,*..:•■- Class ?ft3 057 Boole -M8 _ 1840 LUx^v ^~C A HISTORY LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. INTRODUCTION. In undertaking to write a history of Grecian literature, it is not our intention to enumerate the names of those many hundred authors whose works, accumulated in the Alexandrine Library, are reported, after passing through many other perils, to have finally been burnt by the Khalif Omar — an event from which the cause of civilisation has not, perhaps, suffered so much as many have thought; inasmuch as the inheritance of so vast a collection of writings from antiquity would, by engrossing all the leisure and attention of the moderns, have diminished their zeal and their opportunities for original productions. Nor will it be necessary to carry our younger readers (for whose use this work is chiefly designed) into the controversies of the philosophical schools, the theories of grammarians and critics, or the successive hypotheses of natural philosophy among the Greeks — in short, into those departments of literature which are the province of the learned by profession, and whose influence is confined to them alone. Our object is to consider Grecian literature as a main constituent of the character of the Grecian people, and to show how those illustrious compositions, which we still justly admire as the classical writings of the Greeks, naturally sprung from the taste and genius of the Greek races, and the constitution of civil and domestic society as established among them. For this pur- pose our inquiries may be divided into three principal heads: — 1. The development of Grecian poetry and prose before the rise of the Athenian literature ; 2, The flourishing era of poetry and eloquence at Athens ; and, 3. The history of Greek literature in the long period after Alex- ander; which last, although it produced a much larger number of writings than the former periods, need not, consistently with the object of the present work, be treated at great length, as literature had in this age fallen into the hands of the learned few, and had lost its living influence on the general mass of the community. In attempting to trace the gradual development of the literature of [ 9 HISTORY OF THE \ X a\j p-S^ ancient Greece from its earliest origin, it would be easy to make a beginning, by treating of the extant works of Grecian writers in their chronological order. We might then commence at once with Homer and Hesiod: but it' we were to adopt this course, we should, like an epic poet, place our beginning in the middle of the history; for, like the Pallas of Grecian poetry, who sprang full-armed from the head of Jupiter, the literature of Greece wears the perfection of beauty in those works which Herodotus and Aristotle, and all critical and trust-worthy inquirers among the Greeks, recognised as being the most ancient that had descended to their times. Although both in the Iliad and Odyssey we can clearly discern traces of the infancy of the nation to which they belong, and although a spirit of simplicity pervades them, peculiar to the childhood of the human race, yet the class of poetry under which they fall, appears in them at its full maturity ; all the laws which reflection and experience can suggest for the epic form are observed with the most refined taste ; all the means are employed by which the general effect can be heightened ; no where does the poetry bear the character of a firs 4 essay or an unsuccessful attempt at some higher poetical flight ; indeed, as no subsequent poem, either of ancient or modern times, has so completely caught the genuine epic tone, there seems good reason to doubt whether any future poet will again be able to strike the same chord. It seems, however, manifest, that there must have been many attempts and experiments before epic poetry could reach this elevation ; and it was, doubtless, the perfection of the Iliad and Odyssey, to which these prior essays had led, that buried the productions of former bards in oblivion. Hence the first dawn of Grecian literature is without any perfect memorial ; but we must be content to remain in ignorance of the connexion of literature with the character of the Greek races at the outset of their national existence, if we renounced all attempt at forming a conception of the times anterior to the Homeric poems. In order, therefore, to throw some light on this obscure period, we shall first consider those creations of the human intellect which in general are prior to poetry, and which naturally precede poetical composition, as poetry in its turn is followed by regular composition in prose. These are language and religion. When these two important subjects have been examined, we shall proceed, by means of allusions in the Homeric poems themselves, and the most credible testimonies of later times, to inquire into the progress and character of the Greek poetry before the time of Homer. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT Glti CHAPTER I. o 1. General account of the Languages of the Indo-Teutonic family. — o 2. Origin and formation of the Indo-Teutonic languages — multiplicity of their grammatical forms § .'{. Characteristics of the Greek language, as compared with the other languages of the Indo-Teutonic family. — § 4. Variety of forms, inflexions, and dialects in the Greek language. — § 5. The tribes of Greece, and their several dialects — characteristics of each dialect. § 1. Language, the earliest product of the human mind, and the origin of all other intellectual energies, is at the same time the clearest evidence of the descent of a nation and of its affinity with other races. Hence the comparison of languages enables us to judge of the history of nations at periods to which no other kind of memorial, no tradition or record, can ascend. In modern times, this subject has been studied with more comprehensive views and more systematic methods than formerly : and from these researches it appears that a large part of the nations of the ancient world formed a family, whose languages (besides a large number of radical words, to which we need not here particularly advert) had on the whole the same grammatical structure and the same forms of derivation and inflexion. The nations between which this affinity subsisted are — the Indians, whose language, in its earliest and purest form, is preserved in the Sanscrit; the Persians, whose primitive language, the Zend, is closely allied with the Sanscrit ; the Armenians and Phrygians, kindred races, of whose language the modern Armenian is a very mutilated remnant, though a few ancient features preserved in it still show its original resemblance ; the Green nation, of which the Latin people is a branch ; the Sclavo?iian races, who, notwithstanding their intellectual inferiority, appear from their language to be nearly allied with the Persians and other cognate nations ; the Lettic tribes, among which the Lithuanian has preserved the fundamental forms of this class of languages with remarkable fidelity ; the Teutonic, and, lastly, the Celtic races, whose language (so far as we can judge from the very degenerate remains of it now extant), though deviating widely in some respects from the general character perceptible in the other languages, yet unquestionably belongs to the same family. It is remarkable that this family of languages, which possess the highest perfection of grammatical structure, also includes a larger number of nations, and has spread over a wider extent of surface, than any other : the Semitic family (to which the Hebrew, Syrian, Phoenician, Arabian, and other languages belong), though in many respects it can compete with the Indo-Germanic, is inferior to it in the perfection of its structure and its capacity for literary development; in respect of its diffusion likewise it approaches the Indian class of lan- guages, without being equal to it; while, again, the rude and meagre languages of the American aborigines are often confined to a very b2 4 HISTORY OP THE narrow district, and appear to have no affinity with those of the other tribes in the immediate vicinity*. Hence, perhaps, it may he inferred, that the higher capacity for the formation and development of language Was at this early period combined with a greater physical and mental energy — in short, with all those qualities on which the ulterior improve- ment andjncrease of the nations by which it was spoken depended. While the Semitic branch occupies the south-west of Asia, the Indo- Germanic languages run in a straight line from south-east to north- west, through Asia and Europe : a slight interruption, which occurs in the country between the Euphrates and Asia Minor, appears to have been occasioned by the pressure of Semitic or Syrian races from the south; for it seems probable that originally the members of this national family succeeded one another in a continuous line, although we are not now able to trace the source from which this mighty stream originally flowed. Equally uncertain is it whether these languages were spoken by [the earliest inhabitants of the countries to which they be- longed, or were introduced by subsequent immigrations ; in which latter case the rude aborigines would have adopted the principal features of the language spoken by the more highly endowed race, retaining at the same time much of their original dialect — an hypothesis which appears highly probable as regards those languages which show a general affinity with the others, but nevertheless differ from them widely in their grammatical structure and the number of their radical forms. § 2. On the other hand, this comparison of languages leads to many results, with respect to the intellectual state of the Greek people, which throw an unexpected light into quarters where the eye of the historian has hitherto been able to discover nothing but darkness. We reject as utterly untenable the notion that the savages of Greece, from the inar- ticulate cries by which they expressed their animal wants, and from the sounds by which they sought to imitate the impressions of outward objects, gradually arrived at the harmonious and magnificent language which we admire in the poems of Homer. So far is this hypothesis from the truth, that language evidently is connected with the power of abstracting or of forming general notions, and is inconsistent with the absence of this faculty. It is plain that the most abstract parts of speech, those least likely to arise from the imitation of any outward impression, were the first which obtained a permanent form ; and hence those parts of speech appear most clearly in all the languages of the Indo-Teutonic family. Among these are the verb " to be," the forms of which seem to alternate in the Sanscrit, the Lithuanian, and the Greek; the pronouns, which denote the most general relations of persons and things to the speaker; the numerals, also abstract * Some of the American languages are rather cumbersome than meagre in their grammmatical forms ; and some are much more widely spread than others.— Note by Editor. r LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 5 terms, altogether independent of impressions from single objects ; and, lastly, the grammatical forms, by which the actions expressed by verbs are referred to the speaker, and the objects expressed by nouns are placed in the most various relations to one another. The luxuriance of grammatical forms which we perceive in the Greek cannot t have been of late introduction, but must be referred to the earliest period of the language; for we find traces of nearly all of them in the cognate tongues, which could not have been the case unless the languages before they diverged had possessed these forms in common : thus the distinc- tion between aorist tenses, which represent an action as a moment, as a single point, and others, which represent it as continuous, like a prolonged line, occurs in Sanscrit as well as in Greek. In general it may be observed, that in the lapse of ages, from the time that the progress of language can be observed, grammatical forms, such as the signs of cases, moods, and tenses, have never been increased in number, but have been constantly diminishing. The history of the Romance, as well as of the Germanic, languages, shows in the clearest manner how a grammar, once powerful and copious, has been gradually weakened and impoverished, until at last it preserves only a few frag- ments of its ancient inflections. The ancient languages, especially the Greek, fortunately still retained the chief part of their gram- matical forms at the time of their literary development; thus, for example, little was lost in the progress of the Greek language from Homer to the Athenian orators. Now there is no doubt that this lux- uriance of grammatical forms is not an essential part of a language, considered merely as a vehicle of thought. It is well known that the Chinese language, which is merely a collection of radical words destitute of grammatical forms, can express even philosophical ideas with tolerable precision ; and the English, which, from the mode of its formation by a mixture of different tongues, has been stripped of its