not
+      contemporary with, is clearly reminiscent of, the art of the shaft graves.
+      For, in the period of the first expansions (VII. 1-3 I 2), the form of
+      burial is cremation, with a barrow or tumulus. {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>.,
+      vol. ii. p. xi. and pp. 606, 607.} Thus Mr. Leaf's opinion might lead us
+      to the conclusion that the usual Homeric form of burial occurs in a period
+      <i>PRIOR</i> to an age in which the poet is apparently reminiscent of the
+      work of two early epochs&mdash;the epoch of shaft graves and that of <i>THOLOS</i>
+      graves. If this be so, cremation and urn burial in cairns may be nearly as
+      old as the Mycenaean shaft graves, or as old as the <i>THOLOS</i> graves,
+      and they endure into the age of the latest expansions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must not press, however, opinions founded on the apparent technical
+      resemblance of the free style and coloured metal work on the shield of
+      Achilles, to the coloured metal work and free design on the daggers of the
+      Mycenaean shaft graves. It is enough for us to note that the passages
+      concerning burial, from the "kernel" itself, and also from the earliest to
+      the latest expansions, are all perfectly harmonious, and of a single age&mdash;unless
+      we are convinced by Helbig's objections. That age must have been brief,
+      indeed, for, before it arrives, the period of <i>tholos</i> graves, as at
+      Vaphio, must expire, on one hand, while the blending of cremation with
+      inhumation, in the Dipylon age, must have been evolved after the cremation
+      age passed, on the other. That brief intervening age, however, was the age
+      of the <i>ILIAD</i> and Odyssey. This conclusion can only be avoided by
+      alleging that late poets, however recent and revolutionary, carefully
+      copied the oldest epic model of burial, while they innovated in almost
+      every other point, so we are told. We can go no further till we find an
+      unrifled cairn burial answering to Homeric descriptions. We have, indeed,
+      in Thessaly, "a large tumulus which contained a silver urn with burned
+      remains." But the accompanying pottery dated it in the second century B.C.
+      {Footnote: Ridgeway, <i>Early Age Of Greece</i>, vol. i. p. 491; <i>Journal
+      of Hellenic Studies, vol. xx</i>. pp. 20-25.} It is possible enough that
+      all tumuli of the Homeric period have been robbed by grave plunderers in
+      the course of the ages, as the Vikings are said to have robbed the cairns
+      of Sutherlandshire, in which they were not likely to find a rich reward
+      for their labours. A conspicuous howe invites robbery&mdash;the heroes of
+      the Saga, like Grettir, occasionally rob a howe&mdash;and the fact is
+      unlucky for the Homeric archaeologist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have now tried to show that, as regards (1) to the absence from Homer
+      of new religious and ritual ideas, or of very old ideas revived in Ionia,
+      (2) as concerns the clear conception of a loose form of feudalism, with an
+      Over-Lord, and (3) in the matter of burial, the <i>Iliad</i> and Odyssey
+      are self-consistent, and bear the impress of a single and peculiar moment
+      of culture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact, if accepted, is incompatible with the theory that the poets both
+      introduced the peculiar conditions of their own later ages and also, on
+      other occasions, consciously and consistently "archaised." Not only is
+      such archaising inconsistent with the art of an uncritical age, but a
+      careful archaiser, with all the resources of Alexandrian criticism at his
+      command, could not archaise successfully. We refer to Quintus Smyrnaeus,
+      author of the <i>Post Homerica</i>, in fourteen books. Quintus does his
+      best; but we never observe in him that <i>naïf</i> delight in describing
+      weapons and works of art, and details of law and custom which are so
+      conspicuous in Homer and in other early poets. He does give us
+      Penthesilea's great sword, with a hilt of ivory and silver; but of what
+      metal was the blade? We are not told, and the reader of Quintus will
+      observe that, though he knows {Greek: chalkos}, bronze, as a synonym for
+      weapons, he scarcely ever, if ever, says that a sword or spear or
+      arrow-head was of bronze&mdash;a point on which Homer constantly insists.
+      When he names the military metal Quintus usually speaks of iron. He has no
+      interest in the constitutional and legal sides of heroic life, so
+      attractive to Homer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet Quintus consciously archaises, in a critical age, with Homer as his
+      model. Any one who believes that in an uncritical age rhapsodists
+      archaised, with such success as the presumed late poets of the <i>ILIAD</i>
+      must have done, may try his hand in our critical age, at a ballad in the
+      style of the Border ballads. If he succeeds in producing nothing that will
+      at once mark his work as modern, he will be more successful than any poet
+      who has made the experiment, and more successful than the most ingenious
+      modern forgers of gems, jewels, and terra-cottas. They seldom deceive
+      experts, and, when they do, other experts detect the deceit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HOMERIC ARMOUR
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Tested by their ideas, their picture of political society, and their
+      descriptions of burial rites, the presumed authors of the alleged
+      expansions of the <i>Iliad</i> all lived in one and the same period of
+      culture. But, according to the prevalent critical theory, we read in the
+      <i>Iliad</i> not only large "expansions" of many dates, but also briefer
+      interpolations inserted by the strolling reciters or rhapsodists. "Until
+      the final literary redaction had come," says Mr. Leaf&mdash;that is about
+      540 B.C.&mdash;"we cannot feel sure that any details, even of the oldest
+      work, were secure from the touch of the latest poet." {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>,
+      vol. ii. p. ix.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here we are far from Mr. Leaf's own opinion that "the whole scenery of the
+      poems, the details of armour, palaces, dress, decoration ... had become
+      stereotyped, and formed a foundation which the Epic poet dared not
+      intentionally sap...." {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>., vol. i. p. xv.} We now
+      find {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>., vol. ii. p. ix.} that "the latest poet" saps
+      as much as he pleases down to the middle of the sixth century B.C.
+      Moreover, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., the supposed editor
+      employed by Hsistratus made "constant additions of transitional passages,"
+      and added many speeches by Nestor, an ancestor of Pisistratus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did these very late interlopers, down to the sixth century, introduce
+      modern details into the picture of life? did they blur the <i>unus</i>
+      color? We hope to prove that, if they did so at all, it was but slightly.
+      That the poems, however, with a Mycenaean or sub-Mycenaean basis of actual
+      custom and usage, contain numerous contaminations from the usage of
+      centuries as late as the seventh, is the view of Mr. Leaf, and Reichel and
+      his followers. {Footnote: Homerische Waffen. Von Wolfgang Reichel. Wien,
+      1901.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reichel's hypothesis is that the heroes of the original poet had no
+      defensive armour except the great Mycenaean shields; that the ponderous
+      shield made the use of chariots imperatively necessary; that, after the
+      Mycenaean age, a small buckler and a corslet superseded the unwieldy
+      shield; that chariots were no longer used; that, by the seventh century
+      B.C., a warrior could not be thought of without a breastplate; and that
+      new poets thrust corslets and greaves into songs both new and old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How the new poets could conceive of warriors as always in chariots,
+      whereas in practice they knew no war chariots, and yet could not conceive
+      of them without corslets which the original poet never saw, is Reichel's
+      secret. The new poets had in the old lays a plain example to follow. They
+      did follow it as to chariots and shields; as to corslets and greaves they
+      reversed it. Such is the Reichelian theory.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ THE SHIELD
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      As regards armour, controversy is waged over the shield, corslet, and
+      bronze greaves. In Homer the shield is of leather, plated with bronze, and
+      of bronze is the corslet. No shields of bronze plating and no bronze
+      corslets have been found in Mycenaean excavations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have to ask, do the Homeric descriptions of shields tally with the
+      representations of shields in works of art, discovered in the graves of
+      Mycenae, Spata in Attica, Vaphio in Sparta, and elsewhere? If the
+      descriptions in Homer vary from these relics, to what extent do they vary?
+      and do the differences arise from the fact that the poet describes
+      consistently what he sees in his own age, or are the variations caused by
+      late rhapsodists in the Iron Age, who keep the great obsolete shields and
+      bronze weapons, yet introduce the other military gear of their day, say
+      800-600 B.C.&mdash;gear unknown to the early singers?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be best to inquire, first, what does the poet, or what do the
+      poets, say about shields? and, next, to examine the evidence of
+      representations of shields in Mycenaean art; always remembering that the
+      poet does not pretend to live, and beyond all doubt does not live, in the
+      Mycenaean prime, and that the testimony of the tombs is liable to be
+      altered by fresh discoveries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In <i>Iliad</i>, II. 388, the shield (<i>aspis</i>) is spoken of as
+      "covering a man about" ({Greek: <i>amphibrotae</i>}), while, in the heat
+      of battle, the baldric (<i>telamon</i>), or belt of the shield, "shall be
+      wet with sweat." The shield, then, is not an Ionian buckler worn on the
+      left arm, but is suspended by a belt, and covers a man, or most of him,
+      just as Mycenaean shields are suspended by belts shown in works of art,
+      and cover the body and legs. This (II. 388) is a general description
+      applying to the shields of all men who fight from chariots. Their great
+      shield answers to the great mediaeval shield of the knights of the twelfth
+      century, the "double targe," worn suspended from the neck by a belt. Such
+      a shield covers a mounted knight's body from mouth to stirrup in an ivory
+      chessman of the eleventh to twelfth century A.D., {Footnote: <i>Catalogue
+      of Scottish National Antiquities</i>, p. 375.} so also in the Bayeux
+      tapestry, {Footnote: Gautier, <i>Chanson de Roland</i>. Seventh edition,
+      pp. 393, 394.} and on seals. Dismounted men have the same shield (p. 132).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shield of Menelaus (III. 348) is "equal in all directions," which we
+      might conceive to mean, mathematically "circular," as the words do mean
+      that. A shield is said to have "circles," and a spear which grazes a
+      shield&mdash;a shield which was <i>{Greek: panton eesae}</i>, "every way
+      equal"&mdash;rends both circles, the outer circle of bronze, and the inner
+      circle of leather (<i>Iliad</i>, XX. 273-281). But the passage is not
+      unjustly believed to be late; and we cannot rely on it as proof that Homer
+      knew circular shields among others. The epithet <i>{Greek: eukuklykos}</i>,
+      "of good circle," is commonly given to the shields, but does not mean that
+      the shield was circular, we are told, but merely that it was "made of
+      circular plates." {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 573.} As for
+      the shield of Menelaus, and other shields described in the same words,
+      "every way equal," the epithet is not now allowed to mean "circular." Mr.
+      Leaf, annotating <i>Iliad</i>, I. 306, says that this sense is
+      "intolerably mathematical and prosaic," and translates <i>{Greek: panton
+      eesae}</i> as "well balanced on every side." Helbig renders the epithets
+      in the natural sense, as "circular." {Footnote: Helbig, <i>Homerische Epos</i>,
+      p. 315; cf., on the other hand, p. 317, Note I.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the rendering "circular" it is objected that a circular shield of, say,
+      four feet and a half in diameter, would be intolerably heavy and
+      superfluously wide, while the shields represented in Mycenaean art are not
+      circles, but rather resemble a figure of eight, in some cases, or a
+      section of a cylinder, in others, or, again, a door (Fig. 5, p. 130).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What Homer really meant by such epithets as "equal every way," "very
+      circular," "of a good circle," cannot be ascertained, since Homeric
+      epithets of the shield, which were previously rendered "circular," "of
+      good circle," and so on, are now translated in quite other senses, in
+      order that Homeric descriptions may be made to tally with Mycenaean
+      representations of shields, which are never circular as represented in
+      works of art. In this position of affairs we are unable to determine the
+      shape, or shapes, of the shields known to Homer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A scholar's rendering of Homer's epithets applied to the shield is obliged
+      to vary with the variations of his theory about the shield. Thus, in 1883,
+      Mr. Leaf wrote, "The poet often calls the shield by names which seem to
+      imply that it was round, and yet indicates that it was large enough to
+      cover the whole body of a man.... In descriptions the round shape is
+      always implied." The words which indicated that the shield (or one shield)
+      "really looked like a tower, and really reached from neck to ankles" (in
+      two or three cases), were "received by the poet from the earlier Achaean
+      lays." "But to Homer the warriors appeared as using the later small round
+      shield. His belief in the heroic strength of the men of old time made it
+      quite natural to speak of them as bearing a shield which at once combined
+      the later circular shape and the old heroic expanse...." {Footnote: <i>Journal
+      of Hellenic Studies, iv. pp.</i> 283-285.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the Homeric words which naturally mean "circular" or "round" are
+      accepted as meaning "round" or "circular." Homer, it is supposed, in
+      practice only knows the round shields of the later age, 700 B.C., so he
+      calls shields "round," but, obedient to tradition, he conceives of them as
+      very large.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, after the appearance of Reichel's speculations, the Homeric words for
+      "round" and "circular" have been explained as meaning something else, and
+      Mr. Leaf, in place of maintaining that Homer knew no shields but round
+      shields, now writes (1900), "The small circular shield of later times...is
+      equally unknown to Homer, with a very few curious exceptions," which
+      Reichel discovered&mdash;erroneously, as we shall later try to show.
+      {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 575.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus does science fluctuate! Now Homer knows in practice none but light
+      round bucklers, dating from about 700 B.C.; again, he does not know them
+      at all, though they were habitually used in the period at which the later
+      parts of his Epic were composed. We shall have to ask, how did small round
+      bucklers come to be unknown to late poets who saw them constantly?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some scholars, then, believe that the old original poet always described
+      Mycenaean shields, which are of various shapes, but never circular in
+      Mycenaean art. If there are any circular shields in the poems, these, they
+      say, must have been introduced by poets accustomed, in a much later age,
+      to seeing circular bucklers. Therefore Homeric words, hitherto understood
+      as meaning "circular," must now mean something else&mdash;even if the
+      reasoning seems circular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other scholars believe that the poet in real life saw various types of
+      shields in use, and that some of them were survivals of the Mycenaean
+      shields, semi-cylindrical, or shaped like figures of 8, or like a door;
+      others were circular; and these scholars presume that Homer meant
+      "circular" when he said "circular." Neither school will convert the other,
+      and we cannot decide between them. We do not pretend to be certain as to
+      whether the original poet saw shields of various types, including the
+      round shape, in use, though that is possible, or whether he saw only the
+      Mycenaean types.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As regards size, Homer certainly describes, in several cases, shields very
+      much larger than most which we know for certain to have been common after,
+      say, 700 B.C. He speaks of shields reaching from neck to ankles, and
+      "covering the body of a man about." Whether he was also familiar with
+      smaller shields of various types is uncertain; he does not explicitly say
+      that any small bucklers were used by the chiefs, nor does he explicitly
+      say that all shields were of the largest type. It is possible that at the
+      time when the Epic was composed various types of shield were being tried,
+      while the vast ancient shield was far from obsolete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To return to the <i>size</i> of the shield. In a feigned tale of Odysseus
+      (Odyssey, XIV. 474-477), men in a wintry ambush place their shields over
+      their shoulders, as they lie on the ground, to be a protection against
+      snow. But any sort of shield, large or small, would protect the shoulders
+      of men in a recumbent position. Quite a large shield may seem to be
+      indicated in <i>Iliad</i>, XIII. 400-405, where Idomeneus curls up his
+      whole person behind his shield; he was "hidden" by it. Yet, as any one can
+      see by experiment, a man who crouched low would be protected entirely by a
+      Highland targe of less than thirty inches in diameter, so nothing about
+      the size of the shield is ascertained in this passage. On a black-figured
+      vase in the British Museum (B, 325) the entire body of a crouching warrior
+      is defended by a large Boeotian buckler, oval, and with <i>échancrures</i>
+      in the sides. The same remark applies to <i>Z&amp;ad</i>{sic}, XXII.
+      273-275. Hector watches the spear of Achilles as it flies; he crouches,
+      and the spear flies over him. Robert takes this as an "old Mycenaean"
+      dodge&mdash;to duck down to the bottom of the shield. {Footnote: <i>Studien
+      zur Ilias</i>, p. 21.} The avoidance by ducking can be managed with no
+      shield, or with a common Highland targe, which would cover a man in a
+      crouching posture, as when Glenbucket's targe was peppered by bullets at
+      Clifton (746), and Cluny shouted "What the devil is this?" the assailants
+      firing unexpectedly from a ditch. A few moments of experiment, we repeat,
+      prove that a round targe can protect a man in Hector's attitude, and that
+      the Homeric texts here throw no light on the <i>size</i> of the shield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shield of Hector was of black bull's-hide, and as large and long as
+      any represented in Mycenaean art, so that, as he walked, the rim knocked
+      against his neck and ankles. The shape is not mentioned. Despite its size,
+      he <i>walked</i> under it from the plain and field of battle into Troy (<i>Iliad</i>,
+      VI. 116-118). This must be remembered, as Reichel {Footnote: Reichel, 38,
+      39. Father Browne (<i>Handbook</i>, p. 230) writes, "In <i>Odyssey</i>,
+      XIV 475, Odysseus says he slept within the shield." He says "under arms" (<i>Odyssey</i>,
+      XIV. 474, but <i>cf</i>. XIV. 479).} maintains that a man could not walk
+      under shield, or only for a short way; wherefore the war chariot was
+      invented, he says, to carry the fighting man from point to point (Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>,
+      vol. i. p. 573). Mr. Leaf elaborates these points: "Why did not the
+      Homeric heroes ride? Because no man could carry such a shield on
+      horseback." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 573.} We reply that men
+      could and did carry such shields on horseback, as we know on the evidence
+      of works of art and poetry of the eleventh to twelfth centuries A.D. Mr.
+      Ridgeway has explained the introduction of chariots as the result of
+      horses too small to carry a heavy and heavily-armed man as a cavalier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shield ({Greek: aspis}), we are told by followers of Reichel, was only
+      worn by princes who could afford to keep chariots, charioteers, and
+      squires of the body to arm and disarm them. But this can scarcely be true,
+      for all the comrades of Diomede had the shield ({Greek: aspis}, <i>Iliad</i>,
+      X. 152), and the whole host of Pandarus of Troy, a noted bowman, were
+      shield-bearers ({Greek: aspistaon laon}, <i>Iliad</i>, IV. 90), and some
+      of them held their shields ({Greek: sakae}) in front of Pandarus when he
+      took a treacherous shot at Menelaus (IV. 113). The whole host could not
+      have chariots and squires, we may presume, so the chariot was not
+      indispensable to the <i>écuyer</i> or shield-bearing man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The objections to this conjecture of Reichel are conspicuous, as we now
+      prove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No Mycenaean work of art shows us a shielded man in a chariot; the men
+      with the monstrous shields are always depicted on foot. The only modern
+      peoples who, to our knowledge, used a leather shield of the Mycenaean size
+      and even of a Mycenaean shape had no horses and chariots, as we shall
+      show. The ancient Eastern peoples, such as the Khita and Egyptians, who
+      fought from chariots, carried <i>small</i> shields of various forms, as in
+      the well-known picture of a battle between the Khita, armed with spears,
+      and the bowmen of Rameses II, who kill horse and man with arrows from
+      their chariots, and carry no spears; while the Khita, who have no bows,
+      merely spears, are shot down as they advance. {Footnote: Maspero, <i>Hist.
+      Ancienne</i>, ii. p. 225.}. Egyptians and Khita, who fight from chariots,
+      use <i>small</i> bucklers, whence it follows that war chariots were not
+      invented, or, at least, were not retained in use, for the purpose of
+      giving mobility to men wearing gigantic shields, under which they could
+      not hurry from point to point. War chariots did not cease to be used in
+      Egypt, when men used small shields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moreover, Homeric warriors can make marches under shield, while there is
+      no mention of chariots to carry them to the point where they are to lie in
+      ambush (Odyssey, XIV. 470-510). If the shield was so heavy as to render a
+      chariot necessary, would Homer make Hector trudge a considerable distance
+      under shield, while Achilles, under shield, sprints thrice round the whole
+      circumference of Troy? Helbig notices several other cases of long runs
+      under shield. Either Reichel is wrong, when he said that the huge shield
+      made the use of the war chariot necessary, or the poet is "late"; he is a
+      man who never saw a large shield like Hector's, and, though he speaks of
+      such shields, he thinks that men could walk and run under them. When men
+      did walk or run under shield, or ride, if they ever rode, they would hang
+      it over the left side, like the lion-hunters on the famous inlaid dagger
+      of Mycenae, {Footnote: For the chariots, <i>cf</i>. Reichel, <i>Homerische
+      Waffen</i>, 120<i>ff</i>. Wien, 1901.} or the warrior on the chessman
+      referred to above (p. 111).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aias, again, the big, brave, stupid Porthos of the <i>Iliad</i>, has the
+      largest shield of all, "like a tower" (this shield cannot have been
+      circular), and is recognised by his shield. But he never enters a chariot,
+      and, like Odysseus, has none of his own, because both men come from rugged
+      islands, unfit for chariot driving. Odysseus has plenty of shields in his
+      house in Ithaca, as we learn from the account of the battle with the
+      Wooers in the <i>Odyssey;</i> yet, in Ithaca, as at Troy, he kept no
+      chariot. Here, then, we have nations who fight from chariots, yet use
+      small shields, and heroes who wear enormous shields, yet never own a
+      chariot. Clearly, the great shield cannot have been the cause of the use
+      of the war chariot, as in the theory of Reichel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aias and his shield we meet in <i>Iliad</i>, VII. 206-220. "He clothed
+      himself upon his flesh in <i>all</i> his armour" ({Greek: teuchea}), to
+      quote Mr. Leaf's translation; but the poet only <i>describes</i> his
+      shield: his "towerlike shield of bronze, with sevenfold ox-hide, that
+      Tychius wrought him cunningly; Tychius, the best of curriers, that had his
+      home in Hyle, who made for him his glancing shield of sevenfold hides of
+      stalwart bulls, and overlaid the seven with bronze."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shield known to Homer then is, in this case, so tall as to resemble a
+      tower, and has bronze plating over bull's hide. By tradition from an age
+      of leather shields the Currier is still the shield-maker, though now the
+      shield has metal plating. It is fairly clear that Greek tradition regarded
+      the shield of Aias as of the kind which covered the body from chin to
+      ankles, and resembled a bellying sail, or an umbrella unfurled, and drawn
+      in at the sides in the middle, so as to offer the semblance of two
+      bellies, or of one, pinched in at or near the centre. This is probable,
+      because the coins of Salamis, where Aias was worshipped as a local hero of
+      great influence, display this shield as the badge of the AEginetan
+      dynasty, claiming descent from Aias. The shield is bossed, or bellied out,
+      with two half-moons cut in the centre, representing the <i>waist</i>, or
+      pinched&mdash;in part, of the ancient Mycenaean shield; the same device
+      occurs on a Mycenaean ring from AEgina in the British Museum. {Footnote:
+      Evans, <i>Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>, xiii. 213-216.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a duel with Aias the spear of Hector pierced the bronze and six layers
+      of hide on his shield, but stuck in the seventh. The spear of Aias went
+      through the circular (or "every way balanced") huge shield of Hector, and
+      through his corslet and <i>chiton</i>, but Hector had doubled himself up
+      laterally ({Greek: eklinthae}, VII. 254), and was not wounded. The next
+      stroke of Aias pierced his shield, and wounded his neck; Hector replied
+      with a boulder that lighted on the centre of the shield of Aias, "on the
+      boss," whether that means a mere ornament or knob, or whether it was the
+      genuine boss&mdash;which is disputed. Aias broke in the shield of Hector
+      with another stone; and the gentle and joyous passage of arms was stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shield of Agamemnon was of the kind that "cover all the body of a
+      man," and was "every way equal," or "circular." It was plated with twelve
+      circles of bronze, and had twenty {Greek: omphaloi}, or ornamental knobs
+      of tin, and the centre was of black cyanus (XI. 31-34). There was also a
+      head of the Gorgon, with Fear and Panic. The description is not
+      intelligible, and I do not discuss it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man could be stabbed in the middle of the belly, "under his shield" (XI.
+      424-425), not an easy thing to do, if shields covered the whole body to
+      the feet; but, when a hero was leaping from his chariot (as in this case),
+      no doubt a spear could be pushed up under the shield. The ancient Irish
+      romances tell of a <i>gae bulg</i>, a spear held in the warrior's toes,
+      and jerked up under the shield of his enemy! Shields could be held up on
+      high, in an attack on a wall garrisoned by archers (XII. 139), the great
+      Norman shield, also, could be thus lifted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Locrians, light armed infantry, had no shields, nor bronze helmets,
+      nor spears, but slings and bows (XIII. 714). Mr. Leaf suspects that this
+      is a piece of "false archaism," but we do not think that early poets in an
+      uncritical age are ever archaeologists, good or bad. The poet is aware
+      that some men have larger, some smaller shields, just as some have longer
+      and some shorter spears (XIV. 370-377); but this does not prove that the
+      shields were of different types. A tall man might inherit the shield of a
+      short father, or <i>versa</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man in turning to fly might trip on the rim of his shield, which proves
+      how large it was: "it reached to his feet." This accident of tripping
+      occurred to Periphetes of Mycenae, but it might have happened to Hector,
+      whose shield reached from neck to ankles. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, XV.
+      645-646.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Achilles must have been a large man, for he knew nobody whose armour would
+      fit him when he lost his own (though his armour fitted Patroclus), he
+      could, however, make shift with the tower-like shield of Aias, he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration 1: "THE VASE OF ARISTONOTHOS"}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evidence of the Iliad, then, is mainly to the effect that the heroes
+      carried huge shields, suspended by belts, covering the body and legs. If
+      Homer means, by the epithets already cited, "of good circle" and "every
+      way equal," that some shields of these vast dimensions were circular, we
+      have one example in early Greek art which corroborates his description.
+      This is "the vase of Aristonothos," signed by that painter, and supposed
+      to be of the seventh century (Fig. 1). On one side, the companions of
+      Odysseus are boring out the eye of the Cyclops; on the other, a galley is
+      being rowed to the attack of a ship. On the raised deck of the galley
+      stand three warriors, helmeted and bearing spears. The artist has
+      represented their shields as covering their right sides, probably for the
+      purpose of showing their devices or blazons. <i>Their</i> shields are
+      small round bucklers. On the ship are three warriors whose shields, though
+      circular, <i>cover THE BODY from CHIN TO ANKLES</i>, as in Homer. One
+      shield bears a bull's head; the next has three crosses; the third blazon
+      is a crab. {Footnote: Mon. <i>dell</i>. Inst., is. pl. 4.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such personal armorial bearings are never mentioned by Homer. It is not
+      usually safe to argue, from his silence, that he is ignorant of anything.
+      He never mentions seals or signet rings, yet they cannot but have been
+      familiar to his time. Odysseus does not seal the chest with the Phaeacian
+      presents; he ties it up with a cunning knot; there are no rings named
+      among the things wrought by Hephaestus, nor among the offerings of the
+      Wooers of Penelope. {Footnote: Helbig citing Odyssey, VIII. 445-448; <i>Iliad</i>,
+      XVIII. 401; Odyssey, xviii. 292-301.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, if we are to admit that Homer knew not rings and seals, which lasted
+      to the latest Mycenaean times, through the Dipylon age, to the very late
+      AEginetan treasure (800 B.C.) in the British Museum, and appear again in
+      the earliest dawn of the classical age and in a Cyclic poem, it is plain
+      that all the expansionists lived in one, and that a most peculiar <i>ringless</i>
+      age. This view suits our argument to a wish, but it is not credible that
+      rings and seals and engraved stones, so very common in Mycenaean and later
+      times, should have vanished wholly in the Homeric time. The poet never
+      mentions them, just as Shakespeare never mentions a thing so familiar to
+      him as tobacco. How often are finger rings mentioned in the whole mass of
+      Attic tragic poetry? We remember no example, and instances are certainly
+      rare: Liddell and Scott give none. Yet the tragedians were, of course,
+      familiar with rings and seals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Manifestly, we cannot say that Homer knew no seals, because he mentions
+      none; but armorial blazons on shields could be ignored by no poet of war,
+      if they existed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, the shields of the warriors on the vase, being circular and
+      covering body and legs, answer most closely to Homer's descriptions.
+      Helbig is reduced to suggest, first, that these shields are worn by men
+      aboard ship, as if warriors had one sort of shield when aboard ship and
+      another when fighting on land, and as if the men in the other vessel were
+      not equally engaged in a sea fight. No evidence in favour of such
+      difference of practice, by sea and land, is offered. Again, Helbig does
+      not trust the artist, in this case, though the artist is usually trusted
+      to draw what he sees; and why should he give the men in the other ship or
+      boat small bucklers, genuine, while bedecking the warriors in the adverse
+      vessel with large, purely imaginary shields? {Footnote: Helbig, <i>Das
+      Homerische Epos</i>, ii. pp. 313-314.} It is not in the least "probable,"
+      as Helbig suggests, that the artist is shirking the trouble of drawing the
+      figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reichel supposes that round bucklers were novelties when the vase was
+      painted (seventh century), and that the artist did not understand how to
+      depict them. {Footnote: <i>Homerische Waffen</i>, p. 47.} But he depicted
+      them very well as regards the men in the galley, save that, for obvious
+      aesthetic reasons, he chose to assume that the men in the galley were
+      left-handed and wore their shields on their right arms, his desire being
+      to display the blazons of both parties. {Footnote: See the same
+      arrangement in a Dipylon vase. Baumeister, <i>Denkmaler</i>, iii. p.
+      1945.} We thus see, if the artist may be trusted, that shields, which both
+      "reached to the feet" and were circular, existed in his time (the seventh
+      century), so that possibly they may have existed in Homer's time and
+      survived into the age of small bucklers. Tyrtaeus (late seventh century),
+      as Helbig remarks, speaks of "a <i>wide</i> shield, covering thighs,
+      shins, breast, and shoulders." {Footnote: <i>Tyrtaeus</i>, xi. 23; Helbig,
+      <i>Das Homerische Epos</i>, ii. p. 315, Note 2.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing can be more like the large shields of the vase of Aristonothos.
+      Thus the huge circular shield seems to have been a practicable shield in
+      actual use. If so, when Homer spoke of large circular shields he may have
+      meant large circular shields. On the Dodwell pyxis of 650 to 620 B.C., a
+      man wears an oval shield, covering him from the base of the neck to the
+      ankles. He wears it on his left arm. {Footnote: Walters, <i>Ancient
+      Pottery</i>, p. 316.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of shields certainly small and light, worn by the chiefs, there is not a
+      notice in the <i>Iliad</i>, unless there be a hint to that effect in the
+      accounts of heroes running, walking considerable distances, and "stepping
+      lightly" under shields, supposed, by the critics, to be of crushing
+      weight. In such passages the poet may be carried away by his own <i>verve</i>,
+      or the heroes of ancient times may be deemed capable of exertions beyond
+      those of the poet's contemporaries, as he often tells us that, in fact,
+      the old heroes were. A poet is not a scientific military writer; and in
+      the epic poetry of all other early races very gross exaggeration is
+      permitted, as in the {blank space} the old Celtic romances, and, of
+      course, the huge epics of India. In Homer "the skill of the poet makes
+      things impossible convincing," Aristotle says; and it is a critical error
+      to insist on taking Homer absolutely and always <i>au pied de la lettre</i>.
+      He seems, undeniably, to have large body-covering shields present to his
+      mind as in common use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Small shields of the Greek historic period are "unknown to Homer," Mr.
+      Leaf says, "with a very few curious exceptions," {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      vol. i. p. 575.} detected by Reichel in Book X. 15 {Footnote: <i>Ibid,</i>
+      vol. i. p. 569, fig. 2.}, where Diomede's men sleep with their heads
+      resting on their shields, whereas a big-bellied Mycenaean shield rises, he
+      says, too high for a pillow. But some Mycenzean shields were perfectly
+      flat; while, again, nothing could be more comfortable, as a head-rest,
+      than the hollow between the upper and lower bulges of the Mycenzean huge
+      shield. The Zulu wooden head-rest is of the same character. Thus this
+      passage in Book X. does not prove that small circular shields were known
+      to Homer, nor does X. 5 13. 526-530, an obscure text in which it is
+      uncertain whether Diomede and Odysseus ride or drive the horses of Rhesus.
+      They <i>could</i> ride, as every one must see, even though equipped with
+      great body-covering shields. True, the shielded hero could neither put his
+      shield at his back nor in front of him when he rode; but he could hang it
+      sidewise, when it would cover his left side, as in the early Middle Ages
+      (1060-1160 A.D.).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The taking of the shield from a man's shoulders (XI. 374) does not prove
+      the shield to be small; the shield hung by the belt (<i>telamon</i>) from
+      the shoulder. {Footnote: On the other side, see Reichel, <i>Homerische
+      Waffen</i>, pp. 40-44. Wien, 1901. We have replied to his arguments
+      above.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far we have the results that Homer seems most familiar with vast
+      body-covering shields; that such shields were suspended by a baldric, not
+      worn on the left arm; that they were made of layers of hide, plated with
+      bronze, and that such a shield as Aias wore must have been tall, doubtless
+      oblong, "like a tower," possibly it was semi-cylindrical. Whether the
+      epithets denoting roundness refer to circular shields or to the double <i>targe</i>,
+      g-shaped, of Mycenaean times is uncertain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We thus come to a puzzle of unusual magnitude. If Homer does not know
+      small circular shields, but refers always to huge shields, whereas, from
+      the eighth century B.C. onwards, such shields were not in use
+      (disregarding Tyrtaeus, and the vase of Aristonothos on which they appear
+      conspicuously, and the Dodwell pyxis), where are we? Either we have a
+      harmonious picture of war from a very ancient date of large shields, or
+      late poets did not introduce the light round buckler of their own period.
+      Meanwhile they are accused of introducing the bronze corslets and other
+      defensive armour of their own period. Defensive armour was unknown, we are
+      told, in the Mycenaean prime, which, if true, does not affect the
+      question. Homer did not live in or describe the Mycenaean prime, with its
+      stone arrow-tips. Why did the late poets act so inconsistently? Why were
+      they ignorant of small circular shields, which they saw every day? Or why,
+      if they knew them, did they not introduce them in the poems, which, we are
+      told, they were filling with non-Mycenaean greaves and corslets?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is one of the dilemmas which constantly arise to confront the
+      advocates of the theory that the <i>Iliad</i> is a patchwork of many
+      generations. "Late" poets, if really late, certainly in every-day life
+      knew small parrying bucklers worn on the left arm, and huge body-covering
+      shields perhaps they rarely saw in use. They also knew, and the original
+      poet, we are told, did not know bronze corslets and greaves. The theory of
+      critics is that late poets introduced the bronze corslets and greaves with
+      which they were familiar into the poems, but scrupulously abstained from
+      alluding to the equally familiar small shields. Why are they so recklessly
+      anachronistic and "up-to-date" with the corslets and greaves, and so
+      staunchly but inconsistently conservative about keeping the huge shields?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf explains thus: "The groundwork of the Epos is Mycenaean, in the
+      arrangement of the house, in the prevalence of copper" (as compared with
+      iron), "and, as Reichel has shown, in armour. Yet in many points the poems
+      are certainly later than the prime, at least, of the Mycenaean age"&mdash;which
+      we are the last to deny. "Is it that the poets are deliberately trying to
+      present the conditions of an age anterior to their own? or are they
+      depicting the circumstances by which they are surrounded&mdash;circumstances
+      which slowly change during the period of the development of the Epos?
+      Cauer decides for the latter alternative, <i>the only one which is really
+      conceivable</i> {Footnote: Then how is the alleged archaeology of the poet
+      of Book X. conceivable?} in an age whose views are in many ways so naïve
+      as the poems themselves prove them to have been." {Footnote: <i>Classical
+      Review, ix. pp. 463, 464.</i>}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here we entirely side with Mr. Leaf. No poet, no painter, no sculptor, in
+      a naïf, uncritical age, ever represents in art anything but what he sees
+      daily in costume, customs, weapons, armour, and ways of life. Mr. Leaf,
+      however, on the other hand, occasionally chides pieces of deliberate
+      archaeological pedantry in the poets, in spite of his opinion that they
+      are always "depicting the circumstances by which they are surrounded." But
+      as huge man-covering shields are <i>not</i> among the circumstances by
+      which the supposed late poets were surrounded, why do they depict them?
+      Here Mr. Leaf corrects himself, and his argument departs from the
+      statement that only one theory is "conceivable," namely, that the poets
+      depict their own surroundings, and we are introduced to a new proposition.
+      "Or rather we must recognise everywhere a compromise between two opposing
+      principles: the singer, on the one hand, has to be conservatively
+      tenacious of the old material which serves as the substance of his song;
+      on the other hand, he has to be vivid and actual in the contributions
+      which he himself makes to the common stock." {Footnote: <i>Ibid.</i>, ix.
+      pp. 463, 464.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conduct of such singers is so weirdly inconsistent as not to be easily
+      credible. But probably they went further, for "it is possible that the
+      allusions" to the corslet "may have been introduced in the course of
+      successive modernisation such as the oldest parts of the <i>Iliad</i> seem
+      in many cases to have passed through. But, in fact, <i>Iliad</i>, XI. 234
+      is the only mention of a corslet in any of the oldest strata, so far as we
+      can distinguish them, and here Reichel translates <i>thorex</i> 'shield.'"
+      {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 578.} Mr. Leaf's statement we
+      understand to mean that, when the singer or reciter was delivering an
+      ANCIENT lay he did not introduce any of the military gear&mdash;light
+      round bucklers, greaves, and corslets&mdash;with which his audience were
+      familiar. But when the singer delivers a new lay, which he himself has
+      added to "the kernel," then he is "vivid and actual," and speaks of
+      greaves and corslets, though he still cleaves in his new lay to the
+      obsolete chariot, the enormous shield, and, in an age of iron, to weapons
+      of bronze. He is a sadly inconsistent new poet!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, sixteen allusions to the corslet "can be cut out," as probably
+      "some or all these are additions to the text made at a time when it seemed
+      absurd to think of a man in full armour without a corslet." {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>,
+      vol. i. p. 577.} Thus the reciters, after all, did not spare "the old
+      material" in the matter of corslets. The late singers have thus been
+      "conservatively tenacious" in clinging to chariots, weapons of bronze, and
+      obsolete enormous shields, while they have also been "vivid and actual"
+      and "up to date" in the way of introducing everywhere bronze corslets,
+      greaves, and other armour unknown, by the theory, in "the old material
+      which is the substance of their song." By the way, they have not even
+      spared the shield of the old material, for it was of leather or wood (we
+      have no trace of metal plating on the old Mycenaean shields), and the
+      singer, while retaining the size of it, has added a plating of bronze,
+      which we have every reason to suppose that Mycenaean shields of the prime
+      did not present to the stone-headed arrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This theory of singers, who are at once "conservatively tenacious" of the
+      old and impudently radical in pushing in the new, appears to us to be
+      logically untenable. We have, in Chapter I, observed the same
+      inconsistency in Helbig, and shall have occasion to remark again on its
+      presence in the work of that great archaeologist. The inconsistency is
+      inseparable from theories of expansion through several centuries. "Many a
+      method," says Mr. Leaf, "has been proposed which, up to a certain point,
+      seemed irresistible, but there has always been a residuum which returned
+      to plague the inventor." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. ii. p. X.} This is
+      very true, and our explanation is that no method which starts from the
+      hypothesis that the poems are the product of several centuries will work.
+      The "residuum" is the element which cannot be fitted into any such
+      hypothesis. But try the hypothesis that the poems are the product of a
+      single age, and all is harmonious. There is no baffling "residuum." The
+      poet describes the details of a definite age, not that of the Mycenaean
+      bloom, not that of 900-600 A.D.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We cannot, then, suppose that many generations of irresponsible reciters
+      at fairs and public festivals conservatively adhered to the huge size of
+      the shield, while altering its material; and also that the same men, for
+      the sake of being "actual" and up to date, dragged bronze corslets and
+      greaves not only into new lays, but into passages of lays by old poets who
+      had never heard of such things. Consequently, the poetic descriptions of
+      arms and armour must be explained on some other theory. If the poet,
+      again, as others suppose&mdash;Mr. Ridgeway for one&mdash;knew such
+      bronze-covered circular shields as are common in central and western
+      Europe of the Bronze Age, why did he sometimes represent them as extending
+      from neck to ankles, whereas the known bronze circular shields are not of
+      more than 2 feet 2 inches to 2 feet 6 inches in diameter? {Footnote:
+      Ridgeway, <i>Early Age of Greece, vol. i pp. 453, 471.</i>} Such a shield,
+      without the wood or leather, weighed 5 lbs. 2 ozs., {Footnote: <i>Ibid.,
+      vol.</i> i. p. 462.} and a strong man might walk or run under it. Homer's
+      shields would be twice as heavy, at least, though, even then, not too
+      heavy for a Hector, or an Aias, or Achilles. I do not see that the round
+      bronze shields of Limerick, Yetholm, Beith, Lincolnshire, and Tarquinii,
+      cited by Mr. Ridgeway, answer to Homer's descriptions of huge shields.
+      They are too small. But it is perfectly possible, or rather highly
+      probable, that in the poet's day shields of various sizes and patterns
+      coexisted.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SHIELDS
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Turning to archaeological evidence, we find no remains in the graves of
+      the Mycenaean prime of the bronze which covered the ox-hides of Homeric
+      shields, though we do find gold ornaments supposed to have been attached
+      to shields. There is no evidence that the Mycenaean shield was plated with
+      bronze. But if we judge from their shape, as represented in works of
+      Mycenaean art, some of the Mycenaean shields were not of wood, but of
+      hide. In works of art, such as engraved rings and a bronze dagger (Fig. 2)
+      with pictures inlaid in other metals, the shield, covering the whole body,
+      is of the form of a bellying sail, or a huge umbrella "up," and pinched at
+      both sides near the centre: or is like a door, or a section of a cylinder;
+      only one sort of shield resembles a big-bellied figure of 8. Ivory models
+      of shields indicate the same figure. {Footnote: Schuchardt, <i>Schliemann's
+      Excavations</i>, p. 192.} A gold necklet found at Enkomi, in Cyprus,
+      consists of a line of models of this Mycenaean shield. {Footnote: <i>Excavations
+      in Cyprus</i>, pl. vii. fig. 604. A. S. Murray, 1900.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: FIG. 2. DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: FIG. 3.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There also exists a set of small Mycenaean relics called Palladia, found
+      at Mycenae, Spata and in the earliest strata of the Acropolis at Athens.
+      They resemble "two circles joined together so as to intersect one another
+      slightly," or "a long oval pinched in at the middle." They vary in size
+      from six inches to half an inch, and are of ivory, glazed ware, or glass.
+      Several such shields are engraved on Mycenaean gems; one, in gold, is
+      attached to a silver vase. The ornamentation shown on them occurs, too, on
+      Mycenaean shields in works of art; in short, these little objects are
+      representations in miniature of the big double-bellied Mycenaean shield.
+      Mr. Ernest Gardner concludes that these objects are the "schematised"
+      reductions of an armed human figure, only the shield which covered the
+      whole body is left. They are talismans symbolising an armed divinity,
+      Pallas or another. A Dipylon vase (Fig. 3) shows a man with a shield,
+      possibly evolved out of this kind, much scooped out at the waist, and
+      reaching from neck to knees. The shield covers his side, not his back or
+      front. {Footnote: <i>Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>, vol. xiii. pp.
+      21-24.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: FIG. 4.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One may guess that the original pinch at the waist of the Mycenaean shield
+      was evolved later into the two deep scoops to enable the warrior to use
+      his arms more freely, while the shield, hanging from his neck by a belt,
+      covered the front of his body. Fig. 4 shows shields of 1060-1160 A.D.
+      equally designed to cover body and legs. Men wore shields, if we believe
+      the artists of Mycenae, when lion-hunting, a sport in which speed of foot
+      is desirable; so they cannot have been very weighty. The shield then was
+      hung over one side, and running was not so very difficult as if it hung
+      over back or front (<i>cf.</i> Fig. 5). The shields sometimes reach only
+      from the shoulders to the calf of the leg. {Footnote: Reichel, p. 3, fig.
+      5, Grave III. at Mycenae.} The wearer of the largest kind could only be
+      got at by a sword-stab over the rim into the throat {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>.,
+      p. 2, fig. 2.} (Fig. 5). Some shields of this shape were quite small, if
+      an engraved rock-crystal is evidence; here the shield is not half so high
+      as an adjacent goat, but it may be a mere decoration to fill the field of
+      the gem. {Footnote: Reichel, p. 3, fig. 7.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: FIG. 5. RINGS: SWORDS AND SHIELDS}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other shields, covering the body from neck to feet, were sections of
+      cylinders; several of these are represented on engraved Mycenaean ring
+      stones or on the gold; the wearer was protected in front and flank
+      {Footnote: <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 4, fig II, 12; p. I, fig I.} (Fig. 5).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a "maze of buildings" outside the precincts of the graves of Mycenae,
+      Dr. Schliemann found fragments of vases much less ancient than the
+      contents of the sepulchres. There was a large amphora, the "Warrior Vase"
+      (Fig. 6). The men wear apparently a close-fitting coat of mail over a
+      chiton, which reaches with its fringes half down the thigh. The shield is
+      circular, with a half-moon cut out at the bottom. The art is infantile.
+      Other warriors carry long oval shields reaching, at least, from neck to
+      shin. {Footnote: Schuchardt, <i>Schliemann's</i> Excavations, pp.
+      279-285.} They wear round leather caps, their enemies have helmets. On a
+      Mycenaean painted <i>stele</i>, apparently of the same relatively late
+      period, the costume is similar, and the shield&mdash;oval&mdash;reaches
+      from neck to knee. {Footnote: Ridgeway, vol. i. p. 314.} The Homeric
+      shields do not answer to the smaller of these late and ugly
+      representations, while, in their bronze plating, Homeric shields seem to
+      differ from the leather shields of the Mycenaean prime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, at Enkomi, near Salamis, in Cyprus, an ivory carving (in the
+      British Museum) shows a fighting man whose perfectly circular shield
+      reaches from neck to knee; this is one of several figures in which Mr.
+      Arthur Evans finds "a most valuable illustration of the typical Homeric
+      armour." {Footnote: <i>Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxx.
+      pp. 209-214, figs. 5, 6, 9.</i>} The shield, however, is not so huge as
+      those of Aias, Hector, and Periphetes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I can only conclude that Homer describes intermediate types of shield, as
+      large as the Mycenaean but plated with bronze, for a reason to be given
+      later. This kind of shield, the kind known to Homer, was not the invention
+      of late poets living in an age of circular bucklers, worn on the left arm,
+      and these supposed late poets never introduce into the epics such
+      bucklers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What manner of military needs prompted the invention of the great
+      Mycenaean shields which, by Homer's time, were differentiated by the
+      addition of metal plating?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: FIG. 6. FRAGMENTS OF WARRIOR VASE}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The process of evolution of the huge Mycenaean shields, and of the Homeric
+      shields covering the body from chin to ankles, can easily be traced. The
+      nature of the attack expected may be inferred from the nature of the
+      defence employed. Body-covering shields were, obviously, at first, <i>defences
+      against showers of arrows</i> tipped with stone. "In the earlier Mycenaean
+      times the arrow-head of obsidian alone appears," as in Mycenaean Grave IV.
+      In the upper strata of Mycenae and in the later tombs the arrow-head is
+      usually of bronze. {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 206.} No man going
+      into battle naked, without body armour, like the Mycenaeans (if they had
+      none), could protect himself with a small shield, or even with a round
+      buckler of twenty-six inches in diameter, against the rain of shafts. In a
+      fight, on the other hand, where man singled out man, and spears were the
+      missiles, and when the warriors had body armour, or even when they had
+      not, a small shield sufficed; as we see among the spear-throwing Zulus and
+      the spear-throwing aborigines of Australia (unacquainted with bows and
+      arrows), who mainly use shields scarcely broader than a bat. On the other
+      hand, the archers of the Algonquins in their wars with the Iroquois, about
+      1610, used clubs and tomahawks but no spears, no missiles but arrows, and
+      their leather shield was precisely the {Greek: amphibrotae aspis} of
+      Homer, "covering the whole of a man." It is curious to see, in
+      contemporary drawings (1620), Mycenaean shields on Red Indian shoulders!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Champlain's sketches of fights between French and Algonquins against
+      Iroquois (1610-1620), we see the Algonquins outside the Iroquois stockade,
+      which is defended by archers, sheltering under huge shields shaped like
+      the Mycenaean "tower" shield, though less cylindrical; in fact, more like
+      the shield of the fallen hunter depicted on the dagger of Mycenae. These
+      Algonquin shields partially cover the sides as well as the front of the
+      warrior, who stoops behind them, resting the lower rim of the shield on
+      the ground. The shields are oblong and rounded at the top, much like that
+      of Achilles {Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii p. 605} in Mr. Leaf's restoration?
+      The sides curve inward. Another shield, oval in shape and flat, appears to
+      have been suspended from the neck, and covers an Iroquois brave from chin
+      to feet. The Red Indian shields, like those of Mycenae, were made of
+      leather; usually of buffalo hide, {Footnote: <i>Les Voyages de Sr. de
+      Champlain</i>, Paris, 1620, f. 22: "rondache de cuir bouili, qui est d'un
+      animal, comme le boufle."} good against stone-tipped arrows. The braves
+      are naked, like the unshielded archers on the Mycenaean silver vase
+      fragment representing a siege (Fig. 7). The description of the Algonquin
+      shields by Champlain, when compared with his drawings, suggests that we
+      cannot always take artistic representations as exact. In his designs only
+      a few Algonquins and one Iroquois carry the huge shields; the unshielded
+      men are stark naked, as on the Mycenaean silver vase. But in his text
+      Champlain says that the Iroquois, like the Algonquins, "carried
+      arrow-proof shields" and "a sort of armour woven of cotton thread"&mdash;Homer's
+      {Greek: linothoraex} (<i>Iliad</i>, II. 259, 850). These facts appear in
+      only one of Champlain's drawings {Footnote: Dix's <i>Champlain</i>, p.
+      113. Appleton, New York, 1903. Laverdière's <i>Champlain</i>, vol. iv.,
+      plate opposite p. 85 (1870).} (Fig. 8).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These Iroquois and Algonquin shields are the armour of men exposed, not to
+      spears, but to a hail of flint-tipped arrows. As spears came in for
+      missiles in Greek warfare, arrows did not wholly go out, but the noble
+      warriors preferred spear and sword. {Footnote: Cf. Archilochus, 3.} Mr.
+      Ridgeway erroneously says that "no Achaean warrior employs the bow for
+      war." {Footnote: <i>Early Age of Greece</i>, i. 301.} Teucer, frequently,
+      and Meriones use the bow; like Pandarus and Paris, on the Trojan side,
+      they resort to bow or spear, as occasion serves. Odysseus, in <i>Iliad</i>,
+      Book X., is armed with the bow and arrows of Meriones when acting as a
+      spy; in the <i>Odyssey</i> his skill as an archer is notorious, but he
+      would not pretend to equal famous bowmen of an older generation, such as
+      Heracles and Eurytus of OEchalia, whose bow he possessed but did not take
+      to Troy. Philoctetes is his master in archery. {Footnote: Odyssey, VIII.
+      219-222.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: FIG. 7. FRAGMENT OF SIEGE VASE}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bow, however, was little esteemed by Greek warriors who desired to
+      come to handstrokes, just as it was despised, to their frequent ruin, by
+      the Scots in the old wars with England. Dupplin, Falkirk, Halidon Hill and
+      many another field proved the error.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was much need in Homeric warfare for protection against heavy
+      showers of arrows. Mr. Monro is hardly correct when he says that, in
+      Homer, "we do not hear of <i>BODIES</i> of archers, of arrows darkening
+      the air, as in descriptions of oriental warfare." {Footnote: <i>Ibid.</i>,
+      vol. ii. 305.} These precise phrases are not used by Homer; but,
+      nevertheless, arrows are flying thick in his battle pieces. The effects
+      are not often noticed, because, in Homer, helmet, shield, corslet, <i>zoster</i>,
+      and greaves, as a rule prevent the shafts from harming the well-born,
+      well-armed chiefs; the nameless host, however, fall frequently. When
+      Hector came forward for a parley (<i>Iliad</i>, III. 79), the Achaens
+      "kept shooting at him with arrows," which he took unconcernedly. Teucer
+      shoots nine men in <i>Iliad</i>, VIII. 297-304. In XI. <i>85</i> the
+      shafts ({Greek: belea}) showered and the common soldiers fell&mdash;{misprint}
+      being arrows as well as thrown spears. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, IV. 465;
+      XVI. 668, 678.} Agamemnon and Achilles are as likely, they say, to be hit
+      by arrow as by spear (XI. 191; XXI. 13). Machaon is wounded by an arrow.
+      Patroclus meets Eurypylus limping, with an arrow in his thigh&mdash;archer
+      unknown. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, XI. 809, 810.} Meriones, though an
+      Achaean paladin, sends a bronze-headed arrow through the body of Harpalion
+      (XIII. <i>650</i>). The light-armed Locrians are all bowmen and slingers
+      (XIII. 716). Acamas taunts the Argives as "bowmen" (XIV. 479). "The
+      war-cry rose on both sides, and the arrows leaped from the bowstrings"
+      (XV. 313). Manifestly the arrows are always on the wing, hence the need
+      for the huge Homeric and Mycenaean shields. Therefore, as the Achaeans in
+      Homer wore but flimsy corslets (this we are going to prove), the great
+      body-covering shield of the Mycenaean prime did not go out of vogue in
+      Homer's time, when bronze had superseded stone arrow-heads, but was
+      strengthened by bronze plating over the leather. In a later age the bow
+      was more and more neglected in Greek warfare, and consequently large
+      shields went out, after the close of the Mycenaean age, and round parrying
+      bucklers came into use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Greeks appear never to have been great archers, for some vases show
+      even the old heroes employing the "primary release," the arrow nock is
+      held between the thumb and forefinger&mdash;an ineffectual release.
+      {Footnote: C. J. Longman, <i>Archery</i>. Badminton Series.} The archers
+      in early Greek art often stoop or kneel, unlike the erect archers of old
+      England; the bow is usually small&mdash;a child's weapon; the string is
+      often drawn only to the breast, as by Pandarus in the <i>Iliad</i> (IV. i
+      23). By 730 B.C. the release with three fingers, our western release, had
+      become known. {Footnote: Leaf <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 585.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: FIG. 8.&mdash;ALGONQUIN CORSLET. From Laverdiere, <i>Oeuvres
+      de Champlain</i>, vol. iv. fol. 4. Quebec, 1870.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The course of evolution seems to be: (1) the Mycenaean prime of much
+      archery, no body armour (?); huge leather "man-covering" shields are used,
+      like those of the Algonquins; (2) the same shields strengthened with
+      metal, light body armour-thin corslets&mdash;and archery is frequent, but
+      somewhat despised (the Homeric age); (3) the parrying shield of the latest
+      Mycenaean age (infantry with body armour); (4) the Ionian hoplites, with
+      body armour and small circular bucklers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It appears, then, that the monstrous Mycenaean shield is a survival of an
+      age when bows and arrows played the same great part as they did in the
+      wars of the Algonquins and Iroquois. The celebrated picture of a siege on
+      a silver vase, of which fragments were found in Grave IV., shows archers
+      skirmishing; there is an archer in the lion hunt on the dagger blade;
+      thirty-five obsidian arrow-heads were discovered in Grave IV., while "in
+      the upper strata of Mycenae and in the later tombs the arrow-head is
+      usually of bronze, though instances of obsidian still occur." In 1895 Dr.
+      Tsountas found twenty arrow-heads of bronze, ten in each bundle, in a
+      Mycenaean chamber tomb. Messrs. Tsountas and Manatt say, "In the Acropolis
+      graves at Mycenae... the spear-heads were but few... arrow-heads, on the
+      contrary, are comparatively abundant." They infer that "picked men used
+      shield and spear; the rank and file doubtless fought simply with bow and
+      sling." {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, zog. {sic}}. The great Mycenaean
+      shield was obviously evolved as a defence against arrows and sling-stones
+      flying too freely to be parried with a small buckler. What other purpose
+      could it have served? But other defensive armour was needed, and was
+      evolved, by Homer's men, as also, we shall see, by the Algonquins and
+      Iroquois. The Algonquins and Iroquois thus prove that men who thought
+      their huge shields very efficient, yet felt the desirableness of the
+      protection afforded by corslets, for they wore, in addition to their
+      shields, such corslets as they were able to manufacture, made of cotton,
+      and corresponding to the Homeric {Greek: linothoraex}. {Footnote: In the
+      interior of some shields, perhaps of all, were two {Greek: kanones} (VIII
+      193; XIII. 407). These have been understood as meaning a brace through
+      which the left arm went, and another brace which the left hand grasped.
+      Herodotus says that the Carians first used shield grips, and that
+      previously shields were suspended by belts from the neck and left shoulder
+      (Herodotus, i. 171). It would be interesting to know how he learned these
+      facts-perhaps from Homer; but certainly the Homeric shield is often
+      described as suspended by a belt. Mr. Leaf used to explain the {Greek:
+      kanones} (XIII. 407) as "serving to attach the two ends of the baldrick to
+      the shield" (<i>Hellenic</i> Society's <i>Journal</i>, iv. 291), as does
+      Mr. Ridgeway. But now he thinks that they were two pieces of wood,
+      crossing each other, and making the framework on which the leather of the
+      shield was stretched. The hero could grasp the cross-bar, at the centre of
+      gravity, in his left hand, rest the lower rim of the shield on the ground,
+      and crouch behind it (XI. 593; XIII 157). In neither passage cited is
+      anything said about resting the lower rim "on the ground," and in the
+      second passage the warrior is actually advancing. In this attitude,
+      however-grounding the lower rim of the great body-covering shield, and
+      crouching behind it&mdash;we see Algonquin warriors of about 1610 in
+      Champlain's drawings of Red Indian warfare.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf, indeed, when reviewing Reichel, says that "the use of the
+      Mycenaean shield is inconsistent with that of the metal breastplate; 'the
+      shield' covers the wearer in a way which makes a breastplate an useless
+      encumbrance; or rather, it is ignorance of the breastplate which alone can
+      explain the use of such frightfully cumbrous gear as the huge shield."
+      {Footnote: <i>Classical Review</i>, ix. p. 55. 1895.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Algonquins and Iroquois wore such breastplates as they could
+      manufacture, though they also used shields of great size, suspended, in
+      Mycenaean fashion, from the neck and shoulder by a <i>telamon</i> or belt.
+      The knights of the eleventh century A.D., in addition to very large
+      shields, wore ponderous hauberks or byrnies, as we shall prove presently.
+      As this combination of great shield with corslet was common and natural,
+      we cannot agree with Mr. Leaf when he says, "it follows that the Homeric
+      warriors wore no metal breastplate, and that all the passages where the
+      {Greek: thoraes} is mentioned are either later interpolations or refer to
+      some other sort of armour," which, <i>ex hypothesi</i>, would itself be
+      superfluous, given the body-covering shield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shields never make corslets superfluous when men can manufacture corslets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The facts speak for themselves: the largest shields are not exclusive, so
+      to speak, of corslets; the Homeric warriors used both, just as did Red
+      Indians and the mediaeval chivalry of Europe. The use of the aspis in
+      Homer, therefore, throws no suspicion on the concomitant use of the
+      corslet. The really surprising fact would be if late poets, who knew only
+      small round bucklers, never introduced them into the poems, but always
+      spoke of enormous shields, while they at the same time did introduce
+      corslets, unknown to the early poems which they continued. Clearly
+      Reichel's theory is ill inspired and inconsistent. This becomes plain as
+      soon as we trace the evolution of shields and corslets in ages when the
+      bow played a great part in war. The Homeric bronze-plated shield and
+      bronze corslet are defences of a given moment in military evolution; they
+      are improvements on the large leather shield of Mycenaean art, but, as the
+      arrows still fly in clouds, the time for the small parrying buckler has
+      not yet come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the age of the Dipylon vases with human figures, the shield had been
+      developed into forms unknown to Homer. In Fig. 3 (p. 131) we see one
+      warrior with a fantastic shield, slim at the waist, with horns, as it
+      were, above and below; the greater part of the shield is expended
+      uselessly, covering nothing in particular. In form this targe seems to be
+      a burlesque parody of the figure of a Mycenaean shield. The next man has a
+      short oblong shield, rather broad for its length&mdash;perhaps a reduction
+      of the Mycenaean door-shaped shield. The third warrior has a round
+      buckler. All these shields are manifestly post-Homeric; the first type is
+      the most common in the Dipylon art; the third survived in the
+      eighth-century buckler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      {Illustration: FIG. 9.-GOLD CORSLET}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE BREASTPLATE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      No "practicable" breastplates, hauberks, corslets, or any things of the
+      kind have so far been discovered in graves of the Mycenaean prime. A
+      corpse in Grave V. at Mycenae had, however, a golden breastplate, with
+      oval bosses representing the nipples and with prettily interlaced spirals
+      all over the remainder of the gold (Fig. 9). Another corpse had a plain
+      gold breastplate with the nipples indicated. {Footnote: Schuchardt, <i>Schliemann's</i>
+      Excavations, pp. 254-257, fig. 256.} These decorative corslets of gold
+      were probably funereal symbols of practicable breastplates of bronze, but
+      no such pieces of armour are worn by the fighting-men on the gems and
+      other works of art of Mycenae, and none are found in Mycenaean graves. But
+      does this prove anything? Leg-guards, broad metal bands clasping the leg
+      below the knee, are found in the Mycenaean shaft graves, but are never
+      represented in Mycenaean art. {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p.
+      575.} Meanwhile, bronze corslets are very frequently mentioned in the
+      "rarely alluded to," says Mr. Leaf, {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p.
+      576.} but this must be a slip of the pen. Connected with the breastplate
+      or <i>thorex</i> ({Greek: thoraex}) is the verb {Greek: thoraesso,
+      thoraessethai}, which means "to arm," or "equip" in general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Achaeans are constantly styled in the <i>ILIAD</i> and in the <i>ODYSSEY</i>
+      "<i>chalkochitones</i>," "with bronze chitons." epics have therefore
+      boldly argued that by "bronze chitons" the poet pleasantly alludes to
+      shields. But as the Mycenaeans seem scarcely to have worn any <i>CHITONS</i>
+      in battle, as far as we are aware from their art, and are not known to
+      have had any bronze shields, the argument evaporates, as Mr. Ridgeway has
+      pointed out. Nothing can be less like a <i>chiton</i> or smock, loose or
+      tight, than either the double-bellied huge shield, the tower-shaped
+      cylindrical shield, or the flat, doorlike shield, covering body and legs
+      in Mycenaean art. "The bronze <i>chiton</i>," says Helbig, "is only a
+      poetic phrase for the corslet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reichel and Mr. Leaf, however, think that "bronze chitoned" is probably "a
+      picturesque expression... and refers to the bronze-covered shield."
+      {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, i. 578.} The breastplate covered the upper
+      part of the <i>chiton</i>, and so might be called a "bronze <i>chiton</i>,"
+      above all, if it had been evolved, as corselets usually have been, out of
+      a real <i>chiton</i>, interwoven with small plates or rings of bronze. The
+      process of evolution might be from a padded linen <i>chiton</i> ({Greek:
+      linothooraes}) worn by Teucer, and on the Trojan side by Amphius (as by
+      nervous Protestants during Oates's "Popish Plot"), to a leathern <i>chiton</i>,
+      strengthened by rings, or studs, or scales of bronze, and thence to
+      plates. {Footnote: Ridgeway, <i>Early Age of Greece</i>, vol. i. pp. 309,
+      310.} Here, in this armoured <i>chiton</i>, would be an object that a poet
+      might readily call "a <i>chiton</i> of bronze." But that, if he lived in
+      the Mycenaean age, when, so far as art shows, <i>CHITONS</i> were not worn
+      at all, or very little, and scarcely ever in battle, and when we know
+      nothing of bronze-plating on shields, the poet should constantly call a
+      monstrous double-bellied leather shield, or any other Mycemean type of
+      shield, "a <i>bronze chiton</i>," seems almost unthinkable. "A leather
+      cloak" would be a better term for such shields, if cloaks were in fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to Mr. Myres (1899) the "stock line" in the <i>Iliad</i>, about
+      piercing a {Greek: poludaidalos thoraex} or corslet, was inserted "to
+      satisfy the practical criticisms of a corslet-wearing age," the age of the
+      later poets, the Age of Iron. But why did not such practical critics
+      object to the constant presence in the poems of bronze weapons, in their
+      age out of date, if they objected to the absence from the poems of the
+      corslets with which they were familiar? Mr. Myres supposes that the line
+      about the {Greek: poludaidalos} corslet was already old, but had merely
+      meant "many-glittering body clothing"&mdash;garments set with the golden
+      discs and other ornaments found in Mycemean graves. The bronze corslet, he
+      says, would not be "many glittering," but would reflect "a single star of
+      light." {Footnote: <i>Journal of Hellenic Studies.</i> 1899} Now, first,
+      even if the star were a single star, it would be as "many glittering" when
+      the warrior was in rapid and changeful motion as the star that danced when
+      Beatrix was born. Secondly, if the contemporary corslets of the Iron Age
+      were NOT "many glittering," practical corslet-wearing critics would ask
+      the poet, "why do you call corslets 'many glittering'?" Thirdly, {Greek:
+      poludaidalos} may surely be translated "a thing of much art," and Greek
+      corslets were incised with ornamental designs. Thus Messrs. Hogarth and
+      Bosanquet report "a very remarkable 'Mycemean' bronze breastplate" from
+      Crete, which "shows four female draped figures, the two central ones
+      holding a wreath over a bird, below which is a sacred tree. The two outer
+      figures are apparently dancing. It is probably a ritual scene, and may
+      help to elucidate the nature of early AEgean cults." {Footnote: <i>Journal
+      of Hellenic Studies, vol. xx</i>. p. 322. 1899.} Here, {Greek:
+      poludaidalos}&mdash;if that word means "artistically wrought." Helbig
+      thinks the Epics silent about the gold spangles on dresses. {Footnote:
+      Helbig, p. 71.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Myres applauds Reichel's theory that {blank space} first meant a man's
+      chest. If <i>thorex</i> means a man's breast, then <i>THOREX</i> in a
+      secondary sense, one thinks, would mean "breastplate," as waist of a woman
+      means, first, her waist; next, her blouse (American). But Mr. Myres and
+      Reichel say that the secondary sense of <i>THOREX</i> is not breastplate
+      but "body clothing," as if a man were all breast, or wore only a breast
+      covering, whereas Mycenaean art shows men wearing nothing on their
+      breasts, merely drawers or loin-cloths, which could not be called <i>THOREX</i>,
+      as they cover the antipodes of the breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The verb {Greek: thoraesestai}, the theory runs on, merely meant "to put
+      on body clothing," which Mycenaeans in works of art, if correctly
+      represented, do not usually put on; they fought naked or in bathing
+      drawers. Surely we might as well argue that a "waistcoat" might come to
+      mean "body clothing in general," as that a word for the male breast
+      became, first, a synonym for the covering of the male buttocks and for
+      apparel in general, and, next, for a bronze breastplate. These arguments
+      appear rather unconvincing, {Footnote: <i>Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>,
+      vol. xx. pp. 149, 150.} nor does Mycenaean art instruct us that men went
+      into battle dressed in body clothing which was thickly set with many
+      glittering gold ornaments, and was called "a many-glittering <i>thorex</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Further, if we follow Reichel and Mr. Leaf, the Mycenaeans wore <i>chitons</i>
+      and called them <i>chitons</i>. They also used bronze-plated shields,
+      though of this we have no evidence. Taking the bronze-plated (?) shield to
+      stand poetically for the <i>chiton</i>, the poet spoke of "<i>the
+      bronze-chitoned Achaeans</i>" But, if we follow Mr. Myres, the Mycenaeans
+      also applied the word <i>thorex</i> to body clothing at large, in place of
+      the word <i>chiton</i>; and when a warrior was transfixed by a spear, they
+      said that his "many-glittering, gold-studded <i>thorex</i>," that is, his
+      body clothing in general, was pierced. It does seem simpler to hold that
+      <i>chiton</i> meant <i>chiton</i>; that <i>thorex</i> meant, first,
+      "breast," then "breastplate," whether of linen, or plaited leather, or
+      bronze, and that to pierce a man through his {Greek: poludaidalos thoraex}
+      meant to pierce him through his handsome corslet. No mortal ever dreamt
+      that this was so till Reichel tried to make out that the original poet
+      describes no armour except the large Mycenaean shield and the <i>mitrê</i>,
+      and that all corslets in the poems were of much later introduction.
+      Possibly they were, but they had plenty of time wherein to be evolved long
+      before the eighth century, Reichel's date for corslets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The argument is that a man with a large shield needs no body armour, or
+      uses the shield because he has no body armour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the possession and use of a large shield did not in the Middle Ages,
+      or among the Iroquois and Algonquins, make men dispense with corslets,
+      even when the shield was worn, as in Homer, slung round the neck by a <i>telamon</i>
+      (<i>guige</i> in Old French), belt, or baldric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We turn to a French <i>Chanson de Geste&mdash;La Chancun de Willem</i>&mdash;of
+      the twelfth century A.D., to judge by the handwriting. One of the heroes,
+      Girard, having failed to rescue Vivien in battle, throws down his weapons
+      and armour, blaming each piece for having failed him. Down goes the heavy
+      lance; down goes the ponderous shield, suspended by a <i>telamon:
+      "Ohitarge grant cume peises al col</i>!" down goes the plated byrnie, "<i>Ohi
+      grant broine cum me vas apesant</i>" {Footnote: <i>La Chancun de Willame</i>,
+      lines 716-726.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mediaeval warrior has a heavy byrnie as well as a great shield
+      suspended from his neck. It will be remarked also that the Algonquins and
+      Iroquois of the beginning of the seventeenth century, as described by
+      Champlain, give us the whole line of Mycenaean evolution of armour up to a
+      certain point. Not only had they arrow-proof, body-covering shields of
+      buffalo hide, but, when Champlain used his arquebus against the Iroquois
+      in battle, "they were struck amazed that two of their number should have
+      been killed so promptly, seeing that they wore a sort of armour, woven of
+      cotton thread, and carried arrow-proof shields." We have already alluded
+      to this passage, but must add that Parkman, describing from French
+      archives a battle of Illinois against Iroquois in 1680, speaks of
+      "corslets of tough twigs interwoven with cordage." {Footnote: <i>Discovery
+      of the Great IV</i>, {misprint} 1869.} Golden, in his <i>Five Nations</i>,
+      writes of the Red Indians as wearing "a kind of cuirass made of pieces of
+      wood joined together." {Footnote: Dix, <i>Champlion</i> {misprint}}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the kindness of Mr. Hill Tout I also owe a description of the armour of
+      the Indian tribes of north-west America, from a work of his own. He says:
+      "For protective purposes in warfare they employed shields and coat-armour.
+      The shields varied in form and material from tribe to tribe. Among the
+      Interior Salish they were commonly made of wood, which was afterwards
+      covered with hide. Sometimes they consisted of several thicknesses of hide
+      only. The hides most commonly used were those of the elk, buffalo, or
+      bear. After the advent of the Hudson's Bay Co. some of the Indians used to
+      beat out the large copper kettles they obtained from the traders and make
+      polished circular shields of these. In some centres long rectangular
+      shields, made from a single or double hide, were employed. These were
+      often from 4 to 5 feet in length and from 3 to 4 feet in width&mdash;large
+      enough to cover the whole body. Among the Déné tribes (Sikanis) the shield
+      was generally made of closely-woven wicker-work, and was of an ovaloid
+      form (exact size not given).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The coat armour was <i>everywhere used</i>, and varied in form and style
+      in almost every centre. There were two ways in which this was most
+      commonly made. One of these was the slatted cuirass or corslet, which was
+      formed of a series of narrow slats of wood set side by side vertically and
+      fastened in place by interfacings of raw hide. It went all round the body,
+      being hung from the shoulders with straps. The other was a kind of shirt
+      of double or treble elk hide, fastened at the side with thongs. Another
+      kind of armour, less common than that just described, was the long
+      elk-hide tunic, which reached to and even <i>below the knees and was
+      sleeved to the elbow."</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hill Tout's minute description, with the other facts cited, leaves no
+      doubt that even in an early stage, as in later stages of culture, the use
+      of the great shield does not exclude the use of such body armour as the
+      means of the warriors enable them to construct. To take another instance,
+      Pausanias describes the corslets of the neolithic Sarmatae, which he saw
+      dedicated in the temple of Asclepius at Athens. Corslets these bowmen and
+      users of the lasso possessed, though they did not use the metals. They
+      fashioned very elegant corslets out of horses' hoofs, cutting them into
+      scales like those of a pine cone, and sewing them on to cloth. {Footnote:
+      Pausanias, i. 211. {misprint} 6.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certain small, thin, perforated discs of stone found in Scotland have been
+      ingeniously explained as plates to be strung together on a garment of
+      cloth, a neolithic <i>chiton</i>. However this may be, since Iroquois and
+      Algonquins and Déné had some sort of woven, or plaited, or wooden, or buff
+      corslet, in addition to their great shields, we may suppose that the
+      Achaeans would not be less inventive. They would pass from the {Greek:
+      linothoraex} (answering to the cotton corslet of the Iroquois) to a sort
+      of jack or <i>jaseran</i> with rings, scales, or plates, and thence to
+      bronze-plate corslets, represented only by the golden breastplates of the
+      Mycenaean grave. Even if the Mycenaeans did not evolve the corslet, there
+      is no reason why, in the Homeric times, it should not have been evolved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For linen corslets, such as Homer mentions, in actual use and represented
+      in works of art we consult Mr. Leaf on <i>The Armour</i> of <i>Homeric</i>
+      Heroes.' He finds Memnon in a white corslet, on a black-figured vase in
+      the British Museum. There is another white corsleted {Footnote: <i>Journal</i>
+      of <i>Hellenic</i> Studies, vol. iv. pp. 82, 83, 85.} Memnon figured in
+      the <i>Vases Peints</i> of the Duc de Luynes (plate xii.). Mr. Leaf
+      suggests that the white colour represents "a corslet not of metal but of
+      linen," and cites <i>Iliad</i>, II. 529, 5 30. "Xenophon mentions linen
+      corslets as being worn by the Chalybes" (<i>Anabasis</i>, iv. 15). Two
+      linen corslets, sent from Egypt to Sparta by King Amasis, are recorded by
+      Herodotus (ii. 182; iii. 47). The corslets were of linen, embroidered in
+      cotton and gold. Such a piece of armour or attire might easily develop
+      into the {Greek: streptos chitoon} of <i>Iliad</i>, V. 113, in which
+      Aristarchus appears to have recognised chain or scale armour; but we find
+      no such object represented in Mycenaean art, which, of course, does not
+      depict Homeric armour or costume, and it seems probable that the bronze
+      corslets mentioned by Homer were plate armour. The linen corslet lasted
+      into the early sixth century B.C. In the poem called <i>Stasiotica</i>,
+      Alcaeus (<i>No</i>. 5) speaks of his helmets, bronze greaves and corslets
+      of linen ({Choorakes te neoi linoo}) as a defence against arrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile a "bronze <i>chiton</i>" or corslet would turn spent arrows and
+      spent spears, and be very useful to a warrior whose shield left him
+      exposed to shafts shot or spears thrown from a distance. Again, such a
+      bronze <i>chiton</i> might stop a spear of which the impetus was spent in
+      penetrating the shield. But Homeric corslets did not, as a rule, avail to
+      keep out a spear driven by the hand at close quarters, or powerfully
+      thrown from a short distance. Even the later Greek corslets do not look as
+      if they could resist a heavy spear wielded by a strong hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I proceed to show that the Homeric corslet did not avail against a spear
+      at close quarters, but could turn an arrow point (once), and could
+      sometimes turn a spear which had perforated a shield. So far, and not
+      further, the Homeric corslet was serviceable. But if a warrior's breast or
+      back was not covered by the shield, and received a thrust at close
+      quarters, the corslet was pierced more easily than the pad of paper which
+      was said to have been used as secret armour in a duel by the Master of
+      Sinclair (1708). {Footnote: <i>Proceedings in Court Marshal held upon
+      John, Master of Sinclair</i>. Sir Walter Scott. Roxburghe Club. (Date of
+      event, 1708.)} It is desirable to prove this feebleness of the corslet,
+      because the poet often says that a man was smitten with the spear in
+      breast or back when unprotected by the shield, without mentioning the
+      corslet, whence it is argued by the critics that corslets were not worn
+      when the original lays were fashioned, and that they have only been
+      sporadically introduced, in an after age when the corslet was universal,
+      by "modernising" later rhapsodists aiming at the up-to-date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A weak point is the argument that Homer says back or breast was pierced,
+      without mentioning the corslet, whence it follows that he knew no
+      corslets. Quintus Smyrnaeus does the same thing. Of course, Quintus knew
+      all about corslets, yet (Book I. 248, 256, 257) he makes his heroes drive
+      spear or sword through breast or belly without mentioning the resistance
+      of the corslet, even when (I. 144, 594) he has assured us that the victim
+      was wearing a corslet. These facts are not due to inconsistent
+      interpolation of corslets into the work of this post-Christian poet
+      Quintus. {Footnote: I find a similar omission in the <i>Chanson de Roland</i>.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Corslets, in Homer, are flimsy; that of Lycaon, worn by Paris, is pierced
+      by a spear which has also perforated his shield, though the spear came
+      only from the weak hand of Menelaus (<i>Iliad</i>, III. 357, 358). The
+      arrow of Pandarus whistles through the corslet of Menelaus (IV. 136). The
+      same archer pierces with an arrow the corslet of Diomede (V. 99, 100). The
+      corslet of Diomede, however, avails to stop a spear which has traversed
+      his shield (V. 281). The spear of Idomeneus pierces the corslet of
+      Othryoneus, and the spear of Antilochus perforates the corslet of a
+      charioteer (XIII. 371, 397). A few lines later Diomede's spear reaches the
+      midriff of Hypsenor. No corslet is here mentioned, but neither is the
+      shield mentioned (this constantly occurs), and we cannot argue that
+      Hypsenor wore no corslet, unless we are also to contend that he wore no
+      shield, or a small shield. Idomeneus drives his spear through the "<i>bronze
+      chiton</i>" of Alcathöus (XIII. 439, 440). Mr. Leaf reckons these lines
+      "probably an interpolation to turn the linen <i>chiton</i>, the rending of
+      which is the sign of triumph, into a bronze corslet." But we ask why, if
+      an editor or rhapsodist went through the <i>Iliad</i> introducing
+      corslets, he so often left them out, where the critics detect their
+      absence because they are not mentioned?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spear of Idomeneus pierces another feeble corslet over the victim's
+      belly (XIII. 506-508). It is quite a surprise when a corslet does for once
+      avail to turn an arrow (XIII. 586-587). But Aias drives his spear through
+      the corslet of Phorcys, into his belly (XVII 311-312). Thus the corslet
+      scarcely ever, by itself, protects a hero; it never protects him against
+      an unspent spear; even when his shield stands between his corslet and the
+      spear both are sometimes perforated. Yet occasionally the corslet saves a
+      man when the spear has gone through the shield. The poet, therefore,
+      sometimes gives us a man pierced in a part which the corslet covers,
+      without mentioning the flimsy article that could not keep out a spear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reichel himself came to see, before his regretted death, that he could not
+      explain away the <i>thorex</i> or corslet, on his original lines, as a
+      mere general name for "a piece of armour"; and he inclined to think that
+      jacks, with metal plates sewn on, did exist before the Ionian corslet.
+      {Footnote: <i>Homerische Waffen</i>, pp. 93-94. 1901.} The gold
+      breastplates of the Mycenaean graves pointed in this direction. But his
+      general argument is that corslets were interpolated into the old lays by
+      poets of a corslet-wearing age; and Mr. Leaf holds that corslets may have
+      filtered in, "during the course of successive modernisation, such as the
+      oldest parts of the <i>Iliad</i> seem in many cases to have passed
+      through," {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, i. p. 578.} though the new poets were,
+      for all that, "conservatively tenacious of the old material." We have
+      already pointed out the difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poets who did not introduce the new small bucklers with which they
+      were familiar, did stuff the <i>Iliad</i> full of corslets unknown, by the
+      theory, to the original poet, but familiar to rhapsodists living centuries
+      later. Why, if they were bent on modernising, did they not modernise the
+      shields? and how, if they modernised unconsciously, as all uncritical
+      poets do, did the shield fail to be unconsciously "brought up to date"? It
+      seems probable that Homer lived at a period when both huge shield and
+      rather feeble corslet were in vogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall now examine some of the passages in which Mr. Leaf, mainly
+      following Reichel, raises difficulties about corslets. We do not know
+      their mechanism; they were composed of {Greek: guala}, presumed to be a
+      backplate and a breastplate. The word <i>gualon</i> appears to mean a
+      hollow, or the converse, something convex. We cannot understand the
+      mechanism (see a young man putting on a corslet, on an amphora by
+      Euthymides. Walter, vol. ii. p. 176); but, if late poets, familiar with
+      such corslets, did not understand how they worked, they were very dull
+      men. When their descriptions puzzle us, that is more probably because we
+      are not at the point of view than because poets interpolated mentions of
+      pieces of armour which they did not understand, and therefore cannot have
+      been familiar with, and, in that case, would not introduce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf starts with a passage in the <i>Iliad</i> (III. 357-360)&mdash;it
+      recurs in another case: "Through the bright shield went the ponderous
+      spear, and through the inwrought" (very artfully wrought), {Greek:
+      poludaidalou} "breastplate it pressed on, and straight beside his flank it
+      rent the tunic, but he swerved and escaped black death." Mr. Leaf says,
+      "It is obvious that, after a spear has passed through a breastplate, there
+      is no longer any possibility for the wearer to bend aside and so to avoid
+      the point...." But I suppose that the wearer, by a motion very natural,
+      doubled up sideways, so to speak, and so the spear merely grazed his
+      flesh. That is what I suppose the poet to intend. The more he knew of
+      corslets, the less would he mention an impossible circumstance in
+      connection with a corslet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, in many cases the late poets, by the theory&mdash;though it is they
+      who bring the corslets in&mdash;leave the corslets out! A man without
+      shield, helmet, and spear calls himself "naked." Why did not these late
+      poets, it is asked, make him take off his corslet, if he had one, as well
+      as his shield? The case occurs in XXII. 111-113,124-125. Hector thinks of
+      laying aside helmet, spear, and shield, and of parleying with Achilles.
+      "But then he will slay me naked," that is, unarmed. "He still had his
+      corslet," the critics say, "so how could he be naked? or, if he had no
+      corslet, this is a passage uncontaminated by the late poets of the corslet
+      age." Now certainly Hector <i>was</i> wearing a corslet, which he had
+      taken from Patroclus: that is the essence of the story. He would, however,
+      be "naked" or unprotected if he laid aside helmet, spear, and shield,
+      because Achilles could hit him in the head or neck (as he did), or lightly
+      drive the spear through the corslet, which, we have proved, was no sound
+      defence against a spear at close quarters, though useful against chance
+      arrows, and occasionally against spears spent by traversing the shield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We next learn that no corslet occurs in the <i>Odyssey</i>, or in <i>Iliad</i>,
+      Book X., called "very late": Mr. Leaf suggests that it is of the seventh
+      century B.C. But if the Odyssey and Iliad, Book X., are really very late,
+      their authors and interpolators were perfectly familiar with Ionian
+      corslets. Why did they leave corslets out, while their predecessors and
+      contemporaries were introducing them all up and down the <i>Iliad</i>? In
+      fact, in Book X, no prince is regularly equipped; they have been called up
+      to deliberate in the dead of night, and when two go as spies they wear
+      casual borrowed gear. It is more important that no corslet is mentioned in
+      Nestor's arms in his tent. But are we to explain this, and the absence of
+      mention of corslets in the Odyssey (where there is little about regular
+      fighting), on the ground that the author of <i>Iliad</i>, Book X., and all
+      the many authors and editors of the <i>Odyssey</i> happened to be profound
+      archaeologists, and, unlike their contemporaries, the later poets and
+      interpolators of the <i>Iliad</i>, had formed the theory that corslets
+      were not known at the time of the siege of Troy and therefore must not be
+      mentioned? This is quite incredible. No hypothesis can be more improbable.
+      We cannot imagine late Ionian rhapsodists listening to the <i>Iliad</i>,
+      and saying, "These poets of the <i>Iliad</i> are all wrong: at the date of
+      the Mycenaean prime, as every educated man knows, corslets were not yet in
+      fashion. So we must have no corslets in the <i>Odyssey</i>?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A modern critic, who thinks this possible, is bringing the practice of
+      archaising poets of the late nineteenth century into the minds of
+      rhapsodists of the eighth century before Christ. Artists of the middle of
+      the sixteenth century always depict Jeanne d'Arc in the armour and costume
+      of their own time, wholly unlike those of 1430. This is the regular rule.
+      Late rhapsodists would not delve in the archaeology of the Mycenaean
+      prime. Indeed, one does not see how they could discover, in Asia, that
+      corslets were not worn, five centuries earlier, on the other side of the
+      sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are told that Aias and some other heroes are never spoken of as wearing
+      corslets. But Aias certainly did put on a set of pieces of armour, and did
+      not trust to his shield alone, tower-like as it was. The description runs
+      thus: The Achaeans have disarmed, before the duel of Aias and Hector. Aias
+      draws the lucky lot; he is to 'meet Hector, and bids the others pray to
+      Zeus "while I clothe me in my armour of battle." While they prayed, Aias
+      "arrayed himself in flashing bronze. And when he had now clothed upon his
+      flesh <i>all</i> his pieces of armour" ({Greek: panta teuchae}) "he went
+      forth to fight." If Aias wore only a shield, as on Mr. Leaf's hypothesis,
+      he could sling it on before the Achaeans could breathe a <i>pater noster</i>.
+      His sword he would not have taken off; swords were always worn. What,
+      then, are "all his pieces of armour"? (VII. 193, 206).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carl Robert cites passages in which the {Greek: teuchea}, taken from the
+      shoulders, include corslets, and are late and Ionian, with other passages
+      which are Mycenaean, with no corslet involved. He adds about twenty more
+      passages in which {Greek: teuchea} include corslets. Among these
+      references two are from the <i>Doloneia</i> (X. 254, 272), where Reichel
+      finds no mention of corslets. How Robert can tell {Greek: teuchea}, which
+      mean corslets, from {Greek: teuchea}, which exclude corslets, is not
+      obvious. But, at all events, he does see corslets, as in VII. 122, where
+      Reichel sees none, {Footnote: Robert, <i>Studien zur Ilias</i>, pp.
+      20-21.} and he is obviously right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a strong point with Mr. Leaf that "we never hear of the corslet in
+      the case of Aias...." {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 576.}
+      Robert, however, like ourselves, detects the corslet among "<i>al</i> the
+      {Greek: teuchea}" which Aias puts on for his duel with Hector (Iliad, VII.
+      193, 206-207).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the same Book (VII. 101-103, 122) the same difficulty occurs. Menelaus
+      offers to fight Hector, and says, "I will put on my harness" {Greek:
+      thooraxomai}, and does "put on his fair pieces of armour" {Greek: teuchea
+      kala}, Agamemnon forbids him to fight, and his friends "joyfully take his
+      pieces of armour" {Greek: teuchea} "from his shoulders" (<i>Iliad</i>,
+      VII. 206-207). They take off pieces of armour, in the plural, and a shield
+      cannot be spoken of in the plural; while the sword would not be taken off&mdash;it
+      was worn even in peaceful costume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Idomeneus is never named as wearing a corslet, but he remarks that he has
+      plenty of corslets (XIII. 264); and in this and many cases opponents of
+      corslets prove their case by cutting out the lines which disprove it.
+      Anything may be demonstrated if we may excise whatever passage does not
+      suit our hypothesis. It is impossible to argue against this logical
+      device, especially when the critic, not satisfied with a clean cut,
+      supposes that some late enthusiast for corslets altered the prayer of
+      Thetis to Hephaestus for the very purpose of dragging in a corslet.
+      {Footnote: Leaf, Note to <i>Iliad</i>, xviii. 460, 461.} If there is no
+      objection to a line except that a corslet occurs in it, where is the logic
+      in excising the line because one happens to think that corslets are later
+      than the oldest parts of the <i>Iliad</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another plan is to maintain that if the poet does not in any case mention
+      a corslet, there was no corslet. Thus in V. 99, an arrow strikes Diomede
+      "hard by the right shoulder, the plate of the corslet." Thirteen lines
+      later (V. 112, 113) "Sthenelus drew the swift shaft right through out of
+      Diomede's shoulder, and the blood darted up through the pliant <i>chiton</i>."
+      We do not know what the word here translated "pliant" {Greek: streptos}
+      means, and Aristarchus seems to have thought it was "a coat of mail,
+      chain, or scale armour." If so, here is the corslet, but in this case, if
+      a corslet or jack with intertwisted small plates or scales or rings of
+      bronze be meant, <i>gualon</i> cannot mean a large "plate," as it does.
+      Mr. Ridgeway says, "It seems certain that {Greek: streptos chitoon} means,
+      as Aristarchus held, a shirt of mail." {Footnote: <i>Early Age of Greece</i>,
+      vol. i. p, 306.} Mr. Leaf says just the reverse. As usual, we come to a
+      deadlock; a clash of learned opinion. But any one can see that, in the
+      space of thirteen lines, no poet or interpolator who wrote V. i 12, i 13
+      could forget that Diomede was said to be wearing a corslet in V. 99; and
+      even if the poet could forget, which is out of the question, the editor of
+      540 B.C. was simply defrauding his employer, Piaistratus, if he did not
+      bring a remedy for the stupid fault of the poet. When this or that hero is
+      not specifically said to be wearing a corslet, it is usually because the
+      poet has no occasion to mention it, though, as we have seen, a man is
+      occasionally smitten, in the midriff, say, without any remark on the
+      flimsy piece of mail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That corslets are usually taken for granted as present by the poet, even
+      when they are not explicitly named, seems certain. He constantly
+      represents the heroes as "stripping the pieces of mail" {Greek: teuchea},
+      when they have time and opportunity, from fallen foes. If only the shield
+      is taken, if there is nothing else in the way of bronze body armour to
+      take, why have we the plural, {Greek: teuchea}? The corslet, as well as
+      the shield, must be intended. The stripping is usually "from the
+      shoulders," and it is "from his shoulders" that Hector hopes to strip the
+      corslet of Diomede (Iliad, VIII. 195) in a passage, to be sure, which the
+      critics think interpolated. However this may be, the stripping of the
+      (same Greek characters), cannot be the mere seizure of the shield, but
+      must refer to other pieces of armour: "all the pieces of armour." So other
+      pieces of defensive armour besides the shield are throughout taken for
+      granted. If they were not there they could not be stripped. It is the
+      chitons that Agamemnon does something to, in the case of two fallen foes (<i>Iliad</i>,
+      XI. 100), and Aristarchus thought that these <i>chitons</i> were corslets.
+      But the passage is obscure. In <i>Iliad</i>, XI. 373, when Diomede strips
+      helmet from head, shield from shoulder, corslet from breast of
+      Agastrophus, Reichel was for excising the corslet, because it was not
+      mentioned when the hero was struck on the hip joint. I do not see that an
+      inefficient corslet would protect the hip joint. To do that, in our
+      eighteenth century cavalry armour, was the business of a <i>zoster</i>, as
+      may be seen in a portrait of the Chevalier de St. George in youth. It is a
+      thick ribbed <i>zoster</i> that protects the hip joints of the king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, Mr. Evans observes that the western invaders of Egypt, under
+      Rameses III, are armed, on the monuments, with cuirasses formed of a
+      succession of plates, "horizontal, or rising in a double curve," while the
+      Enkomi ivories, already referred to, corroborate the existence of corslet,
+      <i>zoster</i>, and <i>zoma</i> as articles of defensive armour. {Footnote:
+      <i>Journal of Anthropological Institute</i>, xxx. p. 213.} "Recent
+      discoveries," says Mr. Evans, "thus supply a double corroboration of the
+      Homeric tradition which carries back the use of the round shield and the
+      cuirass or {Greek: thoraex} to the earlier epic period... With such a
+      representation before us, a series of Homeric passages on which Dr.
+      Reichel... has exhausted his powers of destructive criticism, becomes
+      readily intelligible." {Footnote: Ibid., p. 214.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Homer, then, describes armour <i>later</i> than that of the Mycenaean
+      prime, when, as far as works of art show, only a huge leathern shield was
+      carried, though the gold breastplates of the corpses in the grave suggest
+      that corslets existed. Homer's men, on the other hand, have, at least in
+      certain cases quoted above, large bronze-plated shields and bronze
+      cuirasses of no great resisting power, perhaps in various stages of
+      evolution, from the byrnie with scales or small plates of bronze to the
+      breastplate and backplate, though the plates for breast and back certainly
+      appear to be usually worn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems that some critics cannot divest themselves of the idea that "the
+      original poet" of the "kernel" was contemporary with them who slept in the
+      shaft graves of Mycenae, covered with golden ornaments, and that for body
+      armour he only knew their monstrous shields. Mr. Leaf writes: "The armour
+      of Homeric heroes corresponds closely to that of the Mykenaean age as we
+      learn it from the monuments. The heroes wore no breastplate; their only
+      defensive armour was the enormous Mykenaean shield...."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is only true if we excise all the passages which contradict the
+      statement, and go on with Mr. Leaf to say, "by the seventh century B.C.,
+      or thereabouts, the idea of a panoply without a breastplate had become
+      absurd. By that time the epic poems had almost ceased to grow; but they
+      still admitted a few minor episodes in which the round shield" (where (?)
+      "and corslet played a part, as well as the interpolation of a certain
+      number of lines and couplets in which the new armament was mechanically
+      introduced into narratives which originally knew nothing of it."
+      {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 568.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, Mr. Leaf says that "the small circular shield of later
+      times is unknown to Homer," with "a very few curious exceptions," in which
+      the shields are not said to be small or circular. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      vol. i. p, 575.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surely this is rather arbitrary dealing! We start from our theory that the
+      original poet described the armour of "the monuments" though <i>they</i>
+      are "of the prime," while he professedly lived long after the prime&mdash;lived
+      in an age when there must have been changes in military equipment. We then
+      cut out, as of the seventh century, whatever passages do not suit our
+      theory. Anybody can prove anything by this method. We might say that the
+      siege scene on the Mycenaean silver vase represents the Mycenaean prime,
+      and that, as there is but one jersey among eight men otherwise stark
+      naked, we must cut out seven-eighths of the <i>chitons</i> in the <i>Iliad</i>,
+      these having been interpolated by late poets who did not run about with
+      nothing on. We might call the whole poem late, because the authors know
+      nothing of the Mycenaean bathing-drawers so common on the "monuments." The
+      argument compels Mr. Leaf to assume that a shield can be called {Greek:
+      teuchea} in the plural, so, in <i>Iliad</i>, VII. 122, when the squires of
+      Menelaus "take the {Greek: teuchea} from his shoulders," we are assured
+      that "the shield (aspis) was for the chiefs alone" (we have seen that all
+      the host of Pandarus wore shields), "for those who could keep a chariot to
+      carry them, and squires to assist them in taking off this ponderous
+      defence" (see VII 122). {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 583.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We do "see VII. 122," and find that not a <i>single</i> shield, but pieces
+      of gear in the plural number were taken off Menelaus. The feeblest warrior
+      without any assistance could stoop his head and put it through the belt of
+      his shield, as an angler takes off his fishing creel, and there he was,
+      totally disarmed. No squire was needed to disarm him, any more than to
+      disarm Girard in the <i>Chancun de Willame</i>. Nobody explains why a
+      shield is spoken of as a number of things, in the plural, and that
+      constantly, and in lines where, if the poet means a shield, prosody
+      permits him to <i>say</i> a shield, {Greek: therapontes ap oopoon aspid
+      elonto}.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It really does appear that Reichel's logic, his power of visualising
+      simple things and processes, and his knowledge of the evolution of
+      defensive armour everywhere, were not equal to his industry and classical
+      erudition. Homer seems to describe what he saw: shields, often of great
+      size, made of leather, plated with bronze, and suspended by belts; and,
+      for body armour, feeble bronze corslets and <i>zosters</i>. There is
+      nothing inconsistent in all this: there was no more reason why an Homeric
+      warrior should not wear a corslet as well as a shield than there was
+      reason why a mediaeval knight who carried a <i>targe</i> should not also
+      wear a hauberk, or why an Iroquois with a shield should not also wear his
+      cotton or wicker-work armour. Defensive gear kept pace with offensive
+      weapons. A big leather shield could keep out stone-tipped arrows; but as
+      bronze-tipped arrows came in and also heavy bronze-pointed spears,
+      defensive armour was necessarily strengthened; the shield was plated with
+      bronze, and, if it did not exist before, the bronze corslet was developed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To keep out stone-tipped arrows was the business of the Mycenaean wooden
+      or leather shield. "Bronze arrow-heads, so common in the <i>Iliad</i>, are
+      never found," says Schuchardt, speaking of Schliemann's Mycenaean
+      excavations. {Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 237.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was thus, as far as arrows went, no reason why Mycenaean shields
+      should be plated with bronze. If the piece of wood in Grave V. was a
+      shield, as seems probable, what has become of its bronze plates, if it had
+      any? {Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 269} Gold ornaments, which could only
+      belong to shields, {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>., p. 237.} were found, but
+      bronze shield plates never. The inference is certain. The Mycenaean
+      shields of the prime were originally wooden or leather defences against
+      stone-headed arrows. Homer's shields are bronze-plated shields to keep out
+      bronze-headed or even, perhaps, iron-pointed arrows of primitive
+      construction (IV. 123). Homer describes armour based on Mycenaean lines
+      but developed and advanced as the means of attack improved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where everything is so natural it seems fantastic to explain the
+      circumstances by the theory that poets in a late age sometimes did and
+      sometimes did not interpolate the military gear of four centuries
+      posterior to the things known by the original singer. These rhapsodists,
+      we reiterate, are now said to be anxiously conservative of Mycenaean
+      detail and even to be deeply learned archaeologists. {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>,
+      vol. ii. p. 629.} At other times they are said to introduce recklessly
+      part of the military gear of their own age, the corslets, while sternly
+      excluding the bucklers. All depends on what the theory of very late
+      developments of the Epic may happen to demand at this or that moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, Mr. Leaf informs us that "the first rhapsodies were born in the
+      bronze age, in the day of the ponderous Mycenaean shield; the last in the
+      iron age, when men armed themselves with breastplate and light round
+      buckler." {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>., vol. ii. p. x.} We cannot guess how he
+      found these things out, for corslets are as common in one "rhapsody" as in
+      another when circumstances call for the mention of corslets, and are
+      entirely unnamed in the Odyssey (save that the Achaeans are
+      "bronze-chitoned"), while the Odyssey is alleged to be much later than the
+      <i>Iliad</i>. As for "the iron age," no "rhapsodist" introduces so much as
+      one iron spear point. It is argued that he speaks of bronze in deference
+      to tradition. Then why does he scout tradition in the matter of greaves
+      and corslets, while he sometimes actually goes behind tradition to find
+      Mycenaean things unknown to the original poets?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These theories appear too strangely inconsistent; really these theories
+      cannot possibly be accepted. The late poets, of the theory, are in the
+      iron age, and are, of course, familiar with iron weapons; yet, in
+      conservative deference to tradition, they keep them absolutely out of
+      their rhapsodies. They are equally familiar with bronze corslets, so,
+      reckless this time of tradition, they thrust them even into rhapsodies
+      which are centuries older than their own day. They are no less familiar
+      with small bucklers, yet they say nothing about them and cling to the
+      traditional body-covering shield. The source of the inconsistent theories
+      which we have been examining is easily discovered. The scholars who hold
+      these opinions see that several things in the Homeric picture of life are
+      based on Mycenaean facts; for example, the size of the shields and their
+      suspension by baldrics. But the scholars also do steadfastly believe,
+      following the Wolfian tradition, that there could be no <i>long</i> epic
+      in the early period. Therefore the greater part, much the greater part of
+      the <i>Iliad</i>, must necessarily, they say, be the work of continuators
+      through several centuries. Critics are fortified in this belief by the
+      discovery of inconsistencies in the Epic, which, they assume, can only be
+      explained as the result of a compilation of the patchwork of ages. But as,
+      on this theory, many men in many lands and ages made the Epic, their
+      contributions cannot but be marked by the inevitable changes in manners,
+      customs, beliefs, implements, laws, weapons, and so on, which could not
+      but arise in the long process of time. Yet traces of change in law,
+      religion, manners, and customs are scarcely, if at all, to be detected;
+      whence it logically follows that a dozen generations of irresponsible
+      minstrels and vagrant reciters were learned, conscientious, and staunchly
+      conservative of the archaic tone. Their erudite conservatism, for example,
+      induced them, in deference to the traditions of the bronze age, to
+      describe all weapons as of bronze, though many of the poets were living in
+      an age of weapons of iron. It also prompted them to describe all shields
+      as made on the far-away old Mycenaean model, though they were themselves
+      used to small circular bucklers, with a bracer and a grip, worn on the
+      left arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at this point the learning and conservatism of the late poets deserted
+      them, and into their new lays, also into the old lays, they eagerly
+      introduced many unwarrantable corslets and greaves&mdash;things of the
+      ninth to seventh centuries. We shall find Helbig stating, on the same
+      page, that in the matter of usages "the epic poets shunned, as far as
+      possible, all that was recent," and also that for fear of puzzling their
+      military audiences they did the reverse: "they probably kept account of
+      the arms and armour of their own day." {Footnote: La <i>Question
+      Mycénienne</i>, p. 50. <i>Cf</i>. Note I.} Now the late poets, on this
+      showing, must have puzzled warriors who used iron weapons by always
+      speaking of bronze weapons. They pleased the critical warriors, on the
+      other hand, by introducing the corslets and greaves which every military
+      man of their late age possessed. But, again, the poets startled an
+      audience which used light bucklers, worn on the left arm, by talking of
+      enormous <i>targes</i>, slung round the neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these inconsistencies of theory follow from the assumption that the <i>Iliad</i>
+      <i>must</i> be a hotch-potch of many ages. If we assume that, on the
+      whole, it is the work of one age, we see that the poet describes the
+      usages which obtained in his own day. The dead are cremated, not, as in
+      the Mycenaean prime, inhumed. The shield has been strengthened to meet
+      bronze, not stone-tipped, arrows by bronze plates. Corslets and greaves
+      have been elaborated. Bronze, however, is still the metal for swords and
+      spears, and even occasionally for tools and implements, though these are
+      often of iron. In short, we have in Homer a picture of a transitional age
+      of culture; we have not a medley of old and new, of obsolete and modern.
+      The poets do not describe inhumation, as they should do, if they are
+      conservative archaeologists. In that case, though they burn, they would
+      have made their heroes bury their dead, as they did at Mycenas. They do
+      not introduce iron swords and spears, as they must do, if, being late
+      poets, they keep in touch with the armament of their time. If they speak
+      of huge shields only because they are conservative archaeologists, then,
+      on the other hand, they speak of corslets and greaves because they are
+      also reckless innovators.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They cannot be both at once. They are depicting a single age, a single
+      "moment in culture." That age is certainly sundered from the Mycenaean
+      prime by the century or two in which changing ideas led to the superseding
+      of burial by burning, or it is sundered from the Mycenaean prime by a
+      foreign conquest, a revolution, and the years in which the foreign
+      conquerors acquired the language of their subjects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In either alternative, and one or other must be actual, there was time
+      enough for many changes in the culture of the Mycenaean prime to be
+      evolved. These changes, we say, are represented by the descriptions of
+      culture in the Iliad. That hypothesis explains, simply and readily, all
+      the facts. The other hypothesis, that the <i>Iliad</i> was begun near the
+      Mycenaean prime and was continued throughout four or five centuries,
+      cannot, first, explain how the <i>Iliad</i> was <i>composed</i>, and,
+      next, it wanders among apparent contradictories and through a maze of
+      inconsistencies.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ THE ZOSTER, ZOMA, AND MITRE
+
+ We are far from contending that it is always possible to
+understand Homer's descriptions of defensive armour. But as we have
+never seen the actual objects, perhaps the poet's phrases were clear
+enough to his audience and are only difficult to us. I do not, for
+example, profess to be sure of what happened when Pandarus shot at
+Menelaus. The arrow lighted "where the golden buckles of the <i>zoster</i>
+were clasped, and the doubled breastplate met them. So the bitter arrow
+alighted upon the firm <i>zoster</i>; through the wrought <i>zoster</i> it sped,
+and through the curiously wrought breastplate it pressed on, and through
+the <i>mitre</i> he wore to shield his flesh, a barrier against darts; and
+this best shielded him, yet it passed on even through this," and grazed
+the hero's flesh (<i>Iliad</i>, IV. I 32 seq.). Menelaus next says that "the
+glistering <i>zoster</i> in front stayed the dart, and the <i>zoma</i> beneath,
+and the <i>mitrê</i> that the coppersmiths fashioned" (IV. 185-187). Then the
+surgeon, Machaon, "loosed the glistering <i>zoster</i> and the <i>zoma</i>, and
+the <i>mitrê</i> beneath that the coppersmiths fashioned" (IV. 215, 216).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Reading as a mere student of poetry I take this to mean that the corslet
+      was of two pieces, fastening in the middle of the back and the middle of
+      the front of a man (though Mr. Monro thinks that the plates met and the <i>zoster</i>
+      was buckled at the side); that the <i>zoster</i>, a mailed belt, buckled
+      just above the place where the plates of the corslet met; that the arrow
+      went through the meeting-place of the belt buckles, through the place
+      where the plates of the corslet met, and then through the <i>mitrê</i>, a
+      piece of bronze armour worn under the corslet, though the nature of this
+      <i>mitrê</i> and of the <i>zoma</i> I do not know. Was the <i>mitrê</i> a
+      separate article or a continuation of the breastplate, lower down, struck
+      by a dropping arrow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1883 Mr. Leaf wrote: "I take it that the <i>zoma</i> means the waist of
+      the cuirass which is covered by the <i>zoster</i>, and has the upper edge
+      of the <i>mitrê</i> or plated apron beneath it fastened round the
+      warrior's body. ... This view is strongly supported by all the archaic
+      vase paintings I have been able to find." {Footnote: <i>Journal of
+      Hellenic studies, vol. iv. pp. 74,75</i>.} We see a "corslet with a
+      projecting rim"; that rim is called zoma and holds the <i>zoster</i>. "The
+      hips and upper part of the thighs were protected either by a belt of
+      leather, sometimes plated, called the <i>mitrê</i>, or else only by the
+      lower part of the <i>chiton</i>, and this corresponds exactly with Homeric
+      description." {Footnote: <i>Journal of Hellenic</i> Studies, <i>pp. 76, 77</i>.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time, in days before Reichel, Mr. Leaf believed in bronze
+      corslets, whether of plates or plated jacks; he also believed, we have
+      seen, that the huge shields, as of Aias, were survivals in poetry; that
+      "Homer" saw small round bucklers in use, and supposed that the old
+      warriors were muscular enough to wear circular shields as great as those
+      in the vase of Aristonothos, already described. {Footnote: <i>Ibid., vol.
+      iv p. 285</i>.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the corslet, as we have seen, Mr. Leaf now writes as a disciple of
+      Reichel. But as to the <i>mitrê</i>, he rejects Helbig's and Mr.
+      Ridgeway's opinion that it was a band of metal a foot wide in front and
+      very narrow behind. Such things have been found in Euboea and in Italy.
+      Mr. Ridgeway mentions examples from Bologna, Corneto, Este, Hallstatt, and
+      Hungary. {Footnote: <i>Early Age of Greece, p. 31 I</i>.} The <i>zoster</i>
+      is now, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, a "girdle" "holding up the waist-cloth (<i>zoma</i>),
+      so characteristic of Mycenaean dress!" Reichel's arguments against
+      corslets "militate just as strongly against the presence of such a <i>mitrê</i>,
+      which is, in fact, just the lower half of a corslet.... The conclusion is
+      that the metallic <i>mitrê</i> is just as much an intruder into the
+      armament of the <i>Epos</i> as the corslet." The process of evolution was,
+      Mr. Leaf suggests, first, the abandonment of the huge shield, with the
+      introduction of small round bucklers in its place. Then, second, a man
+      naturally felt very unprotected, and put on "the metallic <i>mitrê</i>" of
+      Helbig (which covered a foot of him in front and three inches behind).
