Homer and His Age

es. 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 th

egards customs, weapons, and armour, a definite moment of evolution; a period between the age record

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, a

he regards the heroes as closely connected by descent of one or two generations with the gods, and as in frequent and familiar intercourse with gods and goddesses, we must suppose that he did not think their period recent. The singers of the Chansons de Geste knew that angels’ visits were few and far between at the period, say

of the fragment of a silver vase in a grave, on which a siege is represented, is not the art, the costumes are not the costumes, of the inlaid bronze dagger-blade. The men shown on the vase and the lion-hunters on the dagger both have their hair close cropped, but on the vase they are naked, on the dagger they wear short drawers. On the Vaphio cups, found in a tholos chamber-tomb near Amyclae, the men are “long-haired Achaeans,” with heavy, pendent locks, like the man on a pyxis from Knossos, published by Mr. Evans; they a

form of a figure 8, on a painted sarcophagus from Milato in Crete, is more crude and savage than many productions of the Australian abor

with precious cloths (no arms are buried, as a general rule), and a mound, howe, barrow, or tumulus is raised over all. Usually a stele or pillar crowns the edifice. This method is almost uniform, and, as far as cremation and the cairn go, is universal in the Iliad and Odyssey whenever a burial is described. Now this mode of interment must be the mode of a single age in Greek civilisation. It is confessedly not the method of the Mycenaeans of the shaft grave, or of the latter tholos or stone beehiv

the shaft-graves in Mycenae proves the cult of ancestors in Mycenae; of this cult in the Iliad there is no trace, or only a dim trace of survival in the slaughter of animals at the funeral. The Homeric way of thinking about the state of the dead, weak, shadowy things beyond the r

lt. 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 ba

es, prove the use of cremation, but also, unlike Homer, of iron weapons. 66 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”),

ia 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 wit

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 ba

h 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 th

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. 72 It h

excavated. It preserves the memory of its occupant, an early Celtic saint; whether he was cremated or not it is impossi

he arms of the dead could not be

the Calydonian boar “brought many to

urn 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

or “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 i

ing to old epic tradition, but bring in details of the life of their own date. By Helbig’s other alternate

h the older AEolic from the newer and more sceptical ‘Ionic’ faith seem to me visionary.” 76 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

, and in Australia, a still more newly settled country, sixty years ago Fisher’s ghost gave evidence of Fisher’s murder, evidence wh

ns 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 H

acle of the bones and dust. Hector was buried in a larnax; so will Achilles and Patroclus be when Achilles falls, but the dust of Patroclus

. He exclaims that “there remaineth then even in the House of Hades a spirit and phantom of the dead, albeit the li

uld 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

e “the cry of sudden personal conviction in a matter which has hitherto been lazily accepted as an orthodox dogma.” 81 Already, as we have seen,

t as in their beliefs about the other world.” We ourselves hold various beliefs simultaneously. The natives of Australia and of Tasmania practise, or did practise, every conceivable way of disposing of the dead — burying, burning, exposure in trees, carrying about the bodies or parts of them, eating the bodies, and so forth. If

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, w

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 wa

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. 83 He supposes that Hector wore the chiton, and had one [Greek: pharos] over him and the other under

f 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); ye

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

weapons are burned with Hector. In the Odyssey the weapons of Achilles are not burned; in the Iliad the armour of Patroclus is not burned. No victims of any kind are burned with

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

Homeric accounts of burial “are all late; the oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing.” 89 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 Di

ctised side by side. In the interval, therefore, two beliefs have come into conflict. 90 It seems that the Homeric poems mark this intermediate point. . . . ” 91 In that case the Homeric poems are of one age, or, at least, all of them sa

outgrown ancestor and hero worship, and had not, like the age of the Cyclics, relapsed into it. Enfin, unless we agree with Helbig as to essential variations of custom, the poems are the work of one age, and that a brief age, and an age of peculiar customs, cremation and barrow burial; and of a religion that stood, without spirit worship, between the Mycenzean period and the ninth century. That seems as certain as anything in prehistoric times can be, unless

. 79, 80, where Hector makes conditions that the fallen hero shall be restored to his friends when he challenges the Achaeans to a duel. But whoever knows the curious economy by way of repetition that marks early national epics has a right to regard the allusion to cremation (XXII, 342,343) as an example of this practice. Compare La Chancun de Williame, lines 1041–1058 with lines 1140–1134. In both the dinner of a knight who has been long deprived of food is described in passages containing many identical lines. The poet, having found his formula, uses it whenever occasion serves. There are

howe or a barrow. Thus the method of cremation had come in as early as the “kernel,” The Slaying of Hector, and as

— the Making of the Shield for Achilles is, at least, in touch with the period — of “the eminently free and naturalistic treatment which we find in the best Mycenaean work, in the dagger blades, in the siege fragment, and notably in the Vaphio cups,” (which show long-haired men, not men close-cropped, as in the daggers and siege fragment). 95 The

1–3 I 2), the form of burial is cremation, with a barrow or tumulus. 97 Thus Mr. Leaf’s opinion might lead us to the conclusion that the usual Homeric form of burial occurs in a period prior to an age in which the poet is apparently reminiscent of the work of

, as at Vaphio, must expire, on one hand, while the blending of cremation with inhumation, in the Dipylon age, must have been evolved after the cremation age passed, on the other. That brief intervening age, however, was the age of the Iliad and Odyssey. This conclusion can only be avoided by alleging that late poets, however recent and revolutionary, carefully copied the oldest epic model of burial, while they innovated in almost every other point, so we are told. We can go no further till we find an unrifled cairn burial answering to Homeric descriptions. We have, in

deas revived in Ionia, (2) as concerns the clear conception of a loose form of feudalism, with an Over–Lord, and (3) in the

We refer to Quintus Smyrnaeus, author of the Post Homerica, in fourteen books. Quintus does his best; but we never observe in him that na?f 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

t 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