grammatical inflections more completely than any other European language, seems nevertheless, even to a foreigner, to be distinguished by its energetic eloquence. All this must be admitted by every unprejudiced inquirer ; but yet it cannot be overlooked, that this copiousness of grammatical forms, and the fine shades of meaning which they express, evince a nicety of observation and a faculty of distinguishing, which unques- tionably prove that the race of mankind among whom these languages arose was characterized by a remarkable correctness and subtlety of thought. Nor can any modern European, who forms in his mind a lively image of the classical languages in their ancient grammatical luxuriance, and compares them with his mother tongue, conceal from himself that in the ancient languages the words, with their inflections, clothed as it were with muscles and sinews, come forward like living bodies, full of expression and character ; while in the modern tongues the words seem shrunk up into mere skeletons. Another advantage which belongs to the fulness of grammatical forms is, that words of 6 HISTORY OF THE similar signification make likewise a similar impression on the ear; whence each sentence obtains a certain symmetry and, even where the collocation of the words is involved, a clearness and regularity, which may be compared with the effect produced on the eye by the parts of a well- proportioned building ; whereas, in the languages which have lost their grammatical forms, either the lively expression of the feeling is hin- dered by an unvarying and monotonous collocation of the words, or the hearer is compelled to strain his attention, in order to comprehend the mutual relation of the several parts of the sentence. Modern lan- guages seem to attempt to win their way at once to the understanding without dwelling in the ear ; while the classical languages of antiquity seek at the same time to produce a corresponding effect on the outward sense, and to assist the mind by previously filling the ear, as it were, with an imperfect consciousness of the meaning sought to be conveyed by the words. § 3. These remarks apply generally to the languages of the Indo- Germanic family, so far as they have been preserved in a state of inte- grity by literary works and have been cultivated^ by poets and orators. We shall now limit our regards to the Greek language alone, and shall attempt to exhibit its more prominent and characteristic features as compared with those of its sister tongues. In the sounds which were formed by the various articulation of the voice, the Greek language hits that happy medium which characterises all the mental productions of this people, in being equally removed, on the one hand, from the super- abundant fulness, and, on the other, from the meagreness and tenuity of sound, by which other languages are variously deformed. If we com- pare the Greek with that language which comes next to it in fitness for a lofty and flowing style of poetry, viz., the Sanscrit, this latter certainly has some classes of consonants not to be found in the Greek, the sounds of which it is almost impossible for an European mouth to imitate and distinguish : on the other hand, the Greek is much richer in short vowels than the Sanscrit, whose most harmonious poetry would weary our ears by the monotonous repetition of the A sound ; and it possesses an astonishing abundance of diphthongs, and tones produced by the contraction of vowels, which a Greek mouth could alone distin- guish with the requisite nicety, and which, therefore, are necessarily confounded by the modern European pronunciation. We may likewise perceive in the Greek the influence of the laws of harmony , which, in different nations, have caused the rejection of different combinations of vowels and consonants, and which have increased the softness and beauty of languages, though sometimes at the expense of their ter- minations and characteristic features. By the operation of the latter cause, the Greek has, in many places, lost its resemblance to the original type, which, although not now preserved in any one of the extant languages, may be restored by conjecture from all of them ; even here, however, it cannot be denied that the correct taste and feeling LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 7 of the Greeks led them to a happy mixture of the consonant and vowel sounds, by which strength has been reconciled with softness, and har- mony with strongly marked peculiarities ; while the language has, at the same time, in its multifarious dialects, preserved a variety of sound and character, which fit it for the most discordant kinds of poetical and prose composition. § 4. We must not pass over one important characteristic of the Greek language, which is closely connected with the early condition of the Greek nation, and which may be considered as, in some degree, pre- figuring the subsequent character of its civilisation. In order to con- vey an adequate idea of our meaning, we will ask any person who is acquainted with Greek, to recal to his mind the toils and fatigue which he underwent in mastering the forms of the language, and the difficulty which he found to impress them on his memory ; when his mind, vainly attempting to discover a reason for such anomalies, was almost in despair at finding that so large a number of verbs derive their tenses from the most various roots ; that one verb uses only the first, another only the second, aorist, and that even the individual persons of the aoristare sometimes compounded of the forms of the first and second aorists respec- tively ; and that many verbs and substantives have retained only single or a few forms, which have been left standing by themselves, like the remains of a past age. The convulsions and catastrophes of which we see so many traces around us in the frame-work of the world have not been confined to external nature alone. The structure of languages also has evidently, in ages prior to the existence of any literature, suffered some violent shocks, which may, perhaps, have received their impulse from migrations or internal discord ; and the elements of the language, having been thrown in confusion together, were afterwards re-arranged, and combined into a new whole. Above all is this true of the Greek lan- guage, which bears strong marks of having originally formed part of a great and regular plan, and of having been reconstructed on a new system from the fragments of the former edifice. The same is doubtless also the cause of the great variety of dialects which existed both among the Greeks and the neighbouring nations ; — a variety, of which mention is made at so early a date as the Homeric poems*. As the country inhabited by the Greeks is intersected to a remarkable degree by moun- tains and sea, and thus was unfitted by Nature to serve as the habitation of a uniform population, collected in large states, like the plains of the Euphrates and Ganges ; and as, for this reason, the Greek people was divided into a number of separate tribes, some of which attract our attention in the early fabulous age, others in the later historical period ; so likewise the Greek language was divided, to an unexampled extent, into various dialects, which differed from each other according to the * In Iliad, ii. 804, and iv. 437, there is mention of the variety of dialects among the allies of the Trojans j and in Odyssey, xix. 175, among the Greek tribes in Crete# 8 HISTORY OF THE several tribes and territories. In what relation the dialects of the Pelasgians, Dryopes, Abantes, Leleges, Epeans, and other races widely diffused in the earliest periods of Grecian history, may have stood to one another, isjndeed a question which it would be vain to attempt to answer; but thus much is evident, that the number of these tribes, and their frequent migrations, by mixing- and confounding the different races, contributed powerfully to produce that irregularity of structure which characterises the Greek language in its very earliest monuments. § 5. The primitive tribes just mentioned, which were the earliest occupants of Greece known to tradition, and of which the Pelasgians, and after them the Leleges, were the most extended, unquestionably did much for the first cultivation of the soil, the foundation of insti- tutions for divine worship, and the first establishment of a regular order of society. The Pelasgians, widely scattered over Greece, and having their settlements in the most fertile regions (as the vale of the Peneus in Thessaly, the lower districts of Bceotia, and the plains of Argos and Sicyon), appear, before the time when they wandered through Greece in isolated bodies, as a nation attached to their own dwelling- places, fond of building towns, which they fortified with walls of a colossal size, and zealously worshipping the powers of heaven and earth, which made their fields fruitful and their cattle prosperous. The mythical genealogies of Argos competed as it were with those of Sicyon ; and both these cities, by a long chain of patriarchal princes (most of whom are merely personifications of the country, its mountains and rivers), were able to place their origin at a period of the remotest antiquity. The Leleges also (with whom were connected the Locrians in Northern Greece and the Epeans in Peloponnesus), although they had fewer fixed settlements, and appear to have led a rougher and more warlike life — such as still prevailed in the mountainous districts of Northern Greece at the time of the historian Thucydides — yet cele- brated their national heroes, especially Deucalion and his descendants, as founders of cities and temples. But there is no trace of any peculiar creation of the intellect having developed itself among these races, or of any poems in which they displayed any peculiar character ; and whe- ther it may be possible to discover any characteristic and distinct features in the legends of the gods and heroes who belong to the territories occupied by these different tribes is a question which must be deferred until we come to treat of the origin of the Grecian mythology. It is however much to be lamented that, with our sources of information, it seems impossible to form a well-grounded opinion on the dialects of these ancient tribes of Greece, by which they were doubtless precisely distinguished from one another; and any such' attempt appears the more hopeless, as even of the dialects which were spoken in the several territories of Greece within the historical period we have only a scanty knowledge, by means of a few inscriptions and the statements of gram- LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 9 marians, wherever they had not obtained a literary cultivation and celebrity by the labours of poets and prose writers. Of more influence, however, on the development of the intellectual faculties of the Greeks was the distinction of the tribes and their dialects, established at a period which, from the domination of war- like and conquering races and the consequent prevalence of a bold spirit of enterprise, was called the heroic age. It is at this time, before the migration of the Dorians into Peloponnesus and the settlements in" Asia Minor, that the seeds must have been sown of an opposition between the races and dialects of Greece, which exercised the most important influence on the state of civil society, and thus on the direction of the mental energies of the people, of their poetry, art, and literature. If we consider the dialects of the Greek language, with which we are ac- quainted by means of its literary monuments, they appear to fall into two great classes, which are distinguished from each other by characteristic marks. The one class is formed by the JEolic dialect ; a name, indeed, under which the Greek grammarians included dialects very different from one another, as in later times everything was comprehended under the term iEolic, which was not Ionic, Attic, or Doric. According to this acceptation of the term about three-fourths of the Greek nation consisted of iEolians, and dialects were classed together as iEolic which (as is evident from the more ancient inscriptions) differed more from one another than from the Doric ; as, for example, the Thessalian and iEtolian, the Boeotian and Elean dialects. The iEolians, however, pro- perly so called (who occur in mythology under this appellation), lived at this early period in the plain of Thessaly, south of the Peneus, which was afterwards called Thessaliotis, and from thence as far as the Paga- setic Bay. We also find in the same mythical age a branch of the ZEolian race, in southern iEtolia, in possession of Calydon ; this frag- ment of the iEolians, however, afterwards disappears from history, while the iEolians of Thessaly, who also bore the name of Boeotians, two generations after the Trojan war, migrated into the country which was called after them Bceotia, and from thence, soon afterwards, mixed with other races, to the maritime districts and islands of Asia Minor, which from that time forward received the name of iEolis in Asia Minor *. It is in this latter iEolis that we become acquainted with the iEolian dialect, through the lyric poets of the Lesbian school, the origin and character of which will be explained in a subsequent chapter. On the * We here only reckon those Cohans who were in fact considered as belonging to the yEolian race, and not all the tribes which were ruled by heroes, whom Hesiod, in the fragment of the men, calls sons of iEolus ; although this genealogy justifies us in assuming a close affinity between those races, which is also confirmed by other testimonies. In this sense the Minyans of Orchomenus and Iolcus, ruled by the ^Eolids Athamas and Cretheus, were of j35olian origin ; a nation which, by the stability of its political institutions, its spirit of enterprise, eren for maritime expe- ditions, and its colossal buildings, holds a pre-eminent rank among the tribes of the mythical age of Greece. (See Hesiod, Fragm. 