+      "Only as technical skill improved could the final stage, that of the
+      elaborate cuirass, be attained."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This appears to us an improbable sequence of processes. While arrows were
+      flying thick, as they do fly in the <i>Iliad</i>, men would not reject
+      body-covering shields for small bucklers while they were still wholly
+      destitute of body armour. Nor would men arm only their stomachs when, if
+      they had skill enough to make a metallic <i>mitrê</i>, they could not have
+      been so unskilled as to be unable to make corslets of some more or less
+      serviceable type. Probably they began with huge shields, added the <i>linothorex</i>
+      (like the Iroquois cotton <i>thorex</i>), and next, as a rule, superseded
+      that with the bronze <i>thorex</i>, while retaining the huge shield,
+      because the bronze <i>thorex</i> was so inadequate to its purpose of
+      defence. Then, when archery ceased to be of so much importance as coming
+      to the shock with heavy spears, and as the bronze <i>thorex</i> really
+      could sometimes keep out an arrow, they reduced the size of their shields,
+      and retained surface enough for parrying spears and meeting point and edge
+      of the sword. That appears to be a natural set of sequences, but I cannot
+      pretend to guess how the corslet fastened or what the <i>mitrê</i> and <i>zoster</i>
+      really were, beyond being guards of the stomach and lower part of the
+      trunk.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ HELMETS, GREAVES, SPEARS
+
+ No helmets of metal, such as Homer mentions, have been found in
+Mycenaean graves. A quantity of boars' teeth, sixty in all, were
+discovered in Grave V. and may have adorned and strengthened leather
+caps, now mouldered into dust. An ivory head from Mycenae shows a
+conical cap set with what may be boars' tusks, with a band of the same
+round the chin, and an earpiece which was perhaps of bronze? Spata and
+the graves of the lower town of Mycenae and the Enkomi ivories show
+similar headgear. {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, pp. 196, 197.}
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This kind of cap set with boars' tusks is described in <i>Iliad</i>, Book
+      X., in the account of the hasty arraying of two spies in the night of
+      terror after the defeat and retreat to the ships. The Trojan spy, Dolon,
+      also wears a leather cap. The three spies put on no corslets, as far as we
+      can affirm, their object being to remain inconspicuous and unburdened with
+      glittering bronze greaves and corslets. The Trojan camp was brilliantly
+      lit up with fires, and there may have been a moon, so the less bronze the
+      better. In these circumstances alone the heroes of the Iliad are
+      unequipped, certainly, with bronze helmets, corslets, and bronze greaves.
+      {Dislocated Footnote: Evans, <i>Journal of the Anthropological Institute,
+      xxx. pp.</i> 209-215.} {Footnote: <i>Iliad, X.</i> 255-265.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The author of Book X. is now regarded as a precise archaeologist, who knew
+      that corslets and bronze helmets were not used in Agamemnon's time, but
+      that leather caps with boars' tusks were in fashion; while again, as we
+      shall see, he is said to know nothing about heroic costume (cf. The <i>Doloneia</i>).
+      As a fact, he has to describe an incident which occurs nowhere else in
+      Homer, though it may often have occurred in practice&mdash;a hurried
+      council during a demoralised night, and the hasty arraying of two spies,
+      who wish to be lightfooted and inconspicuous. The author's evidence as to
+      the leather cap and its garnishing of boars' tusks testifies to a survival
+      of such gear in an age of bronze battle-helmets, not to his own minute
+      antiquarian research.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ GREAVES
+
+ Bronze greaves are not found, so far, in Mycenaean tombs in
+Greece, and Reichel argued that the original Homer knew none. The
+greaves, {Greek: kunmides} "were gaiters of stuff or leather"; the one
+mention of bronze greaves is stuff and nonsense interpolated (VII. 41).
+But why did men who were interpolating bronze corslets freely introduce
+bronze so seldom, if at all, as the material of greaves?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Bronze greaves, however, have been found in a Cypro-Mycenaean grave at
+      Enkomi (Tomb XV.), <i>accompanied</i> by <i>an early type</i> of <i>bronze</i>
+      dagger, while bronze greaves adorned with Mycenaean ornament are
+      discovered in the Balkan peninsula at Glassinavç. {Footnote: Evans, <i>Journal
+      of the Anthropological Institute,</i> pp. 214, 215, figs. 10, 11.} Thus
+      all Homer's description of arms is here corroborated by archaeology, and
+      cannot be cut out by what Mr. Evans calls "the Procrustean method" of Dr.
+      Reichel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A curious feature about the spear may be noticed. In Book X. while the men
+      of Diomede slept, "their spears were driven into the ground erect on the
+      spikes of the butts" (X. 153). Aristotle mentions that this was still the
+      usage of the Illyrians in his day. {Footnote: <i>Poctica</i>, 25.} Though
+      the word for the spike in the butt (<i>sauroter</i>) does not elsewhere
+      occur in the <i>Iliad</i>, the practice of sticking the spears erect in
+      the ground during a truce is mentioned in III. 135: "They lean upon their
+      shields" (clearly large high shields), "and the tall spears are planted by
+      their sides." No butt-spikes have been found in graves of the Mycenaean
+      prime. The <i>sauroter</i> was still used, or still existed, in the days
+      of Herodotus. {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 205; Ridgeway, vol. i.
+      pp. 306, 307.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the whole, Homer does not offer a medley of the military gear of four
+      centuries&mdash;that view we hope to have shown to be a mass of
+      inconsistencies&mdash;but describes a state of military equipment in
+      advance of that of the most famous Mycenaean graves, but other than that
+      of the late "warrior vase." He is also very familiar with some uses of
+      iron, of which, as we shall see, scarcely any has been found in Mycenaean
+      graves of the central period, save in the shape of rings. Homer never
+      mentions rings of any metal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      BRONZE AND IRON
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Taking the Iliad and Odyssey just as they have reached us they give, with
+      the exception of one line, an entirely harmonious account of the
+      contemporary uses of bronze and iron. Bronze is employed in the making of
+      weapons and armour (with cups, ornaments, &amp;c.); iron is employed (and
+      bronze is also used) in the making of tools and implements, such as
+      knives, axes, adzes, axles of a chariot (that of Hera; mortals use an axle
+      tree of oak), and the various implements of agricultural and pastoral
+      life. Meanwhile, iron is a substance perfectly familiar to the poets; it
+      is far indeed from being a priceless rarity (it is impossible to trace
+      Homeric stages of advance in knowledge of iron), and it yields epithets
+      indicating strength, permanence, and stubborn endurance. These epithets
+      are more frequent in the Odyssey and the "later" Books of the Iliad than
+      in the "earlier" Books of the Iliad; but, as articles made of iron, the
+      Odyssey happens to mention only one set of axes, which is spoken of ten
+      times&mdash;axes and adzes as a class&mdash;and "iron bonds," where "iron"
+      probably means "strong," "not to be broken." {Footnote: In these
+      circumstances, it is curious that Mr. Monro should have written thus: "In
+      Homer, as is well known, iron is rarely mentioned in comparison with
+      bronze, but the proportion is greater in the Odyssey (25 iron, 80 bronze)
+      than in the Iliad" (23 iron, 279 bronze).&mdash;Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii.
+      p. 339. These statistics obviously do not prove that, at the date of the
+      composition of the Odyssey, the use of iron was becoming more common, or
+      that the use of bronze was becoming more rare, than when the <i>Iliad</i>
+      was put together. Bronze is, in the poems, the military metal: the <i>Iliad</i>
+      is a military poem, while the <i>Odyssey</i> is an epic of peace;
+      consequently the <i>Iliad</i> is much more copious in references to bronze
+      than the <i>Odyssey</i> has any occasion to be. Wives are far more
+      frequently mentioned in the Odyssey than in the <i>Iliad</i>, but nobody
+      will argue that therefore marriage had recently come more into vogue.
+      Again, the method of counting up references to iron in the Odyssey is
+      quite misleading, when we remember that ten out of the twenty references
+      are only <i>one</i> reference to one and the same set of iron tools-axes.
+      Mr. Monro also proposed to leave six references to iron in the <i>Iliad</i>
+      out of the reckoning, "as all of them are in lines which can be omitted
+      without detriment to the sense." Most of the six are in a recurrent epic
+      formula descriptive of a wealthy man, who possesses iron, as well as
+      bronze, gold, and women. The existence of the formula proves familiarity
+      with iron, and to excise it merely because it contradicts a theory is
+      purely arbitrary.&mdash;Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 339.}. The statement
+      of facts given here is much akin to Helbig's account of the uses of bronze
+      and iron in Homer. {Footnote: Helbig, <i>Das Homerischi Epos</i>, pp. 330,
+      331. <i>1887</i>.} Helbig writes: "It is notable that in the Epic there is
+      much more frequent mention of iron <i>implements</i> than of iron <i>weapons
+      of war</i>." He then gives examples, which we produce later, and
+      especially remarks on what Achilles says when he offers a mass of iron as
+      a prize in the funeral games of Patroclus. The iron, says Achilles, will
+      serve for the purposes of the ploughman and shepherd, "a surprising speech
+      from the son of Peleus, from whom we rather expect an allusion to the
+      military uses of the metal." Of course, if iron weapons were not in vogue
+      while iron was the metal for tools and implements, the words of Achilles
+      are appropriate and intelligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The facts being as we and Helbig agree in stating them, we suppose that
+      the Homeric poets sing of the usages of their own time. It is an age when
+      iron, though quite familiar, is not yet employed for armour, or for swords
+      or spears, which must be of excellent temper, without great weight in
+      proportion to their length and size. Iron is only employed in Homer for
+      some knives, which are never said to be used in battle (not even for
+      dealing the final stab, like the mediaeval poniard, the <i>miséricorde</i>),
+      for axes, which have a short cutting edge, and may be thick and weighty
+      behind the edge, and for the rough implements of the shepherd and
+      ploughman, such as tips of ploughshares, of goads, and so forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As far as archaeological excavations and discoveries enlighten us, these
+      relative uses of bronze and iron did not exist in the ages of Mycenaean
+      culture which are represented in the <i>tholos</i> of Vaphio and the
+      graves, earlier and later, of Mycenae. Even in the later Mycenaean graves
+      iron is found only in the form of finger rings (iron rings were common in
+      late Greece). {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, pp. 72, 146, 165.} Iron was
+      scarce in the Cypro-Mycenaean graves of Enkomi. A small knife with a
+      carved handle had left traces of an iron blade. A couple of lumps of iron,
+      one of them apparently the head of a club, were found in Schliemann's
+      "Burned City" at Hissarlik; for the rest, swords, spear-heads, knives, and
+      axes are all of bronze in the age called "Mycenaean." But we do not know
+      whether iron <i>implements</i> may not yet be found in the sepulchres of
+      <i>Thetes</i>, and other poor and landless men. The latest discoveries in
+      Minoan graves in Crete exhibit tools of bronze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Iron, we repeat, is in the poems a perfectly familiar metal. Ownership of
+      "bronze, gold, and iron, which requires much labour" (in the smithying or
+      smelting), appears regularly in the recurrent epic formula for describing
+      a man of wealth. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, VI. 48; IX. 365-366; X. 379; XI.
+      133; <i>Odyssey</i>, XIV. 324; XXI. 10.} Iron, bronze, slaves, and hides
+      are bartered for sea-borne wine at the siege of Troy? {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      VII. 472-475.} Athene, disguised as Mentes, is carrying a cargo of iron to
+      Temesa (Tamasus in Cyprus?), to barter for copper. The poets are certainly
+      not describing an age in which only a man of wealth might indulge in the
+      rare and extravagant luxury of an iron ring: iron was a common commodity,
+      like cattle, hides, slaves, bronze, and other such matters. Common as it
+      was, Homer never once mentions its use for defensive armour, or for swords
+      and spears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only in two cases does Homer describe any weapon as of iron. There is to
+      be sure the "iron," the knife with which Antilochus fears Achilles will
+      cut his own throat. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i> XVIII. 34.} But no knife is
+      ever used as a weapon of war: knives are employed in cutting the throats
+      of victims (see <i>Iliad</i>, III. 271 and XXIII. 30); the knife is said
+      to be of iron, in this last passage; also Patroclus uses the knife to cut
+      the arrow-head out of the flesh of a wounded friend. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      XI. 844.} It is the <i>knife</i> of Achilles that is called "the iron,"
+      and on "the iron" perish the cattle in <i>Iliad</i>, XXIII. 30. Mr. Leaf
+      says that by "the usual use, the metal" (iron) "is confined to tools of
+      small size." {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, xxiii. 30, Note.} This is
+      incorrect; the Odyssey speaks of <i>great axes</i> habitually made of
+      iron. {Footnote: Odyssey, IX. 391.} But we do find a knife of bronze, that
+      of Agamemnon, used in sacrificing victims; at least so I infer from Iliad,
+      III. 271-292.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The only two specimens of <i>weapons</i> named by Homer as of iron are one
+arrow-head, used by Pandarus, {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, IV. 123.} and one
+mace, borne, before Nestor's time, by Areithöus. To fight with an iron
+mace was an amiable and apparently unique eccentricity of Areithbus, and
+caused his death. On account of his peculiar practice he was named "The
+Mace man." {Footnote: Iliad, VII. 141.} The case is mentioned by Nestor
+as curious and unusual.
+
+ Mr. Leaf gets rid of this solitary iron <i>casse tête</i> in a
+pleasant way. Since he wrote his <i>Companion to the Iliad</i>, 1902, he has
+become converted, as we saw, to the theory, demolished by Mr. Monro,
+Nutzhorn, and Grote, and denounced by Blass, that the origin of our
+Homer is a text edited by some literary retainer of Pisistratus of
+Athens (about 560-540 B.C.). The editor arranged current lays, "altered"
+freely, and "wrote in" as much as he pleased. Probably he wrote this
+passage in which Nestor describes the man of the iron mace, for "the
+tales of Nestor's youthful exploits, all of which bear the mark of late
+work, are introduced with no special applicability to the context, but
+rather with the intention of glorifying the ancestor of Pisistratus."
+{Footnote: Iliad (1900), VII. 149, Note.} If Pisistratus was pleased
+with the ancestral portrait, nobody has a right to interfere, but we
+need hardly linger over this hypothesis (cf. pp. 281-288).
+
+ Iron axes are offered as prizes by Achilles, {Footnote: Iliad,
+XXIII. 850.} and we have the iron axes of Odysseus, who shot an arrow
+through the apertures in the blades, at the close of the Odyssey.
+But all these axes, as we shall show, were not weapons, but <i>peaceful
+implements</i>.
+
+ As a matter of certain fact the swords and spears of Homer's
+warriors are invariably said by the poet to be of bronze, not of iron,
+in cases where the metal of the weapons is specified.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Except for an arrow-head (to which we shall return) and the one iron mace,
+      noted as an eccentricity, no weapon in Homer is ever said to be of iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The richest men use swords of bronze. Not one chooses to indulge in a
+      sword said to be of iron. The god, Hephaestus, makes a bronze sword for
+      Achilles, whose own bronze sword was lent to Patroclus, and lost by him to
+      Hector. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i> XVI. 136; XIX. 372-373.} This bronze
+      sword, at least, Achilles uses, after receiving the divine armour of the
+      god. The sword of Paris is of bronze, as is the sword of Odysseus in the
+      Odyssey. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, III. 334-335} Bronze is the sword which
+      he brought from Troy, and bronze is the sword presented to him by Euryalus
+      in Phaeacia, and bronze is the spear with which he fought under the walls
+      of Ilios. {Footnote: <i>Odyssey</i>, X. 162, 261-262} There are other
+      examples of bronze swords, while spears are invariably said to be of
+      bronze, when the metal of the spear is specified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here we are on the ground of solid certainty: we see that the Homeric
+      warrior has regularly spear and sword of bronze. If any man used a spear
+      or sword of iron, Homer never once mentions the fact. If the poets, in an
+      age of iron weapons, always spoke of bronze, out of deference to
+      tradition, they must have puzzled their iron-using military patrons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, as regards weapons, the Homeric heroes are in the age of bronze,
+      like them who slept in the tombs of the Mycenaean age. When Homer speaks
+      of the use of cutting instruments of iron, he is always concerned, except
+      in the two cases given, not with {blank space} but with <i>implements</i>,
+      which really were of iron. The wheelwright fells a tree "with the iron,"
+      that is, with an axe; Antilochus fears that Achilles "will cut his own
+      throat with the iron," that is, with his knife, a thing never used in
+      battle; the cattle struggle when slain with "the iron," that is, the
+      butcher's knife; and Odysseus shoots "through the iron," that is, through
+      the holes in the blade of the iron axes. {Footnote: For this peculiar kind
+      of Mycenaean axe with holes in the blade, see the design of a bronze
+      example from Vaphio in Tsountas and Manatt, <i>The Mycenaean Age</i>, p.
+      207, fig. 94.} Thus Homer never says that this or that was done "with the
+      iron" in the case of any but one weapon of war. Pandarus "drew the
+      bow-string to his breast and to the bow." {Footnote: Iliad, W. 123.}
+      Whoever wrote that line was writing in an age, we may think, when
+      arrow-heads were commonly of iron; but in Homer, when the metal of the
+      arrow-head is mentioned, except, in this one case, it is always bronze.
+      The iron arrow-tip of Pandarus was of an early type, the shaft did not run
+      into the socket of the arrow-head; the tang of the arrow-head, on the
+      other hand, entered the shaft, and was whipped on with sinew. {<i>Iliad</i>,
+      IV. 151.} Pretty primitive this method, still the iron is an advance on
+      the uniform bronze of Homer. The line about Pandarus and the iron
+      arrow-head may really be early enough, for the arrow-head is of a
+      primitive kind&mdash;socketless&mdash;and primitive is the attitude of the
+      archer: he "drew the arrow to his breast." On the Mycenaean silver bowl,
+      representing a siege, the archers draw to the breast, in the primitive
+      style, as does the archer on the bronze dagger with a representation of a
+      lion hunt. The Assyrians and Khita drew to the ear, as the monuments
+      prove, and so does the "Cypro-Mycenaean" archer of the ivory draught-box
+      from Enkomi. {Footnote: Evans, Journal of the Anthropological Institute,
+      vol. xxx. p. 210.} In these circumstances we cannot deny that the poet may
+      have known iron arrow-heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now take the case of axes. We never hear from Homer of the use of an
+      iron axe in battle, and warlike use of an axe only occurs twice. In <i>Iliad</i>,
+      XV. 711, in a battle at and on the ships, "they were fighting with sharp
+      axes and battle-axes" ({Greek text: axinai}) "and with great swords, and
+      spears armed at butt and tip." At and on the ships, men would set hand to
+      whatever tool of cutting edge was accessible. Seiler thinks that only the
+      Trojans used the battle-axe; perhaps for damaging the ships: he follows
+      the scholiast. {Greek text: Axinae}, however, {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      XIII. 611.} may perhaps be rendered "battle-axe," as a Trojan, Peisandros,
+      fights with an {Greek text: Axinae}, and this is the only place in the <i>Iliad</i>,
+      except XV. 711, where the thing is said to be used as a weapon. But it is
+      not an <i>iron</i> axe; it is "of fine bronze." Only one bronze <i>battle-axe</i>,
+      according to Dr. Joseph Anderson, is known to have been found in Scotland,
+      though there are many bronze heads of axes which were tools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Axes ({Greek text: pelekeis}) were <i>implements</i>, tools of the
+      carpenter, woodcutter, shipwright, and so on; they were not weapons of war
+      of the Achaeans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As implements they are, with very rare exceptions, of iron. The
+      wheelwright fells trees "with the gleaming iron," iron being a synonym for
+      axe and for knife. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, IV. 485} In <i>Iliad</i>,
+      XIII. 391, the shipwrights cut timber with axes. In <i>Iliad</i>, XXIII.
+      114, woodcutters' axes are employed in tree-felling, but the results are
+      said to be produced {Greek text: tanaaekei chalcho}, "by the long-edged
+      bronze," where the word {Greek text: tanaaekaes} is borrowed from the
+      usual epithet of swords; "the long edge" is quite inappropriate to a
+      woodcutter's axe. On Calypso's isle Calypso gives to Odysseus a bronze axe
+      for his raft-making. Butcher's work is done with an axe. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      XVII. 520; Odyssey, III. 442-449.} The axes offered by Achilles as a prize
+      for archers and the axes through which Odysseus shot are <i>implements</i>
+      of iron. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, XXIII. 850; Odyssey, XXI. 3, 81, 97.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Odyssey, when the poet describes the process of tempering iron, we
+      read, "as when a smith dips a great axe or an adze in chill water, for
+      thus men temper iron." {Footnote: Odyssey, IX. 391-393.} He is not using
+      iron to make a sword or spear, but a tool-adze or axe. The poet is
+      perfectly consistent. There are also examples both of bronze axes and,
+      apparently, of bronze knives. Thus, though the woodcutter's or carpenter's
+      axe is of bronze in two passages cited, iron is the usual material of the
+      axe or adze. Again we saw, when Achilles gives a mass of iron as a prize
+      in the games, he does not mean the armourer to fashion it into sword or
+      spear, but says that it will serve the shepherd or ploughman for domestic
+      implements, {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i> (1902), XXIII. line 30, Note.}
+      so that the men need not, on an upland farm, go to the city for iron
+      implements. In commenting upon this Mr. Leaf is scarcely at the proper
+      point of view. He says, {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, XXIII. 835, Note.} "the
+      idea of a state of things when the ploughman and shepherd forge their own
+      tools from a lump of raw iron has a suspicious appearance of a deliberate
+      attempt to represent from the inner consciousness an archaic state of
+      civilisation. In Homeric times the {Greek: chalceus} is already
+      specialised as a worker in metals...." However, Homer does not say that
+      the ploughman and shepherd "forge their own tools." A Homeric chief, far
+      from a town, would have his own smithy, just as the laird of Runraurie
+      (now Urrard) had his smithy at the time of the battle of Killicrankie
+      (1689). Mackay's forces left their <i>impedimenta</i> "at the laird's
+      smithy," says an eye-witness. {Footnote: Napier's <i>Life</i> Of <i>Dundee</i>,
+      iii. p. 724.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea of a late Homeric poet trying to reconstruct from his fancy a
+      prehistoric state of civilisation is out of the question. Even historical
+      novelists of the eighteenth century A.D. scarcely attempted such an
+      effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the regular state of things in the Highlands during the
+      eighteenth century, when many chiefs, and most of the clans, lived far
+      from any town. But these rural smiths did not make sword-blades, which
+      Prince Charles, as late as 1750, bought on the Continent. The Andrea
+      Ferrara-marked broadsword blades of the clans were of foreign manufacture.
+      The Highland smiths did such rough iron work as was needed for rural
+      purposes. Perhaps the Homeric chief may have sometimes been a craftsman
+      like the heroes of the Sagas, great sword-smiths. Odysseus himself,
+      notably an excellent carpenter, may have been as good a sword-smith, but
+      every hero was not so accomplished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In searching with microscopes for Homeric discrepancies and
+      interpolations, critics are apt to forget the ways of old rural society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Homeric poems, whether composed in one age or throughout five
+      centuries, are thus entirely uniform in allotting bronze as the material
+      for all sorts of warlike gear, down to the solitary battle-axe mentioned;
+      and iron as the usual metal for heavy tools, knives, carpenters' axes,
+      adzes, and agricultural implements, with the rare exceptions which we have
+      cited in the case of bronze knives and axes. Either this distinction&mdash;iron
+      for tools and implements; bronze for armour, swords, and spears&mdash;prevailed
+      throughout the period of the Homeric poets or poet; or the poets invented
+      such a stage of culture; or poets, some centuries later, deliberately kept
+      bronze for weapons only, while introducing iron for implements. In that
+      case they were showing archaeological conscientiousness in following the
+      presumed earlier poets of the bronze age, the age of the Mycenaean graves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now early poets are never studious archaeologists. Examining the {blank
+      space} certainly based on old lays and legends which survive in the Edda,
+      we find that the poets of the <i>Nibelungenlied</i> introduce chivalrous
+      and Christian manners. They do not archaeologise. The poets of the French
+      <i>Chansons de Geste</i> (eleventh to thirteenth centuries) bring their
+      own weapons, and even armorial bearings, into the 'remote age of
+      Charlemagne, which they know from legends and <i>cantilènes</i>. Again,
+      the later <i>remanieurs</i> of the earliest <i>Chansons de Geste</i>
+      modernise the details of these poems. But, <i>per impossibile</i>, and for
+      the sake of argument, suppose that the later interpolators and
+      continuators of the Homeric lays were antiquarian precisians, or, on the
+      other hand, "deliberately attempted to reproduce from their inner
+      consciousness an archaic state of civilisation." Suppose that, though they
+      lived in an age of iron weapons, they knew, as Hesiod knew, that the old
+      heroes "had warlike gear of bronze, and ploughed with bronze, and there
+      was no black iron." {Footnote: Hesiod, <i>Works and Days</i>, pp. 250,
+      251.} In that case, why did the later interpolating poets introduce iron
+      as the special material of tools and implements, knives and axes, in an
+      age when they knew that there was no iron? Savants such as, by this
+      theory, the later poets of the full-blown age of iron were, they must have
+      known that the knives and axes of the old heroes were made of bronze. In
+      old votive offerings in temples and in any Mycenaean graves which might be
+      opened, the learned poets of 800-600 B.C. saw with their eyes knives and
+      axes of bronze. {Footnote: <i>Early Age of Greece</i>, i. 413-416.} The
+      knife of Agamemnon ({Greek: machaira}), which hangs from his girdle,
+      beside his sword, {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, III. 271; XIX. 252.}
+      corresponds to the knives found in Grave IV. at Mycenae; the handles of
+      these dirks have a ring for suspension. {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p.
+      204.} But these knives, in Mycenaean graves, are of bronze, and of bronze
+      are the axes in the Mycenaean deposits and the dagger of Enkomi.
+      {Footnote: <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 145, 207, 208, 256. <i>Evans, Journal of the
+      Anthropological Institute</i>, vol xxx. p, 214.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why, then, did the late poetic interpolators, who knew that the spears and
+      swords of the old warriors were of bronze, and who describe them as of
+      bronze, not know that their knives and axes were also of bronze? Why did
+      they describe the old knives and axes as of iron, while Hesiod knew, and
+      could have told them&mdash;did tell them, in fact&mdash;that they were of
+      bronze? Clearly the theory that Homeric poets were archaeological
+      precisians is impossible. They describe arms as of bronze, tools usually
+      as of iron, because they see them to be such in practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poems, in fact, depict a very extraordinary condition of affairs, such
+      as no poets could invent and adhere to with uniformity. We are accustomed
+      in archaeology to seeing the bronze sword pass by a gradual transition
+      into the iron sword; but, in Homer, people with abundance of iron never,
+      in any one specified case, use iron sword blades or spears. The greatest
+      chiefs, men said to be rich in gold and iron, always use swords and spears
+      of <i>bronze</i> in <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The usual process of transition from bronze to iron swords, in a
+      prehistoric European age, is traced by Mr. Ridgeway at Hallstatt, "in the
+      heart of the Austrian Alps," where a thousand old graves have been
+      explored. The swords pass from bronze to iron with bronze hilts, and,
+      finally, are wholly of iron. Weapons of bronze are fitted with iron edges.
+      Axes of iron were much more common than axes of bronze. {Footnote: <i>Early
+      Age of Greece</i>, i. 413-416.} The axes were fashioned in the old shapes
+      of the age of bronze, were not of the <i>bipennis</i> Mycenaean model&mdash;the
+      double axe&mdash;nor of the shape of the letter D, very thick, with two
+      round apertures in the blade, like the bronze axe of Vaphio. {Footnote:
+      Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. 176.} Probably the axes through which Odysseus
+      shot an arrow were of this kind, as Mr. Monro, and, much earlier, Mr.
+      Butcher and I have argued. {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>. (1901), vol. ii. Book
+      XIX. line 572. Note. Butcher and Lang, Odyssey, Appendix (1891).}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Hallstatt there was the <i>normal</i> evolution from bronze swords and
+      axes to iron swords and axes. Why, then, had Homer's men in his time not
+      made this step, seeing that they were familiar with the use of iron? Why
+      do they use bronze for swords and spears, iron for tools? The obvious
+      answer is that they could temper bronze for military purposes much better
+      than they could temper iron. Now Mr. Ridgeway quotes Polybius (ii. 30; ii.
+      33) for the truly execrable quality of the iron of the Celtic invaders of
+      Italy as late as 225 B.C. Their swords were as bad as, or worse than,
+      British bayonets; they <i>always</i> "doubled up." "Their long iron swords
+      were easily bent, and could only give one downward stroke with any effect;
+      but after this the edges got so turned and the blades so bent that, unless
+      they had time to straighten them with the foot against the ground, they
+      could not deliver a second blow." {Footnote: <i>Early Age of Greece</i>,
+      vol. i. 408.} If the heroes in Homer's time possessed iron as badly
+      tempered as that of the Celts of 225 B.C., they had every reason to
+      prefer, as they did, excellent bronze for all their military weapons,
+      while reserving iron for pacific purposes. A woodcutter's axe might have
+      any amount of weight and thickness of iron behind the edge; not so a sword
+      blade or a spear point. {Footnote: Monsieur Salomon Reinach suggests to me
+      that the story of Polybius may be a myth. Swords and spear-heads in graves
+      are often found doubled up; possibly they are thus made dead, like the
+      owner, and their spirits are thus set free to be of use to his spirit.
+      Finding doubled up iron swords in Celtic graves, the Romans, M. Beinach
+      suggests, may have explained their useless condition by the theory that
+      they doubled up in battle, leaving their owners easy victims, and this
+      myth was accepted as fact by Polybius. But he was not addicted to myth,
+      nor very remote from the events which he chronicles. Again, though bronze
+      grave-weapons in our Museum are often doubled up, the myth is not told of
+      the warriors of the age of bronze. We later give examples of the doubling
+      up, in battle, of Scandinavian iron swords as late as 1000 A.D.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the <i>Iliad</i> we hear of swords breaking at the hilt in dealing a
+      stroke at shield or helmet, a thing most incident to bronze swords,
+      especially of the early type, with a thin bronze tang inserted in a hilt
+      of wood, ivory, or amber, or with a slight shelf of the bronze hilt
+      riveted with three nails on to the bronze blade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lycaon struck Peneleos on the socket of his helmet crest, "and his sword
+      brake at the hilt." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, XVI. 339.} The sword of
+      Menelaus broke into three or four pieces when he smote the helmet ridge of
+      Paris. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, III. 349, 380.} Iron of the Celtic sort
+      described by Polybius would have bent, not broken. There is no doubt on
+      that head: if Polybius is not romancing, the Celtic sword of 225 B.C.
+      doubled up at every stroke, like a piece of hoop iron. But Mr. Leaf tells
+      us that, "by primitive modes of smelting," iron is made "hard and brittle,
+      like cast iron." If so, it would be even less trustworthy for a sword than
+      bronze. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i> (1900), Book VI, line 48, Note.} Perhaps
+      the Celts of 225 B.C. did not smelt iron by primitive methods, but
+      discovered some process for making it not hard and brittle, but flabby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The swords of the Mycenaean graves, we know, were all of bronze, and, in
+      three intaglios on rings from the graves, the point, not the edge, is
+      used, {Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 199.} once against a lion, once
+      over the rim of a shield which covers the whole body of an enemy, and once
+      at too close quarters to permit the use of the edge. It does not follow
+      from these three cases (as critics argue) that no bronze sword could be
+      used for a swashing blow, and there are just half as many thrusts as
+      strokes with the bronze sword in the <i>Iliad</i>. {Footnote: Twenty-four
+      cuts to eleven lunges, in the <i>Iliad</i>.} As the poet constantly dwells
+      on the "long edge" of the <i>bronze</i> swords and makes heroes use both
+      point and edge, how can we argue that Homeric swords were of iron and ill
+      fitted to give point? The Highlanders at Clifton (1746) were obliged,
+      contrary to their common practice, to use the point against Cumberland's
+      dragoons. They, like the Achaeans, had heavy cut and thrust swords, but
+      theirs were of steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the Achaeans had thoroughly excellent bronze, and had iron as bad as
+      that of the Celts a thousand years later, their preference for bronze over
+      iron for weapons is explained. In Homer the fighters do not very often
+      come to sword strokes; they fight mainly with the spear, except in
+      pursuit, now and then. But when they do strike, they cleave heads and cut
+      off arms. They could not do this with bronze rapiers, such as those with
+      which men give point over the rim of the shield on two Mycenaean gems. But
+      Mr. Myres writes, "From the shaft graves (of Mycenae) onwards there are
+      two types of swords in the Mycenaean world&mdash;one an exaggerated dagger
+      riveted into the front end of the hilt, the other with a flat flanged tang
+      running the whole length of the hilt, and covered on either face by
+      ornamental grip plates riveted on. This sword, though still of bronze, can
+      deal a very effective cut; and, as the Mycenaeans had no armour for body
+      or head," (?) "the danger of breaking or bending the sword on a cuirass or
+      helmet did not arise." {Footnote: <i>Classical Review</i>, xvi. 72.} The
+      danger did exist in Homer's time, as we have seen. But a bronze sword,
+      published by Tsountas and Manatt (<i>Mycenaean Age</i>, p. 199, fig. 88),
+      is emphatically meant to give both point and edge, having a solid handle&mdash;a
+      continuation of the blade&mdash;and a very broad blade, coming to a very
+      fine point. Even in Grave V. at Mycenae, we have a sword blade so massive
+      at the top that it was certainly capable of a swashing blow. {Footnote:
+      Schuchardt, <i>Schliemann's Excavations</i>, p. <i>265, fig.</i> 269.} The
+      sword of the charioteer on the <i>stêlê</i> of Grave V. is equally good
+      for cut and thrust. A pleasanter cut and thrust bronze sword than the one
+      found at Ialysus no gentleman could wish to handle. {Footnote: Furtwängler
+      und Loeschke, <i>Myk. Va.</i> Taf. D.} Homer, in any case, says that his
+      heroes used bronze swords, well adapted to strike. If his age had really
+      good bronze, and iron as bad as that of the Celts of Polybius, a thousand
+      years later, their preference of bronze over iron for weapons needs no
+      explanation. If their iron was not so bad as that of the Celts, their
+      military conservatism might retain bronze for weapons, while in civil life
+      they often used iron for implements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The uniform evidence of the Homeric poems can only be explained on the
+      supposition that men had plenty of iron; but, while they used it for
+      implements, did not yet, with a natural conservatism, trust life and
+      victory to iron spears and swords. Unluckily, we cannot test the temper of
+      the earliest known iron swords found in Greece, for rust hath consumed
+      them, and I know not that the temper of the Mycenaean bronze swords has
+      been tested against helmets of bronze. I can thus give no evidence from
+      experiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is just one line in Homer which disregards the distinction&mdash;iron
+      for implements, bronze for weapons; it is in <i>Odyssey</i>, XVI. 294;
+      XIX. 13. Telemachus is told to remove the warlike harness of Odysseus from
+      the hall, lest the wooers use it in the coming fray. He is to explain the
+      removal by saying that it has been done, "Lest you fall to strife in your
+      cups, and harm each other, and shame the feast, and <i>this</i> wooing; <i>for
+      iron of himself draweth a man to him</i>." The proverb is manifestly of an
+      age when iron was almost universally used for weapons, and thus was, as in
+      Thucydides, synonymous with all warlike gear; but throughout the poems no
+      single article of warlike gear is of iron except one eccentric mace and
+      one arrow-head of primitive type. The line in the Odyssey must therefore
+      be a very late addition; it may be removed without injuring the sense of
+      the passage in which it occurs. {Footnote: This fact, in itself, is of
+      course no proof of interpolation. <i>Cf.</i> Helbig, <i>op</i>. cit., p.
+      331. He thinks the line very late.} If, on the other hand, the line be as
+      old as the oldest parts of the poem, the author for once forgets his usual
+      antiquarian precision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are thus led to the conclusion that either there was in early Greece an
+      age when weapons were all of bronze while implements were often of iron,
+      or that the poet, or crowd of poets, invented that state of things. Now
+      early poets never invent in this way; singing to an audience of warriors,
+      critical on such a point, they speak of what the warriors know to be
+      actual, except when, in a recognised form of decorative exaggeration, they
+      introduce
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Masts of the beaten gold
+      And sails of taffetie."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Our theory is, then, that in the age when the Homeric poems were composed,
+      iron, though well known, was on its probation. Men of the sword preferred
+      bronze for all their military purposes, just as fifteenth-century soldiers
+      found the long-bow and cross-bow much more effective than guns, or as the
+      Duke of Wellington forbade the arming of all our men with rifles in place
+      of muskets ... for reasons not devoid of plausibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir John Evans supposes that, in the seventh century, the Carian and
+      Ionian invaders of Egypt were still using offensive arms of bronze, not of
+      iron. {Footnote: Ancient <i>Bronze Implements</i>, p. 8 (1881), citing
+      Herodotus, ii. c. 112. Sir John is not sure that Achaean spear-heads were
+      not of copper, for they twice double up against a shield. <i>Iliad</i>,
+      III. 348; VII. 259; Evans, p. 13.} Sir John remarks that "for a
+      considerable time after the Homeric period, bronze remained in use for
+      offensive weapons," especially for "spears, lances, and arrows." Hesiod,
+      quite unlike his contemporaries, the "later" poets of Iliad and <i>Odyssey</i>,
+      gives to Heracles an iron helmet and sword. {Footnote: <i>Scutum Herculis</i>,
+      pp. 122-138.} Hesiod knew better, but was not a consistent archaiser. Sir
+      John thinks that as early as 500 or even 600 B.C. iron and steel were in
+      common use for weapons in Greece, but not yet had they altogether
+      superseded bronze battle-axes and spears. {Footnote: Evans, p. 18.} By Sir
+      John's showing, iron for offensive weapons superseded bronze very slowly
+      indeed in Greece; and, if my argument be correct, it had not done so when
+      the Homeric poems were composed. Iron merely served for utensils, and the
+      poems reflect that stage of transition which no poet could dream of
+      inventing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These pages had been written before my attention was directed to M.
+      Bérard's book, <i>Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssée</i> (Paris, 1902). M. Bérard
+      has anticipated and rather outrun my ideas. "I might almost say," he
+      remarks, "that iron is the popular metal, native and rustic... the
+      shepherd and ploughman can extract and work it without going to the town."
+      The chief's smith could work iron, if he had iron to work, and this iron
+      Achilles gave as a prize. "With rustic methods of working it iron is
+      always impure; it has 'straws' in it, and is brittle. It may be the metal
+      for peace and for implements. In our fields we see the reaper sit down and
+      repair his sickle. In war is needed a metal less hard, perhaps, but more
+      tough and not so easily broken. You cannot sit down in the field of
+      battle, as in a field of barley, to beat your sword straight...."
+      {Footnote: Bérard, i. 435.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the Celts found, if we believe Polybius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, iron swords did supersede bronze swords in the long
+      run. Apparently they had not done so in the age of the poet, but iron had
+      certainly ceased to be "a precious metal"; knives and woodcutters' axes
+      are never made of a metal that is precious and rare. I am thus led, on a
+      general view, to suppose that the poems took shape when iron was very well
+      known, but was not yet, as in the "Dipylon" period in Crete, commonly used
+      by sword-smiths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ideas here stated are not unlike those of Paul Cauer. {Footnote: <i>Grundfrager
+      des Homerkritik,</i> pp. 183-187. Leipsic, 1895.} I do not, however, find
+      the mentions of iron useful as a test of "early" and "late" lays, which it
+      is his theory that they are. Thus he says:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (1) Iron is often mentioned as part of a man's personal property, while we
+      are not told how he means to use it. It is named with bronze, gold, and
+      girls. The poet has no definite picture before his eyes; he is vague about
+      iron. But, we reply, his picture of iron in these passages is neither more
+      nor less definite than his mental picture of the other commodities. He
+      calls iron "hard to smithy," "grey," "dark-hued"; he knows, in fact, all
+      about it. He does not tell us what the owner is going to do with the gold
+      and the bronze and the girls, any more than he tells us what is to be done
+      with the iron. Such information was rather in the nature of a luxury than
+      a necessity. Every hearer knew the uses of all four commodities. This does
+      not seem to have occurred to Cauer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (2) Iron is spoken of as an emblem of hard things, as, to take a modern
+      example, in Mr. Swinburne's "armed and iron maidenhood "&mdash;said of
+      Atalanta. Hearts are "iron," strength is "iron," flesh is not "iron," an
+      "iron" noise goes up to the heaven of bronze. It may not follow, Cauer
+      thinks, from these phrases that iron was used in any way. Men are supposed
+      to marvel at its strange properties; it was "new and rare." I see no
+      ground for this inference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (3) We have the "iron gates" of Tartarus, and the "iron bonds" in which
+      Odysseus was possibly lying; it does not follow that chains or gates were
+      made of iron any more than that gates were of chrysoprase in the days of
+      St. John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (4) Next, we have mention of implements, not weapons, of iron&mdash;a
+      remarkable trait of culture. Greek ploughs and axes were made of iron
+      before spears and swords were of iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (5) We have mention of iron weapons, namely, the unique iron mace of
+      Areithous and the solitary iron arrow-head of Pandarus, and what Cauer
+      calls the iron swords (more probably knives) of Achilles and others. It is
+      objected to the "iron" of Achilles that Antilochus fears he will cut his
+      throat with it on hearing of the death of Patroclus, while there is no
+      other mention of suicide in the <i>Iliad</i>. It does not follow that
+      suicide was unheard of; indeed, Achilles may be thinking of suicide
+      presently, in XIII. 98, when he says to his mother: "Let me die at once,
+      since it was not my lot to succour my comrade."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (6) We have the iron-making spoken of in Book IX. 393 of the <i>Odyssey</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It does not appear to us that the use of iron as an epithet bespeaks an
+      age when iron was a mysterious thing, known mainly by reputation, "a
+      costly possession." The epithets "iron strength," and so on, may as
+      readily be used in our own age or any other. If iron were at first a
+      "precious" metal, it is odd that Homeric men first used it, as Cauer sees
+      that they did, to make points to ploughshares and "tools of agriculture
+      and handiwork." "Then people took to working iron for weapons." Just so,
+      but we cannot divide the <i>Iliad</i> into earlier and later portions in
+      proportion to the various mentions of iron in various Books. These
+      statistics are of no value for separatist purposes. It is impossible to
+      believe that men when they spoke of "iron strength," "iron hearts," "grey
+      iron," "iron hard to smithy," did so because iron was, first, an almost
+      unknown legendary mineral, next, "a precious metal," then the metal of
+      drudgery, and finally the metal of weapons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The real point of interest is, as Cauer sees, that domestic preceded
+      military uses of iron among the Achaeans. He seems, however, to think that
+      the confinement of the use of bronze to weapons is a matter of traditional
+      style. {Footnote: "Nur die Sprache der Dichter hielt an dem Gebrauch der
+      Bronze fest, die in den Jahrhunderten, während deren der Epische Stil
+      erwachsen war, allein geherrscht hatte."} But, in the early days of the
+      waxing epics, tools as well as weapons were, as in Homer they occasionally
+      are, of bronze. Why, then, do the supposed late continuators represent
+      tools, not weapons, as of iron? Why do they not cleave to the traditional
+      term&mdash;bronze&mdash;in the case of tools, as the same men do in the
+      case of weapons?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helbig offers an apparently untenable explanation of this fact. He has
+      proposed an interpretation of the uses of bronze and iron in the poems
+      entirely different from that which I offer. {Footnote: <i>Sur la Question
+      Mycénienne</i>. 1896.} Unfortunately, one can scarcely criticise his
+      theory without entering again into the whole question of the construction
+      of the Epics. He thinks that the origin of the poems dates from "the
+      Mycenaean period," and that the later continuators of the poems retained
+      the traditions of that remote age. Thus they thrice call Mycenae "golden,"
+      though, in the changed economic conditions of their own period, Mycenae
+      could no longer be "golden"; and I presume that, if possible, the city
+      would have issued a papyrus currency without a metallic basis. However
+      this may be, "in the description of customs the epic poets did their best
+      to avoid everything modern." Here we have again that unprecedented
+      phenomenon&mdash;early poets who are archaeologically precise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have first to suppose that the kernel of the <i>Iliad</i> originated in
+      the Mycenaean age, the age of bronze. We are next to believe that this
+      kernel was expanded into the actual Epic in later and changed times, but
+      that the later poets adhered in their descriptions to the Mycenaean
+      standard, avoiding "everything modern." That poets of an uncritical
+      period, when treating of the themes of ancient legend or song, carefully
+      avoid everything modern is an opinion not warranted by the usage of the
+      authors of the <i>Chansons de Geste</i>, of <i>Beowulf</i>, and of the <i>Nibelungenlied</i>.
+      These poets, we must repeat, invariably introduce in their chants
+      concerning ancient days the customs, costume, armour, religion, and
+      weapons of their own time. Dr. Helbig supposes that the late Greek poets,
+      however, who added to the <i>Iliad</i>, carefully avoided doing what other
+      poets of uncritical ages have always done. {Footnote: <i>La Question
+      Mycénienne</i>, p. 50.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is his position in his text (p. 50). In his note 1 to page 50,
+      however, he occupies the precisely contrary position. "The epic poems were
+      chanted, as a rule, in the houses of more or less warlike chiefs. It is,
+      then, <i>à priori</i> probable that the later poets took into account the
+      <i>contemporary</i> military state of things. Their audience would have
+      been much perturbed (<i>bien chequés</i>) if they had heard the poet
+      mention nothing but arms and forms of attack and defence to which they
+      were unaccustomed." If so, when iron weapons came in the poets would
+      substitute iron for bronze, in lays new and old, but they never do.
+      However, this is Helbig's opinion in his note. But in his text he says
+      that the poets, carefully avoiding the contemporary, "the modern," make
+      the heroes fight, not on horseback, but from chariots. Their listeners,
+      according to his note, must have been <i>bien chequés</i>, for there came
+      a time when <i>they</i> were not accustomed to war chariots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the poets who, in Dr. Helbig's text, "avoid as far as possible all
+      that is modern," in his note, on the same page, "take account of the
+      contemporary state of things," and are as modern as possible where weapons
+      <i>are</i> concerned. Their audience would be sadly put out (<i>bien
+      chequés</i>) "if they heard talk only of arms ... to which they were
+      unaccustomed"; talk of large suspended shields, of uncorsleted heroes, and
+      of bronze weapons. They had to endure it, whether they liked it or not, <i>teste</i>
+      Reichel. Dr. Helbig seems to speak correctly in his note; in his text his
+      contradictory opinion appears to be wrong. Experience teaches us that the
+      poets of an uncritical age&mdash;Shakespeare, for example&mdash;introduce
+      the weapons of their own period into works dealing with remote ages.
+      Hamlet uses the Elizabethan rapier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his argument on bronze and iron, unluckily, Dr. Helbig deserts the
+      judicious opinions of his note for the opposite theory of his text. His
+      late poets, in the age of iron, always say that the weapons of the heroes
+      are made of bronze. {Footnote: <i>Op. laud</i>., p. 51.} They thus, "as
+      far as possible avoid what is modern." But, of course, warriors of the age
+      of iron, when they heard the poet talk only of weapons of bronze, "<i>aurient
+      été bien choqués</i>" (as Dr. Helbig truly says in his note), on hearing
+      of nothing but "<i>armes auxquels ils n'étaient pas habitués,</i>"&mdash;arms
+      always of bronze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Dr. Helbig in his text is of the opposite opinion, I must agree
+      entirely with the view which he states so clearly in his note. It follows
+      that if a poet speaks invariably of weapons of bronze, he is living in an
+      age when weapons are made of no other material. In his text, however, Dr.
+      Helbig maintains that the poets of later ages "as far as possible avoid
+      everything modern," and, therefore, mention none but bronze weapons. But,
+      as he has pointed out, they do mention iron tools and implements. Why do
+      they desert the traditional bronze? Because "it occasionally happened that
+      a poet, when thinking of an entirely new subject, wholly emancipated
+      himself from traditional forms," {Footnote: <i>Op. laud</i>., pp. 51, 52}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The examples given in proof are the offer by Achilles of a lump of iron as
+      the prize for archery&mdash;the iron, as we saw, being destined for the
+      manufacture of pastoral and agricultural implements, in which Dr. Helbig
+      includes the lances of shepherds and ploughmen, though the poet never says
+      that they were of iron. {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, XXIII. 826, 835; Odyssey,
+      XIV. 531; XIII. 225.} There are also the axes through which Odysseus
+      shoots his arrow. {Footnote: <i>Odyssey</i>, XIX. 587; XXI. 3, X, 97, 114,
+      127, 138; XXIV. 168, 177; cf. XXI. 61.} "The poet here treated an entirely
+      new subject, in the development of which he had perfect liberty." So he
+      speaks freely of iron. "But," we exclaim, "tools and implements, axes and
+      knives, are not a perfectly new subject!" They were extremely familiar to
+      the age of bronze, the Mycenaean age. Examples of bronze tools,
+      arrow-heads, and implements are discovered in excavations on Mycenaean
+      sites. There was nothing new about bronze tools and implements. Men had
+      bronze tips to their ploughshares, bronze knives, bronze axes, bronze
+      arrow-heads before they used iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps we are to understand that feats of archery, non-military contests
+      in bowmanship, are <i>un sujet à fait nouveau</i>: a theme so very modern
+      that a poet, in singing of it, could let himself go, and dare to speak of
+      iron implements. But where was the novelty? All peoples who use the bow in
+      war practise archery in time of peace. The poet, moreover, speaks of
+      bronze tools, axes and knives, in other parts of the <i>Iliad</i>; neither
+      tools nor bronze tools constitute <i>un sujet tout à fait nouveau</i>.
+      There was nothing new in shooting with a bow and nothing new in the
+      existence of axes. Bows and axes were as familiar to the age of stone and
+      to the age of bronze as to the age of iron. Dr. Helbig's explanation,
+      therefore, explains nothing, and, unless a better explanation is offered,
+      we return to the theory, rejected by Dr. Helbig, that implements and tools
+      were often, not always, of iron, while weapons were of bronze in the age
+      of the poet. Dr. Helbig rejects this opinion. He writes: "We cannot in any
+      way admit that, at a period when the socks of the plough, the lance points
+      of shepherds" (which the poet never describes as of iron), "and axe-heads
+      were of iron, warriors still used weapons of bronze." {Footnote: op. <i>laud.</i>,
+      p. 53.} But it is logically possible to admit that this was the real state
+      of affairs, while it is logically impossible to admit that bows and tools
+      were "new subjects"; and that late poets, when they sang of military gear,
+      "<i>tenaient compte de l'armement contemporain,</i>" carefully avoiding
+      the peril of bewildering their hearers by speaking of antiquated arms,
+      and, at the same time, spoke of nothing but antiquated arms&mdash;weapons
+      of bronze&mdash;and of war chariots, to fighting men who did not use war
+      chariots and did use weapons of iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These logical contradictions beset all arguments in which it is maintained
+      that "the late poets" are anxious archaisers, and at the same time are
+      eagerly introducing the armour and equipment of their own age. The critics
+      are in the same quandary as to iron and bronze as traps them in the case
+      of large shields, small bucklers, greaves, and corslets. They are obliged
+      to assign contradictory attitudes to their "late poets." It does not seem
+      possible to admit that a poet, who often describes axes as of iron in
+      various passages, does so in his account of a peaceful contest in
+      bowmanship, because contests in bowmanship are <i>UN sujet TOUT à FAIT
+      NOUVEAU;</i> and so he feels at liberty to describe axes as of iron, while
+      he adheres to bronze as the metal for weapons. He, or one of the Odyssean
+      poets, had already asserted (Odyssey, IX. 391) that iron <i>was</i> the
+      metal for adzes and axes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Helbig's argument {Footnote: <i>La Question Mycénienne</i>, p. 54.}
+      does not explain the facts. The bow of Eurytus and the uses to which
+      Odysseus is to put it have been in the poet's mind all through the conduct
+      of his plot, and there is nothing to suggest that the exploit of
+      bowmanship is a very new lay, tacked on to the Odyssey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After writing this chapter, I observed that my opinion had been
+      anticipated by S. H. Naber. {Footnote: <i>Quaestiones Homericae</i>, p.
+      60. Amsterdam. Van der Post, 1897.} "Quod Herodoti diserto testimonio
+      novimus, Homeri restate ferruminatio nondum inventa erat necdum bene
+      noverant mortales, uti opinor, <i>acuere</i> ferrum. Hinc pauperes homines
+      ubi possunt, ferro utuntur; sed in plerisque rebus turn domi turn militiae
+      imprimis coguntur uti aere...."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theory of Mr. Ridgeway as to the relative uses of iron and bronze is
+      not, by myself, very easily to be understood. "The Homeric warrior ... has
+      regularly, as we have seen, spear and sword of iron." {Footnote: <i>Early
+      Age of Greece</i>, vol. i. p. 301.} As no spear or sword of iron is ever
+      mentioned in the <i>Iliad</i> or Odyssey, as both weapons are always of
+      bronze when the metal is specified, I have not "seen" that they are
+      "regularly," or ever, of iron. In proof, Mr. Ridgeway cites the axes and
+      knives already mentioned&mdash;which are not spears or swords, and are
+      sometimes of bronze. He also quotes the line in the Odyssey, "Iron of
+      itself doth attract a man." But if this line is genuine and original, it
+      does not apply to the state of things in the <i>Iliad</i>, while it
+      contradicts the whole Odyssey, in which swords and spears are <i>ALWAYS</i>
+      of bronze when their metal is mentioned. If the line reveals the true
+      state of things, then throughout the Odyssey, if not throughout the <i>Iliad</i>,
+      the poets when they invariably speak of bronze swords and spears
+      invariably say what they do not mean. If they do this, how are we to know
+      when they mean what they say, and of what value can their evidence on
+      points of culture be reckoned? They may always be retaining traditional
+      terms as to usages and customs in an age when these are obsolete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the Achaeans were, as in Mr. Ridgeway's theory, a northern people&mdash;"Celts"&mdash;who
+      conquered with iron weapons a Pelasgian bronze-using Mycenaean people, it
+      is not credible to me that Achaean or Pelasgian poets habitually used the
+      traditional Pelasgian term for the metal of weapons, namely, bronze, in
+      songs chanted before victors who had won their triumph with iron. The
+      traditional phrase of a conquered bronze-using race could not thus survive
+      and flourish in the poetry of an outlandish iron-using race of conquerors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ridgeway cites the Odyssey, wherein we are told that "Euryalus, the
+      Phaeacian, presented to Odysseus a bronze sword, though, as we have seen"
+      (Mr. Ridgeway has seen), "the usual material for all such weapons is iron.
+      But the Phoeacians both belonged to the older race and lived in a remote
+      island, and therefore swords of bronze may well have continued in use in
+      such out-of-the-world places long after iron swords were in use everywhere
+      else in Greece. The man who could not afford iron had to be satisfied with
+      bronze." {Footnote: <i>Early Age of Greece</i>, p. 305.} Here the poet is
+      allowed to mean what he says. The Phaeacian sword is really of bronze,
+      with silver studs, probably on the hilt (Odyssey, VIII. 401-407), which
+      was of ivory. The "out-of-the-world" islanders could afford ivory, not
+      iron. But when the same poet tells us that the sword which Odysseus
+      brought from Troy was "a great silver-studded bronze sword" (Odyssey, X.
+      261, 262), then Mr. Ridgeway does not allow the poet to mean what he says.
+      The poet is now using an epic formula older than the age of iron swords.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That Mr. Ridgeway adopts Helbig's theory&mdash;the poet says "bronze," by
+      a survival of the diction of the bronze age, when he means iron&mdash;I
+      infer from the following passage: "<i>Chalkos</i> is the name for the
+      older metal, of which cutting weapons were made, and it thus lingered in
+      many phrases of the Epic dialect; 'to smite with the <i>chalkos</i>' was
+      equivalent to our phrase 'to smite with the steel.'" {Footnote: <i>Early
+      Age of Greece</i>, i. 295.} But we certainly do smite with the steel,
+      while the question is, "<i>DID</i> Homer's men smite with the iron?" Homer
+      says not; he does not merely use "an epic phrase" "to smite with the <i>CHALKOS</i>,"
+      but he carefully describes swords, spears, and usually arrow-heads as
+      being of bronze (<i>CHALKOS</i>), while axes, adzes, and knives are
+      frequently described by him as of iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ridgeway has an illustrative argument with some one, who says: "The
+      dress and weapons of the Saxons given in the lay of <i>Beowulf</i> fitted
+      exactly the bronze weapons in England, for they had shields, and spears,
+      and battle-axes, and swords." If you pointed out to him that the Saxon
+      poem spoke of these weapons as made of iron, he would say, "I admit that
+      it is a difficulty, but the resemblances are so many that the
+      discrepancies may be jettisoned." {Footnote: <i>Ridgeway,</i> i. 83, 84.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, if the supposed controversialist were a Homeric critic, he would not
+      admit any difficulty. He would say, "Yes; in <i>Beowulf</i> the weapons
+      are said to be of iron, but that is the work of the Christian <i>remanieur,</i>
+      or <i>bearbeiter,</i> who introduced all the Christian morality into the
+      old heathen lay, and who also, not to puzzle his iron-using audience,
+      changed the bronze into iron weapons."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may prove anything if we argue, now that the poets retain the tradition
+      of obsolete things, now that they modernise as much as they please. Into
+      this method of reasoning, after duly considering it, I am unable to come
+      with enthusiasm, being wedded to the belief that the poets say what they
+      mean. Were it otherwise, did they not mean what they say, their evidence
+      would be of no value; they might be dealing throughout in terms for things
+      which were unrepresented in their own age. To prove this possible, it
+      would be necessary to adduce convincing and sufficient examples of early
+      national poets who habitually use the terminology of an age long prior to
+      their own in descriptions of objects, customs, and usages. Meanwhile, it
+      is obvious that my whole argument has no archaeological support. We may
+      find "Mycenaean" corslets and greaves, but they are not in cremation
+      burials. No Homeric cairn with Homeric contents has ever been discovered;
+      and if we did find examples of Homeric cairns, it appears, from the poems,
+      that they would very seldom contain the arms of the dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nowhere, again, do we find graves containing bronze swords and iron axes
+      and adzes. I know nothing nearer in discoveries to my supposed age of
+      bronze weapons and iron tools than a grave of the early iron and
+      geometrical ornament age of Crete&mdash;a <i>tholos</i> tomb, with a
+      bronze spear-head and a set of iron tools, among others a double axe and a
+      pick of iron. But these were in company with iron swords? To myself the
+      crowning mystery is, what has become of the Homeric tumuli with their
+      contents? One can but say that only within the last thirty years have we
+      found, or, finding, have recognised Mycenaean burial records. As to the
+      badness of the iron of the North for military purposes, and the probable
+      badness of all early iron weapons, we have testimony two thousand years
+      later than Homer and some twelve hundred years later than Polybius. In the
+      Eyrbyggja Saga (Morris and Maguússon, chap, xxiv.) we read that Steinthor
+      "was girt with a sword that was cunningly wrought; the hilts were white
+      with silver, and the grip wrapped round with the same, but the strings
+      thereof were gilded." This was a splendid sword, described with the
+      Homeric delight in such things; but the battle-cry arises, and then "the
+      fair-wrought sword bit not when it smote armour, and Steinthor must <i>straighten
+      it under</i> his <i>foot.</i>" Messrs. Morris and Maguússon add in a note:
+      "This is a very common experience in Scandinavian weapons, and for the
+      first time heard of at the battle of Aquae Sextiae between Marius and the
+      Teutons." {Footnote: The reference is erroneous.} "In the North
+      weapon-smiths who knew how to forge tempered or steel-laminated weapons
+      were, if not unknown, at least very rare." When such skill was unknown or
+      rare in Homer's time, nothing was more natural than that bronze should
+      hold its own, as the metal for swords and spears, after iron was commonly
+      used for axes and ploughshares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE HOMERIC HOUSE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      If the Homeric poems be, as we maintain, the work of a peculiar age, the
+      Homeric house will also, in all likelihood, be peculiar. It will not be
+      the Hellenic house of classical times. Manifestly the dwelling of a
+      military-prince in the heroic age would be evolved to meet his needs,
+      which were not the needs of later Hellenic citizens. In time of peace the
+      later Greeks are weaponless men, not surrounded by and entertaining
+      throngs of armed retainers, like the Homeric chief. The women of later
+      Greece, moreover, are in the background of life, dwelling in the women's
+      chambers, behind those of the men, in seclusion. The Homeric women also,
+      at least in the house of Odysseus, have their separate chambers, which the
+      men seem not to enter except on invitation, though the ladies freely
+      honour by their presence the hall of the warriors. The circumstances,
+      however, were peculiar&mdash;Penelope being unprotected in the absence of
+      her lord.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole domestic situation in the Homeric poems&mdash;the free equality
+      of the women, the military conditions, the life of the chiefs and
+      retainers&mdash;closely resembles, allowing for differences of climate,
+      that of the rich landowners of early Iceland as described in the sagas.
+      There can be no doubt that the house of the Icelandic chief was analogous
+      to the house of the Homeric prince. Societies remarkably similar in mode
+      of life were accommodated in dwellings similarly arranged. Though the
+      Icelanders owned no Over-Lord, and, indeed, left their native Scandinavia
+      to escape the sway of Harold Fairhair, yet each wealthy and powerful chief
+      lived in the manner of a Homeric "king." His lands and thralls, horses and
+      cattle, occupied his attention when he did not chance to be on Viking
+      adventure&mdash;"bearing bane to alien men." He always carried sword and
+      spear, and often had occasion to use them. He entertained many guests, and
+      needed a large hall and ample sleeping accommodation for strangers and
+      servants. His women were as free and as much respected as the ladies in
+      Homer; and for a husband to slap a wife was to run the risk of her deadly
+      feud. Thus, far away in the frosts of the north, the life of the chief was
+      like that of the Homeric prince, and their houses were alike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is our intention to use this parallel in the discussion of the Homeric
+      house. All Icelandic chiefs' houses in the tenth and eleventh centuries
+      were not precisely uniform in structure and accommodation, and saga
+      writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, living more comfortably
+      than their forefathers, sometimes confuse matters by introducing the
+      arrangements of their own into the tale of past times. But, in any case,
+      one Icelandic house of the tenth or eleventh century might differ from
+      another in certain details. It is not safe, therefore, to argue that
+      difference of detail in Homer's accounts of various houses means that the
+      varying descriptions were composed in different ages. In the <i>Odyssey</i>
+      the plot demands that the poet must enter into domestic details much more
+      freely than he ever has occasion to do in the Iliad. He may mention upper
+      chambers freely, for example; it will not follow that in the <i>Iliad</i>
+      upper chambers do not exist because they are only mentioned twice in that
+      Epic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is even more important to note that in the house of Odysseus we have an
+      unparalleled domestic situation. The lady of the house is beset by more
+      than a hundred wooers&mdash;"sorning" on her, in the old Scots legal
+      phrase&mdash;making it impossible for her to inhabit her own hall, and
+      desirable to keep the women as much as possible apart from the men. Thus
+      the Homeric house of which we know most, that of Odysseus, is a house in a
+      most abnormal condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the sake of brevity we omit the old theory that the Homeric house was
+      practically that of historical Greece, with the men's hall approached by a
+      door from the courtyard; while a door at the upper end of the men's hall
+      yields direct access to the quarters where the women dwelt apart, at the
+      rear of the men's hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That opinion has not survived the essay by Mr. J. L. Myres on the "Plan of
+      the Homeric House." {Footnote: <i>Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>, vol.
+      XX, 128-150.} Quite apart from arguments that rest on the ground plans of
+      palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns, Mr. Myres has proved, by an exact reading
+      of the poet's words, that the descriptions in the <i>Odyssey</i> cannot be
+      made intelligible on the theory that the poet has in his mind a house of
+      the Hellenic pattern. But in his essay he hardly touches on any Homeric
+      house except that of Odysseus, in which the circumstances were unusual. A
+      later critic, Ferdinand Noack, has demonstrated that we must take other
+      Homeric houses into consideration. {Footnote: <i>Homerische Paläste</i>.
+      Teubner. Leipzig, 1903.} The prae-Mycenaean house is, according to Mr.
+      Myres, on the whole of the same plan as the Hellenic house of historic
+      days; between these comes the Mycenaean and Homeric house; "so that the
+      Mycenaean house stands out <i>as an intrusive phenomenon</i>, of
+      comparatively late arrival <i>and short of duration</i>..." {Footnote:
+      Myres, <i>Journal</i> of <i>Hellenic</i> Studies, vol. xx. p. 149.} Noack
+      goes further; he draws a line between the Mycenaean houses on one hand and
+      the houses described by Homer on the other; while he thinks that the "<i>late</i>
+      Homeric house," that of the closing Books of the Odyssey, is widely
+      sundered from the Homeric house of the <i>Iliad</i> and from the houses of
+      Menelaus and Alcinous in earlier Books of the <i>Odyssey.</i> {Footnote:
+      Noack, p. 73.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this case the Iliadic and earlier Odyssean houses are those of a single
+      definite age, neither Mycenaean of the prime, nor Hellenic&mdash;a fact
+      which entirely suits our argument. But it is not so certain, that the
+      house of Odysseus is severed from the other Homeric houses by the later
+      addition of an upper storey, as Noack supposes, and of women's quarters,
+      and of separate sleeping chambers for the heads of the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Iliad,</i> save in two passages, and earlier Books of the <i>Odyssey</i>
+      may not mention upper storeys because they have no occasion, or only rare
+      occasion, to do so; and some houses may have had upper sleeping chambers
+      while others of the same period had not, as we shall prove from the
+      Icelandic parallel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Myres's idea of the Homeric house, or, at least, of the house of
+      Odysseus, is that the women had a <i>meguron,</i> or common hall, apart
+      from that of the men, with other chambers. These did not lie to the direct
+      rear of the men's hall, nor were they entered by a door that opened in the
+      back wall of the men's hall. Penelope has a chamber, in which she sleeps
+      and does woman's work, upstairs; her connubial chamber, unoccupied during
+      her lord's absence, is certainly on the ground floor. The women's rooms
+      are severed from the men's hall by a courtyard; in the courtyard are
+      chambers. Telemachus has his {Greek: Thalamos}, or chamber, in the men's
+      courtyard. All this appears plain from the poet's words; and Mr. Myres
+      corroborates, by the ground plans of the palaces of Tiryns and Mycenae, a
+      point on which Mr. Monro had doubts, as regards Tiryns, while he accepted
+      it for Mycenae. {Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, ii. 497; <i>Journal of Hellenic
+      Studies</i>, xx. 136.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noack {Footnote: Noack, p. 39.} does not, however, agree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There appears to be no doubt that in the centre of the great halls of
+      Tiryns and of Mycenae, as of the houses in Homer, was the hearth, with two
+      tall pillars on each side, supporting a <i>louvre</i> higher than the rest
+      of the roof, and permitting some, at least, of the smoke of the fire to
+      escape. Beside the fire were the seats of the master and mistress of the
+      house, of the minstrel, and of honoured guests. The place of honour was
+      not on a dais at the inmost end of the hall, like the high table in
+      college halls. Mr. Myres holds that in the Homeric house the {Greek:
+      prodomos}, or "forehouse," was a chamber, and was not identical with the
+      {Greek: aethousa}, or portico, though he admits that the two words "are
+      used indifferently to describe the sleeping place of a guest." {Footnote:
+      <i>Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>, xx. 144, 155.} This was the case at
+      Tiryns; and in the house of the father of Phoenix, in the <i>Iliad</i>,
+      the <i>prodomos</i>, or forehouse, and the <i>aethousa</i>, or portico,
+      are certainly separate things (Iliad, IX. 473). Noack does not accept the
+      Tiryns evidence for the Homeric house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Mr. Myres's showing, the women in the house of Odysseus had distinct
+      and separate quarters into which no man goes uninvited. Odysseus when at
+      home has, with his wife, a separate bedroom; and in his absence Penelope
+      sleeps upstairs, where there are several chambers for various purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Granting that all this is so, how do the pictures of the house given in
+      the final part of the <i>Odyssey</i> compare with those in the {Blank
+      space} and with the accounts of the dwellings of Menelaus and Alcinous in
+      the Odyssey? Noack argues that the house of Odysseus is unlike the other
+      Homeric houses, because in these, he reasons, the women have no separate
+      quarters, and the lord and lady of the house sleep in the great hall, and
+      have no other bedroom, while there are no upper chambers in the houses of
+      the <i>Iliad</i>, except in two passages dismissed as "late."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If all this be so, then the Homeric period, as regards houses and domestic
+      life, belongs to an age apart, not truly Mycenaean, and still less later
+      Hellenic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be remembered that Noack regards the Odyssey as a composite and in
+      parts very late mosaic (a view on which I have said what I think in <i>Homer
+      and the Epic</i>). According to this theory (Kirchhoff is the exponent of
+      a popular form thereof) the first Book of the Odyssey belongs to "the
+      latest stratum," and is the "copy" of the general "worker-up," whether he
+      was the editor employed by Pisistratus or a laborious amateur. This theory
+      is opposed by Sittl, who makes his point by cutting out, as
+      interpolations, whatever passages do not suit his ideas, and do suit
+      Kirchhoff's&mdash;this is the regular method of Homeric criticism. The
+      whole cruise of Telemachus (Book IV.) is also regarded as a late addition:
+      on this point English scholars hitherto have been of the opposite opinion.
+      {Footnote: Cf. Monro, <i>Odyssey</i>, vol. ii. 313-317.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The method of all parties is to regard repetitions of phrases as examples
+      of borrowing, except, of course, in the case of the earliest poet from
+      whom the others pilfer, and in other cases of prae-Homeric surviving epic
+      formulae. Critics then dispute as to which recurrent passage is the
+      earlier, deciding, of course, as may happen to suit their own general
+      theory. In our opinion these passages are traditional formulae, as in our
+      own old ballads and in the <i>Chansons de Geste</i>, and Noack also takes
+      this view every now and then. They may well be older, in many cases, than
+      <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>; or the poet, having found his own
+      formula, economically used it wherever similar circumstances occurred.
+      Such passages, so considered, are no tests of earlier composition in one
+      place, of later composition in another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now look into Noack's theory of the Homeric house. Where do the lord
+      and lady sleep? <i>Not</i>, he says, as Odysseus and Penelope do (when
+      Odysseus is at home), in a separate chamber (<i>thalamos</i>) on the
+      ground floor, nor, like Gunnar and Halgerda (Njal's Saga), in an upper
+      chamber. They sleep <i>mucho domou</i>; that is, not in a separate recess
+      in the <i>house</i>, but in a recess of the great hall or <i>megaron</i>.
+      Thus, in the hall of Alcinous, the whole space runs from the threshold to
+      the <i>muchos</i>, the innermost part (<i>Odyssey</i>, VII. 87-96). In the
+      hall of Odysseus, the Wooers retreat to the <i>muchos</i>, "the innermost
+      part of the hall" (<i>Odyssey</i>, XXII. 270). "The <i>muchos</i>, in
+      Homer, never denotes a separate chamber." {Footnote: Noack, p. 45. <i>Cf</i>.
+      Monro, Note to Odyssey, XXII. 270.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Odyssey, XI. 373, Alcinous says it is not yet time to sleep <i>ev
+      megaro</i>, "in the hall." Alcinous and Arete, his wife, sleep "in the
+      recess of the lofty <i>domos</i>," that is, in the recess of the <i>hall</i>,
+      not of "the house" (Odyssey, VII. 346). The same words are used of Helen
+      and Menelaus (Odyssey, IV. 304). But when Menelaus goes forth next
+      morning, he goes <i>ek thalamoio</i>, "out of his <i>chamber</i>" (<i>Odyssey</i>,
+      IV. 310). But this, says Noack, is a mere borrowing of Odyssey, II 2-5,
+      where the same words are used of Telemachus, leaving his chamber, which
+      undeniably was a separate chamber in the court: Eurycleia lighted him
+      thither at night (Odyssey, I. 428). In Odyssey, IV. 121, Helen enters the
+      hall "from her fragrant, lofty chamber," so she <i>had</i> a chamber, not
+      in the hall. But, says Noack, this verse "is not original." The late poet
+      of <i>Odyssey</i>, IV. has cribbed it from the early poet who composed <i>Odyssey,
+      XIX. 53.</i> In that passage Penelope "comes from her chamber, like
+      Artemis or golden Aphrodite." Penelope <i>had</i> a chamber&mdash;being "a
+      lone lorn woman," who could not sleep in a hall where the Wooers sat up
+      late drinking&mdash;and the latest poet transfers this chamber to Helen.
+      But however late and larcenous he may have been, the poet of IV. 121
+      certainly did not crib the words of the poet of XIX. 53, for he says,
+      "Helen came out of her <i>fragrant, high-roofed</i> chamber." The <i>hall</i>
+      was not precisely "fragrant"! However, Noack supposes that the late poet
+      of Book IV. let Helen have a chamber apart, to lead up to the striking
+      scene of her entry to the hall where her guests are sitting. May Helen not
+      even have a boudoir? In <i>Odyssey</i>, IV. 263, Helen speaks remorsefully
+      of having abandoned her "chamber," and husband, and child, with Paris; but
+      the late poet says this, according to Noack, because he finds that he is
+      in for a chamber, so to speak, at all events, as a result of his having
+      previously cribbed the word "chamber" from Odyssey, XIX. 53. Otherwise, we
+      presume Helen would have said that she regretted having left "the recess
+      of the lofty hall" where she really did sleep. {Footnote: Noack, pp.
+      47-48}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The merit of this method of arguing may be left to the judgment of the
+      reader, who will remark that wedded pairs are not described as leaving the
+      hall when they go to bed; they sleep in "a recess of the lofty house," the
+      innermost part. Is this the same as the "recess of the <i>hall</i>" or is
+      it an innermost part of the <i>house?</i> Who can be certain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bridal chamber, built so cunningly, with the trunk of a tree for the
+      support of the bed, by Odysseus (odyssey, XXIII. 177-204), is, according
+      to Noack, an exception, a solitary freak of Odysseus. But we may reply
+      that the <i>thalamos</i>, the separate chamber, is no freak; the freak, by
+      knowledge of which Odysseus proves his identity, is the use of the tree in
+      the construction of the bed. {blank space} was highly original.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That separate chambers are needed for grown-up children, <i>BECAUSE</i>
+      the parents sleep in the hall, is no strong argument. If the parents had a
+      separate chamber, the young people, unless they slept in the hall, would
+      still need their own. The girls, of course, could not sleep in the hall;
+      and, in the absence of both Penelope and Odysseus from the hall, ever
+      since Telemachus was a baby, Telemachus could have slept there. But it
+      will be replied that the Wooers did not beset the hall, and Penelope did
+      not retire to a separate chamber, till Telemachus was a big boy of
+      sixteen. Noack argues that he had a separate chamber, though the hall was
+      free, <i>tradition</i>. {Footnote: Noack, p. 49.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where does Noack think that, in a normal Homeric house, the girls of the
+      family slept? <i>They</i> could not sleep in the hall, and on the two
+      occasions when the <i>Iliad</i> has to mention the chambers of the young
+      ladies they are "upper chambers," as is natural. But as Noack wants to
+      prove the house of Odysseus, with its upper chambers, to be a late
+      peculiar house, he, of course, expunges the two mentions of girls' upper
+      chambers in the <i>Odyssey</i>. The process is simple and easy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We find (<i>Iliad</i>, XVII. 36) that a son, wedding in his father's and
+      mother's life-time, has a <i>thalamos</i> built for him, and a <i>muchos</i>
+      in the <i>THALAMOS</i>, where he leaves his wife when he goes to war. This
+      dwelling of grown-up married children, as in the case of the sons of
+      Priam, has a <i>thalamos</i>, or <i>doma</i>, and a courtyard&mdash;is a
+      house, in fact (<i>Iliad</i>, VI. 3 16). Here we seem to distinguish the
+      bed-chamber from the <i>doma</i>, which is the hall. Noack objects that
+      when Odysseus fumigates his house, after slaying the Wooers, he thus
+      treats the <i>megaron</i>, <i>AND</i> the <i>doma</i>, <i>AND</i> the
+      courtyard. Therefore, Noack argues, the <i>megaron</i>, or hall, is one
+      thing; the <i>doma</i> is another. Mr. Monro writes, "<i>doma</i> usually
+      means <i>megaron</i>," and he supposes a slip from another reading, <i>thalamon</i>
+      for <i>megaron</i>, which is not satisfactory. But if <i>doma</i> here be
+      not equivalent to <i>megaron</i>, what room can it possibly be? Who was
+      killed in another place? what place therefore needed purification except
+      the hall and courtyard? No other places needed purifying; there is
+      therefore clearly a defect in the lines which cannot be used in the
+      argument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noack, in any case, maintains that Paris has but one place to live in by
+      day and to sleep in by night&mdash;his {Greek: talamos}. There he sleeps,
+      eats, and polishes his weapons and armour. There Hector finds him looking
+      to his gear; Helen and the maids are all there (<i>Iliad,</i> VI.
+      321-323). Is this quite certain? Are Helen and the maids in the {Greek:
+      talamos}, where Paris is polishing his corslet and looking to his bow, or
+      in an adjacent room? If not in another room, why, when Hector is in the
+      room talking to Paris, does Helen ask him to "come in"? (<i>Iliad,</i> VI.
+      354). He is in, is there another room whence she can hear him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The minuteness of these inquiries is tedious!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In <i>Iliad,</i> III. 125, Iris finds Helen "in the hall" weaving. She
+      summons her to come to Priam on the gate. Helen dresses in outdoor
+      costume, and goes forth "from the chamber," {Greek: talamos} (III.
+      141-142). Are hall and chamber the same room, or did not Helen dress "in
+      the chamber"? In the same Book (III. 174) she repents having left the
+      {Greek: talamos} of Menelaus, not his hall: the passage is not a
+      repetition in words of her speech in the Odyssey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gods, of course, are lodged like men. When we find that Zeus has
+      really a separate sleeping chamber, built by Hephaestus, as Odysseus has (<i>Iliad,</i>
+      XIV. 166-167), we are told that this is a late interpolation. Mr. Leaf,
+      who has a high opinion of this scene, "the Beguiling of Zeus," places it
+      in the "second expansions"; he finds no "late Odyssean" elements in the
+      language. In <i>Iliad,</i> I. 608-611, Zeus "departed to his couch"; he
+      seems not to have stayed and slept in the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here a quaint problem occurs. Of all late things in the Odyssey the latest
+      is said to be the song of Demodocus about the loves of Ares and Aphrodite
+      in the house of Hephaestus. {Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 266-300.} We shall
+      show that this opinion is far from certainly correct. Hephaestus sets a
+      snare round the bed in his {Greek: talamos} and catches the guilty lovers.
+      <i>Now</i>, was his {Greek: talamos} or bedroom, also his dining-room? If
+      so, the author of the song, though so "late," knows what Noack knows, and
+      what the poets who assign sleeping chambers to wedded folks do not know,
+      namely, that neither married gods nor married men have separate bedrooms.
+      This is plain, for he makes Hephaestus stand at the front door of his
+      house, and shout to the gods to come and see the sinful lovers. {Footnote:
+      Ibid., VI. 304-305} They all come and look on <i>from the front door</i> (<i>Odyssey</i>,
+      VII. 325), which leads into the {Greek: megaron}, the hall. If the lovers
+      are in bed in the hall, then hall and bedroom are all one, and the
+      terribly late poet who made this lay knows it, though the late poets of
+      the <i>Odyssey</i> and <i>Iliad</i> do not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would appear that the author of the lay is not "late," as we shall
+      prove in another case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noack, then, will not allow man or god to have a separate wedding chamber,
+      nor women, before the late parts of the <i>Odyssey</i>, to have separate
+      quarters, except in the house of Odysseus. Women's chambers do not exist
+      in the Homeric house. {Footnote: Noack, p. 50.} If so, how remote is the
+      true Homeric house from the house of historical Greece!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for upper chambers, those of the daughter of the house (<i>Iliad,</i>
+      II. 514; XVI. 184), both passages are "late," as we saw (Noack, p.{blank
+      space}). In the <i>Odyssey</i> Penelope both sleeps and works at the
+      shroud in an upper chamber. But the whole arrangement of upper chambers as
+      women's apartments is as late, says Noack, as the time of the poets and
+      "redactors" (whoever they may have been) of the Odyssey, XXI., XXII.,
+      XXIII. {Footnote: Noack, p. 68.} At the earliest these Books are said to
+      be of the eighth century B.C. Here the late poets have their innings at
+      last, and do modernise the Homeric house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To prove the absence of upper rooms in the <i>Iliad</i> we have to abolish
+      II. 514, where Astyoche meets her divine lover in her upper chamber, and
+      XVI. 184, where Polymêlê celebrates her amour with Hermes "in the upper
+      chambers." The places where these two passages occur, <i>Catalogue</i>
+      (Book II.) and the <i>Catalogue</i> of the <i>Myrmidons</i> (Book XVI.)
+      are, indeed, both called "late," but the author of the latter knows the
+      early law of bride-price, which is supposed to be unknown to the authors
+      of "late" passages in the Odyssey (XVI. 190).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stated briefly, such are the ideas of Noack. They leave us, at least, with
+      permission to hold that the whole of the Epics, except Books XXI., XXII.,
+      and XXIII. of the Odyssey, bear, as regards the house, the marks of a
+      distinct peculiar age, coming between the period of Mycenae and Tiryns on
+      one hand and the eighth century B.C. on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the point for which we have contended, and this suits our argument
+      very well, though we are sorry to see that Odyssey, Books XXI., XXII., and
+      XXIII., are no older than the eighth century B.C. But we have not been
+      quite convinced that Helen had not her separate chamber, that Zeus had not
+      his separate chamber, and that the upper chambers of the daughters of the
+      house in the Iliad are "late." Where, if not in upper chambers, did the
+      young princesses repose? Again, the marked separation of the women in the
+      house of Odysseus may be the result of Penelope's care in unusual
+      circumstances, though she certainly would not build a separate hall for
+      them. There are over a hundred handsome young scoundrels in her house all
+      day long and deep into the night; she would, vainly, do her best to keep
+      her girls apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It stands to reason that young girls of princely families would have
+      bedrooms in the house, not in the courtyard-bedrooms out of the way of
+      enterprising young men. What safer place could be found for them than in
+      upper chambers, as in the Iliad? But, if their lovers were gods, we know
+      that none "can see a god coming or going against his will." The
+      arrangements of houses may and do vary in different cases in the same age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As examples we turn to the parallel afforded by the Icelandic sagas and
+      their pictures of houses of the eleventh century B.C. The present author
+      long ago pointed out the parallel of the houses in the sagas and in Homer.
+      {Footnote: <i>The</i> House. Butcher and Lang. Translation of the
+      Odyssey.} He took his facts from Dasent's translation of the Njal Saga
+      (1861, vol. i. pp. xcviii., ciii., with diagrams). As far as he is aware,
+      no critic looked into the matter till Mr. Monro (1901), being apparently
+      unacquainted with Dasent's researches, found similar lore in works by Dr.
+      Valtyr Gudmundsson {Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 491-495; <i>cf</i>.
+      Gudmundsson, <i>Der Islandske Bottg i Fristats Tiden</i>, 1894; <i>cf</i>.
+      Dasent, <i>Oxford</i> Essays, 1858.} The roof of the hall is supported by
+      four rows of columns, the two inner rows are taller, and between them is
+      the hearth, with seats of honour for the chief guests and the lord. The
+      fire was in a kind of trench down the hall; and in very cold weather, we
+      learn from Dasent, long fires could be lit through the extent of the hall.
+      The chief had a raised seat; the guests sat on benches. The high seats
+      were at the centre; not till later times on the dais, as in a college
+      hall. The tables were relatively small, and, as in Homer, could be removed
+      after a meal. The part of the hall with the dais in later days was
+      partitioned off as a <i>stofa</i> or parlour. In early times cooking was
+      done in the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Gudmundsson, if I understand him, varies from Dasent in some respects.
+      I quote an abstract of his statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About the year 1000 houses generally consisted of, at least, four rooms;
+      often a fifth was added, the so-called bath-room. The oldest form for
+      houses was that of one long line or row of separate rooms united by wooden
+      or clay corridors or partitions, and each covered with a roof. Later, this
+      was considered unpractical, and they began building some of the houses or
+      rooms behind the others, which facilitated the access from one to another,
+      and diminished the number of outer doors and corridors."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Towards the latter part of the tenth century the <i>skaal</i> was used as
+      common sleeping-room for the whole family, including servants and serfs;
+      it was fitted up in the same way as the hall. Like this, it was divided in
+      three naves by rows of wooden pillars; the middle floor was lower than
+      that of the two side naves. In these were placed the so-called <i>saet</i>
+      or bed-places, not running the whole length of the {blank space} from
+      gable to gable, but sideways, filling about a third part. Each <i>saet</i>
+      was enclosed by broad, strong planks joined into the pillars, but not
+      nailed on, so they might easily be taken out. These planks, called <i>SATTESTOKKE</i>,
+      could also be turned sideways and used as benches during the day; they
+      were often beautifully carved, and consequently highly valued."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When settling abroad the people took away with them these planks, and put
+      them up in their new home as a symbol of domestic happiness. The <i>saet</i>
+      was occupied by the servants of the farm as sleeping-rooms; generally it
+      was screened by hangings and low panels, which partitioned it off like
+      huge separate boxes, used as beds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All beds were filled with hay or straw; servants and serfs slept on this
+      without any bedclothes, sometimes a sleeping-bag was used, or they covered
+      themselves with deerskins or a mantle. The family had bed-clothes, but
+      only in very wealthy houses were they also provided for the servants.
+      Moveable beds were extremely rare, but are sometimes mentioned. Generally
+      two people slept in each bed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the further end of the <i>skaal</i>, facing the door, opened out one
+      or several small bedrooms, destined for the husband with wife and
+      children, besides other members of the family, including guests of a
+      higher standing. These small dormitories were separated by partitions of
+      planks into bedrooms with one or several beds, and shut away from the
+      outer <i>SKAAL</i> either by a sliding-door in the wall or by an ordinary
+      door shutting with a hasp. Sometimes only a hanging covered the opening."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In some farms were found underground passages, leading from the master's
+      bedside to an outside house, or even as far as a wood or another sheltered
+      place in the neighbourhood, to enable the inhabitants to save themselves
+      during a night attack. For the same reason each man had his arms suspended
+      over his bed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Ildhus</i> or fire-house was the kitchen, often used besides as a
+      sleeping-room when the farms were very small. This was quite abolished
+      after the year 1000."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Buret</i> was the provision house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The bathroom was heated from a stone oven; the stones were heated red-hot
+      and cold water thrown upon them, which developed a quantity of vapour. As
+      the heat and the steam mounted, the people&mdash;men and women&mdash;crawled
+      up to a shelf under the roof and remained there as in a Turkish bath."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In large and wealthy houses there was also a women's room, with a
+      fireplace built low down in the middle, as in the hall, where the women
+      used to sit with their handiwork all day. The men were allowed to come in
+      and talk to them, also beggar-women and other vagabonds, who brought them
+      the news from other places. Towards evening and for meals all assembled
+      together in the hall."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this showing, people did not sleep in cabins partitioned off the
+      dining-hall, but in the <i>skaale</i>; and two similar and similarly
+      situated rooms, one the common dining-hall, the other the common
+      sleeping-hall, have been confused by writers on the sagas. {Footnote:
+      Gudmundsson, p, 14, Note I.} Can there be a similar confusion in the uses
+      of <i>megaron</i>, <i>doma</i>, and <i>domos</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Eyrbyggja Saga we have descriptions of the "fire-hall," <i>skáli</i>
+      or <i>eldhús</i>. "The fire-hall was the common sleeping-room in Icelandic
+      homesteads." Guests and strangers slept there; not in the portico, as in
+      Homer. "Here were the lock-beds." There were butteries; one of these was
+      reached by a ladder. The walls were panelled. {Footnote: <i>The Ere
+      Dwellers</i>, p. 145.} Thorgunna had a "berth," apparently partitioned
+      off, in the hall. {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>., 137-140.} As in Homer the hall
+      was entered from the courtyard, in which were separate rooms for stores
+      and other purposes. In the courtyard also, in the houses of Gunnar of
+      Lithend and Gisli at Hawkdale, and doubtless in other cases, were the <i>dyngfur</i>,
+      or ladies' chambers, their "bowers" (<i>Thalamos</i>, like that of
+      Telemachus in the courtyard), where they sat spinning and gossiping. The
+      <i>dyngja</i> was originally called <i>búr</i>, our "bower"; the ballads
+      say "in bower and hall." In the ballad of <i>MARGARET</i>, her parents are
+      said to put her in the way of deadly sin by building her a bower,
+      apparently separate from the main building; she would have been safer in
+      an upper chamber, though, even there, not safe&mdash;at least, if a god
+      wooed her! It does not appear that all houses had these chambers for
+      ladies apart from the main building. You did not enter the main hall in
+      Iceland from the court directly in front, but by the "man's door" at the
+      west side, whence you walked through the porch or outer hall (<i>prodomos</i>,
+      <i>aithonsa</i>), in the centre of which, to the right, were the doors of
+      the hall. The women entered by the women's door, at the eastern extremity.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Guests did not sleep, as in Homer, in the <i>prodomos</i>, or the
+portico&mdash;the climate did not permit it&mdash;but in one or other hall. The
+hall was wainscotted; the walls were hung with shields and weapons,
+like the hall of Odysseus. The heads of the family usually slept in the
+aisles, in chambers entered through the wainscot of the hall. Such a
+chamber might be called <i>muchos</i>; it was private from the hall though
+under the same roof. It appears not improbable that some Homeric halls
+had sleeping places of this kind; such a <i>muchos</i> in Iceland seems to
+have had windows. {Footnote: Story of Burnt <i>Njal</i>, i. 242.}
+
+ Gunnar himself, however, slept with his wife, Halegerda, in an
+upper chamber; his mother, who lived with him, also had a room upstairs.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In Njal's house, too, there was an upper chamber, wherein the foes of Njal
+      threw fire. {Footnote:<i>Ibid</i>., ii. 173.} But Njal and Bergthora, his
+      wife, when all hope was ended, went into their own bride-chamber in the
+      separate aisle of the hall "and gave over their souls into God's hand."
+      Under a hide they lay; and when men raised up the hide, after the fire had
+      done its work, "they were unburnt under it. All praised God for that, and
+      thought it was a <i>GREAT</i> token." In this house was a weaving room for
+      the women. {Footnote:<i>Ibid</i>, ii. 195.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It thus appears that Icelandic houses of the heroic age, as regards
+      structural arrangements, were practically identical with the house of
+      Odysseus, allowing for a separate sleeping-hall, while the differences
+      between that and other Homeric houses may be no more than the differences
+      between various Icelandic dwellings. The parents might sleep in
+      bedchambers off the hall or in upper chambers. Ladies might have bowers in
+      the courtyard or might have none. The {Greek: laurae}&mdash;each passage
+      outside the hall&mdash;yielded sleeping rooms for servants; and there were
+      store-rooms behind the passage at the top end of the hall, as well as
+      separate chambers for stores in the courtyard. Mr. Leaf judiciously
+      reconstructs the Homeric house in its "public rooms," of which we hear
+      most, while he leaves the residential portion with "details and limits
+      probably very variable." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. pp. 586-589,
+      with diagram based on the palace of Tiryns.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Given variability, which is natural and to be expected, and given the
+      absence of detail about the "residential portion" of other houses than
+      that of Odysseus in the poems, it does not seem to us that this house is
+      conspicuously "late," still less that it is the house of historical
+      Greece. Manifestly, in all respects it more resembles the houses of Njal
+      and Gunnar of Lithend in the heroic age of Iceland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the house, as in the uses of iron and bronze, the weapons, armour,
+      relations of the sexes, customary laws, and everything else, Homer gives
+      us an harmonious picture of a single and peculiar age. We find no stronger
+      mark of change than in the Odyssean house, if that be changed, which we
+      show reason to doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_NOTE" id="link2H_NOTE">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NOTES OF CHANGE IN THE "ODYSSEY"
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      If the Homeric descriptions of details of life contain anachronisms,
+      points of detail inserted in later progressive ages, these must be
+      peculiarly conspicuous in the Odyssey. Longinus regarded it as the work of
+      Homer's advanced life, the sunset of his genius, and nobody denies that it
+      assumes the existence of the <i>Iliad</i> and is posterior to that epic.
+      In the Odyssey, then, we are to look, if anywhere, for indications of a
+      changed society. That the language of the <i>Odyssey</i>, and of four
+      Books of the <i>Iliad</i> (IX., X., XXIII., XXIV.), exhibits signs of
+      change is a critical commonplace, but the language is matter for a
+      separate discussion; we are here concerned with the ideas, manners,
+      customary laws, weapons, implements, and so forth of the Epics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taking as a text Mr. Monro's essay, <i>The Relation of the Odyssey to the
+      Iliad</i>, {Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 324, <i>seqq</i>.} we
+      examine the notes of difference which he finds between the twin Epics. As
+      to the passages in which he discovers "borrowing or close imitation of
+      passages" in the <i>Iliad</i> by the poet of the <i>Odyssey</i>, we shall
+      not dwell on the matter, because we know so little about the laws
+      regulating the repetition of epic formulae. It is tempting, indeed, to
+      criticise Mr. Monro's list of twenty-four Odyssean "borrowings," and we
+      might arrive at some curious results. For example, we could show that the
+      <i>Klôthes</i>, the spinning women who "spae" the fate of each new-born
+      child, are not later, but, as less abstract, are if anything earlier than
+      "the simple <i>Aisa</i> of the <i>Iliad</i>." {Footnote: <i>Odyssey</i>,
+      VII. 197; <i>Iliad</i>, xx. 127.} But our proof would require an excursion
+      into the beliefs of savage and barbaric peoples who have their <i>Klôthes</i>,
+      spae-women attending each birth, but who are not known to have developed
+      the idea of <i>Aisa</i> or Fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We might also urge that "to send a spear through the back of a stag" is
+      not, as Mr. Monro thought, "an improbable feat," and that a man wounded to
+      death as Leiocritus was wounded, would not, as Mr. Monro argued, fall
+      backwards. He supposes that the poet of the <i>Odyssey</i> borrowed the
+      forward fall from a passage in the <i>Iliad</i>, where the fall is in
+      keeping. But, to make good our proof, it might be necessary to spear a
+      human being in the same way as Leiocritus was speared. {Footnote: Monro,
+      odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 239, 230.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The repetitions of the Epic, at all events, are not the result of the
+      weakness of a poet who had to steal his expressions like a schoolboy. They
+      have some other cause than the indolence or inefficiency of a <i>cento</i>&mdash;making
+      undergraduate. Indeed, a poet who used the many terms in the <i>Odyssey</i>
+      which do not occur in the <i>Iliad</i> was not constrained to borrow from
+      any predecessor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is needless to dwell on the Odyssean novelties in vocabulary, which
+      were naturally employed by a poet who had to sing of peace, not of war,
+      and whose epic, as Aristotle says, is "ethical," not military. The poet's
+      rich vocabulary is appropriate to his novel subject, that is all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming to Religion (I) we find Mr. Leaf assigning to his original <i>Achilleis</i>&mdash;"the
+      kernel"&mdash;the very same religious ideas as Mr. Monro takes to be marks
+      of "lateness" and of advance when he finds them in the Odyssey!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the original oldest part of the <i>Iliad</i>, says Mr. Leaf, "the gods
+      show themselves just so much as to let us know what are the powers which
+      control mankind from heaven.... Their interference is such as becomes the
+      rulers of the world, not partisans in the battle." {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>,
+      vol. ii. pp. xii., xiii.} It is the later poets of the <i>Iliad</i>, in
+      Mr. Leaf's view, who introduce the meddlesome, undignified, and extremely
+      unsportsmanlike gods. The original early poet of the <i>Iliad</i> had the
+      nobler religious conceptions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that case&mdash;the <i>Odyssey</i> being later than the original kernel
+      of the Iliad&mdash;the <i>Odyssey</i> ought to give us gods as undignified
+      and unworthy as those exhibited by the later continuators of the <i>Iliad</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the reverse is the case. The gods behave fairly well in Book XXIV. of
+      the <i>Iliad</i>, which, we are to believe, is the latest, or nearly the
+      latest, portion. They are all wroth with the abominable behaviour of
+      Achilles to dead Hector (XXIV. 134). They console and protect Priam. As
+      for the <i>Odyssey</i>, Mr. Monro finds that in this late Epic the gods
+      are just what Mr. Leaf proclaims them to have been in his old original
+      kernel. "There is now an Olympian concert that carries on something like a
+      moral government of the world. It is very different in the <i>Iliad</i>...."
+      {Footnote: Monro, <i>Odyssey</i>, ii. 335.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not very different; it was just the same, in Mr. Leaf's genuine
+      old original germ of the <i>Iliad</i>. In fact, the gods are "very much
+      like you and me." When their <i>ichor</i> is up, they misbehave as we do
+      when our blood is up, during the fury of war. When Hector is dead and when
+      the war is over, the gods give play to their higher nature, as men do.
+      There is no difference of religious conception to sever the <i>Odyssey</i>
+      from the later but not from the original parts of the <i>Iliad</i>. It is
+      all an affair of the circumstances in each case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Odyssey</i> is calmer, more reflective, more <i>religious</i> than
+      the <i>Iliad</i>, being a poem of peace. The <i>Iliad</i>, a poem of war,
+      is more <i>mythological</i> than the <i>Odyssey</i>: the gods in the <i>Iliad</i>
+      are excited, like the men, by the great war and behave accordingly. That
+      neither gods nor men show any real sense of the moral weakness of
+      Agamemnon or Achilles, or of the moral superiority of Hector, is an
+      unacceptable statement. {Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 336.} Even
+      Achilles and Agamemnon are judged by men and by the poet according to
+      their own standard of ethics and of customary law. There is really no
+      doubt on this point. Too much (2) is made of the supposed different views
+      of Olympus&mdash;a mountain in Thessaly in the <i>Iliad</i>; a snowless,
+      windless, supra-mundane place in <i>Odyssey</i>, V. 41-47. {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>.,
+      ii. 396.} Of the Odyssean passage Mr. Merry justly says, "the actual
+      description is not irreconcilable with the general Homeric picture of
+      Olympus." It is "an idealised mountain," and conceptions of it vary, with
+      the variations which are essential to and inseparable from all
+      mythological ideas. As Mr. Leaf says, {Footnote: Note to <i>Iliad</i>, V.
+      750.} "heaven, <i>ouranos</i> and Olympus, if not identical, are at least
+      closely connected." In V. 753, the poet "regarded the summit of Olympus as
+      a half-way stage between heaven and earth," thus "departing from the
+      oldest Homeric tradition, which made the earthly mountain Olympus, and not
+      any aerial region, the dwelling of the gods." But precisely the same
+      confusion of mythical ideas occurs among a people so backward as the
+      Australian south-eastern tribes, whose All Father is now seated on a
+      hill-top and now "above the sky." In <i>ILIAD</i>, VIII. 25, 26, the poet
+      is again said to have "entirely lost the real Epic conception of Olympus
+      as a mountain in Thessaly," and to "follow the later conception, which
+      removed it from earth to heaven." In <i>Iliad</i>, XI. 184, "from heaven"
+      means "from the summit of Olympus, which, though Homer does not identify
+      it with <i>oupavos</i>, still, as a mountain, reached into heaven" (Leaf).
+      The poet of Iliad, XI. 184, says plainly that Zeus descended "<i>from</i>
+      heaven" to Mount Ida. In fact, all that is said of Olympus, of heaven, of
+      the home of the gods, is poetical, is mythical, and so is necessarily
+      subject to the variations of conception inseparable from mythology. This
+      is certain if there be any certainty in mythological science, and here no
+      hard and fast line can be drawn between <i>ODYSSEY</i> and <i>Iliad</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (3) The next point of difference is that, "we hear no more of Iris as the
+      messenger of Zeus;" in the Odyssey, "the agent of the will of Zeus is now
+      Hermes, as in the Twenty-fourth Book of the <i>Iliad</i>," a late
+      "Odyssean" Book. But what does that matter, seeing that <i>ILIAD</i>, Book
+      VIII, is declared to be one of the latest additions; yet in Book VIII.
+      Iris, not Hermes, is the messenger (VIII. 409-425). If in late times
+      Hermes, not Iris, is the messenger, why, in a very "late" Book (VIII.) is
+      Iris the messenger, not Hermes? <i>Iliad</i>, Book XXIII., is also a late
+      "Odyssean" Book, but here Iris goes on her messages (XXIII. 199) moved
+      merely by the prayers of Achilles. In the late Odyssean Book (XXIV.) of
+      the <i>Iliad</i>, Iris runs on messages from Zeus both to Priam and to
+      Achilles. If Iris, in "Odyssean" times, had resigned office and been
+      succeeded by Hermes, why did Achilles pray, not to Hermes, but to Iris?
+      There is nothing in the argument about Hermes and Iris. There is nothing
+      in the facts but the variability of mythical and poetical conceptions.
+      Moreover, the conception of Iris as the messenger certainly existed
+      through the age of the Odyssey, and later. In the Odyssey the beggar man
+      is called "Irus," a male Iris, because he carries messages; and Iris does
+      her usual duty as messenger in the Homeric Hymns, as well as in the
+      so-called late Odyssean Books of the <i>Iliad</i>. The poet of the Odyssey
+      knew all about Iris; there had arisen no change of belief; he merely
+      employed Hermes as messenger, not of the one god, but of the divine
+      Assembly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (4) Another difference is that in the <i>Iliad</i> the wife of Hephaestus
+      is one of the Graces; in the Odyssey she is Aphrodite. {Footnote: Monro,
+      <i>Odyssey</i>, vol. ii. p. 336.} This is one of the inconsistencies which
+      are the essence of mythology. Mr. Leaf points out that when Hephaestus is
+      about exercising his craft, in making arms for Achilles, Charis "is made
+      wife of Hephaestus by a more transparent allegory than we find elsewhere
+      in Homer," whereas, when Aphrodite appears in a comic song by Demodocus
+      (Odyssey, VIII. 266-366), "that passage is later and un-Homeric."
+      {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. ii. p. 246.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of this we do not accept the doctrine that the lay is un-Homeric. The
+      difference comes to no more than <i>that;</i> the accustomed discrepancy
+      of mythology, of story-telling about the gods. But as to the lay of
+      Demodocus being un-Homeric and late, the poet at least knows the regular
+      Homeric practice of the bride-price, and its return by the bride's father
+      to the husband of an adulterous wife (Odyssey, VIII. 318, 319). The poet
+      of this lay, which Mr. Merry defends as Homeric, was intimately familiar
+      with Homeric customary law. Now, according to Paul Cauer, as we shall see,
+      other "Odyssean" poets were living in an age of changed law, later than
+      that of the author of the lay of Demodocus. All these so-called
+      differences between <i>Iliad</i> and Odyssey do not point to the fact that
+      the <i>Odyssey</i> belongs to a late and changed period of culture, of
+      belief and customs. There is nothing in the evidence to prove that
+      contention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There (5) are two references to local oracles in the <i>Odyssey,</i> that
+      of Dodona (XIV. 327; XIX. 296) and that of Pytho (VIII. 80). This is the
+      old name of Delphi. Pytho occurs in <i>Iliad,</i> IX. 404, as a very rich
+      temple of Apollo&mdash;the oracle is not named, but the oracle brought in
+      the treasures. Achilles (XVI. 233) prays to Pelasgian Zeus of Dodona,
+      whose priests were thickly tabued, but says nothing of the oracle of
+      Dodona. Neither when in leaguer round Troy, nor when wandering in fairy
+      lands forlorn, had the Achaeans or Odysseus much to do with the local
+      oracles of Greece; perhaps not, in Homer's time, so important as they were
+      later, and little indeed is said about them in either Epic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (6) "The geographical knowledge shown in the Odyssey goes beyond that of
+      the <i>Iliad</i> ... especially in regard to Egypt and Sicily." But a poet
+      of a widely wandering hero of Western Greece has naturally more occasion
+      than the poet of a fixed army in Asia to show geographical knowledge.
+      Egyptian Thebes is named, in <i>ILIAD</i>, IX., as a city very rich,
+      especially in chariots; while in the <i>ODYSSEY</i> the poet has occasion
+      to show more knowledge of the way to Egypt and of Viking descents from
+      Crete on the coast (Odyssey, III. 300; IV. 351; XIV. 257; XVII. 426).
+      Archaeology shows that the Mycenaean age was in close commercial relation
+      with Egypt, and that the Mycenaean civilisation extended to most
+      Mediterranean lands and islands, and to Italy and Sicily. {Footnote:
+      Ridgeway, <i>Early Age of Greece</i>, i. 69.} There is nothing suspicious,
+      as "late," in the mention of Sicily by Odysseus in Ithaca (Odyssey, XX.
+      383; XXIV. 307). In the same way, if the poet of a western poem does not
+      dilate on the Troad and the people of Asia Minor as the poet of the <i>ILIAD</i>
+      does, that is simply because the scene of the <i>ILIAD</i> is in Asia and
+      the scene of the Odyssey is in the west, when it is not in No Man's land.
+      From the same cause the poet of sea-faring has more occasion to speak of
+      the Phoenicians, great sea-farers, than the poet of the Trojan leaguer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (7) We know so little about land tenure in Homeric times&mdash;and,
+      indeed, early land tenure is a subject so complex and obscure that it is
+      not easy to prove advance towards separate property in the <i>Odyssey</i>&mdash;beyond
+      what was the rule in the time of the <i>ILIAD</i>. In the Making of the
+      Arms (XVIII. 541-549) we find many men ploughing a field, and this may
+      have been a common field. But in what sense? Many ploughs were at work at
+      once on a Scottish runrig field, and each farmer had his own strip on
+      several common fields, but each farmer held by rent, or by rent and
+      services, from the laird. These common fields were not common property. In
+      XII. 422 we have "a common field," and men measuring a strip and
+      quarrelling about the marking-stones, across the "baulk," but it does not
+      follow that they are owners; they may be tenants. Such quarrels were
+      common in Scotland when the runrig system of common fields, each man with
+      his strip, prevailed. {Footnote: Grey Graham, <i>Social Life in Scotland
+      in the Eighteenth Century</i>, i. 157.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man had a {Greek: klaeros} or lot (<i>ILIAD</i>, XV. 448), but what was
+      a "lot"? At first, probably, a share in land periodically shifted-&amp; <i>partage
+      noir</i> of the Russian peasants. Kings and men who deserve public
+      gratitude receive a {Greek: temenos} a piece of public land, as
+      Bellerophon did from the Lycians (VI. 194). In the case of Melager such an
+      estate is offered to him, but by whom? Not by the people at large, but by
+      the {Greek: gerontes} (IX. 574).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who are the {Greek: gerontes}? They are not ordinary men of the people;
+      they are, in fact, the gentry. In an age so advanced from tribal
+      conditions as is the Homeric time&mdash;far advanced beyond ancient tribal
+      Scotland or Ireland&mdash;we conceive that, as in these countries during
+      the tribal period, the {Greek: gerontes} (in Celtic, the <i>Flaith</i>)
+      held in POSSESSION, if not in accordance with the letter of the law, as
+      property, much more land than a single "lot." The Irish tribal freeman had
+      a right to a "lot," redistributed by rotation. Wealth consisted of cattle;
+      and a <i>bogire</i>, a man of many kine, let <i>them</i> out to tenants.
