Homer and His Age

ivilisation 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

aking 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 today would work on a poem of Trojan times, he would have represented his heroes as using weapons of bronze. 1 No such idea of archaising occur

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. Ye

a double hypothesis: first, that the later contributors to the Iliad kept a steady eye on the t

eing 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.” 2 “A writer of our own day,”— there is the per

ologist, who wishes to give an accurate representation of the past. Lead, in fact, was perfectly familiar to the Mycenaean prime. 4 The critical usage of supposing that the ancients were like the most recent moderns — in their archaeological preoccupations — is a surviv

s drawn in geometrical forms, lines, and triangles, was quite unlike that of the Achaean age in many ways, for example, in mode of burial and in the use of iron for weapons. Mr. H. R. Hall, in his learned book, The Oldest Civilisation of Greece (1901), supposes the culture described in the Homeric poems to be contemporary in Asia with that of this Dipylon period in Greece. 5 He says, “The Homeric cu

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 P

ets 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

ey do not hunt for “local colour” in the Chanson de Roland. The very words “local colour” are a modern phrase for an idea that never occurred to the artists of ancient uncritical ages. The Homeric poets, like the painters of the Dipylon period, describe the details of life as they see them with their own eyes. Such poets and artists never have the fear of “anachronisms” before them. This, indeed, is plain to the critics themselves, for they,

al 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 th

poets. After the appearance of Wolfs celebrated book, Homeric critics have maintained, generally speaking, that the Iliad is either a collection of short lays disposed in sequence in a late age, or

e 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

ragraph 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 l

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

wn 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 k

es, and is in itself the reverse of consistent. “The artists of antiquity,” says Helbig, with perfect truth, “had no idea of archaeological studies. . . . The

f times past, represents (in an uncritical age) the arms, utensils, costume, and the religious, geographical, legal, social, and p

e 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 w

ries rests on the postulate that poets throughout these centuries did what such poets

allowed themselves to be influenced by their own environment: this influence betrays itself in the descriptions of details. . . . The rhapsodists,”

f 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

wed 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 cha

rather ancient Ionian times, and scrupulously preserved by the latest poets — that is, when the latest poets do not bring in the new details of their own age. But Helbig will not accept his own theory in this case, whence does it follow that the author of the T

again, some of the poets are fond of actual and very minute archaeological research! The theory shifts its position as may suit the point to be made at the moment by the critic. All is arbitrary, and it is certain that logic demands a very different method of inquiry. If Helbig and other critics of his way of thinking mean that in the Iliad (1) there are parts of genuine antiquity; other parts (2) by poets who, with stern accuracy, copied the old modes; other parts (3)

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 sel