28, ed. Gaisford. ' 10 HISTORY OF THE whole it may be said of this dialect, as of the Boeotian in its earlier form, that it bears an archaic character, and approaches nearest to the source of the Greek language ; hence the Latin, as being connected with the most ancient form of the Greek, has a close affinity with it, and in general the agreement with the other languages of the Indo-Ger- manic family is always most perceptible in the iEolie. A mere variety of the iEolie was the dialect of the Doric race, which originally was confined to a narrow district in Northern Greece, but was afterwards spread over the Peloponnesus and other regions by that important move- ment of population which was called the Return of the Heracleids. It is characterized by strength and breadth, as shown in its fondness for simple open vowel sounds, and its aversion for sibilants. Much more different from the original type is the other leading dialect of the Greek language, the Ionic, which took its origin in the mother- country, and was by the Ionic colonies, which sailed from Athens, carried over to Asia Minor, where it underwent still further changes. Its character- istics are softness and liquidness of sound, arising chiefly from the concurrence of vowels, among which, not the broad a and o, but the thinner sounds of e and w, were most prevalent ; among the consonants the tendency to the use of s is most discernible. It may be observed, that wherever the Ionic dialect differs either in vowels or consonants from the /Eolic, it also differs from the original type, as may be discovered by a comparison of the cognate languages ; it must there- fore be considered as a peculiar form of the Greek, which was deve- loped within the limits of the Grecian territory. It is probable that this dialect was spoken not only by the Ionians, but also, at least one very similar, by the ancient Achaeans; since the Achaeans in the genealogical legends concerning the descendants of Hellen are repre- sented as the brothers of the Ionians : this hypothesis would also explain how the ancient epic poems, in which the Ionians are scarcely men- tioned, but the Achaean race plays the principal part, were written in a dialect which, though differing in many respects from the genuine Ionic, has yet the closest resemblance to it. Even from these first outlines of the history of the Greek dialects we might be led to expect that those features would be developed in the institutions and literature of the several races which we find in their actual history. In the JEolic and Doric tribes we should be prepared to find the order of society regulated by those ancient customs and principles which had been early established among the Greeks ; their dialects at least show a strong disposition to retain the archaic forms, without much tendency to refinement. Among the Dorians, however, every thing is more strongly expressed, and comes forward in a more prominent light than among the iEolians ; and as their dialect every- where prefers the broad, strong, and rough tones, and introduces them throughout with unbending regularity, so we might naturally look among LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 11 them for a disposition to curry a spirit of austerity and of reverence for ancient custom through the entire frame of civil and private society. The IoniaiiSy on the other hand, show even in their dialect a strong tendency to modify ancient forms according* to their taste and humour, together with a constant endeavour to polish and refine, which was doubtless the cause why this dialect, although of later date and of secondary origin, was first employed in finished poetical compositions. CHAPTER II*. § 1. The earliest form of the Greek religion not portrayed in the Homeric poems, — § 2. The Olympic deities, as described' by Homer. — § 3. Earlier form of worship in Greece directed to the outward objects of Nature. — § 4. Character and attri- butes of the several Greek deities, as personifications of the powers and objects of Nature. — § 5. Subsequent modification of these ideas, as_ displayed in the Ho- meric description of the same deities. § 1. Next to the formation of language, religion is the earliest object of attention to mankind, and therefore exercises a most important influence on all the productions of the human intellect. Although poetry has arisen at a very early date among many nations, and ages which were as yet quite unskilled in the other fine arts have been dis- tinguished for their poetical enthusiasm, yet the development of religious notions and usages is always prior, in point of time, to poetry. No nation has ever been found entirely destitute of notions of a superior race of beings exercising an influence on mankind ; but tribes have existed without songs, or compositions of any kind which could be considered as poetry. Providence has evidently first given mankind that knowledge of which they are most in need ; and has, from the beginning, scattered among the nations of the entire world a glimmering of that light which was, at a later period, to be manifested in brighter effulgence. This consideration must make it evident that, although the Homeric poems belong to the first age of the Greek poetry, they nevertheless cannot be viewed as monuments of the first period of the development of the Greek religion. Indeed, it is plain that the notions concerning the gods must have undergone many changes before (partly, indeed, by means of the poets themselves) they assumed that form under which * We have thought it absolutely essential, for the sake of accuracy, in treating of the deities of the ancient Greek religion, to use the names by which they were known to the Greeks. As these, however, may sound strange to persons not ac- quainted with the Greek language, we subjoin a list of the gods of the Romans with which they were in later times severally identified, and by whose names they are commonly known : —Zeus, Jupiter; Hera, Juno; Athena, Minerva; Ares, Mars; Artemis, Diana ; Hermes, Mercury ; Demeter, Ceres ; Cora, Proserpine ; Hephosstus, Vulcan ; Poseidon* Neptune ; Aphrodite, Venus ; Dionysus, Bacchus. 12 HISTORY OF TIIF. they appear in the Homeric poems. The description given L>y Homer vl' the life of the gods in the palace of Zeus on Olympus is doubtless as different from the feeling and the conception with which the ancient Pelasgian lifted up his hands and voice to the Zeus of Dodona, whose dwelling was in the oak of the forest, as the palace of a Priam or Aga- memnon from the hut which one of the original settlers constructed of un- hewn trunks in a solitary pasture, in the midst of his flocks and herds. § 2. The conceptions of the gods, as manifested in the Homeric poems, are perfectly suited to a time when the most distinguished and prominent part of the people devoted their lives to the occupation of arms and to the transaction of public business in common ; which time was the period in which the heroic spirit was developed. On Olympus, lying near the northern boundary of Greece, the highest mountain of this country, whose summit seems to touch the heavens, there rules an assembly or family of gods; the chief of which, Zeus, summons at his pleasure the other gods to council, as Agamemnon summons the other princes. He is acquainted with the decrees of fate, and is able to guide them ; and, as being himself king among the gods, he gives the kings of the earth their power and dignity. By his side is a wife, whose station entitles her to a large share of his rank and dominion ; and a daughter of a masculine complexion, a leader of battles, and a protec- tress of citadels, who by her wise counsels deserves the confidence which her father bestows on her ; besides these a number of gods, with various degrees of kindred, who have each their proper place and allotted duty in the divine palace. On the whole, however, the attention of this divine council is chiefly turned to the fortunes of nations and cities, and especially to the adventures and enterprises of the heroes, who, being themselves for the most part sprung from the blood of the gods, form the connecting link between them and the ordinary herd of mankind. § 3. Doubtless such a notion of the gods as we have just described was entirely satisfactory to the princes of Ithaca, or any other Greek territory, who assembled in the hall of the chief king at the common meal, and to whom some bard sung the newest song of the bold adven- tures of heroes. But how could this religion satisfy the mere country- man, who wished to believe that in seed-time and in harvest, in winter and in summer, the divine protection was thrown over him ; who anxiously sought to offer his thanks to the gods for all kinds of rural prosperity, for the warding ofF of all danger from the seed and from the cattle ? As the heroic age of the Greek nation was preceded by another, in which the cultivation of the land, and the nature of the different districts, occupied the chief attention of the inhabitants (which may be called the Pelasgian period), so likewise there are sufficient traces and remnants of a state of the Grecian religion, in which the gods were considered as exhibiting their power chiefly in the operations of outward nature, in the changes of the seasons, and the phenomena of the year. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 13 Imagination — whose operations are most active, and whose expressions are most simple and natural in the childhood both of nations and indi- viduals — led these early inhabitants to discover, not only in the general phenomena of vegetation, the unfolding and death of the leaf and flower, and in the moist and dry seasons of the year, but also in the peculiar physical character of certain districts, a sign of the alternately hostile or peaceful, happy or ill-omened coincidence of certain deities. There are still preserved in the Greek mythology many legends of a charming, and at the same time touching simplicity, which hud their origin at this period, when the Greek religion bore the character of a worship of the powers of Nature. It sometimes also occurs that those parts of mythology which refer to the origin of civil society, to the alliances of princes, and to military expeditions, are closely interwoven with mythical narratives, which when minutely examined are found to contain nothing definite on the acts of particular heroes, but only describe physical phenomena, and other circumstances of a general character, and which have been combined with the heroic fables only through a forgetfulness of their original form ; a confusion which natural y arose, when in later times the original connexion of the gods with the agencies of Nature was more and more forgotten, and those of their attributes and acts which had reference to the conduct of human life, the government of states, or moral principles, were perpetually brought into more pro- minent notice. It often happens that the original meaning of narratives of this kind may be deciphered when it had been completely hidden from the most learned mythologists of antiquity. But though this process of investigation is often laborious, and may, after all, lead only to uncertain results, yet it is to be remembered that the mutilation and obscuring of the ancient mythological legends by the poets of laier times affords the strongest proof of their high antiquity ; as the most ancient buildings are most discoloured and impaired by time. § 4. An inquiry, of which the object should be to select and unite all the parts of the Greek mythology which have reference to natural phenomena and the changes of the seasons, although it has never been regularly undertaken, would doubtless show that the earliest religion of the Greeks was founded on the same notions as the chief part of the religions of the East, particularly of that part of the East which was nearest to Greece,!' Asia Minor. The Greek mind, however, even in this the earliest of its productions, appears richer and more various in its forms, and at the same time to take a loftier and a wider range, than is the case in the religion of the oriental neighbours of the Greeks, the Phrygians, Lydians, and Syrians. In the religion of these nations, the combination and contrast of two beings (Baal and Astarte), the one male, representing the productive, and