+      Such a rich man, a <i>flatha</i>, would, in accordance with human nature,
+      use his influence with kineless dependents to acquire in possession
+      several lots, avoid the partition, and keep the lots in possession though
+      not legally in property. Such men were the Irish <i>flaith</i>, gentry
+      under the <i>RI</i>, or king, his {Greek: gerontes}, each with his <i>ciniod</i>,
+      or near kinsmen, to back his cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Flaith</i> seems clearly to mean land-owners," or squires, says Sir
+      James Ramsay. {Footnote: <i>Foundations of England</i>, i. 16, Note 4.} If
+      land, contrary to the tribal ideal, came into private hands in early
+      Ireland, we can hardly suppose that, in the more advanced and settled
+      Homeric society, no man but the king held land equivalent in extent to a
+      number of "lots." The {Greek: gerontes}, the gentry, the chariot-owning
+      warriors, of whom there are hundreds not of kingly rank in Homer (as in
+      Ireland there were many <i>flaith</i> to one <i>Ri</i>) probably, in an
+      informal but tight grip, held considerable lands. When we note their
+      position in the <i>Iliad</i>, high above the nameless host, can we imagine
+      that they did not hold more land than the simple, perhaps periodically
+      shifting, "lot"? There were "lotless" men (Odyssey, XL 490), lotless <i>freemen</i>,
+      and what had become of their lots? Had they not fallen into the hands of
+      the {Greek: gerontes} or the <i>flaith</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ridgeway in a very able essay {Footnote: <i>Journal of Hellenic
+      Studies</i>, vi. 319-339.} holds different opinions. He points out that
+      among a man's possessions, in the <i>Iliad</i>, we hear only of personal
+      property and live stock. It is in one passage only in the Odyssey (XIV.
+      211) that we meet with men holding several lots of land; but <i>they</i>,
+      we remark, occur in Cretean isle, as we know, of very advanced
+      civilisation from of old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ridgeway also asks whether the lotless men may not be "outsiders,"
+      such as are attached to certain villages of Central and Southern India;
+      {Footnote: Maine, <i>Village Communities</i>, P. 127.} or they may answer
+      to the <i>Fuidhir</i>, or "broken men," of early Ireland, fugitives from
+      one to another tribe. They would be "settled on the waste lands of a
+      community." If so, they would not be lotless; they would have new lots.
+      {Footnote: <i>Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>, vi. 322, 323.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Laertes, though a king, is supposed to have won his farm by his own
+      labours from the waste (Odyssey, XXIV. 207). Mr. Monro says, "the land
+      having thus been won from the wastes (the {Greek: gae aklaeros te kai
+      aktitos} of <i>H., Ven.</i> 123), was a {Greek: temenos} or separate
+      possession of Laertes." The passage is in the rejected conclusion of the
+      Odyssey; and if any man might go and squat in the waste, any man might
+      have a lot, or better than one lot. In <i>Iliad</i>, XXIII. 832-835,
+      Achilles says that his offered prize of iron will be useful to a man
+      "whose rich fields are very remote from any town," Teucer and Meriones
+      compete for the prize: probably they had such rich remote fields, not each
+      a mere lot in a common field. These remote fields they are supposed to
+      hold in perpetuity, apart from the <i>temenos</i>, which, in Mr.
+      Ridgeway's opinion, reverted, on the death of each holder, to the
+      community, save where kingship was hereditary. Now, if {Greek: klaeros}
+      had come to mean "a lot of land," as we say "a building lot," obviously
+      men like Teucer and Meriones had many lots, rich fields, which at death
+      might sometimes pass to their heirs. Thus there was separate landed
+      property in the <i>Iliad</i>; but the passage is denounced, though not by
+      Mr. Ridgeway, as "late."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The absence of enclosures ({Greek: herkos arouraes}) proves nothing about
+      absence of several property in land. In Scotland the laird's lands were
+      unenclosed till deep in the eighteenth century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My own case for land in private possession, in Homeric times, rests mainly
+      on human nature in such an advanced society. Such possession as I plead
+      for is in accordance with human nature, in a society so distinguished by
+      degrees of wealth as is the Homeric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unless we are able to suppose that all the gentry of the <i>Iliad</i> held
+      no "rich fields remote from towns," each having but one rotatory lot
+      apiece, there is no difference in Iliadic and Odyssean land tenure, though
+      we get clearer lights on it in the <i>Odyssey</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The position of the man of several lots may have been indefensible, if the
+      ideal of tribal law were ever made real, but wealth in growing societies
+      universally tends to override such law. Mr. Keller {Footnote: Homeric
+      Society, p. 192. 1902.} justly warns us against the attempt "to apply
+      universally certain fixed rules of property development. The passages in
+      Homer upon which opinions diverge most are isolated ones, occurring in
+      similes and fragmentary descriptions. Under such conditions the
+      formulation of theories or the attempt rigorously to classify can be
+      little more than an intellectual exercise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have not the materials for a scientific knowledge of Homeric real
+      property; and, with all our materials in Irish law books, how hard it is
+      for us to understand the early state of such affairs in Ireland! But does
+      any one seriously suppose that the knightly class of the <i>Iliad</i>, the
+      chariot-driving gentlemen, held no more land&mdash;legally or by permitted
+      custom&mdash;than the two Homeric swains who vituperate each other across
+      a baulk about the right to a few feet of a strip of a runrig field?
+      Whosoever can believe that may also believe that the practice of adding
+      "lot" to "lot" began in the period between the finished composition of the
+      <i>Iliad</i> (or of the parts of it which allude to land tenure) and the
+      beginning of the <i>Odyssey</i> (or of the parts of it which refer to land
+      tenure). The inference is that, though the fact is not explicitly stated
+      in the <i>Iliad</i>, there were men who held more "lots" than one in
+      Iliadic times as well as in the Odyssean times, when, in a solitary
+      passage of the Odyssey, we do hear of such men in Crete. But whosoever has
+      pored over early European land tenures knows how dim our knowledge is, and
+      will not rush to employ his lore in discriminating between the date of the
+      <i>Iliad</i> and the date of the Odyssey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not much proof of change in institutions between Iliadic and Odyssean
+      times can be extracted from two passages about the ethna, or bride-price
+      of Penelope. The rule in both <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i> is that the
+      wooer gives a bride-price to the father of the bride, ethna. This was the
+      rule known even to that painfully late and un-Homeric poet who made the
+      Song of Demodocus about the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. In that song the
+      injured husband, Hephaestus, claims back the bride-price which he had paid
+      to the father of his wife, Zeus. {Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 318.} This is
+      the accepted custom throughout the <i>Odyssey</i> (VI. 159; XVI. 77; XX.
+      335; XXI. 162; XV. 17, &amp;c.). So far there is no change of manners, no
+      introduction of the later practice, a dowry given with the bride, in place
+      of a bride-price given to the father by the bridegroom. But Penelope was
+      neither maid, wife, nor widow; her husband's fate, alive or dead, was
+      uncertain, and her son was so anxious to get her out of the house that he
+      says he offered gifts <i>with</i> her (XX. 342). In the same way, to buy
+      back the goodwill of Achilles, Agamemnon offers to give him his daughter
+      without bride-price, and to add great gifts (<i>Iliad</i>, IX. l47)&mdash;the
+      term for the gifts is {Greek: mailia}. People, of course, could make their
+      own bargain; take as much for their daughter as they could get, or let the
+      gifts go from husband to bride, and then return to the husband's home with
+      her (as in Germany in the time of Tacitus, <i>Germania</i>, 18), or do
+      that, and throw in more gifts. But in Odyssey, II. 53, Telemachus says
+      that the Wooers shrink from going to the house of Penelope's father,
+      Icarius, who would endow (?) his daughter ({Greek: eednoosaito}) And again
+      (<i>Odyssey</i>, I. 277; II. 196), her father's folk will furnish a bridal
+      feast, and "array the {Greek: heedna}, many, such as should accompany a
+      dear daughter." Some critics think that the gifts here are <i>dowry</i>, a
+      later institution than bride-price; others, that the father of the dear
+      daughter merely chose to be generous, and returned the bride-price, or its
+      equivalent, in whole or part. {Footnote: Merry, Odyssey, vol. i. p. 50.
+      Note to Book I 277.} If the former view be correct, these passages in
+      Odyssey, I., II. are later than the exceedingly "late" song of Demodocus.
+      If the latter theory be correct the father is merely showing goodwill, and
+      doing as the Germans did when they were in a stage of culture much earlier
+      than the Homeric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The position of Penelope is very unstable and legally perplexing. Has her
+      father her marriage? has her son her marriage? is she not perhaps still a
+      married woman with a living husband? Telemachus would give much to have
+      her off his hands, but he refuses to send her to her father's house, where
+      the old man might be ready enough to return the bride-price to her new
+      husband, and get rid of her with honour. For if Telemachus sends his
+      mother away against her will he will have to pay a heavy fine to her
+      father, and to thole his mother's curse, and lose his character among men
+      (odyssey, II. 130-138). The Icelanders of the saga period gave dowries
+      with their daughters. But when Njal wanted Hildigunna for his foster-son,
+      Hauskuld, he offered to give {Greek: hedna}. "I will lay down as much
+      money as will seem fitting to thy niece and thyself," he says to Flosi,
+      "if thou wilt think of making this match." {Footnote: Story of <i>Burnt
+      Njal</i>, ii. p. 81.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Circumstances alter cases, and we must be hard pressed to discover signs
+      of change of manners in the Odyssey as compared with the <i>Iliad</i> if
+      we have to rely on a solitary mention of "men of many lots" in Crete, and
+      on the perplexed proposals for the second marriage of Penelope. {Footnote:
+      For the alleged "alteration of old customs" see Cauer, <i>Grundfragen der
+      Homerkritik</i>, pp. 193-194.} We must not be told that the many other
+      supposed signs of change, Iris, Olympus, and the rest, have "cumulative
+      weight." If we have disposed of each individual supposed note of change in
+      beliefs and manners in its turn, then these proofs have, in each case, no
+      individual weight and, cumulatively, are not more ponderous than a
+      feather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The great strength of the theory that the poems are the work of several
+      ages is the existence in them of various strata of languages, earlier and
+      later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not to speak of differences of vocabulary, Mr. Monro and Mr. Leaf, with
+      many scholars, detect two strata of earlier and later <i>grammar</i> in
+      Iliad and Odyssey. In the <i>Iliad</i> four or five Books are infected by
+      "the later grammar," while the Odyssey in general seems to be
+      contaminated. Mr. Leafs words are: "When we regard the Epos in large
+      masses, we see that we can roughly arrange the inconsistent elements
+      towards one end or the other of a line of development both linguistic and
+      historical. The main division, that of <i>Iliad</i> and Odyssey, shows a
+      distinct advance along this line; and the distinction is still more marked
+      if we group with the <i>Odyssey</i> four Books of the <i>Iliad</i> whose
+      Odyssean physiognomy is well marked. Taking as our main guide the
+      dissection of the plot as shown in its episodes, we find that marks of
+      lateness, though nowhere entirely absent, group themselves most numerously
+      in the later additions ..." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. ii. p. X.} We
+      are here concerned with <i>linguistic</i> examples of "lateness." The
+      "four Books whose Odyssean physiognomy" and language seem "well marked,"
+      are IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. Here Mr. Leaf, Mr. Monro, and many authorities
+      are agreed. But to these four Odyssean Books of the <i>Iliad</i> Mr. Leaf
+      adds <i>Iliad</i>, XI. 664-772: "probably a later addition," says Mr.
+      Monro. "It is notably Odyssean in character," says Mr. Leaf; and the
+      author "is ignorant of the geography of the Western Peloponnesus. No doubt
+      the author was an Asiatic Greek." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. pp.
+      465-466. Note on Book XI. 756.} The value of this discovery is elsewhere
+      discussed (see <i>The Interpolations of Nestor</i>).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Odyssean notes in this passage of a hundred lines (<i>Iliad</i>, XI.
+      670-762) are the occurrence of "a purely Odyssean word" (677), an Attic
+      form of an epic word, and a "forbidden trochaic caesura in the fourth
+      foot"; an Odyssean word for carving meat, applied in a <i>non</i>-Odyssean
+      sense (688), a verb for "insulting," not elsewhere found in the <i>Iliad</i>
+      (though the noun is in the <i>Iliad</i>) (695), an Odyssean epithet of the
+      sun, "four times in the <i>Odyssey</i>" (735). It is also possible that
+      there is an allusion to a four-horse chariot (699).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are the proofs of Odyssean lateness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The real difficulty about Odyssean words and grammar in the <i>Iliad</i>
+      is that, if they were in vigorous poetic existence down to the time of
+      Pisistratus (as the Odysseanism of the Asiatic editor proves that they
+      were), and if every rhapsodist could add to and alter the materials at the
+      disposal of the Pisistratean editor at will, we are not told how the
+      fashionable Odysseanisms were kept, on the whole, out of twenty Books of
+      the Iliad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a point on which we cannot insist too strongly, as an argument
+      against the theory that, till the middle of the sixth century B.C., the <i>Iliad</i>
+      scarcely survived save in the memory of strolling rhapsodists. If that
+      were so, all the Books of the <i>Iliad</i> would, in the course of
+      recitation of old and composition of new passages, be equally contaminated
+      with late Odyssean linguistic style. It could not be otherwise; all the
+      Books would be equally modified in passing through the lips of modern
+      reciters and composers. Therefore, if twenty out of twenty-four Books are
+      pure, or pure in the main, from Odysseanisms, while four are deeply
+      stained with them, the twenty must not only be earlier than the four, but
+      must have been specially preserved, and kept uncontaminated, in some
+      manner inconsistent with the theory that all alike scarcely existed save
+      in the memory or invention of late strolling reciters.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+How the twenty Books relatively pure "in grammatical forms, in syntax,
+and in vocabulary," could be kept thus clean without the aid of written
+texts, I am unable to imagine. If left merely to human memory and at
+the mercy of reciters and new poets, they would have become stained with
+"the defining article"&mdash;and, indeed, an employment of the article which
+startles grammarians, appears even in the eleventh line of the First
+Book of the <i>Iliad</i>? {Footnote (exact placing uncertain): Cf. Monro and
+Leaf, on Iliad, I. 11-12.}
+
+ Left merely to human memory and the human voice, the twenty more
+or less innocent Books would have abounded, like the Odyssey, in
+{Greek: amphi} with the dative meaning "about," and with {Greek: ex} "in
+consequence of," and "the extension of the use of {Greek: ei} clauses
+as final and objective clauses," and similar marks of lateness, so
+interesting to grammarians. {Footnote: Monro, <i>Odyssey</i>, ii. pp.
+331-333.} But the twenty Books are almost, or quite, inoffensive in
+these respects.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Now, even in ages of writing, it has been found difficult or impossible to
+      keep linguistic novelties and novelties of metre out of old epics. We
+      later refer (<i>Archaeology of the Epic</i>) to the <i>Chancun de Willame</i>,
+      of which an unknown benefactor printed two hundred copies in 1903. Mr.
+      Raymond Weeks, in <i>Romania</i>, describes <i>Willame</i> as taking a
+      place beside the <i>Chanson de Roland</i> in the earliest rank of <i>Chansons
+      de Geste</i>. If the text can be entirely restored, the poem will appear
+      as "the most primitive" of French epics of the eleventh and twelfth
+      centuries. But it has passed from copy to copy in the course of
+      generations. The methods of versification change, and, after line 2647,
+      "there are traces of change in the language. The word <i>ço</i>, followed
+      by a vowel, hitherto frequent, never again reappears. The vowel <i>i</i>,
+      of <i>li</i>, nominative masculine of the article" (<i>li Reis</i>, "the
+      king"), "never occurs in the text after line 2647. Up to that point it is
+      elided or not at pleasure.... There is a progressive tendency towards
+      hiatus. After line 1980 the system of assonance changes. <i>An</i> and en
+      have been kept distinct hitherto; this ceases to be the case." {Footnote:
+      <i>Romania</i>, xxxiv. pp. 240-246.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poem is also notable, like the <i>Iliad</i>, for textual repetition of
+      passages, but that is common to all early poetry, which many Homeric
+      critics appear not to understand. In this example we see how apt novelties
+      in grammar and metre are to steal into even written copies of epics,
+      composed in and handed down through uncritical ages; and we are confirmed
+      in the opinion that the relatively pure and orthodox grammar and metre of
+      the twenty Books must have been preserved by written texts carefully
+      'executed. The other four Books, if equally old, were less fortunate.
+      Their grammar and metre, we learn, belong to a later stratum of language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These opinions of grammarians are not compatible with the hypothesis that
+      <i>all</i> of the <i>Iliad</i>, even the "earliest" parts, are loaded with
+      interpolations, forced in at different places and in any age from 1000
+      B.C. to 540 B.C.; for if that theory were true, the whole of the <i>Iliad</i>
+      would equally be infected with the later Odyssean grammar. According to
+      Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb, it is not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But suppose, on the other hand, that the later Odyssean grammar abounds
+      all through the whole <i>Iliad</i>, then that grammar is not more Odyssean
+      than it is Iliadic. The alleged distinction of early Iliadic grammar, late
+      Odyssean grammar, in that case vanishes. Mr. Leaf is more keen than Mr.
+      Monro and Sir Richard Jebb in detecting late grammar in the <i>Iliad</i>
+      beyond the bounds of Books IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. But he does not carry
+      these discoveries so far as to make the late grammar no less Iliadic than
+      Odyssean. In Book VIII. of the <i>Iliad</i>, which he thinks was only made
+      for the purpose of introducing Book IX., {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i.
+      p. 332. 1900.} we ought to find the late Odyssean grammar just as much as
+      we do in Book IX., for it is of the very same date, and probably by one or
+      more of the same authors as Book IX. But we do not find the Odyssean
+      grammar in Book VIII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf says, "The peculiar character" of Book VIII. "is easily
+      understood, when we recognise the fact that Book VIII. is intended to
+      serve only as a means for the introduction of Book IX...." which is "late"
+      and "Odyssean." Then Book VIII., intended to introduce Book IX., must be
+      at least as late as Book IX. and might be expected to be at least as
+      Odyssean, indeed one would think it could not be otherwise. Yet it is not
+      so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf's theory has thus to face the difficulty that while the whole <i>Iliad</i>,
+      by his view, for more than four centuries, was stuffed with late
+      interpolations, in the course of oral recital through all Greek lands, and
+      was crammed with original "copy" by a sycophant of Pisistratus about 540
+      B.C., the late grammar concentrated itself in only some four Books. Till
+      some reasonable answer is given to this question&mdash;how did twenty
+      Books of the Iliad preserve so creditably the ancient grammar through
+      centuries of change, and of recitation by rhapsodists who used the
+      Odyssean grammar, which infected the four other Books, and the whole of
+      the <i>Odyssey?</i>&mdash;it seems hardly worth while to discuss this
+      linguistic test.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Any scholar who looks at these pages knows all about the proofs of grammar
+      of a late date in the <i>Odyssey</i> and the four contaminated Books of
+      the <i>Iliad</i>. But it may be well to give a few specimens, for the
+      enlightenment of less learned readers of Homer.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The use of {Greek: amfi}, with the dative, meaning "about," when
+<i>thinking</i> or <i>speaking</i> "about" Odysseus or anything else, is peculiar
+to the <i>Odyssey</i>. But how has it not crept into the four Odyssean
+contaminated Books of the <i>Iliad</i>?
+
+ {Greek: peri}, with the genitive, "follows verbs meaning to speak
+or know <i>about</i> a person," but only in the <i>Odyssey</i>. What preposition
+follows such verbs in the <i>Iliad</i>?
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Here, again, we ask: how did the contaminated Books of the <i>Iliad</i>
+escape the stain of {Greek: peri}, with the genitive, after verbs
+meaning to speak or know? What phrase do they use in the <i>Iliad</i> for
+speaking or asking <i>about</i> anybody? {Footnote (exact placing uncertain):
+Monro, Homeric <i>Grammar</i>. See Index, under <i>Iliad</i>, p. 339.}
+
+ {Greek: meta}, with the genitive, meaning "among" or "with,"
+comes twice in the Odyssey (X. 320; XVI. 140) and thrice in the <i>Iliad</i>
+(XIII. 700; XXI. 458; XXIV. 400); but all these passages in the <i>Iliad</i>
+are disposed of as "late" parts of the poem.
+
+ {Greek: epi}, with the accusative, meaning <i>towards</i> a
+person, comes often in the <i>Iliad</i>; once in the Odyssey. But it comes
+four times in <i>Iliad</i>, Book X., which almost every critic scouts as very
+"late" indeed. If so, why does the "late" <i>Odyssey</i> not deal in this
+grammatical usage so common in the "late" Book X. of the <i>Iliad</i>?
+
+ {Greek: epi}, with the accusative, "meaning <i>extent</i>
+(without <i>motion</i>)," is chiefly found in the <i>Odyssey</i>, and in the
+Iliad, IX., X., XXIV. On consulting grammarians one thinks that there is
+not much in this.
+
+ {Greek: proti} with the dative, meaning "in addition to," occurs
+only once (<i>Odyssey, X. 68</i>). If it occurs only once, there is little to
+be learned from the circumstance.
+
+ {Greek: ana} with the genitive, is only in <i>Odyssey</i>, only
+thrice, always of going on board a ship. There are not many ship-farings
+in the <i>Iliad</i>. Odysseus and his men are not described as going on board
+their ship, in so many words, in <i>Iliad</i>, Book I. The usage occurs in
+the poem where the incidents of seafaring occur frequently, as is to be
+expected? It is not worth while to persevere with these tithes of mint
+and cummin. If "Neglect of Position" be commoner&mdash;like "Hiatus in the
+Bucolic Diaeresis"&mdash;in the <i>Odyssey</i> and in <i>Iliad</i>, XXIII., XXIV., why
+do the failings not beset <i>Iliad</i>, IX., X., these being such extremely
+"late" books? As to the later use of the Article in the <i>Odyssey</i> and
+the Odyssean Books of the <i>Iliad</i>, it appears to us that Book I. of the
+<i>Iliad</i> uses the article as it is used in Book X.; but on this topic we
+must refer to a special treatise on the language of <i>Iliad</i>, Book X.,
+which is promised.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Turning to the vocabulary: "words expressive of civilisation" are bound to
+      be more frequent, as they are, in the Odyssey, a poem of peaceful life,
+      than in a poem about an army in action, like the <i>Iliad</i>. Out of all
+      this no clue to the distance of years dividing the two poems can be found.
+      As to words concerning religion, the same holds good. The Odyssey is more
+      frequently <i>religious</i> (see the case of Eumaeus) than the <i>Iliad</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In morals the term {Greek: dikaios} is more used in the <i>Odyssey</i>,
+      also {Greek: atemistos} ("just" and "lawless"). But that is partly because
+      the Odyssey has to contrast civilised ("just") with wild outlandish people&mdash;Cyclopes
+      and Laestrygons, who are "lawless." The <i>Iliad</i> has no occasion to
+      touch on savages; but, as the {Greek: hybris} of the Wooers is a standing
+      topic in the Odyssey (an ethical poem, says Aristotle), the word {Greek:
+      hybris} is of frequent occurrence in the <i>Odyssey</i>, in just the same
+      sense as it bears in <i>Iliad</i>, I 214&mdash;the insolence of Agamemnon.
+      Yet when Achilles has occasion to speak of Agamemnon's insolence in <i>Iliad</i>,
+      Book IX., he does not use the <i>word</i> {Greek: hybris}, though Book IX.
+      is so very "late" and "Odyssean." It would be easy to go through the words
+      for moral ideas in the <i>Odyssey</i>, and to show that they occur in the
+      numerous moral situations which do not arise, or arise much less
+      frequently, in the <i>Iliad</i>. There is not difference enough in the
+      moral standard of the two poems to justify us in assuming that centuries
+      of ethical progress had intervened between their dates of composition. If
+      the <i>Iliad</i>, again, were really, like the <i>Odyssey</i>, a thing of
+      growth through several centuries, which overlapped the centuries in which
+      the <i>Odyssey</i> grew, the moral ideas of the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>
+      would necessarily be much the same, would be indistinguishable. But, as a
+      matter of fact, it would be easy to show that the moral standard of the <i>Iliad</i>
+      is higher, in many places, than the moral standard of the <i>Odyssey</i>;
+      and that, therefore, by the critical hypothesis, the <i>Iliad</i> is the
+      later poem of the twain. For example, the behaviour of Achilles is most
+      obnoxious to the moralist in <i>Iliad</i>, Book IX., where he refuses
+      gifts of conciliation. But by the critical hypothesis this is not the
+      fault of the <i>Iliad</i>, for Book IX. is declared to be "late," and of
+      the same date as late parts of the <i>Odyssey</i>. Achilles is not less
+      open to moral reproach in his abominable cruelty and impiety, as shown in
+      his sacrifice of prisoners of war and his treatment of dead Hector, in <i>Iliad</i>,
+      XXIII., XXIV. But these Books also are said to be as late as the <i>Odyssey</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The solitary "realistic" or "naturalistic" passage in Homer, with which a
+      lover of modern "problem novels" feels happy and at home, is the story of
+      Phoenix, about his seduction of his father's mistress at the request of
+      his mother. What a charming situation! But that occurs in an "Odyssean"
+      Book of the <i>Iliad</i>, Book IX.; and thus Odyssean seems lower, not
+      more advanced, than Iliadic taste in morals. To be sure, the poet
+      disapproves of all these immoralities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Odyssey the hero, to the delight of Athene, lies often and freely
+      and with glee. The Achilles of the <i>Iliad</i> hates a liar "like the
+      gates of Hades"; but he says so in an "Odyssean" Book (Book IX.), so there
+      were obviously different standards in Odyssean ethics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the Odyssey being the work of "a milder age," consider the hanging
+      of Penelope's maids and the abominable torture of Melanthius. There is no
+      torturing in the {blank space} for the <i>Iliad</i> happens not to deal
+      with treacherous thralls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Enfin</i>, there is no appreciable moral advance in the <i>ODYSSEY</i>
+      on the moral standard of the <i>ILIAD</i>. It is rather the other way.
+      Odysseus, in the <i>ODYSSEY</i>, tries to procure poison for his
+      arrow-heads. The person to whom he applies is too moral to oblige him. We
+      never learn that a hero of the <i>Iliad</i> would use poisoned arrows. The
+      poet himself obviously disapproves; in both poems the poet is always on
+      the side of morality and of the highest ethical standard of his age. The
+      standard in both Epics is the same; in both some heroes fall short of the
+      standard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To return to linguistic tests, it is hard indeed to discover what Mr.
+      Leaf's opinion of the value of linguistic tests of lateness really is. "It
+      is on such fundamental discrepancies"&mdash;as he has found in Books IX.,
+      XVI.&mdash;"that we can depend, <i>AND ON THESE ALONE</i>, when we come to
+      dissect the <i>ILIAD</i> ... Some critics have attempted to base their
+      analysis on evidences from language, but I do not think they are
+      sufficient to bear the super-structure which has been raised on them."
+      {Footnote: <i>Companion,</i> p. 25.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He goes on, still placing a low value on linguistic tests alone, to say:
+      "It is on the broad grounds of the construction and motives of the poem,
+      <i>AND NOT ON ANY MERELY linguistic CONSIDERATIONS</i>, that a decision
+      must be sought." {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>., p. x.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he contradicts these comfortable words when he comes to "the latest
+      expansions," such as Books XXIII., XXIV. "The latest expansions are
+      thoroughly in the spirit of those which precede, <i>them ON ACCOUNT OF
+      linguistic EVIDENCE,</i> which definitely classes them with the <i>ODYSSEY</i>
+      rather than the rest of the <i>ILIAD</i>." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol.
+      ii. p. xiv.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now as Mr. Leaf has told us that we must depend on "fundamental
+      discrepancies," "on these alone," when we want to dissect the <i>ILIAD;</i>
+      as he has told us that linguistic tests alone are "not sufficient to bear
+      the superstructure," &amp;c., how can we lop off two Books "only on
+      account of linguistic evidence"? It would appear that on this point, as on
+      others, Mr. Leaf has entirely changed his mind. But, even in the <i>Companion</i>
+      (p. 388), he had amputated Book XXIV. for no "fundamental discrepancy,"
+      but because of "its close kinship to the <i>ODYSSEY</i>, as in the whole
+      language of the Book."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, as in many other passages, if we are to account for discrepancies by
+      the theory of multiplex authorship, we must decide that Mr. Leaf's books
+      are the work of several critics, not of one critic only. But there is
+      excellent evidence to prove that here we would be mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Confessedly and regretfully no grammarian, I remain unable, in face of
+      what seem contradictory assertions about the value of linguistic tests, to
+      ascertain what they are really worth, and what, if anything, they really
+      prove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Monro allows much for "the long insensible influence of Attic
+      recitation upon the Homeric text;" ... "many Attic peculiarities may be
+      noted" (so much so that Aristarchus thought Homer must have been an
+      Athenian!). "The poems suffered a gradual and unsystematic because
+      generally unconscious process of modernising, the chief agents in which
+      were the rhapsodists" (reciters in a later democratic age), "who wandered
+      over all parts of Greece, and were likely to be influenced by all the
+      chief forms of literature." {Footnote: Monro, <i>Homeric Grammar</i>, pp
+      394-396. 1891}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, wherefore insist so much on tests of language?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Monro was not only a great grammarian; he had a keen appreciation of
+      poetry. Thus he was conspicuously uneasy in his hypothesis, based on words
+      and grammar, that the two last Books of the <i>Iliad</i> are by a late
+      hand. After quoting Shelley's remark that, in these two Books, "Homer
+      truly begins to be himself," Mr. Monro writes, "in face of such testimony
+      can we say that the Book in which the climax is reached, in which the last
+      discords of the <i>Iliad</i> are dissolved in chivalrous pity and regret,
+      is not the work of the original poet, but of some Homerid or rhapsodist?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Monro, with a struggle, finally voted for grammar, and other
+      indications of lateness, against Shelley and against his own sense of
+      poetry. In a letter to me of May 1905, Mr. Monro sketched a theory that
+      Book IX. (without which he said that he deemed an <i>Achilleis</i> hardly
+      possible) might be a <i>remanié</i> representative of an earlier lay to
+      the same general effect. Some Greek Shakespeare, then, treated an older
+      poem on the theme of Book IX. as Shakespeare treated old plays, namely, as
+      a canvas to work over with a master's hand. Probably Mr. Monro would not
+      have gone <i>so</i> far in the case of Book XXIV., <i>The Repentance</i>
+      of Achilles. He thought it in too keen contrast with the brutality of Book
+      XXII. (obviously forgetting that in Book XXIV. Achilles is infinitely more
+      brutal than in Book XXII.), and thought it inconsistent with the refusal
+      of Achilles to grant burial at the prayer of the dying Hector, and with
+      his criminal treatment of the dead body of his chivalrous enemy. But in
+      Book XXIV. his ferocity is increased. Mr. Leaf shares Mr. Monro's view;
+      but Mr. Leaf thinks that a Greek audience forgave Achilles, because he was
+      doing "the will of heaven," and "fighting the great fight of Hellenism
+      against barbarism." {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad,</i> vol.-ii. p. 429. 1902.}
+      But the Achzeans were not Puritans of the sixteenth century! Moreover, the
+      Trojans are as "Hellenic" as the Achzeans. They converse, clearly, in the
+      same language. They worship the same gods. The Achzeans cannot regard them
+      (unless on account of the breach of truce, by no Trojan, but an ally) as
+      the Covenanters regarded "malignants," their name for loyal cavaliers,
+      whom they also styled "Amalekites," and treated as Samuel treated Agag.
+      The Achaeans to whom Homer sang had none of this sanguinary Pharisaism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Others must decide on the exact value and import of Odyssean grammar as a
+      test of lateness, and must estimate the probable amount of time required
+      for the development of such linguistic differences as they find in the <i>Odyssey</i>
+      and <i>Iliad</i>. In undertaking this task they may compare the literary
+      language of America as it was before 1860 and as it is now. The language
+      of English literature has also been greatly modified in the last forty
+      years, but our times are actively progressive in many directions;
+      linguistic variations might arise more slowly in the Greece of the Epics.
+      We have already shown, in the more appropriate instance of the <i>Chancun
+      de Willame</i>, that considerable varieties in diction and metre occur in
+      a single MS. of that poem, a MS. written probably within less than a
+      century of the date of the poem's composition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can also trace, in <i>remaniements</i> of the <i>Chanson DE ROLAND</i>,
+      comparatively rapid and quite revolutionary variations from the oldest&mdash;the
+      Oxford&mdash;manuscript. Rhyme is substituted for assonance; the process
+      entails frequent modernisations, and yet the basis of thirteenth-century
+      texts continues to be the version of the eleventh century. It may be worth
+      the while of scholars to consider these parallels carefully, as regards
+      the language and prosody of the Odyssean Books of the <i>Iliad</i>, and to
+      ask themselves whether the processes of alteration in the course of
+      transmission, which we know to have occurred in the history of the Old
+      French, may not also have affected the <i>ILIAD</i>, though why the effect
+      is mainly confined to four Books remains a puzzle. It is enough for us to
+      have shown that if Odyssean varies from Iliadic language, in all other
+      respects the two poems bear the marks of the same age. Meanwhile, a
+      Homeric scholar so eminent as Mr. T. W. Allen, says that "the linguistic
+      attack upon their age" (that of the Homeric poems) "may be said to have at
+      last definitely failed, and archaeology has erected an apparently
+      indestructible buttress for their defence." {Footnote: <i>Classical
+      Review, May</i> 1906, p. 194.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE "DOLONEIA"
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      "ILIAD," BOOK X.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Of all Books in the {blank space} Book X., called the <i>Doloneia</i>, is
+      most generally scouted and rejected. The Book, in fact, could be omitted,
+      and only a minutely analytic reader would perceive the lacuna. He would
+      remark that in Iliad, IX. 65-84, certain military preparations are made
+      which, if we suppress Book X., lead up to nothing, and that in <i>Iliad</i>,
+      XIV. 9-11, we find Nestor with the shield of his son, Thrasymedes, while
+      Thrasymedes has his father's shield, a fact not explained, though the poet
+      certainly meant something by it. The explanation in both cases is found in
+      Book X., which may also be thought to explain why the Achaeans, so
+      disconsolate in Book IX., and why Agamemnon, so demoralised, so gaily
+      assume the offensive in Book XI. Some ancient critics, Scholiast T and
+      Eustathius, attributed the <i>DOLONEIA</i> to Homer, but supposed it to
+      have been a separate composition of his added to the <i>Iliad</i> by
+      Pisistratus. This merely proves that they did not find any necessity for
+      the existence of the <i>DOLONEIA</i>. Mr. Allen, who thinks that "it
+      always held its present place," says, "the <i>DOLONEIA</i> is persistently
+      written down." {Footnote: <i>Classical Review</i>, May 1906, p. 194}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To understand the problem of the <i>DOLONEIA</i>, we must make a summary
+      of its contents. In Book IX. 65-84, at the end of the disastrous fighting
+      of Book VIII, the Achaeans, by Nestor's advice, station an advanced guard
+      of "<i>the young men</i>" between the fosse and wall; 700 youths are
+      posted there, under Meriones, the squire of Idomeneus, and Thrasymedes,
+      the son of Nestor. All this is preparation for Book X., as Mr. Leaf
+      remarks, {Footnote: <i>Companion</i>, p. 174.} though in any case an
+      advanced guard was needed. Their business is to remain awake, under arms,
+      in case the Trojans, who are encamped on the plain, attempt a night
+      attack. At their station the young men will be under arms till dawn; they
+      light fires and cook their provisions; the Trojans also surround their own
+      watchfires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Achaean chiefs then hold council, and Agamemnon sends the embassy to
+      Achilles. The envoys bring back his bitter answer; and all men go to sleep
+      in their huts, deeply discouraged, as even Odysseus avowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the Tenth Book begins, and it is manifest that the poet is thoroughly
+      well acquainted with the Ninth Book. Without the arrangements made in the
+      Ninth Book, and without the despairing situation of that Book, his lay is
+      impossible. It will be seen that critics suppose him, alternately, to have
+      "quite failed to realise the conditions of life of the heroes of whom he
+      sang" (that is, if certain lines are genuine), and also to be a peculiarly
+      learned archaeologist and a valuable authority on weapons. He is addicted
+      to introducing fanciful "touches of heroic simplicity," says Mr. Leaf, and
+      is altogether a puzzling personage to the critics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Book opens with the picture of Agamemnon, sleepless from anxiety,
+      while the other chiefs, save Menelaus, are sleeping. He "hears the music
+      of the joyous Trojan pipes and flutes" and sees the reflected glow of
+      their camp-fires, we must suppose, for he could not see the fires
+      themselves through the new wall of his own camp, as critics very wisely
+      remark. He tears out his hair before Zeus; no one else does so, in the <i>Iliad</i>,
+      but no one else is Agamemnon, alone and in despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rises to consult Nestor, throwing a lion's skin over his <i>chiton</i>,
+      and grasping a spear. Much noise is made about the furs, such as this
+      lion's pelt, which the heroes, in Book X., throw about their shoulders
+      when suddenly aroused. That sportsmen like the heroes should keep the
+      pelts of animals slain by them for use as coverlets, and should throw on
+      one of the pelts when aroused in a hurry, is a marvellous thing to the
+      critics. They know that fleeces were used for coverlets of beds (IX. 661),
+      and pelts of wild animals, slain by Anchises, cover his bed in the Hymn to
+      Aphrodite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the facts do not enlighten critics. Yet no facts could be more
+      natural. A scientific critic, moreover, never reflects that the poet is
+      dealing with an unexampled situation&mdash;heroes wakened and called into
+      the cold air in a night of dread, but not called to battle. Thus Reichel
+      says: "The poet knows so little about true heroic costume that he drapes
+      the princes in skins of lions and panthers, like giants.... But about a
+      corslet he never thinks." {Footnote: Reichel, p.70.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The simple explanation is that the poet has not hitherto had to tell us
+      about men who are called up, not to fight, on a night that must have been
+      chilly. In war they do not wear skins, though Paris, in archer's
+      equipment, wears a pard's skin (III. 17). Naturally, the men throw over
+      themselves their fur coverlets; but Nestor, a chilly veteran, prefers a <i>chiton</i>
+      and a wide, double-folded, fleecy purple cloak. The cloak lay ready to his
+      hand, for such cloaks were used as blankets (XXIV. 646; Odyssey, III. 349,
+      351; IV. 299; II. 189). We hear more of such bed-coverings in the Odyssey
+      than in the merely because in the <i>ODYSSEY</i> we have more references
+      to beds and to people in bed. That a sportsman may have (as many folk have
+      now) a fur coverlet, and may throw it over him as a kind of dressing-gown
+      or "bed-gown," is a simple circumstance which bewilders the critical mind
+      and perplexed Reichel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the poet knew so little as Reichel supposed his omission of corslets is
+      explained. Living in an age of corslets (seventh century), he, being a
+      literary man, knew nothing about corslets, or, as he is also an acute
+      archaeologist, he knew too much; he knew that they were not worn in the
+      Mycenaean prime, so he did not introduce them. The science of this
+      remarkable ignoramus, in <i>this</i> view, accounts for his being aware
+      that pelts of animals were in vogue as coverlets, just as fur
+      dressing-gowns were worn in the sixteenth century, and he introduces them
+      precisely as he leaves corslets out, because he knows that pelts of fur
+      were in use, and that, in the Mycenaean prime, corslets were not worn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In speaking to Nestor, Agamemnon awakens sympathy: "Me, of all the
+      Achaeans, Zeus has set in toil and labour ceaselessly." They are almost
+      the very words of Charlemagne in the <i>Chanson de Roland: "Deus, Dist li
+      Reis, si peneuse est ma vie."</i> The author of the <i>Doloneia</i>
+      consistently conforms to the character of Agamemnon as drawn in the rest
+      of the <i>Iliad</i>. He is over-anxious; he is demoralising in his fits of
+      gloom, but all the burden of the host hangs on him&mdash;sipeneuse <i>est
+      ma via</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To turn to higher things. Menelaus, too, was awake, anxious about the
+      Argives, who risked their lives in his cause alone. He got up, put on a
+      pard's skin and a bronze helmet (here the poet forgets, what he ought to
+      have known, that no bronze helmets have been found in the Mycenaean
+      graves). Menelaus takes a spear, and goes to look for Agamemnon, whom he
+      finds arming himself beside his ship. He discovers that Agamemnon means to
+      get Nestor to go and speak to the advanced guard, as his son is their
+      commander, and they will obey Nestor. Agamemnon's pride has fallen very
+      low! He tells Menelaus to waken the other chief with all possible formal
+      courtesy, for, brutally rude when in high heart, at present Agamemnon
+      cowers to everybody. He himself finds Nestor in bed, his <i>shield</i>,
+      two spears, and helmet beside him, also his glittering <i>zoster</i>. His
+      corslet is not named; perhaps the poet knew that the <i>zoster</i>, or
+      broad metallic belt, had been evolved, but that the corslet had not been
+      invented; or perhaps he "knows so little about the costume of the heroes"
+      that he is unaware of the existence of corslets. Nestor asks Agamemnon
+      what he wants; and Agamemnon says that his is a toilsome life, that he
+      cannot sleep, that his knees tremble, and that he wants Nestor to come and
+      visit the outposts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is really nothing absurd in this. Napoleon often visited his
+      outposts in the night before Waterloo, and Cromwell rode along his lines
+      all through the night before Dunbar, biting his lips till the blood
+      dropped on his linen bands. In all three cases hostile armies were arrayed
+      within striking distance of each other, and the generals were careworn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nestor admits that it is an anxious night, and rather blames Menelaus for
+      not rousing the other chiefs; but Agamemnon explains and defends his
+      brother. Nestor then puts on the comfortable cloak already described, and
+      picks up a spear, {blank space} <i>in HIS QUARTERS</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Odysseus, he merely throws a shield over his shoulders. The company
+      of Diomede are sleeping with their heads on their shields. Thence Reichel
+      (see "The Shield") infers that the late poet of Book X. gave them small
+      Ionian round bucklers; but it has been shown that no such inference is
+      legitimate. Their spears were erect by their sides, fixed in the ground by
+      the <i>sauroter</i>, or butt-spike, used by the men of the late "warrior
+      vase" found at Mycenae. To arrange the spears thus, we have seen, was a
+      point of drill that, in Aristotle's time, survived among the Illyrians.
+      {Footnote: <i>Poetics</i>, XXV.} The practice is also alluded to in <i>Iliad</i>,
+      III 135. During a truce "the tall spears are planted by their sides." The
+      poet, whether ignorant or learned, knew that point of war, later obsolete
+      in Greece, but still extant in Illyria.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nestor aroused Diomede, whose night apparel was the pelt of a lion; he
+      took his spear, and they came to the outposts, where the men were awake,
+      and kept a keen watch on all movements among the Trojans. Nestor praised
+      them, and the princes, taking Nestor's son, Thrasymedes, and Meriones with
+      them, went out into the open in view of the Trojan camp, sat down, and
+      held a consultation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nestor asked if any one would volunteer to go as a spy among the Trojans
+      and pick up intelligence. His reward will be "a black ewe with her lamb at
+      her foot," from their chiefs&mdash;"nothing like her for value"&mdash;and
+      he will be remembered in songs at feasts, <i>or</i> will be admitted to
+      feasts and wine parties of the chiefs. {Footnote: Leaf, Note on X. 215.}
+      The proposal is very odd; what do the princes want with black ewes, while
+      at feasts they always have honoured places? Can Nestor be thinking of
+      sending out any brave swift-footed young member of the outpost party, to
+      whom the reward would be appropriate?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After silence, Diomede volunteers to go, with a comrade, though this kind
+      of work is very seldom undertaken in any army of any age by a chief, and
+      by his remark about admission to wine parties it is clear that Nestor was
+      not thinking of a princely spy. Many others volunteer, but Agamemnon bids
+      Diomede choose his own companion, with a very broad hint not to take
+      Menelaus. <i>HIS</i> death, Agamemnon knows, would mean the disgraceful
+      return of the host to Greece; besides he is, throughout the <i>ILIAD</i>,
+      deeply attached to his brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet of Book X., however late, knows the <i>ILIAD</i> well, for he
+      keeps up the uniform treatment of the character of the Over-Lord. As he
+      knows the <i>ILIAD</i> well, how can he be ignorant of the conditions of
+      life of the heroes? How can he dream of "introducing a note of heroic
+      simplicity" (Mr. Leaf's phrase), when he must be as well aware as we are
+      of the way in which the heroes lived? We cannot explain the black ewes, if
+      meant as a princely reward, but we do not know everything about Homeric
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diomede chooses Odysseus, "whom Pallas Athene loveth"; she was also the
+      patroness of Diomede himself, in Books V., VI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they are unarmed&mdash;all of the chiefs hastily aroused were unarmed,
+      save for a spear there or a sword here&mdash;Thrasymedes gives to Diomede
+      his two-edged sword, <i>his</i> shield, and "a helm of bull's hide,
+      without horns or crest, that is called a skull-cap (knap-skull), and keeps
+      the heads of strong young men." All the advanced guard were young men, as
+      we saw in Book IX. 77. Obviously, Thrasymedes must then send back to camp,
+      though we are not told it, for another shield, sword, and helmet, as he is
+      to lie all night under arms. We shall hear of the shield later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meriones, who is an archer (XIII. 650), lends to Odysseus his bow and
+      quiver and a sword. He also gives him "a helm made of leather; and with
+      many a thong it was stiffly wrought within, while without the white teeth
+      of a boar of flashing tusks were arrayed, thick set on either side well
+      and cunningly... ." Here Reichel perceives that the ignorant poet is
+      describing a piece of ancient headgear represented in Mycenaean art, while
+      the boars' teeth were found by Schliemann, to the number of sixty, in
+      Grave IV. at Mycenae. Each of them had "the reverse side cut perfectly
+      flat, and with the borings to attach them to some other object." They were
+      "in a veritable funereal armoury." The manner of setting the tusks on the
+      cap is shown on an ivory head of a warrior from Mycenae. {Footnote:
+      Tsountas and Manatt, 196-197.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reichel recognises that the poet's description in Book X. is excellent, "<i>ebenso
+      klar als eingehend</i>." He publishes another ivory head from Spata, with
+      the same helmet set with boars' tusks. {Footnote: Reichel, pp. 102-104}
+      Mr. Leaf decides that this description by the poet, wholly ignorant of
+      heroic costume, as Reichel thinks him, must be "another instance of the
+      archaic and archaeologising tendency so notable in Book X." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>,
+      vol. ii. p. 629.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same time, according to Reichel and Mr. Leaf, the poet of Book X.
+      introduces the small round Ionian buckler, thus showing his utter
+      ignorance of the great Mycenaean shield. The ignorance was most unusual
+      and quite inexcusable, for any one who reads the rest of the <i>Iliad</i>
+      (which the poet of Book X. knew well) is aware that the Homeric shields
+      were huge, often covering body and legs. This fact the poet of Book X. did
+      not know, in Reichel's opinion. {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p.
+      575}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How are we to understand this poet? He is such an erudite archaeologist
+      that, in the seventh century, he knows and carefully describes a helmet of
+      the Mycenaean prime. Did he excavate it? and had the leather interior
+      lasted with the felt cap through seven centuries? Or did he see a sample
+      in an old temple of the Mycenaean prime, or in a museum of his own period?
+      Or had he heard of it in a lost Mycenaean poem? Yet, careful as he was, so
+      pedantic that he must have puzzled his seventh-century audience, who never
+      saw such caps, the poet knew nothing of the shields and costumes of the
+      heroes, though he might have found out all that is known about them in the
+      then existing Iliadic lays with which he was perfectly familiar&mdash;see
+      his portrait of Agamemnon. He was well aware that corslets were, in
+      Homeric poetry, anachronisms, for he gave Nestor none; yet he fully
+      believed, in his ignorance, that small Ionian bucklers loveth; (which need
+      the aid of corslets badly) were the only wear among the heroes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Criticism has, as we often observe, no right to throw the first stone at
+      the inconsistencies of Homer. As we cannot possibly believe that one poet
+      knew so much which his contemporaries did not know (and how, in the
+      seventh century, could he know it?), and that he also knew so little, knew
+      nothing in fact, we take our own view. The poet of Book X. sings of <i>a</i>
+      fresh topic, a confused night of dread; of young men wearing the headgear
+      which, he says, young men <i>do</i> wear; of pelts of fur such as suddenly
+      wakened men, roused, but not roused for battle, would be likely to throw
+      over their bodies against the chill air. He describes things of his own
+      day; things with which he is familiar. He is said to "take quite a
+      peculiar delight in the minute description of dress and weapons."
+      {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 423.} We do not observe that he
+      does describe weapons or shields minutely; but Homer always loves to
+      describe weapons and costume&mdash;scores of examples prove it&mdash;and
+      here he happens to be describing such costume as he nowhere else has
+      occasion to mention. By an accident of archaeological discovery, we find
+      that there were such caps set with boars' tusks as he introduces. They had
+      survived, for young men on night duty, into the poet's age. We really
+      cannot believe that a poet of the seventh century had made excavations in
+      Mycenaean graves. If he did and put the results into his lay, his audience&mdash;not
+      wearing boars' tusks&mdash;would have asked, "What nonsense is the man
+      talking?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Erhardt, remarking on the furs which the heroes throw over their shoulders
+      when aroused, says that this kind of wrap is very late. It was Peisander
+      who, in the second half of the seventh century, clothed Herakles in a
+      lion's skin. Peisander brought this costume into poetry, and the author of
+      the <i>Doloneia</i> knew no better than to follow Peisander. {Footnote: <i>Die
+      Enstehung der Homerischen Gedichte</i>, pp. 163-164.} The poet of the <i>Doloneia</i>
+      was thus much better acquainted with Peisander than with the Homeric lays,
+      which could have taught him that a hero would never wear a fur coverlet
+      when aroused&mdash;not to fight&mdash;from slumber. Yet he knew about
+      leathern caps set with boars' tusks. He must have been an erudite
+      excavator, but, in literature, a reader only of recent minor poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having procured arms, without corslets (<i>with</i> corslets, according to
+      Carl Robert)&mdash;whether, if they had none, because the poet knew that
+      corslets were anachronisms, or because spies usually go as lightly
+      burdened as possible&mdash;Odysseus and Diomede approach the Trojan camp.
+      The hour is the darkest hour before dawn. They hear, but do not see, a
+      heron sent by Athene as an omen, and pray to the goddess, with promise of
+      sacrifice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Trojan camp Hector has called a council, and asked for a volunteer
+      spy to seek intelligence among the Achaeans. He offers no black ewes as a
+      reward, but the best horses of the enemy. This allures Dolon, son of a
+      rich Trojan, "an only son among five sisters," a poltroon, a weak lad,
+      ugly, but swift of foot, and an enthusiastic lover of horses. He asks for
+      the steeds of Achilles, which Hector swears to give him; and to be lightly
+      clad he takes merely spear and bow and a cap of ferret skin, with the pelt
+      of a wolf for covering. Odysseus sees him approach; he and Diomede lie
+      down among the dead till Dolon passes, then they chase him towards the
+      Achaean camp and catch him. He offers ransom, which before these last days
+      of the war was often accepted. Odysseus replies evasively, and asks for
+      information. Dolon, thinking that the bitterness of death is past,
+      explains that only the Trojans have watch-fires; the allies, more
+      careless, have none. At the extreme flank of the host sleep the newly
+      arrived Thracians, under their king, Rhesus, who has golden armour, and
+      "the fairest horses that ever I beheld" (the ruling passion for horses is
+      strong in Dolon), "and the greatest, whiter than snow, and for speed like
+      the winds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having learned all that he needs to know, Diomede ruthlessly slays Dolon.
+      Odysseus thanks Athene, and hides the poor spoils of the dead, marking the
+      place. They then creep into the dark camp of the sleeping Thracians, and
+      as Diomede slays them Odysseus drags each body aside, to leave a clear
+      path for the horses, that they may not plunge and tremble when they are
+      led forth, "for they were not yet used to dead men." No line in Homer
+      shows more intimate knowledge and realisation of horses and of war.
+      Odysseus drives the horses of Rhesus out of the camp with the bow of
+      Meriones; he has forgotten to take the whip from the chariot. Diomede,
+      having slain King Rhesus asleep, thinks whether he shall lift out the
+      chariot (war chariots were very light) or drag it by the pole; but Athene
+      warns him to be going. He "springs upon the steeds," and they make for
+      their camp. It is not clearly indicated whether they ride or drive (X., 5
+      I 3, 527-528, 541); but, suppose that they ride, are we to conclude that
+      the fact proves "lateness"? The heroes always drive in Homer, but it is
+      inconceivable that they could not ride in cases of necessity, as here, if
+      Diomede has thought it wiser not to bring out the chariot and harness the
+      horses. Riding is mentioned in <i>Iliad</i>, XV. 679, in a simile; again,
+      in a simile, <i>Odyssey</i>, V. 37 I. It is not the custom for heroes to
+      ride; the chariot is used in war and in travelling, but, when there are
+      horses and no chariot, men could not be so imbecile as not to mount the
+      horses, nor could the poet be so pedantic as not to make them do so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shields would cause no difficulty; they would be slung sideways, like
+      the shields of knights in the early Middle Ages. The pair, picking up
+      Dolon's spoils as they pass, hurry back to the chiefs, where Nestor
+      welcomes them. The others laugh and are encouraged (to encourage them and
+      his audience is the aim of the poet); while the pair go to Diomede's
+      quarters, wash off the blood and sweat from their limbs in the sea, and
+      then "enter the polished baths," common in the <i>Odyssey</i>, unnamed in
+      the Iliad. But on no other occasion in the Iliad are we admitted to view
+      this part of heroic toilette. Nowhere else, in fact, do we accompany a
+      hero to his quarters and his tub after the day's work is over. Achilles,
+      however, refuses to wash, after fighting, in his grief for Patroclus,
+      though plenty of water was being heated for the purpose, and it is to be
+      presumed that a bath was ready for the water (<i>Iliad</i>, XXIII. 40).
+      See, too, for Hector's bath, XXII. 444.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two heroes then refresh themselves; breakfast, in fact, and drink, as
+      is natural. By this time the dawn must have been in the sky, and in Book
+      XI. men are stirring with the dawn. Such is the story of Book X. The
+      reader may decide as to whether it is "<i>Very</i> late; barely Homeric,"
+      or a late and deliberate piece of burlesque, {Footnote: Henry, <i>Classical
+      Review</i>. March 1906.} or whether it is very Homeric, though the whole
+      set of situations&mdash;a night of terror, an anxious chief, a nocturnal
+      adventure&mdash;are unexampled in the poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet's audience of warriors must have been familiar with such
+      situations, and must have appreciated the humorous, ruthless treatment of
+      Dolon, the spoiled only brother of five sisters. Mr. Monro admitted that
+      Dolon is Shakespearian, but added, "too Shakespearian for Homer." One may
+      as well say that Agincourt, in Henry V., is "too Homeric for Shakespeare."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Monro argued that "the Tenth Book comes in awkwardly after the Ninth."
+      Nitzsche thinks just the reverse. The patriotic warrior audience would
+      delight in the <i>Doloneia</i> after the anguish of Book IX.; would laugh
+      with Odysseus at the close of his adventure, and rejoice with the other
+      Achaeans (X. 505).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The introductory part of the Book is cumbrous," says Mr. Monro. To us it
+      is, if we wish to get straight to the adventure, just as the customary
+      delays in Book XIX., before Achilles is allowed to fight, are tedious to
+      us. But the poet's audience did not necessarily share our tastes, and
+      might take pleasure (as I do) in the curious details of the opening of
+      Book X. The poet was thinking of his audience, not of modern professors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We hear no more of Rhesus and his Thracians." Of Rhesus there was no more
+      to hear, and his people probably went home, like Glenbuckie's Stewarts
+      after the mysterious death of their chief in Amprior's house of Leny
+      before Prestonpans (1745). Glenbuckie was mysteriously pistolled in the
+      night. "The style and tone is unlike that of the Iliad ... It is rather
+      akin to comedy of a rough farcical kind." But it was time for "comic
+      relief." If the story of Dolon be comic, it is comic with the practical
+      humour of the sagas. In an isolated nocturnal adventure and massacre we
+      cannot expect the style of an heroic battle under the sunlight. Is the
+      poet not to be allowed to be various, and is the scene of the Porter in <i>Macbeth</i>,
+      "in style and tone," like the rest of the drama? (<i>Macbeth</i>, Act ii.
+      sc. 3). Here, of course, Shakespeare indulges infinitely more in "comedy
+      of a rough practical kind" than does the author of the <i>Doloneia</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The humour and the cruelty do not exceed what is exhibited in many of the
+      <i>gabes</i>, or insulting boasts of heroes over dead foes in other parts
+      of the <i>Iliad</i>; such as the taunting comparison of a warrior falling
+      from his chariot to a diver after oysters, or as "one of the Argives hath
+      caught the spear in his flesh, and leaning thereon for a staff, methinks
+      that he will go down within the house of Hades" (XIV. 455-457). The <i>Iliad</i>,
+      like the sagas, is rich in this extremely practical humour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Leaf says that the Book "must have been composed before the <i>Iliad</i>
+      had reached its present form, for it cannot have been meant to follow on
+      Book IX. It is rather another case of a parallel rival to that Book,
+      coupled with it only in the final literary redaction," which Mr. Leaf
+      dates in the middle of the sixth century. "The Book must have been
+      composed before the <i>Iliad</i> had reached its present form," {Footnote:
+      <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 424.} It is not easy to understand this decision;
+      for, as Mr. Leaf had previously written, about Book IX. 60-68, "the
+      posting of the watch is at least not necessary to the story, and it has a
+      suspicious air of being merely a preparation for the next Book, which is
+      much later, and which turns entirely upon a visit to the sentinels."
+      {Footnote: <i>Companion,</i> p.174.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now a military audience would not have pardoned the poet of Book IX. if,
+      in the circumstances of defeat, with a confident enemy encamped within
+      striking distance, he had not made the Achaeans throw forth their
+      outposts. The thing was inevitable and is not suspicious; but the poet
+      purposely makes the advanced guard consist of young men under Nestor's son
+      and Meriones. He needs them for Book X. Therefore the poet of Book IX. is
+      the poet of Book X. preparing his effect in advance; or the poet of Book
+      X. is a man who cleverly takes advantage of Book IX., or he composed his
+      poem of "a night of terror and adventure," "in the air," and the editor of
+      540 B.C., having heard it recited and copied it out, went back to Book IX.
+      and inserted the advanced guard, under Thrasymedes and Meriones, to lead
+      up to Book X.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Mr. Leafs present theory, {Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p.424.} Book X., we
+      presume, was meant, not to follow Book IX., but to follow the end of Book
+      VII, being an alternative to Book VIII. (composed, he says, to lead up to
+      Book IX.) and Book IX. But Book VII. closes with the Achaean refusal of
+      the compromise offered by Paris&mdash;the restoration of the property but
+      not of the wife of Menelaus. The Trojans and Achaeans feast all night; the
+      Trojans feast in the city. There is therefore no place here for Book X.
+      after Book VII, and the Achaeans cannot roam about all night, as they are
+      feasting; nor can Agamemnon be in the state of anxiety exhibited by him in
+      Book X.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Book X. could not exist without Book IX., and <i>must</i> have been "meant
+      to follow on it." Mr. Leaf sees that, in his preface to Book IX.,
+      {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 371.} "The placing of sentinels" (in
+      Book IX. 80, 84) "is needed as an introduction to Book X. but has nothing
+      to do with this Book" (IX.). But, we have said, it was inevitable, given
+      the new situation in Book IX. (an Achaean repulse, and the enemy camped in
+      front), that an advanced guard must be placed, even if there proved to be
+      no need of their services. We presume that Mr. Leaf's literary editor,
+      finding that Book X. existed and that the advanced guard was a necessity
+      of its action, went back to Book IX. and introduced an advanced guard of
+      young men, with its captains, Thrasymedes and Meriones. Even after this
+      the editor had much to do, if Book IX. originally exhibited Agamemnon as
+      not in terror and despair, as it now does.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We need not throw the burden of all this work on the editor. As Mr. Leaf
+      elsewhere writes, in a different mind, the Tenth Book "is obviously
+      adapted to its present place in the <i>Iliad</i>, for it assumes a moment
+      when Achilles is absent from the field, and when the Greeks are in deep
+      dejection from a recent defeat. These conditions are exactly fulfilled by
+      the situation at the end of Book IX." {Footnote: <i>Companion</i>, p.
+      190.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is certainly the case. The Tenth Book could not exist without the
+      Ninth; yet Mr. Leaf's new opinion is that it "cannot have been meant to
+      follow on Book IX." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. 424.} He was
+      better inspired when he held the precisely opposite opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Adolf Kiene {Footnote: Die <i>Epen des Homer, Zweiter Theil,</i> pp.
+      90-94. Hanover, 1884.} accepts Book XI. as originally composed to fill its
+      present place in the <i>Iliad.</i> He points out the despondency of the
+      chiefs after receiving the reply of Achilles, and supposes that even
+      Diomede (IX. 708) only urges Agamemnon to "array before the ships thy folk
+      and horsemen," for defensive battle. But, encouraged by the success of the
+      night adventure, Agamemnon next day assumes the offensive. To consider
+      thus is perhaps to consider too curiously. But it is clear that the
+      Achaeans have been much encouraged by the events of Book X., especially
+      Agamemnon, whose character, as Kiene observes, is very subtly and
+      consistently treated, and "lies near the poet's heart." This is the point
+      which we keep urging. Agamemnon's care for Menelaus is strictly preserved
+      in Book X.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nitzsche (I 897) writes, "Between Book IX. and Book XI there is a gap;
+      that gap the <i>Doloneia</i> fills: it must have been composed to be part
+      of the <i>ILIAD</i>." But he thinks that the <i>Doloneia</i> has taken the
+      place of an earlier lay which filled the gap. {Footnote: Die <i>Echtheit
+      der Doloneia,</i> p. 32. Programme des K. K. Staats Gymnasium zu Marburg,
+      1877.} That the Book is never referred to later in the <i>Iliad</i>, even
+      if it be true, is no great argument against its authenticity. For when
+      later references are made to Book IX., they are dismissed as clever late
+      interpolations. If the horses of Rhesus took part, as they do not, in the
+      sports at the funeral of Patroclus, the passage would be called a clever
+      interpolation: in fact, Diomede had better horses, divine horses to run.
+      However, it is certainly remarkable that the interpolation was not made by
+      one of the interpolators of critical theory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile there is, we think, a reference to Book X. in Book XIV.
+      {Footnote: This was pointed out to me by Mr. Shewan, to whose great
+      knowledge of Homer I am here much indebted.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In <i>Iliad</i>, XIV. 9-11, we read that Nestor, in his quarters with the
+      wounded Machaon, on the day following the night of Dolon's death, hears
+      the cry of battle and goes out to see what is happening. "He took the
+      well-wrought shield of his son, horse-taming Thrasymedes, which was lying
+      in the hut, all glistening with bronze, but <i>the son had the shield of
+      his father</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why had Thrasymedes the shield of his father? At about 3 A.M. before dawn
+      the shield of Nestor was lying beside him in his own bedroom (Book X. 76),
+      and at the same moment his son Thrasymedes <i>was</i> on outpost duty, and
+      had his own shield with him (Book IX. 81).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, then, did father and son exchange shields, and why? Mr. Leaf says,
+      "It is useless to inquire why father and son had thus changed shields, as
+      the scholiasts of course do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scholiasts merely babble. Homer, of course, meant <i>something</i> by
+      this exchange of shields, which occurred late in the night of Book IX. or
+      very early in the following day, that of Books XI-XVI.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us follow again the sequence of events. On the night before the day
+      when Nestor had Thrasymedes' shield and Thrasymedes had Nestor's,
+      Thrasymedes was sent out, with shield and all, in command of one of the
+      seven companies of an advanced guard, posted between fosse and wall, in
+      case of a camisade by the Trojans, who were encamped on the plain (IX.
+      81). With him in command were Meriones and five other young men less
+      notable. They had supplies with them and whatever was needed: they cooked
+      supper in bivouac.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the <i>Doloneia</i> the wakeful princes, after inspecting the advanced
+      guard, go forward within view of the Trojan ranks and consult. With them
+      they take Nestor's son, Thrasymedes, and Meriones (X. 196). The two young
+      men, being on active service, are armed; the princes are not. Diomede,
+      having been suddenly roused out of sleep, with no intention to fight,
+      merely threw on his dressing-gown, a lion's skin. Nestor wore a thick,
+      double, purple dressing-gown. Odysseus had cast his shield about his
+      shoulders. It was decided that Odysseus and Diomede should enter the
+      Trojan camp and "prove a jeopardy." Diomede had no weapon but his spear;
+      so Thrasymedes, who is armed as we saw, lends him his bull's-hide cap,
+      "that keeps the heads of stalwart youths," his sword (for that of Diomede
+      "was left at the ships"), and his shield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diomede and Odysseus successfully achieve their adventure and return to
+      the chiefs, where they talk with Nestor; and then they go to Diomede's hut
+      and drink. The outposts remain, of course, at their stations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, Thrasymedes, having lent his shield to Diomede, has none of his
+      own. Naturally, as he was to pass the night under arms, he would send to
+      his father's quarters for the old man's shield, a sword, and a helmet. He
+      would remain at his post (his men had provisions) till the general <i>reveillez</i>
+      at dawn, and would then breakfast at his post and go into the fray.
+      Nestor, therefore, missing his shield, would send round to Diomede's
+      quarters for the shield of Thrasymedes, which had been lent overnight to
+      Diomede, would take it into the fight, and would bring it back to his own
+      hut when he carried the wounded Machaon thither out of the battle. When he
+      arms to go out and seek for information, he picks up the shield of
+      Thrasymedes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing can be more obvious; the poet, being a man of imagination, not a
+      professor, sees it all, and casually mentions that the son had the
+      father's and the father had the son's shield. His audience, men of the
+      sword, see the case as clearly as the poet does: only we moderns and the
+      scholiasts, almost as modern as ourselves, are puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may also be argued, though we lay no stress on it, that in Book XI.
+      312, when Agamemnon has been wounded, we find Odysseus and Diomede alone
+      together, without their contingents, because they have not separated since
+      they breakfasted together, after returning from the adventure of Book X.,
+      and thus they have come rather late to the field. They find the Achaeans
+      demoralised by the wounding of Agamemnon, and they make a stand. "What
+      ails us," asks Odysseus, "that we forget our impetuous valour?" The
+      passage appears to take up the companionship of Odysseus and Diomede, who
+      were left breakfasting together at the end of Book X. and are not
+      mentioned till we meet them again in this scene of Book XI., as if they
+      had just come on the field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the linguistic tests of lateness "there are exceptionally numerous
+      traces of later formation," says Mr. Monro; while Fick, tout <i>contraire,</i>
+      writes, "clumsy Ionisms are not common, and, as a rule, occur in these
+      parts which on older grounds show themselves to be late interpolations."
+      "The cases of agreement" (between Fick and Mr. Monro), "are few, and the
+      passages thus condemned are not more numerous in the <i>Doloneia</i> than
+      in any average book." {Footnote: Jevons, <i>Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>,
+      vii. p. 302.} The six examples of "a post-Homeric use of the article" do
+      not seem so very post-Homeric to an ordinary intelligence&mdash;parallels
+      occur in Book I.&mdash;and "Perfects in {Greek: ka} from derivative verbs"
+      do not destroy the impression of antiquity and unity which is left by the
+      treatment of character; by the celebrated cap with boars' tusks, which no
+      human being could archaeologically reconstruct in the seventh century; and
+      by the Homeric vigour in such touches as the horses unused to dead men. As
+      the <i>Iliad</i> certainly passed through centuries in which its language
+      could not but be affected by linguistic changes, as it could not escape
+      from <i>remaniements</i>, consciously or unconsciously introduced by
+      reciters and copyists, the linguistic objections are not strongly felt by
+      us. An unphilological reader of Homer notes that Duntzer thinks the <i>Doloneia</i>
+      "older than the oldest portion of the Odyssey," while Gemoll thinks that
+      the author of the <i>Doloneia</i>. was familiar with the <i>Odyssey</i>.
+      {Footnote: Duntzer, <i>Homer. Abhanglungen</i>, p. 324. Gemoll, <i>Hermes</i>,
+      xv. 557 ff.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, one thing seems plain to us: when the author of Book IX. posted
+      the guards under Thrasymedes, he was deliberately leading up to Book X.;
+      while the casual remark in Book XIV. about the exchange of shields between
+      father and son, Nestor and Thrasymedes, glances back at Book X. and
+      possibly refers to some lost and more explicit statement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not always remembered that, if things could drop into the
+      interpolations, things could also drop out of the <i>ILIAD,</i> causing <i>lacunae</i>,
+      during the dark backward of its early existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the <i>Doloneia</i> be "barely Homeric," as Father Browne holds, this
+      opinion was not shared by the listeners or readers of the sixth century.
+      The vase painters often illustrate the <i>Doloneia;</i> but it does not
+      follow that "the story was fresh" because it was "popular," as Mr. Leaf
+      suggests, and "was treated as public property in a different way" (namely,
+      in a comic way) "from the consecrated early legends" (<i>Iliad,</i> II
+      424, 425). The sixth century vase painters illustrated many passages in
+      Homer, not the <i>Doloneia</i> alone. The "comic way" was the ruthless
+      humour of two strong warriors capturing one weak coward. Much later, wild
+      caricature was applied in vase painting to the most romantic scenes in the
+      Odyssey, which were "consecrated" enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE INTERPOLATIONS OF NESTOR
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      That several of the passages in which Nestor speaks are very late
+      interpolations, meant to glorify Pisistratus, himself of Nestor's line, is
+      a critical opinion to which we have more than once alluded. The first
+      example is in <i>Iliad,</i> II. 530-568. This passage "is meant at once to
+      present Nestor as the leading counsellor of the Greek army, and to
+      introduce the coming <i>Catalogue</i>." {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad,</i>
+      vol. i. p. 70.} Now the <i>Catalogue</i> "originally formed an
+      introduction to the whole Cycle." {Footnote: Ibid., vol. i. p. 87.} But,
+      to repeat an earlier observation, surely the whole Cycle was much later
+      than the period of Pisistratus and his sons; that is, the compilation of
+      the Homeric and Cyclic poems into one body of verse, named "The Cycle," is
+      believed to have been much later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is objected that Nestor's advice in this passage, "Separate thy
+      warriors by tribes and clans" ({Greek: phyla, phraetras}), "is out of
+      place in the last year of the war"; but this suggestion for military
+      reorganisation may be admitted as a mere piece of poetical perspective,
+      like Helen's description of the Achaean chiefs in Book III, or Nestor may
+      wish to return to an obsolete system of clan regiments. The Athenians had
+      "tribes" and "clans," political institutions, and Nestor's advice is noted
+      as a touch of late Attic influence; but about the nature and origin of
+      these social divisions we know so little that it is vain to argue about
+      them. The advice of Nestor is an appeal to the clan spirit&mdash;a very
+      serviceable military spirit, as the Highlanders have often proved&mdash;but
+      we have no information as to whether it existed in Achaean times. Nestor
+      speaks as the aged Lochiel spoke to Claverhouse before Killiecrankie. Did
+      the Athenian army of the sixth century fight in clan regiments? The device
+      seems to belong to an earlier civilisation, whether it survived in sixth
+      century Athens or not. It is, of course, notorious that tribes and clans
+      are most flourishing among the most backward people, though they were
+      welded into the constitution of Athens. The passage, therefore, cannot
+      with any certainty be dismissed as very late, for the words for "tribe"
+      and "clan" could not be novel Athenian inventions, the institutions
+      designated being of prehistoric origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nestor shows his tactics again in IV. 303-309, offers his "inopportune
+      tactical lucubrations, doubtless under Athenian (Pisistratean) influence."
+      The poet is here denied a sense of humour. That a veteran military
+      Polonius should talk as inopportunely about tactics as Dugald Dalgetty
+      does about the sconce of Drumsnab is an essential part of the humour of
+      the character of Nestor. This is what Nestor's critics do not see; the
+      inopportune nature of his tactical remarks is the point of them, just as
+      in the case of the laird of Drumthwacket, "that should be." Scott knew
+      little of Homer, but coincided in the Nestorian humour by mere congruity
+      of genius. The Pisistratidze must have been humourless if they did not see
+      that the poet smiled as he composed Nestor's speeches, glorifying old
+      deeds of his own and old ways of fighting. He arrays his Pylians with
+      chariots in front, footmen in the rear. In the {blank space} the princely
+      heroes dismounted to fight, the chariots following close behind them.
+      {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, XI. 48-56.} In the same way during the Hundred
+      Years' War the English knights dismounted and defeated the French chivalry
+      till, under Jeanne d'Arc and La Hire, the French learned the lesson, and
+      imitated the English practice. On the other hand, Egyptian wall-paintings
+      show the Egyptian chariotry advancing in neat lines and serried squadrons.
+      According to Nestor these had of old been the Achaean tactics, and he
+      preferred the old way. Nestor's advice in Book IV. is <i>not</i> to
+      dismount or break the line of chariots; these, he says, were the old
+      tactics: "Even so is the far better way; thus, moreover, did men of old
+      time lay low cities and walls." There was to be no rushing of individuals
+      from the ranks, no dismounting. Nestor's were not the tactics of the
+      heroes&mdash;they usually dismount and do single valiances; but Nestor,
+      commanding his local contingent, recommends the methods of the old school,
+      {Greek: hoi pretoroi}. What can be more natural and characteristic?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet's meaning seems quite clear. He is not flattering Pisistratus,
+      but, with quiet humour, offers the portrait of a vain, worthy veteran. It
+      is difficult to see how this point can be missed; it never was missed
+      before Nestor's speeches seemed serviceable to the Pisistratean theory of
+      the composition of the <i>ILIAD</i>. In his first edition Mr. Leaf
+      regarded the interpolations as intended "to glorify Nestor" without
+      reference to Pisistratus, whom Mr. Leaf did not then recognise as the
+      master of a sycophantic editor. The passages are really meant to display
+      the old man's habit of glorifying himself and past times. Pisistratus
+      could not feel flattered by passages intended to exhibit his ancestor as a
+      conceited and inopportune old babbler. I ventured in 1896 to suggest that
+      the interpolator was trying to please Pisistratus, but this was said in a
+      spirit of mockery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the characters in Homer that of Nestor is most familiar to the
+      unlearned world, merely because Nestor's is a "character part," very
+      broadly drawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third interpolation of flattery to Pisistratus in the person of Nestor
+      is found in VII. 125-160. The Achaean chiefs are loath to accept the
+      challenge of Hector to single combat. Only Menelaus rises and arms
+      himself, moved by the strong sense of honour which distinguishes a warrior
+      notoriously deficient in bodily strength. Agamemnon refuses to let him
+      fight; the other peers make no movement, and Nestor rebukes them. It is
+      entirely in nature that he should fall back on his memory of a similar
+      situation in his youth; when the Arcadian champion, Ereuthalion,
+      challenged any prince of the Pylians, and when "no man plucked up heart"
+      to meet him except Nestor himself. Had there never been any Pisistratus,
+      any poet who created the part of a worthy and wordy veteran must have made
+      Nestor speak just as he does speak. Ereuthalion "was the tallest and
+      strongest of men that I have slain!" and Nestor, being what he is, offers
+      copious and interesting details about the armour of Ereuthalion and about
+      its former owners. The passage is like those in which the Icelandic
+      sagamen dwelt lovingly on the history of a good sword, or the Maoris on
+      the old possessors of an ancient jade <i>patu</i>. An objection is now
+      taken to Nestor's geography: he is said not to know the towns and burns of
+      his own country. He speaks of the swift stream Keladon, the streams of
+      Iardanus, and the walls of Pheia. Pheia "is no doubt the same as Pheai"
+      {Footnote: Monro, Note on Odyssey, XV. 297.} (Odyssey, XV. 297), "but that
+      was a maritime town not near Arkadia. There is nothing known of a Keladon
+      or Iardanus anywhere near it." Now Didymus (Schol. A) "is said to have
+      read {Greek: Phaeraes} for {Greek: Pheias}," following Pherekydes.
+      {Footnote: Leaf, <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. 308.} M. Victor Bérard, who has
+      made an elaborate study of Elian topography, says that "Pheia is a cape,
+      not a town," and adopts the reading "Phera," the {Greek: Pherae} of the
+      journey of Telemachus, in the Odyssey. He thinks that the {Greek: Pherae}
+      of Nestor is the Aliphera of Polybius, and believes that the topography of
+      Nestor and of the journey of Telemachus is correct. The Keladon is now the
+      river or burn of Saint Isidore; the Iardanus is at the foot of Mount
+      Kaiapha. Keladon has obviously the same sense as the Gaelic Altgarbh, "the
+      rough and brawling stream." Iardanus is also a stream in Crete, and Mr.
+      Leaf thinks it Semitic&mdash;"<i>Yarden</i>, from yarad to flow"; but the
+      Semites did not give the <i>Yar</i> to the <i>Yarrow</i> nor to the
+      Australian <i>Yarra Yarra</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The country, says M. Bérard, is a network of rivers, burns, and rivulets;
+      and we cannot have any certainty, we may add, as the same river and burn
+      names recur in many parts of the same country; {Footnote: Bérard, <i>Les
+      Phéniciens et L'Odyssée,</i> 108-113, 1902} many of them, in England, are
+      plainly prae-Celtic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the correct geography may, on this showing, be that of Homer, we
+      cannot give up Homer's claim to Nestor's speech. As to Nestor's tale about
+      the armour of Ereuthalion, it is manifest that the first owner of the
+      armour of Ereuthalion, namely Are'ithous, "the Maceman," so called because
+      he had the singularity of fighting with an iron <i>casse-tête,</i> as
+      Nestor explains (VII. 138-140), was a famous character in legendary
+      history. He appears "as Prince Areithous, the Maceman," father (or
+      grand-father?) of an Areithous slain by Hector (VII. 8-10). In Greece, it
+      was not unusual for the grandson to bear the grandfather's name, and, if
+      the Maceman was grand-father of Hector's victim, there is no chronological
+      difficulty. The chronological difficulty, in any case, if Hector's victim
+      is the son of the Maceman, is not at all beyond a poetic narrator's
+      possibility of error in genealogy. If Nestor's speech is a late
+      interpolation, if its late author borrowed his vivid account of the
+      Maceman and his <i>casse-tête</i> from the mere word "maceman" in VII. 9,
+      he must be credited with a lively poetic imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Few or none of these reminiscences of Nestor are really "inapplicable to
+      the context." Here the context demands encouragement for heroes who shun a
+      challenge. Nestor mentions an "applicable" and apposite instance of
+      similar want of courage, and, as his character demands, he is the hero of
+      his own story. His brag, or <i>gabe,</i> about "he was the tallest and
+      strongest of all the men I ever slew," is deliciously in keeping, and
+      reminds us of the college don who said of the Czar, "he is the nicest
+      emperor I ever met." The poet is sketching an innocent vanity; he is not
+      flattering Pisistratus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next case is the long narrative of Nestor to the hurried Patroclus,
+      who has been sent by Achilles to bring news of the wounded Machaon (XI.
+      604-702). Nestor on this occasion has useful advice to give, namely, that
+      Achilles, if he will not fight, should send his men, under Patroclus, to
+      turn the tide of Trojan victory. But the poet wishes to provide an
+      interval of time and of yet more dire disaster before the return of
+      Patroclus to Achilles. By an obvious literary artifice he makes Nestor
+      detain the reluctant Patroclus with a long story of his own early feats of
+      arms. It is a story of a "hot-trod," so called in Border law; the Eleians
+      had driven a <i>creagh</i> of cattle from the Pylians, who pursued, and
+      Nestor killed the Eleian leader, Itymoneus. The speech is an Achaean
+      parallel to the Border ballad of "Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead," in
+      editing which Scott has been accused of making a singular and most obvious
+      and puzzling blunder in the topography of his own sheriffdom of the
+      Forest. On Scott's showing the scene of the raid is in upper Ettrickdale,
+      not, as critics aver, in upper Teviotdale; thus the narrative of the
+      ballad would be impossible. {Footnote: In fact both sites on the two
+      Dodburns are impossible; the fault lay with the ballad-maker, not with
+      Scott.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Pisistratean editor is accused of a similar error. "No doubt he was an
+      Asiatic Greek, completely ignorant of the Peloponnesus." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>.
+      Note to XI. 756, and to the <i>Catalogue</i>, II. 615-617.} It is
+      something to know that Pisistratus employed an editor, or that his editor
+      employed a collaborator who was an Asiatic Greek!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, nothing is less secure than arguments based on the <i>Catalogue</i>.
+      We have already shown how Mr. Leaf's opinions as to the date and
+      historical merits of the <i>Catalogue</i> have widely varied, while M.
+      Bérard appears to have vindicated the topography of Nestor. Of the <i>Catalogue</i>
+      Mr. Allen writes, "As a table, according to regions, of Agamemnon's forces
+      it bears every mark of venerable antiquity," showing "a state of things
+      which never recurred in later history, and which no one had any interest
+      to invent, or even the means for inventing." He makes a vigorous defence
+      of the <i>Catalogue,</i> as regards the dominion of Achilles, against Mr.
+      Leaf. {Footnote: <i>Classical Review,</i> May 1906, pp. x94-201.} Into the
+      details we need not go, but it is not questions of Homeric topography,
+      obscure as they are, that can shake our faith in the humorous portrait of
+      old Nestor, or make us suppose that the sympathetic mockery of the poet is
+      the sycophantic adulation of the editor to his statesman employer,
+      Pisistratus. If any question may be left to literary discrimination it is
+      the authentic originality of the portrayal of Nestor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Though comparison is the method of Science, the comparative study of the
+      national poetry of warlike aristocracies, its conditions of growth and
+      decadence, has been much neglected by Homeric critics. Sir Richard Jebb
+      touched on the theme, and, after devoting four pages to a sketch of
+      Sanskrit, Finnish, Persian, and early Teutonic heroic poetry and <i>SAGA,</i>
+      decided that "in our country, as in others, we fail to find any true
+      parallel to the case of the Homeric poems. These poems must be studied in
+      themselves, without looking for aid, in this sense, to the comparative
+      method." {Footnote: <i>Homer</i>, p. 135.} Part of this conclusion seems
+      to us rather hasty. In a brief manual Sir Richard had not space for a
+      thorough comparative study of old heroic poetry at large. His quoted
+      sources are: for India, Lassen; for France, Mr. Saintsbury's Short History
+      of <i>FRENCH LITERATURE</i> (sixteen pages on this topic), and a work
+      unknown to me, by "M. Paul"; for Iceland he only quoted <i>THE
+      Encyclopedia BRITANNICA</i> (Mr. Edmund Gosse); for Germany, Lachmann and
+      Bartsch; for the Finnish <i>Kalewala,</i> the <i>ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA</i>
+      (Mr. Sime and Mr. Keltie); and for England, a <i>PRIMER OF ENGLISH
+      LITERATURE</i> by Mr. Stopford Brooke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These sources appear less than adequate, and Celtic heroic romance is
+      entirely omitted. A much deeper and wider comparative criticism of early
+      heroic national poetry is needed, before any one has a right to say that
+      the study cannot aid our critical examination of the Homeric problem. Many
+      peoples have passed through a stage of culture closely analogous to that
+      of Achaean society as described in the <i>Iliad</i> and Odyssey. Every
+      society of this kind has had its ruling military class, its ancient
+      legends, and its minstrels who on these legends have based their songs.
+      The similarity of human nature under similar conditions makes it certain
+      that comparison will discover useful parallels between the poetry of
+      societies separated in time and space but practically identical in
+      culture. It is not much to the credit of modern criticism that a topic so
+      rich and interesting has been, at least in England, almost entirely
+      neglected by Homeric scholars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, it is perfectly correct to say, as Sir Richard observes, that
+      "we fail to find any true parallel to the case of the Homeric poems," for
+      we nowhere find the legends of an heroic age handled by a very great poet&mdash;the
+      greatest of all poets&mdash;except in the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>.
+      But, on the other hand, the critics refuse to believe that, in the <i>Iliad</i>
+      and <i>Odyssey,</i> we possess the heroic Achaean legends handled by one
+      great poet. They find a composite by many hands, good and bad, and of many
+      ages, they say; sometimes the whole composition and part of the poems are
+      ascribed to a late <i>littérateur</i>. Now to that supposed state of
+      things we do find several "true parallels," in Germany, in Finland, in
+      Ireland. But the results of work by these many hands in many ages are
+      anything but "a true parallel" to the results which lie before us in the
+      <i>Iliad</i> and <i>ODYSSEY</i>. Where the processes of composite
+      authorship throughout many <i>AGES</i> certainly occur, as in Germany and
+      Ireland, there we find no true parallel to the Homeric poems. It follows
+      that, in all probability, no such processes as the critics postulate
+      produced the <i>Iliad</i> and Odyssey, for where the processes existed,
+      beyond doubt they failed egregiously to produce the results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Richard's argument would have been logical if many efforts by many
+      hands, in many ages, in England, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, and Germany
+      did actually produce true parallels to the Achaean epics. They did not,
+      and why not? Simply because these other races had no Homer. All the other
+      necessary conditions were present, the legendary material, the heroic
+      society, the Court minstrels, all&mdash;except the great poet. In all the
+      countries mentioned, except Finland, there existed military aristocracies
+      with their courts, castles, and minstrels, while the minstrels had rich
+      material in legendary history and in myth, and <i>Märchen</i>, and old
+      songs. But none of the minstrels was adequate to the production of an
+      English, German, or Irish <i>ILIAD</i> or <i>ODYSSEY</i>, or even of a
+      true artistic equivalent in France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have tried to show that the critics, rejecting a Homer, have been
+      unable to advance any adequate hypothesis to account for the existence of
+      the <i>ILIAD</i> and <i>ODYSSEY</i>. Now we see that, where such
+      conditions of production as they postulate existed but where there was no
+      great epic genius, they can find no true parallels to the Epics. Their
+      logic thus breaks down at both ends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be replied that in non-Greek lands one condition found in Greek
+      society failed: the succession of a reading age to an age of heroic
+      listeners. But this is not so. In France and Germany an age of readers
+      duly began, but they did not mainly read copies of the old heroic poems.
+      They turned to lyric poetry, as in Greece, and they recast the heroic
+      songs into modern and popular forms in verse and prose, when they took any
+      notice of the old heroic poems at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One merit of the Greek epics is a picture of "a certain phase of early
+      civilisation," and that picture is "a naturally harmonious whole," with
+      "unity of impression," says Sir Richard Jebb. {Footnote: Homer, p. 37.}
+      Certainly we can find no true parallel, on an Homeric scale, to this
+      "harmonious picture" in the epics of Germany and England or in the early
+      literature of Ireland. Sir Richard, for England, omits notice of <i>Beowulf</i>;
+      but we know that <i>Beowulf</i>, a long heroic poem, is a mass of
+      anachronisms&mdash;a heathen legend in a Christian setting. The hero, that
+      great heathen champion, has his epic filled full of Christian allusions
+      and Christian morals, because the clerical redactor, in Christian England,
+      could not but intrude these things into old pagan legends evolved by the
+      continental ancestors of our race. He had no "painful anxiety," like the
+      supposed Ionic continuators of the Achaean poems (when they are not said
+      to have done precisely the reverse), to preserve harmony of ancient ideas.
+      Such archaeological anxieties are purely modern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we take the <i>Nibelungenlied</i>, {Footnote: See chapter on the <i>Nibelungenlied</i>
+      in Homer <i>AND the Epic</i>, pp. 382-404.} we find that it is a thing of
+      many rehandlings, even in existing manuscripts. For example, the Greeks
+      clung to the hexameter in Homer. Not so did the Germans adhere to old
+      metres. The poem that, in the oldest MS., is written in assonances, in
+      later MSS. is reduced to regular rhymes and is retouched in many essential
+      respects. The matter of the <i>Nibelungenlied</i> is of heathen origin. We
+      see the real state of heathen affairs in the Icelandic versions of the
+      same tale, for the Icelanders were peculiar in preserving ancient lays;
+      and, when these were woven into a prose saga, the archaic and heathen
+      features were retained. Had the post-Christian prose author of the <i>Volsunga</i>
+      been a great poet, we might find in his work a true parallel to the <i>Iliad</i>.
+      But, though he preserves the harmony of his picture of pre-Christian
+      princely life (save in the savage beginnings of his story), he is not a
+      poet; so the true parallel to the Greek epic fails, noble as is the saga
+      in many passages. In the German <i>Nibelungenlied</i> all is modernised;
+      the characters are Christian, the manners are chivalrous, and <i>Märchen</i>
+      older than Homer are forced into a wandering mediaeval chronicle-poem. The
+      Germans, in short, had no early poet of genius, and therefore could not
+      produce a true parallel to <i>ILIAD</i> or Odyssey. The mediaeval poets,
+      of course, never dreamed of archaeological anxiety, as the supposed Ionian
+      continuators are sometimes said to have done, any more than did the French
+      and late Welsh handlers of the ancient Celtic Arthurian materials. The
+      late German <i>bearbeiter</i> of the <i>Nibelungenlied</i> has no idea of
+      unity of plot&mdash;<i>enfin</i>, Germany, having excellent and ancient
+      legendary material for an epic, but producing no parallel to <i>ILIAD</i>
+      and Odyssey, only proves how absolutely essential a Homer was to the Greek
+      epics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If any inference could properly be drawn from the Edda" (the Icelandic
+      collection of heroic lays), says Sir Richard Jebb, "it would be that short
+      separate poems on cognate subjects can long exist as a collection <i>without</i>
+      coalescing into such an artistic whole as the Iliad or the Odyssey."
+      {Footnote: Homer, p. 33.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is our own argument that Sir Richard states. "Short separate poems on
+      cognate subjects" can certainly co-exist for long anywhere, but they
+      cannot automatically and they cannot by aid of an editor become a long
+      epic. Nobody can stitch and vamp them into a poem like the <i>ILIAD</i> or
+      Odyssey. To produce a poem like either of these a great poetic genius must
+      arise, and fuse the ancient materials, as Hephaestus fused copper and tin,
+      and then cast the mass into a mould of his own making. A small poet may
+      reduce the legends and lays into a very inartistic whole, a very
+      inharmonious whole, as in the <i>Nibelungenlied</i>, but a controlling
+      poet, not a mere redactor or editor, is needed to perform even that feat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where a man who is not a poet undertakes to produce the coalescence, as
+      Dr. Lönnrot (1835-1849) did in the case of the peasant, not courtly, lays
+      of Finland, he "fails to prove that mere combining and editing can form an
+      artistic whole out of originally distinct songs, even though concerned
+      with closely related themes," says Sir Richard Jebb. {Footnote: Homer, p.
+      134-135.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is perfectly true; much as Lönnrot botched and vamped the Finnish
+      lays he made no epic out of them. But, as it is true, how did the late
+      Athenian drudge of Pisistratus succeed where Lönnrot failed? "In the
+      dovetailing of the <i>ODYSSEY</i> we see the work of one mind," says Sir
+      Richard. {Footnote: Homer, p. 129.} This mind cannot have been the
+      property of any one but a great poet, obviously, as the <i>Odyssey</i> is
+      confessedly "an artistic whole." Consequently the disintegrators of the
+      Odyssey, when they are logical, are reduced to averring that the poem is
+      an exceedingly inartistic whole, a whole not artistic at all. While Mr.
+      Leaf calls it "a model of skilful construction," Wilamowitz Mollendorff
+      denounces it as the work of "a slenderly-gifted botcher," of about 650
+      B.C., a century previous to Mr. Leaf's Athenian editor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus we come, after all, to a crisis in which mere literary appreciation
+      is the only test of the truth about a work of literature. The Odyssey is
+      an admirable piece of artistic composition, or it is the very reverse.
+      Blass, Mr. Leaf, Sir Richard Jebb, and the opinion of the ages declare
+      that the composition is excellent. A crowd of German critics and Father
+      Browne, S.J., hold that the composition is feeble. The criterion is the
+      literary taste of each party to the dispute. Kirchhoff and Wilamowitz
+      Möllendorff see a late bad patchwork, where Mr. Leaf, Sir Richard Jebb,
+      Blass, Wolf, and the verdict of all mankind see a masterpiece of excellent
+      construction. The world has judged: the <i>Odyssey</i> is a marvel of
+      construction: therefore is not the work of a late botcher of disparate
+      materials, but of a great early poet. Yet Sir Richard Jebb, while
+      recognising the <i>Odyssey</i> as "an artistic whole" and an harmonious
+      picture, and recognising Lönnrot's failure "to prove that mere combining
+      and editing can form an artistic whole out of originally distinct songs,
+      even though concerned with closely related themes," thinks that Kirchhoff
+      has made the essence of his theory of late combination of distinct strata
+      of poetical material from different sources and periods, in the <i>Odyssey</i>,
+      "in the highest degree probable." {Footnote: Homer, p. 131.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, of course, possible that Mr. Leaf, who has not edited the <i>Odyssey,</i>
+      may now, in deference to his belief in the Pisistratean editor, have
+      changed his opinion of the merits of the poem. If the <i>Odyssey,</i> like
+      the <i>Iliad</i>, was, till about 540 B.C., a chaos of lays of all ages,
+      variously known in various <i>répertoires</i> of the rhapsodists, and
+      patched up by the Pisistratean editor, then of two things one&mdash;either
+      Mr. Leaf abides by his enthusiastic belief in the excellency of the
+      composition, or he does not. If he does still believe that the composition
+      of the <i>Odyssey</i> is a masterpiece, then the Pisistratean editor was a
+      great master of construction. If he now, on the other hand, agrees with
+      Wilamowitz Möllendorff that the <i>Odyssey</i> is cobbler's work, then his
+      literary opinions are unstable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Sir Richard Jebb remarks, with truth, that "before any definite solution
+      of the Homeric problem could derive scientific support from such
+      analogies" (with epics of other peoples), "it would be necessary to show
+      that the particular conditions under which the Homeric poems appear in
+      early Greece had been reproduced with sufficient closeness elsewhere."
+      {Footnote: Homer, pp. 131, 132.} Now we can show that the particular
+      conditions under which the Homeric poems confessedly arose were
+      "reproduced with sufficient closeness elsewhere," except that no really
+      great poet was elsewhere present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This occurred among the Germanic aristocracy, "the Franks of France," in
+      the eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth centuries of our era. The
+      closeness of the whole parallel, allowing for the admitted absence in
+      France of a very great and truly artistic poet, is astonishing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have first, in France, answering to the Achaean aristocracy, the
+      Frankish noblesse of warriors dwelling in princely courts and strong
+      castles, dominating an older population, owing a practically doubtful
+      fealty to an Over-Lord, the King, passing their days in the chace, in
+      private war, or in revolt against the Over-Lord, and, for all literary
+      entertainment, depending on the recitations of epic poems by <i>jongleurs</i>,
+      who in some cases are of gentle birth, and are the authors of the poems
+      which they recite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This national poetry," says M. Gaston Paris, "was born and mainly
+      developed among the warlike class, princes, lords, and their courts.... At
+      first, no doubt, some of these men of the sword themselves composed and
+      chanted lays" (like Achilles), "but soon there arose a special class of
+      poets ... They went from court to court, from castle ... Later, when the
+      townsfolk began to be interested in their chants, they sank a degree, and
+      took their stand in public open places ..." {Footnote: <i>Literature
+      Française au Moyen Age</i>, pp. 36, 37. 1898.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the <i>Iliad</i> we hear of no minstrels in camp: in the <i>Odyssey</i>
+      a prince has a minstrel among his retainers&mdash;Demodocus, at the court
+      of Phaeacia; Phemius, in the house of Odysseus. In Ionia, when princes had
+      passed away, rhapsodists recited for gain in marketplaces and at fairs.
+      The parallel with France is so far complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The French national epics, like those of the Achaeans, deal mainly with
+      legends of a long past legendary age. To the French authors the greatness
+      and the fortunes of the Emperor Charles and other heroic heads of great
+      Houses provide a theme. The topics of song are his wars, and the prowess
+      and the quarrels of his peers with the Emperor and among themselves. These
+      are seen magnified through a mist of legend; Saracens are substituted for
+      Gascon foes, and the great Charles, so nobly venerable a figure in the
+      oldest French epic (the <i>Chanson de Roland, circ.</i> 1050-1070 in its
+      earliest extant form), is more degraded, in the later epics, than
+      Agamemnon himself. The "machinery" of the gods in Homer is replaced by the
+      machinery of angels, but the machinery of dreams is in vogue, as in the
+      Iliad and <i>Odyssey</i>. The sources are traditional and legendary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We know that brief early lays of Charles and other heroes had existed, and
+      they may have been familiar to the French epic poets, but they were not
+      merely patched into the epics. The form of verse is not ballad-like, but a
+      series of <i>laisses</i> of decasyllabic lines, each <i>laisse</i>
+      presenting one assonance, not rhyme. As time went on, rhyme and
+      Alexandrine lines were introduced, and the old epics were expanded,
+      altered, condensed, <i>remaniés</i>, with progressive changes in taste,
+      metre, language, manners, and ways of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, an age of Cyclic poems began; authors took new characters, whom
+      they attached by false genealogies to the older heroes, and they chanted
+      the adventures of the sons of the former heroes, like the Cyclic poet who
+      sang of the son of Odysseus by Circe. All these conditions are undeniably
+      "true parallels" to "the conditions under which the Homeric poems
+      appeared." The only obvious point of difference vanishes if we admit, with
+      Sir Richard Jebb and M. Salomon Reinach, the possibility of the existence
+      of written texts in the Greece of the early iron age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We do not mean texts prepared for a <i>reading</i> public. In France such
+      a public, demanding texts for reading, did not arise till the decadence of
+      the epic. The oldest French texts of their epics are small volumes, each
+      page containing some thirty lines in one column. Such volumes were carried
+      about by the <i>jongleurs</i>, who chanted their own or other men's
+      verses. They were not in the hands of readers. {Footnote: <i>Épopées
+      Françaises</i>, Léon Gautier, vol. i. pp. 226-228. 1878.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An example of an author-reciter, Jendeus de Brie (he was the maker of the
+      first version of the <i>Bataille Loquifer</i>, twelfth century) is
+      instructive. Of Jendeus de Brie it is said that "he wrote the poem, kept
+      it very carefully, taught it to no man, made much gain out of it in Sicily
+      where he sojourned, and left it to his son when he died." Similar
+      statements are made in <i>Renaus de Montauban</i> (the existing late
+      version is of the thirteenth century) about Huon de Villeneuve, who would
+      not part with his poem for horses or furs, or for any price, and about
+      other poets. {Footnote: <i>Épopées Françaises, Léon Gautier</i>, vol. i.
+      p. 215, Note I.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These early <i>jongleurs</i> were men of position and distinction; their
+      theme was the <i>gestes</i> of princes; they were not under the ban with
+      which the Church pursued vulgar strollers, men like the Greek rhapsodists.
+      Pindar's story that Homer wrote the <i>Cypria</i> {Footnote: <i>Pindari
+      Opera</i>, vol. iii. p. 654. Boeckh.} and gave the copy, as the dowry of
+      his daughter, to Stasinus who married her, could only have arisen in
+      Greece in circumstances exactly like those of Jendeus de Brie. Jendeus
+      lived on his poem by reciting it, and left it to his son when he died. The
+      story of Homer and Stasinus could only have been invented in an age when
+      the possession of the solitary text of a poem was a source of maintenance
+      to the poet. This condition of things could not exist, either when there
+      were no written texts or when such texts were multiplied to serve the
+      wants of a reading public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, a poet in the fortunate position of Jendeus would not teach his
+      Epic in a "school" of reciters unless he were extremely well paid. In
+      later years, after his death, his poem came, through copies good or bad,
+      into circulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we hear of a "school" of
+      <i>jongleurs</i> at Beauvais. In Lent they might not ply their profession,
+      so they gathered at Beauvais, where they could learn <i>cantilenae</i>,
+      new lays. {Footnote: <i>Épopées Françaises</i>, Léon Gautier, vol. ii. pp.
+      174, 175.} But by that time the epic was decadent and dying?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The audiences of the <i>jongleurs</i>, too, were no longer, by that time,
+      what they had been. The rich and great, now, had library copies of the
+      epics; not small <i>jongleurs'</i> copies, but folios, richly illuminated
+      and bound, with two or three columns of matter on each page. {Footnote:
+      Ibid., vol. i. p. 228. See, too, photographs of an illuminated,
+      double-columned library copy in <i>La Chancun de Willame</i>., London,
+      1903.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The age of recitations from a text in princely halls was ending or ended;
+      the age of a reading public was begun. The earlier condition of the <i>jongleur</i>
+      who was his own poet, and carefully guarded his copyright in spite of all
+      temptations to permit the copying of his MS., is regarded by Sir Richard
+      Jebb as quite a possible feature of early Greece. He thinks that there was
+      "no wide circulation of writings by numerous copies for a reading public"
+      before the end of the fifth century B.C. As Greek mercenaries could write,
+      and write well, in the seventh to sixth centuries, I incline to think that
+      there may then, and earlier, have been a reading public. However, long
+      before that a man might commit his poems to writing. "Wolf allows that
+      some men did, as early at least as 776 B.C. The verses might never be read
+      by anybody except himself" (the author) "or those to whom he privately
+      bequeathed them" (as Jendeus de Brie bequeathed his poem to his son), "but
+      his end would have been gained." {Footnote: <i>Homer</i>, p. 113.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Recent discoveries as to the very early date of linear non-Phoenician
+      writing in Crete of course increase the probability of this opinion, which
+      is corroborated by the story of the <i>Cypria</i>, given as a dowry with
+      the author's daughter. Thus "the particular conditions under which the
+      Homeric poems appeared" "been reproduced with sufficient closeness" in
+      every respect, with surprising closeness, in the France of the eleventh to
+      thirteenth centuries. The social conditions are the same; the legendary
+      materials are of identical character; the method of publication by
+      recitation is identical; the cyclic decadence occurs in both cases, the <i>monomanie
+      cyclique</i>. In the Greece of Homer we have the four necessary conditions
+      of the epic, as found by M. Léon Gautier in mediaeval France. We have:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (1) An uncritical age confusing history by legend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (2) We have a national <i>milieu</i> with religious uniformity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (3) We have poems dealing with&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ "Old unhappy far-off things
+ And battles long ago."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      (4) We have representative heroes, the Over-Lord, and his peers or
+      paladins. {Footnote: <i>Épopées Françaises</i>, Léon Gautier, vol. i. pp.
+      6-9}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be added that in Greece, as in France, some poets adapt into the
+      adventures of their heroes world-old <i>Märchen</i>, as in the Odyssey,
+      and in the cycle of the parents of Charles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the French, as in the Greek epics, we have such early traits of poetry
+      as the textual repetition of speeches, and the recurring epithets,
+      "swift-footed Achilles," "Charles of the white beard," "blameless heroes"
+      (however blamable). Ladies, however old, are always "of the clear face."
+      Thus the technical manners of the French and Greek epics are closely
+      parallel; they only differ in the exquisite art of Homer, to which no
+      approach is made by the French poets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The French authors of epic, even more than Homer, abound in episodes much
+      more distracting than those of the <i>Iliad</i>. Of blood and wounds, of
+      course, both the French and the Greek are profuse: they were writing for
+      men of the sword, not for modern critics. Indeed, the battle pieces of
+      France almost translate those of Homer. The Achaean "does on his goodly
+      corslet"; the French knight "<i>sur ses espalles son halberc li colad</i>."
+      The Achaean, with his great sword, shears off an arm at the shoulder. The
+      French knight&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Trenchad le braz, Parmi leschine sun grant espee li passe</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The huge shield of Aias becomes <i>cele grant targe duble</i> in France,
+      and the warriors boast over their slain in France, as in the <i>Iliad</i>.
+      In France, as in Greece, a favourite epic theme was "The Wrath" of a hero,
+      of Achilles, of Roland, of Ganelon, of Odysseus and Achilles wrangling at
+      a feast to the joy of Agamemnon, "glad that the bravest of his peers were
+      at strife." {Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 75-7s {sic}.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the many parallels between the Greek and French epics, the most
+      extraordinary is the coincidence between Charles with his peers and
+      Agamemnon with his princes. The same historical conditions occurred, at an
+      interval of more than two thousand years. Agamemnon is the Bretwalda, the
+      Over-Lord, as Mr. Freeman used to say, of the Achaeans: he is the
+      suzerain. Charles in the French epics holds the same position, but the
+      French poets regard him in different lights. In the earliest epic, the <i>Chanson</i>
+      de Roland, a divinity doth hedge the famous Emperor, whom Jeanne d'Arc
+      styled "St. Charlemagne." He was, in fact, a man of thirty-seven at the
+      date of the disaster of Roncesvaux, where Roland fell (778 A.D.). But in
+      the tradition that has reached the poet of the <i>chanson</i> he is a
+      white-bearded warrior, as vigorous as he is venerable. As he rules by
+      advice of his council, he bids them deliberate on the proposals of the
+      Paynim King, Marsile&mdash;to accept or refuse them. Roland, the
+      counterpart of Achilles in all respects (Oliver is his Patroclus), is for
+      refusing: Ganelon appears to have the rest with him when he speaks in
+      favour of peace and return to France out of Spain. So, in the <i>Iliad</i>
+      (II.), the Achaeans lend a ready ear to Agamemnon when he proposes the
+      abandonment of the siege of Troy. Each host, French and Achaean, is
+      heartily homesick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ganelon's advice prevailing, it is necessary to send an envoy to the
+      Saracen court. It is a dangerous mission; other envoys have been sent and
+      been murdered. The Peers, however, volunteer, beginning with the aged
+      Naismes, the Nestor of the Franks. His offer is not accepted, nor are
+      those of Oliver, Roland, and Turpin. Roland then proposes that Ganelon
+      shall be sent; and hence arises the Wrath of Ganelon, which was the ruin
+      of Roland and the peers who stood by him. The warriors attack each other
+      in speeches of Homeric fury. Charles preserves his dignity, and Ganelon
+      departs on his mission. He deliberately sells himself, and seals the fate
+      of the peers whom he detests: the surprise of the rearguard under Roland,
+      the deadly battle, and the revenge of Charles make up the rest of the
+      poem. Not even in victory is Charles allowed repose; the trumpet again
+      summons him to war. He is of those whom Heaven has called to endless
+      combat&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Their whole lives long to be winding
+      Skeins of grievous wars, till every soul of them perish,"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      in the words of Diomede.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such is the picture of the imperial Charles in one of the oldest of the
+      French epics. The heart of the poet is with the aged, but unbroken and
+      truly imperial, figure of St. Charlemagne&mdash;wise, just, and brave, a
+      true "shepherd of the people," regarded as the conqueror of all the known
+      kingdoms of the world. He is, among his fierce paladins, like "the
+      conscience of a knight among his warring members." "The greatness of
+      Charlemagne has entered even into his name;" but as time went on and the
+      feudal princes began the long struggle against the French king, the poets
+      gratified their patrons by degrading the character of the Emperor. They
+      created a second type of Charles, and it is the second type that on the
+      whole most resembles the Agamemnon of the <i>Iliad.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We ask why the widely ruling lord of golden Mycenae is so skilfully and
+      persistently represented as respectable, indeed, by reason of his office,
+      but detestable, on the whole, in character?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The answer is that just as the second type of Charles is the result of
+feudal jealousies of the king, so the character of Agamemnon reflects
+the princely hatreds of what we may call the feudal age of Greece. The
+masterly portrait of Agamemnon could only have been designed to win
+the sympathies of feudal listeners, princes with an Over-Lord whom they
+cannot repudiate, for whose office they have a traditional reverence,
+but whose power they submit to with no good will, and whose person and
+character some of them can barely tolerate.
