The Iliad

[1] “What,” says Archdeacon Wilberforce, “is the natural root of loyalty as distinguished from such mere selfish desire of personal security as is apt to take its place in civilized times, but that consciousness of a natural bond among the families of men which gives a fellow-feeling to whole clans and nations, and thus enlists their affections in behalf of those time-honoured representatives of their ancient blood, in whose success they feel a personal interest? Hence the delight when we recognize an act of nobility or justice in our hereditary princes

“So strong is this feeling, that it regains an engrafted influence even when history witnesses that vast convulsions have rent and weakened it and the Celtic feeling towards the Stuarts has been rekindled in our own days towards the granddaughter of George the Third of Hanover. “Somewhat similar may be seen in the disposition to idolize those great lawgivers of man’s race, who have given expression, in the immortal language of song, to the deeper inspirations of our nature. The thoughts of Homer or of Shakespere are the universal inheritance of the human race. In this mutual ground every man meets his brother, they have been set forth by the providence of God to vindicate for all of us what nature could effect, and that, in these representatives of our race, we might recognize our common benefactors.’—Doctrine of the Incarnation, pp. 9, 10.

[2] Εἰκος δέ μιν ἦν καὶ μνημόσυνα πάντων γράφεσθαι. Vit. Hom. in Schweigh. Herodot. t. iv. p. 299, sq. § 6. I may observe that this Life has been paraphrased in English by my learned young friend Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, and appended to my prose translation of the Odyssey. The present abridgement however, will contain all that is of use to the reader, for the biographical value of the treatise is most insignificant.

[3]I.e. both of composing and reciting verses for as Blair observes, “The first poets sang their own verses.” Sextus Empir. adv. Mus. p. 360 ed. Fabric. Οὐ ἀμελει γέ τοι καὶ οἰ ποιηταὶ μελοποιοὶ λέγονται, καὶ τὰ Ὁμήρου ἕπη τὸ πάλαι πρὸς λύραν ἤδετο. “The voice,” observes Heeren, “was always accompanied by some instrument. The bard was provided with a harp on which he played a prelude, to elevate and inspire his mind, and with which he accompanied the song when begun. His voice probably preserved a medium between singing and recitation; the words, and not the melody were regarded by the listeners, hence it was necessary for him to remain intelligible to all. In countries where nothing similar is found, it is difficult to represent such scenes to the mind; but whoever has had an opportunity of listening to the improvisation of Italy, can easily form an idea of Demodocus and Phemius.”—Ancient Greece, p. 94.

[4] “Should it not be, since my arrival? asks Mackenzie, observing that “poplars can hardly live so long”. But setting aside the fact that we must not expect consistency in a mere romance, the ancients had a superstitious belief in the great age of trees which grew near places consecrated by the presence of gods and great men. See Cicero de Legg II I, sub init., where he speaks of the plane tree under which Socrates used to walk and of the tree at Delos, where Latona gave birth to Apollo. This passage is referred to by Stephanus of Byzantium, s. v. N. T. p. 490, ed. de Pinedo. I omit quoting any of the dull epigrams ascribed to Homer for, as Mr. Justice Talfourd rightly observes, “The authenticity of these fragments depends upon that of the pseudo Herodotean Life of Homer, from which they are taken.” Lit of Greece, pp. 38 in Encycl. Metrop. Cf. Coleridge, Classic Poets, p. 317.

[5] It is quoted as the work of Cleobulus, by Diogenes Laert. Vit. Cleob. p. 62, ed. Casaub.

[6] I trust I am justified in employing this as an equivalent for the Greek λέσχαι.

[7] Ὡς εἰ τοὺς Ὁμήρους δόξει τρέφειν αὐτοῖς, ὅμιλον πολλόν τε και ἀχρεοῖν ἕξουσιν. ἐι τεῦθεν δὲ και τοὔνομα Ὁμηρος ἐπεκράτησε τῷ Μελησιγενεῖ ἀπὸ τῆς συμφορης. οἱ γὰρ Κυμαῖοι τοὺς τυφλοὺς Ὁμήρους λέγουσιν. Vit. Hom. l. c. p. 311. The etymology has been condemned by recent scholars. See Welcker, Epische Cyclus, p. 127, and Mackenzie’s note, p. xiv.

[8] Θεστορίδης, θνητοῖσιν ἀνωἷστων πολεών περ, οὐδὲν ἀφραστότερον πέλεται νόου ἀνθρώποισιν. Ibid. p. 315. During his stay at Phocœa, Homer is said to have composed the Little Iliad, and the Phocœid. See Muller’s Hist. of Lit., vi. § 3. Welcker, l. c. pp. 132, 272, 358, sqq., and Mure, Gr. Lit. vol. ii. p. 284, sq.

[9] This is so pretty a picture of early manners and hospitality, that it is almost a pity to find that it is obviously a copy from the Odyssey. See the fourteenth book. In fact, whoever was the author of this fictitious biography, he showed some tact in identifying Homer with certain events described in his poems, and in eliciting from them the germs of something like a personal narrative.

[10] Διὰ λόγων ἐστιῶντο. A common metaphor. So Plato calls the parties conversing δαιτύμονες, or ἐστιάτορες, Tim. i. p. 522 A. Cf. Themist. Orat. vi. p. 168, and xvi. p. 374, ed. Petav. So διηγήμασι σοφοῖς ὁμοῦ καὶ τερπνοῖς ἡδίω τὴν θοινην τοῖς ἑστιωμένοις ἐποίει, Choricius in Fabric. Bibl. Gr. T. viii. P. 851. λόγοις γὰρ ἑστίᾳ, Athenæus vii p 275, A.