the other female, representing the passive and nutritive powers of Nature, and the alternation of two states, viz., the strength and vigour, and the weakness and death of 14 HISTORY OF THE the male personification of Nature, of which the first was celebrated with vehement joy, the latter with e\cessi\e lamentation, recur in a perpetual cycle, which must in the end have wearied and stupihed the mind. The Grecian worship of Nature, on the other hand, in all the various /onus which it assumed in different places, places one deity, as the highest of all, at the head of the entire system, the God of heaven and light ; for that this is the meaning of the name Zeus is shown by the occurrence of the same root {Din) with the same signification, even ill the Sanscrit*, and by the preservation of several of its derivatives which remained in common use both in Greek and Latin, all containing the notion of heaven and day. With this god of the heavens, who dwells in the pure expanse of ether, is associated, though not as a being of the same rank, the goddess of the Earth, who in different temples (which may be considered as the mother-churches of the Grecian religion) was worshipped under different names, Hera, Demeter, Dione, and some others of less celebrity. The marriage of Zeus with this god- dess (which signified the union of heaven and earth in the fertilizing rains) was a sacred solemnity in the worship of these deities. Besides this goddess, other beings are associated on one side with the Supreme God, who are personifications of certain of his energies ; powerful deities who carry the influence of light over the earth, and destroy the opposing powers of darkness and confusion : as Athena, born from the head of her father, in the height of the heavens ; and Apollo, the pure and shining god of a worship belonging to other races, but who even in his original form was" a god of light. On the other side are deities, allied with the earth and dwelling in her dark recesses; and as all life appears not only to spring from the earth, but to return to that whence it sprung, these deities are for the most part also connected with death : a3 Hermes, who brings up the treasures of fruitfulness from the depth of the earth, and the child, now lost and now recovered by her mother Demeter, Cora, the goddess both of flourishing and of decaying Nature. It was natural to expect that the element of water {Poseidon) should also be introduced into this assemblage of the personified powers of Nature, and should be peculiarly combined with the goddess of the Earth : and that fire {Hephcestus) should be represented as a powerful principle derived from heaven and having dominion on the earth, and be closely allied with the goddess who sprang from the head of the god of the heavens. Other deities are less important and necessary parts of this system, as Aphrodite, whose worship was evidently for the most part propagated over Greece from Cyprus and Cythera f by the influence of * The root DIU is most clearly seen in the oblique cases of Zeus, A/Fo? A/F/, in which the U has passed into the consonant form F : whereas in Zsb;, as in other Greek words, the sound DI has passed into Z, and the vowel has been lengthened. In the Latin Iovi.s (luve in Umbrian) the D has been lost before I, which, however, is pre- served in many other derivatives of the same root, as dies, dium. f See Herod, i. 105 : and Hist, of Rome, pp. 121, 122. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 15 Syrophconician tribes. As a singular being, howe\er, in the assembly of Hit' Greek deities, stands the changeable god of flourishing, decaying, and renovated Nature, Dionytw 9 whose alternate joys and sufferings, and mar- vellous adventures, show a strong- resemblance to the form which religious notions assumed in Asia Minor. Introduced by the Thracians (a tribe which spread from the north of Greece into the interior of the country), and not, like the gods of Olympus, recognized by all the races of the Greeks, Dionysus always remained to a certain degree estranged from the rest ef the gods, although his attributes had evidently most affinity with those of Demeter and Cora. But in this isolated position, Dionysus exercises an important influence on the spirit of the Greek nation, and both in sculpture and poetry gives rise to a class of feelings which agree in displaying more powerful emotions of the mind, a bolder flight of the imagination, and more acute sensations of pain and pleasure, than were exhibited on occasions where this influence did not operate. § 5. In like manner the Homeric poems (which instruct us not merely by their direct statements, but also by their indirect allusions, not only by what they say, but also by what they do not say), when atten- tively considered, clearly show how this ancient religion of nature sank into the shade as compared with the salient and conspicuous forms of the deities of the heroic age. The gods who dwell on Olympus scarcely appear at all in connexion with natural phenomena. Zeus chiefly exercises his powers as a ruler and a king ; although he is still designated (by epithets doubtless of high antiquity) as the god of the ether and the storms*; as in much later times the old picturesque expression was used, "What is Zeus doing?" for " What kind of weather is it?" In the Homeric conception of Hera, Athena, and Apollo, there is no trace of any reference of these deities to the fertility of the earth, the clearness of the atmosphere, the arrival of the serene spring, and the like ; which, however, can be discovered in other mythical legends concerning them, and still more in the ceremonies practised at their festivals, which generally contain the most ancient ideas. Hephaestus has passed from the powerful god of fire in heaven and in earth into a laborious smith and worker of metals, who performs his duty by making armour and arms for the other gods and their favourite heroes. As to Hermes, there are some stories in which he is represented as giving fruitfulness to cattle, in his capacity of the rural god of Arcadia; from which, by means of \arious metamorphoses, he is transmuted into the messenger of Zeus, and the servant of the gods. Those deities, however, which stood at a greater distance from the relations of human life, and especially from the military and political actions of the princes, and could not easily be brought into connexion with them, are for that reason rarely mentioned by Homer, and never take any part in the events described by him ; in general they keep aloof 16 HISTORY OF THE from the circle of the Olympic gods. Demeter is never mentioned as assisting any hero, or rescuing him from danger, or stimulating him to the battle ; but if any one were thence to inter that this goddess was not known as early as Homer's time, he would be refuted by the incidental allusions to her which frequently occur in connexion with agriculture and corn. Doubtless Demeter (whose name denotes the earth as the mother and author of life*) was in the ancient Pelasgic time honoured with a general and public worship beyond any other deity ; but the notions and feelings excited by the worship of this goddess and her daughter (whom she beheld, with deep lamentation, torn from her every autumn, and recovered with excessive joy every spring) constantly became more and more unlike those which were connected with the other gods of Olympus. Hence her worship gradually obtained a peculiar form, and chiefly from this cause assumed the character of mysteries: that is, religious solemnities, in which no one could participate without having undergone a previous ceremony of admission and initiation. In this manner Homer was, by a just and correct taste, led to perceive that Demeter, together with the other divine beings belonging to her, had nothing in common with the gods whom the epic muse assembled about the throne of Zeus ; and it was the same feeling which also prevented him from mixing up Dionysus, the other leading deity of the mystic worship of the Greeks, with the subject of his poem, although this god is mentioned by him as a divine being, of a marvellous nature, stimu- lating the mind to joy and enthusiasm. CHAPTER III. § 1. First efforts of Greek poetry. Plaintive songs of husbandmen. — § 2. Descrip- tion of several of these songs, viz. the Linus. — § 3. The Ialemus, the Scephrus, the Lityerses, the Bormus, the Maneros, and the laments for Orpheus and Adonis. — § 4. The Paean, its origin and character. — § 5. The Threnos, or lament for the dead, and the Hymenceos, or bridal song. — § 6. Origin and character of the chorus. — § 7. Ancient poets who composed sacred hymns, divided into three classes, viz. those connected, i. With the worship of Apollo; ii. With the worship of Demeter and Dionysus ; and iii. With the Phrygian worship of the mother of the Gods, of the Corybantes, &c. — § 8. Explanation of the Thracian origin of several of the early Greek poets. — § 9. Influence of the early Thracian or Pierian poets on the epic poetry of Homer. § 1. Many centuries must have elapsed before the poetical language of the Greeks could have attained the splendour, the copiousness, and the fluency which so strongly excite our admiration in the poems of Homer. The service of the gods, to which all the highest energies of the mind were first directed, and from which the first beginnings of sculpture, * A?? fitirnp, that is, y>j p.wrnp> LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 17 architecture, music, and poetry proceeded, must for a long time have consisted chiefly in mute motions of the body, in symbolical gestures, in prayers muttered in a low tone, and, lastly, in loud broken ejaculations (dXoXvyuoc), such as were in later times uttered at the death of the victim, in token of an inward feeling ; before the winged word issued clearly from the mouth, and raised the feelings of the multitude to religious enthusiasm — in short, before the first hymn was heard. The first outpourings of poetical enthusiasm were doubtless songs describing-, in few and simple verses, events which powerfully affected the feeling's of the hearers. From what has been said in the last chapter it is probable that the earliest date may be assigned to the songs which referred to the seasons and their phenomena, and expressed with sim- plicity the notions and feelings to which these events gave birth : as they were sung by peasants at the corn and wine harvest, they had their origin in times of ancient rural simplicity. It is remarkable that songs of this kind often had a plaintive and melancholy character ; which cir- cumstance is however explained when we remember that the ancient worship of outward nature (which was preserved in the rites of Demeter and Cora, and also of Dionysus) contained festivals of wailing and lamentation as well as of rejoicing and mirth. 1 1 is not, however, to be supposed that this was the only cause of the mournful ditties in question, for the human heart has a natural disposition to break out from time to time into lamentation, and to seek an occasion for grief even where it does not present itself — as Lucretius says, that " in the pathless woods, among the lonely dwellings of the shepherds, the sweet laments were sounded on the pipe*." § 2. To the number of these plaintive ditties belongs the song Linus, mentioned by Homer t, the melancholy character of which is shown by its fuller names, AiXivog and OItoXlvoq (literally, " Alas, Linus !" and " Death of Linus"). It was frequently sung in Greece, according to Homer, at the grape-picking. According to a fragment of HesiodJ, all singers and players on the cithara lament at feasts and dances Linus, the beloved son of Urania, and call on Linus at the beginning and the end ; which probably means that the song of lamentation began and ended with the exclamation At Ahe. Linus was originally the subject of the song, the person whose fate was bewailed in it ; and there were many districts in Greece (for example, Thebes, Chalcis, and Argos) in which tombs of Linus were shown. This Linus evidently belongs to a class of deities or demigods, of which many instances occur in the * Inde mmutatim dulcet* didicere quere/ax, Tibia quas fuodit digitis pulsata eanentum, Avia per nemora ac sylvas saltusque reperta, Per loca pastorum deserta atqua otia dm. — Lucretius, v. 13S3 — 138G. f Iliad, xviii. 5G9. \ Cited ia Eustathius, p. 1163 (fragm. 