+
+ {blank space} <i>an historical unity.</i> The poem deals with
+what may be called a feudal society, and the attitudes of the Achaean
+Bretwalda and of his peers are, from beginning to end of the <i>Iliad</i> and
+in every Book of it, those of the peers and king in the later <i>Chansons
+de Geste</i>.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Returning to the decadent Charles of the French epics, we lay no stress on
+      the story of his incest with his sister, Gilain, "whence sprang Roland."
+      The House of Thyestes, whence Agamemnon sprang, is marked by even blacker
+      legends. The scandal is mythical, like the same scandal about the King
+      Arthur, who in romance is so much inferior to his knights, a reflection of
+      feudal jealousies and hatreds. In places the reproaches hurled by the
+      peers at Charles read like paraphrases of those which the Achaean princes
+      cast at Agamemnon. Even Naismes, the Nestor of the French epics, cries:
+      "It is for you that we have left our lands and fiefs, our fair wives and
+      our children ... But, by the Apostle to whom they pray in Rome, were it
+      not that we should be guilty before God we would go back to sweet France,
+      and thin would be your host." {Footnote: <i>Chevalerie Ogier</i>,
+      1510-1529. <i>Épopées Françaises</i>, Léon Gautier, vol. iii. pp.
+      156-157.} In the lines quoted we seem to hear the voice of the angered
+      Achilles: "We came not hither in our own quarrel, thou shameless one, but
+      to please thee! But now go I back to Phthia with my ships&mdash;the better
+      part." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, I. 158-169.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Agamemnon answers that Zeus is on his side, just as even the angry Naismes
+      admits that duty to God demands obedience to Charles. There cannot be
+      parallels more close and true than these, between poems born at a distance
+      from each other of more than two thousand years, but born in similar
+      historical conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Guide <i>Bourgogne,</i> a poem of the twelfth century, Ogier cries,
+      "They say that Charlemagne is the conqueror of kingdoms: they lie, it is
+      Roland who conquers them with Oliver, Naismes of the long beard, and
+      myself. As to Charles, he eats." Compare Achilles to Agamemnon, "Thou,
+      heavy with wine, with dog's eyes and heart of deer, never hast thou dared
+      to arm thee for war with the host ..." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, I. 227,
+      228. <i>Gui de Bourgogne</i>, pp. 37-41.} It is Achilles or Roland who
+      stakes his life in war and captures cities; it is Agamemnon or Charles who
+      camps by the wine. Charles, in the <i>Chanson de Saisnes</i>, abases
+      himself before Herapois, even more abjectly than Agamemnon in his offer of
+      atonement to Achilles. {Footnote: <i>Épopées Françaises</i>, Léon Gautier,
+      vol. iii. p. 158.} Charles is as arrogant as Agamemnon: he strikes Roland
+      with his glove, for an uncommanded victory, and then he loses heart and
+      weeps as copiously as the penitent Agamemnon often does when he rues his
+      arrogance. {Footnote: <i>Entrée en Espagne</i>.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet of the <i>Iliad</i> is a great and sober artist. He does not make
+      Agamemnon endure the lowest disgraces which the latest French epic poets
+      heap on Charles. But we see how close is the parallel between Agamemnon
+      and the Charles of the decadent type. Both characters are reflections of
+      feudal jealousy of the Over-Lord; both reflect real antique historical
+      conditions, and these were the conditions of the Achaeans in Europe, not
+      of the Ionians in Asia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The treatment of Agamemnon's character is harmonious throughout. It is not
+      as if in "the original poem" Agamemnon were revered like St. Charlemagne
+      in the <i>Chanson de Roland</i>, and in the "later" parts of the <i>Iliad</i>
+      were reduced to the contemptible estate of the Charles of the decadent <i>Chanson
+      de Geste</i>. In the <i>Iliad</i> Agamemnon's character is consistently
+      presented from beginning to end, presented, I think, as it could only be
+      by a great poet of the feudal Achaean society in Europe. The Ionians&mdash;"democratic
+      to the core," says Mr. Leaf&mdash;would either have taken no interest in
+      the figure of the Over-Lord, or would have utterly degraded him below the
+      level of the Charles of the latest <i>Chansons</i>. Or the late
+      rhapsodists, in their irresponsible lays, would have presented a wavering
+      and worthless portrait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conditions under which the <i>Chansons</i> arose were truly parallel
+      to the conditions under which the Homeric poems arose, and the poems,
+      French and Achaean, are also true parallels, except in genius. The French
+      have no Homer: <i>cared vate sacro</i>. It follows that a Homer was
+      necessary to the evolution of the Greek epics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may, perhaps, be replied to this argument that our <i>Iliad</i> is only
+      a very late <i>remaniement</i>, like the fourteenth century <i>Chansons de
+      Geste</i>, of something much earlier and nobler. But in France, in the age
+      of <i>remaniement</i>, even the versification had changed from assonance
+      to rhyme, from the decasyllabic line to the Alexandrine in the decadence,
+      while a plentiful lack of seriousness and a love of purely fanciful
+      adventures in fairyland take the place of the austere spirit of war.
+      Ladies "in a coming on humour" abound, and Charles is involved with his
+      Paladins in <i>gauloiseries</i> of a Rabelaisian cast. The French language
+      has become a new thing through and through, and manners and weapons are of
+      a new sort; but the high seriousness of the <i>Iliad</i> is maintained
+      throughout, except in the burlesque battle of the gods: the versification
+      is the stately hexameter, linguistic alterations are present, extant, but
+      inconspicuous. That the armour and weapons are uniform in character
+      throughout we have tried to prove, while the state of society and of
+      religion is certainly throughout harmonious. Our parallel, then, between
+      the French and the Greek national epics appears as perfect as such a thing
+      can be, surprisingly perfect, while the great point of difference in
+      degree of art is accounted for by the existence of an Achaean poet of
+      supreme genius. Not such, certainly, were the composers of the Cyclic
+      poems, men contemporary with the supposed later poets of the <i>Iliad</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_CONC" id="link2H_CONC">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CONCLUSION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The conclusion at which we arrive is that the <i>Iliad</i>, as a whole, is
+      the work of one age. That it has reached us without interpolations and <i>lacunae</i>
+      and <i>remaniements</i> perhaps no person of ordinary sense will allege.
+      But that the mass of the Epic is of one age appears to be a natural
+      inference from the breakdown of the hypotheses which attempt to explain it
+      as a late mosaic. We have also endeavoured to prove, quite apart from the
+      failure of theories of expansion and compilation, that the <i>Iliad</i>
+      presents an historical unity, unity of character, unity of customary law,
+      and unity in its archaeology. If we are right, we must have an opinion as
+      to how the Epic was preserved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we had evidence for an Homeric school, we might imagine that the Epic
+      was composed by dint of memory, and preserved, like the Sanskrit Hymns of
+      the Rig Veda, and the Hymns of the Maoris, the Zuñis, and other peoples in
+      the lower or middle stage of barbarism, by the exertions and teaching of
+      schools. But religious hymns and mythical hymns&mdash;the care of a
+      priesthood&mdash;are one thing; a great secular epic is another. Priests
+      will not devote themselves from age to age to its conservation. It cannot
+      be conserved, with its unity of tone and character, and, on the whole,
+      even of language, by generations of paid strollers, who recite new lays of
+      their own, as well as any old lays that they may remember, which they
+      alter at pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are thus driven back to the theory of early written texts, not intended
+      to meet the wants of a reading public, but for the use of the poet himself
+      and of those to whom he may bequeath his work. That this has been a method
+      in which orally published epics were composed and preserved in a
+      non-reading age we have proved in our chapter on the French Chansons <i>de
+      Geste</i>. Unhappily, the argument that what was done in mediaeval France
+      might be done in sub-Mycenaean Greece, is based on probabilities, and
+      these are differently estimated by critics of different schools. All seems
+      to depend on each individual's sense of what is "likely." In that case
+      science has nothing to make in the matter. Nitzsche thought that writing
+      might go back to the time of Homer. Mr. Monro thought it "probable enough
+      that writing, even if known at the time of Homer, was not used for
+      literary purposes." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i. p. xxxv.} Sir Richard
+      Jebb, as we saw, took a much more favourable view of the probability of
+      early written texts. M. Salomon Reinach, arguing from the linear written
+      clay tablets of Knossos and from a Knossian cup with writing on it in ink,
+      thinks that there may have existed whole "Minoan" libraries&mdash;manuscripts
+      executed on perishable materials, palm leaves, papyrus, or parchment.
+      {Footnote: <i>L'Anthropologie</i>, vol. xv, pp. 292, 293.} Mr. Leaf, while
+      admitting that "writing was known in some form through the whole period of
+      epic development," holds that "it is in the highest degree unlikely that
+      it was ever employed to form a standard text of the Epic or any portion of
+      it.... At best there was a continuous tradition of those portions of the
+      poems which were especially popular ..." {Footnote: <i>Iliad</i>, vol. i.
+      pp. xvi., xvii.} Father Browne dates the employment of writing for the
+      preservation of the Epic "from the sixth century onwards." {Footnote: <i>Handbook
+      of Homeric Study</i>, p. 134.} He also says that "it is difficult to
+      suppose that the Mycenaeans, who were certainly in contact with this form
+      of writing" (the Cretan linear), "should not have used it much more freely
+      than our direct evidence warrants us in asserting." He then mentions the
+      Knossian cup "with writing inscribed on it apparently in pen and ink ...
+      The conclusion is that ordinary writing was in use, but that the
+      materials, probably palm leaves, have disappeared." {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>.,
+      pp. 258, 259.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why it should be unlikely that a people confessedly familiar with writing
+      used it for the preservation of literature, when we know that even the Red
+      Indians preserve their songs by means of pictographs, while West African
+      tribes use incised characters, is certainly not obvious. Many sorts of
+      prae-Phoenician writing were current during the Mycenaean age in Asia,
+      Egypt, Assyria, and in Cyprus. As these other peoples used writing of
+      their own sort for literary purposes, it is not easy to see why the
+      Cretans, for example, should not have done the same thing. Indeed, Father
+      Browne supposes that the Mycenaeans used "ordinary writing," and used it
+      freely. Nevertheless, the Epic was not written, he says, till the sixth
+      century B.C. Cauer, indeed, remarks that "the Finnish epic" existed
+      unwritten till Lbnnrot, its Pisistratus, first collected it from oral
+      recitation. {Footnote: <i>Grundfragen der Homerkritik</i>, p. 94.} But
+      there is not, and never was, any "Finnish epic." There were cosmogonic
+      songs, as among the Maoris and Zuñis&mdash;songs of the beginnings of
+      things; there were magical songs, songs of weddings, a song based on the
+      same popular tale that underlies the legend of the Argonauts. There were
+      songs of the Culture Hero, songs of burial and feast, and of labour.
+      Lönnrot collected these, and tried by interpolations to make an epic out
+      of them; but the point, as Comparetti has proved, is that he failed. There
+      is no Finnish epic, only a mass of <i>Volkslieder.</i> Cauer's other
+      argument, that the German popular tales, Grimm's tales, were unwritten
+      till 1812, is as remote from the point at issue. Nothing can be less like
+      an epic than a volume of <i>Märchen.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As usual we are driven back upon a literary judgment. Is the <i>Iliad</i>
+      a patchwork of metrical <i>Märchen</i> or is it an epic nobly constructed?
+      If it is the former, writing was not needed; if it is the latter, in the
+      absence of Homeric guilds or colleges, only writing can account for its
+      preservation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is impossible to argue against a critic's subjective sense of what is
+      likely. Possibly that sense is born of the feeling that the Cretan linear
+      script, for example, or the Cyprian syllabary, looks very odd and
+      outlandish. The critic's imagination boggles at the idea of an epic
+      written in such scripts. In that case his is not the scientific
+      imagination; he is checked merely by the unfamiliar. Or his sense of
+      unlikelihood may be a subconscious survival of Wolf's opinion, formed by
+      him at a time when the existence of the many scripts of the old world was
+      unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our own sense of probability leads us to the conclusion that, in an age
+      when people could write, people wrote down the Epic. If they applied their
+      art to literature, then the preservation of the Epic is explained. Written
+      first in a prae-Phoenician script, it continued to be written in the Greek
+      adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet. There was not yet, probably, a
+      reading public, but there were a few clerkly men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the Cretans, at least, could write long before the age of Homer, Mr.
+      Arthur Evans has demonstrated by his discoveries. Prom my remote
+      undergraduate days I was of the opinion which he has proved to be correct,
+      starting, like him, from what I knew about savage pictographs. {Footnote:
+      Cretan <i>Pictographs</i> and <i>Prae-Phoenician</i> Script. London, 1905.
+      Annual of British <i>School</i> of Athens, 1900-1901, p. 10. Journal of <i>Hellenic
+      Studies,</i> 1897, pp. 327-395.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Reinach and Mr. Evans have pointed out that in this matter tradition
+      joins hands with discovery. Diodorus Siculus, speaking of the Cretan Zeus
+      and probably on Cretan authority, says: "As to those who hold that the
+      Syrians invented letters, from whom the Phoenicians received them and
+      handed them on to the Greeks, ... and that for this reason the Greeks call
+      letters 'Phoenician,' some reply that the Phoenicians did not {blank
+      space} letters, but merely modified (transposed 3) the forms of the
+      letters, and that most men use this form of script, and thus letters came
+      to be styled 'Phoenician.'" {Footnote: Diodorus Siculus, v. 74. <i>L'Anthropologie,</i>
+      vol. xi. pp. 497-502.} In fact, the alphabet is a collection of signs of
+      palaeolithic antiquity and of vast diffusion. {Footnote: Origins of the
+      Alphabet. A. L. Fortnightly Review, 1904, pp. 634-645}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the use of writing for the conservation of the Epic cannot seem to me
+      to be unlikely, but rather probable; and here one must leave the question,
+      as the subjective element plays so great a part in every man's sense of
+      what is likely or unlikely. That writing cannot have been used for this
+      literary purpose, that the thing is impossible, nobody will now assert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My supposition is, then, that the text of the Epic existed in AEgean
+      script till Greece adapted to her own tongue the "Phoenician letters,"
+      which I think she did not later than the ninth to eighth centuries; "at
+      the beginning of the ninth century," says Professor Bury. {Footnote: <i>History
+      of Greece</i>, vol. i. p. 78. 1902.} This may seem an audaciously early
+      date, but when we find vases of the eighth to seventh centuries bearing
+      inscriptions, we may infer that a knowledge of reading and writing was
+      reasonably common. When such a humble class of hirelings or slaves as the
+      pot-painters can sign their work, expecting their signatures to be read,
+      reading and writing must be very common accomplishments among the more
+      fortunate classes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Mr. Gardner is right in dating a number of incised inscriptions on
+      early pottery at Naucratis before the middle of the seventh century, we
+      reach the same conclusion. In fact, if these inscriptions be of a century
+      earlier than the Abu Simbel inscriptions, of date 590 B.C., we reach 690
+      B.C. Wherefore, as writing does not become common in a moment, it must
+      have existed in the eighth century B.C. We are not dealing here with a
+      special learned class, but with ordinary persons who could write.
+      {Footnote: <i>The Early Ionic Alphabet: Journal of Hellenic Studies</i>,
+      vol. vii. pp. 220-239. Roberts, <i>Introduction to Greek Epigraphy</i>,
+      pp. 31, 151, 159, 164, 165-167}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Interesting for our purpose is the verse incised on a Dipylon vase, found
+      at Athens in 1880. It is of an ordinary cream-jug shape, with a neck, a
+      handle, a spout, and a round belly. On the neck, within a zigzag
+      "geometrical" pattern, is a doe, feeding, and a tall water-fowl. On the
+      shoulder is scratched with a point, in very antique Attic characters
+      running from right to left, {Greek: os nun orchaeston panton hatalotata
+      pais ei, tou tode}. "This is the jug of him who is the most delicately
+      sportive of all dancers of our time." The jug is attributed to the eighth
+      century. {Footnote: Walters, <i>History of Ancient Pottery</i>, vol. ii.
+      p, 243; Kretschmer, <i>Griechischen Vasen inschriften</i>, p. 110, 1894,
+      of the seventh century. H. von Rohden, <i>Denkmaler</i>, iii. pp. 1945,
+      1946: "Probably dating from the seventh century." Roberts, op. cit., vol.
+      i. p. 74, "at least as far back as the seventh century," p. 75.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taking the vase, with Mr. Walters, as of the eighth century, I do not
+      suppose that the amateur who gave it to a dancer and scratched the
+      hexameter was of a later generation than the jug itself. The vase may have
+      cost him sixpence: he would give his friend a <i>new</i> vase; it is
+      improbable that old jugs were sold at curiosity shops in these days, and
+      given by amateurs to artists. The inscription proves that, in the eighth
+      to seventh centuries, at a time of very archaic characters (the Alpha is
+      lying down on its side, the aspirate is an oblong with closed ends and a
+      stroke across the middle, and the Iota is curved at each end), people
+      could write with ease, and would put verse into writing. The general
+      accomplishment of reading is taken for granted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reading is also taken for granted by the Gortyn (Cretan) inscription of
+      twelve columns long, <i>boustro-phedon</i> (running alternately from left
+      to right, and from right to left). In this inscribed code of laws, incised
+      on stone, money is not mentioned in the more ancient part, but fines and
+      prices are calculated in "chalders" and "bolls" ({Greek: lebaetes} and
+      {Greek: tripodes}), as in Scotland when coin was scarce indeed. Whether
+      the law contemplated the value of the vessels themselves, or, as in
+      Scotland, of their contents in grain, I know not. The later inscriptions
+      deal with coined money. If coin came in about 650 B.C., the older parts of
+      the inscription may easily be of 700 B.C.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Gortyn inscription implies the power of writing out a long code of
+      laws, and it implies that persons about to go to law could read the public
+      inscription, as we can read a proclamation posted up on a wall, or could
+      have it read to them. {Footnote: Roberts, vol. i. pp. 52-55.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The alphabets inscribed on vases of the seventh century (Abecedaria), with
+      "the archaic Greek forms of every one of the twenty-two Phoenician letters
+      arranged precisely in the received Semitic order," were, one supposes,
+      gifts for boys and girls who were learning to read, just like our English
+      alphabets on gingerbread. {Footnote: For Abecedaria, cf. Roberts, vol. i.
+      pp. 16-21.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among inscriptions on tombstones of the end of the seventh century, there
+      is the epitaph of a daughter of a potter. {Footnote: Roberts, vol. i. p.
+      76.} These writings testify to the general knowledge of reading, just as
+      much as our epitaphs testify to the same state of education. The Athenian
+      potter's daughter of the seventh century B.C. had her epitaph, but the
+      grave-stones of highlanders, chiefs or commoners, were usually uninscribed
+      till about the end of the eighteenth century, in deference to custom,
+      itself arising from the illiteracy of the highlanders in times past.
+      {Footnote: Ramsay, <i>Scotland and Scotsmen</i>, ii. p. 426. 1888.} I find
+      no difficulty, therefore, in supposing that there were some Greek readers
+      and writers in the eighth century, and that primary education was common
+      in the seventh. In these circumstances my sense of the probable is not
+      revolted by the idea of a written epic, in {blank space} characters, even
+      in the eighth century, but the notion that there was no such thing till
+      the middle of the sixth century seems highly improbable. All the
+      conditions were present which make for the composition and preservation of
+      literary works in written texts. That there were many early written copies
+      of Homer in the eighth century I am not inclined to believe. The Greeks
+      were early a people who could read, but were not a reading people. Setting
+      newspapers aside, there is no such thing as a reading <i>people</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Greeks preferred to listen to recitations, but my hypothesis is that
+      the rhapsodists who recited had texts, like the <i>jongleurs</i>' books of
+      their epics in France, and that they occasionally, for definite purposes,
+      interpolated matter into their texts. There were also texts, known in
+      later times as "city texts" ({Greek: ai kata poleis}), which Aristarchus
+      knew, but he did not adopt the various readings. {Footnote: Monro,
+      Odyssey, vol. ii. p, 435.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Athens had a text in Solon's time, if he entered the decree that the whole
+      Epic should be recited in due order, every five years, at the Panathenaic
+      festival. {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>., vol. ii. p. 395.} "This implies the
+      possession of a complete text." {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>., vol. ii. p. 403.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cauer remarks that the possibility of "interpolation" "began only after
+      the fixing of the text by Pisistratus." {Footnote: <i>Grundfragen</i>, p.
+      205.} But surely if every poet and reciter could thrust any new lines
+      which he chose to make into any old lays which he happened to know, that
+      was interpolation, whether he had a book of the words or had none. Such
+      interpolations would fill the orally recited lays which the supposed
+      Pisistratean editor must have written down from recitation before he began
+      his colossal task of making the <i>Iliad</i> out of them. If, on the other
+      hand, reciters had books of the words, they could interpolate at pleasure
+      into <i>them</i>, and such books may have been among the materials used in
+      the construction of a text for the Athenian book market. But if our theory
+      be right, there must always have been a few copies of better texts than
+      those of the late reciters' books, and the effort of the editors for the
+      book market would be to keep the parts in which most manuscripts were
+      agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how did Athens, or any other city, come to possess a text? One can
+      only conjecture; but my conjecture is that there had always been texts&mdash;copied
+      out in successive generations&mdash;in the hands of the curious; for
+      example, in the hands of the Cyclic poets, who knew our <i>Iliad</i> as
+      the late French Cyclic poets knew the earlier <i>Chansons de Geste</i>.
+      They certainly knew it, for they avoided interference with it; they worked
+      at epics which led up to it, as in the <i>Cypria;</i> they borrowed <i>motifs</i>
+      from hints and references in the <i>Iliad</i>, {Footnote: Monro, <i>Odyssey</i>,
+      vol. ii. pp. 350, 351.} and they carried on the story from the death of
+      Hector, in the <i>AEthiopis</i> of Arctinus of Miletus. This epic ended
+      with the death of Achilles, when <i>The Little Iliad</i> produced the tale
+      to the bringing in of the wooden horse. Arctinus goes on with his <i>Sack</i>
+      of <i>Ilios</i>, others wrote of <i>The Return</i> of <i>the Heroes,</i>
+      and the <i>Telegonia</i> is a sequel to the Odyssey. The authors of these
+      poems knew the <i>Iliad</i>, then, as a whole, and how could they have
+      known it thus if it only existed in the casual <i>repertoire</i> of
+      strolling reciters? The Cyclic poets more probably had texts of Homer, and
+      themselves wrote their own poems&mdash;how it paid, whether they recited
+      them and collected rewards or not, is, of course, unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cyclic poems, to quote Sir Richard Jebb, "help to fix the lowest limit
+      for the age of the Homeric poems. {Footnote: <i>Homer</i>, pp. 151, 154.}
+      The earliest Cyclic poems, dating from about 776 B.C., presuppose the <i>Iliad</i>,
+      being planned to introduce or continue it.... It would appear, then, that
+      the <i>Iliad</i> must have existed in something like its present compass
+      as early as 800 B.C.; indeed a considerably earlier date will seem
+      probable, if due time is allowed for the poem to have grown into such fame
+      as would incite the effort to continue it and to prelude to it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Richard then takes the point on which we have already insisted,
+      namely, that the Cyclic poets of the eighth century B.C. live in an age of
+      ideas, religions, ritual, and so forth which are absent from the <i>Iliad</i>
+      {Footnote: Homer, pp. 154, 155.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the <i>Iliad</i> existed with its characteristics that are prior to
+      800 B.C., and in its present compass, and was renowned before 800 B.C. As
+      it could not possibly have thus existed in the <i>repertoire</i> of
+      irresponsible strolling minstrels and reciters, and as there is no
+      evidence for a college, school, or guild which preserved the Epic by a
+      system of mnemonic teaching, while no one can deny at least the
+      possibility of written texts, we are driven to the hypothesis that written
+      texts there were, whence descended, for example, the text of Athens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can scarcely suppose, however, that such texts were perfect in all
+      respects, for we know how, several centuries later, in a reading age,
+      papyrus fragments of the <i>Iliad</i> display unwarrantable interpolation.
+      {Footnote: Monro, <i>Odyssey</i>, vol. ii. pp. 422-426.} But Plato's
+      frequent quotations, of course made at an earlier date, show that
+      "whatever interpolated texts of Homer were then current, the copy from
+      which Plato quoted was not one of them." {Footnote: <i>Ibid</i>., p. 429}
+      Plato had something much better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a reading public for Homer arose&mdash;and, from the evidences of the
+      widespread early knowledge of reading, such a small public may have come
+      into existence sooner than is commonly supposed&mdash;Athens was the
+      centre of the book trade. To Athens must be due the prae-Alexandrian
+      Vulgate, or prevalent text, practically the same as our own. Some person
+      or persons must have made that text&mdash;not by taking down from
+      recitation all the lays which they could collect, as Herd, Scott, Mrs.
+      Brown, and others collected much of the <i>Border Minstrelsy</i>, and not
+      by then tacking the lays into a newly-composed whole. They must have done
+      their best with such texts as were accessible to them, and among these
+      were probably the copies used by reciters and rhapsodists, answering to
+      the MS. books of the mediaeval <i>jongleurs.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jevons has justly and acutely remarked that "we do not know, and there
+      is no external evidence of any description which leads us to suppose, that
+      the <i>Iliad</i> was ever expanded" (<i>J. H. S</i>, vii. 291-308).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That it was expanded is a mere hypothesis based on the idea that "if there
+      was an <i>Iliad</i> at all in the ninth century, its length must have been
+      such as was compatible with the conditions of an oral delivery,"&mdash;"a
+      poem or poems short enough to be recited at a single sitting."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we have proved, with Mr. Jevons and Blass, and by the analogy of the
+      Chansons that, given a court audience (and a court audience is granted),
+      there were no such narrow limits imposed on the length of a poem orally
+      recited from night to night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The length of the <i>Iliad</i> yields, therefore, no argument for
+      expansions throughout several centuries. That theory, suggested by the
+      notion that the original poem <i>MUST</i> have been short, is next
+      supposed to be warranted by the inconsistencies and discrepancies. But we
+      argue that these are only visible, as a rule, to "the analytical reader,"
+      for whom the poet certainly was not composing; that they occur in all long
+      works of fictitious narrative; that the discrepancies often are not
+      discrepancies; and, finally, that they are not nearly so glaring as the
+      inconsistencies in the theories of each separatist critic. A theory, in
+      such matter as this, is itself an explanatory myth, or the plot of a story
+      which the critic invents to account for the facts in the case. These
+      critical plots, we have shown, do not account for the facts of the case,
+      for the critics do not excel in constructing plots. They wander into
+      unperceived self-contradictions which they would not pardon in the poet.
+      These contradictions are visible to "the analytical reader," who concludes
+      that a very early poet may have been, though Homer seldom is, as
+      inconsistent as a modern critic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, though we have no external evidence that the <i>Iliad</i> was
+      ever expanded&mdash;that it was expanded is an explanatory myth of the
+      critics&mdash;"we do know, on good evidence," says Mr. Jevons, "that the
+      <i>Iliad</i> was rhapsodised." The rhapsodists were men, as a rule, of one
+      day recitations, though at a prolonged festival at Athens there was time
+      for the whole <i>Iliad</i> to be recited. "They chose for recitation such
+      incidents as could be readily detached, were interesting in themselves,
+      and did not take too long to recite." Mr. Jevons suggests that the many
+      brief poems collected in the Homeric hymns are invocations which the
+      rhapsodists preluded to their recitals. The practice seems to have been
+      for the rhapsodist first to pay his reverence to the god, "to begin from
+      the god," at whose festival the recitation was being given (the short
+      proems collected in the Hymns pay this reverence), "and then proceed with
+      his rhapsody"&mdash;with his selected passage from the <i>Iliad</i>,
+      "Beginning with thee" (the god of the festival), "I will go on to another
+      lay," that is, to his selection from the Epic. Another conclusion of the
+      proem often is, "I will be mindful both of thee and of another lay,"
+      meaning, says Mr. Jevons, that "the local deity will figure in the
+      recitation from Homer which the rhapsodist is about to deliver."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These explanations, at all events, yield good sense. The invocation of
+      Athene (Hymns, XI., XXVIII.) would serve as the proem of invocation to the
+      recital of <i>Iliad</i>, V., VI. 1-311, the day of valour of Diomede,
+      spurred on by the wanton rebuke of Agamemnon, and aided by Athene. The
+      invocation of Hephaestus (Hymn XX.), would prelude to a recital of the <i>Making
+      of the Awns of Achilles</i>, and so on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the rhapsodist may be reciting at a festival of Dionysus, about whom
+      there is practically nothing said in the <i>Iliad</i>; for it is a proof
+      of the antiquity of the <i>Iliad</i> that, when it was composed, Dionysus
+      had not been raised to the Olympian peerage, being still a folk-god only.
+      The rhapsodist, at a feast of Dionysus in later times, has to introduce
+      the god into his recitation. The god is not in his text, but he adds him.
+      {Footnote:<i>Ibid</i>., VI. 130-141}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why should any mortal have made this interpolation? Mr. Jevons's theory
+      supplies the answer. The rhapsodist added the passages to suit the
+      Dionysus feast, at which he was reciting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same explanation is offered for the long story of the <i>Birth</i> of
+      {blank space} which Agamemnon tells in his speech of apology and
+      reconciliation. {Footnote:<i>Ibid</i>., XIX. 136.} There is an invocation
+      to Heracles (Hymns, XV.), and the author may have added this speech to his
+      rhapsody of the Reconciliation, recited at a feast of Heracles. Perhaps
+      the remark of Mr. Leaf offers the real explanation of the presence of this
+      long story in the speech of Agamemnon: "Many speakers with a bad case take
+      refuge in telling stories." Agamemnon shows, says Mr. Leaf, "the peevish
+      nervousness of a man who feels that he has been in the wrong," and who
+      follows a frank speaker like Achilles, only eager for Agamemnon to give
+      the word to form and charge. So Agamemnon takes refuge in a long story,
+      throwing the blame of his conduct on Destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We do not need, then, the theory of a rhapsodist's interpolation, but it
+      is quite plausible in itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Local heroes, as well as gods, had their feasts in post-Homeric times, and
+      a reciter at a feast of AEneas, or of his mother, Aphrodite, may have
+      foisted in the very futile discourse of Achilles and AEneas, {Footnote:<i>Ibid</i>.,
+      XX. 213-250.} with its reference to Erichthonius, an Athenian hero.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In other cases the rhapsodist rounded off his selected passage by a few
+      lines, as in <i>Iliad</i>, XIII. 656-659, where a hero is brought to
+      follow his son's dead body to the grave, though the father had been killed
+      in <i>V. 576</i>. "It is really such a slip as is often made by authors
+      who write," says Mr. Leaf; and, in <i>Esmond</i>, Thackeray makes similar
+      errors. The passage in XVI. 69-80, about which so much is said, as if it
+      contradicted Book IX. (<i>The Embassy to Achilles</i>), is also, Mr.
+      Jevons thinks, to be explained as "inserted by a rhapsodist wishing to
+      make his extract complete in itself." Another example&mdash;the confusion
+      in the beginning of Book II.&mdash;we have already discussed (see Chapter
+      IV.), and do not think that any explanation is needed, when we understand
+      that Agamemnon, once wide-awake, had no confidence in his dream. However,
+      Mr. Jevons thinks that rhapsodists, anxious to recite straight on from the
+      dream to the battle, added II. 35-41, "the only lines which represent
+      Agamemnon as believing confidently in his dream." We have argued that he
+      only believed <i>till he awoke</i>, and then, as always, wavered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, in our way of looking at these things, interpolations by rhapsodists
+      are not often needed as explanations of difficulties. Still, granted that
+      the rhapsodists, like the <i>jongleurs</i>, had texts, and that these were
+      studied by the makers of the Vulgate, interpolations and errors might
+      creep in by this way. As to changes in language, "a poetical dialect... is
+      liable to be gradually modified by the influence of the ever-changing
+      colloquial speech. And, in the early times, when writing was little used,
+      this influence would be especially operative." {Footnote: Monro, <i>Odyssey</i>,
+      vol. ii. p. 461.}
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To conclude, the hypothesis of a school of mnemonic teaching of the <i>Iliad</i>
+      would account for the preservation of so long a poem in an age destitute
+      of writing, when memory would be well cultivated. There may have been such
+      schools. We only lack evidence for their existence. But against the
+      hypothesis of the existence of early texts, there is nothing except the
+      feeling of some critics that it is not likely. "They are dangerous guides,
+      the feelings."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In any case the opinion that the <i>Iliad</i> was a whole, centuries
+      before Pisistratus, is the hypothesis which is by far the least fertile in
+      difficulties, and, consequently, in inconsistent solutions of the problems
+      which the theory of expansion first raises, and then, like an unskilled
+      magician, fails to lay.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Homer and His Age, by Andrew Lang
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Homer and His Age
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+
+Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7972]
+[This file was first posted on June 8, 2003]
+Last Updated: April 9, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOMER AND HIS AGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Moynihan, Lee Dawei, Miranda van de
+Heijning, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HOMER AND HIS AGE
+
+By Andrew Lang
+
+
+[Illustration: ALGONQUINS UNDER SHIELD _Frontispiece_]
+
+
+To R. W. RAPER IN ALL GRATITUDE
+
+
+[Etext Editor's note: Due to unclear typesetting of the original work,
+which contains unidentifiable characters and blank spaces, it has not
+been possible to capture this text completely. Where we have been unable
+to recover the meaning of the text, this has been indicated by the
+annotation [sic] or [blank space]. We hope that in the future a complete
+edition can be found and these gaps can be filled.]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In _Homer and the Epic_, ten or twelve years ago, I examined the
+literary objections to Homeric unity. These objections are chiefly based
+on alleged discrepancies in the narrative, of which no one poet, it
+is supposed, could have been guilty. The critics repose, I venture
+to think, mainly on a fallacy. We may style it the fallacy of "the
+analytical reader." The poet is expected to satisfy a minutely critical
+reader, a personage whom he could not foresee, and whom he did not
+address. Nor are "contradictory instances" examined--that is, as Blass
+has recently reminded his countrymen, Homer is put to a test which
+Goethe could not endure. No long fictitious narrative can satisfy "the
+analytical reader."
+
+The fallacy is that of disregarding the Homeric poet's audience. He
+did not sing for Aristotle or for Aristarchus, or for modern minute
+and reflective inquirers, but for warriors and ladies. He certainly
+satisfied them; but if he does not satisfy microscopic professors, he is
+described as a syndicate of many minstrels, living in many ages.
+
+In the present volume little is said in defence of the poet's
+consistency. Several chapters on that point have been excised. The way
+of living which Homer describes is examined, and an effort is made to
+prove that he depicts the life of a single brief age of culture. The
+investigation is compelled to a tedious minuteness, because the points
+of attack--the alleged discrepancies in descriptions of the various
+details of existence--are so minute as to be all but invisible.
+
+The unity of the Epics is not so important a topic as the methods of
+criticism. They ought to be sober, logical, and self-consistent. When
+these qualities are absent, Homeric criticism may be described, in the
+recent words of Blass, as "a swamp haunted by wandering fires, will o'
+the wisps."
+
+In our country many of the most eminent scholars are no believers in
+separatist criticism. Justly admiring the industry and erudition of the
+separatists, they are unmoved by their arguments, to which they do
+not reply, being convinced in their own minds. But the number and
+perseverance of the separatists make on "the general reader" the
+impression that Homeric unity is chose _jugee_, that _scientia locuta
+est_, and has condemned Homer. This is far from being the case: the
+question is still open; "science" herself is subject to criticism; and
+new materials, accruing yearly, forbid a tame acquiescence in hasty
+theories.
+
+May I say a word to the lovers of poetry who, in reading Homer, feel no
+more doubt than in reading Milton that, on the whole, they are studying
+a work of one age, by one author? Do not let them be driven from their
+natural impression by the statement that Science has decided against
+them. The certainties of the exact sciences are one thing: the opinions
+of Homeric commentators are other and very different things. Among all
+the branches of knowledge which the Homeric critic should have at his
+command, only philology, archaeology, and anthropology can be called
+"sciences"; and they are not exact sciences: they are but skirmishing
+advances towards the true solution of problems prehistoric and
+"proto-historic."
+
+Our knowledge shifts from day to day; on every hand, in regard to almost
+every topic discussed, we find conflict of opinions. There is no certain
+scientific decision, but there is the possibility of working in the
+scientific spirit, with breadth of comparison; consistency of logic;
+economy of conjecture; abstinence from the piling of hypothesis on
+hypothesis.
+
+Nothing can be more hurtful to science than the dogmatic assumption that
+the hypothesis most in fashion is scientific.
+
+Twenty years ago, the philological theory of the Solar Myth was preached
+as "scientific" in the books, primers, and lectures of popular science.
+To-day its place knows it no more. The separatist theories of the
+Homeric poems are not more secure than the Solar Myth, "like a wave
+shall they pass and be passed."
+
+When writing on "The Homeric House" (Chapter X.) I was unacquainted with
+Mr. Percy Gardner's essay, "The Palaces of Homer" (_Journal of Hellenic
+Studies_, vol. iii. pp. 264-282). Mr. Gardner says that Dasent's plan
+of the Scandinavian Hall "offers in most respects not likeness, but a
+striking contrast to the early Greek hall." Mr. Monro, who was not aware
+of the parallel which I had drawn between the Homeric and Icelandic
+houses, accepted it on evidence more recent than that of Sir George
+Dasent. Cf. his _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 490-494.
+
+Mr. R. W. Raper, of Trinity College, Oxford, has read the proof sheets
+of this work with his habitual kindness, but is in no way responsible
+for the arguments. Mr. Walter Leaf has also obliged me by mentioning
+some points as to which I had not completely understood his position,
+and I have tried as far as possible to represent his ideas correctly. I
+have also received assistance from the wide and minute Homeric lore of
+Mr. A. Shewan, of St. Andrews, and have been allowed to consult other
+scholars on various points.
+
+The first portion of the chapter on "Bronze and Iron" appeared in the
+Revue _Archeologique_ for April 1905, and the editor, Monsieur Salomon
+Reinach, obliged me with a note on the bad iron swords of the Celts as
+described by Polybius.
+
+The design of men in three shields of different shapes, from a Dipylon
+vase, is reproduced, with permission, from the British Museum _Guide
+to the Antiquities of the Iron Age_; and the shielded chessmen from
+Catalogue of Scottish Society of Antiquaries. Thanks for the two ships
+with men under shield are offered to the Rev. Mr. Browne, S.J., author
+of _Handbook of Homeric Studies_ (Longmans). For the Mycenaean gold
+corslet I thank Mr. John Murray (Schliemann's Mycenae and Tiryns), and
+for all the other Mycenaean illustrations Messrs. Macmillan and Mr.
+Leaf, publishers and author of Mr. Leaf's edition of the _Iliad_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+
+CHAPTER I: THE HOMERIC AGE
+
+CHAPTER II: HYPOTHESES AS TO THE GROWTH OF THE EPICS
+
+CHAPTER III: HYPOTHESES OF EPIC COMPOSITION
+
+CHAPTER IV: LOOSE FEUDALISM: THE OVER-LORD IN "ILIAD," BOOKS I. AND II.
+
+CHAPTER V: AGAMEMNON IN THE LATER "ILIAD"
+
+CHAPTER VI: ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE "ILIAD"--BURIAL AND CREMATION
+
+CHAPTER VII: HOMERIC ARMOUR
+
+CHAPTER VIII: THE BREASTPLATE
+
+CHAPTER IX: BRONZE AND IRON
+
+CHAPTER X: THE HOMERIC HOUSE
+
+CHAPTER XI: NOTES OF CHANGE IN THE "ODYSSEY"
+
+CHAPTER XII: LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES
+
+CHAPTER XIII: THE "DOLONEIA"--"ILIAD," BOOK X.
+
+CHAPTER XIV: THE INTERPOLATIONS OF NESTOR
+
+CHAPTER XV: THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS
+
+CHAPTER XVI: HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS
+
+CHAPTER XVII: CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
+
+
+ALGONQUINS UNDER SHIELD
+
+THE VASE OF ARISTONOTHOS
+
+DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS
+
+RINGS: SWORDS AND SHIELDS
+
+FRAGMENTS OF WARRIOR VASE
+
+FRAGMENT OF SIEGE VASE
+
+ALGONQUIN CORSLET
+
+GOLD CORSLET
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+THE HOMERIC AGE
+
+The aim of this book is to prove that the Homeric Epics, as wholes, and
+apart from passages gravely suspected in antiquity, present a perfectly
+harmonious picture of the entire life and civilisation of one single
+age. The faint variations in the design are not greater than such as
+mark every moment of culture, for in all there is some movement; in all,
+cases are modified by circumstances. If our contention be true, it will
+follow that the poems themselves, as wholes, are the product of a single
+age, not a mosaic of the work of several changeful centuries.
+
+This must be the case--if the life drawn is harmonious, the picture
+must be the work of a single epoch--for it is not in the nature of early
+uncritical times that later poets should adhere, or even try to adhere,
+to the minute details of law, custom, opinion, dress, weapons, houses,
+and so on, as presented in earlier lays or sagas on the same set
+of subjects. Even less are poets in uncritical times inclined to
+"archaise," either by attempting to draw fancy pictures of the manners
+of the past, or by making researches in graves, or among old votive
+offerings in temples, for the purpose of "preserving local colour." The
+idea of such archaising is peculiar to modern times. To take an instance
+much to the point, Virgil was a learned poet, famous for his antiquarian
+erudition, and professedly imitating and borrowing from Homer. Now, had
+Virgil worked as a man of to-day would work on a poem of Trojan times,
+he would have represented his heroes as using weapons of bronze.
+[Footnote: Looking back at my own poem, _Helen of Troy_ (1883), I find
+that when the metal of a weapon is mentioned the metal is bronze.] No
+such idea of archaising occurred to the learned Virgil. It is "the iron"
+that pierces the head of Remulus (_Aeneid_, IX. 633); it is "the iron"
+that waxes warm in the breast of Antiphates (IX. 701). Virgil's men,
+again, do not wear the great Homeric shield, suspended by a baldric:
+AEneas holds up his buckler (_clipeus_), borne "on his left arm" (X. 26
+i). Homer, familiar with no buckler worn on the left arm, has no such
+description. When the hostile ranks are to be broken, in the _Aeneid_ it
+is "with the iron" (X. 372), and so throughout.
+
+The most erudite ancient poet, in a critical age of iron, does not
+archaise in our modern fashion. He does not follow his model, Homer, in
+his descriptions of shields, swords, and spears. But, according to
+most Homeric critics, the later continuators of the Greek Epics, about
+800-540 B.C., are men living in an age of iron weapons, and of round
+bucklers worn on the left arm. Yet, unlike Virgil, they always give
+their heroes arms of bronze, and, unlike Virgil (as we shall see),
+they do not introduce the buckler worn on the left arm. They adhere
+conscientiously to the use of the vast Mycenaean shield, in their time
+obsolete. Yet, by the theory, in many other respects they innovate
+at will, introducing corslets and greaves, said to be unknown to the
+beginners of the Greek Epics, just as Virgil innovates in bucklers and
+iron weapons. All this theory seems inconsistent, and no ancient poet,
+not even Virgil, is an archaiser of the modern sort.
+
+All attempts to prove that the Homeric poems are the work of several
+centuries appear to rest on a double hypothesis: first, that the later
+contributors to the _ILIAD_ kept a steady eye on the traditions of the
+remote Achaean age of bronze; next, that they innovated as much as they
+pleased.
+
+Poets of an uncritical age do not archaise. This rule is overlooked by
+the critics who represent the Homeric poems as a complex of the work of
+many singers in many ages. For example, Professor Percy Gardner, in his
+very interesting _New chapters in Greek History_ (1892), carries neglect
+of the rule so far as to suppose that the late Homeric poets, being
+aware that the ancient heroes could not ride, or write, or eat boiled
+meat, consciously and purposefully represented them as doing none of
+these things. This they did "on the same principle on which a writer of
+pastoral idylls in our own day would avoid the mention of the telegraph
+or telephone." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 142.] "A writer of our own
+day,"--there is the pervading fallacy! It is only writers of the last
+century who practise this archaeological refinement. The authors of
+_Beowulf_ and the _Nibelungenlied_, of the Chansons de _Geste_ and of
+the Arthurian romances, always describe their antique heroes and the
+details of their life in conformity with the customs, costume, and
+armour of their own much later ages.
+
+But Mr. Leaf, to take another instance, remarks as to the lack of the
+metal lead in the Epics, that it is mentioned in similes only, as though
+the poet were aware the metal was unknown in the heroic age. [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, Note on, xi. 237.] Here the poet is assumed to be a careful
+but ill-informed archaeologist, who wishes to give an accurate
+representation of the past. Lead, in fact, was perfectly familiar to the
+Mycenaean prime. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 73.] The critical
+usage of supposing that the ancients were like the most recent
+moderns--in their archaeological preoccupations--is a survival of the
+uncritical habit which invariably beset old poets and artists. Ancient
+poets, of the uncritical ages, never worked "on the same principle as a
+writer in our day," as regards archaeological precision; at least we are
+acquainted with no example of such accuracy.
+
+Let us take another instance of the critical fallacy. The age of the
+Achaean warriors, who dwelt in the glorious halls of Mycenae, was
+followed, at an interval, by the age represented in the relics found in
+the older tombs outside the Dipylon gate of Athens, an age beginning,
+probably, about 900-850 B.C. The culture of this "Dipylon age," a
+time of geometrical ornaments on vases, and of human figures drawn in
+geometrical forms, lines, and triangles, was quite unlike that of the
+Achaean age in many ways, for example, in mode of burial and in the use
+of iron for weapons. Mr. H. R. Hall, in his learned book, _The Oldest
+Civilisation of Greece_ (1901), supposes the culture described in the
+Homeric poems to be contemporary in Asia with that of this Dipylon
+period in Greece. [Footnote: Op. cit., pp. 49, 222.] He says, "The
+Homeric culture is evidently the culture of the poet's own days; there
+is no attempt to archaise here...." They do not archaise as to the
+details of life, but "the Homeric poets consciously and consistently
+archaised, in regard to the political conditions of continental Greece,"
+in the Achaean times. They give "in all probability a pretty accurate
+description" of the loose feudalism of Mycenaean Greece. [Footnote: Op.
+cit., pp. 223, 225.]
+
+We shall later show that this Homeric picture of a past political and
+social condition of Greece is of vivid and delicate accuracy, that it
+is drawn from the life, not constructed out of historical materials. Mr.
+Hall explains the fact by "the conscious and consistent" archaeological
+precision of the Asiatic poets of the ninth century. Now to any one
+who knows early national poetry, early uncritical art of any kind,
+this theory seems not easily tenable. The difficulty of the theory is
+increased, if we suppose that the Achaeans were the recent conquerors
+of the Mycenaeans. Whether we regard the Achaeans as "Celts," with Mr.
+Ridgeway, victors over an Aryan people, the Pelasgic Mycenaeans; or
+whether, with Mr. Hall, we think that the Achaeans were the Aryan
+conquerors of a non-Aryan people, the makers of the Mycenaean
+civilisation; in the stress of a conquest, followed at no long interval
+by an expulsion at the hands of Dorian invaders, there would be little
+thought of archaising among Achaean poets. [Footnote: Mr. Hall informs
+me that he no longer holds the opinion that the poets archaised.]
+
+A distinction has been made, it is true, between the poet and other
+artists in this respect. Monsieur Perrot says, "The vase-painter
+reproduces what he sees; while the epic poets endeavoured to represent
+a distant past. If Homer gives swords of bronze to his heroes of times
+gone by, it is because he knows that such were the weapons of these
+heroes of long ago. In arming them with bronze he makes use, in his
+way, of what we call 'local colour....' Thus the Homeric poet is a more
+conscientious historian than Virgil!" [Footnote: La _Grete de l'Epopee_,
+Perrot et Chipiez, p. 230.]
+
+Now we contend that old uncritical poets no more sought for antique
+"local colour" than any other artists did. M. Perrot himself says with
+truth, "the _CHANSON DE ROLAND_, and all the _Gestes_ of the same cycle
+explain for us the Iliad and the Odyssey." [Footnote: op. cit., p. 5.]
+But the poet of the _CHANSON DE ROLAND_ accoutres his heroes of old time
+in the costume and armour of his own age, and the later poets of the
+same cycle introduce the innovations of their time; they do not hunt for
+"local colour" in the _CHANSON DE ROLAND_. The very words "local colour"
+are a modern phrase for an idea that never occurred to the artists of
+ancient uncritical ages. The Homeric poets, like the painters of the
+Dipylon period, describe the details of life as they see them with their
+own eyes. Such poets and artists never have the fear of "anachronisms"
+before them. This, indeed, is plain to the critics themselves, for
+they, detect anachronisms as to land tenure, burial, the construction
+of houses, marriage customs, weapons, and armour in the _Iliad_ and
+_Odyssey_. These supposed anachronisms we examine later: if they really
+exist they show that the poets were indifferent to local colour
+and archaeological precision, or were incapable of attaining to
+archaeological accuracy. In fact, such artistic revival of the past in
+its habit as it lived is a purely modern ideal.
+
+We are to show, then, that the Epics, being, as wholes, free from such
+inevitable modifications in the picture of changing details of life as
+uncritical authors always introduce, are the work of the one age which
+they represent. This is the reverse of what has long been, and still is,
+the current theory of Homeric criticism, according to which the Homeric
+poems are, and bear manifest marks of being, a mosaic of the poetry of
+several ages of change.
+
+Till Wolf published his _Prolegomena_ to [blank space] (1795) there was
+little opposition to the old belief that the _ILIAD_ and Odyssey were,
+allowing for interpolations, the work of one, or at most of two, poets.
+After the appearance of Wolfs celebrated book, Homeric critics have
+maintained, generally speaking, that the _ILIAD_ is either a collection
+of short lays disposed in sequence in a late age, or that it contains an
+ancient original "kernel" round which "expansions," made throughout
+some centuries of changeful life, have accrued, and have been at last
+arranged by a literary redactor or editor.
+
+The latter theory is now dominant. It is maintained that the _Iliad_ is
+a work of at least four centuries. Some of the objections to this theory
+were obvious to Wolf himself--more obvious to him than to his followers.
+He was aware, and some of them are not, of the distinction between
+reading the _ILIAD_ as all poetic literature is naturally read, and by
+all authors is meant to be read, for human pleasure, and studying it in
+the spirit of "the analytical reader." As often as he read for pleasure,
+he says, disregarding the purely fanciful "historical conditions" which
+he invented for Homer; as often as he yielded himself to that running
+stream of action and narration; as often as he considered the _harmony_
+of _colour_ and of characters in the Epic, no man could be more angry
+with his own destructive criticism than himself. Wolf ceased to be a
+Wolfian whenever he placed himself at the point of view of the reader or
+the listener, to whom alone every poet makes his appeal.
+
+But he deemed it his duty to place himself at another point of view,
+that of the scientific literary historian, the historian of a period
+concerning whose history he could know nothing. "How could the thing
+be possible?" he asked himself. "How could a long poem like the _Iliad_
+come into existence in the historical circumstances?" [Footnote, exact
+place in paragraph unknown: Preface to Homer, p, xxii., 1794.]. Wolf was
+unaware that he did not know what the historical circumstances were. We
+know how little we know, but we do know more than Wolf. He invented the
+historical circumstances of the supposed poet. They were, he said, like
+those of a man who should build a large ship in an inland place, with no
+sea to launch it upon. The _Iliad_ was the large ship; the sea was the
+public. Homer could have no _readers_, Wolf said, in an age that, like
+the old hermit of Prague, "never saw pen and ink," had no knowledge
+of letters; or, if letters were dimly known, had never applied them
+to literature. In such circumstances no man could have a motive for
+composing a long poem. [Footnote: _Prolegomena to the Iliad_, p. xxvi.]
+
+Yet if the original poet, "Homer," could make "the greater part of the
+songs," as Wolf admitted, what physical impossibility stood in the way
+of his making the whole? Meanwhile, the historical circumstances, as
+conceived of by Wolf, were imaginary. He did not take the circumstances
+of the poet as described in the Odyssey. Here a king or prince has a
+minstrel, honoured as were the minstrels described in the ancient Irish
+books of law. His duty is to entertain the prince and his family and
+guests by singing epic chants after supper, and there is no reason why
+his poetic narratives should be brief, but rather he has an opportunity
+that never occurred again till the literary age of Greece for producing
+a long poem, continued from night to night. In the later age, in the
+Asiatic colonies and in Greece, the rhapsodists, competing for prizes at
+feasts, or reciting to a civic crowd, were limited in time and gave but
+snatches of poetry. It is in this later civic age that a poet without
+readers would have little motive for building Wolfs great ship of song,
+and scant chance of launching it to any profitable purpose. To this
+point we return; but when once critics, following Wolf, had convinced
+themselves that a long early poem was impossible, they soon found
+abundant evidence that it had never existed.
+
+They have discovered discrepancies of which, they say, no one sane poet
+could have been guilty. They have also discovered that the poems had
+not, as Wolf declared, "one 'harmony of colour" (_unus color_). Each
+age, they say, during which the poems were continued, lent its own
+colour. The poets, by their theory, now preserved the genuine tradition
+of things old; cremation, cairn and urn burial; the use of the chariot
+in war; the use of bronze for weapons; a peculiar stage of customary
+law; a peculiar form of semi-feudal society; a peculiar kind of house.
+But again, by a change in the theory, the poets introduced later
+novelties; later forms of defensive armour; later modes of burial; later
+religious and speculative beliefs; a later style of house; an advanced
+stage of law; modernisms in grammar and language.
+
+The usual position of critics in this matter is stated by Helbig; and
+we are to contend that the theory is contradicted by all experience of
+ancient literatures, and is in itself the reverse of consistent. "The
+_artists_ of antiquity," says Helbig, with perfect truth, "had no idea
+of archaeological studies.... They represented legendary scenes in
+conformity with the spirit of their own age, and reproduced the arms and
+implements and costume that they saw around them." [Footnote: _L'Epopee
+Homerique_, p. 5; _Homerische Epos_, p. 4.]
+
+Now a poet is an _artist_, like another, and he, too--no less than the
+vase painter or engraver of gems--in dealing with legends of times past,
+represents (in an uncritical age) the arms, utensils, costume, and the
+religious, geographical, legal, social, and political ideas of his own
+period. We shall later prove that this is true by examples from the
+early mediaeval epic poetry of Europe.
+
+It follows that if the _Iliad_ is absolutely consistent and harmonious
+in its picture of life, and of all the accessories of life, the _Iliad_
+is the work of a single age, of a single stage of culture, the poet
+describing his own environment. But Helbig, on the other hand, citing
+Wilamowitz Moellendorff, declares that the _Iliad_--the work of four
+centuries, he says--maintains its unity of colour by virtue of
+an uninterrupted poetical tradition. [Footnote: _Homerische
+Untersuchungen_, p. 292; _Homerische Epos_, p. I.] If so, the poets must
+have archaeologised, must have kept asking themselves, "Is this or that
+detail true to the past?" which artists in uncritical ages never do,
+as we have been told by Helbig. They must have carefully pondered the
+surviving old Achaean lays, which "were born when the heroes could
+not read, or boil flesh, or back a steed." By carefully observing the
+earliest lays the late poets, in times of changed manners, "could avoid
+anachronisms by the aid of tradition, which gave them a very exact idea
+of the epic heroes." Such is the opinion of Wilamowitz Moellendorff. He
+appears to regard the tradition as keeping the later poets in the old
+way automatically, not consciously, but this, we also learn from Helbig,
+did not occur. The poets often wandered from the way. [Footnote: Helbig,
+_Homerische Epos,_ pp. 2, 3.] Thus old Mycenaean lays, if any existed,
+would describe the old Mycenaean mode of burial. The Homeric poet
+describes something radically different. We vainly ask for proof that
+in any early national literature known to us poets have been true to the
+colour and manners of the remote times in which their heroes moved,
+and of which old minstrels sang. The thing is without example: of this
+proofs shall be offered in abundance.
+
+Meanwhile, the whole theory which regards the _Iliad_ as the work of
+four or five centuries rests on the postulate that poets throughout
+these centuries did what such poets never do, kept true to the details
+of a life remote from their own, and also did not.
+
+For Helbig does not, after all, cleave to his opinion. On the other
+hand, he says that the later poets of the _Iliad_ did not cling to
+tradition. "They allowed themselves to be influenced by their own
+environment: _this influence betrays ITSELF IN THE descriptions of
+DETAILS_.... The rhapsodists," (reciters, supposed to have altered the
+poems at will), "did not fail to interpolate relatively recent elements
+into the oldest parts of the Epic." [Footnote: _Homerische Epos,_ p. 2.]
+
+At this point comes in a complex inconsistency. The Tenth Book of the
+_Iliad_, thinks Helbig--in common with almost all critics--"is one of
+the most recent lays of the _Iliad_." But in this recent lay (say of
+the eighth or seventh century) the poet describes the Thracians as on
+a level of civilisation with the Achaeans, and, indeed, as even more
+luxurious, wealthy, and refined in the matter of good horses, glorious
+armour, and splendid chariots. But, by the time of the Persian
+wars, says Helbig, the Thracians were regarded by the Greeks as rude
+barbarians, and their military equipment was totally un-Greek. They did
+not wear helmets, but caps of fox-skin. They had no body armour; their
+shields were small round bucklers; their weapons were bows and daggers.
+These customs could not, at the time of the Persian wars, be recent
+innovations in Thrace. [Footnote: Herodotus, vii. 75.]
+
+Had the poet of _ILIAD_, Book X., known the Thracians in _this_
+condition, says Helbig, as he was fond of details of costume and arms,
+he would have certainly described their fox-skin caps, bows, bucklers,
+and so forth. He would not here have followed the Epic tradition, which
+represented the Thracians as makers of great swords and as splendidly
+armed charioteers. His audience had met the Thracians in peace and war,
+and would contradict the poet's description of them as heavily armed
+charioteers. It follows, therefore, that the latest poets, such as the
+author of Book X., did not introduce recent details, those of their
+own time, but we have just previously been told that to do so was their
+custom in the description of details.
+
+Now Studniczka [Footnote: _Homerische Epos, pp. 7-11, cf._ Note I;
+_Zeitschrift fur die Oestern Gymnasien_, 1886, p. 195.] explains the
+picture of the Thracians in _Iliad_, Book X., on Helbig's _other_
+principle, namely, that the very late author of the Tenth Book merely
+conforms to the conventional tradition of the Epic, adheres to the model
+set in ancient Achaean, or rather ancient Ionian times, and scrupulously
+preserved by the latest poets--that is, when the latest poets do not
+bring in the new details of their own age. But Helbig will not accept
+his own theory in this case, whence does it follow that the author of
+the Tenth Book must, in his opinion, have lived in Achaean times, and
+described the Thracians as they then were, charioteers, heavily armed,
+not light-clad archers? If this is so, we ask how Helbig can aver that
+the Tenth Book is one of the latest parts of the _Iliad?_
+
+In studying the critics who hold that the _Iliad_ is the growth of
+four centuries--say from the eleventh to the seventh century B.C.--no
+consistency is to be discovered; the earth is never solid beneath our
+feet. We find now that the poets are true to tradition in the details of
+ancient life--now that the poets introduce whatever modern details they
+please. The late poets have now a very exact knowledge of the past; now,
+the late poets know nothing about the past, or, again, some of the poets
+are fond of actual and very minute archaeological research! The theory
+shifts its position as may suit the point to be made at the moment by
+the critic. All is arbitrary, and it is certain that logic demands a
+very different method of inquiry. If Helbig and other critics of his
+way of thinking mean that in the _Iliad_ (1) there are parts of genuine
+antiquity; other parts (2) by poets who, with stern accuracy, copied the
+old modes; other parts (3) by poets who tried to copy but failed; with
+passages (4) by poets who deliberately innovated; and passages (5)
+by poets who drew fanciful pictures of the past "from their inner
+consciousness," while, finally (6), some poets made minute antiquarian
+researches; and if the argument be that the critics can detect these six
+elements, then we are asked to repose unlimited confidence in critical
+powers of discrimination. The critical standard becomes arbitrary and
+subjective.
+
+It is our effort, then, in the following pages to show that the _unus_
+color of Wolf does pervade the Epics, that recent details are not often,
+if ever, interpolated, that the poems harmoniously represent one
+age, and that a brief age, of culture; that this effect cannot, in
+a thoroughly uncritical period, have been deliberately aimed at and
+produced by archaeological learning, or by sedulous copying of poetic
+tradition, or by the scientific labours of an editor of the sixth
+century B.C. We shall endeavour to prove, what we have already
+indicated, that the hypotheses of expansion are not self-consistent,
+or in accordance with what is known of the evolution of early national
+poetry. The strongest part, perhaps, of our argument is to rest on our
+interpretation of archaeological evidence, though we shall not
+neglect the more disputable or less convincing contentions of literary
+criticism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+HYPOTHESES AS TO THE GROWTH OF THE EPICS
+
+A theorist who believes that the Homeric poems are the growth of four
+changeful centuries, must present a definite working hypothesis as to
+how they escaped from certain influences of the late age in which much
+of them is said to have been composed. We must first ask to what manner
+of audiences did the poets sing, in the alleged four centuries of the
+evolution of the Epics. Mr. Leaf, as a champion of the theory of ages
+of "expansion," answers that "the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are essentially,
+and above all, Court poems. They were composed to be sung in the palaces
+of a ruling aristocracy ... the poems are aristocratic and courtly, not
+popular." [Footnote: Companion to the _Iliad_, pp. 2,8. 1892.] They are
+not _Volkspoesie_; they are not ballads. "It is now generally recognised
+that this conception is radically false."
+
+These opinions, in which we heartily agree--there never was such a
+thing as a "popular" Epic--were published fourteen years ago. Mr.
+Leaf, however, would not express them with regard to "our" _Iliad_ and
+Odyssey, because, in his view, a considerable part of the _Iliad_, as
+it stands, was made, not by Court bards in the Achaean courts of Europe,
+not for an audience of noble warriors and dames, but by wandering
+minstrels in the later Ionian colonies of Asia. They did not chant for a
+military aristocracy, but for the enjoyment of town and country folk at
+popular festivals. [Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p. xvi. 1900.] The poems
+were _begun_, indeed, he thinks, for "a wealthy aristocracy living
+on the product of their lands," in European Greece; were begun by
+contemporary court minstrels, but were continued, vastly expanded, and
+altered to taste by wandering singers and reciting rhapsodists, who
+amused the holidays of a commercial, expansive, and bustling Ionian
+democracy. [Footnote: _Companion to the Iliad_, p. II.]
+
+ We must suppose that, on this theory, the later poets pleased a
+commercial democracy by keeping up the tone that had delighted an old
+land-owning military aristocracy. It is not difficult, however, to admit
+this as possible, for the poems continued to be admired in all ages of
+Greece and under every form of society. The real question is, would the
+modern poets be the men to keep up a tone some four or five centuries
+old, and to be true, if they were true, to the details of the heroic
+age? "It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that some part of the
+most primitive _Iliad_ may have been actually sung by the court minstrel
+in the palace whose ruins can still be seen in Mycenae." [Footnote:
+Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. xv.] But, by the expansionist theory, even
+the oldest parts of our _Iliad_ are now full of what we may call quite
+recent Ionian additions, full of late retouches, and full, so to speak,
+of omissions of old parts.
+
+Through four or five centuries, by the hypothesis, every singer who
+could find an audience was treating as much as he knew of a vast body of
+ancient lays exactly as he pleased, adding here, lopping there, altering
+everywhere. Moreover, these were centuries full of change. The ancient
+Achaean palaces were becoming the ruins which we still behold. The
+old art had faded, and then fallen under the disaster of the Dorian
+conquest. A new art, or a recrudescence of earlier art, very crude and
+barbaric, had succeeded, and was beginning to acquire form and vitality.
+The very scene of life was altered: the new singers and listeners dwelt
+on the Eastern side of the Aegean. Knights no longer, as in Europe,
+fought from chariots: war was conducted by infantry, for the most part,
+with mounted auxiliaries. With the disappearance of the war chariot the
+huge Mycenaean shields had vanished or were very rarely used. The early
+vase painters do not, to my knowledge, represent heroes as fighting from
+war chariots. They had lost touch with that method. Fighting men now
+carried relatively small round bucklers, and iron was the metal chiefly
+employed for swords, spears, and arrow points. Would the new poets,
+in deference to tradition, abstain from mentioning cavalry, or small
+bucklers, or iron swords and spears? or would they avoid puzzling their
+hearers by speaking of obsolete and unfamiliar forms of tactics and of
+military equipment? Would they therefore sing of things familiar--of
+iron weapons, small round shields, hoplites, and cavalry? We shall see
+that confused and self-contradictory answers are given by criticism
+to all these questions by scholars who hold that the Epics are not the
+product of one, but of many ages.
+
+There were other changes between the ages of the original minstrel and
+of the late successors who are said to have busied themselves in adding
+to, mutilating, and altering his old poem. Kings and courts had passed
+away; old Ionian myths and religious usages, unknown to the Homeric
+poets, had come out into the light; commerce and pleasure and early
+philosophies were the chief concerns of life. Yet the poems continued to
+be aristocratic in manners; and, in religion and ritual, to be pure from
+recrudescences of savage poetry and superstition, though the Ionians
+"did not drop the more primitive phases of belief which had clung to
+them; these rose to the surface with the rest of the marvellous Ionic
+genius, and many an ancient survival was enshrined in the literature
+or mythology of Athens which had long passed out of all remembrance at
+Mycenas." [Footnote: _Companion to the Iliad_, p. 7.]
+
+Amazing to say, none of these "more primitive phases of belief," none
+of the recrudescent savage magic, was intruded by the late Ionian poets
+into the Iliad which they continued, by the theory. Such phases of
+belief were, indeed, by their time popular, and frequently appeared in
+the Cyclic poems on the Trojan war; continuations of the _ILIAD_, which
+were composed by Ionian authors at the same time as much of the _ILIAD_
+itself (by the theory) was composed. The authors of these Cyclic
+poems--authors contemporary with the makers of much of the
+_ILIAD_--_were_ eminently "un-Homeric" in many respects. [Footnote:
+_Cf_. Monro, _The Cyclic Poets; Odyssey_, vol. ii, pp. 342-384.] They
+had ideas very different from those of the authors of the _Iliad_ and
+_ODYSSEY_, as these ideas have reached us.
+
+Helbig states this curious fact, that the Homeric poems are free from
+many recent or recrudescent ideas common in other Epics composed during
+the later centuries of the supposed four hundred years of Epic growth.
+[Footnote: _Homerische Epos_, p. 3.] Thus a signet ring was mentioned
+in the _Ilias Puma_, and there are no rings in _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_.
+But Helbig does not perceive the insuperable difficulty which here
+encounters his hypothesis. He remarks: "In certain poems which were
+grouping themselves around the _Iliad and _Odyssey, we meet data
+absolutely opposed to the conventional style of the Epic." He gives
+three or four examples of perfectly un-Homeric ideas occurring in Epics
+of the eighth to seventh centuries, B.C., and a large supply of such
+cases can be adduced. But Helbig does not ask how it happened that, if
+poets of these centuries had lost touch with the Epic tradition, and had
+wandered into a new region of thought, as they had, examples of their
+notions do not occur in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. By his theory these
+poems were being added to and altered, even in their oldest portions,
+at the very period when strange fresh, or old and newly revived fancies
+were flourishing. If so, how were the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, unlike the
+Cyclic poems, kept uncontaminated, as they confessedly were, by the new
+romantic ideas?
+
+Here is the real difficulty. Cyclic poets of the eighth and seventh
+centuries had certainly lost touch with the Epic tradition; their poems
+make that an admitted fact. Yet poets of the eighth to seventh centuries
+were, by the theory, busily adding to and altering the ancient lays of
+the _Iliad_. How did _they_ abstain from the new or revived ideas, and
+from the new _genre_ of romance? Are we to believe that one set of late
+Ionian poets--they who added to and altered the Iliad--were true
+to tradition, while another contemporary set of Ionian poets, the
+Cyclics--authors of new Epics on Homeric themes--are known to have quite
+lost touch with the Homeric taste, religion, and ritual? The reply will
+perhaps be a Cyclic poet said, "Here I am going to compose quite a new
+poem about the old heroes. I shall make them do and think and believe as
+I please, without reference to the evidence of the old poems." But, it
+will have to be added, the rhapsodists of 800-540 B.C., and the general
+editor of the latter date, thought, _we_ are continuing an old set of
+lays, and we must be very careful in adhering to manners, customs, and
+beliefs as described by our predecessors. For instance, the old heroes
+had only bronze, no iron,--and then the rhapsodists forgot, and made
+iron a common commodity in the _Iliad_. Again, the rhapsodists knew that
+the ancient heroes had no corslets--the old lays, we learn, never
+spoke of corslets--but they made them wear corslets of much splendour.
+[Footnote: The reader must remember that the view of the late poets
+as careful adherents of tradition in usages and ideas only obtains
+_sometimes_; at others the critics declare that archaeological precision
+is _not_ preserved, and that the Ionic continuators introduced, for
+example, the military gear of their own period into a poem which
+represents much older weapons and equipments.] This theory does not help
+us. In an uncritical age poets could not discern that their genre of
+romance and religion was alien from that of Homer.
+
+To return to the puzzle about the careful and precise continuators
+of the _Iliad_, as contrasted with their heedless contemporaries, the
+authors of the Cyclic poems. How "non-Homeric" the authors of these
+Cyclic poems were, before and after 660 B.C., we illustrate from
+examples of their left hand backslidings and right hand fallings
+off. They introduced (1) The Apotheosis of the Dioscuri, who in Homer
+(_Iliad_, III. 243) are merely dead men (_Cypria_). (2) Story of
+Iphigenia _Cypria_. (3) Story of Palamedes, who is killed when angling
+by Odysseus and Diomede (Cypria).
+
+Homer's heroes never fish, except in stress of dire necessity, in the
+Odyssey, and Homer's own Diomede and Odysseus would never stoop
+to assassinate a companion when engaged in the contemplative man's
+recreation. We here see the heroes in late degraded form as on the
+Attic stage. (4) The Cyclics introduce Helen as daughter of Nemesis,
+and describe the flight of Nemesis from Zeus in various animal forms,
+a Maerchen of a sort not popular with Homer; an Ionic Maerchen, Mr. Leaf
+would say. There is nothing like this in the Iliad and Odyssey. (5) They
+call the son of Achilles, not Neoptolemus, as Homer does, but Pyrrhus.
+(6) They represent the Achaean army as obtaining supplies through three
+magically gifted maidens, who produce corn, wine, and oil at will, as in
+fairy tales. Another Ionic non-Achaean Maerchen! They bring in ghosts of
+heroes dead and buried. Such ghosts, in Homer's opinion, were impossible
+if the dead had been cremated. All these non-Homeric absurdities, save
+the last, are from the Cypria, dated by Sir Richard Jebb about 776 B.C.,
+long before the Odyssey was put into shape, namely, after 660 B. C.
+in his opinion. Yet the alleged late compiler of the Odyssey, in the
+seventh century, never wanders thus from the Homeric standard in taste.
+What a skilled archaeologist he must have been! The author of the Cypria
+knew the Iliad, [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 354.] but his
+knowledge could not keep him true to tradition. (7) In the AEthiopis
+(about 776 B.C.) men are made immortal after death, and are worshipped
+as heroes, an idea foreign to Iliad and Odyssey. (8) There is a savage
+ritual of purification from blood shed by a homicide (compare Eumenides,
+line 273). This is unheard of in Iliad and Odyssey, though familiar to
+Aeschylus. (9) Achilles, after death, is carried to the isle of Leuke.
+(10) The fate of Ilium, in the Cyclic Little _Iliad_, hangs on the
+Palladium, of which nothing is known in _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_. The
+_Little Iliad_ is dated about 700 B.C. (11) The _Nostoi_ mentions
+Molossians, not named by Homer (which is a trifle); it also mentions
+the Asiatic city of Colophon, an Ionian colony, which is not a trivial
+self-betrayal on the part of the poet. He is dated about 750 B.C.
+
+Thus, more than a century before the _Odyssey_ received its final form,
+after 660 B.C., from the hands of one man (according to the theory),
+the other Ionian poets who attempted Epic were betraying themselves as
+non-Homeric on every hand. [Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp.
+347-383.]
+
+Our examples are but a few derived from the brief notices of the Cyclic
+poets' works, as mentioned in ancient literature; these poets probably,
+in fact, betrayed themselves constantly. But their contemporaries, the
+makers of late additions to the _Odyssey_, and the later mosaic worker
+who put it together, never betrayed themselves to anything like the
+fatal extent of anachronism exhibited by the Cyclic poets. How, if the
+true ancient tone, taste, manners, and religion were lost, as the
+Cyclic poets show that they were, did the contemporary Ionian poets or
+rhapsodists know and preserve the old manner?
+
+The best face we can put on the matter is to say that all the Cyclic
+poets were recklessly independent of tradition, while all men who
+botched at the _Iliad_ were very learned, and very careful to maintain
+harmony in their pictures of life and manners, except when they
+introduced changes in burial, bride-price, houses, iron, greaves, and
+corslets, all of them things, by the theory, modern, and when they sang
+in modern grammar.
+
+Yet despite this conscientiousness of theirs, most of the many
+authors of our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ were, by the theory, strolling
+irresponsible rhapsodists, like the later _jongleurs_ of the thirteenth
+and fourteenth centuries in mediaeval France. How could these strollers
+keep their modern Ionian ideas, or their primitive, recrudescent phases
+of belief, out of their lays, as far as they _did_ keep them out, while
+the contemporary authors of the _Cypria_, _The Sack of Ilios_, and other
+Cyclic poets were full of new ideas, legends, and beliefs, or primitive
+notions revived, and, save when revived, quite obviously late and quite
+un-Homeric in any case?
+
+The difficulty is the greater if the Cyclic poems were long poems, with
+one author to each Epic. Such authors were obviously men of ambition;
+they produced serious works _de longue haleine_. It is from them that
+we should naturally expect conservative and studious adhesion to the
+traditional models. From casual strollers like the rhapsodists and
+chanters at festivals, we look for nothing of the sort. _They_ might be
+expected to introduce great feats done by sergeants and privates, so to
+speak--men of the nameless [Greek: laos], the host, the foot men--who
+in Homer are occasionally said to perish of disease or to fall under the
+rain of arrows, but are never distinguished by name. The strollers, it
+might be thought, would also be the very men to introduce fairy tales,
+freaks of primitive Ionian myth, discreditable anecdotes of the princely
+heroes, and references to the Ionian colonies.
+
+But it is not so; the serious, laborious authors of the long Cyclic
+poems do such un-Homeric things as these; the gay, irresponsible
+strolling singers of a lay here and a lay there--lays now incorporated
+in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_--scrupulously avoid such faults. They never
+even introduce a signet ring. These are difficulties in the theory of
+the _Iliad_ as a patchwork by many hands, in many ages, which nobody
+explains; which, indeed, nobody seems to find difficult. Yet the
+difficulty is insuperable. Even if we take refuge with Wilamowitz in the
+idea that the Cyclic and Homeric poems were at first mere protoplasm
+of lays of many ages, and that they were all compiled, say in the sixth
+century, into so many narratives, we come no nearer to explaining
+why the tone, taste, and ideas of two such narratives--Illiad and
+Odyssey--are confessedly distinct from the tone, taste, and ideas of all
+the others. The Cyclic poems are certainly the production of a late and
+changed age? [Footnote: For what manner of audience, if not for readers,
+the Cyclic poems were composed is a mysterious question.] The _Iliad_ is
+not in any degree--save perhaps in a few interpolated passages--touched
+by the influences of that late age. It is not a complex of the work
+of four incompatible centuries, as far as this point is concerned--the
+point of legend, religion, ritual, and conception of heroic character.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+HYPOTHESES OF EPIC COMPOSITION
+
+Whosoever holds that the Homeric poems were evolved out of the lays of
+many men, in many places, during many periods of culture, must present a
+consistent and logical hypothesis as to how they attained their present
+plots and forms. These could not come by accident, even if the plots
+are not good--as all the world held that they were, till after Wolf's
+day--but very bad, as some critics now assert. Still plot and form,
+beyond the power of chance to produce, the poems do possess. Nobody goes
+so far as to deny that; and critics make hypotheses explanatory of
+the fact that a single ancient "kernel" of some 2500 lines, a "kernel"
+altered at will by any one who pleased during four centuries, became a
+constructive whole. If the hypotheses fail to account for the fact, we
+have the more reason to believe that the poems are the work of one age,
+and, mainly, of one man.
+
+In criticising Homeric criticism as it is to-day, we cannot do better
+than begin by examining the theories of Mr. Leaf which are offered by
+him merely as "a working hypothesis." His most erudite work is based on
+a wide knowledge of German Homeric speculation, of the exact science of
+Grammar, of archaeological discoveries, and of manuscripts. [Footnote:
+The Iliad. Macmillan & Co. 1900, 1902.] His volumes are, I doubt not, as
+they certainly deserve to be, on the shelves of every Homeric student,
+old or young, and doubtless their contents reach the higher forms in
+schools, though there is reason to suppose that, about the unity of
+Homer, schoolboys remain conservative.
+
+In this book of more than 1200 pages Mr. Leaf's space is mainly
+devoted to textual criticism, philology, and pure scholarship, but his
+Introductions, Notes, and Appendices also set forth his mature ideas
+about the Homeric problem in general. He has altered some of his
+opinions since the publication of his _Companion to the Iliad_(1892),
+but the main lines of his old system are, except on one crucial point,
+unchanged. His theory we shall try to state and criticise; in general
+outline it is the current theory of separatist critics, and it may
+fairly be treated as a good example of such theories.
+
+The system is to the following effect: Greek tradition, in the classical
+period, regarded the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ as the work of one man,
+Homer, a native of one or other of the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor.
+But the poems show few obvious signs of origin in Asia. They deal with
+dwellers, before the Dorian invasion (which the poet never alludes to),
+on the continent of Europe and in Crete. [Footnote: If the poet sang
+after the tempest of war that came down with the Dorians from the
+north, he would probably have sought a topic in the Achaean exploits and
+sorrows of that period. The Dorians, not the Trojans, would have been
+the foes. The epics of France of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
+dwell, not on the real victories of the remote Charlemagne so much as
+on the disasters of Aliscans and Roncesvaux--defeats at Saracen hands,
+Saracens being the enemies of the twelfth-century poets. No Saracens,
+in fact, fought at Roncesvaux.] The lays are concerned with "good old
+times"; presumably between 1500 and 1100 B.C. Their pictures of the
+details of life harmonise more with what we know of the society of that
+period from the evidence of buildings and recent excavations, than with
+what we know of the life and the much more rude and barbaric art of the
+so-called "Dipylon" period of "geometrical" ornament considerably later.
+In the Dipylon age though the use of iron, even for swords (made on the
+lines of the old bronze sword), was familiar, art was on a most barbaric
+level, not much above the Bed Indian type, as far, at least, as painted
+vases bear witness. The human figure is designed as in Tommy Traddles's
+skeletons; there is, however, some crude but promising idea of
+composition.
+
+The picture of life in the Homeric poems, then, is more like that of,
+say, 1500-1100 B.C. than of, say, 1000-850 B.C. in Mr. Leaf's opinion.
+Certainly Homer describes a wealthy aristocracy, subject to an
+Over-Lord, who rules, by right divine, from "golden Mycenae." We hear of
+no such potentate in Ionia. Homer's accounts of contemporary art seem to
+be inspired by the rich art generally dated about 1500-1200. Yet there
+are "many traces of apparent anachronism," of divergence from the more
+antique picture of life. In these divergences are we to recognise the
+picture of a later development of the ancient existence of 1500-1200
+B.C.? Or have elements of the life of a much later age of Greece (say,
+800-550 B.C.) been consciously or unconsciously introduced by the late
+poets? Here Mr. Leaf recognises a point on which we have insisted,
+and must keep insisting, for it is of the first importance. "It is _a
+priori_ the most probable" supposition that, "in an uncritical age,"
+poets do _not_ "reproduce the circumstances of the old time," but
+"only clothe the old tale in the garb of their own days." Poets in an
+uncritical age always, in our experience, "clothe old tales with the
+garb of their own time," but Mr. Leaf thinks that, in the case of the
+Homeric poems, this idea "is not wholly borne out by the facts."
+
+In fact, Mr. Leaf's hypothesis, like Helbig's, exhibits a come-and-go
+between the theory that his late poets clung close to tradition and so
+kept true to ancient details of life, and the theory that they did quite
+the reverse in many cases. Of this frequent examples will occur. He
+writes, "The Homeric period is certainly later than the shaft tombs"
+(discovered at Mycenae by Dr. Schliemann), "but it does not necessarily
+follow that it is post-Mycenaean. It is quite possible that certain
+notable differences between the poems and the monuments" (of Mycenae)
+"in burial, for instance, and in women's dress may be due to changes
+which arose within the Mycenaean age itself, in that later part of it
+of which our knowledge is defective--almost as defective as it is of
+the subsequent 'Dipylon' period. On the whole, the resemblance to
+the typical Mycenaean culture is more striking than the difference."
+[Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. pp. xiii.-xv. 1900.]
+
+So far Mr. Leaf states precisely the opinion for which we argue. The
+Homeric poems describe an age later than that of the famous tombs--so
+rich in relics--of the Mycenaean acropolis, and earlier than the tombs
+of the Dipylon of Athens. The poems thus spring out of an age of which,
+except from the poems themselves, we know little or nothing, because,
+as is shown later, no cairn burials answering to the frequent Homeric
+descriptions have ever been discovered--so relics corroborating Homeric
+descriptions are to seek. But the age attaches itself in many ways to
+the age of the Mycenaean tombs, while, in our opinion, it stands quite
+apart from the post-Dorian culture.
+
+Where we differ from Mr. Leaf is in believing that the poems, as wholes,
+were composed in that late Mycenaean period of which, from material
+remains, we know very little; that "much new" was not added, as he
+thinks, in "the Ionian development" which lasted perhaps "from the ninth
+century B.C. to the seventh." We cannot agree with Mr. Leaf, when he,
+like Helbig, thinks that much of the detail of the ancient life in the
+poems had early become so "stereotyped" that no continuator, however
+late, dared "intentionally to sap" the type, "though he slipped from
+time to time into involuntary anachronism." Some poets are also asserted
+to indulge in _voluntary_ anachronism when, as Mr. Leaf supposes, they
+equip the ancient warriors with corslets and greaves and other body
+armour of bronze such as, in his opinion, the old heroes never knew,
+such as never were mentioned in the oldest parts or "kernel" of the
+poems. Thus the traditional details of Mycenaean life sometimes are
+regarded as "stereotyped" in poetic tradition; sometimes as subject to
+modern alterations of a sweeping and revolutionary kind.
+
+As to deliberate adherence to tradition by the poets, we have proved
+that the Cyclic epic poets of 800-660 B.C. wandered widely from the
+ancient models. If, then, every minstrel or rhapsodist who, anywhere,
+added at will to the old "kernel" of the _Achilles_ was, so far as he
+was able, as conscientiously precise in his stereotyped archaeological
+details as Mr. Leaf sometimes supposes, the fact is contrary to general
+custom in such cases. When later poets in an uncritical age take up and
+rehandle the poetic themes of their predecessors, they always give to
+the stories "a new costume," as M. Gaston Paris remarks in reference to
+thirteenth century dealings with French epics of the eleventh century.
+But, in the critics' opinion, the late rehandlers of old Achaean lays
+preserved the archaic modes of life, war, costume, weapons, and
+so forth, with conscientious care, except in certain matters to be
+considered later, when they deliberately did the very reverse. Sometimes
+the late poets devoutly follow tradition. Sometimes they deliberately
+innovate. Sometimes they pedantically "archaise," bringing in genuine,
+but by their time forgotten, Mycenaean things, and criticism can detect
+their doings in each case.
+
+Though the late continuators of the _Iliad_ were able, despite
+certain inadvertencies, to keep up for some four centuries in Asia
+the harmonious picture of ancient Achaean life and society in Europe,
+critics can distinguish four separate strata, the work of many different
+ages, in the _Iliad_. Of the first stratum composed in Europe, say about
+1300-1150 B.C. (I give a conjectural date under all reserves), the topic
+was _THE Wrath of ACHILLES_. Of this poem, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, (a)
+the First Book and fifty lines of the Second Book remain intact or,
+perhaps, are a blend of two versions. (b) The _Valour of Agamemnon_ and
+_Defeat of THE Achaeans_. Of this there are portions in Book XI., but
+they were meddled with, altered, and generally doctored, "down to the
+latest period," namely, the age of Pisistratus in Athens, the middle of
+the sixth century B.C. (c) The fight in which, after their defeat, the
+Achaeans try to save the ships from the torch of Hector, and the _Valour
+of Patroclus_ (but some critics do not accept this), with his death
+(XV., XVI. in parts). (d) Some eighty lines on the _ARMING OF ACHILLES_
+(XIX.). (e) Perhaps an incident or two in Books XX., XXI. (f) The
+_Slaying HECTOR_ by Achilles, in Books XXI., XXII. (but some of the learned
+will not admit this, and we shall, unhappily, have to prove that, if Mr.
+Leaf's principles be correct, we really know nothing about the _SLAYING
+OF HECTOR_ in its original form).
+
+Of these six elements only did the original poem consist, Mr. Leaf
+thinks; a rigid critic will reject as original even the _Valour of
+Patroclus_ and the _DEATH OF HECTOR_, but Mr. Leaf refuses to go so far
+as that. The original poem, as detected by him, is really "the work of
+a single poet, perhaps the greatest in all the world's history." If the
+original poet did no more than is here allotted to him, especially if he
+left out the purpose of Zeus and the person of Thetis in Book I., we
+do not quite understand his unapproachable greatness. He must certainly
+have drawn a rather commonplace Achilles, as we shall see, and we
+confess to preferring the _Iliad_ as it stands.
+
+The brief narrative cut out of the mass by Mr. Leaf, then, was the
+genuine old original poem or "kernel." What we commonly call the
+_ILIAD_, on the other hand, is, by his theory, a thing of shreds and
+patches, combined in a manner to be later described. The blend,
+we learn, has none of the masterly unity of the old original poem.
+Meanwhile, as criticism of literary composition is a purely literary
+question, critics who differ from Mr. Leaf have a right to hold that
+the _Iliad_ as it stands contains, and always did contain, a plot of
+masterly perfection. We need not attend here so closely to Mr. Leaf's
+theory in the matter of the First Expansions, (2) and the Second
+Expansions, (3) but the latest Expansions (4) give the account of _The
+EMBASSY_ to _Achilles_ with his refusal of _Agamemnon's APOLOGY_(Book
+IX.), the [blank space] (Book XXIV.), the _RECONCILIATION OF ACHILLES
+AND Agamemnon, AND the FUNERAL Games_ of _Patroclus_ (XXIII.). In all
+these parts of the poem there are, we learn, countless alterations,
+additions, and expansions, with, last of all, many transitional
+passages, "the work of the editor inspired by the statesman," that is,
+of an hypothetical editor who really by the theory made our _ILIAD_,
+being employed to that end by Pistratus about 540 B.C. [Footnote: Leaf,
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. pp. x., xiv. 1900.].
+
+Mr. Leaf and critics who take his general view are enabled to detect
+the patches and tatters of many ages by various tests, for example, by
+discovering discrepancies in the narrative, such as in their opinion
+no one sane poet could make. Other proofs of multiplex authorship are
+discovered by the critic's private sense of what the poem ought to
+be, by his instinctive knowledge of style, by detection of the poet's
+supposed errors in geography, by modernisms and false archaisms in words
+and grammar, and by the presence of many objects, especially weapons and
+armour, which the critic believes to have been unknown to the original
+minstrel.
+
+Thus criticism can pick out the things old, fairly old, late, and quite
+recent, from the mass, evolved through many centuries, which is called
+the _Iliad_.
+
+If the existing _ILIAD_ is a mass of "expansions," added at all sorts of
+dates, in any number of places, during very different stages of culture,
+to a single short old poem of the Mycenaean age, science needs an
+hypothesis which will account for the _ILIAD_ "as it stands." Everybody
+sees the need of the hypothesis, How was the medley of new songs by many
+generations of irresponsible hands codified into a plot which used to
+be reckoned fine? How were the manners, customs, and characters, _unus
+color_, preserved in a fairly coherent and uniform aspect? How was the
+whole Greek world, throughout which all manner of discrepant versions
+and incongruous lays must, by the theory, have been current, induced to
+accept the version which has been bequeathed to us? Why, and for what
+audience or what readers, did somebody, in a late age of brief lyrics
+and of philosophic poems, take the trouble to harmonise the body of
+discrepant wandering lays, and codify them in the _Iliad_?
+
+An hypothesis which will answer all these questions is the first thing
+needful, and hypotheses are produced.
+
+Believers like Mr. Leaf in the development of the _Iliad_ through
+the changing revolutionary centuries, between say 1200 and 600 B.C.,
+consciously stand in need of a working hypothesis which will account,
+above all, for two facts: first, the relatively correct preservation of
+the harmony of the picture of life, of ideas political and religious,
+of the characters of the heroes, of the customary law (such as the
+bride-price in marriage), and of the details as to weapons, implements,
+dress, art, houses, and so forth, when these are not (according to the
+theory) deliberately altered by late poets.
+
+Next, the hypothesis must explain, in Mr. Leafs own words, how a single
+version of the _Iliad_ came to be accepted, "where many rival versions
+must, from the necessity of the case, have once existed side by side."
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. xviii. 1900.]
+
+Three hypotheses have, in fact, been imagined: the first suggests the
+preservation of the original poems in very early written texts; not,
+of course, in "Homer's autograph." This view Mr. Leaf, we shall see,
+discards. The second presents the notion of one old sacred college for
+the maintenance of poetic uniformity. Mr. Leaf rejects this theory,
+while supposing that there were schools for professional reciters.
+
+Last, there is the old hypothesis of Wolf: "Pisistratus" (about 540
+B.C.) "was the first who had the Homeric poems committed to writing, and
+brought into that order in which we now possess them."
+
+This hypothesis, now more than a century old, would, if it rested on
+good evidence, explain how a single version of the various lays came to
+be accepted and received as authorised. The Greek world, by the theory,
+had only in various places various sets of incoherent chants _orally_
+current on the Wrath of The public was everywhere a public of listeners,
+who heard the lays sung on rare occasions at feasts and fairs, or
+whenever a strolling rhapsodist took up his pitch, for a day or two,
+at a street corner. There was, by the theory, no reading public for the
+Homeric poetry. But, by the time of Pisistratus, a reading public was
+coming into existence. The tyrant had the poems collected, edited,
+arranged into a continuous narrative, primarily for the purpose of
+regulating the recitals at the Panathenaic festival. When once they
+were written, copies were made, and the rest of Hellas adopted these for
+their public purposes.
+
+On a small scale we have a case analogous. The old songs of Scotland
+existed, with the airs, partly in human memory, partly in scattered
+broadsheets. The airs were good, but the words were often silly, more
+often they were Fescennine--"more dirt than wit." Burns rewrote the
+words, which were published in handsome volumes, with the old airs, or
+with these airs altered, and his became the authorised versions, while
+the ancient anonymous chants were almost entirely forgotten.
+
+The parallel is fairly close, but there are points of difference. Burns
+was a great lyric poet, whereas we hear of no great epic poet in the
+age of Pisistratus. The old words which Burns's songs superseded were
+wretched doggerel; not such were the ancient Greek heroic lays. The old
+Scottish songs had no sacred historic character; they did not contain
+the history of the various towns and districts of Scotland. The heroic
+lays of Greece were believed, on the other hand, to be a kind of
+Domesday book of ancient principalities, and cities, and worshipped
+heroes. Thus it was much easier for a great poet like Burns to supersede
+with his songs a mass of unconsidered "sculdudery" old lays, in which no
+man or set of men had any interest, than for a mere editor, in the age
+of Pisistratus, to supersede a set of lays cherished, in one shape or
+another, by every State in Greece. This holds good, even if, prior to
+Pisistratus, there existed in Greece no written texts of Homer, and no
+reading public, a point which we shall show reasons for declining to
+concede.
+
+The theory of the edition of Pisistratus, if it rested on valid
+evidence, would explain "how a single version of the poems came to be
+accepted," namely, because the poem was now _written_ for the first
+time, and oral versions fell out of memory. But it would not, of course,
+explain how, before Pisistratus, during four or five centuries of
+change, the new poets and reciters, throughout the Greek world, each
+adding such fresh verses as he pleased, and often introducing such
+modern details of life as he pleased, kept up the harmony of the Homeric
+picture of life, and character, and law, as far as it confessedly
+exists.
+
+To take a single instance: the poems never allude to the personal
+armorial bearings of the heroes. They are unknown to or unnamed by
+Homer, but are very familiar on the shields in seventh century and sixth
+century vases, and AEschylus introduces them with great poetic effect
+in [blank space]. How did late continuators, familiar with the serpents,
+lions, bulls' heads, crabs, doves, and so forth, on the contemporary
+shields, keep such picturesque and attractive details out of their new
+rhapsodies? In mediaeval France, we shall show, the epics (eleventh to
+thirteenth centuries) deal with Charlemagne and his peers of the eighth
+century A.D. But they provide these heroes with the armorial bearings
+which came in during the eleventh to twelfth century A.D. The late
+Homeric rhapsodists avoided such tempting anachronisms.
+
+Wolf's theory, then, explains "how a single version came to be
+accepted." It was the first _WRITTEN_ version; the others died out, like
+the old Scots orally repeated songs, when Burns published new words to
+the airs. But Wolf's theory does not explain the harmony of the picture
+of life, the absence of post-Homeric ideas and ways of living, in the
+first written version, which, practically, is our own version.
+
+In 1892 (_COMPANION TO THE Iliad_) Mr. Leaf adopted a different theory,
+the hypothesis of a Homeric "school" "which busied itself with the
+tradition of the Homeric poetry," for there must have been some central
+authority to preserve the text intact when it could not be preserved in
+writing. Were there no such body to maintain a fixed standard, the poems
+must have ended by varying indefinitely, according to the caprice of
+their various reciters. This is perfectly obvious.
+
+Such a school could keep an eye on anachronisms and excise them; in
+fact, the Maori priests, in an infinitely more barbarous state of
+society, had such schools for the preservation of their ancient hymns in
+purity. The older priests "insisted on a critical and verbatim
+rehearsal of all the ancient lore." Proceedings were sanctioned by human
+sacrifices and many mystic rites. We are not told that new poems were
+produced and criticised; it does not appear that this was the case.
+Pupils attended from three to five years, and then qualified as priests
+or _tohunga_ [Footnote: White, _THE Ancient HISTORY OF THE Maori, VOL._
+i. pp. 8-13.]. Suppose that the Asiatic Greeks, like the Maoris and
+Zunis, had Poetic Colleges of a sacred kind, admitting new poets, and
+keeping them up to the antique standard in all respects. If this were
+so, the relative rarity of "anachronisms" and of modernisms in language
+in the Homeric poems is explained. But Mr. Leaf has now entirely
+and with a light heart abandoned his theory of a school, which is
+unsupported by evidence, he says.'
+
+"The great problem," he writes, "for those who maintain the gradual
+growth of the poems by a process of crystallisation has been to
+understand how a single version came to be accepted, where many rival
+versions must, from the necessity of the case, have once existed side by
+side. The assumption of a school or guild of singers has been made," and
+Mr. Leaf, in 1892, made the assumption himself: "as some such hypothesis
+we are bound to make in order to explain the possibility of any theory"
+(1892). [Footnote: _COMPANION TO THE Iliad, pp. 20, 21._]
+
+But now (1900) he says, after mentioning "the assumption of a school or
+guild of singers," that "the rare mention of [Greek: Homeridai] in
+Chios gives no support to this hypothesis, which lacks any other
+confirmation." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. xviii. p. xix.] He therefore
+now adopts the Wolfian hypothesis that "an official copy of Homer was
+made in Athens at the time of Solon or Pisistratus," from the rhapsodies
+existing in the memory of reciters. [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. xix.]
+But Mr. Leaf had previously said [Footnote: _COMPANION TO THE Iliad_,
+p. 190.] that "the legend which connects his" (Pisistratus's) "name
+with the Homeric poems is itself probably only conjectural, and of
+late date." Now the evidence for Pisistratus which, in 1892, he thought
+"conjectural and of late date," seems to him a sufficient basis for an
+hypothesis of a Pisistratean editor of the Iliad, while the evidence for
+an Homeric school which appeared to him good enough for an hypothesis in
+1892 is rejected as worthless, though, in each case, the evidence itself
+remains just what it used to be.
+
+This is not very satisfactory, and the Pisistratean hypothesis is much
+less useful to a theorist than the former hypothesis of an Homeric
+school, for the Pisistratean hypothesis cannot explain the harmony of
+the characters and the details in the _Iliad_, nor the absence of
+such glaring anachronisms as the Cyclic poets made, nor the general
+"pre-Odyssean" character of the language and grammar. By the
+Pisistratean hypothesis there was not, what Mr. Leaf in 1892 justly
+deemed essential, a school "to maintain a fixed standard," throughout
+the changes of four centuries, and against the caprice of many
+generations of fresh reciters and irresponsible poets. The hypothesis of
+a school _was_ really that which, of the two, best explained the facts,
+and there is no more valid evidence for the first making and writing
+out of our _Iliad_ under Pisistratus than for the existence of a Homeric
+school.
+
+The evidence for the _Iliad_ edited for Pisistratus is examined in a
+Note at the close of this chapter. Meanwhile Mr. Leaf now revives Wolf's
+old theory to account for the fact that somehow "a single version"
+(of the Homeric poems) "came to be accepted." His present theory, if
+admitted, does account for the acceptation of a single version of the
+poems, the first standard _written_ version, but fails to explain how
+"the caprice of the different reciters" (as he says) did not wander into
+every variety of anachronism in detail and in diction, thus producing
+a chaos which no editor of about 540 A.D. could force into its present
+uniformity.
+
+Such an editor is now postulated by Mr. Leaf. If his editor's edition,
+as being _written_, was accepted by Greece, then we "understand how a
+single version came to be accepted." But we do not understand how
+the editor could possibly introduce a harmony which could only have
+characterised his materials, as Mr. Leaf has justly remarked, if there
+was an Homeric school "to maintain a fixed standard." But now such
+harmony in the picture of life as exists in the poems is left without
+any explanation. We have now, by the theory, a crowd of rhapsodists,
+many generations of uncontrolled wandering men, who, for several
+centuries,
+
+     "Rave, recite, and madden through the land,"
+
+with no written texts, and with no "fixed body to maintain a standard."
+Such men would certainly not adhere strictly to a stereotyped early
+tradition: _that_ we cannot expect from them.
+
+Again, no editor of about 540 B.C. could possibly bring harmony of
+manners, customs, and diction into such of their recitals as he took
+down in writing.
+
+Let us think out the supposed editor's situation. During three centuries
+nine generations of strollers have worked their will on one ancient
+short poem, _The Wrath_ of _Achilles_. This is, in itself, an unexampled
+fact. Poets turn to new topics; they do not, as a rule, for centuries
+embroider one single situation out of the myriads which heroic legend
+affords. Strolling reciters are the least careful of men, each would
+recite in the language and grammar of his day, and introduce the newly
+evolved words and idioms, the new and fashionable manners, costume, and
+weapons of his time. When war chariots became obsolete, he would bring
+in cavalry; when there was no Over-Lord, he would not trouble himself
+to maintain correctly the character and situation of Agamemnon. He would
+speak of coined money, in cases of buying and selling; his European
+geography would often be wrong; he would not ignore the Ionian cities
+of Asia; most weapons would be of iron, not bronze, in his lays. Ionian
+religious ideas could not possibly be excluded, nor changes in customary
+law, civil and criminal. Yet, we think, none of these things occurs in
+Homer.
+
+The editor of the theory had to correct all these anachronisms and
+discrepancies. What a task in an uncritical age! The editor's materials
+would be the lays known to such strollers as happened to be gathered,
+in Athens, perhaps at the Panathenaic festival. The _repertoire_ of each
+stroller would vary indefinitely from those of all the others. One man
+knew this chant, as modified or made by himself; other men knew others,
+equally unsatisfactory.
+
+The editor must first have written down from recitation all the passages
+that he could collect. Then he was obliged to construct a narrative
+sequence containing a plot, which he fashioned by a process of selection
+and rejection; and then he had to combine passages, alter them, add
+as much as he thought fit, remove anachronisms, remove discrepancies,
+accidentally bring in fresh discrepancies (as always happens), weave
+transitional passages, look with an antiquarian eye after the too
+manifest modernisms in language and manners, and so produce the [blank
+space]. That, in the sixth century B.C., any man undertook such a task,
+and succeeded so well as to impose on Aristotle and all the later Greek
+critics, appears to be a theory that could only occur to a modern man of
+letters, who is thinking of the literary conditions of his own time.
+The editor was doing, and doing infinitely better, what Loennrot, in the
+nineteenth century, tried in vain to achieve for the Finnish _Kalewala_.
+[Footnote: See Comparetti, _The Kalewala_.]
+
+Centuries later than Pisistratus, in a critical age, Apollonius Rhodius
+set about writing an epic of the Homeric times. We know how entirely he
+failed, on all hands, to restore the manner of Homer. The editor of 540
+B.C. was a more scientific man. Can any one who sets before himself the
+nature of the editor's task believe in him and it? To the master-less
+floating jellyfish of old poems and new, Mr. Leaf supposes that "but
+small and unimportant additions were made after the end of the eighth
+century or thereabouts," especially as "the creative and imaginative
+forces of the Ionian race turned to other forms of expression," to
+lyrics and to philosophic poems. But the able Pisistratean editor, after
+all, we find, introduced quantities of new matter into the poems--in the
+middle of the sixth century; that kind of industry, then, did not cease
+towards the end of the eighth century, as we have been told. On the
+other hand, as we shall learn, the editor contributed to the _Iliad_,
+among other things, Nestor's descriptions of his youthful adventures,
+for the purpose of flattering Nestor's descendant, the tyrant
+Pisistratus of Athens.
+
+One hypothesis, the theory of an Homeric school--which would answer our
+question, "How was the harmony of the picture of life in remote ages
+preserved in poems composed in several succeeding ages, and in totally
+altered conditions of life?"--Mr. Leaf, as we know, rejects. We might
+suggest, again, that there were written texts handed down from an early
+period, and preserved in new copies from generation to generation. Mr.
+Leaf states his doubt that there were any such texts. "The poems were
+all this time handed down orally only by tradition among the singers
+(_sic_), who used to wander over Greece reciting them at popular
+festivals. Writing was indeed known through the whole period of epic
+development" (some four centuries at least), "but it is in the highest
+degree unlikely that it was ever employed to form a standard text of the
+Epic or _ANY_ part of it. There can hardly have been any standard text;
+at best there was a continuous tradition of those parts of the poems
+which were especially popular, and the knowledge of which was a valuable
+asset to the professional reciter."
+
+Now we would not contend for the existence of any [blank space] text
+much before 600 B.C., and I understand Mr. Leaf not to deny, now, that
+there may have been texts of the _ODYSSEY_ and _Iliad_ before, say,
+600-540 B.C. If cities and reciters had any ancient texts, then texts
+existed, though not "standard" texts: and by this means the harmony of
+thought, character, and detail in the poems might be preserved. We do
+not think that it is "in the highest degree unlikely" that there were no
+texts. Is this one of the many points on which every savant must rely on
+his own sense of what is "likely"? To this essential point, the almost
+certain existence of written texts, we return in our conclusion.
+
+What we have to account for is not only the relative lack of
+anachronisms in poems supposed to have been made through a period of at
+least four hundred years, but also the harmony of the _CHARACTERS_
+in subtle details. Some of the characters will be dealt with later;
+meanwhile it is plain that Mr. Leaf, when he rejects both the idea
+of written texts prior to 600-540 B.C., and also the idea of a school
+charged with the duty of "maintaining a fixed standard," leaves a
+terrible task to his supposed editor of orally transmitted poems which,
+he says--if unpreserved by text or school--"must have ended by varying
+infinitely according to the caprice of their various reciters."
+[Footnote: _Companion to the Iliad, p. 21._]
+
+On that head there can be no doubt; in the supposed circumstances no
+harmony, no _unus_ color, could have survived in the poems till the days
+of the sixth century editor.
+
+Here, then, is another difficulty in the path of the theory that the
+_Iliad_ is the work of four centuries. If it was, we are not enabled to
+understand how it came to be what it is. No editor could possibly tinker
+it into the whole which we possess; none could steer clear of many
+absurd anachronisms. These are found by critics, but it is our hope to
+prove that they do not exist.
+
+ NOTE
+
+THE LEGEND OF THE MAKING OF THE "ILIAD" UNDER PISISTRATOS
+
+It has been shown in the text that in 1892 Mr. Leaf thought the story
+about the making of the _Iliad_ under Pisistratus, a legend without
+authority, while he regarded the traditions concerning an Homeric school
+as sufficient basis for an hypothesis, "which we are bound to make in
+order to explain the possibility of any theory." In 1900 he entirely
+reversed his position, the school was abandoned, and the story of
+Pisistratus was accepted. One objection to accepting any of the various
+legends about the composing and writing out, for the first time, of the
+_Iliad_, in the sixth century, the age of Pisistratus, was the silence
+of Aristarchus on the subject. He discussed the authenticity of lines
+in the _Iliad_ which, according to the legend, were interpolated for a
+political purpose by Solon or Pisistratus, but, as far as his comments
+have reached us in the scholia, he never said a word about the tradition
+of Athenian interpolation. Now Aristarchus must, at least, have known
+the tradition of the political use of a disputed line, for Aristotle
+writes (_Rhetoric_, i. 15) that the Athenians, early in the sixth
+century, quoted _Iliad_, II. 558, to prove their right to Salamis.
+Aristarchus also discussed _Iliad_, II. 553, 555, to which the Spartans
+appealed on the question of supreme command against Persia (Herodotus,
+vii. 159). Again Aristarchus said nothing, or nothing that has reached
+us, about Athenian interpolation. Once more, Odyssey, II. 631, was said
+by Hereas, a Megarian writer, to have been interpolated by Pisistratus
+(Plutarch.) But "the scholia that represent the teaching of Aristarchus"
+never make any reference to the alleged dealings of Pisistratus with the
+_Iliad_. The silence of Aristarchus, however, affords no safe ground of
+argument to believers or disbelievers in the original edition written
+out by order of Pisistratus.
+
+It can never be proved that the scholiasts did not omit what Aristarchus
+said, though we do not know why they should have done so; and it can
+never be proved that Aristarchus was ignorant of the traditions about
+Pisistratus, or that he thought them unworthy of notice. All is matter
+of conjecture on these points. Mr. Leaf's conversion to belief in the
+story that our _Iliad_ was practically edited and first committed to
+writing under Pisistratus appears to be due to the probability that
+Aristarchus must have known the tradition. But if he did, there is no
+proof that he accepted it as historically authentic. There is not, in
+fact, any proof even that Aristarchus must have known the tradition. He
+had probably read Dieuchidas of Megara, for "Wilamowitz has shown that
+Dieuchidas wrote in the fourth century." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i.
+p. xix.] But, unluckily, we do not know that Dieuchidas stated that the
+_Iliad_ was made and first committed to writing in the sixth century
+B.C. No mortal knows what Dieuchidas said: and, again, what Dieuchidas
+said is not evidence. He wrote as a partisan in a historical dispute.
