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      Homer and his Age, by Andrew Lang
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<pre>

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Homer and His Age, by Andrew Lang

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Title: Homer and His Age

Author: Andrew Lang


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</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;">
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    </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">
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    </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>
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    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
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    </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>
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    <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>
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    <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>
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      <!--  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>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER XI
    </h2>
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    <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>
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    <div style="height: 4em;">
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    </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>
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    <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>
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    <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>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER XVII
    </h2>
    <p>
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    <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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