1, od. Gaisfurd). c L6 HISTORY OF THE religions of Greece and Asia Minor; boys of extraordinary beauty, and in the flower of youth, who are supposed to have been drowned, or de- voured by raging dogs, OF destroyed by wild beasts, and whose death is lamented in the harvest or other periods of the hot season. It is obvious that these cannot have been real persons, whose death excited so general a s\ mpathy, although the fables which were offered in explanation of these customs often speak of youths of royal blood, who were carried off in the prime of their life. The real object of lamentation was the tender beauty of spring 1 destroyed by the summer heat, and other phenomena of the same kind, which the imagination of these early times invested with a personal form, and represented as gods or beings of a divine nature. According to the very remarkable and explicit tradition of the Argives, Linus was a youth, who, having sprung from a divine origin, grew up with the shepherds among the lambs, and was torn in pieces by wild dogs ; whence arose the " festival of the lambs," at which many dogs were slain. Doubtless this festival was celebrated during the greatest heat, at the time of the constellation Sirius; the emblem of which, among the Greeks, was, from the earliest times, a raging dog*. It was a natural confusion of the tradition that Linus should afterwards become a minstrel, one of the earliest bards of Greece, who begins a contest with Apollo himself, and overcomes Hercules in playing on the cithara ; even, however, in this character Linus meets his death, and we must probably assume that his fate was mentioned in the ancient song. In Homer the Linus is represented as sung by a boy, who plays at the same time on the harp, an accompaniment usually mentioned with this song ; the young men and women who bear the grapes from the vineyard follow him, moving onward with a measured step, and uttering a shrill cry*, in which probably the chief stress was laid on the excla- mation a* Xii'c. That this shrill cry (called by Homer tuy/ioc) was not necessarily a joyful strain will be admitted by any one who has heard the Ivyfxbc of the Swiss peasants, with its sad and plaintive notes, resounding from hill to hill. § 3. Plaintive songs of this kind, in which not the misfortunes of a single individual, but an universal and perpetually recurring cause of grief was expressed, abounded in ancient Greece, and especially in Asia Minor, the inhabitants of which country had a peculiar fondness for mournful tunes. The Ialemus seems to have been nearly identical with the Linus, as, to a certain extent, the same mythological narrations are applied to both. At Tegea, in Arcadia, there was a plaintive song, called Scephrus, which appears, from the fabulous relation in Pausaniasf, * To7%zro fiaX<7rri$. — Odyssey, vi. 1 Oi . Compare Iliad, xviii. 604: lolu Ti xufiurrwrYiPt hut' oclrov; ju.oX t'/irriQtt x,ce.x.uv >j rixrova %ovquv, y\ x.a) iioniv aoibh, o xiv TioTT'/ifftv uillcuv ; eSroi yug xkr/roi yi $(>otu)> It' utu^ovcc yetiav. Odyssey, xvii. 383 ei seq. h Odyss. xxii. 344; see particularly viii. 479. || Odyss. hi. 267. «[ Od. xvi. 252. ** «v«^«t« Unit. ft Od. xvii. 518. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 31 haps, been of considerable duration in Greece. Even the first sketch of the Iliad and Odyssey may have been intended to be sung; on these occasions, as Demodocus sang the celebrated poem on the contest between Achilles and Ulysses*, or the taking of Troy by means of the wooden horse f. It is clear also that the Homeric poems were intended for the especial gratification of princes, not of republican communities, for whom the adage " The government of many is not good ; let there be one lord, one king }," could not possibly have been composed : and although Homer flourished some centuries later than the heroic age, which appeared to him like some distant and marvellous world, from which the race of man had degenerated both in bodily strength and courage ; yet the constitutions of the different states had not undergone any essential alteration, and the royal families, which are celebrated in the Iliad and Odyssey, still ruled in Greece and the colonies of Asia Minor §. To these the minstrels naturally turned for the purpose of making them acquainted with the renown of their forefathers, and whilst the pride of these descendants of heroes was flattered, and the highest enjoyment secured to them, poetry became the instrument of the most various instruction, and was adapted exclusively for the nobles of that age ; so that Hesiod rightly esteems the power of deciding law-suits with justice, and influencing a popular assembly, as a gift of the Muses, and especially of Calliope, to kings ||. But even before Homer's time heroic poetry was not only employed to give an additional zest to the banquets of princes, but for other pur- poses to which, in the later republican age, it was almost exclusively applied, viz., the contests of poets at public festivals and games. A con- test of this nature is alluded to in the Homeric description of the Thracian * Od. viii. 74. f Od. viii. 500. J Iliad, ii. 204. § The supposed descendants of Hercules ruled in Sparta, and for a long time also in Messenia and Argos (Midler's Dorians, book iii. chap. 6, §. 10) as Bacchiads in Corinth, as Aleuads in Thessaly. The Pelopids were kings of Achaia until Oxylus, probably for several centuries, and ruled as Penthilids in Lesbos as well as in Cyme. The Ne/ids governed Athens as archons for life until the seventh Olympiad, and the. cities of the lonians as kings for several generations (at Miletus, for example, the succession was Nileus, Phobius, Phrygius). Besides these the descendants of the Lycian hero Glaucus ruled in Ionia : Herod, i. 147 — a circumstance which doubtless influenced the poet in assigning so important a part to the Lycians in the Trojan war, and in celebrating Glaucus (Iliad, vi.). The JEacids ruled over the Molossians, the Mneads over the remnant of the Teucrians, which maintained itself at Gergis, in the range of Ida and in the neighbourhood. (Classical Journal, vol. xxvi. p. 308, seq.) In Arcadia kings of the race of JEpytus (Iliad, ii. 604) reigned till about Olympiad 30. Pausan. viii. 5. Boeotia was, in Hesiod's time, governed by kings with extensive powers ; and Amphidamas of Chalcis, at whose funeral games the Ascrsean bard was victorious ("Egya, v. 652) was probably a king in Euboea (see Proclus, Tivos 'Htno^ou, and the 'hyuv) ; although Plutarch (Conviv. sept. sap. c. 10) only calls him an aw,o ToXifnyJs . The Homeric epigram, 13, in the Life of Homer, c. 31, calls the yipugot fixiriXni; vipivot uv ayo^n, the ornament of the market-place ; the later recension of the same epigram in 'Htrio^ou xat 'O^n^ou uyuv mentions instead the kao; e/v uyoPv/a/3oA//), and merely served to give the voice the necessary pitch 4. A simple accompaniment of this description is very well adapted to the delivery of epic poetry ; and in the present day the heroic lays of the Servians, which have most faithfully retained their original character, are delivered in an elevated tone of voice by wandering minstrels, after a few introductory notes, for which the gurla, a stringed instrument of the simplest construction, is employed. That a musical instrument of this nature was not necessary for the recital of epic poetry is proved by the fact, that Hesiod did not make use of the cithara, and on that account is said to have been excluded from the musical contests at Delphi, where this instrument was held in the highest estimation, as the favourite of Apollo himself. On the other hand, the poets of this Boeotian school merely carried a laurel staff§, as a token of the dignity bestowed by Apollo and the Muses, as the sceptre was the badge of judges and heralds. In later times, as music was more highly cultivated, the delivery of the two species of poetry became more clearly denned. The rhapsodists, or chaunters of epic poetry, are clearly distinguished from the citharodi, or singers to the cithara ||. The expression pa\pfftv y -''@ a £' v vtgutcl\'/.ioi Ovwiv ^fry/tied, 0$ p 'Alibi oct tkfckv exurod v 'AO'/ivkioi Ipvovuv afUKiff-Xfttv, f The opinion of Aristarchus is briefly stated by Pseudo-Plutarch Vita Homeri, ii. :i. lis foundation may be seen by comparing, for example, the Schol. Venet. on Iliad, xiii. 1D7, e cod. A, which, according 10 recent investigations, contain extracts from Aristarchus. I Simonides in Pseudo-Plutarch, ii. 2, and others. Compare Theocritus, vii. 17. § Concerning this yivo?, see the statements in Harpocration in 'Opyiofiai, and Bek- ker's Anecdota, p. 288, which in part are derived from the logographers. Another and different use of the word ' Opnefieti occurs in Plato, Isocrates, and other writers, according to which it means the admirers of Homer. 42 HISTORY OF THE hero, from whom they derived their name*. A member of this house of Homerids was, probably, " the blind poet," who, in the Homeric hymn to Apollo, relates of himself, that he dwelt on the rocky Chios, whence he crossed to Delos for the festival of the Ionians and the con- tests of the poets, and whom Thucydides f took for Homer himself; a supposition, which at least shows that this great historian considered Chios as the dwelling-place of Homer. A later Homerid of Chios was the well-known Cinaethus, who, as we know from his victory at Syracuse, flourished about the 69th Olympiad. At what time the Homerid Par- thenius of Chios lived is unknown \. But notwithstanding the ascer- tained existence of this clan of Homerids at Chios, nay, if we even, with Thucydides, take the blind man of the hymn for Homer himself, it would not follow that Chios was the birthplace of Homer : indeed, the ancient writers have reconciled these accounts by representing Homer as having, in his wanderings, touched at Chios, and afterwards fixed his residence there. A notion of this kind is evidently implied in Pindar's statements, who in one place called Homer a Smyrnsean by origin, in another, a Chian and Smyrnaean §. The same idea is also indicated in the passage of an orator, incidentally cited by Aristotle ; which says that " the Chians greatly honoured Homer, although he was not a citizen ||." With the Chian race of Homerids may be aptly compared the Samian family ; although this is not joined immediately to the name of Homer, but to that of Creophylus, who is described as the contemporary and host of Homer. This house also flourished for several centuries ; since, in the first place, a descendant of Creophylus is said to have given the Homeric poems to Lycurgus the Spartan % (which statement may be so far true, that the Lacedaemonians derived their knowledge of these poems from rhapsodists of the race of Creophylus) ; and, secondly, a later Creophylid, named Hermodamas, is said to have been heard by Py- thagoras**. § 2. On the other hand, the opinion that Homer was a Smyrnasan not only appears to have been the prevalent belief in the flourishing times of Greece tt> but is supported by the two following considerations : — first, the important fact, that it appears in the form of a popular legend, a mythus, the divine poet being called a son of a nymph, Critheis, and the * Niebuhr, Hist, of Rome, vol. i. note 747 (801). Compare the Preface to Muller's Dorians, p. xii. seq. English Translation. ]- Thucyd. iii. 104. * Suidas in Ua.t&Uw. It may be conjectured tbat this vios Q'httopo;, a-xoyovo; 'Opipo-j, is connected with the ancient epic poet, Thestorides of Phocaea and Chios, mentioned in Pseudo-Herodot. Vit. Horn. § See Boeckh. Pindar. Fragm. inc. 86. || Aristot. Rhet. ii. 23. Cornp. Pseudo-Herod. Vit. Horn., near the end. *[ See particularly Heraclid. Pont. vroXiruuv, Fragm. 2. ** Suidas in Uv^ayooet; ~S.dy,io;. p. 231, ed. Kuster. \t Besides the testimony of Pindar, the incidental statement of Scylaxis the most remarkable. 2/*y'^a h V'0^r t oo', fa, p. 35, ed. Is. Voss. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 43 Smymaean river Meles*; secondly, that by assuming Smyrna as the central point of Homer's life and celebrity, the claims of all the other cities which rest on good authority (as of the Athenians, already men- tioned, of the Cumaeans, attested by Ephorus, himself a Cumaean f, of the Colophonians, supported by Antimachus of Colophon }), may be ex- plained and reconciled in a simple and natural manner. With this view, the history of Smyrna is of great importance in connexion with Homer, but from the conflicting interests of different tribes and the partial accounts of native authorities, is doubtful and obscure : the following account is, at least, the result of careful investigation. There were two traditions and opinions with respect to the foundation or first occupa- tion of Smyrna by a Greek people : the one was the Ionic ; according to which it was founded from Ephesus, or from an Ephesian village called Smyrna, which really existed under that name § ; this colony was also called an Athenian one, the lonians having settled Ephesus under the command of Androclus, the son of CodrusU. According to the other, the JEolian account, the iEolians of Cyme, eighteen years after their own city was founded, took possession of Smyrna •[[, and, in con- nexion with this event, accounts of the leaders of the colony are given, which agree well with other mythical statements**. As the Ionic settlement was fixed by the Alexandrine chronologists at the year 140 after the destruction of Troy, and the foundation of Cyme is placed at the year 150 after the same epoch (which is in perfect harmony with the succession of the iEolic colonies), the two races met at about the same time in Smyrna, although, perhaps, it may be allowed that the lonians had somewhat the precedence in point of time, as the name of the town was derived from them. It is credible, although it is not distinctly stated, that for a long time the two populations occupied Smyrna jointly. The ^Eolians, however, appear to have predominated, Smyrna, according to Herodotus, being one of the twelve cities of the * Mentioned in all the different lives of Homer. The name or epithet of Homer, Melesigenes, can hardly be of late date, but must have descended from the early epic poets. f See Pseudo-Plutarch, ii. 2. Ephorus was likewise, evidently, the chief autho- rity followed by the author of the life of Homer, which goes by the name of Hero- dotus. % Pseudo-Plutarch, ii. 2. The connexion between the Smymaean and Colophonian origin of Homer is intimated in the epigram, ibid. i. 4, which calls Homer the son of Meles, and at the same time makes Colophon his native countty. 