+
+The story about Pisistratus and his editor, the practical maker of
+the _Iliad_, is interwoven with a legend about an early appeal, in
+the beginning of the sixth century B.C., to Homer as an historical
+authority. The Athenians and Megarians, contending for the possession of
+the island of Salamis, the home of the hero Aias, are said to have laid
+their differences before the Spartans (_cir._ 600-580 B.C.). Each party
+quoted Homer as evidence. Aristotle, who, as we saw, mentions the tale
+(Rhetoric, i. 15), merely says that the Athenians cited _Iliad_,
+II. 558: "Aias led and stationed his men where the phalanxes of the
+Athenians were posted." Aristarchus condemned this line, not (as far
+as evidence goes) because there was a tradition that the Athenians
+had interpolated it to prove their point, but because he thought it
+inconsistent with _Iliad_, III. 230; IV. 251, which, if I may differ
+from so great a critic, it is not; these two passages deal, not with
+the position of the camps, but of the men in the field on a certain
+occasion. But if Aristarchus had thought the tradition of Athenian
+interpolation of II. 558 worthy of notice, he might have mentioned it in
+support of his opinion. Perhaps he did. No reference to his notice has
+reached us. However this may be, Mr. Leaf mainly bases his faith in
+the Pisistratean editor (apparently, we shall see, an Asiatic Greek,
+residing in Athens), on a fragmentary passage of Diogenes Laertius
+(third century A.D.), concerned with the tale of Homer's being cited
+about 600-580 B.C. as an authority for the early ownership of Salamis.
+In this text Diogenes quotes Dieuchidas as saying something about
+Pisistratus in relation to the Homeric poems, but what Dieuchidas really
+said is unknown, for a part has dropped out of the text.
+
+The text of Diogenes Laertius runs thus (Solon, i. 57): "He (Solon)
+decreed that the Homeric poems should be recited by rhapsodists [Greek
+text: ex hypobolaes]" (words of disputed sense), so that where the first
+reciter left off thence should begin his successor. It was rather
+Solon, then, than Pisistratus who brought Homer to light ([Greek text:
+ephotisen]), as Diogenes says in the Fifth Book of his _Megarica_.
+And _the lines_ were _especially these_: "They who held Athens," &c.
+(_Iliad_, II. 546-558), the passage on which the Athenians rested in
+their dispute with the Megarians.
+
+And _what_ "lines were especially these"? Mr. Leaf fills up the gap
+in the sense, after "Pisistratus" thus, "for it was he" (Solon) "who
+interpolated lines in the _Catalogue_, and not Pisistratus." He says:
+"The natural sense of the passage as it stands" (in Diogenes Laertius)
+"is this: It was not Peisistratos, as is generally supposed, but Solon
+_who collected the scattered Homer_ of _his_ day, for he it was who
+interpolated the lines in the _Catalogue of the Ships_".... But Diogenes
+neither says for himself nor quotes from Dieuchidas anything about
+"collecting the scattered Homer of his day." That Pisistratus did so
+is Mr. Leafs theory, but there is not a hint about anybody collecting
+anything in the Greek. Ritschl, indeed, conjecturally supplying the
+gap in the text of Diogenes, invented the words, "Who _collected_ the
+Homeric poems, and inserted some things to please the Athenians." But
+Mr. Leaf rejects that conjecture as "clearly wrong." Then why does he
+adopt, as "the natural sense of the passage," "it was not Peisistratos
+but Solon who _collected_ the scattered Homer of his day?" [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. i. p. xviii.] The testimony of Dieuchidas, as far as we
+can see in the state of the text, "refers," as Mr. Monro says, "to
+the _interpolation_ that has just been mentioned, and need not extend
+further back." "Interpolation is a process that postulates a text in
+which the additional verses can be inserted," whereas, if I understand
+Mr. Leaf, the very first text, in his opinion, was that compiled by the
+editor for Pisistratus. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 400 410,
+especially pp. 408-409.] Mr. Leaf himself dismisses the story of the
+Athenian appeal to Homer for proof of their claim as "a fiction." If,
+so, it does not appear that ancient commentaries on a fiction are of
+any value as proof that Pisistratus produced the earliest edition of
+the _Iliad_. [Footnote: Mr. Leaf adds that, except in one disputed
+line (_Iliad_, II. 558) Aias "is not, in the _Iliad_, encamped next
+the Athenians." His proofs of this odd oversight of the fraudulent
+interpolator, who should have altered the line, are _Iliad_, IV. 327 ff,
+and XII. 681 ff. In the former passage we find Odysseus stationed next
+to the Athenians. But Odysseus would have neighbours on either hand. In
+the second passage we find the Athenians stationed next to the Boeotians
+and Ionians, but the Athenians, too, had neighbours on either side. The
+arrangement was, on the Achaean extreme left, Protesilaus's command (he
+was dead), and that of Aias; then the Boeotians and Ionians, with
+"the picked men of the Athenians"; and then Odysseus, on the
+Boeotolono-Athenian right; or so the Athenians would read the passage.
+The texts must have seemed favourable to the fraudulent Athenian
+interpolator denounced by the Megarians, or he would have altered them.
+Mr. Leaf, however, argues that line 558 of Book II. "cannot be original,
+as is patent from the fact that Aias in the rest of the _Iliad_ is not
+encamped next the Athenians" (see IV. 327; XIII. 681). The Megarians do
+not seem to have seen it, or they would have cited these passages. But
+why argue at all about the Megarian story if it be a fiction? Mr. Leaf
+takes the brief bald mention of Aias in _Iliad_, II. 558 as "a mocking
+cry from Athens over the conquest of the island of the Aiakidai."
+But as, in this same _Catalogue_, Aias is styled "by far the best of
+warriors" after Achilles (II. 768), while there is no more honourable
+mention made of Diomede than that he had "a loud war cry" (II. 568),
+or of Menelaus but that he was also sonorous, and while Nestor, the
+ancestor of Pisistratus, receives not even that amount of praise (line
+601), "the mocking cry from Athens" appears a vain imagination.]
+
+The lines disputed by the Megarians occur in the _Catalogue_, and, as
+to the date and original purpose of the _Catalogue_, the most various
+opinions prevail. In Mr. Leaf's earlier edition of the _Iliad_ (vol. i.
+p. 37), he says that "nothing convincing has been urged to show" that
+the _Catalogue_ is "of late origin." We know, from the story of Solon
+and the Megarians, that the _Catalogue_ "was considered a classical
+work--the Domesday Book of Greece, at a very early date"--say 600-580
+B.C. "It agrees with the poems in being pre-Dorian" (except in lines
+653-670).
+
+"There seems therefore to be no valid reason for doubting that it, like
+the bulk of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, was composed in Achaean times,
+and carried with the emigrants to the coast of Asia Minor...."
+
+In his new edition (vol. ii. p. 86), Mr. Leaf concludes that the
+_Catalogue_ "originally formed an introduction to the whole Cycle," the
+compiling of "the whole Cycle" being of uncertain date, but very late
+indeed, on any theory. The author "studiously preserves an ante-Dorian
+standpoint. It is admitted that there can be little doubt that some of
+the material, at least, is old."
+
+These opinions are very different from those expressed by Mr. Leaf in
+1886. He cannot now give "even an approximate date for the composition
+of the _Catalogue_" which, we conceive, must be the latest thing in
+Homer, if it was composed "for that portion of the whole Cycle which, as
+worked up in a separate poem, was called the _Kypria_" for the _Kypria_
+is obviously a very late performance, done as a prelude to the _Iliad_.
+
+I am unable to imagine how this mutilated passage of Diogenes, even if
+rightly restored, proves that Dieuchidas, a writer of the fourth century
+B.C., alleged that Pisistratus made a collection of scattered Homeric
+poems--in fact, made "a standard text."
+
+The Pisistratean hypothesis "was not so long ago unfashionable, but
+in the last few years a clear reaction has set in," says Mr. Leaf.
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, i. p. XIX.]
+
+The reaction has not affected that celebrated scholar, Dr. Blass, who,
+with Teutonic frankness, calls the Pisistratean edition "an absurd
+legend." [Footnote: Blass, Die _Interpolationen_ in der _Odyssee_,
+pp. I, 2. Halle, 1904.] Meyer says that the Alexandrians rejected the
+Pisistratean story "as a worthless fable," differing here from Mr. Leaf
+and Wilamowitz; and he spurns the legend, saying that it is incredible
+that the whole Greek world would allow the tyrants of Athens to palm off
+a Homer on them. [Footnote: Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, ii. 390,
+391. 1893.]
+
+Mr. T. W. Allen, an eminent textual scholar, treats the Pisistratean
+editor with no higher respect. In an Egyptian papyrus containing a
+fragment of Julius Africanus, a Christian chronologer, Mr. Allen finds
+him talking confidently of the Pisistratidae. They "stitched together
+the rest of the epic," but excised some magical formulae which
+Julius Africanus preserves. Mr. Allen remarks: "The statements about
+Pisistratus belong to a well-established category, that of Homeric
+mythology.... The anecdotes about Pisistratus and the poet himself are
+on a par with Dares, who 'wrote the _Iliad_ before Homer.'" [Footnote:
+_Classical Review_ xviii. 148.]
+
+The editor of Pisistratus is hardly in fashion, though that is of no
+importance. Of importance is the want of evidence for the editor, and,
+as we have shown, the impossible character of the task allotted to him
+by the theory.
+
+As I suppose Mr. Leaf to insinuate, "fashion" has really nothing to do
+with the question. People who disbelieve in written texts must, and
+do, oscillate between the theory of an Homeric "school" and the Wolfian
+theory that Pisistratus, or Solon, or somebody procured the making of
+the first written text at Athens in the sixth century--a theory which
+fails to account for the harmony of the picture of life in the poems,
+and, as Mr. Monro, Grote, Nutzhorn, and many others argue, lacks
+evidence.
+
+As Mr. Monro reasons, and as Blass states the case bluntly, "Solon, or
+Pisistratus, or whoever it was, put a stop, at least as far as Athens
+was concerned, to the mangling of Homer" by the rhapsodists or reciters,
+each anxious to choose a pet passage, and not going through the whole
+_Iliad_ in due sequence. "But the unity existed before the mangling.
+That this has been so long and so stubbornly misunderstood is no credit
+to German scholarship: blind uncritical credulity on one side, limitless
+and arbitrary theorising on the other!" We are not solitary sceptics
+when we decline to accept the theory of Mr. Leaf. It is neither bottomed
+on evidence nor does it account for the facts in the case. That is to
+say, the evidence appeals to Mr. Leaf as valid, but is thought worse
+than inadequate by other great scholars, such as Monro and Blass; while
+the fact of the harmony of the picture of life, preserved through four
+or five centuries, appears to be left without explanation.
+
+Mr. Leaf holds that, in order to organise recitations in due sequence,
+the making of a text, presenting, for the first time, a due sequence,
+was necessary. His opponents hold that the sequence already existed, but
+was endangered by the desultory habits of the rhapsodists. We must here
+judge each for himself; there is no court of final appeal.
+
+I confess to feeling some uncertainty about the correctness of my
+statement of Mr. Leaf's opinions. He and I both think an early Attic
+"recension" probable, or almost certain. But (see' "Conclusion") I
+regard such recension as distinct from the traditional "edition" of
+Pisistratus. Mr. Leaf, I learn, does not regard the "edition" as having
+"made" the _Iliad_; yet his descriptions of the processes and methods
+of his Pisistratean editor correspond to my idea of the "making" of
+our _Iliad_ as it stands. See, for example, Mr. Leaf's Introduction
+to _Iliad_, Book II. He will not even insist on the early Attic as the
+first _written_ text; if it was not, its general acceptance seems
+to remain a puzzle. He discards the idea of one Homeric "school" of
+paramount authority, but presumes that, as recitation was a profession,
+there must have been schools. We do not hear of them or know the
+nature of their teaching. The Beauvais "school" of _jongleurs_ in Lent
+(fourteenth century A.D.) seems to have been a holiday conference of
+strollers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+LOOSE FEUDALISM: THE OVER-LORD IN "ILIAD," BOOKS I. AND II.
+
+We now try to show that the Epics present an historical unity, a
+complete and harmonious picture of an age, in its political, social,
+legal, and religious aspects; in its customs, and in its military
+equipment. A long epic can only present an unity of historical ideas
+if it be the work of one age. Wandering minstrels, living through a
+succession of incompatible ages, civic, commercial, democratic, could
+not preserve, without flaw or failure, the attitude, in the first place,
+of the poet of feudal princes towards an Over-Lord who rules them by
+undisputed right divine, but rules weakly, violently, unjustly, being
+subject to gusts of arrogance, and avarice, and repentance. Late poets
+not living in feudal society, and unfamiliar alike with its customary
+law, its jealousy of the Over-Lord, its conservative respect for his
+consecrated function, would inevitably miss the proper tone, and fail in
+some of the many [blank space] of the feudal situation. This is all the
+more certain, if we accept Mr. Leaf's theory that each poet-rhapsodist's
+_repertoire_ varied from the _repertoires_ of the rest. There could be
+no unity of treatment in their handling of the character and position of
+the Over-Lord and of the customary law that regulates his relations with
+his peers. Again, no editor of 540 B.C. could construct an harmonious
+picture of the Over-Lord in relation to the princes out of the
+fragmentary _repertoires_ of strolling rhapsodists, which now lay before
+him in written versions. If the editor could do this, he was a man of
+Shakespearian genius, and had minute knowledge of a dead society.
+This becomes evident when, in place of examining the _Iliad_ through
+microscopes, looking out for discrepancies, we study it in its large
+lines as a literary whole. The question being, Is the _Iliad_ a
+literary whole or a mere literary mosaic? we must ask "What, taking it
+provisionally as a literary whole, are the qualities of the poet as a
+painter of what we may call feudal society?"
+
+Choosing the part of the Over-Lord Agamemnon, we must not forget that he
+is one of several analogous figures in the national poetry and romance
+of other feudal ages. Of that great analogous figure, Charlemagne,
+and of his relations with his peers in the earlier and later French
+mediaeval epics we shall later speak. Another example is Arthur, in some
+romances "the blameless king," in others _un roi faineant_.
+
+The parallel Irish case is found in the Irish saga of Diarmaid and
+Grainne. We read Mr. O'Grady's introduction on the position of Eionn Mac
+Cumhail, the legendary Over-Lord of Ireland, the Agamemnon of the Celts.
+"Fionn, like many men in power, is variable; he is at times magnanimous,
+at other times tyrannical and petty. Diarmaid, Oisin, Oscar, and Caoilte
+Mac Rohain are everywhere the [Greek: kaloi kachotoi] of the Fenians;
+of them we never hear anything bad." [Footnote: _Transactions of the
+Ossianic_ Society, vol. iii. p. 39.]
+
+Human nature eternally repeats itself in similar conditions of society,
+French, Norse, Celtic, and Achaean. "We never hear anything bad" of
+Diomede, Odysseus, or Aias, and the evil in Achilles's resentment up to
+a certain point is legal, and not beyond what the poet thinks natural
+and pardonable in his circumstances.
+
+The poet's view of Agamemnon is expressed in the speeches and conduct
+of the peers. In Book I. we see the bullying truculence of Agamemnon,
+wreaked first on the priest of Apollo, Chryses, then in threats against
+the prophet Chalcas, then in menaces against any prince on whom he
+chooses to avenge his loss of fair Chryseis, and, finally, in the
+Seizure of Briseis from Achilles.
+
+This part of the First Book of the _Iliad_ is confessedly original, and
+there is no varying, throughout the Epic, from the strong and delicate
+drawing of an historical situation, and of a complex character.
+Agamemnon is truculent, and eager to assert his authority, but he is
+also possessed of a heavy sense of his responsibilities, which often
+unmans him. He has a legal right to a separate "prize of honour" (geras)
+after each capture of spoil. Considering the wrath of Apollo for the
+wrong done in refusing his priest's offered ransom for his daughter,
+Agamemnon will give her back, "if that is better; rather would I see my
+folks whole than perishing." [Footnote: _Iliad_, I. 115-117.]
+
+Here we note points of feudal law and of kingly character. The giving
+and taking of ransom exists as it did in the Middle Ages; ransom is
+refused, death is dealt, as the war becomes more fierce towards its
+close. Agamemnon has sense enough to waive his right to the girlish
+prize, for the sake of his people, but is not so generous as to demand
+no compensation. But there are no fresh spoils to apportion, and the
+Over-Lord threatens to take the prize of one of his peers, even of
+Achilles.
+
+Thereon Achilles does what was frequently done in the feudal age of
+western Europe, he "renounces his fealty," and will return to Phthia. He
+adds insult, "thou dog-face!" The whole situation, we shall show, recurs
+again and again in the epics of feudal France, the later epics of feudal
+discontent. Agamemnon replies that Achilles may do as he pleases. "I
+have others by my side that shall do me honour, and, above all, Zeus,
+Lord of Counsel" (I. 175). He rules, literally, by divine right, and we
+shall see that, in the French feudal epics, as in Homer, this claim of
+divine right is granted, even in the case of an insolent and cowardly
+Over-Lord. Achilles half draws "his great sword," one of the long,
+ponderous cut-and-thrust bronze swords of which we have actual examples
+from Mycenae and elsewhere. He is restrained by Athene, visible only to
+him. "With words, indeed," she says, "revile him .... hereafter shall
+goodly gifts come to thee, yea, in threefold measure...."
+
+Gifts of atonement for "surquedry," like that of Agamemnon, are given
+and received in the French epics, for example, in the [blank space].
+The _Iliad_ throughout exhibits much interest in such gifts, and in the
+customary law as to their acceptance, and other ritual or etiquette
+of reconciliation. This fact, it will be shown, accounts for a passage
+which critics reject, and which is tedious to our taste, as it probably
+was tedious to the age of the supposed late poets themselves. (Book
+XIX.). But the taste of a feudal audience, as of the audience of the
+Saga men, delighted in "realistic" descriptions of their own customs
+and customary law, as in descriptions of costume and armour. This is
+fortunate for students of customary law and costume, but wearies hearers
+and readers who desire the action to advance. Passages of this kind
+would never be inserted by late poets, who had neither the knowledge of,
+nor any interest in, the subjects.
+
+To return to Achilles, he is now within his right; the moral goddess
+assures him of that, and he is allowed to give the reins to his
+tongue, as he does in passages to which the mediaeval epics offer many
+parallels. In the mediaeval epics, as in Homer, there is no idea of
+recourse to a duel between the Over-Lord and his peer. Achilles accuses
+Agamemnon of drunkenness, greed, and poltroonery. He does not
+return home, but swears by the sceptre that Agamemnon shall rue his
+_outrecuidance_ when Hector slays the host. By the law of the age
+Achilles remains within his right. His violent words are not resented by
+the other peers. They tacitly admit, as Athene admits, that Achilles has
+the right, being so grievously injured, to "renounce his fealty," till
+Agamemnon makes apology and gives gifts of atonement. Such, plainly, is
+the unwritten feudal law, which gives to the Over-Lord the lion's share
+of booty, the initiative in war and council, and the right to command;
+but limits him by the privilege of the peers to renounce their fealty
+under insufferable provocation. In no Book is Agamemnon so direfully
+insulted as in the First, which is admitted to be of the original
+"kernel." Elsewhere the sympathy of the poet occasionally enables him to
+feel the elements of pathos in the position of the over-tasked King of
+Men.
+
+As concerns the apology and the gifts of atonement, the poet has feudal
+customary law and usage clearly before his eyes. He knows exactly what
+is due, and the limits of the rights of Over-Lord and prince, matters
+about which the late Ionian poets could only pick up information by
+a course of study in constitutional history--the last thing they were
+likely to attempt--unless we suppose that they all kept their eyes
+on the "kernel," and that steadily, through centuries, generations of
+strollers worked on the lines laid down in that brief poem.
+
+Thus the poet of Book IX.--one of "the latest expansions,"--thoroughly
+understands the legal and constitutional situation, as between Agamemnon
+and Achilles. Or rather all the poets who collaborated in Book IX.,
+which "had grown by a process of accretion," [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad,
+vol. i. p. 371.] understood the legal situation.
+
+Returning to the poet's conception of Agamemnon, we find in the
+character of Agamemnon himself the key to the difficulties which critics
+discover in the Second Book. The difficulty is that when Zeus, won over
+to the cause of Achilles by Thetis, sends a false Dream to Agamemnon,
+the Dream tells the prince that he shall at once take Troy, and bids him
+summon the host to arms. But Agamemnon, far from doing that, summons
+the host to a peaceful assembly, with the well-known results of
+demoralisation.
+
+Mr. Leaf explains the circumstances on his own theory of expansions
+compiled into a confused whole by a late editor. He thinks that probably
+there were two varying versions even of this earliest Book of the poem.
+In one (A), the story went on from the quarrel between Agamemnon and
+Achilles, to the holding of a general assembly "to consider the altered
+state of affairs." This is the Assembly of Book H, but debate, in
+version A, was opened by Thersites, not by Agamemnon, and Thersites
+proposed instant flight! That was probably the earlier version.
+
+In the other early version (B), after the quarrel between the chiefs,
+the story did not, as in A, go on straight to the Assembly, but Achilles
+appealed to his mother, the fair sea-goddess, as in our Iliad, and she
+obtained from Zeus, as in the actual _Iliad_, his promise to honour
+Achilles by giving victory, in his absence, to the Trojans. The poet of
+version B, in fact, created the beautiful figure of Thetis, so essential
+to the development of the tenderness that underlies the ferocity of
+Achilles. The other and earliest poet, who treated of the Wrath of
+the author of version A, neglected that opportunity with all that it
+involved, and omitted the purpose of Zeus, which is mentioned in the
+fifth line of the Epic. The editor of 540 B.C., seeing good in both
+versions, A and B, "combined his information," and produced Books I. and
+II. of the _ILIAD_ as they stand. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
+47.]
+
+Mr. Leaf suggests that "there is some ground for supposing that the
+oldest version of the Wrath of Achilles did not contain the promise of
+Zeus to Thetis; it was a tale played exclusively on the earthly stage."
+[Footnote: _Ibid_, vol. i. p. xxiii.] In that case the author of the
+oldest form (A) must have been a poet very inferior indeed to the later
+author of B who took up and altered his work. In _his_ version, Book
+I. does not end with the quarrel of the princes, but Achilles receives,
+with all the courtesy of his character, the unwelcome heralds of
+Agamemnon, and sends Briseis with them to the Over-Lord. He then with
+tears appeals to his goddess-mother, Thetis of the Sea, who rose from
+the grey mere like a mist, leaving the sea deeps where she dwelt beside
+her father, the ancient one of the waters. Then sat she face to face
+with her son as he let the tears down fall, and caressed him, saying,
+"Child, wherefore weepest thou, for what sorrow of heart? Hide it
+not, tell it to me; that I may know it as well as thou." Here the poet
+strikes the keynote of the character of Achilles, the deadly in war, the
+fierce in council, who weeps for his lost lady and his wounded honour,
+and cries for help to his mother, as little children cry.
+
+Such is the Achilles of the _Iliad_ throughout and consistently, but
+such he was not to the mind of Mr. Leaf's probably elder poet, the
+author of version A. Thetis, in version B, promises to persuade Zeus to
+honour Achilles by making Agamemnon rue his absence, and, twelve days
+after the quarrel, wins the god's consent.
+
+In Book II. Zeus reflects on his promise, and sends a false Dream to
+beguile Agamemnon, promising that now he shall take Troy. Agamemnon,
+while asleep, is full of hope; but when he wakens he dresses in mufti,
+in a soft doublet, a cloak, and sandals; takes his sword (swords were
+then worn as part of civil costume), and the ancestral sceptre, which he
+wields in peaceful assemblies. Day dawns, and "he bids the heralds...."
+A break here occurs, according to the theory.
+
+Here (_Iliad_, Book II., line 50) the kernel ceases, Mr. Leaf says, and
+the editor of 540 B.C. plays his pranks for a while.
+
+The kernel (or one of the _two_ kernels), we are to take up again at
+Book II., 443-483, and thence "skip" to XI. 56, and now "we have a
+narrative masterly in conception and smooth in execution," [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. i. p. 47.] says Mr. Leaf. This kernel is kernel B,
+probably the later kernel of the pair, that in which Achilles appeals to
+his lady mother, who wins from Zeus the promise to cause Achaean defeat,
+till Achilles is duly honoured. The whole Epic turns on this promise of
+Zeus, as announced in the fifth, sixth, and seventh lines of the very
+first Book. If kernel A is the first kernel, the poet left out the
+essence of the plot he had announced. However, let us first examine
+probable kernel B, reading, as advised, Book II. 1-50, [blank space];
+XI. 56 ff.
+
+We left Agamemnon (though the Dream bade him summon the host to arms)
+dressed in _civil costume_. His ancestral sceptre in his hand, he is
+going to hold a deliberative assembly of the unarmed host. His attire
+proves that fact ([Greek: _prepodaes de ae stolae to epi Boulaen
+exionti_], says the scholiast). Then if we skip, as advised, to II.
+443-483 he bids the heralds call the host not to peaceful council, for
+which his costume is appropriate, but to _war_! The host gathers, "and
+in their midst the lord Agamemnon,"--still in civil costume, with his
+sceptre (he has not changed his attire as far as we are told)--"in face
+and eyes like Zeus; in waist like Ares" (god of war); "in breast like
+Poseidon,"--yet, for all that we are told, entirely unarmed! The host,
+however, were dressed "in innumerable bronze," "war was sweeter to them
+than to depart in their ships to their dear native land,"--so much did
+Athene encourage them.
+
+But nobody had been speaking of flight, in THE KERNEL B: THAT proposal
+was originally made by Thersites, in kernel A, and was attributed to
+Agamemnon in the part of Book II. where the editor blends A and B.
+This part, at present, Mr. Leaf throws aside as a very late piece of
+compilation. Turning next, as directed, to XI. 56, we find the Trojans
+deploying in arms, and the hosts encounter with fury--Agamemnon still,
+for all that appears, in the raiment of peace, and with the sceptre of
+constitutional monarchy. "In he rushed, first of all, and slew Bienor,"
+and many other gentlemen of Troy, not with his sceptre!
+
+Clearly all this is the reverse of "a narrative masterly in conception
+and smooth in execution:" it is an impossible narrative.
+
+Mr. Leaf has attempted to disengage one of two forms of the old original
+poem from the parasitic later growths; he has promised to show us a
+smooth and masterly narrative, and the result is a narrative on which
+no Achasan poet could have ventured. In II. 50 the heralds are bidden
+[Greek: _kurussein_], that is to summon the host--to _what_? To a
+peaceful assembly, as Agamemnon's costume proves, says the next line
+(II. 51), but that is excised by Mr. Leaf, and we go on to II. 443, and
+the reunited passage now reads, "Agamemnon bade the loud heralds" (II.
+50) "call the Achaeans to battle" (II. 443), and they came, in harness,
+but their leader--when did he exchange chiton, cloak, and sceptre for
+helmet, shield, and spear? A host appears in arms; a king who set out
+with sceptre and doublet is found with a spear, in bronze armour: and
+not another word is said about the Dream of Agamemnon.
+
+It is perfectly obvious and certain that the two pieces of the broken
+kernel B do not fit together at all. Nor is this strange, if the kernel
+was really broken and endured the insertion of matter enough to fill
+nine Books (IL-XL). If kernel B really contained Book II., line 50,
+as Mr. Leaf avers, if Agamemnon, as in that line (50) "bade the
+clear-voiced heralds do...." something--what he bade them do was,
+necessarily, as his peaceful costume proves, to summon the peaceful
+assembly which he was to moderate with his sceptre. At such an assembly,
+or at a preliminary council of Chiefs, he would assuredly speak of his
+Dream, as he does in the part excised. Mr. Leaf, if he will not have a
+peaceful assembly as part of kernel B, must begin his excision at the
+middle of line 42, in II., where Agamemnon wakens; and must make him
+dress not in mufti but in armour, and call the host of the Achaeans to
+arm, as the Dream bade him do, and as he does in II. 443. Perhaps we
+should then excise II. 45 2, 45 3, with the reference to the plan of
+retreat, for _THAT_ is part of kernel A where there was no promise of
+Zeus, and no Dream sent to Agamemnon. Then from II. 483, the description
+of the glorious armed aspect of Agamemnon, Mr. Leaf may pass to XI. 56,
+the account of the Trojans under Hector, of the battle, of the prowess
+of Agamemnon, inspired by the Dream which he, contrary to Homeric and
+French epic custom, has very wisely mentioned to nobody--that is, in the
+part not excised.
+
+This appears to be the only method by which Mr. Leaf can restore the
+continuity of his kernel B.
+
+Though Mr. Leaf has failed to fit Book XI. to any point in Book II., of
+course it does not follow that Book XI. cannot be a continuation of the
+original _Wrath_ of _Achilles_ (version B). If so, we understand why
+Agamemnon plucks up heart, in Book XI., and is the chief cause of a
+temporary Trojan reverse. He relies on the Dream sent from Zeus in the
+opening lines of Book II., the Dream which was not in kernel A; the
+Dream which he communicated to nobody; the Dream conveying the promise
+that he should at once take Troy. This is perhaps a tenable theory,
+though Agamemnon had much reason to doubt whether the host would obey
+his command to arm, but an alternative theory of why and wherefore
+Agamemnon does great feats of valour, in Book XI., will later be
+propounded. Note that the events of Books XL.-XVIII., by Mr. Leaf's
+theory, all occur on the very day after Thetis (according to kernel
+B)' [79] obtains from Zeus his promise to honour Achilles by the
+discomfiture of the Achaeans; they have suffered nothing till that
+moment, as far as we learn, from the absence of Achilles and his 2500
+men: allowing for casualties, say 2000.
+
+So far we have traced--from Books I. and II. to Book XI.--the fortunes
+of kernel B, of the supposed later of two versions of the opening of the
+_Iliad_. But there may have been a version (A) probably earlier, we have
+been told, in which Achilles did not appeal to his mother, nor she to
+Zeus, and Zeus did not promise victory to the Trojans, and sent no false
+Dream of success to Agamemnon. What were the fortunes of that oldest
+of all old kernels? In this version (A) Agamemnon, having had no Dream,
+summoned a peaceful assembly to discuss the awkwardness caused by the
+mutiny of Achilles. The host met (_Iliad,_ II. 87-99). Here we pass from
+line 99 to 212-242: Thersites it is who opens the debate, (in version A)
+insults Agamemnon, and advises flight. The army rushed off to launch the
+ships, as in II. 142-210, and were brought back by Odysseus, who made a
+stirring speech, and was well backed by Agamemnon, urging to battle.
+
+Version A appears to us to have been a version that no heroic audience
+would endure. A low person like Thersites opens a debate in an assembly
+called by the Over-Lord; this could not possibly pass unchallenged among
+listeners living in the feudal age. When a prince called an assembly,
+he himself opened the debate, as Achilles does in Book I. 54-67. That
+a lewd fellow, the buffoon and grumbler of the host, of "the people,"
+nameless and silent throughout the Epic, should rush in and open debate
+in an assembly convoked by the Over-Lord, would have been regarded
+by feudal hearers, or by any hearers with feudal traditions, as an
+intolerable poetical license. Thersites would have been at once pulled
+down and beaten; the host would not have rushed to the ships on _his_
+motion. Any feudal audience would know better than to endure such
+an impossibility; they would have asked, "How could Thersites
+speak--without the sceptre?"
+
+As the poem stands, and ought to stand, nobody less than the Over-Lord,
+acting within his right, ([Greek: ae themis esti] II. 73), could suggest
+the flight of the host, and be obeyed.
+
+It is the absolute demoralisation of the host, in consequence of the
+strange test of their Lord, Agamemnon, making a feigned proposal to fly,
+and it is their confused, bewildered return to the assembly under the
+persuasions of Odysseus, urged by Athene, that alone, in the poem, give
+Thersites his unique opportunity to harangue. When the Over-Lord had
+called an assembly the first word, of course, was for to speak, as
+he does in the poem as it stands. That Thersifes should rise in the
+arrogance bred by the recent disorderly and demoralised proceedings is
+one thing; that he should open the debate when excitement was eager to
+hear Agamemnon, and before demoralisation set in, is quite another. We
+never hear again of Thersites, or of any one of the commonalty, daring
+to open his mouth in an assembly. Thersites sees his one chance, the
+chance of a life time, and takes it; because Agamemnon, by means of the
+test--a proposal to flee homewards--which succeeded, it is said, in the
+case of Cortes,--has reduced the host, already discontented, to a mob.
+
+Before Agamemnon thus displayed his ineptitude, as he often does later,
+Thersites had no chance. All this appears sufficiently obvious, if we
+put ourselves at the point of view of the original listeners. Thersites
+merely continues, in full assembly, the mutinous babble which he has
+been pouring out to his neighbours during the confused rush to launch
+the ships and during the return produced by the influence of Odysseus.
+The poet says so himself (_Iliad_, II. 212). "The rest sat down ...
+only Thersites still chattered on." No original poet could manage the
+situation in any other way.
+
+We have now examined Mr. Leaf's two supposed earliest versions of the
+beginning of the _Iliad_. His presumed earlier version (A), with no
+Thetis, no promise of Zeus, and no Dream, and with Thersites opening
+debate, is jejune, unpoetical, and omits the gentler and most winning
+aspect of the character of Achilles, while it could not possibly have
+been accepted by a feudal audience for the reasons already given. His
+presumed later version (B), with Thetis, Zeus, and the false Dream,
+cannot be, or certainly has not been, brought by Mr. Leaf into congruous
+connection with Book XI., and it results in the fighting of the
+_unarmed_ Agamemnon, which no poet could have been so careless as to
+invent. Agamemnon could not go into battle without helmet, shield, and
+spears (the other armour we need not dwell upon here), and Thersites
+could not have opened a debate when the Over-Lord had called the
+Assembly, nor could he have moved the chiefs to prepare for flight,
+unless, as in the actual _Iliad_, they had already been demoralised
+by the result of the feigned proposal of flight by Agamemnon, and its
+effect upon the host. Probably every reader who understands heroic
+society, temper, and manners will, so far, agree with us.
+
+Our own opinion is that the difficulties in the poem are caused partly
+by the poet's conception of the violent, wavering, excitable,
+and unstable character of Agamemnon; partly by some accident, now
+indiscoverable, save by conjecture, which has happened to the text.
+
+The story in the actual _Iliad_ is that Zeus, planning disaster for the
+Achaeans, in accordance with his promise to Thetis, sends a false Dream,
+to tell Agamemnon that he will take Troy instantly. He is bidden by the
+Dream to summon the host to arms. Agamemnon, _still asleep_, "has in his
+mind things not to be fulfilled: Him seemeth that he shall take Priam's
+town that very day" (II. 36, 37). "Then he awoke" (II. 41), and,
+obviously, was no longer so sanguine, once awake!
+
+Being a man crushed by his responsibility, and, as commander-in-chief,
+extremely timid, though personally brave, he disobeys the Dream, dresses
+in civil costume, and summons the host to a _peaceful_ assembly, not
+to war, as the Dream bade him do. Probably he thought that the host was
+disaffected, and wanted to argue with them, in place of commanding.
+
+Here it is that the difficulty comes in, and our perplexity is increased
+by our ignorance of the regular procedure in Homeric times. Was the host
+not in arms and fighting every day, when there was no truce? There seems
+to have been no armistice after the mutiny of Achilles, for we are
+told that, in the period between his mutiny and the day of the Dream of
+Agamemnon, Achilles "was neither going to the Assembly, nor into battle,
+but wasted his heart, abiding there, longing for war and the slogan"
+(I. 489, 492). Thus it seems that war went on, and that assemblies were
+being held, in the absence of Achilles. It appears, however, that the
+fighting was mere skirmishing and raiding, no general onslaught was
+attempted; and from Book II. _73_, 83 it seems to have been a matter
+of doubt, with Agamemnon and Nestor, whether the army would venture a
+pitched battle.
+
+It also appears, from the passage cited (I. 489, 492) that assemblies
+were being regularly held; we are told that Achilles did not attend
+them. Yet, when we come to the assembly (II. 86-100) it seems to have
+been a special and exciting affair, to judge by the brilliant picture
+of the crowds, the confusion, and the cries. Nothing of the sort is
+indicated in the meeting of the assembly in I. _54-5_ 8. Why is there
+so much excitement at the assembly of Book II.? Partly because it was
+summoned _at_ dawn, whereas the usual thing was for the host to meet
+in arms before fighting on the plain or going on raids; assemblies were
+held when the day's work was over. The host, therefore, when summoned
+to an assembly _at dawn_, expects to hear of something out of the
+common--as the mutiny of Achilles suggests--and is excited.
+
+We must ask, then, why does Agamemnon, after the Dream has told him
+merely to summon the host to arm--a thing of daily routine--call a
+deliberative morning assembly, a thing clearly not of routine? If
+Agamemnon is really full of confidence, inspired by the Dream, why does
+he determine, not to do what is customary, call the men to arms, but
+as Jeanne d'Arc said to the Dauphin, to "hold such long and weary
+councils"? Mr. Jevons speaks of Agamemnon's "confidence in the delusive
+dream" as at variance with his proceedings, and would excise II. 35-41,
+"the only lines which represent Agamemnon as confidently believing in
+the Dream." [Footnote: _Journal_ of _Hellenic_ Studies, vol. vii. pp.
+306, 307.] But the poet never once says that Agamemnon, awake, did
+believe confidently in the Dream! Agamemnon dwelt with hope _while_
+asleep; when he wakened--he went and called a peaceful morning assembly,
+though the Dream bade him call to arms. He did not dare to risk his
+authority. This was exactly in keeping with his character. The poet
+should have said, "When he woke, the Dream appeared to him rather poor
+security for success" (saying so in poetic language, of course), and
+then there would be no difficulty in the summoning of an assembly at
+dawn. But either the poet expected us to understand the difference
+between the hopes of Agamemnon sleeping, and the doubts of Agamemnon
+waking to chill realities--an experience common to all of us who
+dream--or some explanatory lines have been dropped out--one or two would
+have cleared up the matter.
+
+If I am right, the poet has not been understood. People have not
+observed that Agamemnon hopes while asleep, and doubts, and acts on his
+doubt, when awake. Thus Mr. Leaf writes: "Elated by the dream, as we are
+led to suppose, Agamemnon summons the army--to lead them into battle?
+Nothing of the sort; he calls them to assembly." [Footnote: _Iliad_,
+vol. ii. p. 46.] But we ought not to have been led to suppose that
+the waking Agamemnon was so elated as the sleeping Agamemnon. He was
+"disillusioned" on waking; his conduct proves it; he did not know what
+to think about the Dream; he did not know how the host would take the
+Dream; he doubted whether they would fight at his command, so he called
+an assembly.
+
+Mr. Jevons very justly cites a parallel case. Grote has remarked that in
+Book VII. of Herodotus, "The dream sent by the Gods to frighten Xerxes
+when about to recede from his project," has "a marked parallel in the
+_Iliad_." Thus Xerxes, after the defection of Artabanus, was despondent,
+like Agamemnon after the mutiny of Achilles, and was about to recede
+from his project. To both a delusive dream is sent urging them to
+proceed. Xerxes calls an assembly, however, and says that he will
+not proceed. Why? Because, says Herodotus, "when day came, he thought
+nothing of his dream." Agamemnon, once awake, thought doubtfully of
+_his_ dream; he called a Privy Council, told the princes about his
+dream--of which Nestor had a very dubious opinion--and said that he
+would try the temper of the army by proposing instant flight: the chiefs
+should restrain the men if they were eager to run away.
+
+Now the epic prose narrative of Herodotus is here clearly based on
+_Iliad_, II., which Herodotus must have understood as I do. But in
+Homer there is no line to say--and one line or two would have been
+enough--that Agamemnon, when awake, doubted, like Xerxes, though
+Agamemnon, when asleep, had been confident. The necessary line, for all
+that we know, still existed in the text used by Herodotus. Homer
+may lose a line as well as Dieuchidas of Megara, or rather Diogenes
+Laertius. Juvenal lost a whole passage, re-discovered by Mr. Winstedt
+in a Bodleian manuscript. If Homer expected modern critics to note the
+delicate distinction between Agamemnon asleep and Agamemnon awake, or to
+understand Agamemnon's character, he expected too much. [Footnote: Cf.
+Jevons, _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol. vii. pp. 306, 307.] The poet
+then treats the situation on these lines: Agamemnon, awake and free from
+illusion, does not obey the dream, does _not_ call the army to war; he
+takes a middle course.
+
+In the whole passage the poet's main motive, as Mr. Monro remarks with
+obvious truth, is "to let his audience become acquainted with the temper
+and spirit of the army as it was affected by the long siege ... and by
+the events of the First Book." [Footnote: Monro, _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
+261.] The poet could not obtain his object if Agamemnon merely gave the
+summons to battle; and he thinks Agamemnon precisely the kind of waverer
+who will call, first the Privy Council of the Chiefs, and then an
+assembly. Herein the homesick host will display its humours, as it does
+with a vengeance. Agamemnon next tells his Dream to the chiefs (if he
+had a dream of this kind he would most certainly tell it), and adds (as
+has been already stated) that he will first test the spirit of the
+army by a feigned proposal of return to Greece, while the chiefs are to
+restrain them if they rush to launch the ships. Nestor hints that there
+is not much good in attending to dreams; however, this is the dream of
+the Over-Lord, who is the favoured of Zeus.
+
+Agamemnon next, addressing the assembly, says that posterity will think
+it a shameful thing that the Achaeans raised the siege of a town with a
+population much smaller than their own army; but allies from many
+cities help the Trojans, and are too strong for him, whether posterity
+understands that or not. "Let us flee with our ships!"
+
+On this the host break up, in a splendid passage of poetry, and rush
+to launch the ships, the passion of _nostalgie_ carrying away even
+the chiefs, it appears--a thing most natural in the circumstances.
+But Athene finds Odysseus in grief: "neither laid he any hand upon his
+ship," as the others did, and she encouraged him to stop the flight.
+This he does, taking the sceptre of Agamemnon from his unnerved hand.
+
+He goes about reminding the princes "have we not heard Agamemnon's real
+intention in council?" (II. 188-197), and rating the common sort. The
+assembly meets again in great confusion; Thersites seizes the chance to
+be insolent, and is beaten by Odysseus. The host then arms for battle.
+
+The poet has thus shown Agamemnon in the colours which he wears
+consistently all through the _Iliad_. He has, as usual, contrasted with
+him Odysseus, the type of a wise and resolute man. This contrast the
+poet maintains without fail throughout. He has shown us the temper of
+the weary, home-sick army, and he has persuaded us that he knows how
+subtle, dangerous, and contagious a thing is military panic. Thus, at
+least, I venture to read the passage, which, thus read, is perfectly
+intelligible. Agamemnon is no personal coward, but the burden of the
+safety of the host overcomes him later, and he keeps suggesting flight
+in the ships, as we shall see. Suppose, then, we read on from II. 40
+thus: "The Dream left him thinking of things not to be, even that on
+this day he shall take the town of Priam.... But he awoke from sleep
+with the divine voice ringing in his ears. (_Then it seemed him that
+some dreams are true and_ some _false, for all do_ not _come through the
+Gate of_ Horn.) So he arose and sat up and did on his soft tunic, and
+his great cloak, and grasped his ancestral sceptre ... and bade the
+clear-voiced heralds summon the Achaeans of the long locks to the
+deliberative assembly." He then, as in II. 53-75 told his Dream to the
+preliminary council, and proposed that he should try the temper of
+the host by proposing flight--which, if it began, the chiefs were to
+restrain--before giving orders to arm. The test of the temper of the
+host acted as it might be expected to act; all rushed to launch the
+ships, and the princes were swept away in the tide of flight, Agamemnon
+himself merely looking on helpless. The panic was contagious; only
+Odysseus escaped its influence, and redeemed the honour of the Achaeans,
+as he did again on a later day.
+
+The passage certainly has its difficulties. But Erhardt expresses the
+proper state of the case, after giving his analysis. "The hearer's
+imagination is so captured, first by the dream, then by the brawling
+assembly, by the rush to the ships, by the intervention of Odysseus, by
+the punishment of Thersites--all these living pictures follow each
+other so fleetly before the eyes that we have scarcely time to make
+objections." [Footnote: _Die Enstehung der Homerische Gedichte_, p.
+29.]. The poet aimed at no more and no less effect than he has
+produced, and no more should be required by any one, except by
+that anachronism--"the analytical reader." _He_ has "time to make
+objections": the poet's audience had none; and he must be criticised
+from their point of view. Homer did not sing for analytical readers,
+for the modern professor; he could not possibly conceive that Time would
+bring such a being into existence.
+
+To return to the character of Agamemnon. In moments of encouragement
+Agamemnon is a valiant fighter, few better spearmen, yet "he attains not
+to the first Three," Achilles, Aias, Diomede. But Agamemnon is unstable
+as water; again and again, as in Book II., the lives and honour of the
+Achaeans are saved in the Over-Lord's despite by one or other of the
+peers. The whole _Iliad_, with consistent uniformity, pursues the scheme
+of character and conduct laid down in the two first Books. It is guided
+at once by feudal allegiance and feudal jealousy, like the _Chansons de
+Geste_ and the early sagas or romances of Ireland. A measure of respect
+for Agamemnon, even of sympathy, is preserved; he is not degraded as the
+kings and princes are often degraded on the Attic stage, and even in the
+Cyclic poems. Would wandering Ionian reciters at fairs have maintained
+this uniformity? Would the tyrant Pisistratus have made his literary man
+take this view?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+AGAMEMNON IN THE LATER "ILIAD"
+
+In the Third Book, Agamemnon receives the compliments due to his
+supremacy, aspect, and valour from the lips of Helen and Priam. There
+are other warriors taller by a head, and Odysseus was shorter than he by
+a head, so Agamemnon was a man of middle stature. He is "beautiful and
+royal" of aspect; "a good king and a mighty spearman," says Helen.
+
+The interrupted duel between Menelaus and Paris follows, and then the
+treacherous wounding of Menelaus by Pandarus. One of Agamemnon's most
+sympathetic characteristics is his intense love of his brother, for
+whose sake he has made the war. He shudders on seeing the arrow wound,
+but consoles Menelaus by the certainty that Troy will fall, for the
+Trojans have broken the solemn oath of truce. Zeus "doth fulfil at last,
+and men make dear amends." But with characteristic inconsistency he
+discourages Menelaus by a picture of many a proud Trojan leaping on
+his tomb, while the host will return home-an idea constantly present to
+Agamemnon's mind. He is always the first to propose flight, though he
+will "return with shame" to Mycenae. Menelaus is of much better cheer:
+"Be of good courage, [blank space] ALL THE HOST OF THE [misprint]"--a
+thing which Agamemnon does habitually, though he is not a personal
+poltroon. As Menelaus has only a slight flesh wound after all, and
+as the Trojans are doomed men, Agamemnon is now "eager for glorious
+battle." He encourages the princes, but, of all men, rebukes Odysseus as
+"last at a fray and first at a feast": such is his insolence, for which
+men detest him.
+
+This is highly characteristic in Agamemnon, who has just been redeemed
+from ruin by Odysseus. Rebuked by Odysseus, he "takes back his word" as
+usual, and goes on to chide Diomede as better at making speeches than at
+fighting! But Diomede made no answer, "having respect to the chiding
+of the revered King." He even rebukes the son of Capaneus for answering
+Agamemnon haughtily. Diomede, however, does not forget; he bides his
+time. He now does the great deeds of his day of valour (Book V.).
+Agamemnon meanwhile encourages the host.
+
+During Books V., VI. Agamemnon's business is "to bid the rest keep
+fighting." When Hector, in Book VII., challenges any Achaean, nobody
+volunteers except Menelaus, who has a strong sense of honour. Agamemnon
+restrains him, and lots are cast: the host pray that the lot may fall
+on Aias, Diomede, or Agamemnon (VII. 179-180). Thus the Over-Lord is
+acknowledged to be a man of his hands, especially good at hurling the
+spear, as we see again in Book XXIII.
+
+A truce is proposed for the burial of the dead, and Paris offers to give
+up the wealth that he brought to Troy, and more, if the Achaeans will
+go home, but Helen he will not give up. We expect Agamemnon to answer as
+becomes him. But no! All are silent, till Diomede rises. They will not
+return, he says, even if Helen be restored, for even a fool knows that
+Troy is doomed, because of the broken oath. The rest shout acquiescence,
+and Agamemnon refuses the compromise. Apparently he would not have
+disdained it, but for Diomede's reply.
+
+On the following day the Trojans have the better in the battle, and
+Agamemnon "has no heart to stand," nor have some of his peers. But
+Diomede has more courage, and finally Agamemnon begins to call to
+the host to fight, but breaks down, weeps, and prays to Zeus "that
+we ourselves at least flee and escape;" he is not an encouraging
+commander-in-chief! Zeus, in pity, sends a favourable omen; Aias fights
+well; night falls, and the Trojans camp on the open plain.
+
+Agamemnon, in floods of tears, calls an assembly, and proposes to
+"return to Argos with dishonour." "Let us flee with our ships to our
+dear native land, for now shall we never take wide-wayed Troy," All are
+silent, till Diomede rises and reminds Agamemnon that "thou saidst I was
+no man of war, but a coward." (In Book V.; we are now in Book IX.) "Zeus
+gave thee the honour of the sceptre above all men, but valour he gave
+thee not.... Go thy way; thy way is before thee, and thy ships stand
+beside the sea. But all the other flowing-haired Achaeans will tarry
+here until we waste Troy."
+
+Nestor advises Agamemnon to set an advanced guard, which that martialist
+had never thought of doing, and to discuss matters over supper. A force
+of 700 men, under Meriones and the son of Nestor, was posted between the
+foss and the wall round the camp; the council met, and Nestor advised
+Agamemnon to approach Achilles with gentle words and gifts of atonement.
+Agamemnon, full of repentance, acknowledges his folly and offers
+enormous atonement. Heralds and three ambassadors are sent; and how
+Achilles received them, with perfect courtesy, but with absolute
+distrust of Agamemnon and refusal of his gifts, sending the message that
+he will fight only when fire comes to his own ships, we know.
+
+Achilles is now entirely in the wrong, and the Over-Lord is once more
+within his right. He has done all, or more than all, that customary
+law demands. In Book IX. Phoenix states the case plainly. "If Agamemnon
+brought thee not gifts, and promised thee more hereafter, ... then
+were I not he that should bid thee cast aside thine anger, and save the
+Argives...." (IX. 515-517). The case so stands that, if Achilles later
+relents and fights, the gifts of atonement will no longer be due to him,
+and he "will not be held in like honour" (IX. 604).
+
+The poet knows intimately, and, like his audience, is keenly interested
+in the details of the customary law. We cannot easily suppose this
+frame of mind and this knowledge in a late poet addressing a late Ionian
+audience.
+
+The ambassadors return to Agamemnon; their evil tidings are received in
+despairing silence. But Diomede bids Agamemnon take heart and fight next
+day, with his host arrayed "before the ships" (IX. 708). This appears to
+counsel defensive war; but, in fact, and for reasons, when it comes to
+fighting they do battle in the open.
+
+The next Book (X.) is almost universally thought a late interpolation;
+an opinion elsewhere discussed (see [blank space]). Let us, then, say
+with Mr. Leaf that the Book begins with "exaggerated despondency" and
+ends with "hasty exultation," in consequence of a brilliant camisade,
+wherein Odysseus and Diomede massacre a Thracian contingent. Our point
+is that the poet carefully (see _The Doloneia_) continues the study of
+Agamemnon in despondency, and later, by his "hasty exultation," preludes
+to the valour which the Over-Lord displays in Book XI.
+
+The poet knows that something in the way of personal valour is due to
+Agamemnon's position; he fights brilliantly, receives a flesh wound,
+retires, and is soon proposing a general flight in his accustomed way.
+When the Trojans, in Book XIV., are attacking the ships, Agamemnon
+remarks that he fears the disaffection of his whole army (XIV. 49, 51),
+and, as for the coming defeat, that he "knew it," even when Zeus helped
+the Greeks. They are all to perish far from Argos. Let them drag the
+ships to the sea, moor them with stones, and fly, "For there is no shame
+in fleeing from ruin, even in the night. Better doth he fare who flees
+from trouble than he that is overtaken." It is now the turn of Odysseus
+again to save the honour of the army. "Be silent, lest some other of the
+Achaeans hear this word, that no man should so much as suffer to pass
+through his mouth.... And now I wholly scorn thy thoughts, such a word
+hast thou uttered." On this Agamemnon instantly repents. "Right sharply
+hast thou touched my heart with thy stern reproof:" he has not even the
+courage of his nervousness.
+
+The combat is now in the hands of Aias and Patroclus, who is slain.
+Agamemnon, who is wounded, does not reappear till Book XIX., when
+Achilles, anxious to fight and avenge Patroclus at once, without
+formalities of reconciliation, professes his desire to let bygones be
+bygones. Agamemnon excuses his insolence to Achilles as an inspiration
+of Ate: a predestined fault--"Not I am the cause, but Zeus and Destiny."
+
+Odysseus, to clinch the reunion and fulfil customary law, advises
+Agamemnon to bring out the gifts of atonement (the gifts prepared in
+Book IX.), after which the right thing is for him to give a feast of
+reconciliation, "that Achilles may have nothing lacking of his right."
+[Footnote: Book XIX. 179, 180.] The case is one which has been provided
+for by customary law in every detail. Mr. Leaf argues that all this part
+must be late, because of the allusion to the gifts offered in Book IX.
+But we reply, with Mr. Monro, that the Ninth Book is "almost necessary
+to any Achilleis." The question is, would a late editor or poet know
+all the details of customary law in such a case as a quarrel between
+Over-Lord and peer? would a feudal audience have been satisfied with
+a poem which did not wind the quarrel up in accordance with usage? and
+would a late poet, in a society no longer feudal, know how to wind it
+up? Would he find any demand on the part of his audience for a long
+series of statements, which to a modern seem to interrupt the story?
+To ourselves it appears that a feudal audience desired the customary
+details; to such an audience they were most interesting.
+
+This is a taste which, as has been said, we find in all early poetry
+and in the sagas; hence the long "runs" of the Celtic sagas, minutely
+repeated descriptions of customary things. The Icelandic saga-men never
+weary, though modern readers do, of legal details. For these reasons we
+reckon the passages in Book XIX. about the reconciliation as original,
+and think they can be nothing else. It is quite natural that, in a
+feudal society of men who were sticklers for custom, the hearers should
+insist on having all things done duly and in order--the giving of the
+gifts and the feast of reconciliation--though the passionate Achilles
+himself desires to fight at once. Odysseus insists that what we may call
+the regular routine shall be gone through. It is tedious to the modern
+reader, but it is surely much more probable that a feudal poet thus
+gratified his peculiar audience (he looked for no other) than that a
+late poet, with a different kind of audience, thrust the Reconciliation
+in as an "after-thought." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 317.]
+The right thing must be done, Odysseus assures Achilles, "for I was
+born first, and know more things." It is not the right thing to fight
+at once, unfed, and before the solemn sacrifice by the Over-Lord,
+the prayer, the Oath of Agamemnon, and the reception of the gifts by
+Achilles; only after these formalities, and after the army has fed, can
+the host go forth. "I know more than you do; you are a younger man,"
+says Odysseus, speaking in accordance with feudal character, at the risk
+of wearying later unforeseen generations.
+
+This is not criticism inspired by mere "literary feeling," for "literary
+feeling" is on the side of Achilles, and wishes the story to hurry to
+his revenge. But ours is [blank space] criticism; we must think of the
+poet in relation to his audience and of their demands, which we can
+estimate by similar demands, vouched for by the supply, in the early
+national poetry of other peoples and in the Icelandic sagas.
+
+We hear no more of Agamemnon till, in Book XXIII, 35-38, after the
+slaying of Hector, Achilles "was brought to noble Agamemnon" (for that,
+as Odysseus said, was the regular procedure) "by the Achaean chiefs,
+hardly persuading him thereto, for his heart was wroth for his comrade."
+Here they feast, Achilles still full of grief and resentment. He merely
+goes through the set forms, much against his will. It does appear to us
+that the later the poet the less he would have known or cared about
+the forms. An early society is always much interested in forms and in
+funerals and funeral games, so the poet indulges their taste with the
+last rites of Patroclus. The last view of Agamemnon is given when,
+at the end of the games, Achilles courteously presents him with the
+flowered _lebes_, the prize for hurling the spear, without asking him to
+compete, since his superior skill is notorious. This act of courtesy is
+the real reconciliation; previously Achilles had but gone reluctantly
+through the set forms in such cases provided. Even when Agamemnon
+offered the gifts of atonement, Achilles said, "Give them, as is
+customary, or keep them, as you please" (XIX. 146, 148). Achilles, young
+and passionate, cares nothing for the feudal procedure.
+
+This rapid survey seems to justify the conclusion that the poet presents
+an uniform and historically correct picture of the Over-Lord and of
+his relations with his peers, a picture which no late editor could
+have pieced together out of the widely varying _repertoires_ of late
+strolling reciters. Such reciters would gladly have forgotten, and such
+an editor would gladly have "cut" the "business" of the reconciliation.
+They would also, in a democratic spirit, have degraded the Over-Lord
+into the tyrant, but throughout, however low Agamemnon may fall, the
+poet is guided by the knowledge that his right to rule is _jure divino_,
+that he has qualities, that his responsibilities are crushing, "I, whom
+among all men Zeus hath planted for ever among labours, while my
+breath abides within me, and my limbs move," says the Over-Lord (X.
+Sg, go.[sic]). In short, the poet's conception of the Over-Lord is
+throughout harmonious, is a contemporary conception entertained by a
+singer who lives among peers that own, and are jealous of, and obey an
+Over-Lord. The character and situation of Agamemnon are a poetic work of
+one age, one moment of culture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE "ILIAD". BURIAL AND CREMATION
+
+In archaeological discoveries we find the most convincing proofs that
+the _Iliad_, on the whole, is the production of a single age, not the
+patchwork of several changeful centuries. This may seem an audacious
+statement, as archaeology has been interpreted of late in such a manner
+as to demand precisely the opposite verdict. But if we can show, as we
+think we can, that many recent interpretations of the archaeological
+evidence are not valid, because they are not consistent, our contention,
+though unexpected, will be possible. It is that the combined testimony
+of archaeology and of the Epic proves the _Iliad_ to represent, as
+regards customs, weapons, and armour, a definite moment of evolution; a
+period between the age recorded in the art of the Mycenaean shaft graves
+and the age of early iron swords and the "Dipylon" period.
+
+Before the discoveries of the material remains of the "Mycenzean"
+times, the evidence of archaeology was seldom appropriately invoked
+in discussions of the Homeric question. But in the thirty years since
+Schliemann explored the buried relics of the Mycenzean Acropolis,
+his "Grave of Agamemnon," a series of excavations has laid bare the
+interments, the works of art, and the weapons and ornaments of years
+long prior to the revolution commonly associated with the "Dorian
+Invasion" of about 1100-1000 B.C. The objects of all sorts which have
+been found in many sites of Greece and the isles, especially of Cyprus
+and Crete, in some respects tally closely with Homeric descriptions,
+in others vary from them widely. Nothing can be less surprising, if the
+heroes whose legendary feats inspired the poet lived centuries before
+his time, as Charlemagne and his Paladins lived some three centuries
+before the composition of the earliest extant _Chansons de Geste_ on
+their adventures. There was, in such a case, time for much change in the
+details of life, art, weapons and implements. Taking the relics in the
+graves of the Mycenaean Acropolis as a starting-point, some things would
+endure into the age of the poet, some would be modified, some would
+disappear.
+
+We cannot tell how long previous to his own date the poet supposes the
+Achaean heroes to have existed. He frequently ascribes to them feats of
+strength which "no man of such as now are" could perform. This gives
+no definite period for the interval; he might be speaking of the great
+grandfathers of his own generation. But when he regards the heroes as
+closely connected by descent of one or two generations with the gods,
+and as in frequent and familiar intercourse with gods and goddesses, we
+must suppose that he did not think their period recent. The singers
+of the _Chansons de Geste_ knew that angels' visits were few and far
+between at the period, say, of the Norman Conquest; but they allowed
+angels to appear in epics dealing with the earlier time, almost as
+freely as gods intervene in Homer. In short, the Homeric poet undeniably
+treats the age of his heroes as having already, in the phrase of
+Thucydides, "won its way to the mythical," and therefore as indefinitely
+remote.
+
+It is impossible here to discuss in detail the complex problems of
+Mycenaean chronology. If we place the Mycenaean "bloom-time" from
+"the seventeenth or sixteenth to the twelfth century B.C.," [Footnote:
+Tsountas and Manatt, p. 322.] it is plain that there is space to spare,
+between the poet's age and that of his heroes, for the rise of changes
+in war, weapons, and costume. Indeed, there are traces enough of change
+even in the objects and art discovered in the bloom-time, as represented
+by the Mycenaean acropolis itself and by other "Mycenaean" sites. The
+art of the fragment of a silver vase in a grave, on which a siege is
+represented, is not the art, the costumes are not the costumes, of
+the inlaid bronze dagger-blade. The men shown on the vase and the
+lion-hunters on the dagger both have their hair close cropped, but on
+the vase they are naked, on the dagger they wear short drawers. On the
+Vaphio cups, found in a _tholos_ chamber-tomb near Amyclae, the men are
+"long-haired Achaeans," with heavy, pendent locks, like the man on a
+pyxis from Knossos, published by Mr. Evans; they are of another period
+than the close-cropped men of the vase and dagger. [Footnote: _Journal
+of Hellenic Studies_, vol. xvi. p. 102.] Two of the men on the silver
+vase are covered either with shields of a shape and size elsewhere
+unknown in Mycenaean art, or with cloaks of an unexampled form. The
+masonry of the city wall, shown on the vase in the Mycenaean grave,
+is not the ordinary masonry of Mycenae itself. On the vase the wall is
+"isodomic," built of cut stones in regular layers. Most of the Mycenaean
+walls, on the other hand, are of "Cyclopean" style, in large irregular
+blocks.
+
+Art, good and very bad, exists in many various stages in Mycenaean
+relics. The drawing of a god, with a typical Mycenaean shield in the
+form of a figure 8, on a painted sarcophagus from Milato in Crete,
+is more crude and savage than many productions of the Australian
+aboriginals, [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xvi. _p._
+174, fig. 50._ Grosse. _Les Debuts de l'Art,_ pp. 124-176.] the thing is
+on the level of Red Indian work. Meanwhile at Vaphio, Enkomi, Knossos,
+and elsewhere the art is often excellent.
+
+In one essential point the poet describes a custom without parallel
+among the discovered relics of the Mycenaean age--namely, the disposal
+of the bodies of the dead. They are neither buried with their arms, in
+stately _tholos_ tombs nor in shaft graves, as at Mycenae: whether
+they be princes or simple oarsmen, they are cremated. A pyre of wood is
+built; on this the warrior's body is laid, the pyre is lighted, the body
+is reduced to ashes, the ashes are placed in a vessel or box of gold,
+wrapped round with precious cloths (no arms are buried, as a general
+rule), and a mound, howe, barrow, or tumulus is raised over all. Usually
+a _stele_ or pillar crowns the edifice. This method is almost uniform,
+and, as far as cremation and the cairn go, is universal in the _Iliad_
+and _Odyssey_ whenever a burial is described. Now this mode of
+interment must be the mode of a single age in Greek civilisation. It is
+confessedly not the method of the Mycenaeans of the shaft grave, or of
+the latter _tholos_ or stone beehive-shaped grave; again, the Mycenaeans
+did not burn the dead; they buried. Once more, the Homeric method is not
+that of the Dipylon period (say 900-750 B.C.) represented by the tombs
+outside the Dipylon gate of Athens. The people of that age now buried,
+now burned, their dead, and did not build cairns over them. Thus the
+Homeric custom comes between the shaft graves and the latter _tholos_
+graves, on the one hand, and the Dipylon custom of burning or burying,
+with sunk or rock-hewn graves, on the other.
+
+The Homeric poets describe the method of their own period. They
+assuredly do not adhere to an older epic tradition of shaft graves or
+_tholos_ graves, though these must have been described in lays of the
+period when such methods of disposal of the dead were in vogue. The
+altar above the shaft-graves in Mycenae proves the cult of ancestors in
+Mycenae; of this cult in the _Iliad_ there is no trace, or only a
+dim trace of survival in the slaughter of animals at the funeral. The
+Homeric way of thinking about the state of the dead, weak, shadowy
+things beyond the river Oceanus, did not permit them to be worshipped
+as potent beings. Only in a passage, possibly interpolated, of the
+_Odyssey_, do we hear that Castor and Polydeuces, brothers of Helen,
+and sons of Tyndareus, through the favour of Zeus have immortality, and
+receive divine honours. [Footnote: Odyssey, XI. 298-304.]
+
+These facts are so familiar that we are apt to overlook the strangeness
+of them in the history of religious evolution. The cult of ancestral
+spirits begins in the lowest barbarism, just above the level of the
+Australian tribes, who, among the Dieri, show some traces of the
+practice, at least, of ghost feeding. [Footnote: Howitt, _Native
+Tribes of South-Eastern Australia,_ p. 448. There are also traces of
+propitiation in Western Australia (MS. of Mrs. Bates).] Sometimes, as in
+many African tribes, ancestor worship is almost the whole of practical
+cult. Usually it accompanies polytheism, existing beside it on a lower
+plane. It was prevalent in the Mycenae of the shaft graves; in Attica
+it was uninterrupted; it is conspicuous in Greece from the ninth century
+onwards. But it is unknown to or ignored by the Homeric poets, though it
+can hardly have died out of folk custom. Consequently, the poems are
+of one age, an age of cremation and of burial in barrows, with no ghost
+worship. Apparently some revolution as regards burial occurred between
+the age of the graves of the Mycenaean acropolis and the age of Homer.
+That age, coming with its form of burning and its absence of the cult
+of the dead, between two epochs of inhumation, ancestor worship, and
+absence of cairns, is as certainly and definitely an age apart, a
+peculiar period, as any epoch can be.
+
+Cremation, with cairn burial of the ashes, is, then, the only form of
+burial mentioned by Homer, and, as far as the poet tells us, the period
+was not one in which iron was used for swords and spears. At Assarlik
+(Asia Minor) and in Thera early graves, prove the use of cremation,
+but also, unlike Homer, of iron weapons. [Footnote: Paton, Journal _of
+Hellenic Studies,_ viii. 64_ff_. For other references, cf. Poulsen, _Die
+Dipylongraeben_, p. 2, Notes. Leipzig 1905.] In these graves the ashes
+are inurned. There are examples of the same usage in Salamis, without
+iron. In Crete, in graves of the period of geometrical ornament
+("Dipylon"), burning is more common than inhumation. Cremation is
+attested in a _tholos_ or beehive-shaped grave in Argos, where the vases
+were late Mycenaean. Below this stratum was an older shaft grave, as is
+usual in _tholos_ interments; it had been plundered? [Footnote: Poulsen,
+p.2.]
+
+The cause of the marked change from Mycenaean inhumation to Homeric
+cremation is matter of conjecture. It has been suggested that burning
+was introduced during the migrations after the Dorian invasion. Men
+could carry the ashes of their friends to the place where they finally
+settled. [Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische Epos,_ p.83] The question may,
+perhaps, be elucidated by excavation, especially in Asia Minor, on
+the sites of the earliest Greek colonies. At Colophon are many cairns
+unexplored by science. Mr. Ridgeway, as is well known, attributes the
+introduction of cremation to a conquering northern people, the Achaeans,
+his "Celts." It is certain that cremation and urn burial of the ashes
+prevailed in Britain during the Age of Bronze, and co-existed with
+inhumation in the great cemetery of Hallstatt, surviving into the Age of
+Iron. [Footnote: Cf. _Guide to Antiquities of Early Iron Age,_ British
+Museum, 1905, by Mr. Reginald A. Smith, under direction of Mr. Charles
+H. Read, for a brief account of Hallstatt culture.] Others suppose a
+change in Achaean ideas about the soul; it was no longer believed to
+haunt the grave and grave goods and be capable of haunting the living,
+but to be wholly set free by burning, and to depart for ever to the
+House of Hades, powerless and incapable of hauntings.
+
+It is never easy to decide as to whether a given mode of burial is the
+result of a definite opinion about the condition of the dead, or
+whether the explanation offered by those who practise the method is an
+afterthought. In Tasmania among the lowest savages, now extinct,
+were found monuments over cremated human remains, accompanied with
+"characters crudely marked, similar to those which the aborigines
+tattooed on their forearms." In one such grave was a spear, "for the
+dead man to fight with when he is asleep," as a native explained. Some
+Tasmanian tribes burned the dead and carried the ashes about in amulets;
+others buried in hollow trees; others simply inhumed. Some placed the
+dead in a hollow tree, and cremated the body after lapse of time. Some
+tied the dead up tightly (a common practice with inhumation), and
+then burned him. Some buried the dead in an erect 'posture. The common
+explanation of burning was that it prevented the dead from returning,
+thus it has always been usual to burn the bodies of vampires. Did a race
+so backward hit on an idea unknown to the Mycenaean Greeks?
+[Footnote: Ling Roth., _The Tasmanians_, pp. 128-134. Reports of Early
+Discoverers.] If the usual explanation be correct--burning prevents
+the return of the dead--how did the Homeric Greeks come to substitute
+burning for the worship and feeding of the dead, which had certainly
+prevailed? How did the ancient method return, overlapping and blent with
+the method of cremation, as in the early Dipylon interments? We can
+only say that the Homeric custom is definite and isolated, and that but
+slight variations occur in the methods of Homeric burial.
+
+(1)In _Iliad_, VI, 4 I 6 _ff_, Andromache _SAYS_ that Achilles slew her
+father, "yet he despoiled him not, for his soul had shame of that; but
+he burnt him in his inlaid armour, and raised a barrow over him." We are
+not told that the armour was interred with the ashes of Eetion. This is
+a peculiar case. We always hear in the that the dead are burned, and
+the ashes of princes are placed in a vessel of gold within an artificial
+hillock; but we do not hear, except in this passage, that they are
+burned in their armour, or that it is burned, or that it is buried with
+the ashes of the dead. The invariable practice is for the victor, if he
+can, to despoil the body of the fallen foe; but Achilles for some reason
+spared that indignity in the case of Eetion. [Footnote: German examples
+of burning the amis of the cremated dead and then burying them are given
+by Mr. Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece,_ vol. i. pp. 498, 499.]
+
+(2) _ILIAD,_ VII. 85. Hector, in his challenge to a single combat, makes
+the conditions that the victor shall keep the arms and armour of the
+vanquished, but shall restore his body to his friends. The Trojans
+will burn him, if he falls; if the Achaean falls, the others will do
+something expressed by the word [Greek: tarchuchosi] probably a word
+surviving from an age of embalment. [Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische
+Epos,_ pp. 55, 56.] It has come to mean, generally, to do the funeral
+rites. The hero is to have a barrow or artificial howe or hillock built
+over him, "beside wide Hellespont," a memorial of him, and of Hector's
+valour.
+
+On the River Helmsdale, near Kildonan, on the left bank, there is such
+a hillock which has never, it is believed, been excavated. It preserves
+the memory of its occupant, an early Celtic saint; whether he was
+cremated or not it is impossible to say. But his memory is not lost,
+and the howe, cairn, or hillock, in Homer is desired by the heroes as a
+MEMORIAL.
+
+On the terms proposed by Hector the arms of the dead could not be either
+burned or buried with him.
+
+(3) Iliad, IX. 546. Phoenix says that the Calydonian boar "brought many
+to the mournful pyre." All were cremated.
+
+(4) _Iliad_, XXII 50-55. Andromache in her dirge (the _regret_ of the
+French mediaeval epics) says that Hector lies unburied by the ships and
+naked, but she will burn raiment of his, "delicate and fair, the work of
+women ... to thee no profit, since thou wilt never lie therein, yet this
+shall be honour to thee from the men and women of Troy." Her meaning
+is not very clear, but she seems to imply that if Hector's body were in
+Troy it would be clad in garments before cremation.
+
+Helbig appears to think that to clothe the dead in _garments_ was an
+Ionian, not an ancient epic custom. But in Homer the dead always wear at
+least one garment, the [Greek: pharos], a large mantle, either white or
+purple, such as Agamemnon wears in peace (Iliad, II 43), except when,
+like Eetion and Elpenor in the Odyssey, they are burned in their armour.
+In _Iliad,_ XXIII. 69 _ff_., the shadow of the dead unburned Patroclus
+appears to Achilles in his sleep asking for "his dues of fire." The
+whole passage, with the account of the funeral of Patroclus, must be
+read carefully, and compared with the funeral rites of Hector at the
+end of Book XXIV. Helbig, in an essay of great erudition, though perhaps
+rather fantastic in its generalisations, has contrasted the burials of
+the two heroes. Patroclus is buried, he says, in a true portion of the
+old Aeolic epic (Sir Richard Jebb thought the whole passage "Ionic"),
+though even into this the late Ionian _bearbeiter_ (a spectral figure),
+has introduced his Ionian notions. But the Twenty-fourth Book itself
+is late and Ionian, Helbig says, not genuine early Aeolian epic poetry.
+[Footnote: Helbig, _Zu den Homerischen Bestattungsgebrauechen_. Aus den
+Sitzungsberichten der philos. philol. und histor. Classe der Kgl. bayer.
+Academie der Wissenschaften. 1900. Heft. ii. pp. 199-299.] The burial of
+Patroclus, then, save for Ionian late interpolations, easily detected by
+Helbig, is, he assures us, genuine "kernel," [Footnote: 2 Op. _laud._,
+p. 208.] while Hector's burial "is partly Ionian, and describes the
+destiny of the dead heroes otherwise than as in the old Aeolic epos."
+
+Here Helbig uses that one of his two alternate theories according to
+which the late Ionian poets do not cling to old epic tradition, but
+bring in details of the life of their own date. By Helbig's other
+alternate theory, the late poets cling to the model set in old epic
+tradition in their pictures of details of life.
+
+Disintegrationists differ: far from thinking that the late Ionian poet
+who buried Hector varied from the AEolic minstrel who buried Patroclus
+(in Book XXIII.), Mr. Leaf says that Hector's burial is "almost an
+abstract" of that of Patroclus. [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, XXII Note to
+791.] He adds that Helbig's attempts "to distinguish the older AEolic
+from the newer and more sceptical 'Ionic' faith seem to me visionary."
+[Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii. p. 619. Note 2] Visionary, indeed, they do
+seem, but they are examples of the efforts made to prove that the Iliad
+bears marks of composition continued through several centuries. We must
+remember that, according to Helbig, the Ionians, colonists in a new
+country, "had no use for ghosts." A fresh colony does not produce
+ghosts. "There is hardly an English or Scottish castle without its spook
+(_spuck_). On the other hand, you look in vain for such a thing in the
+United States"--spiritualism apart. [Footnote: Op. _laud._, p. 204.]
+
+This is a hasty generalisation! Helbig will, if he looks, find ghosts
+enough in the literature of North America while still colonial, and in
+Australia, a still more newly settled country, sixty years ago Fisher's
+ghost gave evidence of Fisher's murder, evidence which, as in another
+Australian case, served the ends of justice. [Footnote: See, in _The_
+Valet's Tragedy (A. L.): "Fisher's Ghost."] More recent Australian
+ghosts are familiar to psychical research.
+
+This colonial theory is one of Helbig's too venturous generalisations.
+He studies the ghost, or rather dream-apparition, of Patroclus after
+examining the funeral of Hector; but we shall begin with Patroclus.
+Achilles (XXIII. 4-16) first hails his friend "even in the House of
+Hades" (so he believes that spirits are in Hades), and says that he
+has brought Hector "raw for dogs to devour," and twelve Trojans of good
+family "to slaughter before thy pyre." That night, when Achilles is
+asleep (XXIII. 65) the spirit ([Greek: psyche]) of Patroclus appears to
+him, says that he is forgotten, and begs to be burned at once, that he
+may pass the gates of Hades, for the other spirits drive him off and
+will not let him associate with them "beyond the River," and he wanders
+vaguely along the wide-gated dwelling of Hades. "Give me thy hand, for
+never more again shall I come back from Hades, when ye have given me my
+due of fire." Patroclus, being newly discarnate, does not yet know
+that a spirit cannot take a living man's hand, though, in fact, tactile
+hallucinations are not uncommon in the presence of phantasms of the
+dead. "Lay not my bones apart from thine ... let one coffer" ([Greek:
+soros]) "hide our bones."
+
+ [Greek: Soros], like _larnax_, is a coffin (_Sarg_), or
+what the Americans call a "casket," in the opinion of Helbig: [Footnote:
+OP. _laud_., p.217.] it is an oblong receptacle of the bones and dust.
+Hector was buried in a _larnax_; SO will Achilles and Patroclus be
+when Achilles falls, but the dust of Patroclus is kept, meanwhile, in a
+golden covered cup (phialae) in the quarters of Achilles; it is not laid
+in howe after his cremation (XXIII. 243).
+
+Achilles tries to embrace Patroclus, but fails, like Odysseus with the
+shade of his mother in Hades, in the _ODYSSEY_. He exclaims that "there
+remaineth then even in the House of Hades a spirit and phantom of the
+dead, albeit the life" (or the wits) "be not anywise therein, for all
+night hath the spirit of hapless Patroclus stood over me...."
+
+In this speech Helbig detects the hand of the late Ionian poet. What
+goes before is part of the genuine old Epic, the kernel, done at a time
+when men believed that spooks could take part in the affairs of the
+upper world. Achilles therefore (in his dream), thought that he
+could embrace his friend. It was the sceptical Ionian, in a fresh and
+spookless colony, who knew that he could not; he thinks the ghost a mere
+dream, and introduces his scepticism in XXIII. 99-107. He brought
+in "the ruling ideas of his own period." The ghost, says the Ionian
+_bearbeiter_, is intangible, though in the genuine old epic the ghost
+himself thought otherwise--he being new to the situation and without
+experience. This is the first sample of the critical Ionian spirit,
+later so remarkable in philosophy and natural science, says Helbig.
+[Footnote: Op. laud., pp. 233,234.]
+
+We need not discuss this acute critical theory. The natural
+interpretation of the words of Achilles is obvious; as Mr. Leaf remarks,
+the words are "the cry of sudden personal conviction in a matter which
+has hitherto been lazily accepted as an orthodox dogma." [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 620.] Already, as we have seen, Achilles has made
+promises to Patroclus in the House of Hades, now he exclaims "there
+really is something in the doctrine of a feeble future life."
+
+It is vain to try to discriminate between an old epic belief in
+able-bodied ghosts and an Ionian belief in mere futile _shades_, in
+the Homeric poems. Everywhere the dead are too feeble to be worth
+worshipping after they are burned; but, as Mr. Leaf says with obvious
+truth, and with modern instances, "men are never so inconsistent as in
+their beliefs about the other world." We ourselves hold various beliefs
+simultaneously. The natives of Australia and of Tasmania practise, or
+did practise, every conceivable way of disposing of the dead--burying,
+burning, exposure in trees, carrying about the bodies or parts of them,
+eating the bodies, and so forth. If each such practice corresponded, as
+archaeologists believe, to a different opinion about the soul, then
+all beliefs were held together at once, and this, in fact, is the case.
+There is not now one and now another hard and fast orthodoxy of belief
+about the dead, though now we find ancestor worship prominent and now in
+the shade.
+
+After gifts of hair and the setting up of jars full of oil and honey,
+Achilles has the body laid on the top of the pyre in the centre. Bodies
+of sheep and oxen, two dogs and four horses, are strewed around: why, we
+know not, for the dead is not supposed to need food: the rite may be
+a survival, for there were sacrifices at the burials of the Mycenaean
+shaft graves. Achilles slays also the twelve Trojans, "because of mine
+anger at thy slaying," he says (XXIII. 23). This was his reason, as far
+as he consciously had any reason, not that his friend might have twelve
+thralls in Hades. After the pyre is alit Achilles drenches it all night
+with wine, and, when the flame dies down, the dead hero's bones are
+collected and placed in the covered cup of gold. The circle of the
+barrow is then marked out, stones are set up round it (we see them round
+Highland tumuli), and earth is heaped up; no more is done; the tomb is
+empty; the covered cup holding the ashes is in the hut of Achilles.
+
+We must note another trait. After the body of Patroclus was recovered,
+it was washed, anointed, laid on a bier, and covered from head to foot
+[Greek: heano liti], translated by Helbig, "with a linen sheet" (cf.
+XXIII. 254). The golden cup with the ashes is next wrapped [Greek: heano
+liti]; here Mr. Myers renders the words "with a linen veil." Scottish
+cremation burials of the Bronze Age retain traces of linen wrappings
+of the urn. [Footnote: _Proceedings of the Scottish society of
+Antiquaries_, 1905, p. 552. For other cases, _cf._ Leaf, _Iliad_, XXIV.
+796. Note.] Over all a white [Greek: pharos] (mantle) was spread. In
+_Iliad_, XXIV. 231, twelve [Greek: pharea] with chitons, single cloaks,
+and other articles of dress, are taken to Achilles by Priam as part of
+the ransom of Hector's body. Such is the death-garb of Patroclus; but
+Helbig, looking for Ionian innovations in Book XXIV., finds that the
+death-garb of Hector is not the same as that of Patroclus in Book XXIII.
+One difference is that when the squires of Achilles took the ransom of
+Hector from the waggon of Priam, they left in it two [Greek: pharea] and
+a well-spun chiton. The women washed and anointed Hector's body; they
+clad him in the chiton, and threw one [Greek: pharos] over it; we are
+not told what they did with the other. Perhaps, as Mr. Leaf says, it was
+used as a cover for the bier, perhaps it was not, but was laid under the
+body (Helbig). All we know is that Hector's body was restored to Priam
+in a chiton and a [Greek: pharos], which do not seem to have been
+removed before he was burned; while Patroclus had no chiton in death,
+but a [Greek: pharos] and, apparently, a linen sheet.
+
+To the ordinary reader this does not seem, in the circumstances, a
+strong mark of different ages and different burial customs. Priam did
+not bring any linen sheet--or whatever [Greek: heanos lis] may be--in
+the waggon as part of Hector's ransom; and it neither became Achilles
+to give nor Priam to receive any of Achilles's stuff as death-garb for
+Hector. The squires, therefore, gave back to Priam, to clothe his dead
+son, part of what he had brought; nothing can be more natural, and
+there, we may say, is an end on't. They did what they could in the
+circumstances. But Helbig has observed that, in a Cean inscription of
+the fifth century B.C., there is a sumptuary law, forbidding a corpse to
+wear more than three white garments, a sheet under him, a chiton, and a
+mantle cast over him. [Footnote: op. _laud_., p. 209.] He supposes that
+Hector wore the chiton, and had one [Greek: pharos] over him and the
+other under him, though Homer does not say that. The Laws of Solon also
+confined the dead man to three articles of dress. [Footnote: Plutarch,
+Solon, 21.] In doing so Solon sanctioned an old custom, and that Ionian
+custom, described by the author of Book XXIV., bewrays him, says Helbig,
+for a late Ionian _bearbeiter_, deserting true epic usages and inserting
+those of his own day. But in some Attic Dipylon vases, in the pictures
+of funerals, we see no garments or sheets over the corpses.
+
+Penelope also wove a [Greek: charos] against the burial of old Laertes,
+but surely she ought to have woven for him; on Helbig's showing Hector
+had _two_, Patroclus had only one; Patroclus is in the old epic, Hector
+and Laertes are in the Ionian epics; therefore, Laertes should have had
+two [Greek: charea] but we only hear of one. Penelope had to finish the
+[Greek: charos] and show it; [Footnote: Odyssey, XXIV. 147.] now if she
+wanted to delay her marriage, she should have begun the second [Greek:
+charos] just as necessary as the first, if Hector, with a pair of
+[Greek: charea] represents Ionian usage. But Penelope never thought of
+what, had she read Helbig, she would have seen to be so obvious. She
+thought of no funeral garments for the old man but one shroud [Greek:
+speiron] (Odyssey, II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a
+character of late Ionian, not of genuine old AEolic epic, she should
+have known better. It is manifest that if even the acuteness and vast
+erudition of Helbig can only find such invisible differences as
+these between the manners of the genuine old epic and the late Ionian
+innovations, there is really no difference, beyond such trifles as
+diversify custom in any age.
+
+Hector, when burned and when his ashes have been placed in the casket,
+is laid in a [Greek: kapetos], a ditch or trench (_Iliad_, XV. 356;
+XVIII. 564); but here (XXIV. 797) [Greek: kapetos] is a chamber covered
+with great stones, within the howe, the casket being swathed with purple
+robes, and this was the end. The ghost of Hector would not revisit the
+sun, as ghosts do freely in the Cyclic poems, a proof that the Cyclics
+are later than the Homeric poems. [Footnote: Helbig, op. _laud_., pp.
+240, 241.]
+
+If the burning of the weapons of Eetion and Elpenor are traces of
+another than the _old_ AEolic epic faith, [Footnote: Ibid., p. 253.]
+they are also traces of another than the late _Ionic_ epic faith, for no
+weapons are burned with Hector. In the _Odyssey_ the weapons of Achilles
+are not burned; in the _Iliad_ the armour of Patroclus is not burned.
+No victims of any kind are burned with Hector: possibly the poet was not
+anxious to repeat what he had just described (his last book is already
+a very long book); possibly the Trojans did not slay victims at the
+burning.
+
+The howes or barrows built over the Homeric dead were hillocks high
+enough to be good points of outlook for scouts, as in the case of the
+barrow of AEsyetes (_Iliad_, II. 793) and "the steep mound," the howe of
+lithe Myrine (II. 814). We do not know that women were usually buried
+in howe, but Myrine was a warrior maiden of the Amazons. We know, then,
+minutely what the Homeric mode of burial was, with such variations as
+have been noted. We have burning and howe even in the case of an obscure
+oarsman like Elpenor. It is not probable, however, that every peaceful
+mechanic had a howe all to himself; he may have had a small family
+cairn; he may not have had an expensive cremation.
+
+The interesting fact is that no barrow burial precisely of the Homeric
+kind has ever been discovered in Greek sites. The old Mycenaeans buried
+either in shaft graves or in a stately _tholos_; and in rock chambers,
+later, in the town cemetery: they did not burn the bodies. The people of
+the Dipylon period sometimes cremated, sometimes inhumed, but they built
+no barrow over the dead. [Footnote: _Annal. de l'Inst.,_ 1872, pp. 135,
+147, 167. Plausen, _ut supra_.] The Dipylon was a period of early iron
+swords, made on the lines of not the best type of bronze sword. Now, in
+Mr. Leaf's opinion, our Homeric accounts of burial "are all late; the
+oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii.
+p. 619. Note 2. While Mr. Leaf says that "the oldest parts of the poems
+tell us nothing" of burial, he accepts XXII. 342, 343 as of the oldest
+part. These lines describe cremation, and Mr. Leaf does not think them
+borrowed from the "later" VII. 79, 80, but that VII. 79, 80 are "perhaps
+borrowed" from XXII. 342, 343. It follows that "the oldest parts of the
+poems" do tell us of cremation.] We shall show, however, that Mr. Leaf's
+"kernel" alludes to cremation. What is "late"? In this case it is not
+the Dipylon period, say 900-750 B.C. It is not any later period; one or
+two late barrow burials do not answer to the Homeric descriptions. The
+"late" parts of the poems, therefore, dealing with burials, in Books
+VI., VII., XIX., XXIII., XXIV., and the Odyssey, are of an age not
+in "the Mycenaean prime," not in the Dipylon period, not in any later
+period, say the seventh or sixth centuries B.C., and, necessarily, not
+of any subsequent period. Yet nobody dreams of saying that the poets
+describe a purely fanciful form of interment. They speak of what they
+know in daily life. If it be argued that the late poets preserve, by
+sheer force of epic tradition, a form of burial unknown in their own
+age, we ask, "Why did epic tradition not preserve the burial methods
+of the Mycenaean prime, the shaft grave, or the _tholos_, without
+cremation?"
+
+Mr. Leaf's own conclusion is that the people of Mycenae were "spirit
+worshippers, practising inhumation, and partial mummification;" the
+second fact is dubious. "In the post-Mycenaean 'Dipylon' period, we
+find cremation and sepulture practised side by side. In the interval,
+therefore, two beliefs have come into conflict. [Footnote: All
+conceivable beliefs, we have said, about the dead are apt to coexist.
+For every conceivable and some rather inconceivable contemporary
+Australian modes of dealing with the dead, see Howitt, _Native Tribes of
+South-East Australia_; Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
+Australia_.] It seems that the Homeric poems mark this intermediate
+point...." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 622.] In that case
+the Homeric poems are of one age, or, at least, all of them save "the
+original kernel" are of one age, namely, a period subsequent to the
+Mycenaean prime, but considerably prior to the Dipylon period, which
+exhibits a mixture of custom; cremation and inhumation coexisting,
+without barrows or howes.
+
+We welcome this conclusion, and note that (whatever may be the case
+with the oldest parts of the poems which say nothing about funerals) the
+latest expansions must be of about 1100-1000 B.C. (?). The poem is so
+early that it is prior to hero worship and ancestor worship; or it
+might be more judicious to say that the poem is of an age that did not,
+officially, practise ancestor worship, whatever may have occurred in
+folk-custom. The Homeric age is one which had outgrown ancestor and hero
+worship, and had not, like the age of the Cyclics, relapsed into it.
+_Enfin_, unless we agree with Helbig as to essential variations of
+custom, the poems are the work of one age, and that a brief age, and an
+age of peculiar customs, cremation and barrow burial; and of a religion
+that stood, without spirit worship, between the Mycenzean period and the
+ninth century. That seems as certain as anything in prehistoric times
+can be, unless we are to say, that after the age of shaft graves and
+spirit worship came an age of cremation and of no spirit worship; and
+that late poets consciously and conscientiously preserved the tradition
+of _this_ period into their own ages of hero worship and inhumation,
+though they did not preserve the tradition of the shaft-grave period.
+We cannot accept this theory of adherence to stereotyped poetical
+descriptions, nor can any one consistently adopt it in this case.
+
+The reason is obvious. Mr. Leaf, with many other critics, distinguishes
+several successive periods of "expansion." In the first stratum we have
+the remains of "the original kernel." Among these remains is The Slaying
+of Hector (XXII. 1-404), "with but slight additions." [Footnote: Leaf,
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. p. xi.] In the Slaying of Hector that hero indicates
+cremation as the mode of burial. "Give them my body back again, that
+the Trojans and Trojans' wives grant me my due of fire after my death."
+Perhaps this allusion to cremation, in the "original kernel" in the
+Slaying of Hector, may be dismissed as a late borrowing from Book VII.
+79, 80, where Hector makes conditions that the fallen hero shall be
+restored to his friends when he challenges the Achaeans to a duel. But
+whoever knows the curious economy by way of repetition that marks early
+national epics has a right to regard the allusion to cremation (XXII,
+342,343) as an example of this practice. Compare _La Chancun de
+Williame_, lines 1041-1058 with lines 1140-1134. In both the dinner of
+a knight who has been long deprived of food is described in passages
+containing many identical lines. The poet, having found his formula,
+uses it whenever occasion serves. There are several other examples in
+the same epic. [Footnote: _Romania_, xxxiv. PP. 245, 246.] Repetitions
+in Homer need not indicate late additions; the artifice is part of the
+epic as it is of the ballad manner. If we are right, cremation is the
+mode of burial even in "the original kernel." Hector, moreover, in the
+kernel (XXII. 256-259) makes, before his final fight with Achilles,
+the same proposal as he makes in his challenge to a duel (VII. 85 et
+_seqq_.). The victor shall give back the body of the vanquished to his
+friends, but how the friends are to bury it Hector does not say--in this
+place. When dying, he does say (XXII. 342, 343).
+
+In the kernel and all periods of expansion, funeral rites are described,
+and in all the method is cremation, with a howe or a barrow. Thus the
+method of cremation had come in as early as the "kernel," The Slaying
+of Hector, and as early as the first expansions, and it lasted till the
+period of the latest expansions, such as Books XXIII., XXIV.
+
+But what is the approximate date of the various expansions of the
+original poem? On that point Mr. Leaf gives his opinion. The Making of
+the Arms of Achilles (Books XVIII., XIX. 1-39) is, with the Funeral of
+Patroclus (XXIII. 1-256), in the second set of expansions, and is thus
+two removes later than the original "kernel." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_,
+vol. ii. p. xii.] Now this is the period--the Making of the Shield for
+Achilles is, at least, in touch with the period--of "the eminently free
+and naturalistic treatment which we find in the best Mycenaean work,
+in the dagger blades, in the siege fragment, and notably in the Vaphio
+cups," (which show long-haired men, not men close-cropped, as in the
+daggers and siege fragment). [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p, 606.]
+The poet of the age of the second expansions, then,' is at least
+in touch with the work of the shaft grave and ages. He need not be
+contemporary with that epoch, but "may well have had in his mind the
+work of artists older than himself." It is vaguely possible that he may
+have seen an ancient shield of the Mycenaean prime, and may be inspired
+by that. [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. pp. 606, 607.]
+
+Moreover, and still more remarkable, the ordinary Homeric form of
+cremation and howe-burial is even older than the period which, if not
+contemporary with, is clearly reminiscent of, the art of the shaft
+graves. For, in the period of the first expansions (VII. 1-3 I 2),
+the form of burial is cremation, with a barrow or tumulus. [Footnote:
+_Ibid_., vol. ii. p. xi. and pp. 606, 607.] Thus Mr. Leaf's opinion
+might lead us to the conclusion that the usual Homeric form of burial
+occurs in a period _PRIOR_ to an age in which the poet is apparently
+reminiscent of the work of two early epochs--the epoch of shaft graves
+and that of _THOLOS_ graves. If this be so, cremation and urn burial in
+cairns may be nearly as old as the Mycenaean shaft graves, or as old
+as the _THOLOS_ graves, and they endure into the age of the latest
+expansions.
+
+We must not press, however, opinions founded on the apparent technical
+resemblance of the free style and coloured metal work on the shield of
+Achilles, to the coloured metal work and free design on the daggers
+of the Mycenaean shaft graves. It is enough for us to note that the
+passages concerning burial, from the "kernel" itself, and also from the
+earliest to the latest expansions, are all perfectly harmonious, and of
+a single age--unless we are convinced by Helbig's objections. That age
+must have been brief, indeed, for, before it arrives, the period of
+_tholos_ graves, as at Vaphio, must expire, on one hand, while the
+blending of cremation with inhumation, in the Dipylon age, must have
+been evolved after the cremation age passed, on the other. That brief
+intervening age, however, was the age of the _ILIAD_ and Odyssey. This
+conclusion can only be avoided by alleging that late poets, however
+recent and revolutionary, carefully copied the oldest epic model of
+burial, while they innovated in almost every other point, so we are
+told. We can go no further till we find an unrifled cairn burial
+answering to Homeric descriptions. We have, indeed, in Thessaly, "a
+large tumulus which contained a silver urn with burned remains." But
+the accompanying pottery dated it in the second century B.C. [Footnote:
+Ridgeway, _Early Age Of Greece_, vol. i. p. 491; _Journal of Hellenic
+Studies, vol. xx_. pp. 20-25.] It is possible enough that all tumuli of
+the Homeric period have been robbed by grave plunderers in the course
+of the ages, as the Vikings are said to have robbed the cairns of
+Sutherlandshire, in which they were not likely to find a rich reward
+for their labours. A conspicuous howe invites robbery--the heroes of the
+Saga, like Grettir, occasionally rob a howe--and the fact is unlucky for
+the Homeric archaeologist.
+
+We have now tried to show that, as regards (1) to the absence from
+Homer of new religious and ritual ideas, or of very old ideas revived
+in Ionia, (2) as concerns the clear conception of a loose form of
+feudalism, with an Over-Lord, and (3) in the matter of burial, the
+_Iliad_ and Odyssey are self-consistent, and bear the impress of a
+single and peculiar moment of culture.
+
+The fact, if accepted, is incompatible with the theory that the poets
+both introduced the peculiar conditions of their own later ages and
+also, on other occasions, consciously and consistently "archaised." Not
+only is such archaising inconsistent with the art of an uncritical age,
+but a careful archaiser, with all the resources of Alexandrian criticism
+at his command, could not archaise successfully. We refer to Quintus
+Smyrnaeus, author of the _Post Homerica_, in fourteen books. Quintus
+does his best; but we never observe in him that _naif_ delight in
+describing weapons and works of art, and details of law and custom which
+are so conspicuous in Homer and in other early poets. He does give us
+Penthesilea's great sword, with a hilt of ivory and silver; but of what
+metal was the blade? We are not told, and the reader of Quintus will
+observe that, though he knows [Greek: chalkos], bronze, as a synonym
+for weapons, he scarcely ever, if ever, says that a sword or spear or
+arrow-head was of bronze--a point on which Homer constantly insists.
+When he names the military metal Quintus usually speaks of iron. He has
+no interest in the constitutional and legal sides of heroic life, so
+attractive to Homer.
+
+Yet Quintus consciously archaises, in a critical age, with Homer as
+his model. Any one who believes that in an uncritical age rhapsodists
+archaised, with such success as the presumed late poets of the _ILIAD_
+must have done, may try his hand in our critical age, at a ballad in the
+style of the Border ballads. If he succeeds in producing nothing that
+will at once mark his work as modern, he will be more successful than
+any poet who has made the experiment, and more successful than the most
+ingenious modern forgers of gems, jewels, and terra-cottas. They seldom
+deceive experts, and, when they do, other experts detect the deceit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+HOMERIC ARMOUR
+
+Tested by their ideas, their picture of political society, and their
+descriptions of burial rites, the presumed authors of the alleged
+expansions of the _Iliad_ all lived in one and the same period of
+culture. But, according to the prevalent critical theory, we read in
+the _Iliad_ not only large "expansions" of many dates, but also briefer
+interpolations inserted by the strolling reciters or rhapsodists. "Until
+the final literary redaction had come," says Mr. Leaf--that is about 540
+B.C.--"we cannot feel sure that any details, even of the oldest work,
+were secure from the touch of the latest poet." [Footnote: Leaf,
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. p. ix.]
+
+Here we are far from Mr. Leaf's own opinion that "the whole scenery of
+the poems, the details of armour, palaces, dress, decoration ... had
+become stereotyped, and formed a foundation which the Epic poet dared
+not intentionally sap...." [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. i. p. xv.] We now
+find [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. ix.] that "the latest poet" saps
+as much as he pleases down to the middle of the sixth century B.C.
+Moreover, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., the supposed
+editor employed by Hsistratus made "constant additions of transitional
+passages," and added many speeches by Nestor, an ancestor of
+Pisistratus.
+
+Did these very late interlopers, down to the sixth century, introduce
+modern details into the picture of life? did they blur the _unus_ color?
+We hope to prove that, if they did so at all, it was but slightly. That
+the poems, however, with a Mycenaean or sub-Mycenaean basis of actual
+custom and usage, contain numerous contaminations from the usage of
+centuries as late as the seventh, is the view of Mr. Leaf, and Reichel
+and his followers. [Footnote: Homerische Waffen. Von Wolfgang Reichel.
+Wien, 1901.]
+
+Reichel's hypothesis is that the heroes of the original poet had no
+defensive armour except the great Mycenaean shields; that the ponderous
+shield made the use of chariots imperatively necessary; that, after the
+Mycenaean age, a small buckler and a corslet superseded the unwieldy
+shield; that chariots were no longer used; that, by the seventh century
+B.C., a warrior could not be thought of without a breastplate; and that
+new poets thrust corslets and greaves into songs both new and old.
+
+How the new poets could conceive of warriors as always in chariots,
+whereas in practice they knew no war chariots, and yet could not
+conceive of them without corslets which the original poet never saw, is
+Reichel's secret. The new poets had in the old lays a plain example to
+follow. They did follow it as to chariots and shields; as to corslets
+and greaves they reversed it. Such is the Reichelian theory.
+
+ THE SHIELD
+
+As regards armour, controversy is waged over the shield, corslet, and
+bronze greaves. In Homer the shield is of leather, plated with bronze,
+and of bronze is the corslet. No shields of bronze plating and no bronze
+corslets have been found in Mycenaean excavations.
+
+We have to ask, do the Homeric descriptions of shields tally with the
+representations of shields in works of art, discovered in the graves
+of Mycenae, Spata in Attica, Vaphio in Sparta, and elsewhere? If the
+descriptions in Homer vary from these relics, to what extent do they
+vary? and do the differences arise from the fact that the poet describes
+consistently what he sees in his own age, or are the variations caused
+by late rhapsodists in the Iron Age, who keep the great obsolete shields
+and bronze weapons, yet introduce the other military gear of their day,
+say 800-600 B.C.--gear unknown to the early singers?
+
+It may be best to inquire, first, what does the poet, or what do
+the poets, say about shields? and, next, to examine the evidence of
+representations of shields in Mycenaean art; always remembering that the
+poet does not pretend to live, and beyond all doubt does not live, in
+the Mycenaean prime, and that the testimony of the tombs is liable to be
+altered by fresh discoveries.
+
+In _Iliad_, II. 388, the shield (_aspis_) is spoken of as "covering a
+man about" ([Greek: _amphibrotae_]), while, in the heat of battle, the
+baldric (_telamon_), or belt of the shield, "shall be wet with sweat."
+The shield, then, is not an Ionian buckler worn on the left arm, but is
+suspended by a belt, and covers a man, or most of him, just as Mycenaean
+shields are suspended by belts shown in works of art, and cover the
+body and legs. This (II. 388) is a general description applying to the
+shields of all men who fight from chariots. Their great shield answers
+to the great mediaeval shield of the knights of the twelfth century, the
+"double targe," worn suspended from the neck by a belt. Such a shield
+covers a mounted knight's body from mouth to stirrup in an ivory
+chessman of the eleventh to twelfth century A.D., [Footnote: _Catalogue
+of Scottish National Antiquities_, p. 375.] so also in the Bayeux
+tapestry, [Footnote: Gautier, _Chanson de Roland_. Seventh edition, pp.
+393, 394.] and on seals. Dismounted men have the same shield (p. 132).
+
+The shield of Menelaus (III. 348) is "equal in all directions," which we
+might conceive to mean, mathematically "circular," as the words do mean
+that. A shield is said to have "circles," and a spear which grazes
+a shield--a shield which was _[Greek: panton eesae]_, "every way
+equal"--rends both circles, the outer circle of bronze, and the inner
+circle of leather (_Iliad_, XX. 273-281). But the passage is not
+unjustly believed to be late; and we cannot rely on it as proof
+that Homer knew circular shields among others. The epithet _[Greek:
+eukuklykos]_, "of good circle," is commonly given to the shields, but
+does not mean that the shield was circular, we are told, but merely that
+it was "made of circular plates." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
+573.] As for the shield of Menelaus, and other shields described in the
+same words, "every way equal," the epithet is not now allowed to mean
+"circular." Mr. Leaf, annotating _Iliad_, I. 306, says that this sense
+is "intolerably mathematical and prosaic," and translates _[Greek:
+panton eesae]_ as "well balanced on every side." Helbig renders the
+epithets in the natural sense, as "circular." [Footnote: Helbig,
+_Homerische Epos_, p. 315; cf., on the other hand, p. 317, Note I.]
+
+To the rendering "circular" it is objected that a circular shield of,
+say, four feet and a half in diameter, would be intolerably heavy and
+superfluously wide, while the shields represented in Mycenaean art are
+not circles, but rather resemble a figure of eight, in some cases, or a
+section of a cylinder, in others, or, again, a door (Fig. 5, p. 130).
+
+What Homer really meant by such epithets as "equal every way," "very
+circular," "of a good circle," cannot be ascertained, since Homeric
+epithets of the shield, which were previously rendered "circular," "of
+good circle," and so on, are now translated in quite other senses, in
+order that Homeric descriptions may be made to tally with Mycenaean
+representations of shields, which are never circular as represented in
+works of art. In this position of affairs we are unable to determine the
+shape, or shapes, of the shields known to Homer.
+
+A scholar's rendering of Homer's epithets applied to the shield is
+obliged to vary with the variations of his theory about the shield.
+Thus, in 1883, Mr. Leaf wrote, "The poet often calls the shield by names
+which seem to imply that it was round, and yet indicates that it was
+large enough to cover the whole body of a man.... In descriptions the
+round shape is always implied." The words which indicated that the
+shield (or one shield) "really looked like a tower, and really reached
+from neck to ankles" (in two or three cases), were "received by the poet
+from the earlier Achaean lays." "But to Homer the warriors appeared as
+using the later small round shield. His belief in the heroic strength of
+the men of old time made it quite natural to speak of them as bearing
+a shield which at once combined the later circular shape and the old
+heroic expanse...." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies, iv. pp._
+283-285.]
+
+Here the Homeric words which naturally mean "circular" or "round" are
+accepted as meaning "round" or "circular." Homer, it is supposed, in
+practice only knows the round shields of the later age, 700 B.C., so he
+calls shields "round," but, obedient to tradition, he conceives of them
+as very large.
+
+But, after the appearance of Reichel's speculations, the Homeric words
+for "round" and "circular" have been explained as meaning something
+else, and Mr. Leaf, in place of maintaining that Homer knew no shields
+but round shields, now writes (1900), "The small circular shield of
+later times...is equally unknown to Homer, with a very few curious
+exceptions," which Reichel discovered--erroneously, as we shall later
+try to show. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 575.]
+
+Thus does science fluctuate! Now Homer knows in practice none but light
+round bucklers, dating from about 700 B.C.; again, he does not know
+them at all, though they were habitually used in the period at which
+the later parts of his Epic were composed. We shall have to ask, how
+did small round bucklers come to be unknown to late poets who saw them
+constantly?
+
+Some scholars, then, believe that the old original poet always described
+Mycenaean shields, which are of various shapes, but never circular in
+Mycenaean art. If there are any circular shields in the poems, these,
+they say, must have been introduced by poets accustomed, in a much later
+age, to seeing circular bucklers. Therefore Homeric words, hitherto
+understood as meaning "circular," must now mean something else--even if
+the reasoning seems circular.
+
+Other scholars believe that the poet in real life saw various types of
+shields in use, and that some of them were survivals of the Mycenaean
+shields, semi-cylindrical, or shaped like figures of 8, or like a
+door; others were circular; and these scholars presume that Homer meant
+"circular" when he said "circular." Neither school will convert the
+other, and we cannot decide between them. We do not pretend to be
+certain as to whether the original poet saw shields of various types,
+including the round shape, in use, though that is possible, or whether
+he saw only the Mycenaean types.
+
+As regards size, Homer certainly describes, in several cases, shields
+very much larger than most which we know for certain to have been common
+after, say, 700 B.C. He speaks of shields reaching from neck to ankles,
+and "covering the body of a man about." Whether he was also familiar
+with smaller shields of various types is uncertain; he does not
+explicitly say that any small bucklers were used by the chiefs, nor
+does he explicitly say that all shields were of the largest type. It is
+possible that at the time when the Epic was composed various types of
+shield were being tried, while the vast ancient shield was far from
+obsolete.
+
+To return to the _size_ of the shield. In a feigned tale of Odysseus
+(Odyssey, XIV. 474-477), men in a wintry ambush place their shields over
+their shoulders, as they lie on the ground, to be a protection against
+snow. But any sort of shield, large or small, would protect the
+shoulders of men in a recumbent position. Quite a large shield may seem
+to be indicated in _Iliad_, XIII. 400-405, where Idomeneus curls up his
+whole person behind his shield; he was "hidden" by it. Yet, as any
+one can see by experiment, a man who crouched low would be protected
+entirely by a Highland targe of less than thirty inches in diameter, so
+nothing about the size of the shield is ascertained in this passage. On
+a black-figured vase in the British Museum (B, 325) the entire body of
+a crouching warrior is defended by a large Boeotian buckler, oval, and
+with _echancrures_ in the sides. The same remark applies to _Z&ad_[sic],
+XXII. 273-275. Hector watches the spear of Achilles as it flies; he
+crouches, and the spear flies over him. Robert takes this as an "old
+Mycenaean" dodge--to duck down to the bottom of the shield. [Footnote:
+_Studien zur Ilias_, p. 21.] The avoidance by ducking can be managed
+with no shield, or with a common Highland targe, which would cover a
+man in a crouching posture, as when Glenbucket's targe was peppered by
+bullets at Clifton (746), and Cluny shouted "What the devil is this?"