[11] It was at Bolissus, and in the house of this Chian citizen, that Homer is said to have written the Batrachomyomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and Mice, the Epicichlidia, and some other minor works.

[12] Chandler, Travels, vol. i. p. 61, referred to in the Voyage Pittoresque dans la Grèce, vol. i. P. 92, where a view of the spot is given of which the author candidly says,— “Je ne puis répondre d’une exactitude scrupuleuse dans la vue générale que j’en donne, car étant allé seul pour l’examiner je perdis mon crayon, et je fus obligé de m’en fier à ma mémoire. Je ne crois cependant pas avoir trop à me plaindre d’elle en cette occasion.”

[13] A more probable reason for this companionship, and for the character of Mentor itself, is given by the allegorists, viz.: the assumption of Mentor’s form by the guardian deity of the wise Ulysses, Minerva. The classical reader may compare Plutarch, Opp. t. ii. p. 880; Xyland. Heraclid. Pont. Alleg. Hom. p. 531-5, of Gale’s Opusc. Mythol. Dionys. Halic. de Hom. Poes. c. 15; Apul. de Deo Socrat. s. f.

[14] Vit. Hom. § 28.

[15] The riddle is given in Section 35. Compare Mackenzie’s note, p. xxx.

[16] Heeren’s Ancient Greece, p. 96.

[17] Compare Sir E. L. Bulwer’s Caxtons v. i. p. 4.

[18] Pericles and Aspasia, Letter lxxxiv., Works, vol ii. p. 387.

[19] Quarterly Review, No. lxxxvii., p. 147.

[20] Viz., the following beautiful passage, for the translation of which I am indebted to Coleridge, Classic Poets, p. 286.

See Thucyd. iii, 104.

[21] Longin., de Sublim., ix. § 26. Ὅθεν ἐν τῇ Ὀδυσσείᾳ παρεικάσαι τις ἂν καταδυομένῳ τὸν Ὅμηρον ἡλίῳ, οδ δίχα τῆς σφοδρότητος παραμένει το μέγεθος.

[22] See Tatian, quoted in Fabric. Bibl. Gr. v. II t. ii. Mr. Mackenzie has given three brief but elaborate papers on the different writers on the subject, which deserve to be consulted. See Notes and Queries, vol. v. pp. 99, 171, and 221. His own views are moderate, and perhaps as satisfactory, on the whole, as any of the hypotheses hitherto put forth. In fact, they consist in an attempt to blend those hypotheses into something like consistency, rather than in advocating any individual theory.

[23] Letters to Phileleuth; Lips.

[24] Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 191, sqq.

[25] It is, indeed not easy to calculate the height to which the memory may be cultivated. To take an ordinary case, we might refer to that of any first rate actor, who must be prepared, at a very short warning, to ‘rhapsodize,’ night after night, parts which when laid together, would amount to an immense number of lines. But all this is nothing to two instances of our own day. Visiting at Naples a gentleman of the highest intellectual attainments, and who held a distinguished rank among the men of letters in the last century, he informed us that the day before he had passed much time in examining a man, not highly educated, who had learned to repeat the whole Gierusalemme of Tasso, not only to recite it consecutively, but also to repeat those stanzas in utter defiance of the sense, either forwards or backwards, or from the eighth line to the first, alternately the odd and even lines—in short, whatever the passage required; the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more than to the sense, had it at such perfect command, that it could produce it under any form. Our informant went on to state that this singular being was proceeding to learn the Orlando Furioso in the same manner. But even this instance is less wonderful than one as to which we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty years ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland.

No such person can have forgotten the poor, uneducated man Blind Jamie who could actually repeat, after a few minutes consideration any verse required from any part of the Bible—even the obscurest and most unimportant enumeration of mere proper names not excepted. We do not mention these facts as touching the more difficult part of the question before us, but facts they are; and if we find so much difficulty in calculating the extent to which the mere memory may be cultivated, are we, in these days of multifarious reading, and of countless distracting affairs, fair judges of the perfection to which the invention and the memory combined may attain in a simpler age, and among a more single minded people?—Quarterly Review, l. c., p. 143, sqq. Heeren steers between the two opinions, observing that, “The Dschungariade of the Calmucks is said to surpass the poems of Homer in length, as much as it stands beneath them in merit, and yet it exists only in the memory of a people which is not unacquainted with writing. But the songs of a nation are probably the last things which are committed to writing, for the very reason that they are remembered.”— Ancient Greece. p. 100.

[26] Vol. II p. 198, sqq.

[27] Quarterly Review, l. c., p. 131 sq.

[28] Betrachtungen über die Ilias. Berol. 1841. See Grote, p. 204. Notes and Queries, vol. v. p. 221.

[29] Prolegg. pp. xxxii., xxxvi., &c.

[30] Vol. ii. p. 214 sqq.

[31] “Who,” says Cicero, de Orat. iii. 34, “was more learned in that age, or whose eloquence is reported to have been more perfected by literature than that of Peisistratus, who is said first to have disposed the books of Homer in the order in which we now have them?” Compare Wolf’s Prolegomena 33, §.

[32] “The first book, together with the eighth, and the books from the eleventh to the twenty-second inclusive, seems to form the primary organization of the poem, then properly an Achilleïs.”—Grote, vol. ii. p. 235

[33] K. R. H. Mackenzie, Notes and Queries, p. 222 sqq.

[34] See his Epistle to Raphelingius, in Schroeder’s edition, 4to., Delphis, 1728.

[35] Ancient Greece, p. 101.