'Tt\ MiXwro;, "Of/.'/i(>i } cv tcXio? 'EXkd^t Tuffy Kai Kokotpuvs 7ru.r(>n dnnKi iv u'iotov. § See Strabo's detailed explanation, xiv. p. 633 — 4. || Strabo, xiv. p. G32 — 3. Doubtless, likewise the Smymaean worship of Nemesis was derived from Rhamnus in Attica. The rhetorician Aristides gives many fabu- lous accounts of the Athenian colony at Smyrna in several places. «f[ Pseudo-IIerodot. Vit. Horn. c. 2, 38. ** The oix.tfft'ni was, according to Pseudo-Herod, c. 2, a certain Theseus, the de- scendant of Eumelus of Pherse ; according* to Parthonius, 5, the same family of Admetus the Pheraean founded Magnesia on the Mseander; and Cyme, the indther- city of Smyrna, had also received inhabitants from Magnesia. Pseudo-Herod, c. 2. 1 I HISTORY OF THE JEotians, while the Ionic league includes twelve cities, exclusive of Smyrna*; for the same reason Herodotus is entirely ignorant of the Ephesian settlement in Smyrna. Hence it came to pass, that the lonians — we know not exactly at what time — were expelled by the jEolians ; upon which they withdrew to Colophon, and were mixed with the other Colophonians, always, however, retaining the wish of reco- vering* Smyrna to the Ionic race. In later times the Colophonians, in fact, succeeded in conquering Smyrna, and in expelling- the iEolians from it-f; from which time Smyrna remained a purely Ionian city. Concerning- the time when this change took place, no express testimony has been preserved ; all that we know for certain is, that it happened before the time of Gyges, king of Lydia, that is, before about the 20th Olympiad, or 700 B. C, since Gyges made war on Smyrna, together with Miletus and Colophon J, which proves the connexion of these cities. We also know of an Olympic Tictor, in Olymp. 23 (688 B. C), who was an Ionian of Smyrna §. Mimnermus, the elegiac poet, who flourished about Olymp. 37 (630 B. C), was descended from these Colophonians who had settled at Smyrna ||. It cannot be doubted that the meeting of these different tribes in this corner of the coast of Asia Minor contributed by the various elements which it put in motion to produce the active and stirring spirit which would give birth to such works as the Homeric poems. On the one side there were the lonians from Athens, with their notions of their noble- minded, wise, and prudent goddess Athena, and of their brave and philan- thropic heroes, among whom Nestor, as the ancestor of the Ephesian and Milesian kings, is also to be reckoned. On the other side were the Achceans, the chief race among the iEolians of Cyme, with the princes of Agamemnon's family at their head*fl, with all the claims which were bound up with the name of the king of men, and a large body of legends which referred to the exploits of the Pelopids, particularly the taking of Troy. United with them were various warlike bands from Locris, Thessaly, and Eubcea ; but, especially colonists from Bceotia, with their Heliconian worship of the Muses and their hereditary love for poetry**. § 3. If this conflux and intermixture of different races contributed pow- The Homeric epigram 4, in Pseudo Herod, c. 14, mentions Xuo) Wikuvos as the founders of Smyrna; thereby meaning the Locrian tribe, which, deriving its origin from Phricion, near Thermopylae, founded Cyme Phriconis, and also Larissa Phri- conis. * i.. 149. f Herod, i. 150. comp. i. 16. Pausan. vii. 5, 1. I Herod, i. 14; Pansanias, iv. 21, 3, also states distinctly that the Smyrnaeans were at that time lonians. Nor would Mimnermus have sung the exploits of the Smyrnaeans in this war if they had not been lonians. § Pausan. v. 8, 3. || Mimnermus in Strabo, xiv. p. 634. «[[ Strabo, xiii. p. 582. An Agamemnon, king of Cyme, is mentioned by Pollux, ix. 83. ** On the connexion of Cyme with Boeotia, see below, ch. 8. § 1. LITERATURE OV ANCIENT GREECE. 45 erfully to stimulate the mental energies of the people, and to develop the traditionary accounts of former times, as well as to create and modify the epic dialect ; yet it would be satisfactory if we could advance a step further, and determine to which race Homer himself belonged. There does not appear to be sufficient reason, either in the name or the accounts of Homer, to dissolve him into a mere fabulous and ideal being : we see Hesiod, with all his minutest family relations, standing before our eyes ; and if Homer was by an admiring posterity represented as the son of a nymph, on the other hand, Hesiod relates how he was visited by the Muses. Now, the tradition which called Homer a Smyrncean, evidently (against the opinion of Antimachus) placed him in the iEolic time ; and the Homeric epigram*, in which Smyrna is called the iEolian, although considerably later than Homer himself, in whose mouth it is placed, is yet of much importance, as being the testimony of a Homerid who lived before the conquest of Smyrna by the Colophonians. Another argu- ment to the same effect is, that Melanopus, an ancient Cymaean com- poser of hymns, who, among the early bards, has the best claim to his- torical reality, the supposed author of a hymn referring to the Delian worship f) in various genealogies collected by the logographers and other mythologists is called the grandfather of Homer | ; whence it appears, that when these genealogies were fabricated, the Smyrnaean poet was connected with the Cymaean colony. The critics of antiquity have also remarked some traits of manners and usages described in Homer, which were borrowed from the iEolians : the most remarkable is that Bubi , ostis§ i mentioned by Homer as a personification of unap- peased hunger, had a temple in Smyrna which was referred to theiEolian time|[. Notwithstanding these indications, every one who carefully notes in the Homeric poems all the symptoms of national feelings and recollec- tions of home, will find himself drawn to the other side, and will, with Aristarchus, recognize the beat of an Ionic heart in the breast of Homer. One proof of this is the reverence which the poet shows for the chief gods of the Ionians, and, moreover, in their character of Ionic deities. For Pallas Athenaea is described by him as the Athenian goddess, who loves to dwell in the temple on the Acropolis of Athens, and also hastens from the land of the Phaeacians to Marathon and Athens^" : Poseidon likewise is known to Homer as peculiarly the Heliconian god, that is the deity of the Ionian league, to whom the Ionians celebrated national festivals both * Epigr. Homer, 4. in Pseudo-Herod. 14. f Pausan. v. 7, 4, according to Bekker's edition. Fi'om this it appears that Pau- sanias makes Melanopus later than Olen, and earlier than Aristeas. J See Hellanicus and others in Proclus Vita Homeri, and Pseudo-Herod, c. 1. § II. xxiv. 532 ; and compare the Venetian Scholia. j| According to the Ionica of Metrodorus in Plutarch Qucest. Symp. vi. 8, 1. Eustathius, on the other hand, ascribes the worship to the Ionians. % Od. vii. 80. Compare II. xi. 547. 46 HISTORY OF THE in Peloponnesus and in Asia Minor* : in describing Nestor's sacrifice to Poseidon, moreover, the poet doubtless was mindful of those which his successors, the Nelids, were wont to solemnize, as kings of the Ionians. Among the heroes, Ajax, the son of Telamon, is not repre- sented by Homer, as he was by the Dorians of j£gina and most of the Greeks, as being an iEacid and the kinsman of Achilles (otherwise some mention of this relationship must have occurred), but he is considered merely as a hero of Salamis, and is placed in conjunction with Menes- theus the Athenian : hence it must be supposed that he, as well as the Attic logographer Pherecydes |» considered Ajax as being by origin an Attic Salaminian hero. The detailed statement of the Hellenic descent of ttie Lycian hero Glaucus in his famous encounter with Diomed, gains a fresh interest, when we bear in mind the Ionic kings of the race of Glaucus mentioned above \. Moreover, with respect to political insti- tutions and political phraseology, there are many symptoms of Ionian usage in Homer : thus the Phratrias, mentioned in the Iliad, occur else- where only in Ionic states ; the Thetes, as labourers for hire without land, are the same in Homer as in Solon's time at Athens ; Demos, also, in the sense both of "flat country" and of "common people," appears to be an Ionic expression. A Spartan remarks in Plato §, that Homer represents an Ionic more than a Lacedaemonian mode of life ; and, in truth, many customs and usages may be mentioned, which were spread among the Greeks by the Dorians, and of which no trace appears in Homer. Lastly, besides the proper localities of the two poems, the local knowledge of the poet appears peculiarly accurate and distinct in northern Ionia and the neighbouring Maeonia, where the Asian mea- dow and the river Cayster with its swans, the Gygaean lake, and Mount Tmolus||, where Sipylon with its Achelous^, appear to be known to him, as it were, from youthful recollections. If one may venture, in this dawn of tradition, to follow the faint light of these memorials, and to bring their probable result into connexion with the history of Smyrna, the following may be considered as the sum of the above inquiries. Homer was an Ionian belonging to one of the families which went from Ephesus to Smyrna, at a time when iEolians and Achaeans composed the chief part of the population of the city, and when, moreover, their hereditary traditions respecting the expedition ot the Greeks against Troy excited the greatest interest ; whence he recon- ciles in his poetical capacity the conflict of the contending races, inas- * Iliad, viii. 203 ; xx.404 ; with the Scholia. Epigr. Horn. vi. in Pseudo-Herod. 17. f Apollod. iii. 12, 6. \ Above, p. 31, note h. No use has here been made of the suspicious passages, which might have been interpolated in the age of Pisistratus. Concerning Homer's Attic tendency in mythical points, see also Pseudo-Herod, c. 28. § Leg. iii. p. 680. || Iliad, ii. 865 ; xx. 392. •{[ Iliad, xxiv. 615. It is evident from the Scholia that the Homeric Achelous is the brook Achelous which runs from Sipylon to Smyrna. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 47 much as he treats an Achaean subject with the elegance and geniality of an Ionian. But when Smyrna drove out the Ionians, it deprived itself of this poetical renown ; and the settlement of the Homerids in Chios was, in all probability, a consequence of the expulsion of the Ionians from Smyrna. It may, moreover, be observed that according to this account, founded on the history of the colonies of Asia Minor, the time of Homer would fall a few generations after the Ionic migration to Asia: and with this determination the best testimonies of antiquity agree. Such are the computations of Herodotus, who places Homer with Hesiod 400 years before his time*, and that of the Alexandrine chronologists, who place him 100 years after the Ionic migration, 60 years before the legislation of Lycurgust: although the variety of opinions on 'this subject which prevailed among the learned writers of antiquity cannot be reduced within these limits. § 4. This Homer, then (of the circumstances of whose life we at least know the little just stated), was the person who gave epic poetry its first great impulse; into the causes of which we shall now proceed to inquire. Before Homer, as we have already seen, in general only single actions and adventures were celebrated in short lays. The heroic mythology had prepared the way for the poets by grouping the deeds of the prin- cipal heroes into large masses, so that they had a natural connexion with each other, and referred to some common fundamental notion. Now, as the general features of the more considerable legendary collections were known, the poet had the advantage of being able to narrate any one action of Hercules, or of one of the Argive champions against Thebes, or of the Achaeans against Troy ; and at the same time of being certain that the scope and purport of the action (viz. the elevation of Hercules to the gods, and the fated destruction of Thebes and Troy) would be present to the minds of his hearers, and that the individual adventure would thus be viewed in its proper connexion. Thus doubtless for a long time the bards were satisfied with illustrating single points of the heroic mythology with brief epic lays ; such as in later times were produced by several poets of the school of Hesiod. It was also possible, if it was desired, to form from them longer series of adventures of the same hero; but they always remained a collection of independent poems on the same subject, and never attained to that unity of character and composition which constitutes one poem. It was an entirely new phenomenon, which could not fail to make the greatest impression, when a poet selected a subject of the heroic tradition, which (besides its connexion with the other parts of the same legendary cycle) had in itself the means of awakening a lively interest, and of satisfying the mind ; and at the same time admitted of such a development that the principal personages could be represented as acting each with a peculiar and indi- * Herod, ii. 53. + Apollod. Fragm, i, p. 410, ed. Heyne. 