+the assailants firing unexpectedly from a ditch. A few moments of
+experiment, we repeat, prove that a round targe can protect a man in
+Hector's attitude, and that the Homeric texts here throw no light on the
+_size_ of the shield.
+
+The shield of Hector was of black bull's-hide, and as large and long as
+any represented in Mycenaean art, so that, as he walked, the rim knocked
+against his neck and ankles. The shape is not mentioned. Despite its
+size, he _walked_ under it from the plain and field of battle into Troy
+(_Iliad_, VI. 116-118). This must be remembered, as Reichel [Footnote:
+Reichel, 38, 39. Father Browne (_Handbook_, p. 230) writes, "In
+_Odyssey_, XIV 475, Odysseus says he slept within the shield." He says
+"under arms" (_Odyssey_, XIV. 474, but _cf_. XIV. 479).] maintains that
+a man could not walk under shield, or only for a short way; wherefore
+the war chariot was invented, he says, to carry the fighting man from
+point to point (Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 573). Mr. Leaf elaborates
+these points: "Why did not the Homeric heroes ride? Because no man could
+carry such a shield on horseback." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 573.]
+We reply that men could and did carry such shields on horseback, as
+we know on the evidence of works of art and poetry of the eleventh to
+twelfth centuries A.D. Mr. Ridgeway has explained the introduction
+of chariots as the result of horses too small to carry a heavy and
+heavily-armed man as a cavalier.
+
+The shield ([Greek: aspis]), we are told by followers of Reichel, was
+only worn by princes who could afford to keep chariots, charioteers,
+and squires of the body to arm and disarm them. But this can scarcely
+be true, for all the comrades of Diomede had the shield ([Greek: aspis],
+_Iliad_, X. 152), and the whole host of Pandarus of Troy, a noted
+bowman, were shield-bearers ([Greek: aspistaon laon], _Iliad_, IV.
+90), and some of them held their shields ([Greek: sakae]) in front of
+Pandarus when he took a treacherous shot at Menelaus (IV. 113). The
+whole host could not have chariots and squires, we may presume, so the
+chariot was not indispensable to the _ecuyer_ or shield-bearing man.
+
+The objections to this conjecture of Reichel are conspicuous, as we now
+prove.
+
+No Mycenaean work of art shows us a shielded man in a chariot; the men
+with the monstrous shields are always depicted on foot. The only modern
+peoples who, to our knowledge, used a leather shield of the Mycenaean
+size and even of a Mycenaean shape had no horses and chariots, as
+we shall show. The ancient Eastern peoples, such as the Khita and
+Egyptians, who fought from chariots, carried _small_ shields of various
+forms, as in the well-known picture of a battle between the Khita, armed
+with spears, and the bowmen of Rameses II, who kill horse and man with
+arrows from their chariots, and carry no spears; while the Khita, who
+have no bows, merely spears, are shot down as they advance. [Footnote:
+Maspero, _Hist. Ancienne_, ii. p. 225.]. Egyptians and Khita, who fight
+from chariots, use _small_ bucklers, whence it follows that war chariots
+were not invented, or, at least, were not retained in use, for the
+purpose of giving mobility to men wearing gigantic shields, under which
+they could not hurry from point to point. War chariots did not cease to
+be used in Egypt, when men used small shields.
+
+Moreover, Homeric warriors can make marches under shield, while there is
+no mention of chariots to carry them to the point where they are to
+lie in ambush (Odyssey, XIV. 470-510). If the shield was so heavy as
+to render a chariot necessary, would Homer make Hector trudge a
+considerable distance under shield, while Achilles, under shield,
+sprints thrice round the whole circumference of Troy? Helbig notices
+several other cases of long runs under shield. Either Reichel is wrong,
+when he said that the huge shield made the use of the war chariot
+necessary, or the poet is "late"; he is a man who never saw a large
+shield like Hector's, and, though he speaks of such shields, he thinks
+that men could walk and run under them. When men did walk or run under
+shield, or ride, if they ever rode, they would hang it over the left
+side, like the lion-hunters on the famous inlaid dagger of Mycenae,
+[Footnote: For the chariots, _cf_. Reichel, _Homerische Waffen_,
+120_ff_. Wien, 1901.] or the warrior on the chessman referred to above
+(p. 111).
+
+Aias, again, the big, brave, stupid Porthos of the _Iliad_, has the
+largest shield of all, "like a tower" (this shield cannot have been
+circular), and is recognised by his shield. But he never enters a
+chariot, and, like Odysseus, has none of his own, because both men come
+from rugged islands, unfit for chariot driving. Odysseus has plenty
+of shields in his house in Ithaca, as we learn from the account of the
+battle with the Wooers in the _Odyssey;_ yet, in Ithaca, as at Troy, he
+kept no chariot. Here, then, we have nations who fight from chariots,
+yet use small shields, and heroes who wear enormous shields, yet never
+own a chariot. Clearly, the great shield cannot have been the cause of
+the use of the war chariot, as in the theory of Reichel.
+
+Aias and his shield we meet in _Iliad_, VII. 206-220. "He clothed
+himself upon his flesh in _all_ his armour" ([Greek: teuchea]), to quote
+Mr. Leaf's translation; but the poet only _describes_ his shield:
+his "towerlike shield of bronze, with sevenfold ox-hide, that Tychius
+wrought him cunningly; Tychius, the best of curriers, that had his home
+in Hyle, who made for him his glancing shield of sevenfold hides of
+stalwart bulls, and overlaid the seven with bronze."
+
+The shield known to Homer then is, in this case, so tall as to resemble
+a tower, and has bronze plating over bull's hide. By tradition from an
+age of leather shields the Currier is still the shield-maker, though now
+the shield has metal plating. It is fairly clear that Greek tradition
+regarded the shield of Aias as of the kind which covered the body from
+chin to ankles, and resembled a bellying sail, or an umbrella unfurled,
+and drawn in at the sides in the middle, so as to offer the semblance
+of two bellies, or of one, pinched in at or near the centre. This is
+probable, because the coins of Salamis, where Aias was worshipped as a
+local hero of great influence, display this shield as the badge of the
+AEginetan dynasty, claiming descent from Aias. The shield is bossed,
+or bellied out, with two half-moons cut in the centre, representing the
+_waist_, or pinched--in part, of the ancient Mycenaean shield; the same
+device occurs on a Mycenaean ring from AEgina in the British Museum.
+[Footnote: Evans, _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xiii. 213-216.]
+
+In a duel with Aias the spear of Hector pierced the bronze and six
+layers of hide on his shield, but stuck in the seventh. The spear of
+Aias went through the circular (or "every way balanced") huge shield
+of Hector, and through his corslet and _chiton_, but Hector had doubled
+himself up laterally ([Greek: eklinthae], VII. 254), and was not
+wounded. The next stroke of Aias pierced his shield, and wounded his
+neck; Hector replied with a boulder that lighted on the centre of the
+shield of Aias, "on the boss," whether that means a mere ornament or
+knob, or whether it was the genuine boss--which is disputed. Aias broke
+in the shield of Hector with another stone; and the gentle and joyous
+passage of arms was stopped.
+
+The shield of Agamemnon was of the kind that "cover all the body of
+a man," and was "every way equal," or "circular." It was plated
+with twelve circles of bronze, and had twenty [Greek: omphaloi], or
+ornamental knobs of tin, and the centre was of black cyanus (XI.
+31-34). There was also a head of the Gorgon, with Fear and Panic. The
+description is not intelligible, and I do not discuss it.
+
+A man could be stabbed in the middle of the belly, "under his shield"
+(XI. 424-425), not an easy thing to do, if shields covered the whole
+body to the feet; but, when a hero was leaping from his chariot (as in
+this case), no doubt a spear could be pushed up under the shield.
+The ancient Irish romances tell of a _gae bulg_, a spear held in the
+warrior's toes, and jerked up under the shield of his enemy! Shields
+could be held up on high, in an attack on a wall garrisoned by archers
+(XII. 139), the great Norman shield, also, could be thus lifted.
+
+The Locrians, light armed infantry, had no shields, nor bronze helmets,
+nor spears, but slings and bows (XIII. 714). Mr. Leaf suspects that this
+is a piece of "false archaism," but we do not think that early poets
+in an uncritical age are ever archaeologists, good or bad. The poet is
+aware that some men have larger, some smaller shields, just as some have
+longer and some shorter spears (XIV. 370-377); but this does not prove
+that the shields were of different types. A tall man might inherit the
+shield of a short father, or _versa_.
+
+A man in turning to fly might trip on the rim of his shield, which
+proves how large it was: "it reached to his feet." This accident of
+tripping occurred to Periphetes of Mycenae, but it might have happened
+to Hector, whose shield reached from neck to ankles. [Footnote: _Iliad_,
+XV. 645-646.]
+
+Achilles must have been a large man, for he knew nobody whose armour
+would fit him when he lost his own (though his armour fitted Patroclus),
+he could, however, make shift with the tower-like shield of Aias, he
+said.
+
+[Illustration 1: "THE VASE OF ARISTONOTHOS"]
+
+The evidence of the Iliad, then, is mainly to the effect that the heroes
+carried huge shields, suspended by belts, covering the body and legs. If
+Homer means, by the epithets already cited, "of good circle" and "every
+way equal," that some shields of these vast dimensions were circular, we
+have one example in early Greek art which corroborates his description.
+This is "the vase of Aristonothos," signed by that painter, and supposed
+to be of the seventh century (Fig. 1). On one side, the companions of
+Odysseus are boring out the eye of the Cyclops; on the other, a galley
+is being rowed to the attack of a ship. On the raised deck of the
+galley stand three warriors, helmeted and bearing spears. The artist has
+represented their shields as covering their right sides, probably for
+the purpose of showing their devices or blazons. _Their_ shields are
+small round bucklers. On the ship are three warriors whose shields,
+though circular, _cover THE BODY from CHIN TO ANKLES_, as in Homer. One
+shield bears a bull's head; the next has three crosses; the third blazon
+is a crab. [Footnote: Mon. _dell_. Inst., is. pl. 4.]
+
+Such personal armorial bearings are never mentioned by Homer. It is
+not usually safe to argue, from his silence, that he is ignorant of
+anything. He never mentions seals or signet rings, yet they cannot but
+have been familiar to his time. Odysseus does not seal the chest with
+the Phaeacian presents; he ties it up with a cunning knot; there are
+no rings named among the things wrought by Hephaestus, nor among the
+offerings of the Wooers of Penelope. [Footnote: Helbig citing Odyssey,
+VIII. 445-448; _Iliad_, XVIII. 401; Odyssey, xviii. 292-301.]
+
+But, if we are to admit that Homer knew not rings and seals, which
+lasted to the latest Mycenaean times, through the Dipylon age, to the
+very late AEginetan treasure (800 B.C.) in the British Museum, and
+appear again in the earliest dawn of the classical age and in a Cyclic
+poem, it is plain that all the expansionists lived in one, and that a
+most peculiar _ringless_ age. This view suits our argument to a wish,
+but it is not credible that rings and seals and engraved stones, so very
+common in Mycenaean and later times, should have vanished wholly in the
+Homeric time. The poet never mentions them, just as Shakespeare never
+mentions a thing so familiar to him as tobacco. How often are finger
+rings mentioned in the whole mass of Attic tragic poetry? We remember no
+example, and instances are certainly rare: Liddell and Scott give none.
+Yet the tragedians were, of course, familiar with rings and seals.
+
+Manifestly, we cannot say that Homer knew no seals, because he mentions
+none; but armorial blazons on shields could be ignored by no poet of
+war, if they existed.
+
+Meanwhile, the shields of the warriors on the vase, being circular and
+covering body and legs, answer most closely to Homer's descriptions.
+Helbig is reduced to suggest, first, that these shields are worn by men
+aboard ship, as if warriors had one sort of shield when aboard ship and
+another when fighting on land, and as if the men in the other vessel
+were not equally engaged in a sea fight. No evidence in favour of such
+difference of practice, by sea and land, is offered. Again, Helbig does
+not trust the artist, in this case, though the artist is usually trusted
+to draw what he sees; and why should he give the men in the other ship
+or boat small bucklers, genuine, while bedecking the warriors in the
+adverse vessel with large, purely imaginary shields? [Footnote:
+Helbig, _Das Homerische Epos_, ii. pp. 313-314.] It is not in the least
+"probable," as Helbig suggests, that the artist is shirking the trouble
+of drawing the figure.
+
+Reichel supposes that round bucklers were novelties when the vase was
+painted (seventh century), and that the artist did not understand how
+to depict them. [Footnote: _Homerische Waffen_, p. 47.] But he depicted
+them very well as regards the men in the galley, save that, for obvious
+aesthetic reasons, he chose to assume that the men in the galley were
+left-handed and wore their shields on their right arms, his desire
+being to display the blazons of both parties. [Footnote: See the same
+arrangement in a Dipylon vase. Baumeister, _Denkmaler_, iii. p. 1945.]
+We thus see, if the artist may be trusted, that shields, which both
+"reached to the feet" and were circular, existed in his time (the
+seventh century), so that possibly they may have existed in Homer's
+time and survived into the age of small bucklers. Tyrtaeus (late seventh
+century), as Helbig remarks, speaks of "a _wide_ shield, covering
+thighs, shins, breast, and shoulders." [Footnote: _Tyrtaeus_, xi. 23;
+Helbig, _Das Homerische Epos_, ii. p. 315, Note 2.]
+
+Nothing can be more like the large shields of the vase of Aristonothos.
+Thus the huge circular shield seems to have been a practicable shield
+in actual use. If so, when Homer spoke of large circular shields he may
+have meant large circular shields. On the Dodwell pyxis of 650 to 620
+B.C., a man wears an oval shield, covering him from the base of the neck
+to the ankles. He wears it on his left arm. [Footnote: Walters, _Ancient
+Pottery_, p. 316.]
+
+Of shields certainly small and light, worn by the chiefs, there is not
+a notice in the _Iliad_, unless there be a hint to that effect in
+the accounts of heroes running, walking considerable distances, and
+"stepping lightly" under shields, supposed, by the critics, to be of
+crushing weight. In such passages the poet may be carried away by his
+own _verve_, or the heroes of ancient times may be deemed capable of
+exertions beyond those of the poet's contemporaries, as he often tells
+us that, in fact, the old heroes were. A poet is not a scientific
+military writer; and in the epic poetry of all other early races very
+gross exaggeration is permitted, as in the [blank space] the old Celtic
+romances, and, of course, the huge epics of India. In Homer "the skill
+of the poet makes things impossible convincing," Aristotle says; and it
+is a critical error to insist on taking Homer absolutely and always _au
+pied de la lettre_. He seems, undeniably, to have large body-covering
+shields present to his mind as in common use.
+
+Small shields of the Greek historic period are "unknown to Homer," Mr.
+Leaf says, "with a very few curious exceptions," [Footnote: _Iliad_,
+vol. i. p. 575.] detected by Reichel in Book X. 15 [Footnote: _Ibid,_
+vol. i. p. 569, fig. 2.], where Diomede's men sleep with their heads
+resting on their shields, whereas a big-bellied Mycenaean shield
+rises, he says, too high for a pillow. But some Mycenzean shields were
+perfectly flat; while, again, nothing could be more comfortable, as a
+head-rest, than the hollow between the upper and lower bulges of
+the Mycenzean huge shield. The Zulu wooden head-rest is of the same
+character. Thus this passage in Book X. does not prove that small
+circular shields were known to Homer, nor does X. 5 13. 526-530, an
+obscure text in which it is uncertain whether Diomede and Odysseus ride
+or drive the horses of Rhesus. They _could_ ride, as every one must
+see, even though equipped with great body-covering shields. True, the
+shielded hero could neither put his shield at his back nor in front of
+him when he rode; but he could hang it sidewise, when it would cover his
+left side, as in the early Middle Ages (1060-1160 A.D.).
+
+The taking of the shield from a man's shoulders (XI. 374) does not prove
+the shield to be small; the shield hung by the belt (_telamon_) from
+the shoulder. [Footnote: On the other side, see Reichel, _Homerische
+Waffen_, pp. 40-44. Wien, 1901. We have replied to his arguments above.]
+
+So far we have the results that Homer seems most familiar with vast
+body-covering shields; that such shields were suspended by a baldric,
+not worn on the left arm; that they were made of layers of hide, plated
+with bronze, and that such a shield as Aias wore must have been tall,
+doubtless oblong, "like a tower," possibly it was semi-cylindrical.
+Whether the epithets denoting roundness refer to circular shields or to
+the double _targe_, g-shaped, of Mycenaean times is uncertain.
+
+We thus come to a puzzle of unusual magnitude. If Homer does not know
+small circular shields, but refers always to huge shields, whereas,
+from the eighth century B.C. onwards, such shields were not in use
+(disregarding Tyrtaeus, and the vase of Aristonothos on which they
+appear conspicuously, and the Dodwell pyxis), where are we? Either
+we have a harmonious picture of war from a very ancient date of large
+shields, or late poets did not introduce the light round buckler of
+their own period. Meanwhile they are accused of introducing the bronze
+corslets and other defensive armour of their own period. Defensive
+armour was unknown, we are told, in the Mycenaean prime, which, if true,
+does not affect the question. Homer did not live in or describe the
+Mycenaean prime, with its stone arrow-tips. Why did the late poets act
+so inconsistently? Why were they ignorant of small circular shields,
+which they saw every day? Or why, if they knew them, did they not
+introduce them in the poems, which, we are told, they were filling with
+non-Mycenaean greaves and corslets?
+
+This is one of the dilemmas which constantly arise to confront the
+advocates of the theory that the _Iliad_ is a patchwork of many
+generations. "Late" poets, if really late, certainly in every-day
+life knew small parrying bucklers worn on the left arm, and huge
+body-covering shields perhaps they rarely saw in use. They also knew,
+and the original poet, we are told, did not know bronze corslets and
+greaves. The theory of critics is that late poets introduced the bronze
+corslets and greaves with which they were familiar into the poems,
+but scrupulously abstained from alluding to the equally familiar small
+shields. Why are they so recklessly anachronistic and "up-to-date"
+with the corslets and greaves, and so staunchly but inconsistently
+conservative about keeping the huge shields?
+
+Mr. Leaf explains thus: "The groundwork of the Epos is Mycenaean, in the
+arrangement of the house, in the prevalence of copper" (as compared with
+iron), "and, as Reichel has shown, in armour. Yet in many points the
+poems are certainly later than the prime, at least, of the Mycenaean
+age"--which we are the last to deny. "Is it that the poets are
+deliberately trying to present the conditions of an age anterior to
+their own? or are they depicting the circumstances by which they are
+surrounded--circumstances which slowly change during the period of the
+development of the Epos? Cauer decides for the latter alternative, _the
+only one which is really conceivable_ [Footnote: Then how is the alleged
+archaeology of the poet of Book X. conceivable?] in an age whose views
+are in many ways so naive as the poems themselves prove them to have
+been." [Footnote: _Classical Review, ix. pp. 463, 464._]
+
+Here we entirely side with Mr. Leaf. No poet, no painter, no sculptor,
+in a naif, uncritical age, ever represents in art anything but what he
+sees daily in costume, customs, weapons, armour, and ways of life.
+Mr. Leaf, however, on the other hand, occasionally chides pieces of
+deliberate archaeological pedantry in the poets, in spite of his opinion
+that they are always "depicting the circumstances by which they are
+surrounded." But as huge man-covering shields are _not_ among the
+circumstances by which the supposed late poets were surrounded, why
+do they depict them? Here Mr. Leaf corrects himself, and his argument
+departs from the statement that only one theory is "conceivable,"
+namely, that the poets depict their own surroundings, and we are
+introduced to a new proposition. "Or rather we must recognise everywhere
+a compromise between two opposing principles: the singer, on the one
+hand, has to be conservatively tenacious of the old material which
+serves as the substance of his song; on the other hand, he has to be
+vivid and actual in the contributions which he himself makes to the
+common stock." [Footnote: _Ibid._, ix. pp. 463, 464.]
+
+The conduct of such singers is so weirdly inconsistent as not to be
+easily credible. But probably they went further, for "it is possible
+that the allusions" to the corslet "may have been introduced in the
+course of successive modernisation such as the oldest parts of the
+_Iliad_ seem in many cases to have passed through. But, in fact,
+_Iliad_, XI. 234 is the only mention of a corslet in any of the oldest
+strata, so far as we can distinguish them, and here Reichel translates
+_thorex_ 'shield.'" [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 578.] Mr.
+Leaf's statement we understand to mean that, when the singer or reciter
+was delivering an ANCIENT lay he did not introduce any of the military
+gear--light round bucklers, greaves, and corslets--with which his
+audience were familiar. But when the singer delivers a new lay, which
+he himself has added to "the kernel," then he is "vivid and actual," and
+speaks of greaves and corslets, though he still cleaves in his new lay
+to the obsolete chariot, the enormous shield, and, in an age of iron, to
+weapons of bronze. He is a sadly inconsistent new poet!
+
+Meanwhile, sixteen allusions to the corslet "can be cut out," as
+probably "some or all these are additions to the text made at a time
+when it seemed absurd to think of a man in full armour without a
+corslet." [Footnote: _Ibid_, vol. i. p. 577.] Thus the reciters, after
+all, did not spare "the old material" in the matter of corslets. The
+late singers have thus been "conservatively tenacious" in clinging to
+chariots, weapons of bronze, and obsolete enormous shields, while
+they have also been "vivid and actual" and "up to date" in the way
+of introducing everywhere bronze corslets, greaves, and other armour
+unknown, by the theory, in "the old material which is the substance of
+their song." By the way, they have not even spared the shield of the
+old material, for it was of leather or wood (we have no trace of metal
+plating on the old Mycenaean shields), and the singer, while retaining
+the size of it, has added a plating of bronze, which we have every
+reason to suppose that Mycenaean shields of the prime did not present to
+the stone-headed arrow.
+
+This theory of singers, who are at once "conservatively tenacious" of
+the old and impudently radical in pushing in the new, appears to us
+to be logically untenable. We have, in Chapter I, observed the same
+inconsistency in Helbig, and shall have occasion to remark again on its
+presence in the work of that great archaeologist. The inconsistency is
+inseparable from theories of expansion through several centuries. "Many
+a method," says Mr. Leaf, "has been proposed which, up to a certain
+point, seemed irresistible, but there has always been a residuum which
+returned to plague the inventor." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. X.]
+This is very true, and our explanation is that no method which starts
+from the hypothesis that the poems are the product of several centuries
+will work. The "residuum" is the element which cannot be fitted into any
+such hypothesis. But try the hypothesis that the poems are the product
+of a single age, and all is harmonious. There is no baffling "residuum."
+The poet describes the details of a definite age, not that of the
+Mycenaean bloom, not that of 900-600 A.D.
+
+We cannot, then, suppose that many generations of irresponsible reciters
+at fairs and public festivals conservatively adhered to the huge size of
+the shield, while altering its material; and also that the same men, for
+the sake of being "actual" and up to date, dragged bronze corslets and
+greaves not only into new lays, but into passages of lays by old
+poets who had never heard of such things. Consequently, the poetic
+descriptions of arms and armour must be explained on some other theory.
+If the poet, again, as others suppose--Mr. Ridgeway for one--knew such
+bronze-covered circular shields as are common in central and western
+Europe of the Bronze Age, why did he sometimes represent them as
+extending from neck to ankles, whereas the known bronze circular shields
+are not of more than 2 feet 2 inches to 2 feet 6 inches in diameter?
+[Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece, vol. i pp. 453, 471._] Such
+a shield, without the wood or leather, weighed 5 lbs. 2 ozs., [Footnote:
+_Ibid., vol._ i. p. 462.] and a strong man might walk or run under it.
+Homer's shields would be twice as heavy, at least, though, even then,
+not too heavy for a Hector, or an Aias, or Achilles. I do not see that
+the round bronze shields of Limerick, Yetholm, Beith, Lincolnshire, and
+Tarquinii, cited by Mr. Ridgeway, answer to Homer's descriptions of huge
+shields. They are too small. But it is perfectly possible, or rather
+highly probable, that in the poet's day shields of various sizes and
+patterns coexisted.
+
+ ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SHIELDS
+
+Turning to archaeological evidence, we find no remains in the graves of
+the Mycenaean prime of the bronze which covered the ox-hides of Homeric
+shields, though we do find gold ornaments supposed to have been attached
+to shields. There is no evidence that the Mycenaean shield was plated
+with bronze. But if we judge from their shape, as represented in works
+of Mycenaean art, some of the Mycenaean shields were not of wood, but of
+hide. In works of art, such as engraved rings and a bronze dagger (Fig.
+2) with pictures inlaid in other metals, the shield, covering the whole
+body, is of the form of a bellying sail, or a huge umbrella "up," and
+pinched at both sides near the centre: or is like a door, or a section
+of a cylinder; only one sort of shield resembles a big-bellied figure
+of 8. Ivory models of shields indicate the same figure. [Footnote:
+Schuchardt, _Schliemann's Excavations_, p. 192.] A gold necklet found
+at Enkomi, in Cyprus, consists of a line of models of this Mycenaean
+shield. [Footnote: _Excavations in Cyprus_, pl. vii. fig. 604. A. S.
+Murray, 1900.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 2. DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
+
+There also exists a set of small Mycenaean relics called Palladia, found
+at Mycenae, Spata and in the earliest strata of the Acropolis at Athens.
+They resemble "two circles joined together so as to intersect one
+another slightly," or "a long oval pinched in at the middle." They vary
+in size from six inches to half an inch, and are of ivory, glazed ware,
+or glass. Several such shields are engraved on Mycenaean gems; one,
+in gold, is attached to a silver vase. The ornamentation shown on them
+occurs, too, on Mycenaean shields in works of art; in short,
+these little objects are representations in miniature of the big
+double-bellied Mycenaean shield. Mr. Ernest Gardner concludes that these
+objects are the "schematised" reductions of an armed human figure, only
+the shield which covered the whole body is left. They are talismans
+symbolising an armed divinity, Pallas or another. A Dipylon vase (Fig.
+3) shows a man with a shield, possibly evolved out of this kind, much
+scooped out at the waist, and reaching from neck to knees. The shield
+covers his side, not his back or front. [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic
+Studies_, vol. xiii. pp. 21-24.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
+
+One may guess that the original pinch at the waist of the Mycenaean
+shield was evolved later into the two deep scoops to enable the warrior
+to use his arms more freely, while the shield, hanging from his neck by
+a belt, covered the front of his body. Fig. 4 shows shields of 1060-1160
+A.D. equally designed to cover body and legs. Men wore shields, if we
+believe the artists of Mycenae, when lion-hunting, a sport in which
+speed of foot is desirable; so they cannot have been very weighty.
+The shield then was hung over one side, and running was not so very
+difficult as if it hung over back or front (_cf._ Fig. 5). The shields
+sometimes reach only from the shoulders to the calf of the leg.
+[Footnote: Reichel, p. 3, fig. 5, Grave III. at Mycenae.] The wearer of
+the largest kind could only be got at by a sword-stab over the rim into
+the throat [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 2, fig. 2.] (Fig. 5). Some shields of
+this shape were quite small, if an engraved rock-crystal is evidence;
+here the shield is not half so high as an adjacent goat, but it may be a
+mere decoration to fill the field of the gem. [Footnote: Reichel, p. 3,
+fig. 7.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 5. RINGS: SWORDS AND SHIELDS]
+
+Other shields, covering the body from neck to feet, were sections of
+cylinders; several of these are represented on engraved Mycenaean ring
+stones or on the gold; the wearer was protected in front and flank
+[Footnote: _Ibid._, p. 4, fig II, 12; p. I, fig I.] (Fig. 5).
+
+In a "maze of buildings" outside the precincts of the graves of Mycenae,
+Dr. Schliemann found fragments of vases much less ancient than the
+contents of the sepulchres. There was a large amphora, the "Warrior
+Vase" (Fig. 6). The men wear apparently a close-fitting coat of mail
+over a chiton, which reaches with its fringes half down the thigh. The
+shield is circular, with a half-moon cut out at the bottom. The art is
+infantile. Other warriors carry long oval shields reaching, at least,
+from neck to shin. [Footnote: Schuchardt, _Schliemann's_ Excavations,
+pp. 279-285.] They wear round leather caps, their enemies have helmets.
+On a Mycenaean painted _stele_, apparently of the same relatively late
+period, the costume is similar, and the shield--oval--reaches from neck
+to knee. [Footnote: Ridgeway, vol. i. p. 314.] The Homeric shields do
+not answer to the smaller of these late and ugly representations, while,
+in their bronze plating, Homeric shields seem to differ from the leather
+shields of the Mycenaean prime.
+
+Finally, at Enkomi, near Salamis, in Cyprus, an ivory carving (in the
+British Museum) shows a fighting man whose perfectly circular shield
+reaches from neck to knee; this is one of several figures in which Mr.
+Arthur Evans finds "a most valuable illustration of the typical Homeric
+armour." [Footnote: _Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxx.
+pp. 209-214, figs. 5, 6, 9._] The shield, however, is not so huge as
+those of Aias, Hector, and Periphetes.
+
+I can only conclude that Homer describes intermediate types of shield,
+as large as the Mycenaean but plated with bronze, for a reason to be
+given later. This kind of shield, the kind known to Homer, was not the
+invention of late poets living in an age of circular bucklers, worn on
+the left arm, and these supposed late poets never introduce into the
+epics such bucklers.
+
+What manner of military needs prompted the invention of the great
+Mycenaean shields which, by Homer's time, were differentiated by the
+addition of metal plating?
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 6. FRAGMENTS OF WARRIOR VASE]
+
+The process of evolution of the huge Mycenaean shields, and of the
+Homeric shields covering the body from chin to ankles, can easily be
+traced. The nature of the attack expected may be inferred from the
+nature of the defence employed. Body-covering shields were, obviously,
+at first, _defences against showers of arrows_ tipped with stone. "In
+the earlier Mycenaean times the arrow-head of obsidian alone appears,"
+as in Mycenaean Grave IV. In the upper strata of Mycenae and in the
+later tombs the arrow-head is usually of bronze. [Footnote: Tsountas and
+Manatt, p. 206.] No man going into battle naked, without body armour,
+like the Mycenaeans (if they had none), could protect himself with
+a small shield, or even with a round buckler of twenty-six inches in
+diameter, against the rain of shafts. In a fight, on the other hand,
+where man singled out man, and spears were the missiles, and when the
+warriors had body armour, or even when they had not, a small
+shield sufficed; as we see among the spear-throwing Zulus and the
+spear-throwing aborigines of Australia (unacquainted with bows and
+arrows), who mainly use shields scarcely broader than a bat. On the
+other hand, the archers of the Algonquins in their wars with the
+Iroquois, about 1610, used clubs and tomahawks but no spears, no
+missiles but arrows, and their leather shield was precisely the [Greek:
+amphibrotae aspis] of Homer, "covering the whole of a man." It is
+curious to see, in contemporary drawings (1620), Mycenaean shields on
+Red Indian shoulders!
+
+In Champlain's sketches of fights between French and Algonquins against
+Iroquois (1610-1620), we see the Algonquins outside the Iroquois
+stockade, which is defended by archers, sheltering under huge shields
+shaped like the Mycenaean "tower" shield, though less cylindrical; in
+fact, more like the shield of the fallen hunter depicted on the dagger
+of Mycenae. These Algonquin shields partially cover the sides as well as
+the front of the warrior, who stoops behind them, resting the lower rim
+of the shield on the ground. The shields are oblong and rounded at the
+top, much like that of Achilles [Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii p. 605] in
+Mr. Leaf's restoration? The sides curve inward. Another shield, oval in
+shape and flat, appears to have been suspended from the neck, and covers
+an Iroquois brave from chin to feet. The Red Indian shields, like those
+of Mycenae, were made of leather; usually of buffalo hide, [Footnote:
+_Les Voyages de Sr. de Champlain_, Paris, 1620, f. 22: "rondache de
+cuir bouili, qui est d'un animal, comme le boufle."] good against
+stone-tipped arrows. The braves are naked, like the unshielded archers
+on the Mycenaean silver vase fragment representing a siege (Fig. 7). The
+description of the Algonquin shields by Champlain, when compared
+with his drawings, suggests that we cannot always take artistic
+representations as exact. In his designs only a few Algonquins and one
+Iroquois carry the huge shields; the unshielded men are stark naked, as
+on the Mycenaean silver vase. But in his text Champlain says that the
+Iroquois, like the Algonquins, "carried arrow-proof shields" and "a
+sort of armour woven of cotton thread"--Homer's [Greek: linothoraex]
+(_Iliad_, II. 259, 850). These facts appear in only one of Champlain's
+drawings [Footnote: Dix's _Champlain_, p. 113. Appleton, New York, 1903.
+Laverdiere's _Champlain_, vol. iv., plate opposite p. 85 (1870).] (Fig.
+8).
+
+These Iroquois and Algonquin shields are the armour of men exposed, not
+to spears, but to a hail of flint-tipped arrows. As spears came in for
+missiles in Greek warfare, arrows did not wholly go out, but the noble
+warriors preferred spear and sword. [Footnote: Cf. Archilochus, 3.] Mr.
+Ridgeway erroneously says that "no Achaean warrior employs the bow for
+war." [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i. 301.] Teucer, frequently, and
+Meriones use the bow; like Pandarus and Paris, on the Trojan side, they
+resort to bow or spear, as occasion serves. Odysseus, in _Iliad_, Book
+X., is armed with the bow and arrows of Meriones when acting as a spy;
+in the _Odyssey_ his skill as an archer is notorious, but he would not
+pretend to equal famous bowmen of an older generation, such as Heracles
+and Eurytus of OEchalia, whose bow he possessed but did not take to
+Troy. Philoctetes is his master in archery. [Footnote: Odyssey, VIII.
+219-222.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 7. FRAGMENT OF SIEGE VASE]
+
+The bow, however, was little esteemed by Greek warriors who desired to
+come to handstrokes, just as it was despised, to their frequent ruin, by
+the Scots in the old wars with England. Dupplin, Falkirk, Halidon Hill
+and many another field proved the error.
+
+There was much need in Homeric warfare for protection against heavy
+showers of arrows. Mr. Monro is hardly correct when he says that, in
+Homer, "we do not hear of _BODIES_ of archers, of arrows darkening the
+air, as in descriptions of oriental warfare." [Footnote: _Ibid._,
+vol. ii. 305.] These precise phrases are not used by Homer; but,
+nevertheless, arrows are flying thick in his battle pieces. The effects
+are not often noticed, because, in Homer, helmet, shield, corslet,
+_zoster_, and greaves, as a rule prevent the shafts from harming
+the well-born, well-armed chiefs; the nameless host, however, fall
+frequently. When Hector came forward for a parley (_Iliad_, III.
+79), the Achaens "kept shooting at him with arrows," which he took
+unconcernedly. Teucer shoots nine men in _Iliad_, VIII. 297-304. In
+XI. _85_ the shafts ([Greek: belea]) showered and the common soldiers
+fell--[misprint] being arrows as well as thrown spears. [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, IV. 465; XVI. 668, 678.] Agamemnon and Achilles are as likely,
+they say, to be hit by arrow as by spear (XI. 191; XXI. 13). Machaon is
+wounded by an arrow. Patroclus meets Eurypylus limping, with an arrow in
+his thigh--archer unknown. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XI. 809, 810.] Meriones,
+though an Achaean paladin, sends a bronze-headed arrow through the body
+of Harpalion (XIII. _650_). The light-armed Locrians are all bowmen and
+slingers (XIII. 716). Acamas taunts the Argives as "bowmen" (XIV.
+479). "The war-cry rose on both sides, and the arrows leaped from the
+bowstrings" (XV. 313). Manifestly the arrows are always on the wing,
+hence the need for the huge Homeric and Mycenaean shields. Therefore,
+as the Achaeans in Homer wore but flimsy corslets (this we are going to
+prove), the great body-covering shield of the Mycenaean prime did not
+go out of vogue in Homer's time, when bronze had superseded stone
+arrow-heads, but was strengthened by bronze plating over the leather.
+In a later age the bow was more and more neglected in Greek warfare, and
+consequently large shields went out, after the close of the Mycenaean
+age, and round parrying bucklers came into use.
+
+The Greeks appear never to have been great archers, for some vases show
+even the old heroes employing the "primary release," the arrow nock
+is held between the thumb and forefinger--an ineffectual release.
+[Footnote: C. J. Longman, _Archery_. Badminton Series.] The archers in
+early Greek art often stoop or kneel, unlike the erect archers of old
+England; the bow is usually small--a child's weapon; the string is often
+drawn only to the breast, as by Pandarus in the _Iliad_ (IV. i 23). By
+730 B.C. the release with three fingers, our western release, had become
+known. [Footnote: Leaf _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 585.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 8.--ALGONQUIN CORSLET. From Laverdiere, _Oeuvres de
+Champlain_, vol. iv. fol. 4. Quebec, 1870.]
+
+The course of evolution seems to be: (1) the Mycenaean prime of much
+archery, no body armour (?); huge leather "man-covering" shields are
+used, like those of the Algonquins; (2) the same shields strengthened
+with metal, light body armour-thin corslets--and archery is frequent,
+but somewhat despised (the Homeric age); (3) the parrying shield of
+the latest Mycenaean age (infantry with body armour); (4) the Ionian
+hoplites, with body armour and small circular bucklers.
+
+It appears, then, that the monstrous Mycenaean shield is a survival of
+an age when bows and arrows played the same great part as they did in
+the wars of the Algonquins and Iroquois. The celebrated picture of a
+siege on a silver vase, of which fragments were found in Grave IV.,
+shows archers skirmishing; there is an archer in the lion hunt on the
+dagger blade; thirty-five obsidian arrow-heads were discovered in Grave
+IV., while "in the upper strata of Mycenae and in the later tombs the
+arrow-head is usually of bronze, though instances of obsidian still
+occur." In 1895 Dr. Tsountas found twenty arrow-heads of bronze, ten in
+each bundle, in a Mycenaean chamber tomb. Messrs. Tsountas and Manatt
+say, "In the Acropolis graves at Mycenae... the spear-heads were but
+few... arrow-heads, on the contrary, are comparatively abundant."
+They infer that "picked men used shield and spear; the rank and file
+doubtless fought simply with bow and sling." [Footnote: Tsountas and
+Manatt, zog. [sic]]. The great Mycenaean shield was obviously evolved
+as a defence against arrows and sling-stones flying too freely to be
+parried with a small buckler. What other purpose could it have served?
+But other defensive armour was needed, and was evolved, by Homer's men,
+as also, we shall see, by the Algonquins and Iroquois. The Algonquins
+and Iroquois thus prove that men who thought their huge shields very
+efficient, yet felt the desirableness of the protection afforded by
+corslets, for they wore, in addition to their shields, such corslets as
+they were able to manufacture, made of cotton, and corresponding to
+the Homeric [Greek: linothoraex]. [Footnote: In the interior of some
+shields, perhaps of all, were two [Greek: kanones] (VIII 193; XIII.
+407). These have been understood as meaning a brace through which the
+left arm went, and another brace which the left hand grasped. Herodotus
+says that the Carians first used shield grips, and that previously
+shields were suspended by belts from the neck and left shoulder
+(Herodotus, i. 171). It would be interesting to know how he learned
+these facts-perhaps from Homer; but certainly the Homeric shield is
+often described as suspended by a belt. Mr. Leaf used to explain the
+[Greek: kanones] (XIII. 407) as "serving to attach the two ends of the
+baldrick to the shield" (_Hellenic_ Society's _Journal_, iv. 291), as
+does Mr. Ridgeway. But now he thinks that they were two pieces of wood,
+crossing each other, and making the framework on which the leather of
+the shield was stretched. The hero could grasp the cross-bar, at the
+centre of gravity, in his left hand, rest the lower rim of the shield on
+the ground, and crouch behind it (XI. 593; XIII 157). In neither passage
+cited is anything said about resting the lower rim "on the ground,"
+and in the second passage the warrior is actually advancing. In this
+attitude, however-grounding the lower rim of the great body-covering
+shield, and crouching behind it--we see Algonquin warriors of about 1610
+in Champlain's drawings of Red Indian warfare.]
+
+Mr. Leaf, indeed, when reviewing Reichel, says that "the use of the
+Mycenaean shield is inconsistent with that of the metal breastplate;
+'the shield' covers the wearer in a way which makes a breastplate an
+useless encumbrance; or rather, it is ignorance of the breastplate which
+alone can explain the use of such frightfully cumbrous gear as the huge
+shield." [Footnote: _Classical Review_, ix. p. 55. 1895.]
+
+But the Algonquins and Iroquois wore such breastplates as they could
+manufacture, though they also used shields of great size, suspended, in
+Mycenaean fashion, from the neck and shoulder by a _telamon_ or belt.
+The knights of the eleventh century A.D., in addition to very large
+shields, wore ponderous hauberks or byrnies, as we shall prove
+presently. As this combination of great shield with corslet was common
+and natural, we cannot agree with Mr. Leaf when he says, "it follows
+that the Homeric warriors wore no metal breastplate, and that all
+the passages where the [Greek: thoraes] is mentioned are either later
+interpolations or refer to some other sort of armour," which, _ex
+hypothesi_, would itself be superfluous, given the body-covering shield.
+
+Shields never make corslets superfluous when men can manufacture
+corslets.
+
+The facts speak for themselves: the largest shields are not exclusive,
+so to speak, of corslets; the Homeric warriors used both, just as did
+Red Indians and the mediaeval chivalry of Europe. The use of the aspis
+in Homer, therefore, throws no suspicion on the concomitant use of the
+corslet. The really surprising fact would be if late poets, who knew
+only small round bucklers, never introduced them into the poems, but
+always spoke of enormous shields, while they at the same time did
+introduce corslets, unknown to the early poems which they continued.
+Clearly Reichel's theory is ill inspired and inconsistent. This becomes
+plain as soon as we trace the evolution of shields and corslets in
+ages when the bow played a great part in war. The Homeric bronze-plated
+shield and bronze corslet are defences of a given moment in military
+evolution; they are improvements on the large leather shield of
+Mycenaean art, but, as the arrows still fly in clouds, the time for the
+small parrying buckler has not yet come.
+
+By the age of the Dipylon vases with human figures, the shield had been
+developed into forms unknown to Homer. In Fig. 3 (p. 131) we see one
+warrior with a fantastic shield, slim at the waist, with horns, as
+it were, above and below; the greater part of the shield is expended
+uselessly, covering nothing in particular. In form this targe seems to
+be a burlesque parody of the figure of a Mycenaean shield. The next
+man has a short oblong shield, rather broad for its length--perhaps a
+reduction of the Mycenaean door-shaped shield. The third warrior has a
+round buckler. All these shields are manifestly post-Homeric; the first
+type is the most common in the Dipylon art; the third survived in the
+eighth-century buckler.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 9.-GOLD CORSLET]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+THE BREASTPLATE
+
+No "practicable" breastplates, hauberks, corslets, or any things of the
+kind have so far been discovered in graves of the Mycenaean prime. A
+corpse in Grave V. at Mycenae had, however, a golden breastplate,
+with oval bosses representing the nipples and with prettily interlaced
+spirals all over the remainder of the gold (Fig. 9). Another corpse
+had a plain gold breastplate with the nipples indicated. [Footnote:
+Schuchardt, _Schliemann's_ Excavations, pp. 254-257, fig. 256.]
+These decorative corslets of gold were probably funereal symbols of
+practicable breastplates of bronze, but no such pieces of armour are
+worn by the fighting-men on the gems and other works of art of Mycenae,
+and none are found in Mycenaean graves. But does this prove anything?
+Leg-guards, broad metal bands clasping the leg below the knee, are found
+in the Mycenaean shaft graves, but are never represented in Mycenaean
+art. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 575.] Meanwhile, bronze
+corslets are very frequently mentioned in the "rarely alluded to," says
+Mr. Leaf, [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 576.] but this must be a
+slip of the pen. Connected with the breastplate or _thorex_ ([Greek:
+thoraex]) is the verb [Greek: thoraesso, thoraessethai], which means "to
+arm," or "equip" in general.
+
+The Achaeans are constantly styled in the _ILIAD_ and in the _ODYSSEY_
+"_chalkochitones_," "with bronze chitons." epics have therefore boldly
+argued that by "bronze chitons" the poet pleasantly alludes to shields.
+But as the Mycenaeans seem scarcely to have worn any _CHITONS_ in
+battle, as far as we are aware from their art, and are not known to have
+had any bronze shields, the argument evaporates, as Mr. Ridgeway has
+pointed out. Nothing can be less like a _chiton_ or smock, loose or
+tight, than either the double-bellied huge shield, the tower-shaped
+cylindrical shield, or the flat, doorlike shield, covering body and legs
+in Mycenaean art. "The bronze _chiton_," says Helbig, "is only a poetic
+phrase for the corslet."
+
+Reichel and Mr. Leaf, however, think that "bronze chitoned" is probably
+"a picturesque expression... and refers to the bronze-covered shield."
+[Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, i. 578.] The breastplate covered the upper
+part of the _chiton_, and so might be called a "bronze _chiton_," above
+all, if it had been evolved, as corselets usually have been, out of
+a real _chiton_, interwoven with small plates or rings of bronze. The
+process of evolution might be from a padded linen _chiton_ ([Greek:
+linothooraes]) worn by Teucer, and on the Trojan side by Amphius (as
+by nervous Protestants during Oates's "Popish Plot"), to a leathern
+_chiton_, strengthened by rings, or studs, or scales of bronze, and
+thence to plates. [Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i.
+pp. 309, 310.] Here, in this armoured _chiton_, would be an object that
+a poet might readily call "a _chiton_ of bronze." But that, if he lived
+in the Mycenaean age, when, so far as art shows, _CHITONS_ were not worn
+at all, or very little, and scarcely ever in battle, and when we know
+nothing of bronze-plating on shields, the poet should constantly call a
+monstrous double-bellied leather shield, or any other Mycemean type of
+shield, "a _bronze chiton_," seems almost unthinkable. "A leather cloak"
+would be a better term for such shields, if cloaks were in fashion.
+
+According to Mr. Myres (1899) the "stock line" in the _Iliad_, about
+piercing a [Greek: poludaidalos thoraex] or corslet, was inserted "to
+satisfy the practical criticisms of a corslet-wearing age," the age of
+the later poets, the Age of Iron. But why did not such practical critics
+object to the constant presence in the poems of bronze weapons, in their
+age out of date, if they objected to the absence from the poems of the
+corslets with which they were familiar? Mr. Myres supposes that the line
+about the [Greek: poludaidalos] corslet was already old, but had merely
+meant "many-glittering body clothing"--garments set with the golden
+discs and other ornaments found in Mycemean graves. The bronze corslet,
+he says, would not be "many glittering," but would reflect "a single
+star of light." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies._ 1899] Now,
+first, even if the star were a single star, it would be as "many
+glittering" when the warrior was in rapid and changeful motion as the
+star that danced when Beatrix was born. Secondly, if the contemporary
+corslets of the Iron Age were NOT "many glittering," practical
+corslet-wearing critics would ask the poet, "why do you call corslets
+'many glittering'?" Thirdly, [Greek: poludaidalos] may surely be
+translated "a thing of much art," and Greek corslets were incised with
+ornamental designs. Thus Messrs. Hogarth and Bosanquet report "a very
+remarkable 'Mycemean' bronze breastplate" from Crete, which "shows four
+female draped figures, the two central ones holding a wreath over a
+bird, below which is a sacred tree. The two outer figures are apparently
+dancing. It is probably a ritual scene, and may help to elucidate the
+nature of early AEgean cults." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies,
+vol. xx_. p. 322. 1899.] Here, [Greek: poludaidalos]--if that word means
+"artistically wrought." Helbig thinks the Epics silent about the gold
+spangles on dresses. [Footnote: Helbig, p. 71.]
+
+Mr. Myres applauds Reichel's theory that [blank space] first meant
+a man's chest. If _thorex_ means a man's breast, then _THOREX_ in a
+secondary sense, one thinks, would mean "breastplate," as waist of a
+woman means, first, her waist; next, her blouse (American). But Mr.
+Myres and Reichel say that the secondary sense of _THOREX_ is not
+breastplate but "body clothing," as if a man were all breast, or wore
+only a breast covering, whereas Mycenaean art shows men wearing nothing
+on their breasts, merely drawers or loin-cloths, which could not be
+called _THOREX_, as they cover the antipodes of the breast.
+
+The verb [Greek: thoraesestai], the theory runs on, merely meant "to
+put on body clothing," which Mycenaeans in works of art, if correctly
+represented, do not usually put on; they fought naked or in bathing
+drawers. Surely we might as well argue that a "waistcoat" might come
+to mean "body clothing in general," as that a word for the male breast
+became, first, a synonym for the covering of the male buttocks and for
+apparel in general, and, next, for a bronze breastplate. These arguments
+appear rather unconvincing, [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_,
+vol. xx. pp. 149, 150.] nor does Mycenaean art instruct us that men went
+into battle dressed in body clothing which was thickly set with many
+glittering gold ornaments, and was called "a many-glittering _thorex_."
+
+Further, if we follow Reichel and Mr. Leaf, the Mycenaeans wore
+_chitons_ and called them _chitons_. They also used bronze-plated
+shields, though of this we have no evidence. Taking the bronze-plated
+(?) shield to stand poetically for the _chiton_, the poet spoke of "_the
+bronze-chitoned Achaeans_" But, if we follow Mr. Myres, the Mycenaeans
+also applied the word _thorex_ to body clothing at large, in place of
+the word _chiton_; and when a warrior was transfixed by a spear, they
+said that his "many-glittering, gold-studded _thorex_," that is, his
+body clothing in general, was pierced. It does seem simpler to hold
+that _chiton_ meant _chiton_; that _thorex_ meant, first, "breast," then
+"breastplate," whether of linen, or plaited leather, or bronze, and
+that to pierce a man through his [Greek: poludaidalos thoraex] meant to
+pierce him through his handsome corslet. No mortal ever dreamt that this
+was so till Reichel tried to make out that the original poet describes
+no armour except the large Mycenaean shield and the _mitre_, and that
+all corslets in the poems were of much later introduction. Possibly they
+were, but they had plenty of time wherein to be evolved long before the
+eighth century, Reichel's date for corslets.
+
+The argument is that a man with a large shield needs no body armour, or
+uses the shield because he has no body armour.
+
+But the possession and use of a large shield did not in the Middle Ages,
+or among the Iroquois and Algonquins, make men dispense with corslets,
+even when the shield was worn, as in Homer, slung round the neck by a
+_telamon_ (_guige_ in Old French), belt, or baldric.
+
+We turn to a French _Chanson de Geste--La Chancun de Willem_--of the
+twelfth century A.D., to judge by the handwriting. One of the heroes,
+Girard, having failed to rescue Vivien in battle, throws down his
+weapons and armour, blaming each piece for having failed him. Down
+goes the heavy lance; down goes the ponderous shield, suspended by a
+_telamon: "Ohitarge grant cume peises al col_!" down goes the plated
+byrnie, "_Ohi grant broine cum me vas apesant_" [Footnote: _La Chancun
+de Willame_, lines 716-726.]
+
+The mediaeval warrior has a heavy byrnie as well as a great shield
+suspended from his neck. It will be remarked also that the Algonquins
+and Iroquois of the beginning of the seventeenth century, as described
+by Champlain, give us the whole line of Mycenaean evolution of armour up
+to a certain point. Not only had they arrow-proof, body-covering shields
+of buffalo hide, but, when Champlain used his arquebus against the
+Iroquois in battle, "they were struck amazed that two of their number
+should have been killed so promptly, seeing that they wore a sort of
+armour, woven of cotton thread, and carried arrow-proof shields."
+We have already alluded to this passage, but must add that Parkman,
+describing from French archives a battle of Illinois against Iroquois
+in 1680, speaks of "corslets of tough twigs interwoven with cordage."
+[Footnote: _Discovery of the Great IV_, [misprint] 1869.] Golden, in his
+_Five Nations_, writes of the Red Indians as wearing "a kind of cuirass
+made of pieces of wood joined together." [Footnote: Dix, _Champlion_
+[misprint]]
+
+To the kindness of Mr. Hill Tout I also owe a description of the armour
+of the Indian tribes of north-west America, from a work of his own.
+He says: "For protective purposes in warfare they employed shields
+and coat-armour. The shields varied in form and material from tribe to
+tribe. Among the Interior Salish they were commonly made of wood, which
+was afterwards covered with hide. Sometimes they consisted of several
+thicknesses of hide only. The hides most commonly used were those of the
+elk, buffalo, or bear. After the advent of the Hudson's Bay Co. some of
+the Indians used to beat out the large copper kettles they obtained from
+the traders and make polished circular shields of these. In some centres
+long rectangular shields, made from a single or double hide, were
+employed. These were often from 4 to 5 feet in length and from 3 to
+4 feet in width--large enough to cover the whole body. Among the
+Dene tribes (Sikanis) the shield was generally made of closely-woven
+wicker-work, and was of an ovaloid form (exact size not given).
+
+"The coat armour was _everywhere used_, and varied in form and style in
+almost every centre. There were two ways in which this was most commonly
+made. One of these was the slatted cuirass or corslet, which was formed
+of a series of narrow slats of wood set side by side vertically and
+fastened in place by interfacings of raw hide. It went all round the
+body, being hung from the shoulders with straps. The other was a kind
+of shirt of double or treble elk hide, fastened at the side with thongs.
+Another kind of armour, less common than that just described, was the
+long elk-hide tunic, which reached to and even _below the knees and was
+sleeved to the elbow."_
+
+Mr. Hill Tout's minute description, with the other facts cited, leaves
+no doubt that even in an early stage, as in later stages of culture, the
+use of the great shield does not exclude the use of such body armour
+as the means of the warriors enable them to construct. To take another
+instance, Pausanias describes the corslets of the neolithic Sarmatae,
+which he saw dedicated in the temple of Asclepius at Athens. Corslets
+these bowmen and users of the lasso possessed, though they did not use
+the metals. They fashioned very elegant corslets out of horses' hoofs,
+cutting them into scales like those of a pine cone, and sewing them on
+to cloth. [Footnote: Pausanias, i. 211. [misprint] 6.]
+
+Certain small, thin, perforated discs of stone found in Scotland have
+been ingeniously explained as plates to be strung together on a garment
+of cloth, a neolithic _chiton_. However this may be, since Iroquois and
+Algonquins and Dene had some sort of woven, or plaited, or wooden, or
+buff corslet, in addition to their great shields, we may suppose that
+the Achaeans would not be less inventive. They would pass from the
+[Greek: linothoraex] (answering to the cotton corslet of the Iroquois)
+to a sort of jack or _jaseran_ with rings, scales, or plates, and thence
+to bronze-plate corslets, represented only by the golden breastplates of
+the Mycenaean grave. Even if the Mycenaeans did not evolve the corslet,
+there is no reason why, in the Homeric times, it should not have been
+evolved.
+
+For linen corslets, such as Homer mentions, in actual use and
+represented in works of art we consult Mr. Leaf on _The Armour_
+of _Homeric_ Heroes.' He finds Memnon in a white corslet, on a
+black-figured vase in the British Museum. There is another white
+corsleted [Footnote: _Journal_ of _Hellenic_ Studies, vol. iv. pp.
+82, 83, 85.] Memnon figured in the _Vases Peints_ of the Duc de Luynes
+(plate xii.). Mr. Leaf suggests that the white colour represents "a
+corslet not of metal but of linen," and cites _Iliad_, II. 529, 5
+30. "Xenophon mentions linen corslets as being worn by the Chalybes"
+(_Anabasis_, iv. 15). Two linen corslets, sent from Egypt to Sparta by
+King Amasis, are recorded by Herodotus (ii. 182; iii. 47). The corslets
+were of linen, embroidered in cotton and gold. Such a piece of armour
+or attire might easily develop into the [Greek: streptos chitoon] of
+_Iliad_, V. 113, in which Aristarchus appears to have recognised chain
+or scale armour; but we find no such object represented in Mycenaean
+art, which, of course, does not depict Homeric armour or costume, and
+it seems probable that the bronze corslets mentioned by Homer were plate
+armour. The linen corslet lasted into the early sixth century B.C. In
+the poem called _Stasiotica_, Alcaeus (_No_. 5) speaks of his helmets,
+bronze greaves and corslets of linen ([Choorakes te neoi linoo]) as a
+defence against arrows.
+
+Meanwhile a "bronze _chiton_" or corslet would turn spent arrows and
+spent spears, and be very useful to a warrior whose shield left him
+exposed to shafts shot or spears thrown from a distance. Again, such
+a bronze _chiton_ might stop a spear of which the impetus was spent in
+penetrating the shield. But Homeric corslets did not, as a rule, avail
+to keep out a spear driven by the hand at close quarters, or powerfully
+thrown from a short distance. Even the later Greek corslets do not look
+as if they could resist a heavy spear wielded by a strong hand.
+
+I proceed to show that the Homeric corslet did not avail against a
+spear at close quarters, but could turn an arrow point (once), and could
+sometimes turn a spear which had perforated a shield. So far, and not
+further, the Homeric corslet was serviceable. But if a warrior's breast
+or back was not covered by the shield, and received a thrust at close
+quarters, the corslet was pierced more easily than the pad of paper
+which was said to have been used as secret armour in a duel by the
+Master of Sinclair (1708). [Footnote: _Proceedings in Court Marshal held
+upon John, Master of Sinclair_. Sir Walter Scott. Roxburghe Club.
+(Date of event, 1708.)] It is desirable to prove this feebleness of the
+corslet, because the poet often says that a man was smitten with
+the spear in breast or back when unprotected by the shield, without
+mentioning the corslet, whence it is argued by the critics that corslets
+were not worn when the original lays were fashioned, and that they have
+only been sporadically introduced, in an after age when the corslet was
+universal, by "modernising" later rhapsodists aiming at the up-to-date.
+
+A weak point is the argument that Homer says back or breast was pierced,
+without mentioning the corslet, whence it follows that he knew no
+corslets. Quintus Smyrnaeus does the same thing. Of course, Quintus
+knew all about corslets, yet (Book I. 248, 256, 257) he makes his heroes
+drive spear or sword through breast or belly without mentioning the
+resistance of the corslet, even when (I. 144, 594) he has assured
+us that the victim was wearing a corslet. These facts are not due
+to inconsistent interpolation of corslets into the work of this
+post-Christian poet Quintus. [Footnote: I find a similar omission in the
+_Chanson de Roland_.]
+
+Corslets, in Homer, are flimsy; that of Lycaon, worn by Paris, is
+pierced by a spear which has also perforated his shield, though the
+spear came only from the weak hand of Menelaus (_Iliad_, III. 357, 358).
+The arrow of Pandarus whistles through the corslet of Menelaus (IV.
+136). The same archer pierces with an arrow the corslet of Diomede (V.
+99, 100). The corslet of Diomede, however, avails to stop a spear which
+has traversed his shield (V. 281). The spear of Idomeneus pierces
+the corslet of Othryoneus, and the spear of Antilochus perforates the
+corslet of a charioteer (XIII. 371, 397). A few lines later Diomede's
+spear reaches the midriff of Hypsenor. No corslet is here mentioned, but
+neither is the shield mentioned (this constantly occurs), and we cannot
+argue that Hypsenor wore no corslet, unless we are also to contend that
+he wore no shield, or a small shield. Idomeneus drives his spear through
+the "_bronze chiton_" of Alcathoeus (XIII. 439, 440). Mr. Leaf reckons
+these lines "probably an interpolation to turn the linen _chiton_, the
+rending of which is the sign of triumph, into a bronze corslet." But we
+ask why, if an editor or rhapsodist went through the _Iliad_ introducing
+corslets, he so often left them out, where the critics detect their
+absence because they are not mentioned?
+
+The spear of Idomeneus pierces another feeble corslet over the victim's
+belly (XIII. 506-508). It is quite a surprise when a corslet does for
+once avail to turn an arrow (XIII. 586-587). But Aias drives his spear
+through the corslet of Phorcys, into his belly (XVII 311-312). Thus the
+corslet scarcely ever, by itself, protects a hero; it never protects
+him against an unspent spear; even when his shield stands between his
+corslet and the spear both are sometimes perforated. Yet occasionally
+the corslet saves a man when the spear has gone through the shield. The
+poet, therefore, sometimes gives us a man pierced in a part which the
+corslet covers, without mentioning the flimsy article that could not
+keep out a spear.
+
+Reichel himself came to see, before his regretted death, that he could
+not explain away the _thorex_ or corslet, on his original lines, as a
+mere general name for "a piece of armour"; and he inclined to think that
+jacks, with metal plates sewn on, did exist before the Ionian corslet.
+[Footnote: _Homerische Waffen_, pp. 93-94. 1901.] The gold breastplates
+of the Mycenaean graves pointed in this direction. But his general
+argument is that corslets were interpolated into the old lays by poets
+of a corslet-wearing age; and Mr. Leaf holds that corslets may have
+filtered in, "during the course of successive modernisation, such as the
+oldest parts of the _Iliad_ seem in many cases to have passed through,"
+[Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, i. p. 578.] though the new poets were, for all
+that, "conservatively tenacious of the old material." We have already
+pointed out the difficulty.
+
+The poets who did not introduce the new small bucklers with which they
+were familiar, did stuff the _Iliad_ full of corslets unknown, by
+the theory, to the original poet, but familiar to rhapsodists living
+centuries later. Why, if they were bent on modernising, did they not
+modernise the shields? and how, if they modernised unconsciously, as all
+uncritical poets do, did the shield fail to be unconsciously "brought up
+to date"? It seems probable that Homer lived at a period when both huge
+shield and rather feeble corslet were in vogue.
+
+We shall now examine some of the passages in which Mr. Leaf, mainly
+following Reichel, raises difficulties about corslets. We do not know
+their mechanism; they were composed of [Greek: guala], presumed to be a
+backplate and a breastplate. The word _gualon_ appears to mean a hollow,
+or the converse, something convex. We cannot understand the mechanism
+(see a young man putting on a corslet, on an amphora by Euthymides.
+Walter, vol. ii. p. 176); but, if late poets, familiar with such
+corslets, did not understand how they worked, they were very dull men.
+When their descriptions puzzle us, that is more probably because we are
+not at the point of view than because poets interpolated mentions of
+pieces of armour which they did not understand, and therefore cannot
+have been familiar with, and, in that case, would not introduce.
+
+Mr. Leaf starts with a passage in the _Iliad_ (III. 357-360)--it recurs
+in another case: "Through the bright shield went the ponderous
+spear, and through the inwrought" (very artfully wrought), [Greek:
+poludaidalou] "breastplate it pressed on, and straight beside his flank
+it rent the tunic, but he swerved and escaped black death." Mr.
+Leaf says, "It is obvious that, after a spear has passed through a
+breastplate, there is no longer any possibility for the wearer to bend
+aside and so to avoid the point...." But I suppose that the wearer, by a
+motion very natural, doubled up sideways, so to speak, and so the spear
+merely grazed his flesh. That is what I suppose the poet to intend.
+The more he knew of corslets, the less would he mention an impossible
+circumstance in connection with a corslet.
+
+Again, in many cases the late poets, by the theory--though it is they
+who bring the corslets in--leave the corslets out! A man without shield,
+helmet, and spear calls himself "naked." Why did not these late poets,
+it is asked, make him take off his corslet, if he had one, as well as
+his shield? The case occurs in XXII. 111-113,124-125. Hector thinks of
+laying aside helmet, spear, and shield, and of parleying with Achilles.
+"But then he will slay me naked," that is, unarmed. "He still had his
+corslet," the critics say, "so how could he be naked? or, if he had
+no corslet, this is a passage uncontaminated by the late poets of the
+corslet age." Now certainly Hector _was_ wearing a corslet, which he
+had taken from Patroclus: that is the essence of the story. He would,
+however, be "naked" or unprotected if he laid aside helmet, spear, and
+shield, because Achilles could hit him in the head or neck (as he did),
+or lightly drive the spear through the corslet, which, we have proved,
+was no sound defence against a spear at close quarters, though useful
+against chance arrows, and occasionally against spears spent by
+traversing the shield.
+
+We next learn that no corslet occurs in the _Odyssey_, or in _Iliad_,
+Book X., called "very late": Mr. Leaf suggests that it is of the seventh
+century B.C. But if the Odyssey and Iliad, Book X., are really very
+late, their authors and interpolators were perfectly familiar
+with Ionian corslets. Why did they leave corslets out, while their
+predecessors and contemporaries were introducing them all up and down
+the _Iliad_? In fact, in Book X, no prince is regularly equipped; they
+have been called up to deliberate in the dead of night, and when two go
+as spies they wear casual borrowed gear. It is more important that no
+corslet is mentioned in Nestor's arms in his tent. But are we to explain
+this, and the absence of mention of corslets in the Odyssey (where there
+is little about regular fighting), on the ground that the author of
+_Iliad_, Book X., and all the many authors and editors of the
+_Odyssey_ happened to be profound archaeologists, and, unlike their
+contemporaries, the later poets and interpolators of the _Iliad_, had
+formed the theory that corslets were not known at the time of the siege
+of Troy and therefore must not be mentioned? This is quite incredible.
+No hypothesis can be more improbable. We cannot imagine late Ionian
+rhapsodists listening to the _Iliad_, and saying, "These poets of the
+_Iliad_ are all wrong: at the date of the Mycenaean prime, as every
+educated man knows, corslets were not yet in fashion. So we must have no
+corslets in the _Odyssey_?"
+
+A modern critic, who thinks this possible, is bringing the practice
+of archaising poets of the late nineteenth century into the minds of
+rhapsodists of the eighth century before Christ. Artists of the middle
+of the sixteenth century always depict Jeanne d'Arc in the armour and
+costume of their own time, wholly unlike those of 1430. This is the
+regular rule. Late rhapsodists would not delve in the archaeology of the
+Mycenaean prime. Indeed, one does not see how they could discover, in
+Asia, that corslets were not worn, five centuries earlier, on the other
+side of the sea.
+
+We are told that Aias and some other heroes are never spoken of as
+wearing corslets. But Aias certainly did put on a set of pieces of
+armour, and did not trust to his shield alone, tower-like as it was. The
+description runs thus: The Achaeans have disarmed, before the duel of
+Aias and Hector. Aias draws the lucky lot; he is to 'meet Hector, and
+bids the others pray to Zeus "while I clothe me in my armour of battle."
+While they prayed, Aias "arrayed himself in flashing bronze. And when
+he had now clothed upon his flesh _all_ his pieces of armour" ([Greek:
+panta teuchae]) "he went forth to fight." If Aias wore only a shield, as
+on Mr. Leaf's hypothesis, he could sling it on before the Achaeans could
+breathe a _pater noster_. His sword he would not have taken off; swords
+were always worn. What, then, are "all his pieces of armour"? (VII. 193,
+206).
+
+Carl Robert cites passages in which the [Greek: teuchea], taken from
+the shoulders, include corslets, and are late and Ionian, with other
+passages which are Mycenaean, with no corslet involved. He adds about
+twenty more passages in which [Greek: teuchea] include corslets. Among
+these references two are from the _Doloneia_ (X. 254, 272), where
+Reichel finds no mention of corslets. How Robert can tell [Greek:
+teuchea], which mean corslets, from [Greek: teuchea], which exclude
+corslets, is not obvious. But, at all events, he does see corslets, as
+in VII. 122, where Reichel sees none, [Footnote: Robert, _Studien zur
+Ilias_, pp. 20-21.] and he is obviously right.
+
+It is a strong point with Mr. Leaf that "we never hear of the corslet in
+the case of Aias...." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 576.] Robert,
+however, like ourselves, detects the corslet among "_al_ the [Greek:
+teuchea]" which Aias puts on for his duel with Hector (Iliad, VII. 193,
+206-207).
+
+In the same Book (VII. 101-103, 122) the same difficulty occurs.
+Menelaus offers to fight Hector, and says, "I will put on my harness"
+[Greek: thooraxomai], and does "put on his fair pieces of armour"
+[Greek: teuchea kala], Agamemnon forbids him to fight, and his friends
+"joyfully take his pieces of armour" [Greek: teuchea] "from his
+shoulders" (_Iliad_, VII. 206-207). They take off pieces of armour, in
+the plural, and a shield cannot be spoken of in the plural; while the
+sword would not be taken off--it was worn even in peaceful costume.
+
+Idomeneus is never named as wearing a corslet, but he remarks that he
+has plenty of corslets (XIII. 264); and in this and many cases opponents
+of corslets prove their case by cutting out the lines which disprove it.
+Anything may be demonstrated if we may excise whatever passage does
+not suit our hypothesis. It is impossible to argue against this logical
+device, especially when the critic, not satisfied with a clean cut,
+supposes that some late enthusiast for corslets altered the prayer of
+Thetis to Hephaestus for the very purpose of dragging in a corslet.
+[Footnote: Leaf, Note to _Iliad_, xviii. 460, 461.] If there is no
+objection to a line except that a corslet occurs in it, where is the
+logic in excising the line because one happens to think that corslets
+are later than the oldest parts of the _Iliad_?
+
+Another plan is to maintain that if the poet does not in any case
+mention a corslet, there was no corslet. Thus in V. 99, an arrow strikes
+Diomede "hard by the right shoulder, the plate of the corslet." Thirteen
+lines later (V. 112, 113) "Sthenelus drew the swift shaft right through
+out of Diomede's shoulder, and the blood darted up through the pliant
+_chiton_." We do not know what the word here translated "pliant" [Greek:
+streptos] means, and Aristarchus seems to have thought it was "a coat of
+mail, chain, or scale armour." If so, here is the corslet, but in this
+case, if a corslet or jack with intertwisted small plates or scales or
+rings of bronze be meant, _gualon_ cannot mean a large "plate," as
+it does. Mr. Ridgeway says, "It seems certain that [Greek: streptos
+chitoon] means, as Aristarchus held, a shirt of mail." [Footnote: _Early
+Age of Greece_, vol. i. p, 306.] Mr. Leaf says just the reverse. As
+usual, we come to a deadlock; a clash of learned opinion. But any one
+can see that, in the space of thirteen lines, no poet or interpolator
+who wrote V. i 12, i 13 could forget that Diomede was said to be wearing
+a corslet in V. 99; and even if the poet could forget, which is out of
+the question, the editor of 540 B.C. was simply defrauding his employer,
+Piaistratus, if he did not bring a remedy for the stupid fault of the
+poet. When this or that hero is not specifically said to be wearing a
+corslet, it is usually because the poet has no occasion to mention it,
+though, as we have seen, a man is occasionally smitten, in the midriff,
+say, without any remark on the flimsy piece of mail.
+
+That corslets are usually taken for granted as present by the poet,
+even when they are not explicitly named, seems certain. He constantly
+represents the heroes as "stripping the pieces of mail" [Greek:
+teuchea], when they have time and opportunity, from fallen foes. If only
+the shield is taken, if there is nothing else in the way of bronze body
+armour to take, why have we the plural, [Greek: teuchea]? The corslet,
+as well as the shield, must be intended. The stripping is usually "from
+the shoulders," and it is "from his shoulders" that Hector hopes to
+strip the corslet of Diomede (Iliad, VIII. 195) in a passage, to be
+sure, which the critics think interpolated. However this may be, the
+stripping of the (same Greek characters), cannot be the mere seizure of
+the shield, but must refer to other pieces of armour: "all the pieces
+of armour." So other pieces of defensive armour besides the shield are
+throughout taken for granted. If they were not there they could not be
+stripped. It is the chitons that Agamemnon does something to, in the
+case of two fallen foes (_Iliad_, XI. 100), and Aristarchus thought that
+these _chitons_ were corslets. But the passage is obscure. In _Iliad_,
+XI. 373, when Diomede strips helmet from head, shield from shoulder,
+corslet from breast of Agastrophus, Reichel was for excising the
+corslet, because it was not mentioned when the hero was struck on the
+hip joint. I do not see that an inefficient corslet would protect the
+hip joint. To do that, in our eighteenth century cavalry armour, was the
+business of a _zoster_, as may be seen in a portrait of the Chevalier de
+St. George in youth. It is a thick ribbed _zoster_ that protects the hip
+joints of the king.
+
+Finally, Mr. Evans observes that the western invaders of Egypt, under
+Rameses III, are armed, on the monuments, with cuirasses formed of a
+succession of plates, "horizontal, or rising in a double curve," while
+the Enkomi ivories, already referred to, corroborate the existence
+of corslet, _zoster_, and _zoma_ as articles of defensive armour.
+[Footnote: _Journal of Anthropological Institute_, xxx. p. 213.] "Recent
+discoveries," says Mr. Evans, "thus supply a double corroboration of the
+Homeric tradition which carries back the use of the round shield and the
+cuirass or [Greek: thoraex] to the earlier epic period... With such
+a representation before us, a series of Homeric passages on which Dr.
+Reichel... has exhausted his powers of destructive criticism, becomes
+readily intelligible." [Footnote: Ibid., p. 214.]
+
+Homer, then, describes armour _later_ than that of the Mycenaean prime,
+when, as far as works of art show, only a huge leathern shield was
+carried, though the gold breastplates of the corpses in the grave
+suggest that corslets existed. Homer's men, on the other hand, have,
+at least in certain cases quoted above, large bronze-plated shields and
+bronze cuirasses of no great resisting power, perhaps in various stages
+of evolution, from the byrnie with scales or small plates of bronze to
+the breastplate and backplate, though the plates for breast and back
+certainly appear to be usually worn.
+
+It seems that some critics cannot divest themselves of the idea that
+"the original poet" of the "kernel" was contemporary with them who slept
+in the shaft graves of Mycenae, covered with golden ornaments, and that
+for body armour he only knew their monstrous shields. Mr. Leaf writes:
+"The armour of Homeric heroes corresponds closely to that of the
+Mykenaean age as we learn it from the monuments. The heroes wore no
+breastplate; their only defensive armour was the enormous Mykenaean
+shield...."
+
+This is only true if we excise all the passages which contradict the
+statement, and go on with Mr. Leaf to say, "by the seventh century B.C.,
+or thereabouts, the idea of a panoply without a breastplate had become
+absurd. By that time the epic poems had almost ceased to grow; but they
+still admitted a few minor episodes in which the round shield" (where
+(?) "and corslet played a part, as well as the interpolation of a certain
+number of lines and couplets in which the new armament was mechanically
+introduced into narratives which originally knew nothing of it."
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 568.]
+
+On the other hand, Mr. Leaf says that "the small circular shield of
+later times is unknown to Homer," with "a very few curious exceptions,"
+in which the shields are not said to be small or circular. [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. i. p, 575.]
+
+Surely this is rather arbitrary dealing! We start from our theory that
+the original poet described the armour of "the monuments" though
+_they_ are "of the prime," while he professedly lived long after the
+prime--lived in an age when there must have been changes in military
+equipment. We then cut out, as of the seventh century, whatever passages
+do not suit our theory. Anybody can prove anything by this method. We
+might say that the siege scene on the Mycenaean silver vase represents
+the Mycenaean prime, and that, as there is but one jersey among
+eight men otherwise stark naked, we must cut out seven-eighths of the
+_chitons_ in the _Iliad_, these having been interpolated by late poets
+who did not run about with nothing on. We might call the whole poem
+late, because the authors know nothing of the Mycenaean bathing-drawers
+so common on the "monuments." The argument compels Mr. Leaf to assume
+that a shield can be called [Greek: teuchea] in the plural, so, in
+_Iliad_, VII. 122, when the squires of Menelaus "take the [Greek:
+teuchea] from his shoulders," we are assured that "the shield (aspis)
+was for the chiefs alone" (we have seen that all the host of Pandarus
+wore shields), "for those who could keep a chariot to carry them, and
+squires to assist them in taking off this ponderous defence" (see VII
+122). [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 583.]
+
+We do "see VII. 122," and find that not a _single_ shield, but pieces of
+gear in the plural number were taken off Menelaus. The feeblest warrior
+without any assistance could stoop his head and put it through the belt
+of his shield, as an angler takes off his fishing creel, and there he
+was, totally disarmed. No squire was needed to disarm him, any more
+than to disarm Girard in the _Chancun de Willame_. Nobody explains why
+a shield is spoken of as a number of things, in the plural, and that
+constantly, and in lines where, if the poet means a shield, prosody
+permits him to _say_ a shield, [Greek: therapontes ap oopoon aspid
+elonto].
+
+It really does appear that Reichel's logic, his power of visualising
+simple things and processes, and his knowledge of the evolution
+of defensive armour everywhere, were not equal to his industry and
+classical erudition. Homer seems to describe what he saw: shields, often
+of great size, made of leather, plated with bronze, and suspended by
+belts; and, for body armour, feeble bronze corslets and _zosters_. There
+is nothing inconsistent in all this: there was no more reason why an
+Homeric warrior should not wear a corslet as well as a shield than there
+was reason why a mediaeval knight who carried a _targe_ should not also
+wear a hauberk, or why an Iroquois with a shield should not also
+wear his cotton or wicker-work armour. Defensive gear kept pace with
+offensive weapons. A big leather shield could keep out stone-tipped
+arrows; but as bronze-tipped arrows came in and also heavy
+bronze-pointed spears, defensive armour was necessarily strengthened;
+the shield was plated with bronze, and, if it did not exist before, the
+bronze corslet was developed.
+
+To keep out stone-tipped arrows was the business of the Mycenaean wooden
+or leather shield. "Bronze arrow-heads, so common in the _Iliad_,
+are never found," says Schuchardt, speaking of Schliemann's Mycenaean
+excavations. [Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 237.]
+
+There was thus, as far as arrows went, no reason why Mycenaean shields
+should be plated with bronze. If the piece of wood in Grave V. was a
+shield, as seems probable, what has become of its bronze plates, if it
+had any? [Footnote: Schuchardt, p. 269] Gold ornaments, which could only
+belong to shields, [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 237.] were found, but bronze
+shield plates never. The inference is certain. The Mycenaean shields
+of the prime were originally wooden or leather defences against
+stone-headed arrows. Homer's shields are bronze-plated shields to keep
+out bronze-headed or even, perhaps, iron-pointed arrows of primitive
+construction (IV. 123). Homer describes armour based on Mycenaean lines
+but developed and advanced as the means of attack improved.
+
+Where everything is so natural it seems fantastic to explain the
+circumstances by the theory that poets in a late age sometimes did
+and sometimes did not interpolate the military gear of four centuries
+posterior to the things known by the original singer. These rhapsodists,
+we reiterate, are now said to be anxiously conservative of Mycenaean
+detail and even to be deeply learned archaeologists. [Footnote: Leaf,
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 629.] At other times they are said to introduce
+recklessly part of the military gear of their own age, the corslets,
+while sternly excluding the bucklers. All depends on what the theory of
+very late developments of the Epic may happen to demand at this or that
+moment.
+
+Again, Mr. Leaf informs us that "the first rhapsodies were born in the
+bronze age, in the day of the ponderous Mycenaean shield; the last in
+the iron age, when men armed themselves with breastplate and light round
+buckler." [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. x.] We cannot guess how he
+found these things out, for corslets are as common in one "rhapsody" as
+in another when circumstances call for the mention of corslets, and
+are entirely unnamed in the Odyssey (save that the Achaeans are
+"bronze-chitoned"), while the Odyssey is alleged to be much later than
+the _Iliad_. As for "the iron age," no "rhapsodist" introduces so
+much as one iron spear point. It is argued that he speaks of bronze in
+deference to tradition. Then why does he scout tradition in the matter
+of greaves and corslets, while he sometimes actually goes behind
+tradition to find Mycenaean things unknown to the original poets?
+
+These theories appear too strangely inconsistent; really these theories
+cannot possibly be accepted. The late poets, of the theory, are in
+the iron age, and are, of course, familiar with iron weapons; yet, in
+conservative deference to tradition, they keep them absolutely out of
+their rhapsodies. They are equally familiar with bronze corslets, so,
+reckless this time of tradition, they thrust them even into rhapsodies
+which are centuries older than their own day. They are no less familiar
+with small bucklers, yet they say nothing about them and cling to
+the traditional body-covering shield. The source of the inconsistent
+theories which we have been examining is easily discovered. The scholars
+who hold these opinions see that several things in the Homeric picture
+of life are based on Mycenaean facts; for example, the size of the
+shields and their suspension by baldrics. But the scholars also do
+steadfastly believe, following the Wolfian tradition, that there could
+be no _long_ epic in the early period. Therefore the greater part, much
+the greater part of the _Iliad_, must necessarily, they say, be the work
+of continuators through several centuries. Critics are fortified in
+this belief by the discovery of inconsistencies in the Epic, which,
+they assume, can only be explained as the result of a compilation of the
+patchwork of ages. But as, on this theory, many men in many lands and
+ages made the Epic, their contributions cannot but be marked by the
+inevitable changes in manners, customs, beliefs, implements, laws,
+weapons, and so on, which could not but arise in the long process of
+time. Yet traces of change in law, religion, manners, and customs are
+scarcely, if at all, to be detected; whence it logically follows that a
+dozen generations of irresponsible minstrels and vagrant reciters were
+learned, conscientious, and staunchly conservative of the archaic tone.
+Their erudite conservatism, for example, induced them, in deference to
+the traditions of the bronze age, to describe all weapons as of bronze,
+though many of the poets were living in an age of weapons of iron. It
+also prompted them to describe all shields as made on the far-away old
+Mycenaean model, though they were themselves used to small circular
+bucklers, with a bracer and a grip, worn on the left arm.
+
+But at this point the learning and conservatism of the late poets
+deserted them, and into their new lays, also into the old lays, they
+eagerly introduced many unwarrantable corslets and greaves--things of
+the ninth to seventh centuries. We shall find Helbig stating, on the
+same page, that in the matter of usages "the epic poets shunned, as far
+as possible, all that was recent," and also that for fear of puzzling
+their military audiences they did the reverse: "they probably kept
+account of the arms and armour of their own day." [Footnote: La
+_Question Mycenienne_, p. 50. _Cf_. Note I.] Now the late poets, on
+this showing, must have puzzled warriors who used iron weapons by always
+speaking of bronze weapons. They pleased the critical warriors, on the
+other hand, by introducing the corslets and greaves which every military
+man of their late age possessed. But, again, the poets startled an
+audience which used light bucklers, worn on the left arm, by talking of
+enormous _targes_, slung round the neck.
+
+All these inconsistencies of theory follow from the assumption that the
+_Iliad_ _must_ be a hotch-potch of many ages. If we assume that, on the
+whole, it is the work of one age, we see that the poet describes the
+usages which obtained in his own day. The dead are cremated, not, as in
+the Mycenaean prime, inhumed. The shield has been strengthened to meet
+bronze, not stone-tipped, arrows by bronze plates. Corslets and greaves
+have been elaborated. Bronze, however, is still the metal for swords and
+spears, and even occasionally for tools and implements, though these are
+often of iron. In short, we have in Homer a picture of a transitional
+age of culture; we have not a medley of old and new, of obsolete and
+modern. The poets do not describe inhumation, as they should do, if they
+are conservative archaeologists. In that case, though they burn, they
+would have made their heroes bury their dead, as they did at Mycenas.
+They do not introduce iron swords and spears, as they must do, if, being
+late poets, they keep in touch with the armament of their time. If they
+speak of huge shields only because they are conservative archaeologists,
+then, on the other hand, they speak of corslets and greaves because they
+are also reckless innovators.
+
+They cannot be both at once. They are depicting a single age, a single
+"moment in culture." That age is certainly sundered from the Mycenaean
+prime by the century or two in which changing ideas led to the
+superseding of burial by burning, or it is sundered from the Mycenaean
+prime by a foreign conquest, a revolution, and the years in which the
+foreign conquerors acquired the language of their subjects.
+
+In either alternative, and one or other must be actual, there was time
+enough for many changes in the culture of the Mycenaean prime to be
+evolved. These changes, we say, are represented by the descriptions of
+culture in the Iliad. That hypothesis explains, simply and readily, all
+the facts. The other hypothesis, that the _Iliad_ was begun near the
+Mycenaean prime and was continued throughout four or five centuries,
+cannot, first, explain how the _Iliad_ was _composed_, and, next,
+it wanders among apparent contradictories and through a maze of
+inconsistencies.
+
+
+
+ THE ZOSTER, ZOMA, AND MITRE
+
+ We are far from contending that it is always possible to
+understand Homer's descriptions of defensive armour. But as we have
+never seen the actual objects, perhaps the poet's phrases were clear
+enough to his audience and are only difficult to us. I do not, for
+example, profess to be sure of what happened when Pandarus shot at
+Menelaus. The arrow lighted "where the golden buckles of the _zoster_
+were clasped, and the doubled breastplate met them. So the bitter arrow
+alighted upon the firm _zoster_; through the wrought _zoster_ it sped,
+and through the curiously wrought breastplate it pressed on, and through
+the _mitre_ he wore to shield his flesh, a barrier against darts; and
+this best shielded him, yet it passed on even through this," and grazed
+the hero's flesh (_Iliad_, IV. I 32 seq.). Menelaus next says that "the
+glistering _zoster_ in front stayed the dart, and the _zoma_ beneath,
+and the _mitre_ that the coppersmiths fashioned" (IV. 185-187). Then the
+surgeon, Machaon, "loosed the glistering _zoster_ and the _zoma_, and
+the _mitre_ beneath that the coppersmiths fashioned" (IV. 215, 216).
+
+Reading as a mere student of poetry I take this to mean that the corslet
+was of two pieces, fastening in the middle of the back and the middle of
+the front of a man (though Mr. Monro thinks that the plates met and the
+_zoster_ was buckled at the side); that the _zoster_, a mailed belt,
+buckled just above the place where the plates of the corslet met; that
+the arrow went through the meeting-place of the belt buckles, through
+the place where the plates of the corslet met, and then through the
+_mitre_, a piece of bronze armour worn under the corslet, though the
+nature of this _mitre_ and of the _zoma_ I do not know. Was the _mitre_
+a separate article or a continuation of the breastplate, lower down,
+struck by a dropping arrow?
+
+In 1883 Mr. Leaf wrote: "I take it that the _zoma_ means the waist of
+the cuirass which is covered by the _zoster_, and has the upper edge
+of the _mitre_ or plated apron beneath it fastened round the warrior's
+body. ... This view is strongly supported by all the archaic vase
+paintings I have been able to find." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic
+studies, vol. iv. pp. 74,75_.] We see a "corslet with a projecting rim";
+that rim is called zoma and holds the _zoster_. "The hips and upper
+part of the thighs were protected either by a belt of leather, sometimes
+plated, called the _mitre_, or else only by the lower part of the
+_chiton_, and this corresponds exactly with Homeric description."
+[Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic_ Studies, _pp. 76, 77_.]
+
+At this time, in days before Reichel, Mr. Leaf believed in bronze
+corslets, whether of plates or plated jacks; he also believed, we have
+seen, that the huge shields, as of Aias, were survivals in poetry;
+that "Homer" saw small round bucklers in use, and supposed that the old
+warriors were muscular enough to wear circular shields as great as those
+in the vase of Aristonothos, already described. [Footnote: _Ibid., vol.
+iv p. 285_.]
+
+On the corslet, as we have seen, Mr. Leaf now writes as a disciple of
+Reichel. But as to the _mitre_, he rejects Helbig's and Mr. Ridgeway's
+opinion that it was a band of metal a foot wide in front and very narrow
+behind. Such things have been found in Euboea and in Italy. Mr. Ridgeway
+mentions examples from Bologna, Corneto, Este, Hallstatt, and Hungary.
+[Footnote: _Early Age of Greece, p. 31 I_.] The _zoster_ is now, in
+Mr. Leaf's opinion, a "girdle" "holding up the waist-cloth (_zoma_), so
+characteristic of Mycenaean dress!" Reichel's arguments against corslets
+"militate just as strongly against the presence of such a _mitre_, which
+is, in fact, just the lower half of a corslet.... The conclusion is that
+the metallic _mitre_ is just as much an intruder into the armament
+of the _Epos_ as the corslet." The process of evolution was, Mr.
+Leaf suggests, first, the abandonment of the huge shield, with the
+introduction of small round bucklers in its place. Then, second, a man
+naturally felt very unprotected, and put on "the metallic _mitre_" of
+Helbig (which covered a foot of him in front and three inches behind).
+"Only as technical skill improved could the final stage, that of the
+elaborate cuirass, be attained."
+
+This appears to us an improbable sequence of processes. While arrows
+were flying thick, as they do fly in the _Iliad_, men would not reject
+body-covering shields for small bucklers while they were still wholly
+destitute of body armour. Nor would men arm only their stomachs when,
+if they had skill enough to make a metallic _mitre_, they could not have
+been so unskilled as to be unable to make corslets of some more or
+less serviceable type. Probably they began with huge shields, added the
+_linothorex_ (like the Iroquois cotton _thorex_), and next, as a rule,
+superseded that with the bronze _thorex_, while retaining the huge
+shield, because the bronze _thorex_ was so inadequate to its purpose of
+defence. Then, when archery ceased to be of so much importance as coming
+to the shock with heavy spears, and as the bronze _thorex_ really could
+sometimes keep out an arrow, they reduced the size of their shields, and
+retained surface enough for parrying spears and meeting point and edge
+of the sword. That appears to be a natural set of sequences, but I
+cannot pretend to guess how the corslet fastened or what the _mitre_ and
+_zoster_ really were, beyond being guards of the stomach and lower part
+of the trunk.
+
+
+
+ HELMETS, GREAVES, SPEARS
+
+ No helmets of metal, such as Homer mentions, have been found in
+Mycenaean graves. A quantity of boars' teeth, sixty in all, were
+discovered in Grave V. and may have adorned and strengthened leather
+caps, now mouldered into dust. An ivory head from Mycenae shows a
+conical cap set with what may be boars' tusks, with a band of the same
+round the chin, and an earpiece which was perhaps of bronze? Spata and
+the graves of the lower town of Mycenae and the Enkomi ivories show
+similar headgear. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, pp. 196, 197.]
+
+This kind of cap set with boars' tusks is described in _Iliad_, Book X.,
+in the account of the hasty arraying of two spies in the night of terror
+after the defeat and retreat to the ships. The Trojan spy, Dolon, also
+wears a leather cap. The three spies put on no corslets, as far as we
+can affirm, their object being to remain inconspicuous and unburdened
+with glittering bronze greaves and corslets. The Trojan camp was
+brilliantly lit up with fires, and there may have been a moon, so the
+less bronze the better. In these circumstances alone the heroes of the
+Iliad are unequipped, certainly, with bronze helmets, corslets,
+and bronze greaves. [Dislocated Footnote: Evans, _Journal of the
+Anthropological Institute, xxx. pp._ 209-215.] [Footnote: _Iliad, X._
+255-265.]
+
+The author of Book X. is now regarded as a precise archaeologist, who
+knew that corslets and bronze helmets were not used in Agamemnon's time,
+but that leather caps with boars' tusks were in fashion; while again, as
+we shall see, he is said to know nothing about heroic costume (cf. The
+_Doloneia_). As a fact, he has to describe an incident which occurs
+nowhere else in Homer, though it may often have occurred in practice--a
+hurried council during a demoralised night, and the hasty arraying of
+two spies, who wish to be lightfooted and inconspicuous. The author's
+evidence as to the leather cap and its garnishing of boars' tusks
+testifies to a survival of such gear in an age of bronze battle-helmets,
+not to his own minute antiquarian research.
+
+
+
+ GREAVES
+
+ Bronze greaves are not found, so far, in Mycenaean tombs in
+Greece, and Reichel argued that the original Homer knew none. The
+greaves, [Greek: kunmides] "were gaiters of stuff or leather"; the one
+mention of bronze greaves is stuff and nonsense interpolated (VII. 41).
+But why did men who were interpolating bronze corslets freely introduce
+bronze so seldom, if at all, as the material of greaves?
+
+Bronze greaves, however, have been found in a Cypro-Mycenaean grave at
+Enkomi (Tomb XV.), _accompanied_ by _an early type_ of _bronze_ dagger,
+while bronze greaves adorned with Mycenaean ornament are discovered in
+the Balkan peninsula at Glassinavc. [Footnote: Evans, _Journal of the
+Anthropological Institute,_ pp. 214, 215, figs. 10, 11.] Thus all Homer's
+description of arms is here corroborated by archaeology, and cannot be
+cut out by what Mr. Evans calls "the Procrustean method" of Dr. Reichel.
+
+A curious feature about the spear may be noticed. In Book X. while the
+men of Diomede slept, "their spears were driven into the ground erect
+on the spikes of the butts" (X. 153). Aristotle mentions that this was
+still the usage of the Illyrians in his day. [Footnote: _Poctica_,
+25.] Though the word for the spike in the butt (_sauroter_) does not
+elsewhere occur in the _Iliad_, the practice of sticking the spears
+erect in the ground during a truce is mentioned in III. 135: "They lean
+upon their shields" (clearly large high shields), "and the tall spears
+are planted by their sides." No butt-spikes have been found in graves of
+the Mycenaean prime. The _sauroter_ was still used, or still existed, in
+the days of Herodotus. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 205; Ridgeway,
+vol. i. pp. 306, 307.]
+
+On the whole, Homer does not offer a medley of the military gear of
+four centuries--that view we hope to have shown to be a mass of
+inconsistencies--but describes a state of military equipment in advance
+of that of the most famous Mycenaean graves, but other than that of the
+late "warrior vase." He is also very familiar with some uses of iron, of
+which, as we shall see, scarcely any has been found in Mycenaean graves
+of the central period, save in the shape of rings. Homer never mentions
+rings of any metal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+BRONZE AND IRON
+
+Taking the Iliad and Odyssey just as they have reached us they give,
+with the exception of one line, an entirely harmonious account of the
+contemporary uses of bronze and iron. Bronze is employed in the making
+of weapons and armour (with cups, ornaments, &c.); iron is employed
+(and bronze is also used) in the making of tools and implements, such
+as knives, axes, adzes, axles of a chariot (that of Hera; mortals use
+an axle tree of oak), and the various implements of agricultural and
+pastoral life. Meanwhile, iron is a substance perfectly familiar to the
+poets; it is far indeed from being a priceless rarity (it is impossible
+to trace Homeric stages of advance in knowledge of iron), and it yields
+epithets indicating strength, permanence, and stubborn endurance. These
+epithets are more frequent in the Odyssey and the "later" Books of the
+Iliad than in the "earlier" Books of the Iliad; but, as articles made
+of iron, the Odyssey happens to mention only one set of axes, which is
+spoken of ten times--axes and adzes as a class--and "iron bonds," where
+"iron" probably means "strong," "not to be broken." [Footnote: In these
+circumstances, it is curious that Mr. Monro should have written thus:
+"In Homer, as is well known, iron is rarely mentioned in comparison
+with bronze, but the proportion is greater in the Odyssey (25 iron, 80
+bronze) than in the Iliad" (23 iron, 279 bronze).--Monro, Odyssey, vol.
+ii. p. 339. These statistics obviously do not prove that, at the date
+of the composition of the Odyssey, the use of iron was becoming more
+common, or that the use of bronze was becoming more rare, than when the
+_Iliad_ was put together. Bronze is, in the poems, the military metal:
+the _Iliad_ is a military poem, while the _Odyssey_ is an epic of peace;
+consequently the _Iliad_ is much more copious in references to bronze
+than the _Odyssey_ has any occasion to be. Wives are far more frequently
+mentioned in the Odyssey than in the _Iliad_, but nobody will argue that
+therefore marriage had recently come more into vogue. Again, the method
+of counting up references to iron in the Odyssey is quite misleading,
+when we remember that ten out of the twenty references are only _one_
+reference to one and the same set of iron tools-axes. Mr. Monro also
+proposed to leave six references to iron in the _Iliad_ out of the
+reckoning, "as all of them are in lines which can be omitted without
+detriment to the sense." Most of the six are in a recurrent epic formula
+descriptive of a wealthy man, who possesses iron, as well as bronze,
+gold, and women. The existence of the formula proves familiarity with
+iron, and to excise it merely because it contradicts a theory is purely
+arbitrary.--Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 339.]. The statement of facts
+given here is much akin to Helbig's account of the uses of bronze and
+iron in Homer. [Footnote: Helbig, _Das Homerischi Epos_, pp. 330, 331.
+_1887_.] Helbig writes: "It is notable that in the Epic there is much
+more frequent mention of iron _implements_ than of iron _weapons of
+war_." He then gives examples, which we produce later, and especially
+remarks on what Achilles says when he offers a mass of iron as a prize
+in the funeral games of Patroclus. The iron, says Achilles, will serve
+for the purposes of the ploughman and shepherd, "a surprising speech
+from the son of Peleus, from whom we rather expect an allusion to the
+military uses of the metal." Of course, if iron weapons were not in
+vogue while iron was the metal for tools and implements, the words of
+Achilles are appropriate and intelligible.
+
+The facts being as we and Helbig agree in stating them, we suppose that
+the Homeric poets sing of the usages of their own time. It is an age
+when iron, though quite familiar, is not yet employed for armour, or
+for swords or spears, which must be of excellent temper, without great
+weight in proportion to their length and size. Iron is only employed in
+Homer for some knives, which are never said to be used in battle
+(not even for dealing the final stab, like the mediaeval poniard, the
+_misericorde_), for axes, which have a short cutting edge, and may be
+thick and weighty behind the edge, and for the rough implements of the
+shepherd and ploughman, such as tips of ploughshares, of goads, and so
+forth.
+
+As far as archaeological excavations and discoveries enlighten us, these
+relative uses of bronze and iron did not exist in the ages of Mycenaean
+culture which are represented in the _tholos_ of Vaphio and the graves,
+earlier and later, of Mycenae. Even in the later Mycenaean graves iron
+is found only in the form of finger rings (iron rings were common in
+late Greece). [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, pp. 72, 146, 165.] Iron
+was scarce in the Cypro-Mycenaean graves of Enkomi. A small knife with
+a carved handle had left traces of an iron blade. A couple of lumps
+of iron, one of them apparently the head of a club, were found
+in Schliemann's "Burned City" at Hissarlik; for the rest, swords,
+spear-heads, knives, and axes are all of bronze in the age called
+"Mycenaean." But we do not know whether iron _implements_ may not yet
+be found in the sepulchres of _Thetes_, and other poor and landless
+men. The latest discoveries in Minoan graves in Crete exhibit tools of
+bronze.
+
+Iron, we repeat, is in the poems a perfectly familiar metal. Ownership
+of "bronze, gold, and iron, which requires much labour" (in the
+smithying or smelting), appears regularly in the recurrent epic formula
+for describing a man of wealth. [Footnote: _Iliad_, VI. 48; IX. 365-366;
+X. 379; XI. 133; _Odyssey_, XIV. 324; XXI. 10.] Iron, bronze, slaves,
+and hides are bartered for sea-borne wine at the siege of Troy?
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, VII. 472-475.] Athene, disguised as Mentes, is
+carrying a cargo of iron to Temesa (Tamasus in Cyprus?), to barter for
+copper. The poets are certainly not describing an age in which only a
+man of wealth might indulge in the rare and extravagant luxury of an
+iron ring: iron was a common commodity, like cattle, hides, slaves,
+bronze, and other such matters. Common as it was, Homer never once
+mentions its use for defensive armour, or for swords and spears.
+
+Only in two cases does Homer describe any weapon as of iron. There is to
+be sure the "iron," the knife with which Antilochus fears Achilles will
+cut his own throat. [Footnote: _Iliad_ XVIII. 34.] But no knife is ever
+used as a weapon of war: knives are employed in cutting the throats of
+victims (see _Iliad_, III. 271 and XXIII. 30); the knife is said to be
+of iron, in this last passage; also Patroclus uses the knife to cut the
+arrow-head out of the flesh of a wounded friend. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XI.
+844.] It is the _knife_ of Achilles that is called "the iron," and on
+"the iron" perish the cattle in _Iliad_, XXIII. 30. Mr. Leaf says that
+by "the usual use, the metal" (iron) "is confined to tools of small
+size." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, xxiii. 30, Note.] This is incorrect;
+the Odyssey speaks of _great axes_ habitually made of iron. [Footnote:
+Odyssey, IX. 391.] But we do find a knife of bronze, that of Agamemnon,
+used in sacrificing victims; at least so I infer from Iliad, III.
+271-292.
+
+The only two specimens of _weapons_ named by Homer as of iron are one
+arrow-head, used by Pandarus, [Footnote: _Iliad_, IV. 123.] and one
+mace, borne, before Nestor's time, by Areithoeus. To fight with an iron
+mace was an amiable and apparently unique eccentricity of Areithbus, and
+caused his death. On account of his peculiar practice he was named "The
+Mace man." [Footnote: Iliad, VII. 141.] The case is mentioned by Nestor
+as curious and unusual.
+
+ Mr. Leaf gets rid of this solitary iron _casse tete_ in a
+pleasant way. Since he wrote his _Companion to the Iliad_, 1902, he has
+become converted, as we saw, to the theory, demolished by Mr. Monro,
+Nutzhorn, and Grote, and denounced by Blass, that the origin of our
+Homer is a text edited by some literary retainer of Pisistratus of
+Athens (about 560-540 B.C.). The editor arranged current lays, "altered"
+freely, and "wrote in" as much as he pleased. Probably he wrote this
+passage in which Nestor describes the man of the iron mace, for "the
+tales of Nestor's youthful exploits, all of which bear the mark of late
+work, are introduced with no special applicability to the context, but
+rather with the intention of glorifying the ancestor of Pisistratus."
+[Footnote: Iliad (1900), VII. 149, Note.] If Pisistratus was pleased
+with the ancestral portrait, nobody has a right to interfere, but we
+need hardly linger over this hypothesis (cf. pp. 281-288).
+
+ Iron axes are offered as prizes by Achilles, [Footnote: Iliad,
+XXIII. 850.] and we have the iron axes of Odysseus, who shot an arrow
+through the apertures in the blades, at the close of the Odyssey.
+But all these axes, as we shall show, were not weapons, but _peaceful
+implements_.
+
+ As a matter of certain fact the swords and spears of Homer's
+warriors are invariably said by the poet to be of bronze, not of iron,
+in cases where the metal of the weapons is specified.
+
+Except for an arrow-head (to which we shall return) and the one iron
+mace, noted as an eccentricity, no weapon in Homer is ever said to be of
+iron.
+
+The richest men use swords of bronze. Not one chooses to indulge in a
+sword said to be of iron. The god, Hephaestus, makes a bronze sword for
+Achilles, whose own bronze sword was lent to Patroclus, and lost by
+him to Hector. [Footnote: _Iliad_ XVI. 136; XIX. 372-373.] This bronze
+sword, at least, Achilles uses, after receiving the divine armour of the
+god. The sword of Paris is of bronze, as is the sword of Odysseus in the
+Odyssey. [Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 334-335] Bronze is the sword which he
+brought from Troy, and bronze is the sword presented to him by Euryalus
+in Phaeacia, and bronze is the spear with which he fought under the
+walls of Ilios. [Footnote: _Odyssey_, X. 162, 261-262] There are other
+examples of bronze swords, while spears are invariably said to be of
+bronze, when the metal of the spear is specified.
+
+Here we are on the ground of solid certainty: we see that the Homeric
+warrior has regularly spear and sword of bronze. If any man used a spear
+or sword of iron, Homer never once mentions the fact. If the poets,
+in an age of iron weapons, always spoke of bronze, out of deference to
+tradition, they must have puzzled their iron-using military patrons.
+
+Thus, as regards weapons, the Homeric heroes are in the age of bronze,
+like them who slept in the tombs of the Mycenaean age. When Homer speaks
+of the use of cutting instruments of iron, he is always concerned,
+except in the two cases given, not with [blank space] but with
+_implements_, which really were of iron. The wheelwright fells a tree
+"with the iron," that is, with an axe; Antilochus fears that Achilles
+"will cut his own throat with the iron," that is, with his knife, a
+thing never used in battle; the cattle struggle when slain with "the
+iron," that is, the butcher's knife; and Odysseus shoots "through
+the iron," that is, through the holes in the blade of the iron axes.
+[Footnote: For this peculiar kind of Mycenaean axe with holes in the
+blade, see the design of a bronze example from Vaphio in Tsountas and
+Manatt, _The Mycenaean Age_, p. 207, fig. 94.] Thus Homer never says
+that this or that was done "with the iron" in the case of any but one
+weapon of war. Pandarus "drew the bow-string to his breast and to the
+bow." [Footnote: Iliad, W. 123.] Whoever wrote that line was writing
+in an age, we may think, when arrow-heads were commonly of iron; but in
+Homer, when the metal of the arrow-head is mentioned, except, in this
+one case, it is always bronze. The iron arrow-tip of Pandarus was of an
+early type, the shaft did not run into the socket of the arrow-head; the
+tang of the arrow-head, on the other hand, entered the shaft, and was
+whipped on with sinew. [_Iliad_, IV. 151.] Pretty primitive this method,
+still the iron is an advance on the uniform bronze of Homer. The line
+about Pandarus and the iron arrow-head may really be early enough, for
+the arrow-head is of a primitive kind--socketless--and primitive is
+the attitude of the archer: he "drew the arrow to his breast." On the
+Mycenaean silver bowl, representing a siege, the archers draw to the
+breast, in the primitive style, as does the archer on the bronze dagger
+with a representation of a lion hunt. The Assyrians and Khita drew
+to the ear, as the monuments prove, and so does the "Cypro-Mycenaean"
+archer of the ivory draught-box from Enkomi. [Footnote: Evans,
+Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxx. p. 210.] In
+these circumstances we cannot deny that the poet may have known iron
+arrow-heads.
+
+We now take the case of axes. We never hear from Homer of the use of
+an iron axe in battle, and warlike use of an axe only occurs twice. In
+_Iliad_, XV. 711, in a battle at and on the ships, "they were fighting
+with sharp axes and battle-axes" ([Greek text: axinai]) "and with great
+swords, and spears armed at butt and tip." At and on the ships, men
+would set hand to whatever tool of cutting edge was accessible. Seiler
+thinks that only the Trojans used the battle-axe; perhaps for damaging
+the ships: he follows the scholiast. [Greek text: Axinae], however,
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, XIII. 611.] may perhaps be rendered "battle-axe," as
+a Trojan, Peisandros, fights with an [Greek text: Axinae], and this is
+the only place in the _Iliad_, except XV. 711, where the thing is said
+to be used as a weapon. But it is not an _iron_ axe; it is "of fine
+bronze." Only one bronze _battle-axe_, according to Dr. Joseph Anderson,
+is known to have been found in Scotland, though there are many bronze
+heads of axes which were tools.
+
+Axes ([Greek text: pelekeis]) were _implements_, tools of the carpenter,
+woodcutter, shipwright, and so on; they were not weapons of war of the
+Achaeans.
+
+As implements they are, with very rare exceptions, of iron. The
+wheelwright fells trees "with the gleaming iron," iron being a synonym
+for axe and for knife. [Footnote: _Iliad_, IV. 485] In _Iliad_, XIII.
+391, the shipwrights cut timber with axes. In _Iliad_, XXIII. 114,
+woodcutters' axes are employed in tree-felling, but the results are
+said to be produced [Greek text: tanaaekei chalcho], "by the long-edged
+bronze," where the word [Greek text: tanaaekaes] is borrowed from the
+usual epithet of swords; "the long edge" is quite inappropriate to a
+woodcutter's axe. On Calypso's isle Calypso gives to Odysseus a bronze
+axe for his raft-making. Butcher's work is done with an axe. [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, XVII. 520; Odyssey, III. 442-449.] The axes offered by Achilles
+as a prize for archers and the axes through which Odysseus shot are
+_implements_ of iron. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XXIII. 850; Odyssey, XXI. 3,
+81, 97.]