48 HISTORY OF THE vidual character, without obscuring* the chief hero and the main action of the poem. One legendary subject, of this extent and interest, Homer found in the anger of Achilles ; and another in the return of Ulysses. § 5. The first is an event which did not long precede the final destruction of Troy ; inasmuch as it produced the death of Hector, who was the defender of the city. It was doubtless the ancient tradition, established long before Homer's time, that Hector had been slain by Achilles, in revenge for the slaughter of his friend Patroclus : whose fall in battle, unprotected by the son of Thetis, was explained by the tradi- tion to have arisen from the anger of Achilles against the other Greeks for an affront offered to him, and his consequent retirement from the contest. Now the poet seizes, as the most critical and momentous period of the action, the conversion of Achilles from the foe of the Greeks into that of the Trojans ; for as, on the one hand, the sudden revolution in the fortunes of war, thus occasioned, places the prowess of Achilles in the strongest light, so, on the other hand, the change of his firm and reso- lute mind must have been the more touching to the feelings of the hearers. From this centre of interest there springs a long preparation and gradual development, since not only the cause of the anger of Achilles, but also the defeats of the Greeks occasioned by that anger, were to be narrated ; and the display of the insufficiency of all the other heroes at the same time offered the best opportunity for exhibiting their several excellencies. It is in the arrangement of this preparatory part and its connexion with the catastrophe that the poet displays his perfect acquaintance with all the mysteries of poetical composition ; and in his continued postponement of the crisis of the action, and his scanty reve- lations with respect to the plan of the entire work, he shows a maturity of knowledge, which is astonishing for so early an age. To all appearance the poet, after certain obstacles have been first overcome, tends only to one point, viz. to increase perpetually the disasters of the Greeks, which they have drawn on themselves by the injury offered to Achilles : and Zeus himself, at the beginning, is made to pronounce, as coming from him- self, the vengeance and consequent exaltation of the son of Thetis. At the same time, however, the poet plainly shows his wish to excite in the feelings of an attentive hearer an anxious and perpetually increasing desire, not only to see the Greeks saved from destruction, but also that the unbearable and more than human haughtiness and pride of Achilles should be broken. Both these ends are attained through the fulfil- ment of the secret counsel of Zeus, which he did not communicate to Thetis, and through her to Achilles (who, if he had known it, would have given up all enmity against the Achaeans), but only to Hera, and to her not till the middle of the poem*; and Achilles, through the loss * Thetis hail said nothing to Achilles of the loss of Patroclus (II. xvii. 411), for she herself did not know of 4 it. II. xviii. 63. Zeus also long conceals bis jlans LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 49 of his dearest friend, whom he had sent to battle, not to save the Greeks, but for his own glory*, suddenly changes his hostile attitude towards the Greeks, and is overpowered by entirely opposite feelings. In this manner the exaltation of the son of Thetis is united to that almost imperceptible operation of destiny, which the Greeks were re- quired to observe in all human affairs. It is evident that the Iliad does not so much aim at the individual exaltation of Achilles, as at that of the hero before whom all the other Grecian heroes humble themselves, and through whom alone the Tro- jans were to be subdued. The Grecian poetry has never shown itself favourable to the absolute elevation of a single individual, not even if he was reckoned the greatest of their heroes ; and hence a character like that of Achilles could not excite the entire sympathy of the poet. It is clear that the poet conceives his hero as striving after something super-human and inhuman. Hence he falls from one excess of passion into another, as we see in his insatiable hatred to the Greeks, his despe- rate grief for Patroclus, and his vehement anger against Hector ; but still it is impossible to deny that Achilles is the first, greatest, and most ele- vated character of the Iliad ; we find in him, quite distinct from his heroic strength, which far eclipses that of all the others, a god-like lofti- ness of soul. Compared with the melancholy which Hector, however determined, carries with him to the field of battle, anticipating the dark destiny that awaits him, how lofty is the feeling of Achilles, who sees his early death before his eyes, and, knowing how close it must follow upon the slaughter of Hector f, yet, in spite of this, shows the most determined resolution before, and the most dignified calmness after the deed. Achilles appears greatest at the funeral games and at the inter- view with Priam, — a scene to be compared with no other in ancient poe- try; in which, both with the heroes of the event and with the hearers, national hatred and personal ambition, and all the hostile and most opposite feelings, dissolve themselves into the gentlest and most humane, just as the human countenance beams with some new expression after long-concealed and passionate grief; and thus the purifying and ele- vating process which the character of Achilles undergoes, and by which the divine part of his nature is freed from all obscurities, is one continued idea running through the whole of the poem ; and the manner in which this process is at the same time communicated to the mind of a hearer from Hera and the other gods, notwithstanding their anger on account of the suf- ferings of the Achseans: lie does not reveal them to Hera till after his sleep upon Ida. II. xv. 65. The spuriousness of the verses (II. viii. 475 — 6) was recognized by the ancients, although the principal objection to them is not mentioned. See Schol. Ven. A. * Homer does not wish that the going forth of Patroclus should be considered as a sign that Achilles' wrath is appeased : Achilles, on this very occasion, expresses a wish that no Greek may escape death, but that they two alone, Achilles and Patro clus, may mount the walls of Ilion. 11. xvi. 97. f Iliad, xviii. 95 j xix. 417. E 50 HISTORY OF THE absorbed with the subject, makes it the most beautiful and powerful charm of the Iliad. § 6. To remove from this collection of various actions, conditions, and feelings any substantial part, as not necessarily belonging to it, would in fact be to dismember a living whole, the parts of which would neces- sarily lose their vitality. As in an organic body life does not dwell in one single point, but requires a union of certain systems and members, so the internal connexion of the Iliad rests on the union of certain parts ; and neither the interesting introduction describing the defeat of the Greeks up to the burning of the ship of Protesilaus, nor the turn of affairs brought about by the death of Fatroelus, nor the final pacifi- cation of the anger of Achilles, could be spared from the Iliad, when the fruitful seed of such a poem had once been sown in the soul of Homer, and had begun to develop its growth. But the plan of the Iliad is certainly very much extended beyond what was actually necessary ; and, in particular, the preparatory part consisting of the attempts of the other heroes to compensate the Greeks for the absence of Achilles, has, it must be said, been drawn out to a disproportionate length ; so that the suspicion that there were later insertions of import- ant passages, on the whole applies with far more probability to the first than to the last books, in which, however, modern critics have found most traces of interpolation. For this extension there were two principal motives, which (if we may carry our conjectures so far) exercised an influence even on the mind of Homer himself, but had still more pow- erful effects upon his successors, the later Homerids. In the first place, it is clear that a design manifested itself at an early period to make this poem complete in, itself, so that all the subjects, descriptions, and actions, which could alone give an interest to a poem on the entire war, might find a place within the limits of this composition. For this purpose it is not improbable that many lays of earlier bards, who had sung single adventures of the Trojan war, were laid under contribution, and that the finest parts of them were adopted into the new poem ; it being the natu- ral course of popular poetry propagated by oral tradition, to treat the best thoughts of previous poets as common property, and to give them a new life by working them up in a different context. If in this manner much extraneous matter has been introduced into the poem, which, in common probability, does not agree with the defi- nite event which forms the subject of it, but would more pro- perly find its place at an earlier stage of the Trojan war ; and if, by this means, from a poem on the Anger of Achilles, it grew into an Iliad, as it is significantly called, yet the poet had his justification, in the manner in which he conceived the situation of the contending nations, and their mode of warfare, until the separation of Achilles from the rest of the army, in which he, doubtless, mainly followed the prevalent legends of this time. According to the accounts of the cyclic and later poets (in LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 51 whose time, although the heroic traditions may have become more meagre and scanty than they had been in that of Homer, yet the chief occurrences must have been still preserved in memory), the Trojans, after the Battle at the Landing*, where Hector killed Protesilaus, but was soon put to flight by Achilles, made no attempt to drive the Greeks from their country, up to the time of the separation of Achilles from the rest of the army, and the Greeks had had time (for the wall of Troy still resisted them) to lay waste, under the conduct of Achilles, the surround- ing- cities and islands ; of which Homer mentions particularly Pedasus, the city of the Leleges ; the Cilician Thebe, at the foot of Mount Placus ; the neighbouring- city of Lyrnessus ; and also the islands of Lesbos and Tenedos*. The poet, in various places, shows plainly his notion of the state of the war at this time, viz., that the Trojans, so long as Achilles took part in the war, did not venture beyond the gates ; and if Hector was, perchance, willing to venture a sally, the general fear of Achilles and the anxiety of the Trojan elders held him back j\ By this view of the contest, the poet is sufficiently justified in bringing within the com- pass of the Iliad events which would otherwise have been more fitted for the beginning of the war. The Greeks now arrange themselves for the first time, by the advice of , Nestor, into tribes and phratrias, which affords an occasion for the enumeration of the several nations, or the Catalogue of Ships (as it is called), in the second book; and when this has made us acquainted with the general arrangement of the army, then the view of Helen and Priam from the walls, in the third book, and Agamem- non's mustering of the troops, in the fourth, are intended to give a more distinct notion of the individual character of the chief heroes. Further on, the Greeks and Trojans are, for the first time, struck by an idea which might have occurred in the previous nine years, if the Greeks, when assisted by Achilles, had not, from their confidence of their supe- rior strength, considered every compromise as unworthy of them ; namely, to decide the war by a single combat between the authors of it ; which plan is frustrated by the cowardly flight of Paris and the treachery of Pandarus. Nor is it until they are taught by the experience of the first day's fighting that the Trojans can resist them in open battle, that they build the walls round their ships, in which the omission of the proper sacrifices to the gods is given as a new reason for not fulfilling their intentions. This appeared to Thucydides so little conformable to histo- rical probability, that, without regarding the authority of Homer, he * The question why the Trojans did not attack the Greeks when Achilles was engaged in these maritime