+
+In the Odyssey, when the poet describes the process of tempering iron,
+we read, "as when a smith dips a great axe or an adze in chill water,
+for thus men temper iron." [Footnote: Odyssey, IX. 391-393.] He is not
+using iron to make a sword or spear, but a tool-adze or axe. The poet is
+perfectly consistent. There are also examples both of bronze axes
+and, apparently, of bronze knives. Thus, though the woodcutter's or
+carpenter's axe is of bronze in two passages cited, iron is the usual
+material of the axe or adze. Again we saw, when Achilles gives a mass of
+iron as a prize in the games, he does not mean the armourer to fashion
+it into sword or spear, but says that it will serve the shepherd or
+ploughman for domestic implements, [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_ (1902),
+XXIII. line 30, Note.] so that the men need not, on an upland farm, go
+to the city for iron implements. In commenting upon this Mr. Leaf is
+scarcely at the proper point of view. He says, [Footnote: _Iliad_,
+XXIII. 835, Note.] "the idea of a state of things when the ploughman and
+shepherd forge their own tools from a lump of raw iron has a suspicious
+appearance of a deliberate attempt to represent from the inner
+consciousness an archaic state of civilisation. In Homeric times the
+[Greek: chalceus] is already specialised as a worker in metals...."
+However, Homer does not say that the ploughman and shepherd "forge their
+own tools." A Homeric chief, far from a town, would have his own smithy,
+just as the laird of Runraurie (now Urrard) had his smithy at the
+time of the battle of Killicrankie (1689). Mackay's forces left their
+_impedimenta_ "at the laird's smithy," says an eye-witness. [Footnote:
+Napier's _Life_ Of _Dundee_, iii. p. 724.]
+
+The idea of a late Homeric poet trying to reconstruct from his fancy
+a prehistoric state of civilisation is out of the question. Even
+historical novelists of the eighteenth century A.D. scarcely attempted
+such an effort.
+
+This was the regular state of things in the Highlands during the
+eighteenth century, when many chiefs, and most of the clans, lived far
+from any town. But these rural smiths did not make sword-blades, which
+Prince Charles, as late as 1750, bought on the Continent. The
+Andrea Ferrara-marked broadsword blades of the clans were of foreign
+manufacture. The Highland smiths did such rough iron work as was needed
+for rural purposes. Perhaps the Homeric chief may have sometimes been
+a craftsman like the heroes of the Sagas, great sword-smiths. Odysseus
+himself, notably an excellent carpenter, may have been as good a
+sword-smith, but every hero was not so accomplished.
+
+In searching with microscopes for Homeric discrepancies and
+interpolations, critics are apt to forget the ways of old rural society.
+
+The Homeric poems, whether composed in one age or throughout five
+centuries, are thus entirely uniform in allotting bronze as the
+material for all sorts of warlike gear, down to the solitary battle-axe
+mentioned; and iron as the usual metal for heavy tools, knives,
+carpenters' axes, adzes, and agricultural implements, with the rare
+exceptions which we have cited in the case of bronze knives and axes.
+Either this distinction--iron for tools and implements; bronze for
+armour, swords, and spears--prevailed throughout the period of the
+Homeric poets or poet; or the poets invented such a stage of culture; or
+poets, some centuries later, deliberately kept bronze for weapons only,
+while introducing iron for implements. In that case they were showing
+archaeological conscientiousness in following the presumed earlier poets
+of the bronze age, the age of the Mycenaean graves.
+
+Now early poets are never studious archaeologists. Examining the [blank
+space] certainly based on old lays and legends which survive in
+the Edda, we find that the poets of the _Nibelungenlied_ introduce
+chivalrous and Christian manners. They do not archaeologise. The poets
+of the French _Chansons de Geste_ (eleventh to thirteenth centuries)
+bring their own weapons, and even armorial bearings, into the 'remote
+age of Charlemagne, which they know from legends and _cantilenes_.
+Again, the later _remanieurs_ of the earliest _Chansons de Geste_
+modernise the details of these poems. But, _per impossibile_, and
+for the sake of argument, suppose that the later interpolators and
+continuators of the Homeric lays were antiquarian precisians, or, on
+the other hand, "deliberately attempted to reproduce from their inner
+consciousness an archaic state of civilisation." Suppose that, though
+they lived in an age of iron weapons, they knew, as Hesiod knew, that
+the old heroes "had warlike gear of bronze, and ploughed with bronze,
+and there was no black iron." [Footnote: Hesiod, _Works and Days_, pp.
+250, 251.] In that case, why did the later interpolating poets introduce
+iron as the special material of tools and implements, knives and axes,
+in an age when they knew that there was no iron? Savants such as, by
+this theory, the later poets of the full-blown age of iron were, they
+must have known that the knives and axes of the old heroes were made of
+bronze. In old votive offerings in temples and in any Mycenaean graves
+which might be opened, the learned poets of 800-600 B.C. saw with their
+eyes knives and axes of bronze. [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i.
+413-416.] The knife of Agamemnon ([Greek: machaira]), which hangs from
+his girdle, beside his sword, [Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 271; XIX. 252.]
+corresponds to the knives found in Grave IV. at Mycenae; the handles of
+these dirks have a ring for suspension. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt,
+p. 204.] But these knives, in Mycenaean graves, are of bronze, and of
+bronze are the axes in the Mycenaean deposits and the dagger of Enkomi.
+[Footnote: _Ibid._, pp. 145, 207, 208, 256. _Evans, Journal of the
+Anthropological Institute_, vol xxx. p, 214.]
+
+Why, then, did the late poetic interpolators, who knew that the spears
+and swords of the old warriors were of bronze, and who describe them as
+of bronze, not know that their knives and axes were also of bronze? Why
+did they describe the old knives and axes as of iron, while Hesiod knew,
+and could have told them--did tell them, in fact--that they were of
+bronze? Clearly the theory that Homeric poets were archaeological
+precisians is impossible. They describe arms as of bronze, tools usually
+as of iron, because they see them to be such in practice.
+
+The poems, in fact, depict a very extraordinary condition of affairs,
+such as no poets could invent and adhere to with uniformity. We are
+accustomed in archaeology to seeing the bronze sword pass by a gradual
+transition into the iron sword; but, in Homer, people with abundance of
+iron never, in any one specified case, use iron sword blades or spears.
+The greatest chiefs, men said to be rich in gold and iron, always use
+swords and spears of _bronze_ in _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.
+
+The usual process of transition from bronze to iron swords, in a
+prehistoric European age, is traced by Mr. Ridgeway at Hallstatt, "in
+the heart of the Austrian Alps," where a thousand old graves have been
+explored. The swords pass from bronze to iron with bronze hilts, and,
+finally, are wholly of iron. Weapons of bronze are fitted with
+iron edges. Axes of iron were much more common than axes of bronze.
+[Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i. 413-416.] The axes were fashioned
+in the old shapes of the age of bronze, were not of the _bipennis_
+Mycenaean model--the double axe--nor of the shape of the letter D, very
+thick, with two round apertures in the blade, like the bronze axe of
+Vaphio. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. 176.] Probably the axes
+through which Odysseus shot an arrow were of this kind, as Mr. Monro,
+and, much earlier, Mr. Butcher and I have argued. [Footnote: _Ibid_.
+(1901), vol. ii. Book XIX. line 572. Note. Butcher and Lang, Odyssey,
+Appendix (1891).]
+
+At Hallstatt there was the _normal_ evolution from bronze swords and
+axes to iron swords and axes. Why, then, had Homer's men in his time not
+made this step, seeing that they were familiar with the use of iron? Why
+do they use bronze for swords and spears, iron for tools? The obvious
+answer is that they could temper bronze for military purposes much
+better than they could temper iron. Now Mr. Ridgeway quotes Polybius
+(ii. 30; ii. 33) for the truly execrable quality of the iron of the
+Celtic invaders of Italy as late as 225 B.C. Their swords were as bad
+as, or worse than, British bayonets; they _always_ "doubled up." "Their
+long iron swords were easily bent, and could only give one downward
+stroke with any effect; but after this the edges got so turned and the
+blades so bent that, unless they had time to straighten them with
+the foot against the ground, they could not deliver a second blow."
+[Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. 408.] If the heroes in Homer's
+time possessed iron as badly tempered as that of the Celts of 225 B.C.,
+they had every reason to prefer, as they did, excellent bronze for all
+their military weapons, while reserving iron for pacific purposes. A
+woodcutter's axe might have any amount of weight and thickness of iron
+behind the edge; not so a sword blade or a spear point. [Footnote:
+Monsieur Salomon Reinach suggests to me that the story of Polybius may
+be a myth. Swords and spear-heads in graves are often found doubled up;
+possibly they are thus made dead, like the owner, and their spirits are
+thus set free to be of use to his spirit. Finding doubled up iron swords
+in Celtic graves, the Romans, M. Beinach suggests, may have explained
+their useless condition by the theory that they doubled up in battle,
+leaving their owners easy victims, and this myth was accepted as fact
+by Polybius. But he was not addicted to myth, nor very remote from the
+events which he chronicles. Again, though bronze grave-weapons in our
+Museum are often doubled up, the myth is not told of the warriors of the
+age of bronze. We later give examples of the doubling up, in battle, of
+Scandinavian iron swords as late as 1000 A.D.]
+
+In the _Iliad_ we hear of swords breaking at the hilt in dealing a
+stroke at shield or helmet, a thing most incident to bronze swords,
+especially of the early type, with a thin bronze tang inserted in a
+hilt of wood, ivory, or amber, or with a slight shelf of the bronze hilt
+riveted with three nails on to the bronze blade.
+
+Lycaon struck Peneleos on the socket of his helmet crest, "and his sword
+brake at the hilt." [Footnote: _Iliad_, XVI. 339.] The sword of Menelaus
+broke into three or four pieces when he smote the helmet ridge of Paris.
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, III. 349, 380.] Iron of the Celtic sort described by
+Polybius would have bent, not broken. There is no doubt on that head:
+if Polybius is not romancing, the Celtic sword of 225 B.C. doubled up at
+every stroke, like a piece of hoop iron. But Mr. Leaf tells us that, "by
+primitive modes of smelting," iron is made "hard and brittle, like cast
+iron." If so, it would be even less trustworthy for a sword than bronze.
+[Footnote: _Iliad_ (1900), Book VI, line 48, Note.] Perhaps the Celts
+of 225 B.C. did not smelt iron by primitive methods, but discovered some
+process for making it not hard and brittle, but flabby.
+
+The swords of the Mycenaean graves, we know, were all of bronze, and,
+in three intaglios on rings from the graves, the point, not the edge, is
+used, [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, p. 199.] once against a lion, once
+over the rim of a shield which covers the whole body of an enemy, and
+once at too close quarters to permit the use of the edge. It does not
+follow from these three cases (as critics argue) that no bronze sword
+could be used for a swashing blow, and there are just half as many
+thrusts as strokes with the bronze sword in the _Iliad_. [Footnote:
+Twenty-four cuts to eleven lunges, in the _Iliad_.] As the poet
+constantly dwells on the "long edge" of the _bronze_ swords and makes
+heroes use both point and edge, how can we argue that Homeric swords
+were of iron and ill fitted to give point? The Highlanders at Clifton
+(1746) were obliged, contrary to their common practice, to use the point
+against Cumberland's dragoons. They, like the Achaeans, had heavy cut
+and thrust swords, but theirs were of steel.
+
+If the Achaeans had thoroughly excellent bronze, and had iron as bad as
+that of the Celts a thousand years later, their preference for bronze
+over iron for weapons is explained. In Homer the fighters do not very
+often come to sword strokes; they fight mainly with the spear, except
+in pursuit, now and then. But when they do strike, they cleave heads and
+cut off arms. They could not do this with bronze rapiers, such as those
+with which men give point over the rim of the shield on two Mycenaean
+gems. But Mr. Myres writes, "From the shaft graves (of Mycenae) onwards
+there are two types of swords in the Mycenaean world--one an exaggerated
+dagger riveted into the front end of the hilt, the other with a flat
+flanged tang running the whole length of the hilt, and covered on either
+face by ornamental grip plates riveted on. This sword, though still of
+bronze, can deal a very effective cut; and, as the Mycenaeans had no
+armour for body or head," (?) "the danger of breaking or bending the
+sword on a cuirass or helmet did not arise." [Footnote: _Classical
+Review_, xvi. 72.] The danger did exist in Homer's time, as we have
+seen. But a bronze sword, published by Tsountas and Manatt (_Mycenaean
+Age_, p. 199, fig. 88), is emphatically meant to give both point and
+edge, having a solid handle--a continuation of the blade--and a very
+broad blade, coming to a very fine point. Even in Grave V. at Mycenae,
+we have a sword blade so massive at the top that it was certainly
+capable of a swashing blow. [Footnote: Schuchardt, _Schliemann's
+Excavations_, p. _265, fig._ 269.] The sword of the charioteer on the
+_stele_ of Grave V. is equally good for cut and thrust. A pleasanter cut
+and thrust bronze sword than the one found at Ialysus no gentleman could
+wish to handle. [Footnote: Furtwaengler und Loeschke, _Myk. Va._ Taf.
+D.] Homer, in any case, says that his heroes used bronze swords, well
+adapted to strike. If his age had really good bronze, and iron as bad as
+that of the Celts of Polybius, a thousand years later, their preference
+of bronze over iron for weapons needs no explanation. If their iron
+was not so bad as that of the Celts, their military conservatism might
+retain bronze for weapons, while in civil life they often used iron for
+implements.
+
+The uniform evidence of the Homeric poems can only be explained on the
+supposition that men had plenty of iron; but, while they used it for
+implements, did not yet, with a natural conservatism, trust life and
+victory to iron spears and swords. Unluckily, we cannot test the
+temper of the earliest known iron swords found in Greece, for rust hath
+consumed them, and I know not that the temper of the Mycenaean bronze
+swords has been tested against helmets of bronze. I can thus give no
+evidence from experiment.
+
+There is just one line in Homer which disregards the distinction--iron
+for implements, bronze for weapons; it is in _Odyssey_, XVI. 294; XIX.
+13. Telemachus is told to remove the warlike harness of Odysseus from
+the hall, lest the wooers use it in the coming fray. He is to explain
+the removal by saying that it has been done, "Lest you fall to strife in
+your cups, and harm each other, and shame the feast, and _this_ wooing;
+_for iron of himself draweth a man to him_." The proverb is manifestly
+of an age when iron was almost universally used for weapons, and thus
+was, as in Thucydides, synonymous with all warlike gear; but throughout
+the poems no single article of warlike gear is of iron except one
+eccentric mace and one arrow-head of primitive type. The line in the
+Odyssey must therefore be a very late addition; it may be removed
+without injuring the sense of the passage in which it occurs. [Footnote:
+This fact, in itself, is of course no proof of interpolation. _Cf._
+Helbig, _op_. cit., p. 331. He thinks the line very late.] If, on the
+other hand, the line be as old as the oldest parts of the poem, the
+author for once forgets his usual antiquarian precision.
+
+We are thus led to the conclusion that either there was in early Greece
+an age when weapons were all of bronze while implements were often
+of iron, or that the poet, or crowd of poets, invented that state of
+things. Now early poets never invent in this way; singing to an audience
+of warriors, critical on such a point, they speak of what the warriors
+know to be actual, except when, in a recognised form of decorative
+exaggeration, they introduce
+
+     "Masts of the beaten gold
+      And sails of taffetie."
+
+Our theory is, then, that in the age when the Homeric poems were
+composed, iron, though well known, was on its probation. Men of the
+sword preferred bronze for all their military purposes, just as
+fifteenth-century soldiers found the long-bow and cross-bow much more
+effective than guns, or as the Duke of Wellington forbade the arming of
+all our men with rifles in place of muskets ... for reasons not devoid
+of plausibility.
+
+Sir John Evans supposes that, in the seventh century, the Carian and
+Ionian invaders of Egypt were still using offensive arms of bronze, not
+of iron. [Footnote: Ancient _Bronze Implements_, p. 8 (1881), citing
+Herodotus, ii. c. 112. Sir John is not sure that Achaean spear-heads
+were not of copper, for they twice double up against a shield. _Iliad_,
+III. 348; VII. 259; Evans, p. 13.] Sir John remarks that "for a
+considerable time after the Homeric period, bronze remained in use for
+offensive weapons," especially for "spears, lances, and arrows."
+Hesiod, quite unlike his contemporaries, the "later" poets of Iliad
+and _Odyssey_, gives to Heracles an iron helmet and sword. [Footnote:
+_Scutum Herculis_, pp. 122-138.] Hesiod knew better, but was not a
+consistent archaiser. Sir John thinks that as early as 500 or even 600
+B.C. iron and steel were in common use for weapons in Greece, but
+not yet had they altogether superseded bronze battle-axes and spears.
+[Footnote: Evans, p. 18.] By Sir John's showing, iron for offensive
+weapons superseded bronze very slowly indeed in Greece; and, if my
+argument be correct, it had not done so when the Homeric poems were
+composed. Iron merely served for utensils, and the poems reflect that
+stage of transition which no poet could dream of inventing.
+
+These pages had been written before my attention was directed to M.
+Berard's book, _Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssee_ (Paris, 1902). M. Berard
+has anticipated and rather outrun my ideas. "I might almost say," he
+remarks, "that iron is the popular metal, native and rustic... the
+shepherd and ploughman can extract and work it without going to the
+town." The chief's smith could work iron, if he had iron to work, and
+this iron Achilles gave as a prize. "With rustic methods of working it
+iron is always impure; it has 'straws' in it, and is brittle. It may be
+the metal for peace and for implements. In our fields we see the reaper
+sit down and repair his sickle. In war is needed a metal less hard,
+perhaps, but more tough and not so easily broken. You cannot sit down
+in the field of battle, as in a field of barley, to beat your sword
+straight...." [Footnote: Berard, i. 435.]
+
+So the Celts found, if we believe Polybius.
+
+On the other hand, iron swords did supersede bronze swords in the long
+run. Apparently they had not done so in the age of the poet, but iron
+had certainly ceased to be "a precious metal"; knives and woodcutters'
+axes are never made of a metal that is precious and rare. I am thus led,
+on a general view, to suppose that the poems took shape when iron was
+very well known, but was not yet, as in the "Dipylon" period in Crete,
+commonly used by sword-smiths.
+
+The ideas here stated are not unlike those of Paul Cauer. [Footnote:
+_Grundfrager des Homerkritik,_ pp. 183-187. Leipsic, 1895.] I do not,
+however, find the mentions of iron useful as a test of "early" and
+"late" lays, which it is his theory that they are. Thus he says:--
+
+(1) Iron is often mentioned as part of a man's personal property, while
+we are not told how he means to use it. It is named with bronze, gold,
+and girls. The poet has no definite picture before his eyes; he is vague
+about iron. But, we reply, his picture of iron in these passages is
+neither more nor less definite than his mental picture of the other
+commodities. He calls iron "hard to smithy," "grey," "dark-hued"; he
+knows, in fact, all about it. He does not tell us what the owner is
+going to do with the gold and the bronze and the girls, any more than he
+tells us what is to be done with the iron. Such information was rather
+in the nature of a luxury than a necessity. Every hearer knew the uses
+of all four commodities. This does not seem to have occurred to Cauer.
+
+(2) Iron is spoken of as an emblem of hard things, as, to take a modern
+example, in Mr. Swinburne's "armed and iron maidenhood "--said of
+Atalanta. Hearts are "iron," strength is "iron," flesh is not "iron," an
+"iron" noise goes up to the heaven of bronze. It may not follow, Cauer
+thinks, from these phrases that iron was used in any way. Men are
+supposed to marvel at its strange properties; it was "new and rare." I
+see no ground for this inference.
+
+(3) We have the "iron gates" of Tartarus, and the "iron bonds" in which
+Odysseus was possibly lying; it does not follow that chains or gates
+were made of iron any more than that gates were of chrysoprase in the
+days of St. John.
+
+(4) Next, we have mention of implements, not weapons, of iron--a
+remarkable trait of culture. Greek ploughs and axes were made of iron
+before spears and swords were of iron.
+
+(5) We have mention of iron weapons, namely, the unique iron mace of
+Areithous and the solitary iron arrow-head of Pandarus, and what Cauer
+calls the iron swords (more probably knives) of Achilles and others. It
+is objected to the "iron" of Achilles that Antilochus fears he will cut
+his throat with it on hearing of the death of Patroclus, while there
+is no other mention of suicide in the _Iliad_. It does not follow that
+suicide was unheard of; indeed, Achilles may be thinking of suicide
+presently, in XIII. 98, when he says to his mother: "Let me die at once,
+since it was not my lot to succour my comrade."
+
+(6) We have the iron-making spoken of in Book IX. 393 of the _Odyssey_.
+
+It does not appear to us that the use of iron as an epithet bespeaks
+an age when iron was a mysterious thing, known mainly by reputation,
+"a costly possession." The epithets "iron strength," and so on, may as
+readily be used in our own age or any other. If iron were at first a
+"precious" metal, it is odd that Homeric men first used it, as Cauer
+sees that they did, to make points to ploughshares and "tools of
+agriculture and handiwork." "Then people took to working iron for
+weapons." Just so, but we cannot divide the _Iliad_ into earlier and
+later portions in proportion to the various mentions of iron in various
+Books. These statistics are of no value for separatist purposes. It is
+impossible to believe that men when they spoke of "iron strength," "iron
+hearts," "grey iron," "iron hard to smithy," did so because iron was,
+first, an almost unknown legendary mineral, next, "a precious metal,"
+then the metal of drudgery, and finally the metal of weapons.
+
+The real point of interest is, as Cauer sees, that domestic preceded
+military uses of iron among the Achaeans. He seems, however, to think
+that the confinement of the use of bronze to weapons is a matter of
+traditional style. [Footnote: "Nur die Sprache der Dichter hielt an dem
+Gebrauch der Bronze fest, die in den Jahrhunderten, waehrend deren der
+Epische Stil erwachsen war, allein geherrscht hatte."] But, in the early
+days of the waxing epics, tools as well as weapons were, as in Homer
+they occasionally are, of bronze. Why, then, do the supposed late
+continuators represent tools, not weapons, as of iron? Why do they not
+cleave to the traditional term--bronze--in the case of tools, as the
+same men do in the case of weapons?
+
+Helbig offers an apparently untenable explanation of this fact. He has
+proposed an interpretation of the uses of bronze and iron in the poems
+entirely different from that which I offer. [Footnote: _Sur la Question
+Mycenienne_. 1896.] Unfortunately, one can scarcely criticise his theory
+without entering again into the whole question of the construction
+of the Epics. He thinks that the origin of the poems dates from "the
+Mycenaean period," and that the later continuators of the poems retained
+the traditions of that remote age. Thus they thrice call Mycenae
+"golden," though, in the changed economic conditions of their own
+period, Mycenae could no longer be "golden"; and I presume that, if
+possible, the city would have issued a papyrus currency without a
+metallic basis. However this may be, "in the description of customs
+the epic poets did their best to avoid everything modern." Here we
+have again that unprecedented phenomenon--early poets who are
+archaeologically precise.
+
+We have first to suppose that the kernel of the _Iliad_ originated in
+the Mycenaean age, the age of bronze. We are next to believe that this
+kernel was expanded into the actual Epic in later and changed times,
+but that the later poets adhered in their descriptions to the Mycenaean
+standard, avoiding "everything modern." That poets of an uncritical
+period, when treating of the themes of ancient legend or song, carefully
+avoid everything modern is an opinion not warranted by the usage of
+the authors of the _Chansons de Geste_, of _Beowulf_, and of the
+_Nibelungenlied_. These poets, we must repeat, invariably introduce
+in their chants concerning ancient days the customs, costume, armour,
+religion, and weapons of their own time. Dr. Helbig supposes that the
+late Greek poets, however, who added to the _Iliad_, carefully avoided
+doing what other poets of uncritical ages have always done. [Footnote:
+_La Question Mycenienne_, p. 50.]
+
+This is his position in his text (p. 50). In his note 1 to page 50,
+however, he occupies the precisely contrary position. "The epic poems
+were chanted, as a rule, in the houses of more or less warlike chiefs.
+It is, then, _a priori_ probable that the later poets took into account
+the _contemporary_ military state of things. Their audience would have
+been much perturbed (_bien cheques_) if they had heard the poet mention
+nothing but arms and forms of attack and defence to which they were
+unaccustomed." If so, when iron weapons came in the poets would
+substitute iron for bronze, in lays new and old, but they never do.
+However, this is Helbig's opinion in his note. But in his text he says
+that the poets, carefully avoiding the contemporary, "the modern," make
+the heroes fight, not on horseback, but from chariots. Their listeners,
+according to his note, must have been _bien cheques_, for there came a
+time when _they_ were not accustomed to war chariots.
+
+Thus the poets who, in Dr. Helbig's text, "avoid as far as possible all
+that is modern," in his note, on the same page, "take account of the
+contemporary state of things," and are as modern as possible where
+weapons _are_ concerned. Their audience would be sadly put out (_bien
+cheques_) "if they heard talk only of arms ... to which they were
+unaccustomed"; talk of large suspended shields, of uncorsleted heroes,
+and of bronze weapons. They had to endure it, whether they liked it or
+not, _teste_ Reichel. Dr. Helbig seems to speak correctly in his note;
+in his text his contradictory opinion appears to be wrong. Experience
+teaches us that the poets of an uncritical age--Shakespeare, for
+example--introduce the weapons of their own period into works dealing
+with remote ages. Hamlet uses the Elizabethan rapier.
+
+In his argument on bronze and iron, unluckily, Dr. Helbig deserts the
+judicious opinions of his note for the opposite theory of his text.
+His late poets, in the age of iron, always say that the weapons of the
+heroes are made of bronze. [Footnote: _Op. laud_., p. 51.] They thus,
+"as far as possible avoid what is modern." But, of course, warriors
+of the age of iron, when they heard the poet talk only of weapons of
+bronze, "_aurient ete bien choques_" (as Dr. Helbig truly says in his
+note), on hearing of nothing but "_armes auxquels ils n'etaient pas
+habitues,_"--arms always of bronze.
+
+Though Dr. Helbig in his text is of the opposite opinion, I must agree
+entirely with the view which he states so clearly in his note. It
+follows that if a poet speaks invariably of weapons of bronze, he is
+living in an age when weapons are made of no other material. In his
+text, however, Dr. Helbig maintains that the poets of later ages "as far
+as possible avoid everything modern," and, therefore, mention none but
+bronze weapons. But, as he has pointed out, they do mention iron tools
+and implements. Why do they desert the traditional bronze? Because "it
+occasionally happened that a poet, when thinking of an entirely new
+subject, wholly emancipated himself from traditional forms," [Footnote:
+_Op. laud_., pp. 51, 52]
+
+The examples given in proof are the offer by Achilles of a lump of iron
+as the prize for archery--the iron, as we saw, being destined for the
+manufacture of pastoral and agricultural implements, in which Dr. Helbig
+includes the lances of shepherds and ploughmen, though the poet never
+says that they were of iron. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XXIII. 826, 835;
+Odyssey, XIV. 531; XIII. 225.] There are also the axes through which
+Odysseus shoots his arrow. [Footnote: _Odyssey_, XIX. 587; XXI. 3, X,
+97, 114, 127, 138; XXIV. 168, 177; cf. XXI. 61.] "The poet here treated
+an entirely new subject, in the development of which he had perfect
+liberty." So he speaks freely of iron. "But," we exclaim, "tools and
+implements, axes and knives, are not a perfectly new subject!" They were
+extremely familiar to the age of bronze, the Mycenaean age. Examples of
+bronze tools, arrow-heads, and implements are discovered in excavations
+on Mycenaean sites. There was nothing new about bronze tools and
+implements. Men had bronze tips to their ploughshares, bronze knives,
+bronze axes, bronze arrow-heads before they used iron.
+
+Perhaps we are to understand that feats of archery, non-military
+contests in bowmanship, are _un sujet a fait nouveau_: a theme so very
+modern that a poet, in singing of it, could let himself go, and dare to
+speak of iron implements. But where was the novelty? All peoples who use
+the bow in war practise archery in time of peace. The poet, moreover,
+speaks of bronze tools, axes and knives, in other parts of the _Iliad_;
+neither tools nor bronze tools constitute _un sujet tout a fait
+nouveau_. There was nothing new in shooting with a bow and nothing new
+in the existence of axes. Bows and axes were as familiar to the age
+of stone and to the age of bronze as to the age of iron. Dr. Helbig's
+explanation, therefore, explains nothing, and, unless a better
+explanation is offered, we return to the theory, rejected by Dr. Helbig,
+that implements and tools were often, not always, of iron, while weapons
+were of bronze in the age of the poet. Dr. Helbig rejects this opinion.
+He writes: "We cannot in any way admit that, at a period when the socks
+of the plough, the lance points of shepherds" (which the poet never
+describes as of iron), "and axe-heads were of iron, warriors still used
+weapons of bronze." [Footnote: op. _laud._, p. 53.] But it is logically
+possible to admit that this was the real state of affairs, while it is
+logically impossible to admit that bows and tools were "new subjects";
+and that late poets, when they sang of military gear, "_tenaient
+compte de l'armement contemporain,_" carefully avoiding the peril of
+bewildering their hearers by speaking of antiquated arms, and, at the
+same time, spoke of nothing but antiquated arms--weapons of bronze--and
+of war chariots, to fighting men who did not use war chariots and did
+use weapons of iron.
+
+These logical contradictions beset all arguments in which it is
+maintained that "the late poets" are anxious archaisers, and at the same
+time are eagerly introducing the armour and equipment of their own age.
+The critics are in the same quandary as to iron and bronze as traps them
+in the case of large shields, small bucklers, greaves, and corslets.
+They are obliged to assign contradictory attitudes to their "late
+poets." It does not seem possible to admit that a poet, who often
+describes axes as of iron in various passages, does so in his account of
+a peaceful contest in bowmanship, because contests in bowmanship are _UN
+sujet TOUT a FAIT NOUVEAU;_ and so he feels at liberty to describe axes
+as of iron, while he adheres to bronze as the metal for weapons. He, or
+one of the Odyssean poets, had already asserted (Odyssey, IX. 391) that
+iron _was_ the metal for adzes and axes.
+
+Dr. Helbig's argument [Footnote: _La Question Mycenienne_, p. 54.] does
+not explain the facts. The bow of Eurytus and the uses to which Odysseus
+is to put it have been in the poet's mind all through the conduct of his
+plot, and there is nothing to suggest that the exploit of bowmanship is
+a very new lay, tacked on to the Odyssey.
+
+After writing this chapter, I observed that my opinion had been
+anticipated by S. H. Naber. [Footnote: _Quaestiones Homericae_, p.
+60. Amsterdam. Van der Post, 1897.] "Quod Herodoti diserto testimonio
+novimus, Homeri restate ferruminatio nondum inventa erat necdum bene
+noverant mortales, uti opinor, _acuere_ ferrum. Hinc pauperes homines
+ubi possunt, ferro utuntur; sed in plerisque rebus turn domi turn
+militiae imprimis coguntur uti aere...."
+
+The theory of Mr. Ridgeway as to the relative uses of iron and bronze is
+not, by myself, very easily to be understood. "The Homeric warrior ...
+has regularly, as we have seen, spear and sword of iron." [Footnote:
+_Early Age of Greece_, vol. i. p. 301.] As no spear or sword of iron is
+ever mentioned in the _Iliad_ or Odyssey, as both weapons are always
+of bronze when the metal is specified, I have not "seen" that they are
+"regularly," or ever, of iron. In proof, Mr. Ridgeway cites the axes
+and knives already mentioned--which are not spears or swords, and are
+sometimes of bronze. He also quotes the line in the Odyssey, "Iron of
+itself doth attract a man." But if this line is genuine and original,
+it does not apply to the state of things in the _Iliad_, while it
+contradicts the whole Odyssey, in which swords and spears are _ALWAYS_
+of bronze when their metal is mentioned. If the line reveals the true
+state of things, then throughout the Odyssey, if not throughout the
+_Iliad_, the poets when they invariably speak of bronze swords and
+spears invariably say what they do not mean. If they do this, how are
+we to know when they mean what they say, and of what value can their
+evidence on points of culture be reckoned? They may always be retaining
+traditional terms as to usages and customs in an age when these are
+obsolete.
+
+If the Achaeans were, as in Mr. Ridgeway's theory, a northern
+people--"Celts"--who conquered with iron weapons a Pelasgian
+bronze-using Mycenaean people, it is not credible to me that Achaean or
+Pelasgian poets habitually used the traditional Pelasgian term for the
+metal of weapons, namely, bronze, in songs chanted before victors who
+had won their triumph with iron. The traditional phrase of a conquered
+bronze-using race could not thus survive and flourish in the poetry of
+an outlandish iron-using race of conquerors.
+
+Mr. Ridgeway cites the Odyssey, wherein we are told that "Euryalus,
+the Phaeacian, presented to Odysseus a bronze sword, though, as we have
+seen" (Mr. Ridgeway has seen), "the usual material for all such weapons
+is iron. But the Phoeacians both belonged to the older race and lived in
+a remote island, and therefore swords of bronze may well have continued
+in use in such out-of-the-world places long after iron swords were in
+use everywhere else in Greece. The man who could not afford iron had to
+be satisfied with bronze." [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, p. 305.]
+Here the poet is allowed to mean what he says. The Phaeacian sword is
+really of bronze, with silver studs, probably on the hilt (Odyssey,
+VIII. 401-407), which was of ivory. The "out-of-the-world" islanders
+could afford ivory, not iron. But when the same poet tells us that
+the sword which Odysseus brought from Troy was "a great silver-studded
+bronze sword" (Odyssey, X. 261, 262), then Mr. Ridgeway does not allow
+the poet to mean what he says. The poet is now using an epic formula
+older than the age of iron swords.
+
+That Mr. Ridgeway adopts Helbig's theory--the poet says "bronze," by a
+survival of the diction of the bronze age, when he means iron--I infer
+from the following passage: "_Chalkos_ is the name for the older metal,
+of which cutting weapons were made, and it thus lingered in many phrases
+of the Epic dialect; 'to smite with the _chalkos_' was equivalent to our
+phrase 'to smite with the steel.'" [Footnote: _Early Age of Greece_, i.
+295.] But we certainly do smite with the steel, while the question is,
+"_DID_ Homer's men smite with the iron?" Homer says not; he does not
+merely use "an epic phrase" "to smite with the _CHALKOS_," but he
+carefully describes swords, spears, and usually arrow-heads as being
+of bronze (_CHALKOS_), while axes, adzes, and knives are frequently
+described by him as of iron.
+
+Mr. Ridgeway has an illustrative argument with some one, who says: "The
+dress and weapons of the Saxons given in the lay of _Beowulf_ fitted
+exactly the bronze weapons in England, for they had shields, and spears,
+and battle-axes, and swords." If you pointed out to him that the Saxon
+poem spoke of these weapons as made of iron, he would say, "I admit
+that it is a difficulty, but the resemblances are so many that the
+discrepancies may be jettisoned." [Footnote: _Ridgeway,_ i. 83, 84.]
+
+Now, if the supposed controversialist were a Homeric critic, he would
+not admit any difficulty. He would say, "Yes; in _Beowulf_ the
+weapons are said to be of iron, but that is the work of the Christian
+_remanieur,_ or _bearbeiter,_ who introduced all the Christian morality
+into the old heathen lay, and who also, not to puzzle his iron-using
+audience, changed the bronze into iron weapons."
+
+We may prove anything if we argue, now that the poets retain the
+tradition of obsolete things, now that they modernise as much as they
+please. Into this method of reasoning, after duly considering it, I
+am unable to come with enthusiasm, being wedded to the belief that the
+poets say what they mean. Were it otherwise, did they not mean what
+they say, their evidence would be of no value; they might be dealing
+throughout in terms for things which were unrepresented in their own
+age. To prove this possible, it would be necessary to adduce convincing
+and sufficient examples of early national poets who habitually use
+the terminology of an age long prior to their own in descriptions of
+objects, customs, and usages. Meanwhile, it is obvious that my whole
+argument has no archaeological support. We may find "Mycenaean" corslets
+and greaves, but they are not in cremation burials. No Homeric cairn
+with Homeric contents has ever been discovered; and if we did find
+examples of Homeric cairns, it appears, from the poems, that they would
+very seldom contain the arms of the dead.
+
+Nowhere, again, do we find graves containing bronze swords and iron axes
+and adzes. I know nothing nearer in discoveries to my supposed age
+of bronze weapons and iron tools than a grave of the early iron and
+geometrical ornament age of Crete--a _tholos_ tomb, with a bronze
+spear-head and a set of iron tools, among others a double axe and a
+pick of iron. But these were in company with iron swords? To myself the
+crowning mystery is, what has become of the Homeric tumuli with their
+contents? One can but say that only within the last thirty years have we
+found, or, finding, have recognised Mycenaean burial records. As to the
+badness of the iron of the North for military purposes, and the probable
+badness of all early iron weapons, we have testimony two thousand years
+later than Homer and some twelve hundred years later than Polybius.
+In the Eyrbyggja Saga (Morris and Maguusson, chap, xxiv.) we read that
+Steinthor "was girt with a sword that was cunningly wrought; the hilts
+were white with silver, and the grip wrapped round with the same, but
+the strings thereof were gilded." This was a splendid sword, described
+with the Homeric delight in such things; but the battle-cry arises, and
+then "the fair-wrought sword bit not when it smote armour, and Steinthor
+must _straighten it under_ his _foot._" Messrs. Morris and Maguusson add
+in a note: "This is a very common experience in Scandinavian weapons,
+and for the first time heard of at the battle of Aquae Sextiae between
+Marius and the Teutons." [Footnote: The reference is erroneous.] "In the
+North weapon-smiths who knew how to forge tempered or steel-laminated
+weapons were, if not unknown, at least very rare." When such skill was
+unknown or rare in Homer's time, nothing was more natural than that
+bronze should hold its own, as the metal for swords and spears, after
+iron was commonly used for axes and ploughshares.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+THE HOMERIC HOUSE
+
+If the Homeric poems be, as we maintain, the work of a peculiar age, the
+Homeric house will also, in all likelihood, be peculiar. It will not
+be the Hellenic house of classical times. Manifestly the dwelling of a
+military-prince in the heroic age would be evolved to meet his needs,
+which were not the needs of later Hellenic citizens. In time of peace
+the later Greeks are weaponless men, not surrounded by and entertaining
+throngs of armed retainers, like the Homeric chief. The women of later
+Greece, moreover, are in the background of life, dwelling in the women's
+chambers, behind those of the men, in seclusion. The Homeric women also,
+at least in the house of Odysseus, have their separate chambers, which
+the men seem not to enter except on invitation, though the ladies freely
+honour by their presence the hall of the warriors. The circumstances,
+however, were peculiar--Penelope being unprotected in the absence of her
+lord.
+
+The whole domestic situation in the Homeric poems--the free equality
+of the women, the military conditions, the life of the chiefs and
+retainers--closely resembles, allowing for differences of climate, that
+of the rich landowners of early Iceland as described in the sagas. There
+can be no doubt that the house of the Icelandic chief was analogous to
+the house of the Homeric prince. Societies remarkably similar in mode
+of life were accommodated in dwellings similarly arranged. Though
+the Icelanders owned no Over-Lord, and, indeed, left their native
+Scandinavia to escape the sway of Harold Fairhair, yet each wealthy and
+powerful chief lived in the manner of a Homeric "king." His lands and
+thralls, horses and cattle, occupied his attention when he did not
+chance to be on Viking adventure--"bearing bane to alien men." He
+always carried sword and spear, and often had occasion to use them.
+He entertained many guests, and needed a large hall and ample sleeping
+accommodation for strangers and servants. His women were as free and as
+much respected as the ladies in Homer; and for a husband to slap a wife
+was to run the risk of her deadly feud. Thus, far away in the frosts of
+the north, the life of the chief was like that of the Homeric prince,
+and their houses were alike.
+
+It is our intention to use this parallel in the discussion of the
+Homeric house. All Icelandic chiefs' houses in the tenth and eleventh
+centuries were not precisely uniform in structure and accommodation,
+and saga writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, living
+more comfortably than their forefathers, sometimes confuse matters by
+introducing the arrangements of their own into the tale of past times.
+But, in any case, one Icelandic house of the tenth or eleventh century
+might differ from another in certain details. It is not safe, therefore,
+to argue that difference of detail in Homer's accounts of various houses
+means that the varying descriptions were composed in different ages. In
+the _Odyssey_ the plot demands that the poet must enter into domestic
+details much more freely than he ever has occasion to do in the Iliad.
+He may mention upper chambers freely, for example; it will not follow
+that in the _Iliad_ upper chambers do not exist because they are only
+mentioned twice in that Epic.
+
+It is even more important to note that in the house of Odysseus we have
+an unparalleled domestic situation. The lady of the house is beset by
+more than a hundred wooers--"sorning" on her, in the old Scots legal
+phrase--making it impossible for her to inhabit her own hall, and
+desirable to keep the women as much as possible apart from the men. Thus
+the Homeric house of which we know most, that of Odysseus, is a house in
+a most abnormal condition.
+
+For the sake of brevity we omit the old theory that the Homeric
+house was practically that of historical Greece, with the men's hall
+approached by a door from the courtyard; while a door at the upper end
+of the men's hall yields direct access to the quarters where the women
+dwelt apart, at the rear of the men's hall.
+
+That opinion has not survived the essay by Mr. J. L. Myres on the "Plan
+of the Homeric House." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol.
+XX, 128-150.] Quite apart from arguments that rest on the ground plans
+of palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns, Mr. Myres has proved, by an exact
+reading of the poet's words, that the descriptions in the _Odyssey_
+cannot be made intelligible on the theory that the poet has in his mind
+a house of the Hellenic pattern. But in his essay he hardly touches on
+any Homeric house except that of Odysseus, in which the circumstances
+were unusual. A later critic, Ferdinand Noack, has demonstrated that
+we must take other Homeric houses into consideration. [Footnote:
+_Homerische Palaeste_. Teubner. Leipzig, 1903.] The prae-Mycenaean
+house is, according to Mr. Myres, on the whole of the same plan as the
+Hellenic house of historic days; between these comes the Mycenaean and
+Homeric house; "so that the Mycenaean house stands out _as an intrusive
+phenomenon_, of comparatively late arrival _and short of duration_..."
+[Footnote: Myres, _Journal_ of _Hellenic_ Studies, vol. xx. p. 149.]
+Noack goes further; he draws a line between the Mycenaean houses on one
+hand and the houses described by Homer on the other; while he thinks
+that the "_late_ Homeric house," that of the closing Books of the
+Odyssey, is widely sundered from the Homeric house of the _Iliad_
+and from the houses of Menelaus and Alcinous in earlier Books of the
+_Odyssey._ [Footnote: Noack, p. 73.]
+
+In this case the Iliadic and earlier Odyssean houses are those of a
+single definite age, neither Mycenaean of the prime, nor Hellenic--a
+fact which entirely suits our argument. But it is not so certain, that
+the house of Odysseus is severed from the other Homeric houses by the
+later addition of an upper storey, as Noack supposes, and of women's
+quarters, and of separate sleeping chambers for the heads of the family.
+
+The _Iliad,_ save in two passages, and earlier Books of the _Odyssey_
+may not mention upper storeys because they have no occasion, or only
+rare occasion, to do so; and some houses may have had upper sleeping
+chambers while others of the same period had not, as we shall prove from
+the Icelandic parallel.
+
+Mr. Myres's idea of the Homeric house, or, at least, of the house of
+Odysseus, is that the women had a _meguron,_ or common hall, apart from
+that of the men, with other chambers. These did not lie to the direct
+rear of the men's hall, nor were they entered by a door that opened in
+the back wall of the men's hall. Penelope has a chamber, in which
+she sleeps and does woman's work, upstairs; her connubial chamber,
+unoccupied during her lord's absence, is certainly on the ground floor.
+The women's rooms are severed from the men's hall by a courtyard; in
+the courtyard are chambers. Telemachus has his [Greek: Thalamos], or
+chamber, in the men's courtyard. All this appears plain from the poet's
+words; and Mr. Myres corroborates, by the ground plans of the palaces
+of Tiryns and Mycenae, a point on which Mr. Monro had doubts, as regards
+Tiryns, while he accepted it for Mycenae. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, ii.
+497; _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xx. 136.]
+
+Noack [Footnote: Noack, p. 39.] does not, however, agree.
+
+There appears to be no doubt that in the centre of the great halls of
+Tiryns and of Mycenae, as of the houses in Homer, was the hearth, with
+two tall pillars on each side, supporting a _louvre_ higher than the
+rest of the roof, and permitting some, at least, of the smoke of
+the fire to escape. Beside the fire were the seats of the master and
+mistress of the house, of the minstrel, and of honoured guests. The
+place of honour was not on a dais at the inmost end of the hall, like
+the high table in college halls. Mr. Myres holds that in the Homeric
+house the [Greek: prodomos], or "forehouse," was a chamber, and was not
+identical with the [Greek: aethousa], or portico, though he admits that
+the two words "are used indifferently to describe the sleeping place of
+a guest." [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xx. 144, 155.] This
+was the case at Tiryns; and in the house of the father of Phoenix,
+in the _Iliad_, the _prodomos_, or forehouse, and the _aethousa_, or
+portico, are certainly separate things (Iliad, IX. 473). Noack does not
+accept the Tiryns evidence for the Homeric house.
+
+On Mr. Myres's showing, the women in the house of Odysseus had distinct
+and separate quarters into which no man goes uninvited. Odysseus when at
+home has, with his wife, a separate bedroom; and in his absence Penelope
+sleeps upstairs, where there are several chambers for various purposes.
+
+Granting that all this is so, how do the pictures of the house given in
+the final part of the _Odyssey_ compare with those in the [Blank space]
+and with the accounts of the dwellings of Menelaus and Alcinous in the
+Odyssey? Noack argues that the house of Odysseus is unlike the other
+Homeric houses, because in these, he reasons, the women have no separate
+quarters, and the lord and lady of the house sleep in the great hall,
+and have no other bedroom, while there are no upper chambers in the
+houses of the _Iliad_, except in two passages dismissed as "late."
+
+If all this be so, then the Homeric period, as regards houses and
+domestic life, belongs to an age apart, not truly Mycenaean, and still
+less later Hellenic.
+
+It must be remembered that Noack regards the Odyssey as a composite and
+in parts very late mosaic (a view on which I have said what I think
+in _Homer and the Epic_). According to this theory (Kirchhoff is the
+exponent of a popular form thereof) the first Book of the Odyssey
+belongs to "the latest stratum," and is the "copy" of the general
+"worker-up," whether he was the editor employed by Pisistratus or a
+laborious amateur. This theory is opposed by Sittl, who makes his point
+by cutting out, as interpolations, whatever passages do not suit his
+ideas, and do suit Kirchhoff's--this is the regular method of Homeric
+criticism. The whole cruise of Telemachus (Book IV.) is also regarded
+as a late addition: on this point English scholars hitherto have been
+of the opposite opinion. [Footnote: Cf. Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii.
+313-317.]
+
+The method of all parties is to regard repetitions of phrases as
+examples of borrowing, except, of course, in the case of the earliest
+poet from whom the others pilfer, and in other cases of prae-Homeric
+surviving epic formulae. Critics then dispute as to which recurrent
+passage is the earlier, deciding, of course, as may happen to suit
+their own general theory. In our opinion these passages are traditional
+formulae, as in our own old ballads and in the _Chansons de Geste_, and
+Noack also takes this view every now and then. They may well be older,
+in many cases, than _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_; or the poet, having found
+his own formula, economically used it wherever similar circumstances
+occurred. Such passages, so considered, are no tests of earlier
+composition in one place, of later composition in another.
+
+We now look into Noack's theory of the Homeric house. Where do the
+lord and lady sleep? _Not_, he says, as Odysseus and Penelope do (when
+Odysseus is at home), in a separate chamber (_thalamos_) on the ground
+floor, nor, like Gunnar and Halgerda (Njal's Saga), in an upper chamber.
+They sleep _mucho domou_; that is, not in a separate recess in the
+_house_, but in a recess of the great hall or _megaron_. Thus, in
+the hall of Alcinous, the whole space runs from the threshold to the
+_muchos_, the innermost part (_Odyssey_, VII. 87-96). In the hall of
+Odysseus, the Wooers retreat to the _muchos_, "the innermost part of the
+hall" (_Odyssey_, XXII. 270). "The _muchos_, in Homer, never denotes
+a separate chamber." [Footnote: Noack, p. 45. _Cf_. Monro, Note to
+Odyssey, XXII. 270.]
+
+In Odyssey, XI. 373, Alcinous says it is not yet time to sleep _ev
+megaro_, "in the hall." Alcinous and Arete, his wife, sleep "in the
+recess of the lofty _domos_," that is, in the recess of the _hall_, not
+of "the house" (Odyssey, VII. 346). The same words are used of Helen and
+Menelaus (Odyssey, IV. 304). But when Menelaus goes forth next morning,
+he goes _ek thalamoio_, "out of his _chamber_" (_Odyssey_, IV. 310). But
+this, says Noack, is a mere borrowing of Odyssey, II 2-5, where the same
+words are used of Telemachus, leaving his chamber, which undeniably was
+a separate chamber in the court: Eurycleia lighted him thither at night
+(Odyssey, I. 428). In Odyssey, IV. 121, Helen enters the hall "from her
+fragrant, lofty chamber," so she _had_ a chamber, not in the hall. But,
+says Noack, this verse "is not original." The late poet of _Odyssey_,
+IV. has cribbed it from the early poet who composed _Odyssey, XIX. 53._
+In that passage Penelope "comes from her chamber, like Artemis or golden
+Aphrodite." Penelope _had_ a chamber--being "a lone lorn woman," who
+could not sleep in a hall where the Wooers sat up late drinking--and
+the latest poet transfers this chamber to Helen. But however late and
+larcenous he may have been, the poet of IV. 121 certainly did not crib
+the words of the poet of XIX. 53, for he says, "Helen came out of
+her _fragrant, high-roofed_ chamber." The _hall_ was not precisely
+"fragrant"! However, Noack supposes that the late poet of Book IV. let
+Helen have a chamber apart, to lead up to the striking scene of her
+entry to the hall where her guests are sitting. May Helen not even have
+a boudoir? In _Odyssey_, IV. 263, Helen speaks remorsefully of having
+abandoned her "chamber," and husband, and child, with Paris; but the
+late poet says this, according to Noack, because he finds that he is
+in for a chamber, so to speak, at all events, as a result of his having
+previously cribbed the word "chamber" from Odyssey, XIX. 53. Otherwise,
+we presume Helen would have said that she regretted having left "the
+recess of the lofty hall" where she really did sleep. [Footnote: Noack,
+pp. 47-48]
+
+The merit of this method of arguing may be left to the judgment of the
+reader, who will remark that wedded pairs are not described as leaving
+the hall when they go to bed; they sleep in "a recess of the lofty
+house," the innermost part. Is this the same as the "recess of the
+_hall_" or is it an innermost part of the _house?_ Who can be certain?
+
+The bridal chamber, built so cunningly, with the trunk of a tree for the
+support of the bed, by Odysseus (odyssey, XXIII. 177-204), is, according
+to Noack, an exception, a solitary freak of Odysseus. But we may reply
+that the _thalamos_, the separate chamber, is no freak; the freak, by
+knowledge of which Odysseus proves his identity, is the use of the tree
+in the construction of the bed. [blank space] was highly original.
+
+That separate chambers are needed for grown-up children, _BECAUSE_ the
+parents sleep in the hall, is no strong argument. If the parents had a
+separate chamber, the young people, unless they slept in the hall, would
+still need their own. The girls, of course, could not sleep in the hall;
+and, in the absence of both Penelope and Odysseus from the hall, ever
+since Telemachus was a baby, Telemachus could have slept there. But it
+will be replied that the Wooers did not beset the hall, and Penelope
+did not retire to a separate chamber, till Telemachus was a big boy of
+sixteen. Noack argues that he had a separate chamber, though the hall
+was free, _tradition_. [Footnote: Noack, p. 49.]
+
+Where does Noack think that, in a normal Homeric house, the girls of
+the family slept? _They_ could not sleep in the hall, and on the two
+occasions when the _Iliad_ has to mention the chambers of the young
+ladies they are "upper chambers," as is natural. But as Noack wants
+to prove the house of Odysseus, with its upper chambers, to be a late
+peculiar house, he, of course, expunges the two mentions of girls' upper
+chambers in the _Odyssey_. The process is simple and easy.
+
+We find (_Iliad_, XVII. 36) that a son, wedding in his father's and
+mother's life-time, has a _thalamos_ built for him, and a _muchos_
+in the _THALAMOS_, where he leaves his wife when he goes to war. This
+dwelling of grown-up married children, as in the case of the sons of
+Priam, has a _thalamos_, or _doma_, and a courtyard--is a house, in fact
+(_Iliad_, VI. 3 16). Here we seem to distinguish the bed-chamber
+from the _doma_, which is the hall. Noack objects that when Odysseus
+fumigates his house, after slaying the Wooers, he thus treats the
+_megaron_, _AND_ the _doma_, _AND_ the courtyard. Therefore, Noack
+argues, the _megaron_, or hall, is one thing; the _doma_ is another. Mr.
+Monro writes, "_doma_ usually means _megaron_," and he supposes a
+slip from another reading, _thalamon_ for _megaron_, which is not
+satisfactory. But if _doma_ here be not equivalent to _megaron_, what
+room can it possibly be? Who was killed in another place? what place
+therefore needed purification except the hall and courtyard? No other
+places needed purifying; there is therefore clearly a defect in the
+lines which cannot be used in the argument.
+
+Noack, in any case, maintains that Paris has but one place to live in
+by day and to sleep in by night--his [Greek: talamos]. There he sleeps,
+eats, and polishes his weapons and armour. There Hector finds him
+looking to his gear; Helen and the maids are all there (_Iliad,_ VI.
+321-323). Is this quite certain? Are Helen and the maids in the [Greek:
+talamos], where Paris is polishing his corslet and looking to his bow,
+or in an adjacent room? If not in another room, why, when Hector is in
+the room talking to Paris, does Helen ask him to "come in"? (_Iliad,_
+VI. 354). He is in, is there another room whence she can hear him?
+
+The minuteness of these inquiries is tedious!
+
+In _Iliad,_ III. 125, Iris finds Helen "in the hall" weaving. She
+summons her to come to Priam on the gate. Helen dresses in outdoor
+costume, and goes forth "from the chamber," [Greek: talamos] (III.
+141-142). Are hall and chamber the same room, or did not Helen dress "in
+the chamber"? In the same Book (III. 174) she repents having left
+the [Greek: talamos] of Menelaus, not his hall: the passage is not a
+repetition in words of her speech in the Odyssey.
+
+The gods, of course, are lodged like men. When we find that Zeus has
+really a separate sleeping chamber, built by Hephaestus, as Odysseus has
+(_Iliad,_ XIV. 166-167), we are told that this is a late interpolation.
+Mr. Leaf, who has a high opinion of this scene, "the Beguiling of
+Zeus," places it in the "second expansions"; he finds no "late Odyssean"
+elements in the language. In _Iliad,_ I. 608-611, Zeus "departed to his
+couch"; he seems not to have stayed and slept in the hall.
+
+Here a quaint problem occurs. Of all late things in the Odyssey the
+latest is said to be the song of Demodocus about the loves of Ares
+and Aphrodite in the house of Hephaestus. [Footnote: Odyssey, VIII.
+266-300.] We shall show that this opinion is far from certainly correct.
+Hephaestus sets a snare round the bed in his [Greek: talamos] and
+catches the guilty lovers. _Now_, was his [Greek: talamos] or bedroom,
+also his dining-room? If so, the author of the song, though so "late,"
+knows what Noack knows, and what the poets who assign sleeping chambers
+to wedded folks do not know, namely, that neither married gods nor
+married men have separate bedrooms. This is plain, for he makes
+Hephaestus stand at the front door of his house, and shout to the gods
+to come and see the sinful lovers. [Footnote: Ibid., VI. 304-305] They
+all come and look on _from the front door_ (_Odyssey_, VII. 325), which
+leads into the [Greek: megaron], the hall. If the lovers are in bed in
+the hall, then hall and bedroom are all one, and the terribly late poet
+who made this lay knows it, though the late poets of the _Odyssey_ and
+_Iliad_ do not.
+
+It would appear that the author of the lay is not "late," as we shall
+prove in another case.
+
+Noack, then, will not allow man or god to have a separate wedding
+chamber, nor women, before the late parts of the _Odyssey_, to have
+separate quarters, except in the house of Odysseus. Women's chambers
+do not exist in the Homeric house. [Footnote: Noack, p. 50.] If so, how
+remote is the true Homeric house from the house of historical Greece!
+
+As for upper chambers, those of the daughter of the house (_Iliad,_ II.
+514; XVI. 184), both passages are "late," as we saw (Noack, p.[blank
+space]). In the _Odyssey_ Penelope both sleeps and works at the shroud
+in an upper chamber. But the whole arrangement of upper chambers as
+women's apartments is as late, says Noack, as the time of the poets and
+"redactors" (whoever they may have been) of the Odyssey, XXI., XXII.,
+XXIII. [Footnote: Noack, p. 68.] At the earliest these Books are said to
+be of the eighth century B.C. Here the late poets have their innings at
+last, and do modernise the Homeric house.
+
+To prove the absence of upper rooms in the _Iliad_ we have to abolish
+II. 514, where Astyoche meets her divine lover in her upper chamber, and
+XVI. 184, where Polymele celebrates her amour with Hermes "in the upper
+chambers." The places where these two passages occur, _Catalogue_ (Book
+II.) and the _Catalogue_ of the _Myrmidons_ (Book XVI.) are, indeed,
+both called "late," but the author of the latter knows the early law of
+bride-price, which is supposed to be unknown to the authors of "late"
+passages in the Odyssey (XVI. 190).
+
+Stated briefly, such are the ideas of Noack. They leave us, at least,
+with permission to hold that the whole of the Epics, except Books XXI.,
+XXII., and XXIII. of the Odyssey, bear, as regards the house, the marks
+of a distinct peculiar age, coming between the period of Mycenae and
+Tiryns on one hand and the eighth century B.C. on the other.
+
+This is the point for which we have contended, and this suits our
+argument very well, though we are sorry to see that Odyssey, Books XXI.,
+XXII., and XXIII., are no older than the eighth century B.C. But we have
+not been quite convinced that Helen had not her separate chamber, that
+Zeus had not his separate chamber, and that the upper chambers of the
+daughters of the house in the Iliad are "late." Where, if not in upper
+chambers, did the young princesses repose? Again, the marked separation
+of the women in the house of Odysseus may be the result of Penelope's
+care in unusual circumstances, though she certainly would not build
+a separate hall for them. There are over a hundred handsome young
+scoundrels in her house all day long and deep into the night; she would,
+vainly, do her best to keep her girls apart.
+
+It stands to reason that young girls of princely families would have
+bedrooms in the house, not in the courtyard-bedrooms out of the way of
+enterprising young men. What safer place could be found for them than in
+upper chambers, as in the Iliad? But, if their lovers were gods, we
+know that none "can see a god coming or going against his will." The
+arrangements of houses may and do vary in different cases in the same
+age.
+
+As examples we turn to the parallel afforded by the Icelandic sagas and
+their pictures of houses of the eleventh century B.C. The present author
+long ago pointed out the parallel of the houses in the sagas and in
+Homer. [Footnote: _The_ House. Butcher and Lang. Translation of the
+Odyssey.] He took his facts from Dasent's translation of the Njal Saga
+(1861, vol. i. pp. xcviii., ciii., with diagrams). As far as he is
+aware, no critic looked into the matter till Mr. Monro (1901), being
+apparently unacquainted with Dasent's researches, found similar lore in
+works by Dr. Valtyr Gudmundsson [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii.
+pp. 491-495; _cf_. Gudmundsson, _Der Islandske Bottg i Fristats Tiden_,
+1894; _cf_. Dasent, _Oxford_ Essays, 1858.] The roof of the hall is
+supported by four rows of columns, the two inner rows are taller, and
+between them is the hearth, with seats of honour for the chief guests
+and the lord. The fire was in a kind of trench down the hall; and in
+very cold weather, we learn from Dasent, long fires could be lit through
+the extent of the hall. The chief had a raised seat; the guests sat on
+benches. The high seats were at the centre; not till later times on the
+dais, as in a college hall. The tables were relatively small, and, as in
+Homer, could be removed after a meal. The part of the hall with the
+dais in later days was partitioned off as a _stofa_ or parlour. In early
+times cooking was done in the hall.
+
+Dr. Gudmundsson, if I understand him, varies from Dasent in some
+respects. I quote an abstract of his statement.
+
+"About the year 1000 houses generally consisted of, at least, four
+rooms; often a fifth was added, the so-called bath-room. The oldest form
+for houses was that of one long line or row of separate rooms united by
+wooden or clay corridors or partitions, and each covered with a roof.
+Later, this was considered unpractical, and they began building some of
+the houses or rooms behind the others, which facilitated the access from
+one to another, and diminished the number of outer doors and corridors."
+
+"Towards the latter part of the tenth century the _skaal_ was used as
+common sleeping-room for the whole family, including servants and serfs;
+it was fitted up in the same way as the hall. Like this, it was divided
+in three naves by rows of wooden pillars; the middle floor was lower
+than that of the two side naves. In these were placed the so-called
+_saet_ or bed-places, not running the whole length of the [blank space]
+from gable to gable, but sideways, filling about a third part. Each
+_saet_ was enclosed by broad, strong planks joined into the pillars, but
+not nailed on, so they might easily be taken out. These planks, called
+_SATTESTOKKE_, could also be turned sideways and used as benches during
+the day; they were often beautifully carved, and consequently highly
+valued."
+
+"When settling abroad the people took away with them these planks, and
+put them up in their new home as a symbol of domestic happiness. The
+_saet_ was occupied by the servants of the farm as sleeping-rooms;
+generally it was screened by hangings and low panels, which partitioned
+it off like huge separate boxes, used as beds."
+
+"All beds were filled with hay or straw; servants and serfs slept on
+this without any bedclothes, sometimes a sleeping-bag was used, or
+they covered themselves with deerskins or a mantle. The family had
+bed-clothes, but only in very wealthy houses were they also provided
+for the servants. Moveable beds were extremely rare, but are sometimes
+mentioned. Generally two people slept in each bed."
+
+"In the further end of the _skaal_, facing the door, opened out one or
+several small bedrooms, destined for the husband with wife and children,
+besides other members of the family, including guests of a higher
+standing. These small dormitories were separated by partitions of planks
+into bedrooms with one or several beds, and shut away from the outer
+_SKAAL_ either by a sliding-door in the wall or by an ordinary door
+shutting with a hasp. Sometimes only a hanging covered the opening."
+
+"In some farms were found underground passages, leading from the
+master's bedside to an outside house, or even as far as a wood or
+another sheltered place in the neighbourhood, to enable the inhabitants
+to save themselves during a night attack. For the same reason each man
+had his arms suspended over his bed."
+
+"_Ildhus_ or fire-house was the kitchen, often used besides as a
+sleeping-room when the farms were very small. This was quite abolished
+after the year 1000."
+
+"_Buret_ was the provision house."
+
+"The bathroom was heated from a stone oven; the stones were heated
+red-hot and cold water thrown upon them, which developed a quantity
+of vapour. As the heat and the steam mounted, the people--men and
+women--crawled up to a shelf under the roof and remained there as in a
+Turkish bath."
+
+"In large and wealthy houses there was also a women's room, with a
+fireplace built low down in the middle, as in the hall, where the women
+used to sit with their handiwork all day. The men were allowed to come
+in and talk to them, also beggar-women and other vagabonds, who brought
+them the news from other places. Towards evening and for meals all
+assembled together in the hall."
+
+On this showing, people did not sleep in cabins partitioned off the
+dining-hall, but in the _skaale_; and two similar and similarly situated
+rooms, one the common dining-hall, the other the common sleeping-hall,
+have been confused by writers on the sagas. [Footnote: Gudmundsson, p,
+14, Note I.] Can there be a similar confusion in the uses of _megaron_,
+_doma_, and _domos_?
+
+In the Eyrbyggja Saga we have descriptions of the "fire-hall," _skali_
+or _eldhus_. "The fire-hall was the common sleeping-room in Icelandic
+homesteads." Guests and strangers slept there; not in the portico, as in
+Homer. "Here were the lock-beds." There were butteries; one of these
+was reached by a ladder. The walls were panelled. [Footnote: _The Ere
+Dwellers_, p. 145.] Thorgunna had a "berth," apparently partitioned
+off, in the hall. [Footnote: _Ibid_., 137-140.] As in Homer the hall was
+entered from the courtyard, in which were separate rooms for stores
+and other purposes. In the courtyard also, in the houses of Gunnar of
+Lithend and Gisli at Hawkdale, and doubtless in other cases, were the
+_dyngfur_, or ladies' chambers, their "bowers" (_Thalamos_, like that of
+Telemachus in the courtyard), where they sat spinning and gossiping. The
+_dyngja_ was originally called _bur_, our "bower"; the ballads say "in
+bower and hall." In the ballad of _MARGARET_, her parents are said to
+put her in the way of deadly sin by building her a bower, apparently
+separate from the main building; she would have been safer in an upper
+chamber, though, even there, not safe--at least, if a god wooed her! It
+does not appear that all houses had these chambers for ladies apart from
+the main building. You did not enter the main hall in Iceland from
+the court directly in front, but by the "man's door" at the west
+side, whence you walked through the porch or outer hall (_prodomos_,
+_aithonsa_), in the centre of which, to the right, were the doors of the
+hall. The women entered by the women's door, at the eastern extremity.
+
+Guests did not sleep, as in Homer, in the _prodomos_, or the
+portico--the climate did not permit it--but in one or other hall. The
+hall was wainscotted; the walls were hung with shields and weapons,
+like the hall of Odysseus. The heads of the family usually slept in the
+aisles, in chambers entered through the wainscot of the hall. Such a
+chamber might be called _muchos_; it was private from the hall though
+under the same roof. It appears not improbable that some Homeric halls
+had sleeping places of this kind; such a _muchos_ in Iceland seems to
+have had windows. [Footnote: Story of Burnt _Njal_, i. 242.]
+
+ Gunnar himself, however, slept with his wife, Halegerda, in an
+upper chamber; his mother, who lived with him, also had a room upstairs.
+
+In Njal's house, too, there was an upper chamber, wherein the foes of
+Njal threw fire. [Footnote:_Ibid_., ii. 173.] But Njal and Bergthora,
+his wife, when all hope was ended, went into their own bride-chamber
+in the separate aisle of the hall "and gave over their souls into God's
+hand." Under a hide they lay; and when men raised up the hide, after the
+fire had done its work, "they were unburnt under it. All praised God for
+that, and thought it was a _GREAT_ token." In this house was a weaving
+room for the women. [Footnote:_Ibid_, ii. 195.]
+
+It thus appears that Icelandic houses of the heroic age, as regards
+structural arrangements, were practically identical with the house of
+Odysseus, allowing for a separate sleeping-hall, while the differences
+between that and other Homeric houses may be no more than the
+differences between various Icelandic dwellings. The parents might sleep
+in bedchambers off the hall or in upper chambers. Ladies might have
+bowers in the courtyard or might have none. The [Greek: laurae]--each
+passage outside the hall--yielded sleeping rooms for servants; and there
+were store-rooms behind the passage at the top end of the hall, as well
+as separate chambers for stores in the courtyard. Mr. Leaf judiciously
+reconstructs the Homeric house in its "public rooms," of which we hear
+most, while he leaves the residential portion with "details and limits
+probably very variable." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. 586-589, with
+diagram based on the palace of Tiryns.]
+
+Given variability, which is natural and to be expected, and given the
+absence of detail about the "residential portion" of other houses than
+that of Odysseus in the poems, it does not seem to us that this house
+is conspicuously "late," still less that it is the house of historical
+Greece. Manifestly, in all respects it more resembles the houses of Njal
+and Gunnar of Lithend in the heroic age of Iceland.
+
+In the house, as in the uses of iron and bronze, the weapons, armour,
+relations of the sexes, customary laws, and everything else, Homer
+gives us an harmonious picture of a single and peculiar age. We find no
+stronger mark of change than in the Odyssean house, if that be changed,
+which we show reason to doubt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+NOTES OF CHANGE IN THE "ODYSSEY"
+
+If the Homeric descriptions of details of life contain anachronisms,
+points of detail inserted in later progressive ages, these must be
+peculiarly conspicuous in the Odyssey. Longinus regarded it as the work
+of Homer's advanced life, the sunset of his genius, and nobody denies
+that it assumes the existence of the _Iliad_ and is posterior to that
+epic. In the Odyssey, then, we are to look, if anywhere, for indications
+of a changed society. That the language of the _Odyssey_, and of four
+Books of the _Iliad_ (IX., X., XXIII., XXIV.), exhibits signs of change
+is a critical commonplace, but the language is matter for a separate
+discussion; we are here concerned with the ideas, manners, customary
+laws, weapons, implements, and so forth of the Epics.
+
+Taking as a text Mr. Monro's essay, _The Relation of the Odyssey to the
+Iliad_, [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 324, _seqq_.] we examine
+the notes of difference which he finds between the twin Epics. As to
+the passages in which he discovers "borrowing or close imitation of
+passages" in the _Iliad_ by the poet of the _Odyssey_, we shall not
+dwell on the matter, because we know so little about the laws regulating
+the repetition of epic formulae. It is tempting, indeed, to criticise
+Mr. Monro's list of twenty-four Odyssean "borrowings," and we might
+arrive at some curious results. For example, we could show that the
+_Klothes_, the spinning women who "spae" the fate of each new-born
+child, are not later, but, as less abstract, are if anything earlier
+than "the simple _Aisa_ of the _Iliad_." [Footnote: _Odyssey_, VII. 197;
+_Iliad_, xx. 127.] But our proof would require an excursion into
+the beliefs of savage and barbaric peoples who have their _Klothes_,
+spae-women attending each birth, but who are not known to have developed
+the idea of _Aisa_ or Fate.
+
+We might also urge that "to send a spear through the back of a stag" is
+not, as Mr. Monro thought, "an improbable feat," and that a man wounded
+to death as Leiocritus was wounded, would not, as Mr. Monro argued,
+fall backwards. He supposes that the poet of the _Odyssey_ borrowed
+the forward fall from a passage in the _Iliad_, where the fall is in
+keeping. But, to make good our proof, it might be necessary to spear a
+human being in the same way as Leiocritus was speared. [Footnote: Monro,
+odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 239, 230.]
+
+The repetitions of the Epic, at all events, are not the result of the
+weakness of a poet who had to steal his expressions like a schoolboy.
+They have some other cause than the indolence or inefficiency of a
+_cento_--making undergraduate. Indeed, a poet who used the many terms in
+the _Odyssey_ which do not occur in the _Iliad_ was not constrained to
+borrow from any predecessor.
+
+It is needless to dwell on the Odyssean novelties in vocabulary, which
+were naturally employed by a poet who had to sing of peace, not of
+war, and whose epic, as Aristotle says, is "ethical," not military. The
+poet's rich vocabulary is appropriate to his novel subject, that is all.
+
+Coming to Religion (I) we find Mr. Leaf assigning to his original
+_Achilleis_--"the kernel"--the very same religious ideas as Mr. Monro
+takes to be marks of "lateness" and of advance when he finds them in the
+Odyssey!
+
+In the original oldest part of the _Iliad_, says Mr. Leaf, "the gods
+show themselves just so much as to let us know what are the powers which
+control mankind from heaven.... Their interference is such as becomes
+the rulers of the world, not partisans in the battle." [Footnote: Leaf,
+_Iliad_, vol. ii. pp. xii., xiii.] It is the later poets of the _Iliad_,
+in Mr. Leaf's view, who introduce the meddlesome, undignified, and
+extremely unsportsmanlike gods. The original early poet of the _Iliad_
+had the nobler religious conceptions.
+
+In that case--the _Odyssey_ being later than the original kernel of the
+Iliad--the _Odyssey_ ought to give us gods as undignified and unworthy
+as those exhibited by the later continuators of the _Iliad_.
+
+But the reverse is the case. The gods behave fairly well in Book XXIV.
+of the _Iliad_, which, we are to believe, is the latest, or nearly the
+latest, portion. They are all wroth with the abominable behaviour of
+Achilles to dead Hector (XXIV. 134). They console and protect Priam. As
+for the _Odyssey_, Mr. Monro finds that in this late Epic the gods
+are just what Mr. Leaf proclaims them to have been in his old original
+kernel. "There is now an Olympian concert that carries on something like
+a moral government of the world. It is very different in the _Iliad_...."
+[Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, ii. 335.]
+
+But it was not very different; it was just the same, in Mr. Leaf's
+genuine old original germ of the _Iliad_. In fact, the gods are "very
+much like you and me." When their _ichor_ is up, they misbehave as we
+do when our blood is up, during the fury of war. When Hector is dead and
+when the war is over, the gods give play to their higher nature, as
+men do. There is no difference of religious conception to sever the
+_Odyssey_ from the later but not from the original parts of the _Iliad_.
+It is all an affair of the circumstances in each case.
+
+The _Odyssey_ is calmer, more reflective, more _religious_ than the
+_Iliad_, being a poem of peace. The _Iliad_, a poem of war, is more
+_mythological_ than the _Odyssey_: the gods in the _Iliad_ are excited,
+like the men, by the great war and behave accordingly. That neither
+gods nor men show any real sense of the moral weakness of Agamemnon
+or Achilles, or of the moral superiority of Hector, is an unacceptable
+statement. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 336.] Even Achilles
+and Agamemnon are judged by men and by the poet according to their own
+standard of ethics and of customary law. There is really no doubt on
+this point. Too much (2) is made of the supposed different views of
+Olympus--a mountain in Thessaly in the _Iliad_; a snowless, windless,
+supra-mundane place in _Odyssey_, V. 41-47. [Footnote: _Ibid_., ii.
+396.] Of the Odyssean passage Mr. Merry justly says, "the actual
+description is not irreconcilable with the general Homeric picture of
+Olympus." It is "an idealised mountain," and conceptions of it vary,
+with the variations which are essential to and inseparable from all
+mythological ideas. As Mr. Leaf says, [Footnote: Note to _Iliad_, V.
+750.] "heaven, _ouranos_ and Olympus, if not identical, are at least
+closely connected." In V. 753, the poet "regarded the summit of Olympus
+as a half-way stage between heaven and earth," thus "departing from the
+oldest Homeric tradition, which made the earthly mountain Olympus, and
+not any aerial region, the dwelling of the gods." But precisely the same
+confusion of mythical ideas occurs among a people so backward as the
+Australian south-eastern tribes, whose All Father is now seated on a
+hill-top and now "above the sky." In _ILIAD_, VIII. 25, 26, the poet is
+again said to have "entirely lost the real Epic conception of Olympus
+as a mountain in Thessaly," and to "follow the later conception, which
+removed it from earth to heaven." In _Iliad_, XI. 184, "from heaven"
+means "from the summit of Olympus, which, though Homer does not identify
+it with _oupavos_, still, as a mountain, reached into heaven" (Leaf).
+The poet of Iliad, XI. 184, says plainly that Zeus descended "_from_
+heaven" to Mount Ida. In fact, all that is said of Olympus, of heaven,
+of the home of the gods, is poetical, is mythical, and so is necessarily
+subject to the variations of conception inseparable from mythology. This
+is certain if there be any certainty in mythological science, and here
+no hard and fast line can be drawn between _ODYSSEY_ and _Iliad_.
+
+(3) The next point of difference is that, "we hear no more of Iris as
+the messenger of Zeus;" in the Odyssey, "the agent of the will of Zeus
+is now Hermes, as in the Twenty-fourth Book of the _Iliad_," a late
+"Odyssean" Book. But what does that matter, seeing that _ILIAD_, Book
+VIII, is declared to be one of the latest additions; yet in Book VIII.
+Iris, not Hermes, is the messenger (VIII. 409-425). If in late times
+Hermes, not Iris, is the messenger, why, in a very "late" Book (VIII.)
+is Iris the messenger, not Hermes? _Iliad_, Book XXIII., is also a late
+"Odyssean" Book, but here Iris goes on her messages (XXIII. 199) moved
+merely by the prayers of Achilles. In the late Odyssean Book (XXIV.)
+of the _Iliad_, Iris runs on messages from Zeus both to Priam and to
+Achilles. If Iris, in "Odyssean" times, had resigned office and been
+succeeded by Hermes, why did Achilles pray, not to Hermes, but to Iris?
+There is nothing in the argument about Hermes and Iris. There is nothing
+in the facts but the variability of mythical and poetical conceptions.
+Moreover, the conception of Iris as the messenger certainly existed
+through the age of the Odyssey, and later. In the Odyssey the beggar
+man is called "Irus," a male Iris, because he carries messages; and Iris
+does her usual duty as messenger in the Homeric Hymns, as well as in the
+so-called late Odyssean Books of the _Iliad_. The poet of the Odyssey
+knew all about Iris; there had arisen no change of belief; he merely
+employed Hermes as messenger, not of the one god, but of the divine
+Assembly.
+
+(4) Another difference is that in the _Iliad_ the wife of Hephaestus is
+one of the Graces; in the Odyssey she is Aphrodite. [Footnote: Monro,
+_Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 336.] This is one of the inconsistencies which
+are the essence of mythology. Mr. Leaf points out that when Hephaestus
+is about exercising his craft, in making arms for Achilles, Charis "is
+made wife of Hephaestus by a more transparent allegory than we find
+elsewhere in Homer," whereas, when Aphrodite appears in a comic song
+by Demodocus (Odyssey, VIII. 266-366), "that passage is later and
+un-Homeric." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 246.]
+
+Of this we do not accept the doctrine that the lay is un-Homeric. The
+difference comes to no more than _that;_ the accustomed discrepancy
+of mythology, of story-telling about the gods. But as to the lay of
+Demodocus being un-Homeric and late, the poet at least knows the regular
+Homeric practice of the bride-price, and its return by the bride's
+father to the husband of an adulterous wife (Odyssey, VIII. 318, 319).
+The poet of this lay, which Mr. Merry defends as Homeric, was intimately
+familiar with Homeric customary law. Now, according to Paul Cauer, as we
+shall see, other "Odyssean" poets were living in an age of changed
+law, later than that of the author of the lay of Demodocus. All these
+so-called differences between _Iliad_ and Odyssey do not point to the
+fact that the _Odyssey_ belongs to a late and changed period of culture,
+of belief and customs. There is nothing in the evidence to prove that
+contention.
+
+There (5) are two references to local oracles in the _Odyssey,_ that of
+Dodona (XIV. 327; XIX. 296) and that of Pytho (VIII. 80). This is the
+old name of Delphi. Pytho occurs in _Iliad,_ IX. 404, as a very rich
+temple of Apollo--the oracle is not named, but the oracle brought in the
+treasures. Achilles (XVI. 233) prays to Pelasgian Zeus of Dodona, whose
+priests were thickly tabued, but says nothing of the oracle of Dodona.
+Neither when in leaguer round Troy, nor when wandering in fairy lands
+forlorn, had the Achaeans or Odysseus much to do with the local oracles
+of Greece; perhaps not, in Homer's time, so important as they were
+later, and little indeed is said about them in either Epic.
+
+(6) "The geographical knowledge shown in the Odyssey goes beyond that of
+the _Iliad_ ... especially in regard to Egypt and Sicily." But a poet
+of a widely wandering hero of Western Greece has naturally more occasion
+than the poet of a fixed army in Asia to show geographical knowledge.
+Egyptian Thebes is named, in _ILIAD_, IX., as a city very rich,
+especially in chariots; while in the _ODYSSEY_ the poet has occasion
+to show more knowledge of the way to Egypt and of Viking descents from
+Crete on the coast (Odyssey, III. 300; IV. 351; XIV. 257; XVII. 426).
+Archaeology shows that the Mycenaean age was in close commercial
+relation with Egypt, and that the Mycenaean civilisation extended
+to most Mediterranean lands and islands, and to Italy and Sicily.
+[Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, i. 69.] There is nothing
+suspicious, as "late," in the mention of Sicily by Odysseus in Ithaca
+(Odyssey, XX. 383; XXIV. 307). In the same way, if the poet of a western
+poem does not dilate on the Troad and the people of Asia Minor as
+the poet of the _ILIAD_ does, that is simply because the scene of the
+_ILIAD_ is in Asia and the scene of the Odyssey is in the west, when it
+is not in No Man's land. From the same cause the poet of sea-faring has
+more occasion to speak of the Phoenicians, great sea-farers, than the
+poet of the Trojan leaguer.
+
+(7) We know so little about land tenure in Homeric times--and, indeed,
+early land tenure is a subject so complex and obscure that it is not
+easy to prove advance towards separate property in the _Odyssey_--beyond
+what was the rule in the time of the _ILIAD_. In the Making of the Arms
+(XVIII. 541-549) we find many men ploughing a field, and this may have
+been a common field. But in what sense? Many ploughs were at work at
+once on a Scottish runrig field, and each farmer had his own strip on
+several common fields, but each farmer held by rent, or by rent and
+services, from the laird. These common fields were not common property.
+In XII. 422 we have "a common field," and men measuring a strip and
+quarrelling about the marking-stones, across the "baulk," but it does
+not follow that they are owners; they may be tenants. Such quarrels were
+common in Scotland when the runrig system of common fields, each man
+with his strip, prevailed. [Footnote: Grey Graham, _Social Life in
+Scotland in the Eighteenth Century_, i. 157.]
+
+A man had a [Greek: klaeros] or lot (_ILIAD_, XV. 448), but what was
+a "lot"? At first, probably, a share in land periodically shifted-&
+_partage noir_ of the Russian peasants. Kings and men who deserve
+public gratitude receive a [Greek: temenos] a piece of public land, as
+Bellerophon did from the Lycians (VI. 194). In the case of Melager such
+an estate is offered to him, but by whom? Not by the people at large,
+but by the [Greek: gerontes] (IX. 574).
+
+Who are the [Greek: gerontes]? They are not ordinary men of the people;
+they are, in fact, the gentry. In an age so advanced from tribal
+conditions as is the Homeric time--far advanced beyond ancient tribal
+Scotland or Ireland--we conceive that, as in these countries during the
+tribal period, the [Greek: gerontes] (in Celtic, the _Flaith_) held
+in POSSESSION, if not in accordance with the letter of the law, as
+property, much more land than a single "lot." The Irish tribal freeman
+had a right to a "lot," redistributed by rotation. Wealth consisted of
+cattle; and a _bogire_, a man of many kine, let _them_ out to tenants.
+Such a rich man, a _flatha_, would, in accordance with human nature, use
+his influence with kineless dependents to acquire in possession several
+lots, avoid the partition, and keep the lots in possession though not
+legally in property. Such men were the Irish _flaith_, gentry under the
+_RI_, or king, his [Greek: gerontes], each with his _ciniod_, or near
+kinsmen, to back his cause.
+
+"_Flaith_ seems clearly to mean land-owners," or squires, says Sir James
+Ramsay. [Footnote: _Foundations of England_, i. 16, Note 4.] If land,
+contrary to the tribal ideal, came into private hands in early Ireland,
+we can hardly suppose that, in the more advanced and settled Homeric
+society, no man but the king held land equivalent in extent to a
+number of "lots." The [Greek: gerontes], the gentry, the chariot-owning
+warriors, of whom there are hundreds not of kingly rank in Homer (as in
+Ireland there were many _flaith_ to one _Ri_) probably, in an informal
+but tight grip, held considerable lands. When we note their position in
+the _Iliad_, high above the nameless host, can we imagine that they
+did not hold more land than the simple, perhaps periodically shifting,
+"lot"? There were "lotless" men (Odyssey, XL 490), lotless _freemen_,
+and what had become of their lots? Had they not fallen into the hands of
+the [Greek: gerontes] or the _flaith_?
+
+Mr. Ridgeway in a very able essay [Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic
+Studies_, vi. 319-339.] holds different opinions. He points out that
+among a man's possessions, in the _Iliad_, we hear only of personal
+property and live stock. It is in one passage only in the Odyssey (XIV.
+211) that we meet with men holding several lots of land; but _they_, we
+remark, occur in Cretean isle, as we know, of very advanced civilisation
+from of old.
+
+Mr. Ridgeway also asks whether the lotless men may not be "outsiders,"
+such as are attached to certain villages of Central and Southern India;
+[Footnote: Maine, _Village Communities_, P. 127.] or they may answer to
+the _Fuidhir_, or "broken men," of early Ireland, fugitives from one
+to another tribe. They would be "settled on the waste lands of a
+community." If so, they would not be lotless; they would have new lots.
+[Footnote: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vi. 322, 323.]
+
+Laertes, though a king, is supposed to have won his farm by his own
+labours from the waste (Odyssey, XXIV. 207). Mr. Monro says, "the land
+having thus been won from the wastes (the [Greek: gae aklaeros te
+kai aktitos] of _H., Ven._ 123), was a [Greek: temenos] or separate
+possession of Laertes." The passage is in the rejected conclusion of the
+Odyssey; and if any man might go and squat in the waste, any man might
+have a lot, or better than one lot. In _Iliad_, XXIII. 832-835, Achilles
+says that his offered prize of iron will be useful to a man "whose rich
+fields are very remote from any town," Teucer and Meriones compete for
+the prize: probably they had such rich remote fields, not each a mere
+lot in a common field. These remote fields they are supposed to hold in
+perpetuity, apart from the _temenos_, which, in Mr. Ridgeway's opinion,
+reverted, on the death of each holder, to the community, save where
+kingship was hereditary. Now, if [Greek: klaeros] had come to mean "a
+lot of land," as we say "a building lot," obviously men like Teucer and
+Meriones had many lots, rich fields, which at death might sometimes pass
+to their heirs. Thus there was separate landed property in the _Iliad_;
+but the passage is denounced, though not by Mr. Ridgeway, as "late."
+
+The absence of enclosures ([Greek: herkos arouraes]) proves nothing
+about absence of several property in land. In Scotland the laird's lands
+were unenclosed till deep in the eighteenth century.
+
+My own case for land in private possession, in Homeric times, rests
+mainly on human nature in such an advanced society. Such possession as
+I plead for is in accordance with human nature, in a society so
+distinguished by degrees of wealth as is the Homeric.
+
+Unless we are able to suppose that all the gentry of the _Iliad_ held
+no "rich fields remote from towns," each having but one rotatory lot
+apiece, there is no difference in Iliadic and Odyssean land tenure,
+though we get clearer lights on it in the _Odyssey_.
+
+The position of the man of several lots may have been indefensible,
+if the ideal of tribal law were ever made real, but wealth in growing
+societies universally tends to override such law. Mr. Keller [Footnote:
+Homeric Society, p. 192. 1902.] justly warns us against the attempt
+"to apply universally certain fixed rules of property development. The
+passages in Homer upon which opinions diverge most are isolated ones,
+occurring in similes and fragmentary descriptions. Under such conditions
+the formulation of theories or the attempt rigorously to classify can be
+little more than an intellectual exercise."
+
+We have not the materials for a scientific knowledge of Homeric real
+property; and, with all our materials in Irish law books, how hard it
+is for us to understand the early state of such affairs in Ireland! But
+does any one seriously suppose that the knightly class of the _Iliad_,
+the chariot-driving gentlemen, held no more land--legally or by
+permitted custom--than the two Homeric swains who vituperate each other
+across a baulk about the right to a few feet of a strip of a runrig
+field? Whosoever can believe that may also believe that the practice
+of adding "lot" to "lot" began in the period between the finished
+composition of the _Iliad_ (or of the parts of it which allude to land
+tenure) and the beginning of the _Odyssey_ (or of the parts of it which
+refer to land tenure). The inference is that, though the fact is not
+explicitly stated in the _Iliad_, there were men who held more "lots"
+than one in Iliadic times as well as in the Odyssean times, when, in a
+solitary passage of the Odyssey, we do hear of such men in Crete. But
+whosoever has pored over early European land tenures knows how dim our
+knowledge is, and will not rush to employ his lore in discriminating
+between the date of the _Iliad_ and the date of the Odyssey.
+
+Not much proof of change in institutions between Iliadic and Odyssean
+times can be extracted from two passages about the ethna, or bride-price
+of Penelope. The rule in both _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ is that the wooer
+gives a bride-price to the father of the bride, ethna. This was the rule
+known even to that painfully late and un-Homeric poet who made the Song
+of Demodocus about the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. In that song the
+injured husband, Hephaestus, claims back the bride-price which he had
+paid to the father of his wife, Zeus. [Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 318.]
+This is the accepted custom throughout the _Odyssey_ (VI. 159; XVI. 77;
+XX. 335; XXI. 162; XV. 17, &c.). So far there is no change of manners,
+no introduction of the later practice, a dowry given with the bride,
+in place of a bride-price given to the father by the bridegroom. But
+Penelope was neither maid, wife, nor widow; her husband's fate, alive
+or dead, was uncertain, and her son was so anxious to get her out of the
+house that he says he offered gifts _with_ her (XX. 342). In the same
+way, to buy back the goodwill of Achilles, Agamemnon offers to give him
+his daughter without bride-price, and to add great gifts (_Iliad_, IX.
+l47)--the term for the gifts is [Greek: mailia]. People, of course,
+could make their own bargain; take as much for their daughter as they
+could get, or let the gifts go from husband to bride, and then return
+to the husband's home with her (as in Germany in the time of Tacitus,
+_Germania_, 18), or do that, and throw in more gifts. But in Odyssey,
+II. 53, Telemachus says that the Wooers shrink from going to the house
+of Penelope's father, Icarius, who would endow (?) his daughter ([Greek:
+eednoosaito]) And again (_Odyssey_, I. 277; II. 196), her father's folk
+will furnish a bridal feast, and "array the [Greek: heedna], many, such
+as should accompany a dear daughter." Some critics think that the gifts
+here are _dowry_, a later institution than bride-price; others, that the
+father of the dear daughter merely chose to be generous, and returned
+the bride-price, or its equivalent, in whole or part. [Footnote: Merry,
+Odyssey, vol. i. p. 50. Note to Book I 277.] If the former view
+be correct, these passages in Odyssey, I., II. are later than the
+exceedingly "late" song of Demodocus. If the latter theory be correct
+the father is merely showing goodwill, and doing as the Germans did when
+they were in a stage of culture much earlier than the Homeric.
+
+The position of Penelope is very unstable and legally perplexing. Has
+her father her marriage? has her son her marriage? is she not perhaps
+still a married woman with a living husband? Telemachus would give much
+to have her off his hands, but he refuses to send her to her father's
+house, where the old man might be ready enough to return the bride-price
+to her new husband, and get rid of her with honour. For if Telemachus
+sends his mother away against her will he will have to pay a heavy fine
+to her father, and to thole his mother's curse, and lose his character
+among men (odyssey, II. 130-138). The Icelanders of the saga period gave
+dowries with their daughters. But when Njal wanted Hildigunna for his
+foster-son, Hauskuld, he offered to give [Greek: hedna]. "I will lay
+down as much money as will seem fitting to thy niece and thyself," he
+says to Flosi, "if thou wilt think of making this match." [Footnote:
+Story of _Burnt Njal_, ii. p. 81.]
+
+Circumstances alter cases, and we must be hard pressed to discover signs
+of change of manners in the Odyssey as compared with the _Iliad_ if we
+have to rely on a solitary mention of "men of many lots" in Crete,
+and on the perplexed proposals for the second marriage of Penelope.
+[Footnote: For the alleged "alteration of old customs" see Cauer,
+_Grundfragen der Homerkritik_, pp. 193-194.] We must not be told that
+the many other supposed signs of change, Iris, Olympus, and the rest,
+have "cumulative weight." If we have disposed of each individual
+supposed note of change in beliefs and manners in its turn, then these
+proofs have, in each case, no individual weight and, cumulatively, are
+not more ponderous than a feather.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES
+
+The great strength of the theory that the poems are the work of several
+ages is the existence in them of various strata of languages, earlier
+and later.
+
+Not to speak of differences of vocabulary, Mr. Monro and Mr. Leaf, with
+many scholars, detect two strata of earlier and later _grammar_ in Iliad
+and Odyssey. In the _Iliad_ four or five Books are infected by "the
+later grammar," while the Odyssey in general seems to be contaminated.
+Mr. Leafs words are: "When we regard the Epos in large masses, we see
+that we can roughly arrange the inconsistent elements towards one end or
+the other of a line of development both linguistic and historical. The
+main division, that of _Iliad_ and Odyssey, shows a distinct advance
+along this line; and the distinction is still more marked if we group
+with the _Odyssey_ four Books of the _Iliad_ whose Odyssean physiognomy
+is well marked. Taking as our main guide the dissection of the plot as
+shown in its episodes, we find that marks of lateness, though nowhere
+entirely absent, group themselves most numerously in the later additions
+..." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. X.] We are here concerned with
+_linguistic_ examples of "lateness." The "four Books whose Odyssean
+physiognomy" and language seem "well marked," are IX., X., XXIII., XXIV.
+Here Mr. Leaf, Mr. Monro, and many authorities are agreed. But to these
+four Odyssean Books of the _Iliad_ Mr. Leaf adds _Iliad_, XI. 664-772:
+"probably a later addition," says Mr. Monro. "It is notably Odyssean in
+character," says Mr. Leaf; and the author "is ignorant of the geography
+of the Western Peloponnesus. No doubt the author was an Asiatic Greek."
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. 465-466. Note on Book XI. 756.] The
+value of this discovery is elsewhere discussed (see _The Interpolations
+of Nestor_).
+
+The Odyssean notes in this passage of a hundred lines (_Iliad_, XI.
+670-762) are the occurrence of "a purely Odyssean word" (677), an Attic
+form of an epic word, and a "forbidden trochaic caesura in the fourth
+foot"; an Odyssean word for carving meat, applied in a _non_-Odyssean
+sense (688), a verb for "insulting," not elsewhere found in the _Iliad_
+(though the noun is in the _Iliad_) (695), an Odyssean epithet of the
+sun, "four times in the _Odyssey_" (735). It is also possible that there
+is an allusion to a four-horse chariot (699).
+
+These are the proofs of Odyssean lateness.
+
+The real difficulty about Odyssean words and grammar in the _Iliad_
+is that, if they were in vigorous poetic existence down to the time of
+Pisistratus (as the Odysseanism of the Asiatic editor proves that they
+were), and if every rhapsodist could add to and alter the materials at
+the disposal of the Pisistratean editor at will, we are not told how the
+fashionable Odysseanisms were kept, on the whole, out of twenty Books of
+the Iliad.
+
+This is a point on which we cannot insist too strongly, as an argument
+against the theory that, till the middle of the sixth century B.C., the
+_Iliad_ scarcely survived save in the memory of strolling rhapsodists.
+If that were so, all the Books of the _Iliad_ would, in the course
+of recitation of old and composition of new passages, be equally
+contaminated with late Odyssean linguistic style. It could not be
+otherwise; all the Books would be equally modified in passing through
+the lips of modern reciters and composers. Therefore, if twenty out
+of twenty-four Books are pure, or pure in the main, from Odysseanisms,
+while four are deeply stained with them, the twenty must not only be
+earlier than the four, but must have been specially preserved, and kept
+uncontaminated, in some manner inconsistent with the theory that all
+alike scarcely existed save in the memory or invention of late strolling
+reciters.
+
+How the twenty Books relatively pure "in grammatical forms, in syntax,
+and in vocabulary," could be kept thus clean without the aid of written
+texts, I am unable to imagine. If left merely to human memory and at
+the mercy of reciters and new poets, they would have become stained with
+"the defining article"--and, indeed, an employment of the article which
+startles grammarians, appears even in the eleventh line of the First
+Book of the _Iliad_? [Footnote (exact placing uncertain): Cf. Monro and
+Leaf, on Iliad, I. 11-12.]
+
+ Left merely to human memory and the human voice, the twenty more
+or less innocent Books would have abounded, like the Odyssey, in
+[Greek: amphi] with the dative meaning "about," and with [Greek: ex] "in
+consequence of," and "the extension of the use of [Greek: ei] clauses
+as final and objective clauses," and similar marks of lateness, so
+interesting to grammarians. [Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, ii. pp.
+331-333.] But the twenty Books are almost, or quite, inoffensive in
+these respects.
+
+Now, even in ages of writing, it has been found difficult or impossible
+to keep linguistic novelties and novelties of metre out of old epics. We
+later refer (_Archaeology of the Epic_) to the _Chancun de Willame_,
+of which an unknown benefactor printed two hundred copies in 1903.
+Mr. Raymond Weeks, in _Romania_, describes _Willame_ as taking a place
+beside the _Chanson de Roland_ in the earliest rank of _Chansons de
+Geste_. If the text can be entirely restored, the poem will appear
+as "the most primitive" of French epics of the eleventh and twelfth
+centuries. But it has passed from copy to copy in the course of
+generations. The methods of versification change, and, after line 2647,
+"there are traces of change in the language. The word _co_, followed
+by a vowel, hitherto frequent, never again reappears. The vowel _i_,
+of _li_, nominative masculine of the article" (_li Reis_, "the king"),
+"never occurs in the text after line 2647. Up to that point it is elided
+or not at pleasure.... There is a progressive tendency towards hiatus.
+After line 1980 the system of assonance changes. _An_ and en have
+been kept distinct hitherto; this ceases to be the case." [Footnote:
+_Romania_, xxxiv. pp. 240-246.]
+
+The poem is also notable, like the _Iliad_, for textual repetition of
+passages, but that is common to all early poetry, which many Homeric
+critics appear not to understand. In this example we see how apt
+novelties in grammar and metre are to steal into even written copies of
+epics, composed in and handed down through uncritical ages; and we are
+confirmed in the opinion that the relatively pure and orthodox grammar
+and metre of the twenty Books must have been preserved by written texts
+carefully 'executed. The other four Books, if equally old, were less
+fortunate. Their grammar and metre, we learn, belong to a later stratum
+of language.
+
+These opinions of grammarians are not compatible with the hypothesis
+that _all_ of the _Iliad_, even the "earliest" parts, are loaded with
+interpolations, forced in at different places and in any age from 1000
+B.C. to 540 B.C.; for if that theory were true, the whole of the _Iliad_
+would equally be infected with the later Odyssean grammar. According to
+Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb, it is not.
+
+But suppose, on the other hand, that the later Odyssean grammar abounds
+all through the whole _Iliad_, then that grammar is not more Odyssean
+than it is Iliadic. The alleged distinction of early Iliadic grammar,
+late Odyssean grammar, in that case vanishes. Mr. Leaf is more keen than
+Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb in detecting late grammar in the _Iliad_
+beyond the bounds of Books IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. But he does not carry
+these discoveries so far as to make the late grammar no less Iliadic
+than Odyssean. In Book VIII. of the _Iliad_, which he thinks was only
+made for the purpose of introducing Book IX., [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol.
+i. p. 332. 1900.] we ought to find the late Odyssean grammar just as
+much as we do in Book IX., for it is of the very same date, and probably
+by one or more of the same authors as Book IX. But we do not find the
+Odyssean grammar in Book VIII.
+
+Mr. Leaf says, "The peculiar character" of Book VIII. "is easily
+understood, when we recognise the fact that Book VIII. is intended to
+serve only as a means for the introduction of Book IX...." which is
+"late" and "Odyssean." Then Book VIII., intended to introduce Book IX.,
+must be at least as late as Book IX. and might be expected to be at
+least as Odyssean, indeed one would think it could not be otherwise. Yet
+it is not so.
+
+Mr. Leaf's theory has thus to face the difficulty that while the whole
+_Iliad_, by his view, for more than four centuries, was stuffed with
+late interpolations, in the course of oral recital through all
+Greek lands, and was crammed with original "copy" by a sycophant of
+Pisistratus about 540 B.C., the late grammar concentrated itself in
+only some four Books. Till some reasonable answer is given to this
+question--how did twenty Books of the Iliad preserve so creditably
+the ancient grammar through centuries of change, and of recitation by
+rhapsodists who used the Odyssean grammar, which infected the four other
+Books, and the whole of the _Odyssey?_--it seems hardly worth while to
+discuss this linguistic test.
+
+Any scholar who looks at these pages knows all about the proofs of
+grammar of a late date in the _Odyssey_ and the four contaminated Books
+of the _Iliad_. But it may be well to give a few specimens, for the
+enlightenment of less learned readers of Homer.
+
+The use of [Greek: amfi], with the dative, meaning "about," when
+_thinking_ or _speaking_ "about" Odysseus or anything else, is peculiar
+to the _Odyssey_. But how has it not crept into the four Odyssean
+contaminated Books of the _Iliad_?
+
+ [Greek: peri], with the genitive, "follows verbs meaning to speak
+or know _about_ a person," but only in the _Odyssey_. What preposition
+follows such verbs in the _Iliad_?
+
+Here, again, we ask: how did the contaminated Books of the _Iliad_
+escape the stain of [Greek: peri], with the genitive, after verbs
+meaning to speak or know? What phrase do they use in the _Iliad_ for
+speaking or asking _about_ anybody? [Footnote (exact placing uncertain):
+Monro, Homeric _Grammar_. See Index, under _Iliad_, p. 339.]
+
+ [Greek: meta], with the genitive, meaning "among" or "with,"
+comes twice in the Odyssey (X. 320; XVI. 140) and thrice in the _Iliad_
+(XIII. 700; XXI. 458; XXIV. 400); but all these passages in the _Iliad_
+are disposed of as "late" parts of the poem.
+
+ [Greek: epi], with the accusative, meaning _towards_ a
+person, comes often in the _Iliad_; once in the Odyssey. But it comes
+four times in _Iliad_, Book X., which almost every critic scouts as very
+"late" indeed. If so, why does the "late" _Odyssey_ not deal in this
+grammatical usage so common in the "late" Book X. of the _Iliad_?
+
+ [Greek: epi], with the accusative, "meaning _extent_
+(without _motion_)," is chiefly found in the _Odyssey_, and in the
+Iliad, IX., X., XXIV. On consulting grammarians one thinks that there is
+not much in this.
+
+ [Greek: proti] with the dative, meaning "in addition to," occurs
+only once (_Odyssey, X. 68_). If it occurs only once, there is little to
+be learned from the circumstance.
+
+ [Greek: ana] with the genitive, is only in _Odyssey_, only
+thrice, always of going on board a ship. There are not many ship-farings
+in the _Iliad_. Odysseus and his men are not described as going on board
+their ship, in so many words, in _Iliad_, Book I. The usage occurs in
+the poem where the incidents of seafaring occur frequently, as is to be
+expected? It is not worth while to persevere with these tithes of mint
+and cummin. If "Neglect of Position" be commoner--like "Hiatus in the
+Bucolic Diaeresis"--in the _Odyssey_ and in _Iliad_, XXIII., XXIV., why
+do the failings not beset _Iliad_, IX., X., these being such extremely
+"late" books? As to the later use of the Article in the _Odyssey_ and
+the Odyssean Books of the _Iliad_, it appears to us that Book I. of the
+_Iliad_ uses the article as it is used in Book X.; but on this topic we
+must refer to a special treatise on the language of _Iliad_, Book X.,
+which is promised.
+
+Turning to the vocabulary: "words expressive of civilisation" are bound
+to be more frequent, as they are, in the Odyssey, a poem of peaceful
+life, than in a poem about an army in action, like the _Iliad_. Out of
+all this no clue to the distance of years dividing the two poems can be
+found. As to words concerning religion, the same holds good. The Odyssey
+is more frequently _religious_ (see the case of Eumaeus) than the
+_Iliad_.
+
+In morals the term [Greek: dikaios] is more used in the _Odyssey_, also
+[Greek: atemistos] ("just" and "lawless"). But that is partly because
+the Odyssey has to contrast civilised ("just") with wild outlandish
+people--Cyclopes and Laestrygons, who are "lawless." The _Iliad_ has no
+occasion to touch on savages; but, as the [Greek: hybris] of the Wooers
+is a standing topic in the Odyssey (an ethical poem, says Aristotle),
+the word [Greek: hybris] is of frequent occurrence in the _Odyssey_,
+in just the same sense as it bears in _Iliad_, I 214--the insolence
+of Agamemnon. Yet when Achilles has occasion to speak of Agamemnon's
+insolence in _Iliad_, Book IX., he does not use the _word_ [Greek:
+hybris], though Book IX. is so very "late" and "Odyssean." It would be
+easy to go through the words for moral ideas in the _Odyssey_, and
+to show that they occur in the numerous moral situations which do not
+arise, or arise much less frequently, in the _Iliad_. There is not
+difference enough in the moral standard of the two poems to justify us
+in assuming that centuries of ethical progress had intervened between
+their dates of composition. If the _Iliad_, again, were really, like the
+_Odyssey_, a thing of growth through several centuries, which overlapped
+the centuries in which the _Odyssey_ grew, the moral ideas of the
+_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ would necessarily be much the same, would be
+indistinguishable. But, as a matter of fact, it would be easy to show
+that the moral standard of the _Iliad_ is higher, in many places,
+than the moral standard of the _Odyssey_; and that, therefore, by the
+critical hypothesis, the _Iliad_ is the later poem of the twain. For
+example, the behaviour of Achilles is most obnoxious to the moralist in
+_Iliad_, Book IX., where he refuses gifts of conciliation. But by the
+critical hypothesis this is not the fault of the _Iliad_, for Book IX.
+is declared to be "late," and of the same date as late parts of the
+_Odyssey_. Achilles is not less open to moral reproach in his abominable
+cruelty and impiety, as shown in his sacrifice of prisoners of war and
+his treatment of dead Hector, in _Iliad_, XXIII., XXIV. But these Books
+also are said to be as late as the _Odyssey_.
+
+The solitary "realistic" or "naturalistic" passage in Homer, with which
+a lover of modern "problem novels" feels happy and at home, is the story
+of Phoenix, about his seduction of his father's mistress at the
+request of his mother. What a charming situation! But that occurs in an
+"Odyssean" Book of the _Iliad_, Book IX.; and thus Odyssean seems lower,
+not more advanced, than Iliadic taste in morals. To be sure, the poet
+disapproves of all these immoralities.
+
+In the Odyssey the hero, to the delight of Athene, lies often and freely
+and with glee. The Achilles of the _Iliad_ hates a liar "like the gates
+of Hades"; but he says so in an "Odyssean" Book (Book IX.), so there
+were obviously different standards in Odyssean ethics.
+
+As to the Odyssey being the work of "a milder age," consider the hanging
+of Penelope's maids and the abominable torture of Melanthius. There is
+no torturing in the [blank space] for the _Iliad_ happens not to deal
+with treacherous thralls.
+
+_Enfin_, there is no appreciable moral advance in the _ODYSSEY_ on the
+moral standard of the _ILIAD_. It is rather the other way. Odysseus, in
+the _ODYSSEY_, tries to procure poison for his arrow-heads. The person
+to whom he applies is too moral to oblige him. We never learn that
+a hero of the _Iliad_ would use poisoned arrows. The poet himself
+obviously disapproves; in both poems the poet is always on the side of
+morality and of the highest ethical standard of his age. The standard in
+both Epics is the same; in both some heroes fall short of the standard.
+
+To return to linguistic tests, it is hard indeed to discover what Mr.
+Leaf's opinion of the value of linguistic tests of lateness really is.
+"It is on such fundamental discrepancies"--as he has found in Books IX.,
+XVI.--"that we can depend, _AND ON THESE ALONE_, when we come to dissect
+the _ILIAD_ ... Some critics have attempted to base their analysis on
+evidences from language, but I do not think they are sufficient to
+bear the super-structure which has been raised on them." [Footnote:
+_Companion,_ p. 25.]
+
+He goes on, still placing a low value on linguistic tests alone, to say:
+"It is on the broad grounds of the construction and motives of the poem,
+_AND NOT ON ANY MERELY linguistic CONSIDERATIONS_, that a decision must
+be sought." [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. x.]
+
+But he contradicts these comfortable words when he comes to "the latest
+expansions," such as Books XXIII., XXIV. "The latest expansions are
+thoroughly in the spirit of those which precede, _them ON ACCOUNT OF
+linguistic EVIDENCE,_ which definitely classes them with the _ODYSSEY_
+rather than the rest of the _ILIAD_." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p.
+xiv.]
+
+Now as Mr. Leaf has told us that we must depend on "fundamental
+discrepancies," "on these alone," when we want to dissect the _ILIAD;_
+as he has told us that linguistic tests alone are "not sufficient to
+bear the superstructure," &c., how can we lop off two Books "only on
+account of linguistic evidence"? It would appear that on this point,
+as on others, Mr. Leaf has entirely changed his mind. But, even in the
+_Companion_ (p. 388), he had amputated Book XXIV. for no "fundamental
+discrepancy," but because of "its close kinship to the _ODYSSEY_, as in
+the whole language of the Book."
+
+Here, as in many other passages, if we are to account for discrepancies
+by the theory of multiplex authorship, we must decide that Mr. Leaf's
+books are the work of several critics, not of one critic only. But there
+is excellent evidence to prove that here we would be mistaken.
+
+Confessedly and regretfully no grammarian, I remain unable, in face of
+what seem contradictory assertions about the value of linguistic tests,
+to ascertain what they are really worth, and what, if anything, they
+really prove.
+
+Mr. Monro allows much for "the long insensible influence of Attic
+recitation upon the Homeric text;" ... "many Attic peculiarities may
+be noted" (so much so that Aristarchus thought Homer must have been
+an Athenian!). "The poems suffered a gradual and unsystematic because
+generally unconscious process of modernising, the chief agents in
+which were the rhapsodists" (reciters in a later democratic age), "who
+wandered over all parts of Greece, and were likely to be influenced by
+all the chief forms of literature." [Footnote: Monro, _Homeric Grammar_,
+pp 394-396. 1891]
+
+Then, wherefore insist so much on tests of language?
+
+Mr. Monro was not only a great grammarian; he had a keen appreciation
+of poetry. Thus he was conspicuously uneasy in his hypothesis, based on
+words and grammar, that the two last Books of the _Iliad_ are by a late
+hand. After quoting Shelley's remark that, in these two Books, "Homer
+truly begins to be himself," Mr. Monro writes, "in face of such
+testimony can we say that the Book in which the climax is reached, in
+which the last discords of the _Iliad_ are dissolved in chivalrous pity
+and regret, is not the work of the original poet, but of some Homerid or
+rhapsodist?"
+
+Mr. Monro, with a struggle, finally voted for grammar, and other
+indications of lateness, against Shelley and against his own sense of
+poetry. In a letter to me of May 1905, Mr. Monro sketched a theory that
+Book IX. (without which he said that he deemed an _Achilleis_ hardly
+possible) might be a _remanie_ representative of an earlier lay to the
+same general effect. Some Greek Shakespeare, then, treated an older poem
+on the theme of Book IX. as Shakespeare treated old plays, namely, as a
+canvas to work over with a master's hand. Probably Mr. Monro would
+not have gone _so_ far in the case of Book XXIV., _The Repentance_ of
+Achilles. He thought it in too keen contrast with the brutality of Book
+XXII. (obviously forgetting that in Book XXIV. Achilles is infinitely
+more brutal than in Book XXII.), and thought it inconsistent with the
+refusal of Achilles to grant burial at the prayer of the dying Hector,
+and with his criminal treatment of the dead body of his chivalrous
+enemy. But in Book XXIV. his ferocity is increased. Mr. Leaf shares
+Mr. Monro's view; but Mr. Leaf thinks that a Greek audience forgave
+Achilles, because he was doing "the will of heaven," and "fighting the
+great fight of Hellenism against barbarism." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad,_
+vol.-ii. p. 429. 1902.] But the Achzeans were not Puritans of the
+sixteenth century! Moreover, the Trojans are as "Hellenic" as the
+Achzeans. They converse, clearly, in the same language. They worship
+the same gods. The Achzeans cannot regard them (unless on account of the
+breach of truce, by no Trojan, but an ally) as the Covenanters regarded
+"malignants," their name for loyal cavaliers, whom they also styled
+"Amalekites," and treated as Samuel treated Agag. The Achaeans to whom
+Homer sang had none of this sanguinary Pharisaism.
+
+Others must decide on the exact value and import of Odyssean grammar
+as a test of lateness, and must estimate the probable amount of time
+required for the development of such linguistic differences as they find
+in the _Odyssey_ and _Iliad_. In undertaking this task they may compare
+the literary language of America as it was before 1860 and as it is now.
+The language of English literature has also been greatly modified in
+the last forty years, but our times are actively progressive in many
+directions; linguistic variations might arise more slowly in the Greece
+of the Epics. We have already shown, in the more appropriate instance
+of the _Chancun de Willame_, that considerable varieties in diction and
+metre occur in a single MS. of that poem, a MS. written probably within
+less than a century of the date of the poem's composition.
+
+We can also trace, in _remaniements_ of the _Chanson DE ROLAND_,
+comparatively rapid and quite revolutionary variations from the
+oldest--the Oxford--manuscript. Rhyme is substituted for assonance;
+the process entails frequent modernisations, and yet the basis of
+thirteenth-century texts continues to be the version of the eleventh
+century. It may be worth the while of scholars to consider these
+parallels carefully, as regards the language and prosody of the Odyssean
+Books of the _Iliad_, and to ask themselves whether the processes of
+alteration in the course of transmission, which we know to have occurred
+in the history of the Old French, may not also have affected the
+_ILIAD_, though why the effect is mainly confined to four Books remains
+a puzzle. It is enough for us to have shown that if Odyssean varies from
+Iliadic language, in all other respects the two poems bear the marks
+of the same age. Meanwhile, a Homeric scholar so eminent as Mr. T. W.
+Allen, says that "the linguistic attack upon their age" (that of the
+Homeric poems) "may be said to have at last definitely failed, and
+archaeology has erected an apparently indestructible buttress for their
+defence." [Footnote: _Classical Review, May_ 1906, p. 194.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+THE "DOLONEIA"
+
+"ILIAD," BOOK X.
+
+Of all Books in the [blank space] Book X., called the _Doloneia_,
+is most generally scouted and rejected. The Book, in fact, could be
+omitted, and only a minutely analytic reader would perceive the lacuna.
+He would remark that in Iliad, IX. 65-84, certain military preparations
+are made which, if we suppress Book X., lead up to nothing, and that
+in _Iliad_, XIV. 9-11, we find Nestor with the shield of his son,
+Thrasymedes, while Thrasymedes has his father's shield, a fact not
+explained, though the poet certainly meant something by it. The
+explanation in both cases is found in Book X., which may also be thought
+to explain why the Achaeans, so disconsolate in Book IX., and why
+Agamemnon, so demoralised, so gaily assume the offensive in Book
+XI. Some ancient critics, Scholiast T and Eustathius, attributed the
+_DOLONEIA_ to Homer, but supposed it to have been a separate composition
+of his added to the _Iliad_ by Pisistratus. This merely proves that
+they did not find any necessity for the existence of the _DOLONEIA_. Mr.
+Allen, who thinks that "it always held its present place," says, "the
+_DOLONEIA_ is persistently written down." [Footnote: _Classical Review_,
+May 1906, p. 194]
+
+To understand the problem of the _DOLONEIA_, we must make a summary of
+its contents. In Book IX. 65-84, at the end of the disastrous fighting
+of Book VIII, the Achaeans, by Nestor's advice, station an advanced
+guard of "_the young men_" between the fosse and wall; 700 youths are
+posted there, under Meriones, the squire of Idomeneus, and Thrasymedes,
+the son of Nestor. All this is preparation for Book X., as Mr. Leaf
+remarks, [Footnote: _Companion_, p. 174.] though in any case an advanced
+guard was needed. Their business is to remain awake, under arms, in case
+the Trojans, who are encamped on the plain, attempt a night attack. At
+their station the young men will be under arms till dawn; they light
+fires and cook their provisions; the Trojans also surround their own
+watchfires.
+
+The Achaean chiefs then hold council, and Agamemnon sends the embassy
+to Achilles. The envoys bring back his bitter answer; and all men go to
+sleep in their huts, deeply discouraged, as even Odysseus avowed.
+
+Here the Tenth Book begins, and it is manifest that the poet is
+thoroughly well acquainted with the Ninth Book. Without the arrangements
+made in the Ninth Book, and without the despairing situation of that
+Book, his lay is impossible. It will be seen that critics suppose him,
+alternately, to have "quite failed to realise the conditions of life of
+the heroes of whom he sang" (that is, if certain lines are genuine), and
+also to be a peculiarly learned archaeologist and a valuable authority
+on weapons. He is addicted to introducing fanciful "touches of heroic
+simplicity," says Mr. Leaf, and is altogether a puzzling personage to
+the critics.
+
+The Book opens with the picture of Agamemnon, sleepless from anxiety,
+while the other chiefs, save Menelaus, are sleeping. He "hears the music
+of the joyous Trojan pipes and flutes" and sees the reflected glow
+of their camp-fires, we must suppose, for he could not see the fires
+themselves through the new wall of his own camp, as critics very wisely
+remark. He tears out his hair before Zeus; no one else does so, in the
+_Iliad_, but no one else is Agamemnon, alone and in despair.
+
+He rises to consult Nestor, throwing a lion's skin over his _chiton_,
+and grasping a spear. Much noise is made about the furs, such as this
+lion's pelt, which the heroes, in Book X., throw about their shoulders
+when suddenly aroused. That sportsmen like the heroes should keep the
+pelts of animals slain by them for use as coverlets, and should throw on
+one of the pelts when aroused in a hurry, is a marvellous thing to the
+critics. They know that fleeces were used for coverlets of beds (IX.
+661), and pelts of wild animals, slain by Anchises, cover his bed in the
+Hymn to Aphrodite.
+
+But the facts do not enlighten critics. Yet no facts could be more
+natural. A scientific critic, moreover, never reflects that the poet is
+dealing with an unexampled situation--heroes wakened and called into
+the cold air in a night of dread, but not called to battle. Thus Reichel
+says: "The poet knows so little about true heroic costume that he drapes
+the princes in skins of lions and panthers, like giants.... But about a
+corslet he never thinks." [Footnote: Reichel, p.70.]
+
+The simple explanation is that the poet has not hitherto had to tell
+us about men who are called up, not to fight, on a night that must have
+been chilly. In war they do not wear skins, though Paris, in archer's
+equipment, wears a pard's skin (III. 17). Naturally, the men throw over
+themselves their fur coverlets; but Nestor, a chilly veteran, prefers a
+_chiton_ and a wide, double-folded, fleecy purple cloak. The cloak lay
+ready to his hand, for such cloaks were used as blankets (XXIV.
+646; Odyssey, III. 349, 351; IV. 299; II. 189). We hear more of such
+bed-coverings in the Odyssey than in the merely because in the _ODYSSEY_
+we have more references to beds and to people in bed. That a sportsman
+may have (as many folk have now) a fur coverlet, and may throw it over
+him as a kind of dressing-gown or "bed-gown," is a simple circumstance
+which bewilders the critical mind and perplexed Reichel.
+
+If the poet knew so little as Reichel supposed his omission of corslets
+is explained. Living in an age of corslets (seventh century), he, being
+a literary man, knew nothing about corslets, or, as he is also an acute
+archaeologist, he knew too much; he knew that they were not worn in
+the Mycenaean prime, so he did not introduce them. The science of this
+remarkable ignoramus, in _this_ view, accounts for his being aware that
+pelts of animals were in vogue as coverlets, just as fur dressing-gowns
+were worn in the sixteenth century, and he introduces them precisely as
+he leaves corslets out, because he knows that pelts of fur were in use,
+and that, in the Mycenaean prime, corslets were not worn.
+
+In speaking to Nestor, Agamemnon awakens sympathy: "Me, of all the
+Achaeans, Zeus has set in toil and labour ceaselessly." They are almost
+the very words of Charlemagne in the _Chanson de Roland: "Deus, Dist li
+Reis, si peneuse est ma vie."_ The author of the _Doloneia_ consistently
+conforms to the character of Agamemnon as drawn in the rest of the
+_Iliad_. He is over-anxious; he is demoralising in his fits of gloom,
+but all the burden of the host hangs on him--sipeneuse _est ma via_.
+
+To turn to higher things. Menelaus, too, was awake, anxious about the
+Argives, who risked their lives in his cause alone. He got up, put on a
+pard's skin and a bronze helmet (here the poet forgets, what he ought
+to have known, that no bronze helmets have been found in the Mycenaean
+graves). Menelaus takes a spear, and goes to look for Agamemnon, whom he
+finds arming himself beside his ship. He discovers that Agamemnon means
+to get Nestor to go and speak to the advanced guard, as his son is their
+commander, and they will obey Nestor. Agamemnon's pride has fallen very
+low! He tells Menelaus to waken the other chief with all possible formal
+courtesy, for, brutally rude when in high heart, at present Agamemnon
+cowers to everybody. He himself finds Nestor in bed, his _shield_, two
+spears, and helmet beside him, also his glittering _zoster_. His corslet
+is not named; perhaps the poet knew that the _zoster_, or broad metallic
+belt, had been evolved, but that the corslet had not been invented; or
+perhaps he "knows so little about the costume of the heroes" that he
+is unaware of the existence of corslets. Nestor asks Agamemnon what he
+wants; and Agamemnon says that his is a toilsome life, that he cannot
+sleep, that his knees tremble, and that he wants Nestor to come and
+visit the outposts.
+
+There is really nothing absurd in this. Napoleon often visited his
+outposts in the night before Waterloo, and Cromwell rode along his lines
+all through the night before Dunbar, biting his lips till the blood
+dropped on his linen bands. In all three cases hostile armies were
+arrayed within striking distance of each other, and the generals were
+careworn.
+
+Nestor admits that it is an anxious night, and rather blames Menelaus
+for not rousing the other chiefs; but Agamemnon explains and defends his
+brother. Nestor then puts on the comfortable cloak already described,
+and picks up a spear, [blank space] _in HIS QUARTERS_.
+
+As for Odysseus, he merely throws a shield over his shoulders. The
+company of Diomede are sleeping with their heads on their shields.
+Thence Reichel (see "The Shield") infers that the late poet of Book X.
+gave them small Ionian round bucklers; but it has been shown that no
+such inference is legitimate. Their spears were erect by their sides,
+fixed in the ground by the _sauroter_, or butt-spike, used by the men of
+the late "warrior vase" found at Mycenae. To arrange the spears thus,
+we have seen, was a point of drill that, in Aristotle's time, survived
+among the Illyrians. [Footnote: _Poetics_, XXV.] The practice is also
+alluded to in _Iliad_, III 135. During a truce "the tall spears are
+planted by their sides." The poet, whether ignorant or learned, knew
+that point of war, later obsolete in Greece, but still extant in
+Illyria.
+
+Nestor aroused Diomede, whose night apparel was the pelt of a lion; he
+took his spear, and they came to the outposts, where the men were awake,
+and kept a keen watch on all movements among the Trojans. Nestor praised
+them, and the princes, taking Nestor's son, Thrasymedes, and Meriones
+with them, went out into the open in view of the Trojan camp, sat down,
+and held a consultation.
+
+Nestor asked if any one would volunteer to go as a spy among the Trojans
+and pick up intelligence. His reward will be "a black ewe with her lamb
+at her foot," from their chiefs--"nothing like her for value"--and he
+will be remembered in songs at feasts, _or_ will be admitted to feasts
+and wine parties of the chiefs. [Footnote: Leaf, Note on X. 215.] The
+proposal is very odd; what do the princes want with black ewes, while
+at feasts they always have honoured places? Can Nestor be thinking of
+sending out any brave swift-footed young member of the outpost party, to
+whom the reward would be appropriate?
+
+After silence, Diomede volunteers to go, with a comrade, though this
+kind of work is very seldom undertaken in any army of any age by a
+chief, and by his remark about admission to wine parties it is clear
+that Nestor was not thinking of a princely spy. Many others volunteer,
+but Agamemnon bids Diomede choose his own companion, with a very broad
+hint not to take Menelaus. _HIS_ death, Agamemnon knows, would mean the
+disgraceful return of the host to Greece; besides he is, throughout the
+_ILIAD_, deeply attached to his brother.
+
+The poet of Book X., however late, knows the _ILIAD_ well, for he keeps
+up the uniform treatment of the character of the Over-Lord. As he knows
+the _ILIAD_ well, how can he be ignorant of the conditions of life
+of the heroes? How can he dream of "introducing a note of heroic
+simplicity" (Mr. Leaf's phrase), when he must be as well aware as we are
+of the way in which the heroes lived? We cannot explain the black ewes,
+if meant as a princely reward, but we do not know everything about
+Homeric life.
+
+Diomede chooses Odysseus, "whom Pallas Athene loveth"; she was also the
+patroness of Diomede himself, in Books V., VI.
+
+As they are unarmed--all of the chiefs hastily aroused were unarmed,
+save for a spear there or a sword here--Thrasymedes gives to Diomede his
+two-edged sword, _his_ shield, and "a helm of bull's hide, without horns
+or crest, that is called a skull-cap (knap-skull), and keeps the heads
+of strong young men." All the advanced guard were young men, as we saw
+in Book IX. 77. Obviously, Thrasymedes must then send back to camp,
+though we are not told it, for another shield, sword, and helmet, as he
+is to lie all night under arms. We shall hear of the shield later.
+
+Meriones, who is an archer (XIII. 650), lends to Odysseus his bow and
+quiver and a sword. He also gives him "a helm made of leather; and with
+many a thong it was stiffly wrought within, while without the white
+teeth of a boar of flashing tusks were arrayed, thick set on either side
+well and cunningly... ." Here Reichel perceives that the ignorant poet
+is describing a piece of ancient headgear represented in Mycenaean art,
+while the boars' teeth were found by Schliemann, to the number of
+sixty, in Grave IV. at Mycenae. Each of them had "the reverse side
+cut perfectly flat, and with the borings to attach them to some other
+object." They were "in a veritable funereal armoury." The manner of
+setting the tusks on the cap is shown on an ivory head of a warrior from
+Mycenae. [Footnote: Tsountas and Manatt, 196-197.]
+
+Reichel recognises that the poet's description in Book X. is excellent,
+"_ebenso klar als eingehend_." He publishes another ivory head from
+Spata, with the same helmet set with boars' tusks. [Footnote: Reichel,
+pp. 102-104] Mr. Leaf decides that this description by the poet, wholly
+ignorant of heroic costume, as Reichel thinks him, must be "another
+instance of the archaic and archaeologising tendency so notable in Book
+X." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 629.]
+
+At the same time, according to Reichel and Mr. Leaf, the poet of Book
+X. introduces the small round Ionian buckler, thus showing his utter
+ignorance of the great Mycenaean shield. The ignorance was most unusual
+and quite inexcusable, for any one who reads the rest of the _Iliad_
+(which the poet of Book X. knew well) is aware that the Homeric shields
+were huge, often covering body and legs. This fact the poet of Book X.
+did not know, in Reichel's opinion. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p.
+575]
+
+How are we to understand this poet? He is such an erudite archaeologist
+that, in the seventh century, he knows and carefully describes a helmet
+of the Mycenaean prime. Did he excavate it? and had the leather interior
+lasted with the felt cap through seven centuries? Or did he see a sample
+in an old temple of the Mycenaean prime, or in a museum of his own
+period? Or had he heard of it in a lost Mycenaean poem? Yet, careful
+as he was, so pedantic that he must have puzzled his seventh-century
+audience, who never saw such caps, the poet knew nothing of the shields
+and costumes of the heroes, though he might have found out all that is
+known about them in the then existing Iliadic lays with which he was
+perfectly familiar--see his portrait of Agamemnon. He was well aware
+that corslets were, in Homeric poetry, anachronisms, for he gave
+Nestor none; yet he fully believed, in his ignorance, that small Ionian
+bucklers loveth; (which need the aid of corslets badly) were the only
+wear among the heroes!
+
+Criticism has, as we often observe, no right to throw the first stone
+at the inconsistencies of Homer. As we cannot possibly believe that one
+poet knew so much which his contemporaries did not know (and how, in the
+seventh century, could he know it?), and that he also knew so little,
+knew nothing in fact, we take our own view. The poet of Book X. sings
+of _a_ fresh topic, a confused night of dread; of young men wearing the
+headgear which, he says, young men _do_ wear; of pelts of fur such as
+suddenly wakened men, roused, but not roused for battle, would be likely
+to throw over their bodies against the chill air. He describes things of
+his own day; things with which he is familiar. He is said to "take quite
+a peculiar delight in the minute description of dress and weapons."
+[Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 423.] We do not observe that he
+does describe weapons or shields minutely; but Homer always loves to
+describe weapons and costume--scores of examples prove it--and here he
+happens to be describing such costume as he nowhere else has occasion to
+mention. By an accident of archaeological discovery, we find that
+there were such caps set with boars' tusks as he introduces. They had
+survived, for young men on night duty, into the poet's age. We really
+cannot believe that a poet of the seventh century had made excavations
+in Mycenaean graves. If he did and put the results into his lay, his
+audience--not wearing boars' tusks--would have asked, "What nonsense is
+the man talking?"
+
+Erhardt, remarking on the furs which the heroes throw over their
+shoulders when aroused, says that this kind of wrap is very late. It
+was Peisander who, in the second half of the seventh century, clothed
+Herakles in a lion's skin. Peisander brought this costume into
+poetry, and the author of the _Doloneia_ knew no better than to follow
+Peisander. [Footnote: _Die Enstehung der Homerischen Gedichte_, pp.
+163-164.] The poet of the _Doloneia_ was thus much better acquainted
+with Peisander than with the Homeric lays, which could have taught
+him that a hero would never wear a fur coverlet when aroused--not to
+fight--from slumber. Yet he knew about leathern caps set with boars'
+tusks. He must have been an erudite excavator, but, in literature, a
+reader only of recent minor poetry.
+
+Having procured arms, without corslets (_with_ corslets, according to
+Carl Robert)--whether, if they had none, because the poet knew that
+corslets were anachronisms, or because spies usually go as lightly
+burdened as possible--Odysseus and Diomede approach the Trojan camp. The
+hour is the darkest hour before dawn. They hear, but do not see, a heron
+sent by Athene as an omen, and pray to the goddess, with promise of
+sacrifice.
+
+In the Trojan camp Hector has called a council, and asked for a
+volunteer spy to seek intelligence among the Achaeans. He offers no
+black ewes as a reward, but the best horses of the enemy. This allures
+Dolon, son of a rich Trojan, "an only son among five sisters," a
+poltroon, a weak lad, ugly, but swift of foot, and an enthusiastic lover
+of horses. He asks for the steeds of Achilles, which Hector swears to
+give him; and to be lightly clad he takes merely spear and bow and a cap
+of ferret skin, with the pelt of a wolf for covering. Odysseus sees him
+approach; he and Diomede lie down among the dead till Dolon passes, then
+they chase him towards the Achaean camp and catch him. He offers ransom,
+which before these last days of the war was often accepted. Odysseus
+replies evasively, and asks for information. Dolon, thinking that
+the bitterness of death is past, explains that only the Trojans have
+watch-fires; the allies, more careless, have none. At the extreme flank
+of the host sleep the newly arrived Thracians, under their king, Rhesus,
+who has golden armour, and "the fairest horses that ever I beheld" (the
+ruling passion for horses is strong in Dolon), "and the greatest, whiter
+than snow, and for speed like the winds."
+
+Having learned all that he needs to know, Diomede ruthlessly slays
+Dolon. Odysseus thanks Athene, and hides the poor spoils of the dead,
+marking the place. They then creep into the dark camp of the sleeping
+Thracians, and as Diomede slays them Odysseus drags each body aside, to
+leave a clear path for the horses, that they may not plunge and tremble
+when they are led forth, "for they were not yet used to dead men." No
+line in Homer shows more intimate knowledge and realisation of horses
+and of war. Odysseus drives the horses of Rhesus out of the camp with
+the bow of Meriones; he has forgotten to take the whip from the chariot.
+Diomede, having slain King Rhesus asleep, thinks whether he shall lift
+out the chariot (war chariots were very light) or drag it by the pole;
+but Athene warns him to be going. He "springs upon the steeds," and they
+make for their camp. It is not clearly indicated whether they ride or
+drive (X., 5 I 3, 527-528, 541); but, suppose that they ride, are we
+to conclude that the fact proves "lateness"? The heroes always drive
+in Homer, but it is inconceivable that they could not ride in cases of
+necessity, as here, if Diomede has thought it wiser not to bring out the
+chariot and harness the horses. Riding is mentioned in _Iliad_, XV.
+679, in a simile; again, in a simile, _Odyssey_, V. 37 I. It is not the
+custom for heroes to ride; the chariot is used in war and in travelling,
+but, when there are horses and no chariot, men could not be so imbecile
+as not to mount the horses, nor could the poet be so pedantic as not to
+make them do so.
+
+The shields would cause no difficulty; they would be slung sideways,
+like the shields of knights in the early Middle Ages. The pair, picking
+up Dolon's spoils as they pass, hurry back to the chiefs, where Nestor
+welcomes them. The others laugh and are encouraged (to encourage them
+and his audience is the aim of the poet); while the pair go to Diomede's
+quarters, wash off the blood and sweat from their limbs in the sea, and
+then "enter the polished baths," common in the _Odyssey_, unnamed in
+the Iliad. But on no other occasion in the Iliad are we admitted to view
+this part of heroic toilette. Nowhere else, in fact, do we accompany a
+hero to his quarters and his tub after the day's work is over. Achilles,
+however, refuses to wash, after fighting, in his grief for Patroclus,
+though plenty of water was being heated for the purpose, and it is to be
+presumed that a bath was ready for the water (_Iliad_, XXIII. 40). See,
+too, for Hector's bath, XXII. 444.
+
+The two heroes then refresh themselves; breakfast, in fact, and drink,
+as is natural. By this time the dawn must have been in the sky, and in
+Book XI. men are stirring with the dawn. Such is the story of Book X.
+The reader may decide as to whether it is "_Very_ late; barely
+Homeric," or a late and deliberate piece of burlesque, [Footnote: Henry,
+_Classical Review_. March 1906.] or whether it is very Homeric, though
+the whole set of situations--a night of terror, an anxious chief, a
+nocturnal adventure--are unexampled in the poem.
+
+The poet's audience of warriors must have been familiar with such
+situations, and must have appreciated the humorous, ruthless treatment
+of Dolon, the spoiled only brother of five sisters. Mr. Monro admitted
+that Dolon is Shakespearian, but added, "too Shakespearian for Homer."
+One may as well say that Agincourt, in Henry V., is "too Homeric for
+Shakespeare."
+
+Mr. Monro argued that "the Tenth Book comes in awkwardly after the
+Ninth." Nitzsche thinks just the reverse. The patriotic warrior audience
+would delight in the _Doloneia_ after the anguish of Book IX.; would
+laugh with Odysseus at the close of his adventure, and rejoice with the
+other Achaeans (X. 505).
+
+"The introductory part of the Book is cumbrous," says Mr. Monro. To
+us it is, if we wish to get straight to the adventure, just as the
+customary delays in Book XIX., before Achilles is allowed to fight, are
+tedious to us. But the poet's audience did not necessarily share our
+tastes, and might take pleasure (as I do) in the curious details of the
+opening of Book X. The poet was thinking of his audience, not of modern
+professors.
+
+"We hear no more of Rhesus and his Thracians." Of Rhesus there was
+no more to hear, and his people probably went home, like Glenbuckie's
+Stewarts after the mysterious death of their chief in Amprior's house of
+Leny before Prestonpans (1745). Glenbuckie was mysteriously pistolled
+in the night. "The style and tone is unlike that of the Iliad ... It
+is rather akin to comedy of a rough farcical kind." But it was time for
+"comic relief." If the story of Dolon be comic, it is comic with the
+practical humour of the sagas. In an isolated nocturnal adventure
+and massacre we cannot expect the style of an heroic battle under the
+sunlight. Is the poet not to be allowed to be various, and is the scene
+of the Porter in _Macbeth_, "in style and tone," like the rest of the
+drama? (_Macbeth_, Act ii. sc. 3). Here, of course, Shakespeare indulges
+infinitely more in "comedy of a rough practical kind" than does the
+author of the _Doloneia_.
+
+The humour and the cruelty do not exceed what is exhibited in many of
+the _gabes_, or insulting boasts of heroes over dead foes in other parts
+of the _Iliad_; such as the taunting comparison of a warrior falling
+from his chariot to a diver after oysters, or as "one of the Argives
+hath caught the spear in his flesh, and leaning thereon for a staff,
+methinks that he will go down within the house of Hades" (XIV. 455-457).
+The _Iliad_, like the sagas, is rich in this extremely practical humour.
+
+Mr. Leaf says that the Book "must have been composed before the _Iliad_
+had reached its present form, for it cannot have been meant to follow
+on Book IX. It is rather another case of a parallel rival to that Book,
+coupled with it only in the final literary redaction," which Mr. Leaf
+dates in the middle of the sixth century. "The Book must have been
+composed before the _Iliad_ had reached its present form," [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. i. p. 424.] It is not easy to understand this decision;
+for, as Mr. Leaf had previously written, about Book IX. 60-68, "the
+posting of the watch is at least not necessary to the story, and it has
+a suspicious air of being merely a preparation for the next Book, which
+is much later, and which turns entirely upon a visit to the sentinels."
+[Footnote: _Companion,_ p.174.]
+
+Now a military audience would not have pardoned the poet of Book IX. if,
+in the circumstances of defeat, with a confident enemy encamped within
+striking distance, he had not made the Achaeans throw forth their
+outposts. The thing was inevitable and is not suspicious; but the poet
+purposely makes the advanced guard consist of young men under Nestor's
+son and Meriones. He needs them for Book X. Therefore the poet of Book
+IX. is the poet of Book X. preparing his effect in advance; or the poet
+of Book X. is a man who cleverly takes advantage of Book IX., or he
+composed his poem of "a night of terror and adventure," "in the air,"
+and the editor of 540 B.C., having heard it recited and copied it out,
+went back to Book IX. and inserted the advanced guard, under Thrasymedes
+and Meriones, to lead up to Book X.
+
+On Mr. Leafs present theory, [Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. p.424.] Book X.,
+we presume, was meant, not to follow Book IX., but to follow the end of
+Book VII, being an alternative to Book VIII. (composed, he says, to
+lead up to Book IX.) and Book IX. But Book VII. closes with the Achaean
+refusal of the compromise offered by Paris--the restoration of the
+property but not of the wife of Menelaus. The Trojans and Achaeans feast
+all night; the Trojans feast in the city. There is therefore no place
+here for Book X. after Book VII, and the Achaeans cannot roam about
+all night, as they are feasting; nor can Agamemnon be in the state of
+anxiety exhibited by him in Book X.
+
+Book X. could not exist without Book IX., and _must_ have been "meant
+to follow on it." Mr. Leaf sees that, in his preface to Book IX.,
+[Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 371.] "The placing of sentinels" (in Book
+IX. 80, 84) "is needed as an introduction to Book X. but has nothing to
+do with this Book" (IX.). But, we have said, it was inevitable, given
+the new situation in Book IX. (an Achaean repulse, and the enemy camped
+in front), that an advanced guard must be placed, even if there proved
+to be no need of their services. We presume that Mr. Leaf's literary
+editor, finding that Book X. existed and that the advanced guard was
+a necessity of its action, went back to Book IX. and introduced
+an advanced guard of young men, with its captains, Thrasymedes and
+Meriones. Even after this the editor had much to do, if Book IX.
+originally exhibited Agamemnon as not in terror and despair, as it now
+does.
+
+We need not throw the burden of all this work on the editor. As Mr.
+Leaf elsewhere writes, in a different mind, the Tenth Book "is obviously
+adapted to its present place in the _Iliad_, for it assumes a moment
+when Achilles is absent from the field, and when the Greeks are in deep
+dejection from a recent defeat. These conditions are exactly fulfilled
+by the situation at the end of Book IX." [Footnote: _Companion_, p.
+190.]
+
+This is certainly the case. The Tenth Book could not exist without the
+Ninth; yet Mr. Leaf's new opinion is that it "cannot have been meant to
+follow on Book IX." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 424.] He was better
+inspired when he held the precisely opposite opinion.
+
+Dr. Adolf Kiene [Footnote: Die _Epen des Homer, Zweiter Theil,_ pp.
+90-94. Hanover, 1884.] accepts Book XI. as originally composed to fill
+its present place in the _Iliad._ He points out the despondency of the
+chiefs after receiving the reply of Achilles, and supposes that even
+Diomede (IX. 708) only urges Agamemnon to "array before the ships thy
+folk and horsemen," for defensive battle. But, encouraged by the success
+of the night adventure, Agamemnon next day assumes the offensive. To
+consider thus is perhaps to consider too curiously. But it is clear
+that the Achaeans have been much encouraged by the events of Book X.,
+especially Agamemnon, whose character, as Kiene observes, is very subtly
+and consistently treated, and "lies near the poet's heart." This is the
+point which we keep urging. Agamemnon's care for Menelaus is strictly
+preserved in Book X.
+
+Nitzsche (I 897) writes, "Between Book IX. and Book XI there is a gap;
+that gap the _Doloneia_ fills: it must have been composed to be part of
+the _ILIAD_." But he thinks that the _Doloneia_ has taken the place
+of an earlier lay which filled the gap. [Footnote: Die _Echtheit der
+Doloneia,_ p. 32. Programme des K. K. Staats Gymnasium zu Marburg,
+1877.] That the Book is never referred to later in the _Iliad_, even
+if it be true, is no great argument against its authenticity. For when
+later references are made to Book IX., they are dismissed as clever late
+interpolations. If the horses of Rhesus took part, as they do not, in
+the sports at the funeral of Patroclus, the passage would be called a
+clever interpolation: in fact, Diomede had better horses, divine horses
+to run. However, it is certainly remarkable that the interpolation was
+not made by one of the interpolators of critical theory.
+
+Meanwhile there is, we think, a reference to Book X. in Book XIV.
+[Footnote: This was pointed out to me by Mr. Shewan, to whose great
+knowledge of Homer I am here much indebted.]
+
+In _Iliad_, XIV. 9-11, we read that Nestor, in his quarters with the
+wounded Machaon, on the day following the night of Dolon's death, hears
+the cry of battle and goes out to see what is happening. "He took the
+well-wrought shield of his son, horse-taming Thrasymedes, which was
+lying in the hut, all glistening with bronze, but _the son had the
+shield of his father_."
+
+Why had Thrasymedes the shield of his father? At about 3 A.M. before
+dawn the shield of Nestor was lying beside him in his own bedroom (Book
+X. 76), and at the same moment his son Thrasymedes _was_ on outpost
+duty, and had his own shield with him (Book IX. 81).
+
+When, then, did father and son exchange shields, and why? Mr. Leaf says,
+"It is useless to inquire why father and son had thus changed shields,
+as the scholiasts of course do."
+
+The scholiasts merely babble. Homer, of course, meant _something_ by
+this exchange of shields, which occurred late in the night of Book IX.
+or very early in the following day, that of Books XI-XVI.
+
+Let us follow again the sequence of events. On the night before the
+day when Nestor had Thrasymedes' shield and Thrasymedes had Nestor's,
+Thrasymedes was sent out, with shield and all, in command of one of the
+seven companies of an advanced guard, posted between fosse and wall, in
+case of a camisade by the Trojans, who were encamped on the plain (IX.
+81). With him in command were Meriones and five other young men less
+notable. They had supplies with them and whatever was needed: they
+cooked supper in bivouac.
+
+In the _Doloneia_ the wakeful princes, after inspecting the advanced
+guard, go forward within view of the Trojan ranks and consult. With
+them they take Nestor's son, Thrasymedes, and Meriones (X. 196). The
+two young men, being on active service, are armed; the princes are not.
+Diomede, having been suddenly roused out of sleep, with no intention to
+fight, merely threw on his dressing-gown, a lion's skin. Nestor wore a
+thick, double, purple dressing-gown. Odysseus had cast his shield about
+his shoulders. It was decided that Odysseus and Diomede should enter the
+Trojan camp and "prove a jeopardy." Diomede had no weapon but his spear;
+so Thrasymedes, who is armed as we saw, lends him his bull's-hide
+cap, "that keeps the heads of stalwart youths," his sword (for that of
+Diomede "was left at the ships"), and his shield.
+
+Diomede and Odysseus successfully achieve their adventure and return to
+the chiefs, where they talk with Nestor; and then they go to Diomede's
+hut and drink. The outposts remain, of course, at their stations.
+
+Meanwhile, Thrasymedes, having lent his shield to Diomede, has none of
+his own. Naturally, as he was to pass the night under arms, he would
+send to his father's quarters for the old man's shield, a sword, and a
+helmet. He would remain at his post (his men had provisions) till the
+general _reveillez_ at dawn, and would then breakfast at his post and go
+into the fray. Nestor, therefore, missing his shield, would send round
+to Diomede's quarters for the shield of Thrasymedes, which had been lent
+overnight to Diomede, would take it into the fight, and would bring it
+back to his own hut when he carried the wounded Machaon thither out of
+the battle. When he arms to go out and seek for information, he picks up
+the shield of Thrasymedes.
+
+Nothing can be more obvious; the poet, being a man of imagination, not
+a professor, sees it all, and casually mentions that the son had the
+father's and the father had the son's shield. His audience, men of the
+sword, see the case as clearly as the poet does: only we moderns and the
+scholiasts, almost as modern as ourselves, are puzzled.
+
+It may also be argued, though we lay no stress on it, that in Book XI.
+312, when Agamemnon has been wounded, we find Odysseus and Diomede alone
+together, without their contingents, because they have not separated
+since they breakfasted together, after returning from the adventure of
+Book X., and thus they have come rather late to the field. They find
+the Achaeans demoralised by the wounding of Agamemnon, and they make
+a stand. "What ails us," asks Odysseus, "that we forget our impetuous
+valour?" The passage appears to take up the companionship of Odysseus
+and Diomede, who were left breakfasting together at the end of Book X.
+and are not mentioned till we meet them again in this scene of Book XI.,
+as if they had just come on the field.
+
+As to the linguistic tests of lateness "there are exceptionally
+numerous traces of later formation," says Mr. Monro; while Fick, tout
+_contraire,_ writes, "clumsy Ionisms are not common, and, as a rule,
+occur in these parts which on older grounds show themselves to be late
+interpolations." "The cases of agreement" (between Fick and Mr. Monro),
+"are few, and the passages thus condemned are not more numerous in the
+_Doloneia_ than in any average book." [Footnote: Jevons, _Journal of
+Hellenic Studies_, vii. p. 302.] The six examples of "a post-Homeric
+use of the article" do not seem so very post-Homeric to an ordinary
+intelligence--parallels occur in Book I.--and "Perfects in [Greek: ka]
+from derivative verbs" do not destroy the impression of antiquity and
+unity which is left by the treatment of character; by the celebrated
+cap with boars' tusks, which no human being could archaeologically
+reconstruct in the seventh century; and by the Homeric vigour in such
+touches as the horses unused to dead men. As the _Iliad_ certainly
+passed through centuries in which its language could not but be affected
+by linguistic changes, as it could not escape from _remaniements_,
+consciously or unconsciously introduced by reciters and copyists, the
+linguistic objections are not strongly felt by us. An unphilological
+reader of Homer notes that Duntzer thinks the _Doloneia_ "older than the
+oldest portion of the Odyssey," while Gemoll thinks that the author of
+the _Doloneia_. was familiar with the _Odyssey_. [Footnote: Duntzer,
+_Homer. Abhanglungen_, p. 324. Gemoll, _Hermes_, xv. 557 ff.]
+
+Meanwhile, one thing seems plain to us: when the author of Book IX.
+posted the guards under Thrasymedes, he was deliberately leading up
+to Book X.; while the casual remark in Book XIV. about the exchange of
+shields between father and son, Nestor and Thrasymedes, glances back at
+Book X. and possibly refers to some lost and more explicit statement.
+
+It is not always remembered that, if things could drop into the
+interpolations, things could also drop out of the _ILIAD,_ causing
+_lacunae_, during the dark backward of its early existence.
+
+If the _Doloneia_ be "barely Homeric," as Father Browne holds, this
+opinion was not shared by the listeners or readers of the sixth century.
+The vase painters often illustrate the _Doloneia;_ but it does not
+follow that "the story was fresh" because it was "popular," as Mr.
+Leaf suggests, and "was treated as public property in a different way"
+(namely, in a comic way) "from the consecrated early legends" (_Iliad,_
+II 424, 425). The sixth century vase painters illustrated many passages
+in Homer, not the _Doloneia_ alone. The "comic way" was the ruthless
+humour of two strong warriors capturing one weak coward. Much later,
+wild caricature was applied in vase painting to the most romantic scenes
+in the Odyssey, which were "consecrated" enough.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+THE INTERPOLATIONS OF NESTOR
+
+That several of the passages in which Nestor speaks are very late
+interpolations, meant to glorify Pisistratus, himself of Nestor's line,
+is a critical opinion to which we have more than once alluded. The first
+example is in _Iliad,_ II. 530-568. This passage "is meant at once
+to present Nestor as the leading counsellor of the Greek army, and to
+introduce the coming _Catalogue_." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad,_ vol. i. p.
+70.] Now the _Catalogue_ "originally formed an introduction to the whole
+Cycle." [Footnote: Ibid., vol. i. p. 87.] But, to repeat an earlier
+observation, surely the whole Cycle was much later than the period of
+Pisistratus and his sons; that is, the compilation of the Homeric and
+Cyclic poems into one body of verse, named "The Cycle," is believed to
+have been much later.
+
+It is objected that Nestor's advice in this passage, "Separate thy
+warriors by tribes and clans" ([Greek: phyla, phraetras]), "is out of
+place in the last year of the war"; but this suggestion for military
+reorganisation may be admitted as a mere piece of poetical perspective,
+like Helen's description of the Achaean chiefs in Book III, or Nestor
+may wish to return to an obsolete system of clan regiments. The
+Athenians had "tribes" and "clans," political institutions, and Nestor's
+advice is noted as a touch of late Attic influence; but about the nature
+and origin of these social divisions we know so little that it is vain
+to argue about them. The advice of Nestor is an appeal to the clan
+spirit--a very serviceable military spirit, as the Highlanders have
+often proved--but we have no information as to whether it existed in
+Achaean times. Nestor speaks as the aged Lochiel spoke to Claverhouse
+before Killiecrankie. Did the Athenian army of the sixth century
+fight in clan regiments? The device seems to belong to an earlier
+civilisation, whether it survived in sixth century Athens or not. It is,
+of course, notorious that tribes and clans are most flourishing among
+the most backward people, though they were welded into the constitution
+of Athens. The passage, therefore, cannot with any certainty be
+dismissed as very late, for the words for "tribe" and "clan" could
+not be novel Athenian inventions, the institutions designated being of
+prehistoric origin.
+
+Nestor shows his tactics again in IV. 303-309, offers his "inopportune
+tactical lucubrations, doubtless under Athenian (Pisistratean)
+influence." The poet is here denied a sense of humour. That a veteran
+military Polonius should talk as inopportunely about tactics as Dugald
+Dalgetty does about the sconce of Drumsnab is an essential part of the
+humour of the character of Nestor. This is what Nestor's critics do
+not see; the inopportune nature of his tactical remarks is the point
+of them, just as in the case of the laird of Drumthwacket, "that should
+be." Scott knew little of Homer, but coincided in the Nestorian humour
+by mere congruity of genius. The Pisistratidze must have been humourless
+if they did not see that the poet smiled as he composed Nestor's
+speeches, glorifying old deeds of his own and old ways of fighting. He
+arrays his Pylians with chariots in front, footmen in the rear. In the
+[blank space] the princely heroes dismounted to fight, the chariots
+following close behind them. [Footnote: _Iliad_, XI. 48-56.] In the same
+way during the Hundred Years' War the English knights dismounted and
+defeated the French chivalry till, under Jeanne d'Arc and La Hire, the
+French learned the lesson, and imitated the English practice. On
+the other hand, Egyptian wall-paintings show the Egyptian chariotry
+advancing in neat lines and serried squadrons. According to Nestor
+these had of old been the Achaean tactics, and he preferred the old way.
+Nestor's advice in Book IV. is _not_ to dismount or break the line of
+chariots; these, he says, were the old tactics: "Even so is the far
+better way; thus, moreover, did men of old time lay low cities and
+walls." There was to be no rushing of individuals from the ranks, no
+dismounting. Nestor's were not the tactics of the heroes--they usually
+dismount and do single valiances; but Nestor, commanding his local
+contingent, recommends the methods of the old school, [Greek: hoi
+pretoroi]. What can be more natural and characteristic?
+
+The poet's meaning seems quite clear. He is not flattering Pisistratus,
+but, with quiet humour, offers the portrait of a vain, worthy veteran.
+It is difficult to see how this point can be missed; it never was missed
+before Nestor's speeches seemed serviceable to the Pisistratean theory
+of the composition of the _ILIAD_. In his first edition Mr. Leaf
+regarded the interpolations as intended "to glorify Nestor" without
+reference to Pisistratus, whom Mr. Leaf did not then recognise as the
+master of a sycophantic editor. The passages are really meant to display
+the old man's habit of glorifying himself and past times. Pisistratus
+could not feel flattered by passages intended to exhibit his ancestor as
+a conceited and inopportune old babbler. I ventured in 1896 to suggest
+that the interpolator was trying to please Pisistratus, but this was
+said in a spirit of mockery.
+
+Of all the characters in Homer that of Nestor is most familiar to the
+unlearned world, merely because Nestor's is a "character part," very
+broadly drawn.
+
+The third interpolation of flattery to Pisistratus in the person of
+Nestor is found in VII. 125-160. The Achaean chiefs are loath to accept
+the challenge of Hector to single combat. Only Menelaus rises and arms
+himself, moved by the strong sense of honour which distinguishes a
+warrior notoriously deficient in bodily strength. Agamemnon refuses
+to let him fight; the other peers make no movement, and Nestor rebukes
+them. It is entirely in nature that he should fall back on his memory
+of a similar situation in his youth; when the Arcadian champion,
+Ereuthalion, challenged any prince of the Pylians, and when "no man
+plucked up heart" to meet him except Nestor himself. Had there never
+been any Pisistratus, any poet who created the part of a worthy and
+wordy veteran must have made Nestor speak just as he does speak.
+Ereuthalion "was the tallest and strongest of men that I have slain!"
+and Nestor, being what he is, offers copious and interesting details
+about the armour of Ereuthalion and about its former owners. The passage
+is like those in which the Icelandic sagamen dwelt lovingly on the
+history of a good sword, or the Maoris on the old possessors of an
+ancient jade _patu_. An objection is now taken to Nestor's geography: he
+is said not to know the towns and burns of his own country. He speaks
+of the swift stream Keladon, the streams of Iardanus, and the walls of
+Pheia. Pheia "is no doubt the same as Pheai" [Footnote: Monro, Note on
+Odyssey, XV. 297.] (Odyssey, XV. 297), "but that was a maritime town not
+near Arkadia. There is nothing known of a Keladon or Iardanus anywhere
+near it." Now Didymus (Schol. A) "is said to have read [Greek: Phaeraes]
+for [Greek: Pheias]," following Pherekydes. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_,
+vol. i. 308.] M. Victor Berard, who has made an elaborate study of Elian
+topography, says that "Pheia is a cape, not a town," and adopts the
+reading "Phera," the [Greek: Pherae] of the journey of Telemachus,
+in the Odyssey. He thinks that the [Greek: Pherae] of Nestor is the
+Aliphera of Polybius, and believes that the topography of Nestor and of
+the journey of Telemachus is correct. The Keladon is now the river or
+burn of Saint Isidore; the Iardanus is at the foot of Mount Kaiapha.
+Keladon has obviously the same sense as the Gaelic Altgarbh, "the rough
+and brawling stream." Iardanus is also a stream in Crete, and Mr. Leaf
+thinks it Semitic--"_Yarden_, from yarad to flow"; but the Semites did
+not give the _Yar_ to the _Yarrow_ nor to the Australian _Yarra Yarra_.
+
+The country, says M. Berard, is a network of rivers, burns, and
+rivulets; and we cannot have any certainty, we may add, as the same
+river and burn names recur in many parts of the same country; [Footnote:
+Berard, _Les Pheniciens et L'Odyssee,_ 108-113, 1902] many of them, in
+England, are plainly prae-Celtic.
+
+While the correct geography may, on this showing, be that of Homer, we
+cannot give up Homer's claim to Nestor's speech. As to Nestor's tale
+about the armour of Ereuthalion, it is manifest that the first owner of
+the armour of Ereuthalion, namely Are'ithous, "the Maceman," so called
+because he had the singularity of fighting with an iron _casse-tete,_
+as Nestor explains (VII. 138-140), was a famous character in legendary
+history. He appears "as Prince Areithous, the Maceman," father (or
+grand-father?) of an Areithous slain by Hector (VII. 8-10). In Greece,
+it was not unusual for the grandson to bear the grandfather's name,
+and, if the Maceman was grand-father of Hector's victim, there is no
+chronological difficulty. The chronological difficulty, in any case, if
+Hector's victim is the son of the Maceman, is not at all beyond a poetic
+narrator's possibility of error in genealogy. If Nestor's speech is a
+late interpolation, if its late author borrowed his vivid account of the
+Maceman and his _casse-tete_ from the mere word "maceman" in VII. 9, he
+must be credited with a lively poetic imagination.
+
+Few or none of these reminiscences of Nestor are really "inapplicable to
+the context." Here the context demands encouragement for heroes who shun
+a challenge. Nestor mentions an "applicable" and apposite instance of
+similar want of courage, and, as his character demands, he is the hero
+of his own story. His brag, or _gabe,_ about "he was the tallest and
+strongest of all the men I ever slew," is deliciously in keeping, and
+reminds us of the college don who said of the Czar, "he is the nicest
+emperor I ever met." The poet is sketching an innocent vanity; he is not
+flattering Pisistratus.
+
+The next case is the long narrative of Nestor to the hurried Patroclus,
+who has been sent by Achilles to bring news of the wounded Machaon (XI.
+604-702). Nestor on this occasion has useful advice to give, namely,
+that Achilles, if he will not fight, should send his men, under
+Patroclus, to turn the tide of Trojan victory. But the poet wishes to
+provide an interval of time and of yet more dire disaster before the
+return of Patroclus to Achilles. By an obvious literary artifice he
+makes Nestor detain the reluctant Patroclus with a long story of his own
+early feats of arms. It is a story of a "hot-trod," so called in Border
+law; the Eleians had driven a _creagh_ of cattle from the Pylians, who
+pursued, and Nestor killed the Eleian leader, Itymoneus. The speech is
+an Achaean parallel to the Border ballad of "Jamie Telfer of the Fair
+Dodhead," in editing which Scott has been accused of making a singular
+and most obvious and puzzling blunder in the topography of his own
+sheriffdom of the Forest. On Scott's showing the scene of the raid is in
+upper Ettrickdale, not, as critics aver, in upper Teviotdale; thus the
+narrative of the ballad would be impossible. [Footnote: In fact both
+sites on the two Dodburns are impossible; the fault lay with the
+ballad-maker, not with Scott.]
+
+The Pisistratean editor is accused of a similar error. "No doubt he was
+an Asiatic Greek, completely ignorant of the Peloponnesus." [Footnote:
+_Iliad_. Note to XI. 756, and to the _Catalogue_, II. 615-617.] It
+is something to know that Pisistratus employed an editor, or that his
+editor employed a collaborator who was an Asiatic Greek!
+
+Meanwhile, nothing is less secure than arguments based on the
+_Catalogue_. We have already shown how Mr. Leaf's opinions as to the
+date and historical merits of the _Catalogue_ have widely varied, while
+M. Berard appears to have vindicated the topography of Nestor. Of the
+_Catalogue_ Mr. Allen writes, "As a table, according to regions, of
+Agamemnon's forces it bears every mark of venerable antiquity," showing
+"a state of things which never recurred in later history, and which no
+one had any interest to invent, or even the means for inventing." He
+makes a vigorous defence of the _Catalogue,_ as regards the dominion of
+Achilles, against Mr. Leaf. [Footnote: _Classical Review,_ May 1906, pp.
+x94-201.] Into the details we need not go, but it is not questions of
+Homeric topography, obscure as they are, that can shake our faith in the
+humorous portrait of old Nestor, or make us suppose that the sympathetic
+mockery of the poet is the sycophantic adulation of the editor to his
+statesman employer, Pisistratus. If any question may be left to literary
+discrimination it is the authentic originality of the portrayal of
+Nestor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS
+
+Though comparison is the method of Science, the comparative study of the
+national poetry of warlike aristocracies, its conditions of growth and
+decadence, has been much neglected by Homeric critics. Sir Richard Jebb
+touched on the theme, and, after devoting four pages to a sketch of
+Sanskrit, Finnish, Persian, and early Teutonic heroic poetry and _SAGA,_
+decided that "in our country, as in others, we fail to find any true
+parallel to the case of the Homeric poems. These poems must be
+studied in themselves, without looking for aid, in this sense, to
+the comparative method." [Footnote: _Homer_, p. 135.] Part of this
+conclusion seems to us rather hasty. In a brief manual Sir Richard
+had not space for a thorough comparative study of old heroic poetry
+at large. His quoted sources are: for India, Lassen; for France, Mr.
+Saintsbury's Short History of _FRENCH LITERATURE_ (sixteen pages on
+this topic), and a work unknown to me, by "M. Paul"; for Iceland he only
+quoted _THE Encyclopedia BRITANNICA_ (Mr. Edmund Gosse); for Germany,
+Lachmann and Bartsch; for the Finnish _Kalewala,_ the _ENCYCLOPEDIA
+BRITANNICA_ (Mr. Sime and Mr. Keltie); and for England, a _PRIMER OF
+ENGLISH LITERATURE_ by Mr. Stopford Brooke.
+
+These sources appear less than adequate, and Celtic heroic romance is
+entirely omitted. A much deeper and wider comparative criticism of early
+heroic national poetry is needed, before any one has a right to say that
+the study cannot aid our critical examination of the Homeric problem.
+Many peoples have passed through a stage of culture closely analogous to
+that of Achaean society as described in the _Iliad_ and Odyssey. Every
+society of this kind has had its ruling military class, its ancient
+legends, and its minstrels who on these legends have based their songs.
+The similarity of human nature under similar conditions makes it certain
+that comparison will discover useful parallels between the poetry of
+societies separated in time and space but practically identical in
+culture. It is not much to the credit of modern criticism that a topic
+so rich and interesting has been, at least in England, almost entirely
+neglected by Homeric scholars.
+
+Meanwhile, it is perfectly correct to say, as Sir Richard observes, that
+"we fail to find any true parallel to the case of the Homeric poems,"
+for we nowhere find the legends of an heroic age handled by a very great
+poet--the greatest of all poets--except in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.
+But, on the other hand, the critics refuse to believe that, in the
+_Iliad_ and _Odyssey,_ we possess the heroic Achaean legends handled by
+one great poet. They find a composite by many hands, good and bad, and
+of many ages, they say; sometimes the whole composition and part of the
+poems are ascribed to a late _litterateur_. Now to that supposed state
+of things we do find several "true parallels," in Germany, in Finland,
+in Ireland. But the results of work by these many hands in many ages are
+anything but "a true parallel" to the results which lie before us in
+the _Iliad_ and _ODYSSEY_. Where the processes of composite authorship
+throughout many _AGES_ certainly occur, as in Germany and Ireland, there
+we find no true parallel to the Homeric poems. It follows that, in all
+probability, no such processes as the critics postulate produced the
+_Iliad_ and Odyssey, for where the processes existed, beyond doubt they
+failed egregiously to produce the results.
+
+Sir Richard's argument would have been logical if many efforts by many
+hands, in many ages, in England, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, and Germany
+did actually produce true parallels to the Achaean epics. They did not,
+and why not? Simply because these other races had no Homer. All the
+other necessary conditions were present, the legendary material, the
+heroic society, the Court minstrels, all--except the great poet. In
+all the countries mentioned, except Finland, there existed military
+aristocracies with their courts, castles, and minstrels, while the
+minstrels had rich material in legendary history and in myth, and
+_Maerchen_, and old songs. But none of the minstrels was adequate to the
+production of an English, German, or Irish _ILIAD_ or _ODYSSEY_, or even
+of a true artistic equivalent in France.
+
+We have tried to show that the critics, rejecting a Homer, have been
+unable to advance any adequate hypothesis to account for the existence
+of the _ILIAD_ and _ODYSSEY_. Now we see that, where such conditions of
+production as they postulate existed but where there was no great epic
+genius, they can find no true parallels to the Epics. Their logic thus
+breaks down at both ends.
+
+It may be replied that in non-Greek lands one condition found in Greek
+society failed: the succession of a reading age to an age of heroic
+listeners. But this is not so. In France and Germany an age of readers
+duly began, but they did not mainly read copies of the old heroic poems.
+They turned to lyric poetry, as in Greece, and they recast the heroic
+songs into modern and popular forms in verse and prose, when they took
+any notice of the old heroic poems at all.
+
+One merit of the Greek epics is a picture of "a certain phase of early
+civilisation," and that picture is "a naturally harmonious whole," with
+"unity of impression," says Sir Richard Jebb. [Footnote: Homer, p. 37.]
+Certainly we can find no true parallel, on an Homeric scale, to this
+"harmonious picture" in the epics of Germany and England or in the
+early literature of Ireland. Sir Richard, for England, omits notice of
+_Beowulf_; but we know that _Beowulf_, a long heroic poem, is a mass of
+anachronisms--a heathen legend in a Christian setting. The hero, that
+great heathen champion, has his epic filled full of Christian allusions
+and Christian morals, because the clerical redactor, in Christian
+England, could not but intrude these things into old pagan legends
+evolved by the continental ancestors of our race. He had no "painful
+anxiety," like the supposed Ionic continuators of the Achaean poems
+(when they are not said to have done precisely the reverse), to preserve
+harmony of ancient ideas. Such archaeological anxieties are purely
+modern.
+
+If we take the _Nibelungenlied_, [Footnote: See chapter on the
+_Nibelungenlied_ in Homer _AND the Epic_, pp. 382-404.] we find that
+it is a thing of many rehandlings, even in existing manuscripts. For
+example, the Greeks clung to the hexameter in Homer. Not so did the
+Germans adhere to old metres. The poem that, in the oldest MS., is
+written in assonances, in later MSS. is reduced to regular rhymes and is
+retouched in many essential respects. The matter of the _Nibelungenlied_
+is of heathen origin. We see the real state of heathen affairs in the
+Icelandic versions of the same tale, for the Icelanders were peculiar in
+preserving ancient lays; and, when these were woven into a prose saga,
+the archaic and heathen features were retained. Had the post-Christian
+prose author of the _Volsunga_ been a great poet, we might find in
+his work a true parallel to the _Iliad_. But, though he preserves the
+harmony of his picture of pre-Christian princely life (save in the
+savage beginnings of his story), he is not a poet; so the true parallel
+to the Greek epic fails, noble as is the saga in many passages. In the
+German _Nibelungenlied_ all is modernised; the characters are Christian,
+the manners are chivalrous, and _Maerchen_ older than Homer are forced
+into a wandering mediaeval chronicle-poem. The Germans, in short, had no
+early poet of genius, and therefore could not produce a true parallel
+to _ILIAD_ or Odyssey. The mediaeval poets, of course, never dreamed
+of archaeological anxiety, as the supposed Ionian continuators are
+sometimes said to have done, any more than did the French and late Welsh
+handlers of the ancient Celtic Arthurian materials. The late
+German _bearbeiter_ of the _Nibelungenlied_ has no idea of unity of
+plot--_enfin_, Germany, having excellent and ancient legendary material
+for an epic, but producing no parallel to _ILIAD_ and Odyssey, only
+proves how absolutely essential a Homer was to the Greek epics.
+
+"If any inference could properly be drawn from the Edda" (the Icelandic
+collection of heroic lays), says Sir Richard Jebb, "it would be that
+short separate poems on cognate subjects can long exist as a collection
+_without_ coalescing into such an artistic whole as the Iliad or the
+Odyssey." [Footnote: Homer, p. 33.]
+
+It is our own argument that Sir Richard states. "Short separate poems
+on cognate subjects" can certainly co-exist for long anywhere, but they
+cannot automatically and they cannot by aid of an editor become a long
+epic. Nobody can stitch and vamp them into a poem like the _ILIAD_ or
+Odyssey. To produce a poem like either of these a great poetic genius
+must arise, and fuse the ancient materials, as Hephaestus fused copper
+and tin, and then cast the mass into a mould of his own making. A small
+poet may reduce the legends and lays into a very inartistic whole, a
+very inharmonious whole, as in the _Nibelungenlied_, but a controlling
+poet, not a mere redactor or editor, is needed to perform even that
+feat.
+
+Where a man who is not a poet undertakes to produce the coalescence,
+as Dr. Loennrot (1835-1849) did in the case of the peasant, not courtly,
+lays of Finland, he "fails to prove that mere combining and editing can
+form an artistic whole out of originally distinct songs, even though
+concerned with closely related themes," says Sir Richard Jebb.
+[Footnote: Homer, p. 134-135.]
+
+This is perfectly true; much as Loennrot botched and vamped the Finnish
+lays he made no epic out of them. But, as it is true, how did the late
+Athenian drudge of Pisistratus succeed where Loennrot failed? "In the
+dovetailing of the _ODYSSEY_ we see the work of one mind," says Sir
+Richard. [Footnote: Homer, p. 129.] This mind cannot have been the
+property of any one but a great poet, obviously, as the _Odyssey_ is
+confessedly "an artistic whole." Consequently the disintegrators of the
+Odyssey, when they are logical, are reduced to averring that the poem is
+an exceedingly inartistic whole, a whole not artistic at all. While Mr.
+Leaf calls it "a model of skilful construction," Wilamowitz Mollendorff
+denounces it as the work of "a slenderly-gifted botcher," of about 650
+B.C., a century previous to Mr. Leaf's Athenian editor.
+
+Thus we come, after all, to a crisis in which mere literary appreciation
+is the only test of the truth about a work of literature. The Odyssey is
+an admirable piece of artistic composition, or it is the very reverse.
+Blass, Mr. Leaf, Sir Richard Jebb, and the opinion of the ages declare
+that the composition is excellent. A crowd of German critics and Father
+Browne, S.J., hold that the composition is feeble. The criterion is the
+literary taste of each party to the dispute. Kirchhoff and Wilamowitz
+Moellendorff see a late bad patchwork, where Mr. Leaf, Sir Richard
+Jebb, Blass, Wolf, and the verdict of all mankind see a masterpiece of
+excellent construction. The world has judged: the _Odyssey_ is a
+marvel of construction: therefore is not the work of a late botcher of
+disparate materials, but of a great early poet. Yet Sir Richard Jebb,
+while recognising the _Odyssey_ as "an artistic whole" and an harmonious
+picture, and recognising Loennrot's failure "to prove that mere combining
+and editing can form an artistic whole out of originally distinct
+songs, even though concerned with closely related themes," thinks that
+Kirchhoff has made the essence of his theory of late combination of
+distinct strata of poetical material from different sources and periods,
+in the _Odyssey_, "in the highest degree probable." [Footnote: Homer, p.
+131.]
+
+It is, of course, possible that Mr. Leaf, who has not edited the
+_Odyssey,_ may now, in deference to his belief in the Pisistratean
+editor, have changed his opinion of the merits of the poem. If the
+_Odyssey,_ like the _Iliad_, was, till about 540 B.C., a chaos of
+lays of all ages, variously known in various _repertoires_ of the
+rhapsodists, and patched up by the Pisistratean editor, then of two
+things one--either Mr. Leaf abides by his enthusiastic belief in the
+excellency of the composition, or he does not. If he does still believe
+that the composition of the _Odyssey_ is a masterpiece, then the
+Pisistratean editor was a great master of construction. If he now, on
+the other hand, agrees with Wilamowitz Moellendorff that the _Odyssey_ is
+cobbler's work, then his literary opinions are unstable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS
+
+Sir Richard Jebb remarks, with truth, that "before any definite solution
+of the Homeric problem could derive scientific support from such
+analogies" (with epics of other peoples), "it would be necessary to show
+that the particular conditions under which the Homeric poems appear in
+early Greece had been reproduced with sufficient closeness elsewhere."
+[Footnote: Homer, pp. 131, 132.] Now we can show that the particular
+conditions under which the Homeric poems confessedly arose were
+"reproduced with sufficient closeness elsewhere," except that no really
+great poet was elsewhere present.
+
+This occurred among the Germanic aristocracy, "the Franks of France,"
+in the eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth centuries of our era. The
+closeness of the whole parallel, allowing for the admitted absence in
+France of a very great and truly artistic poet, is astonishing.
+
+We have first, in France, answering to the Achaean aristocracy, the
+Frankish noblesse of warriors dwelling in princely courts and strong
+castles, dominating an older population, owing a practically doubtful
+fealty to an Over-Lord, the King, passing their days in the chace, in
+private war, or in revolt against the Over-Lord, and, for all
+literary entertainment, depending on the recitations of epic poems by
+_jongleurs_, who in some cases are of gentle birth, and are the authors
+of the poems which they recite.
+
+"This national poetry," says M. Gaston Paris, "was born and mainly
+developed among the warlike class, princes, lords, and their courts....
+At first, no doubt, some of these men of the sword themselves composed
+and chanted lays" (like Achilles), "but soon there arose a special class
+of poets ... They went from court to court, from castle ... Later,
+when the townsfolk began to be interested in their chants, they sank
+a degree, and took their stand in public open places ..." [Footnote:
+_Literature Francaise au Moyen Age_, pp. 36, 37. 1898.]
+
+In the _Iliad_ we hear of no minstrels in camp: in the _Odyssey_ a
+prince has a minstrel among his retainers--Demodocus, at the court of
+Phaeacia; Phemius, in the house of Odysseus. In Ionia, when princes had
+passed away, rhapsodists recited for gain in marketplaces and at fairs.
+The parallel with France is so far complete.
+
+The French national epics, like those of the Achaeans, deal mainly
+with legends of a long past legendary age. To the French authors the
+greatness and the fortunes of the Emperor Charles and other heroic heads
+of great Houses provide a theme. The topics of song are his wars, and
+the prowess and the quarrels of his peers with the Emperor and among
+themselves. These are seen magnified through a mist of legend; Saracens
+are substituted for Gascon foes, and the great Charles, so nobly
+venerable a figure in the oldest French epic (the _Chanson de Roland,
+circ._ 1050-1070 in its earliest extant form), is more degraded, in
+the later epics, than Agamemnon himself. The "machinery" of the gods
+in Homer is replaced by the machinery of angels, but the machinery
+of dreams is in vogue, as in the Iliad and _Odyssey_. The sources are
+traditional and legendary.
+
+We know that brief early lays of Charles and other heroes had existed,
+and they may have been familiar to the French epic poets, but they were
+not merely patched into the epics. The form of verse is not ballad-like,
+but a series of _laisses_ of decasyllabic lines, each _laisse_
+presenting one assonance, not rhyme. As time went on, rhyme and
+Alexandrine lines were introduced, and the old epics were expanded,
+altered, condensed, _remanies_, with progressive changes in taste,
+metre, language, manners, and ways of life.
+
+Finally, an age of Cyclic poems began; authors took new characters, whom
+they attached by false genealogies to the older heroes, and they chanted
+the adventures of the sons of the former heroes, like the Cyclic poet
+who sang of the son of Odysseus by Circe. All these conditions are
+undeniably "true parallels" to "the conditions under which the Homeric
+poems appeared." The only obvious point of difference vanishes if we
+admit, with Sir Richard Jebb and M. Salomon Reinach, the possibility of
+the existence of written texts in the Greece of the early iron age.
+
+We do not mean texts prepared for a _reading_ public. In France such a
+public, demanding texts for reading, did not arise till the decadence of
+the epic. The oldest French texts of their epics are small volumes,
+each page containing some thirty lines in one column. Such volumes were
+carried about by the _jongleurs_, who chanted their own or other men's
+verses. They were not in the hands of readers. [Footnote: _Epopees
+Francaises_, Leon Gautier, vol. i. pp. 226-228. 1878.]
+
+An example of an author-reciter, Jendeus de Brie (he was the maker
+of the first version of the _Bataille Loquifer_, twelfth century) is
+instructive. Of Jendeus de Brie it is said that "he wrote the poem,
+kept it very carefully, taught it to no man, made much gain out of it in
+Sicily where he sojourned, and left it to his son when he died." Similar
+statements are made in _Renaus de Montauban_ (the existing late version
+is of the thirteenth century) about Huon de Villeneuve, who would not
+part with his poem for horses or furs, or for any price, and about other
+poets. [Footnote: _Epopees Francaises, Leon Gautier_, vol. i. p. 215,
+Note I.]
+
+These early _jongleurs_ were men of position and distinction; their
+theme was the _gestes_ of princes; they were not under the ban
+with which the Church pursued vulgar strollers, men like the Greek
+rhapsodists. Pindar's story that Homer wrote the _Cypria_ [Footnote:
+_Pindari Opera_, vol. iii. p. 654. Boeckh.] and gave the copy, as the
+dowry of his daughter, to Stasinus who married her, could only have
+arisen in Greece in circumstances exactly like those of Jendeus de Brie.
+Jendeus lived on his poem by reciting it, and left it to his son when he
+died. The story of Homer and Stasinus could only have been invented in
+an age when the possession of the solitary text of a poem was a source
+of maintenance to the poet. This condition of things could not exist,
+either when there were no written texts or when such texts were
+multiplied to serve the wants of a reading public.
+
+Again, a poet in the fortunate position of Jendeus would not teach his
+Epic in a "school" of reciters unless he were extremely well paid. In
+later years, after his death, his poem came, through copies good or bad,
+into circulation.
+
+Late, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we hear of a "school"
+of _jongleurs_ at Beauvais. In Lent they might not ply their profession,
+so they gathered at Beauvais, where they could learn _cantilenae_, new
+lays. [Footnote: _Epopees Francaises_, Leon Gautier, vol. ii. pp. 174,
+175.] But by that time the epic was decadent and dying?
+
+The audiences of the _jongleurs_, too, were no longer, by that time,
+what they had been. The rich and great, now, had library copies of the
+epics; not small _jongleurs'_ copies, but folios, richly illuminated
+and bound, with two or three columns of matter on each page. [Footnote:
+Ibid., vol. i. p. 228. See, too, photographs of an illuminated,
+double-columned library copy in _La Chancun de Willame_., London, 1903.]
+
+The age of recitations from a text in princely halls was ending or
+ended; the age of a reading public was begun. The earlier condition of
+the _jongleur_ who was his own poet, and carefully guarded his copyright
+in spite of all temptations to permit the copying of his MS., is
+regarded by Sir Richard Jebb as quite a possible feature of early
+Greece. He thinks that there was "no wide circulation of writings
+by numerous copies for a reading public" before the end of the fifth
+century B.C. As Greek mercenaries could write, and write well, in the
+seventh to sixth centuries, I incline to think that there may then, and
+earlier, have been a reading public. However, long before that a man
+might commit his poems to writing. "Wolf allows that some men did, as
+early at least as 776 B.C. The verses might never be read by anybody
+except himself" (the author) "or those to whom he privately bequeathed
+them" (as Jendeus de Brie bequeathed his poem to his son), "but his end
+would have been gained." [Footnote: _Homer_, p. 113.]
+
+Recent discoveries as to the very early date of linear non-Phoenician
+writing in Crete of course increase the probability of this opinion,
+which is corroborated by the story of the _Cypria_, given as a dowry
+with the author's daughter. Thus "the particular conditions under which
+the Homeric poems appeared" "been reproduced with sufficient closeness"
+in every respect, with surprising closeness, in the France of the
+eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The social conditions are the same;
+the legendary materials are of identical character; the method of
+publication by recitation is identical; the cyclic decadence occurs in
+both cases, the _monomanie cyclique_. In the Greece of Homer we have the
+four necessary conditions of the epic, as found by M. Leon Gautier in
+mediaeval France. We have:--
+
+(1) An uncritical age confusing history by legend.
+
+(2) We have a national _milieu_ with religious uniformity.
+
+(3) We have poems dealing with--
+
+ "Old unhappy far-off things
+ And battles long ago."
+
+(4) We have representative heroes, the Over-Lord, and his peers or
+paladins. [Footnote: _Epopees Francaises_, Leon Gautier, vol. i. pp.
+6-9]
+
+It may be added that in Greece, as in France, some poets adapt into the
+adventures of their heroes world-old _Maerchen_, as in the Odyssey, and
+in the cycle of the parents of Charles.
+
+In the French, as in the Greek epics, we have such early traits
+of poetry as the textual repetition of speeches, and the recurring
+epithets, "swift-footed Achilles," "Charles of the white beard,"
+"blameless heroes" (however blamable). Ladies, however old, are always
+"of the clear face." Thus the technical manners of the French and Greek
+epics are closely parallel; they only differ in the exquisite art of
+Homer, to which no approach is made by the French poets.
+
+The French authors of epic, even more than Homer, abound in episodes
+much more distracting than those of the _Iliad_. Of blood and wounds, of
+course, both the French and the Greek are profuse: they were writing for
+men of the sword, not for modern critics. Indeed, the battle pieces of
+France almost translate those of Homer. The Achaean "does on his goodly
+corslet"; the French knight "_sur ses espalles son halberc li colad_."
+The Achaean, with his great sword, shears off an arm at the shoulder.
+The French knight--
+
+"_Trenchad le braz, Parmi leschine sun grant espee li passe_."
+
+The huge shield of Aias becomes _cele grant targe duble_ in France, and
+the warriors boast over their slain in France, as in the _Iliad_. In
+France, as in Greece, a favourite epic theme was "The Wrath" of a hero,
+of Achilles, of Roland, of Ganelon, of Odysseus and Achilles wrangling
+at a feast to the joy of Agamemnon, "glad that the bravest of his peers
+were at strife." [Footnote: Odyssey, VIII. 75-7s [sic].]
+
+Of all the many parallels between the Greek and French epics, the most
+extraordinary is the coincidence between Charles with his peers and
+Agamemnon with his princes. The same historical conditions occurred, at
+an interval of more than two thousand years. Agamemnon is the Bretwalda,
+the Over-Lord, as Mr. Freeman used to say, of the Achaeans: he is the
+suzerain. Charles in the French epics holds the same position, but the
+French poets regard him in different lights. In the earliest epic, the
+_Chanson_ de Roland, a divinity doth hedge the famous Emperor, whom
+Jeanne d'Arc styled "St. Charlemagne." He was, in fact, a man of
+thirty-seven at the date of the disaster of Roncesvaux, where Roland
+fell (778 A.D.). But in the tradition that has reached the poet of the
+_chanson_ he is a white-bearded warrior, as vigorous as he is venerable.
+As he rules by advice of his council, he bids them deliberate on the
+proposals of the Paynim King, Marsile--to accept or refuse them. Roland,
+the counterpart of Achilles in all respects (Oliver is his Patroclus),
+is for refusing: Ganelon appears to have the rest with him when he
+speaks in favour of peace and return to France out of Spain. So, in
+the _Iliad_ (II.), the Achaeans lend a ready ear to Agamemnon when he
+proposes the abandonment of the siege of Troy. Each host, French and
+Achaean, is heartily homesick.
+
+Ganelon's advice prevailing, it is necessary to send an envoy to the
+Saracen court. It is a dangerous mission; other envoys have been sent
+and been murdered. The Peers, however, volunteer, beginning with the
+aged Naismes, the Nestor of the Franks. His offer is not accepted,
+nor are those of Oliver, Roland, and Turpin. Roland then proposes that
+Ganelon shall be sent; and hence arises the Wrath of Ganelon, which was
+the ruin of Roland and the peers who stood by him. The warriors attack
+each other in speeches of Homeric fury. Charles preserves his dignity,
+and Ganelon departs on his mission. He deliberately sells himself,
+and seals the fate of the peers whom he detests: the surprise of the
+rearguard under Roland, the deadly battle, and the revenge of Charles
+make up the rest of the poem. Not even in victory is Charles allowed
+repose; the trumpet again summons him to war. He is of those whom Heaven
+has called to endless combat--
+
+     "Their whole lives long to be winding
+      Skeins of grievous wars, till every soul of them perish,"
+
+in the words of Diomede.
+
+Such is the picture of the imperial Charles in one of the oldest of the
+French epics. The heart of the poet is with the aged, but unbroken and
+truly imperial, figure of St. Charlemagne--wise, just, and brave, a true
+"shepherd of the people," regarded as the conqueror of all the known
+kingdoms of the world. He is, among his fierce paladins, like "the
+conscience of a knight among his warring members." "The greatness of
+Charlemagne has entered even into his name;" but as time went on and
+the feudal princes began the long struggle against the French king, the
+poets gratified their patrons by degrading the character of the Emperor.
+They created a second type of Charles, and it is the second type that on
+the whole most resembles the Agamemnon of the _Iliad._
+
+We ask why the widely ruling lord of golden Mycenae is so skilfully
+and persistently represented as respectable, indeed, by reason of his
+office, but detestable, on the whole, in character?
+
+The answer is that just as the second type of Charles is the result of
+feudal jealousies of the king, so the character of Agamemnon reflects
+the princely hatreds of what we may call the feudal age of Greece. The
+masterly portrait of Agamemnon could only have been designed to win
+the sympathies of feudal listeners, princes with an Over-Lord whom they
+cannot repudiate, for whose office they have a traditional reverence,
+but whose power they submit to with no good will, and whose person and
+character some of them can barely tolerate.
+
+ [blank space] _an historical unity._ The poem deals with
+what may be called a feudal society, and the attitudes of the Achaean
+Bretwalda and of his peers are, from beginning to end of the _Iliad_ and
+in every Book of it, those of the peers and king in the later _Chansons
+de Geste_.
+
+Returning to the decadent Charles of the French epics, we lay no stress
+on the story of his incest with his sister, Gilain, "whence sprang
+Roland." The House of Thyestes, whence Agamemnon sprang, is marked by
+even blacker legends. The scandal is mythical, like the same scandal
+about the King Arthur, who in romance is so much inferior to his
+knights, a reflection of feudal jealousies and hatreds. In places the
+reproaches hurled by the peers at Charles read like paraphrases of those
+which the Achaean princes cast at Agamemnon. Even Naismes, the Nestor of
+the French epics, cries: "It is for you that we have left our lands and
+fiefs, our fair wives and our children ... But, by the Apostle to whom
+they pray in Rome, were it not that we should be guilty before God we
+would go back to sweet France, and thin would be your host." [Footnote:
+_Chevalerie Ogier_, 1510-1529. _Epopees Francaises_, Leon Gautier, vol.
+iii. pp. 156-157.] In the lines quoted we seem to hear the voice of the
+angered Achilles: "We came not hither in our own quarrel, thou shameless
+one, but to please thee! But now go I back to Phthia with my ships--the
+better part." [Footnote: _Iliad_, I. 158-169.]
+
+Agamemnon answers that Zeus is on his side, just as even the angry
+Naismes admits that duty to God demands obedience to Charles. There
+cannot be parallels more close and true than these, between poems born
+at a distance from each other of more than two thousand years, but born
+in similar historical conditions.
+
+In Guide _Bourgogne,_ a poem of the twelfth century, Ogier cries, "They
+say that Charlemagne is the conqueror of kingdoms: they lie, it is
+Roland who conquers them with Oliver, Naismes of the long beard, and
+myself. As to Charles, he eats." Compare Achilles to Agamemnon, "Thou,
+heavy with wine, with dog's eyes and heart of deer, never hast thou
+dared to arm thee for war with the host ..." [Footnote: _Iliad_, I. 227,
+228. _Gui de Bourgogne_, pp. 37-41.] It is Achilles or Roland who stakes
+his life in war and captures cities; it is Agamemnon or Charles who
+camps by the wine. Charles, in the _Chanson de Saisnes_, abases himself
+before Herapois, even more abjectly than Agamemnon in his offer of
+atonement to Achilles. [Footnote: _Epopees Francaises_, Leon Gautier,
+vol. iii. p. 158.] Charles is as arrogant as Agamemnon: he strikes
+Roland with his glove, for an uncommanded victory, and then he loses
+heart and weeps as copiously as the penitent Agamemnon often does when
+he rues his arrogance. [Footnote: _Entree en Espagne_.]
+
+The poet of the _Iliad_ is a great and sober artist. He does not make
+Agamemnon endure the lowest disgraces which the latest French epic poets
+heap on Charles. But we see how close is the parallel between Agamemnon
+and the Charles of the decadent type. Both characters are reflections of
+feudal jealousy of the Over-Lord; both reflect real antique historical
+conditions, and these were the conditions of the Achaeans in Europe, not
+of the Ionians in Asia.
+
+The treatment of Agamemnon's character is harmonious throughout. It
+is not as if in "the original poem" Agamemnon were revered like St.
+Charlemagne in the _Chanson de Roland_, and in the "later" parts of the
+_Iliad_ were reduced to the contemptible estate of the Charles of the
+decadent _Chanson de Geste_. In the _Iliad_ Agamemnon's character is
+consistently presented from beginning to end, presented, I think, as it
+could only be by a great poet of the feudal Achaean society in Europe.
+The Ionians--"democratic to the core," says Mr. Leaf--would either have
+taken no interest in the figure of the Over-Lord, or would have utterly
+degraded him below the level of the Charles of the latest _Chansons_. Or
+the late rhapsodists, in their irresponsible lays, would have presented
+a wavering and worthless portrait.
+
+The conditions under which the _Chansons_ arose were truly parallel
+to the conditions under which the Homeric poems arose, and the poems,
+French and Achaean, are also true parallels, except in genius. The
+French have no Homer: _cared vate sacro_. It follows that a Homer was
+necessary to the evolution of the Greek epics.
+
+It may, perhaps, be replied to this argument that our _Iliad_ is only
+a very late _remaniement_, like the fourteenth century _Chansons de
+Geste_, of something much earlier and nobler. But in France, in the age
+of _remaniement_, even the versification had changed from assonance to
+rhyme, from the decasyllabic line to the Alexandrine in the decadence,
+while a plentiful lack of seriousness and a love of purely fanciful
+adventures in fairyland take the place of the austere spirit of war.
+Ladies "in a coming on humour" abound, and Charles is involved with his
+Paladins in _gauloiseries_ of a Rabelaisian cast. The French language
+has become a new thing through and through, and manners and weapons are
+of a new sort; but the high seriousness of the _Iliad_ is maintained
+throughout, except in the burlesque battle of the gods: the
+versification is the stately hexameter, linguistic alterations are
+present, extant, but inconspicuous. That the armour and weapons are
+uniform in character throughout we have tried to prove, while the state
+of society and of religion is certainly throughout harmonious. Our
+parallel, then, between the French and the Greek national epics appears
+as perfect as such a thing can be, surprisingly perfect, while the great
+point of difference in degree of art is accounted for by the existence
+of an Achaean poet of supreme genius. Not such, certainly, were the
+composers of the Cyclic poems, men contemporary with the supposed later
+poets of the _Iliad_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+The conclusion at which we arrive is that the _Iliad_, as a whole, is
+the work of one age. That it has reached us without interpolations and
+_lacunae_ and _remaniements_ perhaps no person of ordinary sense will
+allege. But that the mass of the Epic is of one age appears to be a
+natural inference from the breakdown of the hypotheses which attempt to
+explain it as a late mosaic. We have also endeavoured to prove, quite
+apart from the failure of theories of expansion and compilation, that
+the _Iliad_ presents an historical unity, unity of character, unity of
+customary law, and unity in its archaeology. If we are right, we must
+have an opinion as to how the Epic was preserved.
+
+If we had evidence for an Homeric school, we might imagine that the Epic
+was composed by dint of memory, and preserved, like the Sanskrit Hymns
+of the Rig Veda, and the Hymns of the Maoris, the Zunis, and other
+peoples in the lower or middle stage of barbarism, by the exertions and
+teaching of schools. But religious hymns and mythical hymns--the care
+of a priesthood--are one thing; a great secular epic is another. Priests
+will not devote themselves from age to age to its conservation. It
+cannot be conserved, with its unity of tone and character, and, on the
+whole, even of language, by generations of paid strollers, who recite
+new lays of their own, as well as any old lays that they may remember,
+which they alter at pleasure.
+
+We are thus driven back to the theory of early written texts, not
+intended to meet the wants of a reading public, but for the use of the
+poet himself and of those to whom he may bequeath his work. That this
+has been a method in which orally published epics were composed and
+preserved in a non-reading age we have proved in our chapter on the
+French Chansons _de Geste_. Unhappily, the argument that what was done
+in mediaeval France might be done in sub-Mycenaean Greece, is based
+on probabilities, and these are differently estimated by critics of
+different schools. All seems to depend on each individual's sense
+of what is "likely." In that case science has nothing to make in the
+matter. Nitzsche thought that writing might go back to the time of
+Homer. Mr. Monro thought it "probable enough that writing, even if known
+at the time of Homer, was not used for literary purposes." [Footnote:
+_Iliad_, vol. i. p. xxxv.] Sir Richard Jebb, as we saw, took a much more
+favourable view of the probability of early written texts. M. Salomon
+Reinach, arguing from the linear written clay tablets of Knossos and
+from a Knossian cup with writing on it in ink, thinks that there
+may have existed whole "Minoan" libraries--manuscripts executed on
+perishable materials, palm leaves, papyrus, or parchment. [Footnote:
+_L'Anthropologie_, vol. xv, pp. 292, 293.] Mr. Leaf, while admitting
+that "writing was known in some form through the whole period of epic
+development," holds that "it is in the highest degree unlikely that it
+was ever employed to form a standard text of the Epic or any portion of
+it.... At best there was a continuous tradition of those portions of the
+poems which were especially popular ..." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i.
+pp. xvi., xvii.] Father Browne dates the employment of writing for the
+preservation of the Epic "from the sixth century onwards." [Footnote:
+_Handbook of Homeric Study_, p. 134.] He also says that "it is difficult
+to suppose that the Mycenaeans, who were certainly in contact with this
+form of writing" (the Cretan linear), "should not have used it much
+more freely than our direct evidence warrants us in asserting." He then
+mentions the Knossian cup "with writing inscribed on it apparently in
+pen and ink ... The conclusion is that ordinary writing was in use, but
+that the materials, probably palm leaves, have disappeared." [Footnote:
+_Ibid_., pp. 258, 259.]
+
+Why it should be unlikely that a people confessedly familiar with
+writing used it for the preservation of literature, when we know that
+even the Red Indians preserve their songs by means of pictographs, while
+West African tribes use incised characters, is certainly not obvious.
+Many sorts of prae-Phoenician writing were current during the Mycenaean
+age in Asia, Egypt, Assyria, and in Cyprus. As these other peoples used
+writing of their own sort for literary purposes, it is not easy to
+see why the Cretans, for example, should not have done the same thing.
+Indeed, Father Browne supposes that the Mycenaeans used "ordinary
+writing," and used it freely. Nevertheless, the Epic was not written,
+he says, till the sixth century B.C. Cauer, indeed, remarks that "the
+Finnish epic" existed unwritten till Lbnnrot, its Pisistratus,
+first collected it from oral recitation. [Footnote: _Grundfragen der
+Homerkritik_, p. 94.] But there is not, and never was, any "Finnish
+epic." There were cosmogonic songs, as among the Maoris and Zunis--songs
+of the beginnings of things; there were magical songs, songs of
+weddings, a song based on the same popular tale that underlies the
+legend of the Argonauts. There were songs of the Culture Hero, songs of
+burial and feast, and of labour. Loennrot collected these, and tried by
+interpolations to make an epic out of them; but the point, as Comparetti
+has proved, is that he failed. There is no Finnish epic, only a mass of
+_Volkslieder._ Cauer's other argument, that the German popular tales,
+Grimm's tales, were unwritten till 1812, is as remote from the point at
+issue. Nothing can be less like an epic than a volume of _Maerchen._
+
+As usual we are driven back upon a literary judgment. Is the _Iliad_ a
+patchwork of metrical _Maerchen_ or is it an epic nobly constructed? If
+it is the former, writing was not needed; if it is the latter, in the
+absence of Homeric guilds or colleges, only writing can account for its
+preservation.
+
+It is impossible to argue against a critic's subjective sense of what
+is likely. Possibly that sense is born of the feeling that the Cretan
+linear script, for example, or the Cyprian syllabary, looks very odd
+and outlandish. The critic's imagination boggles at the idea of an
+epic written in such scripts. In that case his is not the scientific
+imagination; he is checked merely by the unfamiliar. Or his sense of
+unlikelihood may be a subconscious survival of Wolf's opinion, formed
+by him at a time when the existence of the many scripts of the old world
+was unknown.
+
+Our own sense of probability leads us to the conclusion that, in an age
+when people could write, people wrote down the Epic. If they applied
+their art to literature, then the preservation of the Epic is explained.
+Written first in a prae-Phoenician script, it continued to be written
+in the Greek adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet. There was not yet,
+probably, a reading public, but there were a few clerkly men.
+
+That the Cretans, at least, could write long before the age of Homer,
+Mr. Arthur Evans has demonstrated by his discoveries. Prom my remote
+undergraduate days I was of the opinion which he has proved to be
+correct, starting, like him, from what I knew about savage pictographs.
+[Footnote: Cretan _Pictographs_ and _Prae-Phoenician_ Script. London,
+1905. Annual of British _School_ of Athens, 1900-1901, p. 10. Journal of
+_Hellenic Studies,_ 1897, pp. 327-395.]
+
+M. Reinach and Mr. Evans have pointed out that in this matter tradition
+joins hands with discovery. Diodorus Siculus, speaking of the Cretan
+Zeus and probably on Cretan authority, says: "As to those who hold that
+the Syrians invented letters, from whom the Phoenicians received them
+and handed them on to the Greeks, ... and that for this reason the
+Greeks call letters 'Phoenician,' some reply that the Phoenicians did
+not [blank space] letters, but merely modified (transposed 3) the forms
+of the letters, and that most men use this form of script, and thus
+letters came to be styled 'Phoenician.'" [Footnote: Diodorus Siculus, v.
+74. _L'Anthropologie,_ vol. xi. pp. 497-502.] In fact, the alphabet is
+a collection of signs of palaeolithic antiquity and of vast diffusion.
+[Footnote: Origins of the Alphabet. A. L. Fortnightly Review, 1904, pp.
+634-645]
+
+Thus the use of writing for the conservation of the Epic cannot seem
+to me to be unlikely, but rather probable; and here one must leave the
+question, as the subjective element plays so great a part in every man's
+sense of what is likely or unlikely. That writing cannot have been used
+for this literary purpose, that the thing is impossible, nobody will now
+assert.
+
+My supposition is, then, that the text of the Epic existed in AEgean
+script till Greece adapted to her own tongue the "Phoenician letters,"
+which I think she did not later than the ninth to eighth centuries; "at
+the beginning of the ninth century," says Professor Bury. [Footnote:
+_History of Greece_, vol. i. p. 78. 1902.] This may seem an audaciously
+early date, but when we find vases of the eighth to seventh centuries
+bearing inscriptions, we may infer that a knowledge of reading and
+writing was reasonably common. When such a humble class of hirelings
+or slaves as the pot-painters can sign their work, expecting their
+signatures to be read, reading and writing must be very common
+accomplishments among the more fortunate classes.
+
+If Mr. Gardner is right in dating a number of incised inscriptions on
+early pottery at Naucratis before the middle of the seventh century,
+we reach the same conclusion. In fact, if these inscriptions be of a
+century earlier than the Abu Simbel inscriptions, of date 590 B.C., we
+reach 690 B.C. Wherefore, as writing does not become common in a moment,
+it must have existed in the eighth century B.C. We are not dealing here
+with a special learned class, but with ordinary persons who could write.
+[Footnote: _The Early Ionic Alphabet: Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol.
+vii. pp. 220-239. Roberts, _Introduction to Greek Epigraphy_, pp. 31,
+151, 159, 164, 165-167]
+
+Interesting for our purpose is the verse incised on a Dipylon vase,
+found at Athens in 1880. It is of an ordinary cream-jug shape, with a
+neck, a handle, a spout, and a round belly. On the neck, within a zigzag
+"geometrical" pattern, is a doe, feeding, and a tall water-fowl. On the
+shoulder is scratched with a point, in very antique Attic characters
+running from right to left, [Greek: os nun orchaeston panton hatalotata
+pais ei, tou tode]. "This is the jug of him who is the most delicately
+sportive of all dancers of our time." The jug is attributed to the
+eighth century. [Footnote: Walters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, vol.
+ii. p, 243; Kretschmer, _Griechischen Vasen inschriften_, p. 110, 1894,
+of the seventh century. H. von Rohden, _Denkmaler_, iii. pp. 1945, 1946:
+"Probably dating from the seventh century." Roberts, op. cit., vol. i.
+p. 74, "at least as far back as the seventh century," p. 75.]
+
+Taking the vase, with Mr. Walters, as of the eighth century, I do not
+suppose that the amateur who gave it to a dancer and scratched the
+hexameter was of a later generation than the jug itself. The vase may
+have cost him sixpence: he would give his friend a _new_ vase; it is
+improbable that old jugs were sold at curiosity shops in these days, and
+given by amateurs to artists. The inscription proves that, in the eighth
+to seventh centuries, at a time of very archaic characters (the Alpha is
+lying down on its side, the aspirate is an oblong with closed ends and
+a stroke across the middle, and the Iota is curved at each end), people
+could write with ease, and would put verse into writing. The general
+accomplishment of reading is taken for granted.
+
+Reading is also taken for granted by the Gortyn (Cretan) inscription of
+twelve columns long, _boustro-phedon_ (running alternately from left to
+right, and from right to left). In this inscribed code of laws, incised
+on stone, money is not mentioned in the more ancient part, but fines and
+prices are calculated in "chalders" and "bolls" ([Greek: lebaetes] and
+[Greek: tripodes]), as in Scotland when coin was scarce indeed. Whether
+the law contemplated the value of the vessels themselves, or, as in
+Scotland, of their contents in grain, I know not. The later inscriptions
+deal with coined money. If coin came in about 650 B.C., the older parts
+of the inscription may easily be of 700 B.C.
+
+The Gortyn inscription implies the power of writing out a long code
+of laws, and it implies that persons about to go to law could read the
+public inscription, as we can read a proclamation posted up on a wall,
+or could have it read to them. [Footnote: Roberts, vol. i. pp. 52-55.]
+
+The alphabets inscribed on vases of the seventh century (Abecedaria),
+with "the archaic Greek forms of every one of the twenty-two Phoenician
+letters arranged precisely in the received Semitic order," were, one
+supposes, gifts for boys and girls who were learning to read, just like
+our English alphabets on gingerbread. [Footnote: For Abecedaria, cf.
+Roberts, vol. i. pp. 16-21.]
+
+Among inscriptions on tombstones of the end of the seventh century,
+there is the epitaph of a daughter of a potter. [Footnote: Roberts, vol.
+i. p. 76.] These writings testify to the general knowledge of reading,
+just as much as our epitaphs testify to the same state of education. The
+Athenian potter's daughter of the seventh century B.C. had her epitaph,
+but the grave-stones of highlanders, chiefs or commoners, were usually
+uninscribed till about the end of the eighteenth century, in deference
+to custom, itself arising from the illiteracy of the highlanders in
+times past. [Footnote: Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen_, ii. p. 426.
+1888.] I find no difficulty, therefore, in supposing that there were
+some Greek readers and writers in the eighth century, and that primary
+education was common in the seventh. In these circumstances my sense of
+the probable is not revolted by the idea of a written epic, in [blank
+space] characters, even in the eighth century, but the notion that there
+was no such thing till the middle of the sixth century seems highly
+improbable. All the conditions were present which make for the
+composition and preservation of literary works in written texts. That
+there were many early written copies of Homer in the eighth century I am
+not inclined to believe. The Greeks were early a people who could read,
+but were not a reading people. Setting newspapers aside, there is no
+such thing as a reading _people_.
+
+The Greeks preferred to listen to recitations, but my hypothesis is that
+the rhapsodists who recited had texts, like the _jongleurs_' books
+of their epics in France, and that they occasionally, for definite
+purposes, interpolated matter into their texts. There were also texts,
+known in later times as "city texts" ([Greek: ai kata poleis]), which
+Aristarchus knew, but he did not adopt the various readings. [Footnote:
+Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p, 435.]
+
+Athens had a text in Solon's time, if he entered the decree that the
+whole Epic should be recited in due order, every five years, at the
+Panathenaic festival. [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. 395.] "This
+implies the possession of a complete text." [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii.
+p. 403.]
+
+Cauer remarks that the possibility of "interpolation" "began only after
+the fixing of the text by Pisistratus." [Footnote: _Grundfragen_, p.
+205.] But surely if every poet and reciter could thrust any new lines
+which he chose to make into any old lays which he happened to know, that
+was interpolation, whether he had a book of the words or had none. Such
+interpolations would fill the orally recited lays which the supposed
+Pisistratean editor must have written down from recitation before he
+began his colossal task of making the _Iliad_ out of them. If, on the
+other hand, reciters had books of the words, they could interpolate at
+pleasure into _them_, and such books may have been among the materials
+used in the construction of a text for the Athenian book market. But if
+our theory be right, there must always have been a few copies of better
+texts than those of the late reciters' books, and the effort of the
+editors for the book market would be to keep the parts in which most
+manuscripts were agreed.
+
+But how did Athens, or any other city, come to possess a text? One
+can only conjecture; but my conjecture is that there had always been
+texts--copied out in successive generations--in the hands of the
+curious; for example, in the hands of the Cyclic poets, who knew our
+_Iliad_ as the late French Cyclic poets knew the earlier _Chansons de
+Geste_. They certainly knew it, for they avoided interference with
+it; they worked at epics which led up to it, as in the _Cypria;_ they
+borrowed _motifs_ from hints and references in the _Iliad_, [Footnote:
+Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 350, 351.] and they carried on the story
+from the death of Hector, in the _AEthiopis_ of Arctinus of Miletus.
+This epic ended with the death of Achilles, when _The Little Iliad_
+produced the tale to the bringing in of the wooden horse. Arctinus goes
+on with his _Sack_ of _Ilios_, others wrote of _The Return_ of _the
+Heroes,_ and the _Telegonia_ is a sequel to the Odyssey. The authors of
+these poems knew the _Iliad_, then, as a whole, and how could they have
+known it thus if it only existed in the casual _repertoire_ of strolling
+reciters? The Cyclic poets more probably had texts of Homer, and
+themselves wrote their own poems--how it paid, whether they recited them
+and collected rewards or not, is, of course, unknown.
+
+The Cyclic poems, to quote Sir Richard Jebb, "help to fix the lowest
+limit for the age of the Homeric poems. [Footnote: _Homer_, pp. 151,
+154.] The earliest Cyclic poems, dating from about 776 B.C., presuppose
+the _Iliad_, being planned to introduce or continue it.... It would
+appear, then, that the _Iliad_ must have existed in something like its
+present compass as early as 800 B.C.; indeed a considerably earlier date
+will seem probable, if due time is allowed for the poem to have grown
+into such fame as would incite the effort to continue it and to prelude
+to it."
+
+Sir Richard then takes the point on which we have already insisted,
+namely, that the Cyclic poets of the eighth century B.C. live in an
+age of ideas, religions, ritual, and so forth which are absent from the
+_Iliad_ [Footnote: Homer, pp. 154, 155.]
+
+Thus the _Iliad_ existed with its characteristics that are prior to 800
+B.C., and in its present compass, and was renowned before 800 B.C. As
+it could not possibly have thus existed in the _repertoire_ of
+irresponsible strolling minstrels and reciters, and as there is no
+evidence for a college, school, or guild which preserved the Epic by
+a system of mnemonic teaching, while no one can deny at least the
+possibility of written texts, we are driven to the hypothesis that
+written texts there were, whence descended, for example, the text of
+Athens.
+
+We can scarcely suppose, however, that such texts were perfect in all
+respects, for we know how, several centuries later, in a reading age,
+papyrus fragments of the _Iliad_ display unwarrantable interpolation.
+[Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 422-426.] But Plato's frequent
+quotations, of course made at an earlier date, show that "whatever
+interpolated texts of Homer were then current, the copy from which
+Plato quoted was not one of them." [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 429] Plato had
+something much better.
+
+When a reading public for Homer arose--and, from the evidences of the
+widespread early knowledge of reading, such a small public may have come
+into existence sooner than is commonly supposed--Athens was the centre
+of the book trade. To Athens must be due the prae-Alexandrian Vulgate,
+or prevalent text, practically the same as our own. Some person or
+persons must have made that text--not by taking down from recitation
+all the lays which they could collect, as Herd, Scott, Mrs. Brown,
+and others collected much of the _Border Minstrelsy_, and not by then
+tacking the lays into a newly-composed whole. They must have done their
+best with such texts as were accessible to them, and among these were
+probably the copies used by reciters and rhapsodists, answering to the
+MS. books of the mediaeval _jongleurs._
+
+Mr. Jevons has justly and acutely remarked that "we do not know, and
+there is no external evidence of any description which leads us to
+suppose, that the _Iliad_ was ever expanded" (_J. H. S_, vii. 291-308).
+
+That it was expanded is a mere hypothesis based on the idea that "if
+there was an _Iliad_ at all in the ninth century, its length must
+have been such as was compatible with the conditions of an oral
+delivery,"--"a poem or poems short enough to be recited at a single
+sitting."
+
+But we have proved, with Mr. Jevons and Blass, and by the analogy of the
+Chansons that, given a court audience (and a court audience is granted),
+there were no such narrow limits imposed on the length of a poem orally
+recited from night to night.
+
+The length of the _Iliad_ yields, therefore, no argument for expansions
+throughout several centuries. That theory, suggested by the notion
+that the original poem _MUST_ have been short, is next supposed to be
+warranted by the inconsistencies and discrepancies. But we argue that
+these are only visible, as a rule, to "the analytical reader," for whom
+the poet certainly was not composing; that they occur in all long
+works of fictitious narrative; that the discrepancies often are not
+discrepancies; and, finally, that they are not nearly so glaring as the
+inconsistencies in the theories of each separatist critic. A theory,
+in such matter as this, is itself an explanatory myth, or the plot of
+a story which the critic invents to account for the facts in the case.
+These critical plots, we have shown, do not account for the facts of the
+case, for the critics do not excel in constructing plots. They wander
+into unperceived self-contradictions which they would not pardon in the
+poet. These contradictions are visible to "the analytical reader," who
+concludes that a very early poet may have been, though Homer seldom is,
+as inconsistent as a modern critic.
+
+Meanwhile, though we have no external evidence that the _Iliad_ was
+ever expanded--that it was expanded is an explanatory myth of the
+critics--"we do know, on good evidence," says Mr. Jevons, "that the
+_Iliad_ was rhapsodised." The rhapsodists were men, as a rule, of one
+day recitations, though at a prolonged festival at Athens there was time
+for the whole _Iliad_ to be recited. "They chose for recitation such
+incidents as could be readily detached, were interesting in themselves,
+and did not take too long to recite." Mr. Jevons suggests that the many
+brief poems collected in the Homeric hymns are invocations which the
+rhapsodists preluded to their recitals. The practice seems to have been
+for the rhapsodist first to pay his reverence to the god, "to begin from
+the god," at whose festival the recitation was being given (the short
+proems collected in the Hymns pay this reverence), "and then proceed
+with his rhapsody"--with his selected passage from the _Iliad_,
+"Beginning with thee" (the god of the festival), "I will go on
+to another lay," that is, to his selection from the Epic. Another
+conclusion of the proem often is, "I will be mindful both of thee and
+of another lay," meaning, says Mr. Jevons, that "the local deity will
+figure in the recitation from Homer which the rhapsodist is about to
+deliver."
+
+These explanations, at all events, yield good sense. The invocation of
+Athene (Hymns, XI., XXVIII.) would serve as the proem of invocation to
+the recital of _Iliad_, V., VI. 1-311, the day of valour of Diomede,
+spurred on by the wanton rebuke of Agamemnon, and aided by Athene. The
+invocation of Hephaestus (Hymn XX.), would prelude to a recital of the
+_Making of the Awns of Achilles_, and so on.
+
+But the rhapsodist may be reciting at a festival of Dionysus, about whom
+there is practically nothing said in the _Iliad_; for it is a proof of
+the antiquity of the _Iliad_ that, when it was composed, Dionysus had
+not been raised to the Olympian peerage, being still a folk-god only.
+The rhapsodist, at a feast of Dionysus in later times, has to introduce
+the god into his recitation. The god is not in his text, but he adds
+him. [Footnote:_Ibid_., VI. 130-141]
+
+Why should any mortal have made this interpolation? Mr. Jevons's theory
+supplies the answer. The rhapsodist added the passages to suit the
+Dionysus feast, at which he was reciting.
+
+The same explanation is offered for the long story of the _Birth_
+of [blank space] which Agamemnon tells in his speech of apology and
+reconciliation. [Footnote:_Ibid_., XIX. 136.] There is an invocation to
+Heracles (Hymns, XV.), and the author may have added this speech to his
+rhapsody of the Reconciliation, recited at a feast of Heracles. Perhaps
+the remark of Mr. Leaf offers the real explanation of the presence of
+this long story in the speech of Agamemnon: "Many speakers with a bad
+case take refuge in telling stories." Agamemnon shows, says Mr. Leaf,
+"the peevish nervousness of a man who feels that he has been in the
+wrong," and who follows a frank speaker like Achilles, only eager for
+Agamemnon to give the word to form and charge. So Agamemnon takes refuge
+in a long story, throwing the blame of his conduct on Destiny.
+
+We do not need, then, the theory of a rhapsodist's interpolation, but it
+is quite plausible in itself.
+
+Local heroes, as well as gods, had their feasts in post-Homeric times,
+and a reciter at a feast of AEneas, or of his mother, Aphrodite, may
+have foisted in the very futile discourse of Achilles and AEneas,
+[Footnote:_Ibid_., XX. 213-250.] with its reference to Erichthonius, an
+Athenian hero.
+
+In other cases the rhapsodist rounded off his selected passage by a few
+lines, as in _Iliad_, XIII. 656-659, where a hero is brought to follow
+his son's dead body to the grave, though the father had been killed
+in _V. 576_. "It is really such a slip as is often made by authors who
+write," says Mr. Leaf; and, in _Esmond_, Thackeray makes similar
+errors. The passage in XVI. 69-80, about which so much is said, as if it
+contradicted Book IX. (_The Embassy to Achilles_), is also, Mr. Jevons
+thinks, to be explained as "inserted by a rhapsodist wishing to make
+his extract complete in itself." Another example--the confusion in the
+beginning of Book II.--we have already discussed (see Chapter IV.), and
+do not think that any explanation is needed, when we understand that
+Agamemnon, once wide-awake, had no confidence in his dream. However, Mr.
+Jevons thinks that rhapsodists, anxious to recite straight on from the
+dream to the battle, added II. 35-41, "the only lines which represent
+Agamemnon as believing confidently in his dream." We have argued that he
+only believed _till he awoke_, and then, as always, wavered.
+
+Thus, in our way of looking at these things, interpolations by
+rhapsodists are not often needed as explanations of difficulties. Still,
+granted that the rhapsodists, like the _jongleurs_, had texts, and that
+these were studied by the makers of the Vulgate, interpolations and
+errors might creep in by this way. As to changes in language, "a
+poetical dialect... is liable to be gradually modified by the influence
+of the ever-changing colloquial speech. And, in the early times, when
+writing was little used, this influence would be especially operative."
+[Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 461.]
+
+To conclude, the hypothesis of a school of mnemonic teaching of the
+_Iliad_ would account for the preservation of so long a poem in an age
+destitute of writing, when memory would be well cultivated. There may
+have been such schools. We only lack evidence for their existence. But
+against the hypothesis of the existence of early texts, there is nothing
+except the feeling of some critics that it is not likely. "They are
+dangerous guides, the feelings."
+
+In any case the opinion that the _Iliad_ was a whole, centuries before
+Pisistratus, is the hypothesis which is by far the least fertile in
+difficulties, and, consequently, in inconsistent solutions of the
+problems which the theory of expansion first raises, and then, like an
+unskilled magician, fails to lay.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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