expeditions must he answered by history, not by the mythical tradition. It is also remarkable that Homer knows of no Achaean hero who had fallen in battle with the Trojans after Protesilaus, and before the time of the Iliad. See particularly Od. iii. \0b,seg. Nor is any Trojan mentioned who had fallen in battle. ./Eneas and Lycaon were surprised when engaged in peaceable occupations, and a similar supposition must be made with regard to Nestor and Troilus. II. xxiv. 257. f II. v. 788; ix. 252; xv. 721. E 2 f>2 HISTORY OF Tilt placed the building' of these walls immediately after the landing*. This endeavour to comprehend every thing in one poem also shows itself in another circumstance, — that some of the events of the war lying within this poem are copied from others not included in it. Thus the wounding of Diomed by Paris, in the heel f, is taken from the story of the death of Achilles, and the same event furnishes the general outlines of the death of Patroclus; as in both, a god and a man together bring about the accomplishment of the will of fate }. § 7. The other motive for the great extension of the preparatory part of the catastrophe may, it appears, be traced to a certain conflict between the plcui of the poet and his own patriotic feelings. An attentive reader cannot fail to observe that while Homer intends that the Greeks should be made to suffer severely from the anger of Achilles, he is yet, as it were, retarded in his progress towards that end by a natural endeavour to avenge the death of each Greek by that of a yet more illustrious Trojan, and thus to increase the glory of the numerous Achaean heroes ; so that, even on the days in which the Greeks are defeated, more Trojans than Greeks are described as being slain. Admitting that the poet, living among the descendants of these Achaean heroes, found more legends about them than about the Trojans in circulation, still the intro- duction of them into a poem, in which these very Achaeans were de- scribed as one of the parties in a war, could not fail to impart to it a national character. How short is the narration of the second day's battle in the eighth book, where the incidents follow their direct course, under the superintendence of Zeus, and the poet is forced to allow the Greeks to be driven back to their camp (yet even then not without severe loss to the Trojans), in comparison with the narrative of the first day's battle, which, besides many others, celebrates the exploits of Diomed, and extends from the second to the seventh book ; in which Zeus appears, as it were, to have forgotten his resolution and his promise to Thetis. The exploits of Diomed § are indeed closely connected with the violation of the treaty, inasmuch as the death of Pandarus, which became necessary in order that his treachery might be avenged, is the work of Tydides || ; but they have been greatly extended, particularly by the battles with the gods, which form the characteristic feature of the legend of Diomed ^| : hence in this part of the Iliad particularly, slight * Thuc. i. 11. The attempt of the scholiast to remove the difficulty, hy supposing a smaller and a larger bulwark, is absurd. + II. xi. 377. I II. xix. 417 ; xxii. 359. It was the fate of Achilles, &8. Of less importance, as it seems to me, is the oblivion of the message to Achilles, which is laid to the charge of Patroclus. II. xi. 839; xv. 390. Muy not Patroclus have sent a messenger to inform Achilles of what he wished to know ? The non-observance by Polydamas of the advice which he himself gives to Hector (II. xii. 75 ; xv. 354, 447 ; xvi. 307) is easily excused by the natural weakness of humanity. I Above, p. 31, note §. § 'isuKTiyi^ffta and AoXcuviia. || Schol. Yen. ad II. ac 1 j Eustath. p. 785, 41, ed. Rom, 54 HISTORY OF THE the second book, in which this humorous tone is most apparent, was written by the ancient Homer or by one of the later Honierids. Zeus undertakes to deceive Agamemnon, for, by means of a dream, he gives him great courage for the battle. Agamemnon himself adopts a second deceit against the Achseans, for he, though full of the hopes of victory, yet persuades the Achaeans that he has determined on the return home ; in this, however, his expectations are again deceived in a ludicrous man- ner by the Greeks, whom he had only wished to try, in order to stimu- late them to the battle, but who now are determined to fly in the ut- most haste, and, contrary to the decree of fate, to leave Troy uninjured, if Ulysses, at the suggestion of the gods, had not held them back. Here is matter for an entire mythical comedy, full of fine irony, and with an amusing plot, in which the deceiving and deceived Agamemnon is the chief character ; who, with the words, " Zeus has played me a pretty trick*," at the same time that he means to invent an ingenious false- hood, unconsciously utters an unpleasant truth. But this Homeric comedy, which is extended through the greater part of the second book, cannot possibly belong to the original plan of the Iliad ; for Agamem- non, two days later, complaining to the Greeks of being deceived by former signs of victory which Zeus had shown him, uses in earnest the same words which he had here used in joke f . But it is not conceivable that Agamemnon (if the laws of probability were respected) should be represented as able seriously to repeat the complaint which he had before feigned, without, at the same time, dwelling on the inconsistency be- tween his present and his former opinion. It is, moreover, evident, that the graver and shorter passage did not grow out of the more comic and longer one ; but that the latter is a copious parody of the former, composed by a later Homerid, and inserted in the room of an original shorter account of the arming of the Greeks. § 9. But of all the parts of the Iliad, there is none of which the dis- crepancies with the rest of the poem are so manifest as the Cata- logue of the Ships, already alluded to. Even the ancients had critical doubts on some passages ; as, for instance, the manifestly intentional association of the ships of Ajax with those of the Athenians, which appears to have been made solely for the interest of the Athenian houses (the Eurysacids and Philaids), which deduced their origin from Ajax ; and the mention of the Panhellenians, whom (contrary to Homer's invariable usage) the Locrian Ajax surpasses in the use of the spear. But still more important are the mythico-historical discrepancies between the Catalogue and the Iliad itself. Meges, the son of Phyleus, is in the Catalogue King of Dulichium ; in the Iliad J, King of the Epeans, dwelling in Elis. The Catalogue here follows the tradition, which was * II. ii. 114, vuv Ti x&xriv aTar'/iv $ov"kVJiTa.-o. f II. ii. 111—18 and 139—41 correspond to I!, ix. IS— 23. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE 55 also known in later times*, that Phyleus, the father of Meges, quarrelled with his father Augeas, and left his home on this account. Medon, a natural son of Oileus, is described in the Catalogue as commanding* the troops of Philoctetes, which come from Methone ; but in the Iliad as lead- ing the Phthianst, inhabiting Phy lace, who, in the Catalogue, form quite a different kingdom, and are led by Podarces instead of Protesilaus. With such manifest contradictions as these one may venture to attach some weight to the less obvious marks of a fundamental difference of views of a more general kind. Agamemnon, according to the Iliad, governs from Mycenae the whole of Argos (that is, the neighbouring part of Peloponne- sus), and many islands j ; according to the Catalogue, he governs no islands whatever ; but, on the other hand, his kingdom comprises iEgialeia, which did not become Achaean till after the expulsion of the Ionians§. With respect to the Boeotians, the poets of the Catalogue have entirely forgotten that they dwelt in Thessaly at the time of the Trojan war ; for they describe the whole nation as already settled in the country after- wards called Bceotia||. That heroes and troops of men joined the Achaean army from the eastern side of the .ZEgean'Sea and the islands on the coast of Asia Minor, is a notion of which the Iliad offers no trace ; it knows nothing of the heroes of Cos, Phidippus and Antiphus, nor anything of the beautiful Nireus from Syme ; and as it is not said of Tlepolemus that he came from Rhodes, but only that he was a son of Hercules, it is most natural to understand that the poet of the Iliad conceived him as a Tirynthian hero. The mention in the Catalogue of a whole line of islands on the coast of Asia Minor destroys the beauty and unity of the picture of the belligerent nations contained in the Iliad, which makes the allies of the Trojans come only from the east and north of the iEgean Sea, and Achaean warriors come only from the west^. The poets of the Catalogue have also made the Arcadians under Aga- penor, as well as the Perrhaebians and the Magnetes, fight before Troy. The purer tradition of the Iliad does not mix up these Pelasgic tribes (for, among all the Greeks, the Arcadians and Perrhaebians remained most Pelasgic) in the ranks of the Achaean army. If the enumeration of the Achaean bands is too detailed, and goes beyond the intention of the original poet of the Iliad, on the other hand, the Catalogue of the Trojans and their allies is much below the notion * Callimachus ap. Schol. II. ii. 629. Comp. Theocrit. xxi. f II. xiii. 693 ; xv. 334. $ II. ii. 108. § Here, in particular, the verse (11. ii. 572), in which Adrastus is named as first king of Sicyon, compared with Herod, v. 67 — 8, clearly shows the objects of the Argive rhapsodist. || There is, likewise, in the Iliad a passage (not, indeed, of much importance) which speaks of Bwotians in Bosotia. II. v. 709. For this reason Thucydides assumed that an uTobodr^h of the Boeotians had at this time settled in Bceotia; which, however, is not sufficient for the Catalogue. •jl The account of the Hkodians in the Catalogue also, by its great lengih, betrays the intention of a rhapsodist to celebrate this island. 56 HISTORY OF THE which the Iliad itself gives of the forces of the Trojans: this altogether omits the important allies, the Caucones and the Leleges, both of whom often occur in the Iliad, and the latter inhabited the celebrated city of Pedasus, on the Satnioeis *. Among the princes unmentioned in this Catalogue, Asteropaeus, the leader and hero of the Paeonians, is particularly ob- servable, who arrived eleven days before the battle with Achilles, and, therefore, before the review in the second book t, and at least deserved to be named as well as Pyraechmes J. On the other hand, this Catalogue has some names, which are wanting in the parts of the Iliad, where they would naturally recur §. But we have another more decided proof that the Catalogue of the Trojans is of comparatively recent date, and was composed after that of the Achaeans. The Cyprian poem, which was intended solely to serve as an introduction to the Iliad ||, gave at its con- clusion (that is, immediately before the beginning of the action of the Iliad) a list of the Trojan allies^"; which certainly would not have been the case if, in the second book of the Iliad, as it then existed, not the Achaeans alone but also the Trojans had been enumerated. Perhaps our present Catalogue in the Iliad is only an abridgment of that in the Cyprian poem ; at least, then, the omission of Asteropaeus could be ex- plained, for if he came eleven days before the battle just mentioned, he would not (according to Homer's chronology) have arrived till after the beginning of the action of the Iliad, that is, the sending of the plague. But from the observations on these two Catalogues may be drawn other inferences, besides that they are not of genuine Homeric origin : first, that the rhapsodists, who composed these parts, had not the Iliad before them in writing, so as to be able to refer to it at pleasure ; other- wise, how should they not have discovered that Medon lived at Phy- lace, and such like particulars; 2dly, that these later poets did not retain the entire Iliad in their memory, but that in this attempt to give an ethnographical survey of the forces on each side, they allowed them- selves to be guided by the parts which they themselves knew by heart and could recite, and by less distinct reminiscences of the rest of the poem. § 10. A far less valid suspicion than that which has been raised * For the Caucones, see II. x. 429 ; xx. 329. For the Leleges, II. x. 429 ; xx. 96 ; xxi. 86. Comp. vi. 35. -J- See II. xxi. 155 ; also xii. 102 ; xviii. 351. J II. ii. 848. The author of this Catalogue must have thought only of II. xvi. 287. The scholiast, on II. ii. 844, is also quite correct in missing Jphidamas ; who, indeed, was a Trojan, the son of Antenor and Theano, hut was furnished by his maternal grandfather, a Thracian prince, with a fleet of twelve ships. 11. xi. 221. § For example, the soothsayer Eunomus, who, according to the Catalogue (11. ii. 861), was slain by Achilles in the river, of which there is no mention in the Iliad. So likewise Amphimachus. II. ii. 871. j| See below, chap. vi. § 4. % scat KdraXoyo; tuv